I don't understand the Anti-Vaccine crowd. I see no possible way for what they espouse to be morally responsible. Without vaccines the mortality rate of children to these diseases would be higher than the total rate of autism. This means that you would have more kids die than get autism even if every case of autism was directly caused by a vaccine.
This leaves us with two options for the beliefs of the anti-vaccination crowd.
1. They believe that a dead child is better than one with autism.
2. They are comfortable letting everyone else's children take the "risk" of getting a vaccine while they sit back and rely on herd immunity.
I see no possible way for what they espouse to be morally responsible.
It is very simple: they don't understand much about science. If you are ignorant of science, then it is easy to believe that autism symptoms that develop in your child after they get a vaccine are caused by the vaccine. The obvious flaws in this claim just won't appear to you just like bugs are often invisible to the developers that write them. Unless you've spent a fair bit of time thinking through causation claims and how they've been wrong, you won't have the practice to get this sort of analysis right, especially on such an emotionally fraught topic.
Although I certainly don't condone the anti-vaccine crowd, I do at least understand them: most of the "crowd" has only vaguely heard the idea that vaccines may be linked to autism. A distant relative (who had a seven year old and was pregnant with baby #2) repeated her worries about vaccines to me over Thanksgiving, and when I told her there was no real link to autism she reacted somewhat skeptically, so I told her to read _Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure_, which discusses why people want to associate vaccines and autism.
The shortest, most obvious version is that most people have trouble disentangling correlation and causation: kids tend to develop obvious signs of autism around the same time they get vaccines. So people think one causes the other when they don't.
Furthermore, most people don't have the training or inclination to really study the data. Journalism, in the meantime, promotes the "two sides of the controversy" school of writing, which often works well for politics and other areas without clear right answers. This works appallingly poorly in matters of science, where right answers are often demonstrably right but non-scientists have trouble distinguishing between competing claims, especially when multiple credentialed sources make compelling-seeming arguments. For more on this, see James Fallows' recent discussion in another context: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/year-e... .
You can see the same kind of thinking in reporting on global climate change, which is almost certainly happening and being caused or accelerated by things we're doing. Yet you often see a climate scientist discussing this, on which there's widespread consensus (and consensus that more study is still needed) followed by a bogus climate skeptic. Same thing for vaccines. People hear this stuff in the air and repeat vague claims at family gatherings, but most of them (and us) don't really understand them.
Another sad fact - in my experience, I have had more luck in convincing people to get their kids vaccinated by pointing out that the guy that did the study linking vaccinations and autism has been prevented from practicing medicine in the UK, than by explaining the studies that show that vaccines categorically do not cause autism. The science just doesn't interest them, they want an authority figure to do the thinking for them.
While I don't agree with the factual basis on which they are making their decision, it is entirely rational given their belief.
MMR are [edit] usually temporary and can typically be effectively treated by the medical systems of industrialized nations, whereas autism is permanent and generally untreatable.
It is analogous to purchasing a large heavy vehicle (e.g. SUV) based on the superior crash protection it provides passengers and despite the increased risk to other vehicles in a collision and the potential for increased long term environmental degradation.
For a start, 'MMR' isn't a disease. It's an acronym for the vaccine which is Measles, Mumps and Rubella. Each of which is thought of as a benign disease, but can have bad consequences.
Measles has a death rate of healthy adults of 3 in 1000. It is deadly for people with compromised immune systems, such as someone with AIDS.
Mumps is less of a threat but can still lead to other complications such as testicular infection and possibile sterility in young men.
Rubella is generally benign but if a pregnant woman contracts the disease in the first trimester it has a 1 in 5 chance of miscarriage, and in the remaining surviving cases the infant can be severely handicapped including sight, heart, bone and organ problems. You absolutely do want Rubella immunity amongst all women of childbearing age.
So I don't understand the anti-vaccine crowd either. Because the range of possible outcomes can be also very bad, and the chances are much higher of contracting one of the diseases than of developing Autism.
I have corrected the grammatical error. It now says, "MMR are temporary." I was fully aware of what MMR stands for, and thank you for pointing out my lack of clarity.
With a mortality rate of 3 in 1000 and an incidence of ~.2 cases per 1,000,000 per year in the US, one would predict a death from measles about every 5 years or so.
Given claims in the media that 1 in every 150 people is effected by Autism, a reasonable person might calculate that their child is 33,333 times more likely to be autistic than to die from measles.
Even if one believes there is only 0.1% chance that there is a causal link between MMR vaccines and autism, the probable risk of autism is still orders of magnitude higher than dying from measles.
It is only if one believes that the probability of a causal link between the MMR vaccine and autism is approximately zero that the risk of death from measles is greater than that of autism.
Once one believes that there is even a slight possibility of a link, then there can be a justified belief that the benefits of no vaccination outweigh the risks.
Yes, but it is wrong to compare the current measles infection rate with MMR vaccines to the autism rate. If you remove Measles vaccination, the figures will return to much, much higher rates of infection in a short space of time. To use your prior analogy, it would be using crash statistics from an SUV-free highway to argue for or against the introduction of SUVs. You can't use the current measles infection rate to make valid arguments to removing vaccines. The correct comparison is the pre-vaccination measles infection and death rates, which are probably 20 times higher.
Besides, a 'claim in the media' of 1 in 150 isn't a strong enough number for this debate.
I'm not debating the merits of MMR vaccines or arguing against vaccination. I'm not even making a statistical argument.
All I'm saying is that the decision of people who forgo vaccination is often a justified rational belief, even if it is incorrect. Keep in mind that most parents know a child with autism and very few know a child who died from MM or R.
While driving, it is rational and justified to believe that the vehicle's speed is 60mph when the speedometer reads "60mph." However, if the speedometer is miscalibrated your belief is incorrect.
It cannot be said that being anti-vaccine is a justified rational belief when it has an unjustified irrational basis. It is justified and rational to believe you're going 60mph when the speedometer says so because we all have experience with the reliability of speedometers, even though it's possible to be incorrect.
To use a different analogy, imagine I believed carpet was lava and stepping on it would burn me and break my mother's back. While this would explain why I'd avoid stepping on carpet, it would hardly be accurate to describe it as a justified, rational belief.
> MMR are [edit] usually temporary and can typically be effectively treated by the medical systems of industrialized nations, whereas autism is permanent and generally untreatable.
Sure, but forgoing the MMR vaccine to prevent autism makes as much sense as forgoing baths to prevent brain tumours.
Especially considering that measles has no effective treatment whatsoever. The treatment for measles is piss poor symptomatic treatment (IE you've got a fever? Here's some ibuprofen. You acquired bacterial pneumonia as a complication? Take some antibiotics.)
I really don't see symptomatic treatment as "effectively treated", I see it as a barely more effective treatment than placing leaches on a plague victim as they have to face the disease alone. Given that acute measles has a 15% mortality rate, I'd say it isn't effective treatment at all given that the measles mortality as a whole is 3 in 1000.
