A reminder to Americans with short fucking memories.
The number of anti-vaccination cranks out there on the interwebs seems to be multiplying. It seems you can’t make reference to any kind of vaccination lately without people, sometimes pretending to be liberals (sometimes actually misguided liberals) wailing and moaning about how terrible vaccinations are. It’s the new fluoridation. I’m somewhat surprised that no one wailed and moaned that I mentioned on Pandagon a tetanus vaccination I got the other day, but rest assured, while my arm has been kind of sore, I haven’t yet developed autism.
I have very little patience for cranks as a general rule (which is why working for this site is so fun, because it’s about pushing back against anti-choice cranks), but I reserve a special contempt and loathing for anti-vaccination cranks. They remind me of nothing so much as women who make their living as professional anti-feminists in terms of denial and idiocy levels. Anti-feminist professional women create a special kind of loathing, because they don’t acknowledge that their very ability to be out there earning a paycheck lambasting feminism would not be possible without feminism giving them the right to be women in the public sphere. Anti-vaccination cranks have a similar parasitic relationship to the existence of vaccines. If it weren’t for vaccination, our country would have far more immediate infectious disease health concerns to worry about that the largely imaginary health drawbacks of the vaccination wouldn’t have a chance to ruffle any feathers.
Anti-vaccination cranks make me see red, in no small part because there’s no excuse for the levels of ignorance they demonstrate about the real value of vaccines. It would be more understandable if the invention of the polio vaccination, for instance, was so far in the past that there were no survivors of the disease hanging around being reminders of how terrible it really is. But there are plenty of people who had the disease that are around, suffering the lifelong effects of even the minor cases that would have allowed you to reach middle age after suffering that disease in your youth. I for one am incredibly grateful to have never known anyone with small pox, tetanus or even the fucking mumps my whole life.
Like all good cranks, anti-vaccination assholes move the goal posts constantly. The big hobbyhorse of anti-vaccination cranks is autism rates (even though the connection between autism and vaccinations has been thoroughly debunked), but of course, the invention of the HPV vaccine hasn’t passed notice, though you get that when you’re like 12 years old, so even if you believe childhood vaccinations have something to do with autism (which you shouldn’t), then you should realize that 12 is way too late to “develop” autism. But it’s this lightening rod because it’s new and it’s sex-related and thus the cranks can hang their hat on it, and get all excited about building a coalition between the usual anti-vaccination cranks and the sexphobes, getting more power.
And of course, the invocations of “Big Pharma” do not an argument make. It’s childish to think that something is an unvarnished, irredeemable evil just because someone made money doing it. Big Pharma does a lot of wrong things, but mainly because they charge too much for products that are actually good. If they were charging too much for products that were just crap, then they’d be no more a political problem than people who make designer handbags. The abstinence-only assholes resort to screaming “Big Pharma” to discourage women from taking the birth control pill, which shows what kind of crankery you’re getting into with that tactic.
Like all good cranks, evidence that conflicts with their theories is simply ignored. The idea behind the autism-vaccination link was that the mercury used in some vaccinations caused autism. Well, they don’t use mercury in childhood vaccinations anymore and haven’t for awhile, but autism rates remain high. Maybe the vaccinations are causing autism out of tradition, then? There’s a theory that kosher laws against the eating of pork were initially developed for health reasons, but were kept out of tradition after the health reasons disappeared. Is that how vaccines do it?
Promoting the idea that there’s these non-existent connections between vaccinations and autism and other ill health effects is vicious and cruel to parents whose children are suffering from the diseases that are claimed to be caused by vaccinations. I can’t imagine how much a parent with an autistic child would suffer from guilt if she actually believed this bullcrap, because after all, it was she who got the child vaccinated. All needless—they may not know what causes autism, but I’m going to bet that if they ever do find out, it’s probably going to be genetic and not something that parents could have known or prevented.
