# RO: Antivaxxers harass family after baby dies of whooping cough **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 28, 2013, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ro-antivaxxers-harass-family-after-baby-dies-of-whooping-cough/659548 "2013-05-28T15:34:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2015, 8:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ro-antivaxxers-harass-family-after-baby-dies-of-whooping-cough/659548/61 "2015-04-20T08:59:27Z")
Since this thread has been revivified, I might as well give Tony Abbott credit for the only thing he’s done that isn’t completely fucking stupid: [he got rid of the religious exemption for vaccinations](http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/abbott-government-closes-religious-loophole-for-childrens-vaccinations-20150419-1mo4rv.html). Admittedly, he likely did it for his own shitty reasons and not because it’s the right thing to do to protect the people and drive a few more diseases into extinction, but at least he didn’t side with the anti-vaxxers. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2015, 9:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ro-antivaxxers-harass-family-after-baby-dies-of-whooping-cough/659548/62 "2015-04-20T09:19:25Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Everything I’ve read tends to imply that parental age has a lot to do with it, and I’m guessing the Amish tend toward getting married very early relative to people in American society at large. > > This would make me wonder if maybe the anti-vaxxers are drawing incorrect conclusions, especially in light of the fact that many Amish groups DO vaccinate. No one knows what causes autism. High paternal age has been implicated, but it’s not men have babies in their late 30s, it’s men having babies in their 60s. Genes probably have a lot to do with it as well, so if a study did find lower rates of autism in Amish communities, it would probably have more to do with inbreeding than anything else. And anyway, they have a high prevalence of some other genetic disorders that have such a low occurrence in the general public, most doctors never see a case. But the idea that “they” don’t vaccinate is wrong. ---
**Author:** ![velomont](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/8491ac/32.png) [@velomont](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/velomont)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2015, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ro-antivaxxers-harass-family-after-baby-dies-of-whooping-cough/659548/63 "2015-04-20T19:53:45Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > With all the anti- and pseudo-science, the rampant belief in homeopathy and other woo-woo treatments, and the belief in the wildest of conspiracies, we seem to be marching steadily backwards into the Dark Ages. This seems to be just fine with a certain segment of our population, who apparently would prefer a return to chaos, robber barons and mob mentality. It’s beyond my comprehension. What has happened to placing a high value on education, scientific method and logical thinking? Add to that (and it is related) religious extremism and so on and so on. A co-worker and I were just talking about a new dark ages feeling. We may have to jump the gun on Hari Seldon and set up some Foundations a few millenia early. It’s actually very depressing to watch. ---
**Author:** ![Seanette](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/seanette/32/9139_2.png) [@Seanette](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seanette)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2015, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ro-antivaxxers-harass-family-after-baby-dies-of-whooping-cough/659548/64 "2015-04-20T20:21:14Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Everything I’ve read tends to imply that parental age has a lot to do with it, and I’m guessing the Amish tend toward getting married very early relative to people in American society at large. I’d personally wonder more about the limited gene pool among Amish, who don’t marry “English”. Since according to Wikipedia, nearly all of them descend from about 200 founders, genetic disorders linked to inbreeding do have a higher occurrence in the Amish population. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2015, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ro-antivaxxers-harass-family-after-baby-dies-of-whooping-cough/659548/65 "2015-04-20T20:56:28Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > With all the anti- and pseudo-science, the rampant belief in homeopathy and other woo-woo treatments, and the belief in the wildest of conspiracies, we seem to be marching steadily backwards into the Dark Ages. This seems to be just fine with a certain segment of our population, who apparently would prefer a return to chaos, robber barons and mob mentality. It’s beyond my comprehension. What has happened to placing a high value on education, scientific method and logical thinking? In addition to the other responses, as I’ve said here before, I think a lot of it comes from a variant on the old “rural vs. urban” thing — that people feel like people smarter than them just want to totally control their lives as a dictator or feudal lord just because they are smarter. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2015, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ro-antivaxxers-harass-family-after-baby-dies-of-whooping-cough/659548/66 "2015-04-20T21:43:18Z")
> [@Leaper](#): > > In addition to the other responses, as I’ve said here before, I think a lot of it comes from a variant on the old “rural vs. urban” thing — that people feel like people smarter than them just want to totally control their lives as a dictator or feudal lord just because they are smarter. I could accept the explanation that “smart people”/experts are resented for their expertise by jealous nitwits. Except that the nitwits, even as they proclaim “Experts can be wrong!” frequently cite a tiny minority of physicians and PhDs who support their nonsense. “You can’t trust science” has an odd ring, when the person saying this links to a scientific study to prove their point. :dubious: Wonder what sort of blowback Tara Hills is getting from her former antivax compadres. I’ve already seen one nasty post on another forum suggesting these children didn’t have whooping cough at all and that Hills herself misdiagnosed them (after it was pointed out to this person that a physician made the diagnosis, backed up by lab testing, a predictable dead silence ensued). ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2015, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ro-antivaxxers-harass-family-after-baby-dies-of-whooping-cough/659548/67 "2015-04-20T22:16:27Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > An [update on the subject](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/04/14/anti-vax-mom-changes-her-tune-when-all-7-of-her-children-come-down-with-whooping-cough/?tid=trending_strip_3) of anti-vaxxers and whopping cough: > > > [@](#): > > > > In the ongoing skirmishes between public health officials and vaccine skeptics, I’m scoring this one for the pro-immunization forces. A Canadian woman who had declined to have her children immunized against pertussis, better known as whooping cough, has changed her position _now that all seven of her children have come down with the disease._ > > (emphasis in original) That’s some lousy reporting right there. Seven paragraphs later, it’s revealed that what really changed her position was a measles outbreak: > [@](#): > > But when a small measles outbreak hit nearby, Hills was terrified. “I looked again at the science and evidence for community immunity and found myself gripped with a very real sense of personal and social responsibility before God and man. The time had come to make a more fully informed decision than we did 6 years ago. I sat down with our family doctor and we put together a catch-up vaccination schedule for our children,” she wrote. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2015, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ro-antivaxxers-harass-family-after-baby-dies-of-whooping-cough/659548/68 "2015-04-20T22:29:33Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > If I were to accept this analysis, I might have been more charitable in my response. > > But the reality is that she already knew how to make a good choice: after the measles outbreak: [She did](http://thescientificparent.org/learning-the-hard-way-my-journey-from-antivaxx-to-science/#more-576): > [@](#): > > That schedule that was supposed to start the week after I found myself in the waiting room of the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) with my 10-month-old son, waiting to confirm if he had whooping cough. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2015, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ro-antivaxxers-harass-family-after-baby-dies-of-whooping-cough/659548/69 "2015-04-21T23:15:45Z")
Had the whooping cough, been around kids with the whooping cough, and I suppose the doctor’s tests and verification are mostly a formality so she can write the erythromycin scrip. The disease is aptly named and you’d know a kid has it from across the McDonald’s playground, even if you’ve never heard it before. ---
**Author:** ![grayhairedmomma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/47e85d/32.png) [@grayhairedmomma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grayhairedmomma)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ro-antivaxxers-harass-family-after-baby-dies-of-whooping-cough/659548/70 "2015-04-22T13:51:26Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Even when I grew up, there was still polio. I’m not picking on you, just using this as an example. I think that this type of talk and the talk for years about certain diseases having been eradicated, have had a big hand in leading people to think that vaccinations aren’t really necessary. I have had quite a few conversations with my friends that have gone along the lines of “if it’s gone, what’s the point of getting vaccinated?” I think the medical and scientific establishment bear a little bit of responsibility for the current state of anti-vaxxers. The public health approach needs to use more precise language to make it easier for people who are on the fence to understand and defend against anti-vax information. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ro-antivaxxers-harass-family-after-baby-dies-of-whooping-cough/659548/71 "2015-04-22T14:50:58Z")
> [@grayhairedmomma](#): > > I think that this type of talk and the talk for years about certain diseases having been eradicated, have had a big hand in leading people to think that vaccinations aren’t really necessary. I have had quite a few conversations with my friends that have gone along the lines of “if it’s gone, what’s the point of getting vaccinated?” I think the medical and scientific establishment bear a little bit of responsibility for the current state of anti-vaxxers. The public health approach needs to use more precise language to make it easier for people who are on the fence to understand and defend against anti-vax information. Your friends are morons. It is not the medical establishment’s fault that they are too stupid to understand that there is more than one disease and that eradicating one does not mean you’ve eradicated all of them. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ro-antivaxxers-harass-family-after-baby-dies-of-whooping-cough/659548/72 "2015-04-22T15:17:39Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > Had the whooping cough, been around kids with the whooping cough, and I suppose the doctor’s tests and verification are mostly a formality so she can write the erythromycin scrip. The disease is aptly named and you’d know a kid has it from across the McDonald’s playground, even if you’ve never heard it before. One report claims that the kids had virtually all the symptoms except the “whoop”. ---