I find the blissful ignorance these people live in to be baffling. Do they not comprehend the statistics that there were hundreds of thousands of infections per year before vaccinations began and that this was attributed to deaths in the ten-thousands and countless more blindnesses.
I guess I'm rare in that I would rather see my kid alive and not suffering an agonizing death in childhood above my inconvenience of taking care of an autistic child and feeling like I have to blame someone else above simply accepting genetics.
It is common for people to prefer no child to a child with substantial medical problems. Hence embryo selection, prenatal genetic testing, abortion, adoption etc. When one considers that it is common for parents to know someone with an autistic child, and increasingly rare for a parent to even hear of a child dying of MM or R, a prophylactic vaccine can seem not to justify the potential risk.
To put it another way, even if a person believed that there was only a 1% chance that there was a 1% increase in risk of Autism due to the vaccine, that would still be significantly more risk than death from measles. Although epidemiology is a science, vaccine sales are a business, and it is not unreasonable to weigh pharma's economic interests in vaccines that scale to the degree that MMR does. Pharma is not in general a philanthropic endeavor and a healthy skepticism regarding their products is not unreasonable.
Vaccines are generally not very profitable, to the point where the various industrialized nations are having to subsidize production to keep supply up.
Healthy skepticism is certainly good and reasonable, but what we're seeing is unhealthy skepticism. The science is in and overwhelming, but antivaxxers consistently latch on to debunked, unreliable, or outright loony evidence to support the increasingly discredited claims.
Having been around since the 1970's development costs have long since been recovered. In addition with the recommendation of a second dose the number of doses delivered per year has almost certainly increased.
The contracted cost to the US CDC for Proquad (MMRV) is $8.57/dose (at which Merck is undoubtedly making a profit) and Merck charges $13.93/dose on the open market (additional 62% margin).
I think there are a few factors at work:
1) In the developed world for people with good incomes and health insurance, people live in relative safety and misjudge risk. Many diseases are rare or nonexistent, so are not viewed as risks as compared to autism (which may receive more media attention, than say the last measles outbreak).
2) Difficulties with distinguishing correlation/causation
3) Interested parties intentionally muddying the waters. The tobacco industry is a prime example of this and Merchants of Doubt makes for excellent, albeit chilling, reading.
4) A desire for control--it's easier to blame someone else if your kid gets autism then to ascribe it to unknown causes. For a parent (who believes that the risk of not vaccinating is small), it may be more satisfying to believe that they can protect their kids against autism, rather than face the fact that either due to unknown environmental or genetic (or an interplay between the two) factors, their child may become (or was diagnosed with) autism and there is nothing that they can currently do (have done) to prevent it....
I have a friend with an autistic son and she is firmly convinced it was caused by his vaccine(s) (according to her, no symptoms prior). Her younger son is perfectly healthy but never vaccinated.
I get that you don't agree with anti-vax people but it can't be too hard to see where those directly affected are coming from—can it?
Good friend of mine has a older son who wears glasses and a younger son with perfect vision. Must be the buildup of ZOMG VACCINATION EVILZ that ruined his eyes, right?
I know, you're not saying that, no one is, but it seems about as silly.
Not quite as silly. My point is that when you combine (a) a known increase in autism cases that isn't fully explained, (b) lying researchers, (c) media hysteria, and (d) personally having to deal with the condition, it's understandable why some might take that side—even if it's based on a fallacious argument.
I'd love to know what their explanation is then when the healthy child catches polio and is crippled for life, or catches measles and dies from the complications, which are both things that have a much higher likelihood of happening to an unvaccinated child then autism, especially when everyone is going on the anti-vaccine craze. Maybe their child will thank them when he becomes sterile in adulthood by having measles, or she will miscarriage and become sterile by having rubella. Well, love is definitely the wrong word here, of course. Not quite sure what the right word is.
I might sound a bit harsh, but I was vaccinated against polio and that was the only thing that saved me from becoming a cripple for life when the stupid bug insisted on infecting me when I was 5 years old - the vaccine didn't quite take, but it took enough to dampen the bug's spirit, but I still had to spend 8 years on physiotherapy and I still suffer the effects from it to this day - all because someone shared a spoon between me and another child one afternoon. These people are the new Darwin Award winners, only they're doing it to their children. It's a shame.
Those aren't the only two options. But I mostly avoid discussions like this on HN because the atmosphere here is pretty openly judgmental and hostile (a la your remark) so I don't see any real good coming out of trying to discuss it. It doesn't help that anyone here who is anti-vax tends to post in these threads in a manner that just promotes the view that we are all extremist nutcases, unfamiliar with basic logic, etc. So posting the type of remark you have just posted (in a forum that is already pretty biased on the topic) is highly unlikely to get you a real explanation of a third option. Thus you get your own "confirmation bias" stuff going on.
The reason people are so hostile about this is because the anti-vaccination belief is objectively wrong and literally fatal. It is directly analogous to believing AIDS isn't spread by HIV.
I don't think it's quite that simple. Most scientific views boil down to "belief" -- by that I mean that most people are essentially taking the word of some expert or other without themselves genuinely understanding it and, also, the lovely drawings of the solar system, tectonic plates, etc that you find in scientific materials are basically made up fantasies. If you used any kind of meaningful scale for the solar system, it would not fit on the pages of any book. In 8th grade, the entire class was asked to do a model of the solar system. I was sick and missed a bunch of school and turned mine in late. The teacher was trying to ding me hard for not having a scale. Then I explained that I had run the calculations and if I used 1mm = approx 33 million miles, then Mercury would be about 1mm from the sun, Venus would be about 2mm from the sun, Earth would be about 3mm from the sun and Pluto would be about 100 meters plus 8 millimeters and the model wouldn't even fit in the classroom. Tectonic plate drawings are basically a mental model and while you can find geologic evidence of them, they don't look as nice and clean as the drawings suggest and it was a very controversial theory for like the first 50 years, IIRC.
So I think most arguments like this boil down to "belief" on both sides and it is usually pointless to try to sway the other side. I didn't stop vaccinating based on "scientific" anything. I stopped because the people who had information that was getting me healthier all were anti-vax. So I stopped based on "social proof", so to speak -- which isn't really any different than most folks who believe their scientists and doctors are correct but they think it is vastly different, so my "social proof" only damns me as it is viewed as further evidence that I am a fruitcake.
So I generally make no effort to argue the science involved.
Your "social proof" has a name, its called anecdotes. While occasionally reasonable in the small scale, it is absurd to believe local observations have any merit in the grand scale.
"Most scientific views boil down to 'belief'" this almost sounds like your saying that nothing can truly be knowable. This is the path of nilism, not reason.
Science has a rigorous process, peer review being part of it. One does not have to be an expert in the field to read numerous studies, evaluate their methodology, reason as to whether the conclusion actually matches the data+experiments, and see if the results across the studies were consistent. This isn't an act of faith.