Maybe what bothers me the most is that the opposition to vaccinations tends to play into this knee-jerk Luddite mentality. Not that I don’t think new technologies shouldn’t be carefully examined to see if they do more good than harm, and that things that prove to be problems like cars should be seriously reconsidered. But a lot of people don’t want to do the hard work of taking each new technology and its issues and problems on for itself, and instead just want this general “new is bad/old ways were better” rule that they can apply indiscriminately. The traditionalism fallacy infects people on the right and the left both, though often in different ways. For instance, when conservatives decry the “unnatural”, they’re referring to sodomy or women getting paychecks, and when liberals do it, they’re probably talking about medications. Of course, some conservatives are beginning to see the benefits of embracing the knee-jerk hostility to modern medicine, at least when it applies to women, because of the contraception thing.* Anti-vaccination crankery doesn’t make much sense outside of this knee-jerk hostility to innovation and science.
The irony here is that scientists really aren’t trying to conquer the imperfect body at all. Vaccination technology actually makes more sense if you realize it came from a place of great respect for the the complexity of life, and the careful study of defenses that had evolved in the body. Which is why I love vaccinations. They work with the pre-existing environment. The real wow factor is that the body responds so well and so predictably to the vaccination. In one sense, it’s a bit alarming that I extended my arm the other day to be shot up with a syringe-full of dead bacteria that would, if alive, kill me pretty damn dead, but it was no big deal at all, because I trusted my body’s immune system to kick into action and do its job. So who’s the one that’s really trusting nature to do what it does best?
*None of this is to say that I’m opposed to the midwifery movement or anything. When they argue for it on pragmatic terms—it’s less expensive and less invasive, for instance—I’m all ears. Because that’s the point of this whole rant. If you got the evidence, you got an argument. But when people start waxing about how it’s more natural and that’s how they did it in the old days, I think “menstrual huts” and wonder why people seem to think that undernourished, illiterate people who didn’t get out much from the past were somehow magically smarter than we are now.
Are those iron lungs? Wow, brings back memories. My family en masse came down with TB in the early Sixties and wound up in a TB sanitarium. Of course by that my brother had wound up deaf due to a combination of scarlet fever and diptheria. There was some mix up about the vaccines.
I think part of the problem with the anti-vaccination people is that they really don’t remember a world that didn’t have vaccines. I am old enough that the only vaccinations I received were for smallpox, whooping cough and polio. I am immune to measles and rubella, only because I actually had them. One of my classmates had to spend a week in a darkened room because he had such a severe case of measles that the doctors were afraid his eyesight would be affected if he didn’t. I actually participated in Sabin Oral Sunday, which finally helped stop the spread of polio.
People simply don’t remember how devastating these childhood diseases were. The anti-vaccination movement can present a real danger to public health.
full disclosure: i am the mother of two children who have been vaccinated. Nevertheless, i think the jury is still out on the link between autism and vaccinations. something like 70% of children who develop autism also develop a chronic measles infection in the urinary tract following vaccination. the risk of adverse affects following vaccinations are small, and the benefits, at least for me, far outweigh those risks. But i’m not ready to jump on the backs of people who choose not to vaccinate.
it would be interesting to look at whether children who are not vaccinated ever develop autism. wouldn’t that really go a long way in convincing parents that autism isn’t the result of an allergic reaction to vaccinations? it always interests me that when people make the claim that autism is caused in some way by vaccines nobody says, ‘ah! but look! these children weren’t vaccinated and still developed autism.”
Promoting the idea that there’s these non-existence connections between vaccinations and autism and other ill health effects is vicious and cruel to parents whose children are suffering from the diseases that are claimed to be caused by vaccinations. I can’t imagine how much a parent with an autistic child would suffer from guilt if she actually believed this bullcrap, because after all, it was she who got the child vaccinated. All needless—they may not know what causes autism, but I’m going to bet that if they ever do find out, it’s probably going to be genetic and not something that parents could have known or prevented.
Unfairly blaming mothers for causing autism? Kind of seems a little familiar.
What is it about autism that makes it such a lightning conductor for destructive, tragic myths?
http://www.psychologymatters.org/facilitated.html
To answer your question, ariane:
“Other larger studies have found no relationship between MMR vaccine and autism. For example, researchers in the UK studied the records of 498 children with autism born between 1979 and 1998. They found:
* The percentage of children with autism who received MMR vaccine was the same as the percentage of unaffected children in the region who received MMR vaccine.