**Author:** ![grayhairedmomma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/47e85d/32.png) [@grayhairedmomma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grayhairedmomma)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2015, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ro-antivaxxers-harass-family-after-baby-dies-of-whooping-cough/659548/73 "2015-04-22T23:47:07Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > Your friends are morons. It is not the medical establishment’s fault that they are too stupid to understand that there is more than one disease and that eradicating one does not mean you’ve eradicated all of them. No, see this is a terrible attitude. Everyone has gotten so comfortable with the idea that “everybody knows” the history and science behind the need for each generation to get vaccinated. But consider that it’s been almost 30 years since anyone in my expanded circle has gotten chicken pox. That the last person I’ve heard of having the mumps is my brother decades ago in high school. Measles is something that people in old books get, and what the funk is Rubella, anyway? My kids, 18 & 11, have never known anyone to have any of those diseases. And yes, all that is because we’ve all been vaccinated or are benefiting from everyone else having been vaccinated. My point is that it is very easy to look around and not see the need for vaccinations because we’ve had such great success, but that in order to continue that success medical professionals and scientists have to restrain their vocabulary and not reinforce this idea by claiming that diseases have been eradicated from our country. ---
**Author:** ![Lacunae\_Matata](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@Lacunae\_Matata](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lacunae_Matata)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2015, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ro-antivaxxers-harass-family-after-baby-dies-of-whooping-cough/659548/74 "2015-04-23T06:39:46Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > I could accept the explanation that “smart people”/experts are resented for their expertise by jealous nitwits. Except that the nitwits, even as they proclaim “Experts can be wrong!” frequently cite a tiny minority of physicians and PhDs who support their nonsense. > > “You can’t trust science” has an odd ring, when the person saying this links to a scientific study to prove their point. :dubious: Not to mention that, when confronted with a growing body of evidence that Reason X for Not Vaccinating is completely bogus and uninformed, the anti-vaxxers simply move the goalpost and propose Reason Y, Z, W, T, or F. Every now and again, I indulge in a quixotic but well-intended effort to fight ignorance on boards other than the Dope. When comments are being made about this latest study finding no link between autism and the MMR vaccine, the woo flingers inevitably pop up with “yeah, but what about mercury/aluminum/formaldehyde/whateverthefuck in vaccines? What about vaccine overload? Blah blah blah.” If cites are provided that there’s no evidence to support their new crackpot theories, the argument swings around to “sanitation stopped the spread of disease, not vaccines!” There’s no acknowledgement that the goalposts keep moving - vaccines, in their minds, simply must be unsafe by virtue of being “unnatural,” and it hardly matters why. These are folks who seem entirely unable to grasp the difference between correlation and causation, nor anecdotes and data. One thing I found interesting today, while tilting at this particular windmill, was that so few of the debaters seemed to have read about this recently-published [study](http://www.livescience.com/50476-gestational-diabetes-autism-children.html). Researchers have also linked several genetic events to autism, although not in such a way as to change outcomes (yet?) And, just to toss my own ridiculous and probably baseless theory in here: Could there be a link between women’s use of hormonal birth control and her choice of a mate with the “wrong” set of genes for healthy offspring? (Perhaps there’s [some evidence](http://www.livescience.com/2781-pill-women-pick-bad-mates.html), but I’m not educated or equipped to actually test my theory that choosing a mate while “under the influence” of hormonal BC have offspring with more genetic problems. But really, that’s the difference between me and the anti-vax crowd: I have an idea that may or may not have merit, but I don’t base healthcare decisions for my children on “it makes sense to me;” I base them on the years of data and research and testing that have gone into current medical recommendations.) ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2015, 8:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ro-antivaxxers-harass-family-after-baby-dies-of-whooping-cough/659548/75 "2015-04-23T08:41:55Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > Had the whooping cough, been around kids with the whooping cough, and I suppose the doctor’s tests and verification are mostly a formality so she can write the erythromycin scrip. The disease is aptly named and you’d know a kid has it from across the McDonald’s playground, even if you’ve never heard it before. Not always. With very young babies, the ones most likely to die from whooping cough, their lungs aren’t developed enough for them to whoop. They probably won’t even cough at all. That makes it quite hard to diagnose sometimes. One of my neices had it for 8 weeks (having got it at around 4 weeks of age) before she was diagnosed. ---
**Author:** ![LavenderBlue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e95f7d/32.png) [@LavenderBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LavenderBlue)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2015, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ro-antivaxxers-harass-family-after-baby-dies-of-whooping-cough/659548/76 "2015-04-23T12:51:55Z")
It is really hard to have any ounce of respect for the anti-vax brigade when they compare laws on vaccines to state sponsored [rape.](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3050727/This-tasteless-kind-disgusting-Anti-vaccination-group-slammed-compare-immunisation-children-rape-claiming-advert-just-honest.html) ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2015, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ro-antivaxxers-harass-family-after-baby-dies-of-whooping-cough/659548/77 "2015-04-23T21:53:28Z")
> [@Lacunae\_Matata](#): > > …I don’t base healthcare decisions for my children on “it makes sense to me;” I base them on the years of data and research and testing that have gone into current medical recommendations.) Well, there are people [that don’t trust your so-called “studies”](http://www.theonion.com/articles/study-vaccines-dont-cause-autism-even-in-highrisk,38471/). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ro-antivaxxers-harass-family-after-baby-dies-of-whooping-cough/659548.md?page=3)