Galileo was put under house arrest for the rest of his life for introducing a new concept. It took many years for Einstein's theory to get sufficient proof as to be accepted. Einstein himself said something like "You cannot solve a problem from the same level of consciousness that created it". I think it is reasonable to assume that our current medical assumptions are part of the problem when it comes to autism, which has reached "epidemic proportions" according to some articles.
I am not suggesting a path of nihilism. I am only suggesting that I recognize that the reasons I do things and the thinking I use to make such decisions doesn't look very "logical" to quite a lot of people. This is highly likely to be true for people arguing from the "scientific" position. Yet, we are all human, even scientists, and thus even they have their biases, shortcomings, etc. I made the choice I made not due to anecdotal evidence but due to a track record of success: These people were helping me get concrete results in terms of a health problem for which "science" would like to write me off and consign me to a slow, torturous death as my only due in life. These same people had strong negative views of vaccines. I went with the folks who were getting me positive results. My other choice is to go along with conventional treatments for my condition. Everyone who does that gets gradually sicker and sicker until they die, usually at a young age. Science claims it is not killing them, it is their genes that is killing them.
To me, that position lacks logic -- but the overwhelming belief is that it is true, so that makes me a lone nutcase. And it is usually a hopelessly lost cause to attempt to point this out when everyone "just knows" they are right, science and doctors are on their side, and I am "objectively" wrong, nevermind the results I am getting. Those results can be easily dismissed as "anecdotal". I didn't get well to impress anyone or make any kind of point. I only did this to get my life back (and give my kids a life of their own). So it is mostly not worth arguing about. Those folks who do not believe me cannot be convinced. The fact that it is a done deal weighs nothing in their minds.
Galileo did not introduce the new concept. And he was put under house arrest by scientists. Your point about Einstein just confirms that science is not about belief, but about proof.
Your reference to science in quotes is really off-putting.
Everyone who does that gets gradually sicker and sicker until they die,
usually at a young age.
Sounds like you know everyone and their condition. Can it be?
Your position is based on logical fallacies. Does not look like you are
even trying to understand why people do not believe you.
I put a great deal of effort into trying to understand why people do not believe me. I am well aware that many don't because they are basically incredulous -- what I am saying flies in the face of everything they know to be true. It is not only hard to believe, it is very upsetting to believe because it calls into question the trustworthiness of their doctor, which is very threatening when you have a deadly medical condition.
Currently, the average life expectancy in the US for people with CF is about 37. I have talked to quite a few people online -- there are only about 30,000 diagnosed cases of CF in the US and some lists have hundreds of members, some of whom have more than one family member with CF. I don't know "everyone" but it is a small enough community to know quite a good cross section of such people via the internet. The folks who are doing better than expected generally make a lot of dietary and lifestyle changes and do a lot of research. The details of what they do and what they think may vary from what I do and what I think, but dietary changes are a very consistent aspect of what I have seen work for this population.
Anecdotally, most people -- whether they have CF or not -- would be well served to make significant dietary and lifestyle changes. Having a life threatening disease just provides more incentive for this to take precedence over many people's personal mantra of immediate gratification and lack of serious introspection.
This doesn't really have any bearing on the efficacy of vaccines, though. Perhaps certain lifestyle changes do dramatically reduce susceptibility to certain diseases, but that doesn't mean one should also rule out current scientific literature.
I don't rule out current scientific literature. I just keep in mind that it has its own biases and that view informs my interpretation and use of it.
For example, I am not aware of any studies concerning making dietary changes to control inflammation in people with CF. However, I am aware of many drug studies that show that controlling inflammation in people with CF does reduce incidence of infection. Those studies are generally conducted by drug companies, whose agenda is to develop products to sell (in this case, drugs). The detail that reducing inflammation in people with CF also reduces infection is useful information to me. The fact that they only seem to study which drugs can be useful in this regard while apparently completely ignoring diet and lifestyle is something I view as inherent bias in the source.
I am not a drug company with an agenda to develop a product and/or find a good reason to sell high doses of an existing product to very ill people. I am an individual who was once extremely ill and wanted to suffer less. (I had no goal of "getting well" initially. I just wanted to take less medication and be less miserable.) So I parse out which pieces of such studies are useful neutral information and which pieces smack of bias and agenda. "Reduce inflammation to reduce infection" is valuable information. "Take boatloads of our drugs (such high doses they have to run liver tests and closely monitor you)" smacks of agenda and bias and, frankly, callous disregard for my welfare in the pursuit of the almighty dollar.
Of course, those studies are based on what gets funding. So, science is not a pure pursuit of truth wherever it leads, but a pursuit of the truth that gets funded. Sometimes only part of the truth can be more misleading than an outright falsehood.
Sorry but "Most scientific views boil down to "belief"" is patently untrue. All scientific theories are not beliefs but rational explanations that fit the facts. If a new fact appears that contravenes the theory, the theory is thrown out. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_theories for example, some of which weren't thrown out till early last century).
As a physics undergrad I was never asked to take an expert at his word. Everything we learnt we tested in the lab, sure I didn't built an electron scanning microscope, but I used one and it fitted with the science.
The science I was presented with was given as a derivation of science I already knew, which was based on things we learn in high school etc etc. There is no taking the word of someone in science, hence the peer review process.
Unfortunately, I don't have the time to write at length this morning and by the time I get off work this discussion will basically be dead. So, in brief: Physics is very different from medicine. If you drop an apple to test gravity (per second per second measures, etc), the apple does not make a zillion and one choices that impact how it falls. But when you try to figure out what does and does not impact human health, people do make a zillion and one choices which impact the study outcome. There is also quite a lot of evidence that most studies concerning human health have serious flaws. Last, I would say that "peer review" is a form of social proof. Given how poorly that point is going over in this discussion, I will skip attempting to elaborate.
Physics and medicine both rely on rationalism and the scientific method.
The difference between what you are talking about and what I am talking about it the difference between objective and subjective proof. Your social proof easily falls into the post hoc fallacy[1]. While I will happily admit medical science doesn't get it right all the time at least the onus is there to prove the safety and efficacy of the drug.
A great example of this is those power balance bracelets[2], where anecdotal evidence (your "social proof") is provided in the form of celebrity endorsement. So a piece of rubber and a hologram like those you see on credit cards is sold for $30. They've been force to admit there is no evidence they work yet people will swear blue murder they do. Why? Because we are subjective beings, right now to our physical makeup (try plunging a hand into luke warm water then hot water then back again sometime).
We are poor judges of things, especially when it comes to ourselves.
It is not possible to completely remove social machinations (and other human shortcomings) from any human endeavor, not even the scientific method. Currently, science dismisses the idea that vaccines play any role in autism while not really having a solid explanation for what supposedly does cause it. I am always enormously skeptical of any claims that "we are absolutely certain X is not it and not even a factor though we have no clue whatsoever what is going on". To me, that smacks of social bias of the worst kind.