* There was no difference in the age of diagnosis of autism in vaccinated and unvaccinated children.
* The onset of “regressive” symptoms of autism did not occur within 2, 4, or 6 months of receiving the MMR vaccine.”
Courtesy of the CDC, bolding mine.
I work with kids with autism, and it amazes me how many very intelligent people still stick by the vaccine meme. I think I kind of understand it; if autism is caused by a vaccine, it’s something that happened to your otherwise typical child, something that can possibly be reversed (and the quacks who push the vaccine explanation are usually selling an unproven treatment while they’re at it). The more likely explanation, that autism is something that your child is and has always been, genetically, is a lot harder to take. I sympathize with that, but at the same time, I hate to see the kids I work with get subjected to uncomfortable and ultimately useless quack treatments.
The jury’s not still out. The research has been done, and is being ignored by people who want to keep the controversy alive.
The most likely explanation for higher autism rates is that diagnostic tools have gotten better, and parents are more on the lookout for symptoms.
it’s really cruel to keep this bullshit alive, cruel to parents of autistic children primarily.
And no, it would not be “interesting” to deprive children of life-saving medications to see if autism rates differ. To create the control group you think is needed (it’s not, because the research has been done), you would have to sacrifice the lives of thousands to easily preventable diseases. That’s not “interesting”. That’s sadistic.
“it would be interesting to look at whether children who are not vaccinated ever develop autism.”
Considering that mass vaccination programs were really only implemented in the 1950’s, and autism as a disorder was defined in the 1930’s, that’s pretty much a historical given.
Just wanted to say great analysis of the personal side of this nonsense. I’m a long-time reader of Orac and PalMD who both do a great job of debunking the pseudoscientific crap these losers spill out of their pores, but you’ve done a great job of capturing the panic mentality this has the potential to create in parents.
Ariane - I’m interested to know where you got this 70% statistic. I don’t work with viruses, so I may be wrong, but I fail to see how being injected with and INACTIVE virus can result in infection (and if this is possible, please tell me, I’m not looking for a fight, I just didn’t think it was possible.)
Ariana Ben Eli,
They did do such a study in Japan and lo and behold found autism rates increasing in children not receiving the MMR vaccine. I’m sure we can try study other vaccines, but at some point the ethical concerns of leaving children susceptible to potential dangerous diseases isn’t worth the effort. Especially since every scientific study keeps finding no link between vaccines and autism. Keep those goalposts moving, though.
Ariane, the study you propose would be highly, highly unethical. Think about it. You’d be giving placebo injections to kids who’s parents think they’re now protected against disease. There is simply no way to do a double blind randomly controlled trial on this question and not run into serious moral complications.
Epidemiological data is not as solid a method as RCTs, I know. However, it’s the best we ethically can do in this instance is go by that, and the evidence thus far is massively against any vaccines/autism causation. And I mean massively, there is simply no credible data backing up such an assertion and tons of good research that refutes it.
I think that the anti-vaccination movement is greedy, ill-informed and people in it could very well be sued since they’re creating mini Patient Zeros within the community.
In fact, I hope someone sues their greedy asses.
A huge part of being in a society is considering all of society and not just yourself- this is in conflict with most people who decide to breed IMHO.
Do Vaccines Cause Autism?
But as for this:
Whatever guilt the parent might feel, I suspect it’s less than the relief that would come from knowing - or at least believing - that they’d found the cause of their child’s condition.
ariane @3-
epidemiologist have looked at the rates of vaccinated and unvaccinated children developing autism. Guess what there is no significant difference. Here is a link to a news paper article comparing Japanese children before and after the MMR vaccine was available. A quick google search will bring up a lot more studies. Unfortunately, it is hard to find them with all of the antivaccine crowded spewing their same crap all over the web.
I agree with you, Amanda, but let me put in a quick plea for mercy before you condemn the autism-vaccine crowd too hard. Having an autistic child sucks like you wouldn’t believe. Most of a mother’s waking hours are nightmarish. If you’ll forgive the melodrama, it’s a punishment ended only by death. Apart from the challenges of living with and trying to educate the kid, consider how much blame mothers get whenever their kids are the least bit annoying, flawed, unusual, or expensive.
If it happened to you, you’d thrash desperately for an explanation. Genetics? That can’t be all of it, or we wouldn’t have seen this increase in diagnoses (which exceeds what you’d expect from increases in diagnostic intervention). Vaccine-blaming communities online and IRL give a parent support and encouragement …
… at least in the short term. If this scary ideology catches on, look forward not only to more infectious disease but mothers’ getting blamed for vaccinating their kids and blamed for not doing so.
There is certainly a strong whiff of crazy to the woo-based science of anti-vaccination ‘activists.’ But craziness isn’t just a personal problem. The anti-vac approach can definitely be understood as a misplaced response to the overmedicalization of everyone, especially children. When parents are bombarded with constant demands to participate in a system that often just chews them up and are shamed when something goes wrong with their kids, they’re going to turn against some part of the system. It just royally sucks that vaccinations is what they’re reacting against because it puts others at serious risk. It doubly sucks that the anti-vac people take advantage of the shaming in order to justify their craziness and further their support/funding. It triply sucks for the poor kids whose parents obsess about vaccines rather than organizing around educational equity.
Is it any coincidence that the last remaining pockets of widespread polio infection are in Pakistan and Nigeria, where Muslim clerics declare that it is an American plot to steal the fertility of their virgins? Woo-based medicine abounds when outside threats are perceived.
My sister has autism and hadn’t been vaccinated yet,
ariane ben eli. Whenever I bring that up, the people who believe that vaccines cause autism always have a bullshit answer ready to explain it away. It’s ridiculous. I vaccinated my children even with a family history on both sides (my sister and my nephew on my husband’s side) and I got a lot of flak for it.
Unree, I believe that it sucks. But I don’t see why believing lies about how this happened changes the suck one iota. It’s still gonna suck. I’m not sure why a lie is more comfort than the truth.
Giving people comforting lies is a terrible thing to do. The short term comfort is no trade-off for the long term importance of keeping your feet planted on the ground.
If it happened to you, you’d thrash desperately for an explanation.
I understand people thrashing around for an explanation. My friend’s mother joined a fundamentalist church after her other daughter died of meningitis and it’s hard for me to declare that she was stupid or weak for needing that support after her child’s horrible death.
However, when the explanation that people seize on is not only incorrect, but is likely to cause injury to others, I lose quite a bit of my sympathy towards someone trying to come up with an explanation. “The vaccine did it” is about as rational as “God did it,” but at least deciding that God did it won’t endanger the lives of the kids your child goes to school with.
I’m sitting right now next to a wonderful little girl who is autistic. I don’t know “why” and frankly, after knowing her for over 10 years now, I don’t care “why”.
She’s one of the best people I know and I adore her.
Oh, and a random comment to make it all about Me Me Me …
As someone who has dealt with various nasty intestinal symptoms (like Irritable Bowel Syndrome and lactose intolerance), color me completely unsurprised that some people have found that their autistic child is much less volatile when they change his/her diet. I can say from personal experience that gas pains and the like hurt WAY more than people seem to realize. If I was in constant digestive pain and unable to communicate, I’d probably be uncontrollable, too.
Jesus Bloody Christ hopped up on a popsicle stick! If this is you being described here, get thee some respite! Stat! Dead fucking serious.
Stressful? Oh yeah. Hard? You betcha. But the rest of this particular piece shows a mind that needs some rest/education/assistance getting head out of ass.
(Psst! Jay! Now you can “snark”…)
These assholes are also freeloading off those of us who did get immunized.
If you’re immunized against a disease, you probably won’t get it. Therefore, you won’t pass it on. So if most people are immunized in a given population, someone who blew off getting immunized is less likely to encounter someone with the guilty germs, and is thus less likely to get sick.
But they’re banking on most other people doing the right thing. Given their beliefs that immunizations are bad for you, their attitude is basically “screw everyone else, they can get sick and run the risks I believe exist–as long as my downy little ass is untouched.”
I was on the fence about all this until my recent trip to India.