Let's just say I have less faith in the objectivity of the scientific community than you have and an alternate method for judging what looked like sound advice has, so far, gotten me better results than anything condoned by conventional medicine ever did. Should it fail me, I will reconsider my options. My judgment of these things is rooted in a 10 year track record of steady forward progress against supposedly impossible odds, not celebrity endorsements of things you and I apparently would both agree are hooey.
It is easy to class out what could have an effect when it is something easily as monitored and controlled like vaccinations. Changes in vaccination rates have had no influence over autism diagnosis rates. So while common sense tells you therefore the two aren't linked due to the lack of correlation there have also been comprehensive statistical studies to back the hypothesis that there is no link.
Why we don't have a solid answer to a cause of autism is because it is likely to be a combination of factors, both genetic and environmental (and likely not a single combination of those). There are plenty of other modern environmental factors that are suspects and but the alt-medicine lobby seems to be leveraging this disproven hypothesis for they own ends. Alt-medicine is big business, for example I know a couple of people making "fuck you" money doing it.
I agree that the human element is always a factor in studies which is why scientists go to great lengths to remove them such as double blind studies for example where both the tester and subject don't know which group the subject belongs to (test or control).
At 33 million miles to the millimeter, the about 4000 million miles from the sun to Pluto would be around 120mm. Just beause you had an error in your calculation doesn't imply that either your teacher nor science as a whole are wrong.
It's possible I am misremembering the exact numbers from many years ago. But that doesn't change the fact that any accurate model of the scale of the solar system would not have fit in the classroom (and certainly does not fit on the pages of a book). There are scale models of the solar system in the world. They get laid out across several city blocks and things like that. One of them puts something (a star maybe? -- not something within the solar system, I don't think) in Australia when the model of the solar system itself is in some place like Great Britain.
I'm not hostile to opposing viewpoints. Truthfully I don't understand.
Now you've mentioned it I'm trying to think of a third option would be something along the lines of "Vaccines could be applied differently than they are today". I haven't seen any evidence that supports that theory, but primarily I'm focused on people the refuse to vaccinate their kids at all. Not the ones that advocate different methods of vaccination.
3. They do enormous amounts of research and are very devoted parents who keep their kids healthy without prescription drugs or vaccines. They use diet, lifestyle changes and herbs/supplements (which are very respected in some "traditional" medicines) in place of what conventional/modern doctors would do to kids.
I have a form of cystic fibrosis (as does my 23 year old son). I have gotten off 8 or 9 prescription drugs and gotten me and my kids healthier. A great deal of what I know about getting healthy I learned from an anti-vax/alternative health board that believes that vaccines and other sources of metal poisoning cause autism (and related disorders). (EDIT: I don't think it's quite that simple, but I do think that is certainly a factor.) Both my sons fit the profile for ASD. Getting the three of us healthier has dramatically reduced their ASD symptoms. My son with cystic fibrosis has not been on antibiotics for over 12 years -- more than half his life -- and has taken no medication whatsoever in about 4 years. Most people with CF take hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of "maintenance drugs" every month, more when they are "sick" (having an exacerbation).
Most people with my genetic disorder get flu vaccines and pneumonia vaccines and other vaccines religiously. And they get gradually sicker and sicker until they die, usually at tragically young ages. I get a lot of flack off of people in the CF community for advocating non-drug approaches to the problem. I also get treated like I am some kind of irresponsible fruitcake and bad mother because none of us has seen a doctor in several years. We haven't seen a doctor because a) we aren't "sick" like we used to be and b) no doctor can help me improve on my track record of success. Doctors told me flat out to my face "people like you don't get well -- symptom management is the name of the game". I beg to differ.
Wow downvotes? I don't agree with most of this position but this viewpoint is while an anecdote and not based solidly in science is valid. Certainly a healthy balanced diet creates a healthier body and something everyone should implement whether they are managing a chronic illness or not.
I don't agree with not vaccinating as a general rule, but I am not overly familiar with cystic fibrosis so I am not aware of what risks sufferers have and what medications sufferers are asked to use. Certainly this is still relying on heard immunity for things like measles, mumps, polio and the like. Healthy living does not prevent these diseases.
Could you describe why you chose not to vaccinate for anything?
Another position I will agree with, though it is only implied in the comment is doctors seem to over prescribe medication. Whether it is a desire to help, or be seen to do something or just laziness to get onto the golf course. Certainly I have seen this anecdotally, I am often offered antibiotics when I don't really need them. Things like presenting with flu symptoms and being given a script to prevent a throat infection.
Could you describe why you chose not to vaccinate for anything?
:-) Wildly inaccurate assumption. :-)
My oldest son is fully vaccinated. I was diagnosed with CF in May 2001, just before I turned 36. My oldest son was diagnosed the following month, shortly after turning 14. (He was born the day after my 22nd birthday. My youngest was born on my 5th wedding anniversary. When I was married, I went around telling everyone my husband was too cheap to buy me anything. <wink>)
When I was first diagnosed, it was after having been bedridden for 3 1/2 months, after 10 weeks of sinusitis turned to pneumonia. The first few years, I got my flu shot every year. My then teenaged son refused his and was very adamant that he would rather have the flu than the flu shot. I was very slow to join the anti-vax crowd and I don't promote it as a position. But I did eventually stop getting my annual flu shot and my youngest son never got the last of his vaccinations. The reason I stopped getting my vaccinations: Absolutely everyone (including my oldest son) who was helping me get well when most of the wold insisted it couldn't be done were strongly anti-vax. No on tried to talk me out of it. But I eventually decided to skip the shot and see if I did better. I haven't gone back.
As for doctors over-prescribing medicine: I think that bias is built in to the way they are compensated. Drugs offer short-term gains with long-term consequences. The doctors can claim credit for the short-term gains while distancing themselves from the long-term negative consequences and not really owning that -- even though it isn't at all secret and everyone in the CF community refers to drug side effects as "a necessary evil". If you are basically healthy, you can do this to yourself occasionally and it isn't necessarily a big deal. But if you have a chronic, deadly condition, it helps to put you in the grave and you cannot prove it. All the experts blame your genes, there aren't really big samples of groups of people successfully doing something else (just a few "anecdotal"/lone nutcases like me), and doing nothing (which is what people seem to think I am doing) does in fact kill you if you have CF.
As for diet and lifestyle: Life is chemistry. Everything you eat, drink or touch impacts your body chemistry to some small degree. If you are willing to do enough research and make enough changes, the chemical impact is greater than what drugs do to the body. But it's hard to sell people on that. <shrug>
Would you immunize yourself or your children for things like MMR now?
I think science and doctors are getting better at studying the holistic approach you talk about, and some things will be born out by the facts and others won't. I am glad things are working for you and your family, and certainly I would contend that a sufferer of a disease like CF is a someone who can rely on herd immunity and boost their immune systems in other ways, and not draw critizim for doing so.
Certainly what you eat has an a large impact, but the complexity of our bodies is such that it is very difficult to draw conclusions on what helps people or not.