I opened the paper one morning and saw the headline “First Polio Cases of 2008 Appear Near Hyderabad”. Including photos. Modern day photos in full color. It wasn’t even front page news, and it was phrased ‘first outbreak of the year’ (this was January, btw), not Holy Crap Can You Believe Somebody Got Polio?!
All my children will be getting vaccinated. Hopefully in moderation and in an informed manner, but yes, they will be getting vaccinated.
I can’t imagine how much a parent with an autistic child would suffer from guilt if she actually believed this bullcrap, because after all, it was she who got the child vaccinated. All needless—they may not know what causes autism, but I’m going to bet that if they ever do find out, it’s probably going to be genetic and not something that parents could have known or prevented.
Two thoughts: Yes, you can’t imagine any part of parenting and this is no exception. While I’m supportive of your decision not to reproduce, and think more people should follow your logic to that end rather than stopping short and having one or two to please the grandparents, this remark may be the best illustration I can posit that you’re not cut out for the job.
More importantly, some children appear to be vulnerable to grouped vaccinations. That is, some children’s bodies DON’T respond as expected to the assault on the immune system that the standard vaccine schedule represents, and get very sick. Some children die.
How do I know this? Well, I was lucky that my child only had a reaction that caused days of high fever followed by four years of regressed and retarded development.
Most kids who get as sick as she did just die. Weren’t we lucky?
Herd immunity has a price.
As you have no intention of paying that price, my suggestion would be that you vent your hostility on a more worthy target than parents who question the vaccination-industrial complex in search of a humane and respectful public policy that meets health goals–which is not currently what we have.
Two points:
1) You’re conflating time periods and regions with dramatically different public health and medical infrastructures. Not only are people in industralized nations less likely to get certain diseases, but we’re less likely to die from it if they do. Pre-existing disease burden and immunosuppression are what lead to infectious diseases’ astronomical mortality and morbidity rates in developing nations generally, and African nations in specific. Antibiotics may treat pertussis, but they don’t treat measles — yet measles kills only 1 in 1,000 Americans who get the disease, while it kills around 100 in 1,000 in Africa.
2) You’re right about the thalidomide-only theory. But you’re mistaking arguments over causation for arguments over what the debate is really about. The debate’s not really about autism; it’s about the precautionary principle and corporate responsibility.
Problem is, enough people are now buying into the anti-immunization propaganda that herd immunity is breaking down. Here in California, you can refuse immunization for any old reason you please and, lo and behold, they’re having measles outbreaks in San Diego.
But, hey, I’m sure that while his parents sat in the emergency room with their son with a 104-degree temperature, they thought, “Oh, thank God he’ll only have brain damage from a high fever and not from autism!” And they were probably doubly glad to be vaccine refusers when their other two kids came down with measles, too.
What truly annoys me about the antivaxers is the amount of time and money they waste that could be better allocated to figuring out how autism is acquired and, more importantly, how those with autism and related disorders can lead happy and productive lives. Because they can and they do.
Gargh. Sleepless nights due to finals suck.
1) You’re conflating time periods and regions with dramatically different public health and medical infrastructures. Not only are people in industralized nations less likely to get certain diseases, but we’re less likely to die from it if they do. Pre-existing disease burden and immunosuppression are what lead to infectious diseases’ astronomical mortality and morbidity rates in developing nations generally, and African nations in specific. Antibiotics may treat pertussis, but they don’t treat measles — yet measles kills only 1 in 1,000 Americans who get the disease, while it kills around 100 in 1,000 in Africa.
2) You’re right about the thimerosol-only theory. But you’re mistaking arguments over causation for arguments over what the debate is really about. The debate’s not really about autism; it’s about the precautionary principle and corporate responsibility.
People who don’t vaccinate in this country are free-riding on everyone who does. Their kids are unlikely to contract these diseases because the incidence in the general population is so low. When I was in the Peace Corps in Paraguay, most families I knew had lost at least one child to one of the diseases known here only by their vaccines. It’s this exact same attitude in other countries that prevents the eradication of polio.