I strongly disagree with "the chemical impact is greater than what drugs do to the body". If your diet is lacking in vitamin c does getting the vitamin from an supplement (in "drug" form if you like) have a greater effect that getting it from an orange I think you would agree not and I would say it is the same. (I am using vitamin C here as the supplement/drug because it has been shown to be taken up by the body just as effectively in both forms.
Would you immunize yourself or your children for things like MMR now?
My sons are both legal adults, so it is no longer my decision to make for them. I don't have plans/expectations to have more kids. I would be very reluctant to get anymore vaccinations. I have done better without them. So far, I haven't really had to make any decisions regarding some "position" along those lines. I don't recall the last time I had the flu or a cold. I think the things we are doing does provide protection from infection, but you have to stay on top of it. It isn't a nice simple "do it once" solution -- but those solutions weren't working for me anyway.
I took quite a lot of supplements for a long time. I take very few these days. I think it is better to get it from food, if possible. If you do the research, you find, for example, that magnesium is best absorbed when taken with calcium and calcium is best absorbed when taken with a few other things. I think there are also micronutrients in food that have yet to be adequately cataloged and studied. So I think food is, generally speaking, a superior means to get what we need because we can't replicate the complexity of food with our supplements, though supplements definitely had their place for a long time for me while I was trying to undo decades of damage and it simply wasn't possible to get the high doses of nutrients I needed from food alone.
I have a website where I talk a little about things I've done. There are some links on it to other resources. The link to it is in my profile (the one with "health" in the name). If you have some specific issue you are trying to address, you can write me privately and I can try to make some suggestions/give some pointers.
Perhaps I'm misinformed, but my understanding is that CF is generally detectable early on - most CF kids born before the 20th century didn't last much longer than a year.
Is it possible yours is just an unusually mild case?
Yes I have a "mild case". Though "mild" is a political hot button in the CF community and the phrase "mild CF" can get you lynched in some crowds. The PC term is "atypical CF". Just as they first recognized "classic Kanner's syndrome" as the only form of autism and now recognize a variety of less severe issues as part of "autism spectrum disorder", they also now recognize less severe forms of CF. That certainly contributes to how long I have lived but it does nothing to explain how I came back from death's door.
You are not really presenting any evidence, especially evidence particular to vaccines and autism. It doesn’t matter how nice and great the alternative health board is if they can’t muster satisfactory evidence.
I would also think that if what you say is indeed true, many scientists would be very interested in your case.
You are not really presenting any evidence, especially evidence particular to vaccines and autism. It doesn’t matter how nice and great the alternative health board is if they can’t muster satisfactory evidence.
I was not offering to give evidence particular to vaccines and autism. I don't even believe that vaccines directly and solely cause autism. (I do believe they are a contributing factor but I think it's more complicated than the two sides want to make it out to be.) I was only suggesting that the two possible characterizations being listed for parents who are anti-vax were not the only two possibilities.
I would also think that if what you say is indeed true, many scientists would be very interested in your case.
You would think so. But my doctor's reaction to me getting healthier was to schedule me with fewer and fewer appointments on the theory that I didn't really need his attention and other patients needed him more, while expressing zero interest in how I was getting well, even though he was clear it was something I was doing, not something he was doing. (This is another reason I haven't seen a doctor recently: My experience is doctors don't really want to hear what I have to say and the only thing they can offer me is drugs, which I have worked extremely hard to get off of and plan to stay off of.)
Some debates cannot be solved by looking at the positions of both sides and picking the middle (though that sure would be nice and simple) and a MD is not a scientist (doing basic research probably won’t make her or him money, it’s not an effective use of her or his time).
A) I don't think I'm picking the middle. I'm saying most things aren't as simple as black or white arguments would like to make them be.
B) No, an MD is not a scientist. I have a website, have had it for a few years. Very few people of any sort have expressed any interest in it whatsoever. I'm not holding my breathe. I don't expect it to catch on.
Humour us, what is this third option? It's possible to describe somebody's point of view without agreeing with it yourself so I don't see why you need to dodge like this.
For example (I believe in evolution): "some creationists commonly argue that some constructs in biology, such as eyes, are too complex to have evolved from simpler systems. They call this concept irreducibility".
See?
If you're interested in a clean and logical discussion, which you seem to imply that you are, then you need to at least participate first!
I get the impression that the tide has turned in the battle, and we should start seeing an improvement in vaccination rates over the next few years. Pity there will be a large lag as children who weren't immunized grow up and continue to get sick from these preventable diseases.
There doesn't have to be a lag; if you have not gotten or spread the disease but get your immunization late, no concrete damage has occurred. It's not like the immunizations only work when you're two, they'll work anytime.
Absolutely, but once a child has left the normal cycle of immunization either the parents or the government need to make an effort to get them up to date. IMO this by and large won't happen without either policies in place or a large public interest campaign directed at it.
Are children still accepted into schools without their vaccinations? I know when I was a kid I had to bring a card with all my shots or they wouldn't enroll me. So has this requirement been dropped?
And to get a VISA for some countries you need to bring that card.
In most US states, a parent can apply for a religious exemption that will allow them to enroll their child in school without one or more of the required immunizations. Some states even offer "philosophical" exemptions.
The National Conference of State Legislatures maintains a list of exemption statutes by state:
IIRC here in Canada you have to have all your vaccinations or by-and-large you will not be accepted into any school. However, I don't remember this being needed in the UK, but then again I remember getting shots during class time so I probably never paid enough attention because everyone got the vaccinations.
I have a two year old so have been doing the vaccination dance recently. We take her to a pediatric nurse practitioner at a rather alternative practice (they even have a shaman) and she advises getting the MMR vaccine. If the vaccine is standard there, then that is a strong indicator supporting your statement that the tides have turned.
The sad thing is that for a lot of this sort of propaganda to be effective, it don't have to prove anything; it suffices to just raise the question and spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
While the book doesn't touch on vaccines, I found Oreskes & Conway's "Merchants of Doubt" a fascinating read on the subject of how easy it is to spread FUD (or at least UD) about science.
Even sadder is that they cite Wakefield being exposed as a fraud as evidence of tampering by "Big Pharma".
As much as I'm convinced this guy is scum and perpetrated a cynical fraud for his own professional and monetary gain, I have to admit this is a fair accusation if you replace "Big Pharma" by the medical community as a whole. It was done with good intentions, but the way they treated the study (and Wakefield) proves that the science is subject to non-scientific considerations. Wakefield's study was accepted and published and didn't immediately cause a scandal, so there must be hundreds of published papers just as shoddy, many of them containing fraud perpetrated for an author's professional gain. Far from ending careers and discrediting ideas, the vast majority of those papers will continue to boost careers and promote their conclusions in some small way until the journals are dusty and forgotten.
Wakefield's study was singled out for special justice in order to manipulate the public debate on vaccines. It was done in the name of truth, will certainly save lives, and didn't inflict on Wakefield anything he didn't deserve. However, it was "tampering" with the normal process, it was done as propaganda, and it was also done for PR motivations, to compensate for the impression that the medical community was complicit in Wakefield's fraud by holding his science to such low standards. It isn't sad if people notice that. It's just sad that the medical community was forced to stage a show trial to put an end to Wakefield's deadly and self-serving BS.
"The sad thing is even though the study has been thoroughly discredited, it continues to hang around and be cited by anti-vaccine activists."
Unlike HN commenters constantly promoting dangerous psychiatric drugs that are no more effective than placebos, extrinsic rewards for children who read/exercise, Bill Gates' KIPP-based school reforms, the conflation of homeopathic and naturopathic medicine, using GPA for hiring, etc.
Where are the HN users you're talking about? Promoting using GPA for hiring? That doesn't sound like the anti-higher-education HN I know and love/tolerate :)
Fair enough, a lot of people in general obviously do that though. I guess my point is that I see people posting stuff here all the time that's contradicted by science, but people only call it out on socially acceptable issues.
For example, if I had a dollar for every time I saw someone on HN criticizing the methodology of a study they haven't actually read then I wouldn't be doing a startup right now. And yet these posts rarely get downvoted.
Wait . . . there is science suggesting that using GPA as a component of hiring leads to bad outcomes? I wouldn't have thought this would be the type of thing that could be studied easily, but I'm always willing to learn.
The study's author "misrepresented or altered the medical histories of all 12 of the patients whose cases formed the basis of the 1998 study." Oh, and he was paid by a law firm which was looking to sue vaccine manufacturers.
The net result: vaccination rates dropped, and measles cases have gone up sharply.
Poking around a bit, the British Medical Journal itself has a much more in-depth and interesting article on the web, which the CNN story is but a pale reflection of: http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347.full
great link, definitely worth reading the full BMJ article.
Here's a quote from the senior clinician on the project, after the journalist presented information from one of the parents that conflicted with the data in the study: “Well I can’t really comment,” he said. “You really touch on an area which I don’t think should be debated like this. And I think these parents are wrong to discuss such details, where you could be put in a position of having a lot of medical details and then try to match it with this, because it is a confidential matter.”
no wonder why so many people are losing trust in science ...
The latest developments being reported are new. Previously the study had been found to be erroneous, it is now been decided parts of the study are outright fraudulent.
There is a big difference between fraud and making mistakes. Mistakes in study methodology or in drawing conclusions are expected to happen in science, hence the peer review process. Fraud on the other hand usually ends a scientist's career.
The news isn't new. But it is welcome news that the "mainstream" media is giving it play - since negative results generally get neglected. Especially compared to dramatic, scary faux findings.
Wow. It boggles the mind that somebody, a physician no less, would jeopardize children all over the world for half a million dollars. It is beyond comprehension.
In two respects, really--first, that it's reprehensible for a physician to jeopardize people's lives in this way, and second, that the magnitude of the motive (only half a million dollars) is nowhere close to the magnitude of this evil.
> They have spent a lot more time thinking about the risks and consequences than most of the other people, for whom there is no direct and immediate concern.
This can be detrimental to rational examination of the facts.
They are valid arguments to either side and nothing is conculsive. I think it is best to do your own research from medical journals/studies etc and do what you think is best for your children.
I think that is one thing everyone here has in common, we all want to do what is best for our children.
The whole problem with the vaccine scare is that some parents believe the FUD and make the actually rational decision that they'd rather have their kids get measles and live, than get autism and be damaged for life.
These parents do what they think is best for THEIR children.
But the cost for doing this is that OTHER children that rely on herd immunity will start dying of measles.
So by having every parent do a local "optimization", the net result, an unvaccinated world, is much, much worse. And then to add insult to injury, it's just plain wrong that vaccines cause autism, so the parents that believe this are only making the world a worse place for everyone and not really doing what's best for their children in any way.
Vaccines do cause autism. Here is a peer reviewed paper in the journal of Toxicological and Environmental Chemistry, the abstract:
Mitochondrial dysfunction, impaired oxidative-reduction activity, degeneration, and death in human neuronal and fetal cells induced by low-level exposure to thimerosal and other metal compounds
Authors: D. A. Geiera; P. G. Kingb; M. R. Geierc
Abstract
Thimerosal (ethylmercurithiosalicylic acid), an ethylmercury (EtHg)-releasing compound (49.55% mercury (Hg)), was used in a range of medical products for more than 70 years. Of particular recent concern, routine administering of Thimerosal-containing biologics/childhood vaccines have become significant sources of Hg exposure for some fetuses/infants. This study was undertaken to investigate cellular damage among in vitro human neuronal (SH-SY-5Y neuroblastoma and 1321N1 astrocytoma) and fetal (nontransformed) model systems using cell vitality assays and microscope-based digital image capture techniques to assess potential damage induced by Thimerosal and other metal compounds (aluminum (Al) sulfate, lead (Pb)(II) acetate, methylmercury (MeHg) hydroxide, and mercury (Hg)(II) chloride) where the cation was reported to exert adverse effects on developing cells. Thimerosal-associated cellular damage was also evaluated for similarity to pathophysiological findings observed in patients diagnosed with autistic disorders (ADs). Thimerosal-induced cellular damage as evidenced by concentration- and time-dependent mitochondrial damage, reduced oxidative-reduction activity, cellular degeneration, and cell death in the in vitro human neuronal and fetal model systems studied. Thimerosal at low nanomolar (nM) concentrations induced significant cellular toxicity in human neuronal and fetal cells. Thimerosal-induced cytoxicity is similar to that observed in AD pathophysiologic studies. Thimerosal was found to be significantly more toxic than the other metal compounds examined. Future studies need to be conducted to evaluate additional mechanisms underlying Thimerosal-induced cellular damage and assess potential co-exposures to other compounds that may increase or decrease Thimerosal-mediated toxicity.
Keywords: autism; glial; lead; mercury; mercuric; neurodevelopmental
Nether of these papers were written by Wakefield. Just because we have a bad scientist doesn't mean the science is flawed.
In fact, the "vaccine doesn't cause autism" scientist have been caught creating fruad as well: Scientist who "debunked mercury vaccines" caught in fraud, steals $2 Million, skips town
A Danish scientist who was a key researcher in two studies that purport to show that mercury used in vaccines and the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine do not cause autism is believed to have used forged documents to steal $2 million from Aarhus University in Denmark according to reports in the Copenenhagen Post Online and a statement from Aarhus University.
Poul Thorsen, MD PhD, headed up a research unit at Aarhus University that was hired by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to prepare a series of studies that would exonerate thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative and adjuvant used in vaccines, and the MMR vaccine from any role in causing autism. The veracity of the two studies he co-authored is now in doubt.
These studies formed the foundation for the conclusions of several Institute of Medicine reports that claimed that it was highly unlikely that thimerosal or MMR were implicated in autism.
In a statement Aarhus University officials said that believe Thorsen forged documents supposedly from the CDC to obtain the release of $2 million from the University. Thorsen resigned abruptly in March 2009 and left Denmark. Since then Thorsen has held several jobs in the US, first at Emory University in Atlanta and then at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Documents show that as late as January 22, 2009. Thorsen was employed at Drexel. Any reference to Poulsen has now been deleted from the Drexel website.
http://info-wars.org/2010/03/11/researcher-who-said-mercury-...
> Dr. Geier, who is a geneticist and an obstetrician, is not qualified to give a neurological diagnosis.
> Dr Geier's testimony is not reliable, or grounded in scientific methodology and procedure. His testimony is merely subjective belief and unsupported speculation.
> Because Dr. Geier has made a profession of testifying in matters to which his professional background (obstetrics, genetics) is unrelated, his testimony is of limited value to the court.
May I suggest a couple of links to some in depth analysis of these studies by scientists in a form the layman can understand? Links about researchers stealing money from their university do not add to your cause as it has no bearing on whether or not a particular immunizations are more dangerous than the disease they prevent.
And to address your concerns re Thimerosal. Apart from the fact the general scientific consensus is it isn't dangerous it was removed from almost all vaccines around 2001. For more information: http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/Questions...
Basically the first paper states, from what I can understand, "Some people are born with a genetic defect in their cells, specifically in the mitochondria part of the cell. When these people are injected with Thimerosal, they get autism. Others don't." My proposed solution: Check to see if the kid has this genetic defect, and if so, don't inject them with mercury, inject them with the mercury free vaccine and they will be fine.
I'm not anti-vaccine at all, just anti-mercury in the vaccine. Also they did not remove Thimerosal from vaccines. In fact, the swine flu shot had Thimersal and if you remember, children and pregnant women were encourage to take it first. This caused a 700% increase in miscarriages. http://hubpages.com/hub/thirmerosal_in_vaccines
Also when Thimerosal was removed from most of the vaccines in 2001 it had no affect on Autism rates. This was pretty much the last nail in the coffin for that hypothesis, yet the meme continues.
(5) Considerable progress has been made in reducing mercury exposures from childhood vaccines, yet 8 years after the July 1999 statement, thimerosal remains in several nonroutinely administered childhood vaccines and many pediatric and adult influenza vaccines.
(6) There is no law or regulation to prohibit the reintroduction of thimerosal into any products from which it has been removed, leaving open the possibility that it may be reintroduced at some point in the future in new vaccines or vaccines from which it has already been removed.
So pretty much what you are saying is backing up what I have said. If thimerosal and other mercury based were responsible for autism then we should see a drop in diagnosis rates relative to the decrease in the use of thimerosal.
As there has been none there is no like, causal or otherwise.
But please keep going, this is almost as fun as playing Battlefield . . .
Let me translate for you. It says there was no law forbidding the use of Thimerosal, and also it says plainly that Congress found in 2007 that some vaccines still contained it. Thus, your statement that it was "eliminated in 2001" is false.
Continue replying to a cowards throw away account? Sure why not it is Friday night and I have a beer in hand.
Perhaps go back and read my comment you grossly misquoted [1] where I say "removed from most vaccines" if you are going to try to quote me at least do it right.
You should read the quote you posted then revise what correlation and causation mean in respect to science and biology in particular.
What you quoted explicitly states "thimerosal remains in several nonroutinely administered childhood vaccines". Note it says nonroutinely, which I will translate for you means not often. So even if only a fraction of the routinely used childhood vaccines had thimerosal removed in the past decade (and it sounds from your quote that none of the routinely ones did have it still in there in 07) we would see a corresponding drop in autism diagnosis rates.
We haven't.
Ball is in your court cowardly sir if you really believe in what you say you'll use your real account, no one is left on this thread to downvote you.
Thimerosal may have been removed from vaccines in 2001/2003, but because it was used as a preservative, vaccines made before then were not taken off the shelf and recalled and still used! According to this link below some up until 2007. Then, the swine flu had Thimerosal which was given to children as well.
"One point that was repeatedly stated was that except for the flu shot, all vaccines that have been offered to parents since 2003 have been thimerosal free. This is not the case.
Because parents in the autism community are very concerned about the prospect of their children getting mercury in their vaccines, many of them routinely ask to see the packaging before their child gets a shot. What some parents are finding is that vaccines with the full 25 micrograms of mercury are still being distributed in doctors offices, some with an expiration date of 2007."
So assuming that is relevant (I don't doubt some doctor still had medicines on the shelf in 2005 (date on post) from 2001 but at what rates your comment does not state) around now we should be already seeing a large drop in autism rates since the shelf life of the older medicines has expired? As there has not been a corresponding drop at all I hold that the autism caused by mercury in vaccines lobby is barking up the wrong tree.
Edit. didn't downvote you btw, did up vote after the downvote as your comment is fair and contributes to the debate. :(
Some of the H1N1 vaccines contained Thimerosal none of them intended for pregnant women or children.
Also the figure of 700% increase in miscarriages alone doesn't actually prove anything on its own, a virulent disease was also abroad at the time. A detailed study of the medical histories of the women who had miscarriages during 08/09/10 would be needed to establish what the cause of the increase was (and I hope is being done?).
You are not paying attention. The single-dose versions that were targeted at administration to children explicitly do not. The nasal inhalation version that was targeted for pregnant women explicitly does not. The multi-dose vials are the ones that contain Thimerosal, and those are explicitly NOT for pregnant women nor young children.
"Thimerosal, a mercury derivative, is not used in the manufacturing process for the single dose presentations; therefore these products contain no preservative. The multi-dose presentation contains thimerosal, added as a preservative; each 0.5 mL dose contains 24.5 mcg of mercury. " From: http://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines....
Your argument that "vaccines cause autism" has huge problems, not the least of which are thimerosal-free vaccines over the last decade.
In addition, the authors of the first study you cited appear to be involved in vaccine litigation and in a business that purports to treat autism by "chelation therapy" and would thus seem to have a vested interest in research findings that show heavy metals cause pathology.
Your second link doesn't go to a paper - you linked to some anti-vaccine website which itself doesn't link to a paper.
You can read the paper for yourself - but I am personally not at all impressed by an N=16, with N=3 in the control group. Complete MRI data in this study were obtained on N=9 in the treatment group, and only N=2 in the control group.
Another discussion of the posters that preceded this second paper's publication can be found at:
You rather carefully chose to note that neither paper was "written" by Wakefield. However, the authors of the second paper noted that Wakefield reviewed their paper and actually helped design their study:
"We thank Drs. Saverio Capuano and Mario Rodriguez
for veterinary assistance; and Dr. David Atwood, Carrie
Redinger, Dave McFarland, Amanda Dettmer, Steven
Kendro, Nicole DeBlasio, Melanie O’Malley and Megan
Rufle for technical support. Special thanks to Dr. Andrew
Wakefield for assistance with study design and for critical
review of this manuscript; and to Troy and Charlie Ball
and Robert Sawyer. This work was supported by the
Johnson Family, SafeMinds, The Ted Lindsay Foundation,
the Autism Research Institute, the Greater Milwaukee
Foundation, the late Liz Birt, David and Cindy Emminger,
Sandy McInnis, and Elyse Roberts. Prior to 2005, Carol
Stott was involved in vaccine litigation."
Papers aside, some anti-vaccine folk seem to have a great deal of emotion invested in the issue:
Well your latter link is a study based on primates, to which diseases and vaccines have markedly different reactions, so without further information is wholly irrelevant to the debate. Especially considering the fact that measles testing on Rhesus Macaques (IIRC the most accurate measure for measles to humans) has to use specially selected strains or all data is irrelevant due to the monkeys immune system responding wholly different from the human immune system. What assurances are there that the test on these vaccines was even controlled in such a way to ensure the right strains of vaccines were used.
So riddle me this. Why did a peer reviewed Polish Study find that the MMR vaccine actually showed decreased autism rates over a standard measles vaccination, when the anti-vaccination groups constantly talk about 'vaccine overload'. A triple vaccine should seriously be harder on the system than a single, so why is the evidence suggesting it is either wholly irrelevant or actually beneficial by decreasing autism rates?
Autism-vaccination link researches have the god awful stench that cold fusion and perpetual motion physicists had several decades ago. The original evidence was wholly and undeniably fabricated, but you're posting links to articles that tout they're proving Wakefield right... I'm sorry but all they're showing is that they're producing results that show an unintentional bias because they obviously care that they prove Wakefield right.
You don't have good science until a scientist does it that is happy whether or not he is right or wrong. The anti-vaccination scientists are consistently producing bad science and are consistently bad scientists.
Don't just vote him down, folks...he's posting links and support for his position. Surely someone on HN is knowledgeable enough on this subject to respond with something more detailed than clicking a down arrow...
those posts are my honest replies. I don't invoke name calling and try to backup everything with sources. I do get downvoted a lot here, I do not have multiple accounts or use my account "as a troll account." My postings are sincere and I honestly have a dissenting viewpoint in general both online and offline. My friends often remark that I like debates. If you disagree with me, let me know. My philosophy in debating is that I either abandon my argument by learning new facts about what I was wrong about, or my argument stands. I live in the Portland Oregon area and if you would like to meet me for a beer I can attest to this. Thanks
Debate is pointless if you ignore contrary evidence.
For example, it's pretty clear that you are anti-vaccine. It's fine to hold that opinion, but as I'm sure you've seen the overwhelming evidence against your point of view I don't see any need in re-hashing the arguments.
In cases like this you may not be consciously trolling, but in my view arguing a dissenting view in the face of such overwhelming evidence exhibits the same damaging behavior patterns that a troll engages in. Given that, I think the appropriate response is exactly the same as the response to a troll, ie: a perfunctory link to counter evidence on Wikipedia (for the sake of casual readers), and a downvote.
I agree that some analysis for laypeople would be useful, but that's part of what I love about HN: an expert in this topic might come along soon and offer such an analysis. I think having a voice of dissent that offers something other than hyperbole and unsupported hand-waving is useful, and shouldn't be discouraged.
Whereas I think that anyone who drags Thimerosal into this debate -- roughly a decade after it was removed from vaccines in response to mass hysteria -- deserves to have a bucket of water poured over their head and sent home.
Just because an argument isn't made out of unsupported hand-waving doesn't mean that it isn't recycled garbage. Citations and glib technical language can be copied and pasted just as easily as mindless rants.
It is not enough to hold debates. One must also have the guts to draw conclusions.
Meanwhile, what's conspicuously missing from this particular cloud of chaff is a concise summary of the most recent epidemiological data. Should we not have plenty of that by now? Thanks to Wakefield, we have conducted an "experiment" over the last decade or so: Hysteria is up, and the vaccination rate is down. As a result, the incidence of preventable disease is measurably higher. Surely, if there is a correlation between autism and vaccination, the autism rate must now be significantly lower in these new unvaccinated populations? Or can we at least try to establish how many more kids have to suffer or die before we can draw that conclusion?
Read the inserts to the vaccine. "Thimerosal, a mercury derivative, is not used in the manufacturing process for the single
dose presentations; therefore these products contain no preservative. The multi-dose
presentation contains thimerosal, added as a preservative; each 0.5 mL dose contains
24.5 mcg of mercury. "
From: http://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines...
Right I will come right out and say what I implied in my full reply to the "dissenter". What they posted is hyperbol and unsupported hand-waving.
None of what they posted is useful in making a decision one way or another on the subject.
I can't understand the title of the study they posted let alone the contents and I have never heard of the journal which maybe is the preeminent publication of its field or a dirty rag which the publisher's mate "peer reviews". I have no way of knowing from the comment and posting the abstract provides nothing.
The second one is a blog of an Autism organisation in New York that doesn't link to anything that I can use to gauge its authority.
And the third is talking about a single scientist in the opposing side of the debate (there is only one person refuting these claims? Really?) who was caught with his hand in the till. Hardly proof or otherwise on the debate at hand.
People here don't want to believe this. They will still vaccinate their kids and worse will be in favor of forced vaccinations. They trust the government research. They trust the doctors and the pharmaceutical companies. This stuff is just a bunch of nonsense by troublemakers.
Sorry, but you clearly have no clue what people here want and don't want to believe.
I generally see a more hesitant view here on HN than anywhere else when it comes to doctors and pharma companies, generally because their advice and drugs are not highly scrutinised or peer reviewed.
However, what I see a lot of here on HN is basic common sense. Smallpox killed ~400 million people in the 20th century, that's not even accurate statistics as we largely wiped out the disease in the latter decades. It was also the cause of 1/3 of all blindnesses.
I fail to see how "not wanting to believe" vaccinations 'causing' autism is even relevant to the debate. I don't even see how a proven causal link between vaccinations and autism would even be relevant to the vaccination debate. I god honest don't give a fuck if vaccinations cause autism unless it's >1/2 because my child's risk of dying in an unvaccinated world is about 50/50 if I'm lucky.
IIRC measles mortality in the US currently stands at 4 in 100 million because of vaccinations. Before the vaccine was licensed measles cases averaged around 450 thousand per year. Within five years of the vaccine being licensed the number of reported cases dropped to ~20 thousand (note: a 22-fold drop in cases), when the second dose was recommended the cases dropped to the current baseline of a statistical zero thousand within five years.
This is equivalent to 68-thousand lives saved per year for the measles vaccination.
If you want to live without vaccination, sure go ahead. However I think you should be forced to pay for the 19 other vaccinations it requires to keep herd immunity that keeps people like you safe from deadly diseases like measles.
Unlike the comment that you're responding to, your comment adds no value whatsoever and your straw-man position is as worthless as the one you're railing against. You sound like a person who finds it unconceivable that someone could have looked at the evidence and come to a different conclusion, so you assume they must be blind.
This leaves us with two options for the beliefs of the anti-vaccination crowd.
1. They believe that a dead child is better than one with autism.
2. They are comfortable letting everyone else's children take the "risk" of getting a vaccine while they sit back and rely on herd immunity.