But if you are the parent of a young child, I understand a certain sqeamishness about the sheer number of vaccines that are given now, including for diseases that are very rarely fatal, to very young children, usually four shots at time, some shots with multiple vaccines in them, starting at two months. My son is two and he’s been vaccinated for at least a dozen diseases. As I mentioned in the other thread, I delayed the Hep B for him and would consider not vaccinating future children for chicken pox. And as PhoenixRising wrote, herd immunity does come with a price. But I would never not get the MMR or the DPT.
1) There is no thimerisol (the mercury type stabilizer) in vaccines any more and autism rates still go up. Perhaps pollution might be a direction for autism research? Nah, let’s just blame the vaccines.
2) “Herd immunity has a price” as do all social goods. I’m not sure berating Amanda for not paying that price as you say, disallows her from analysis. To suggest she is “not cut out for the job” of parenting, when she has respectfully admitted she cannot imagine some of those struggles, is just venting your hostility on her.
I’ve always assumed that a big part of the reason they load up on vaccines is the (unspoken) assumption that you never know when the parent(s) will lose their health insurance or switch to a different plan, so they’d better get the vaccines in while the kid still has coverage.
If we didn’t have a for-profit healthcare system, vaccines could be given on a more rational schedule and not front-loaded to try and get them in before the parent has to pay out of pocket.
Given that 70 children had to be quarantined in San Diego because one unvaccinated kid managed to spread his disease to 11 others, I would need to know that my kid in particular reacts badly to vaccines in order to not vaccinate them.
Speaking as someone who got chicken pox during their Junior Prom and then gave it to their late-40s mother (and chicken pox is DANGEROUS when you’re out of childhood), I had no problem immunizing my children against chicken pox.
PhoenixRising, lots of us have children. Would you mind not implying that we’re unfit parents if we agree with Amanda?
Right, Todd.
Early intervention, a myriad of therapies (speech, applied behavioral, occupational, physical and more) over the past 7 years, and alot of hard work/patience by Jean and all of us who love/care for her have transformed our 10 year old daughter from a feral, uncommunicative person who howled and grunted into a happy, silly and caring child who can talk a blue streak, is learning to read and do math, and last week, came in 2nd in her Special Olympics event against 3 classmates/boys. She is also now learning to swim and conquer her fear of dogs and motorcycles/loud noises.
She also knows that she is autistic (she and I spoke last summer at length when she asked why she was “different” than her sister and other kids) and that while it makes many things she wants to learn to do more difficult sometimes, that with her own determination, effort and sometimes guidance or assistance, she can accomplish alot.
Our kid rocks!
If anyone’s interested–the MMR vaccine isn’t a “killed” vaccine–it’s made from live (attenuated) strains. The most common side effects are transient, mild symptoms of measles and rubella. Most vaccines aren’t inactivated. Polio is, of course. If you do see a serious side effect in a vaccine, live or otherwise, it’s usually anaphylaxis and that’s most likely not a response to the actual viral components, but to something in the vaccine solution formulation.
“Big Pharma does a lot of wrong things, but mainly because they charge too much for products that are actually good.”
There is a sad but undeniable element of truth to that. However, I also don’t think people appreciate the magnitude not only of the research costs, but of some of the processing chemicals required to make some drug products, specially monoclonal antibody vaccines, and the cost of regulatory compliance. Not complaining about the last, mind you–can anybody say “Thalidomide?”–but it’s an expense that most other industries do not have to bear to the same degree. AND to give Pharma some credit, they do manufacture and distribute at a loss sometimes for humanitarian reasons–one good example is Merck and river blindness: http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/83/8325/8325ivermectin.html
f anyone’s interested–the MMR vaccine isn’t a “killed” vaccine–it’s made from live (attenuated) strains. The most common side effects are transient, mild symptoms of measles and rubella. Most vaccines aren’t inactivated. Polio is, of course. If you do see a serious side effect in a vaccine, live or otherwise, it’s usually anaphylaxis and that’s most likely not a response to the actual viral components, but to something in the vaccine solution formulation.
“Big Pharma does a lot of wrong things, but mainly because they charge too much for products that are actually good.”
There is a sad but undeniable element of truth to that. However, I also don’t think people appreciate the magnitude not only of the research costs, but of some of the processing chemicals required to make some drug products, specially monoclonal antibody vaccines, and the cost of regulatory compliance. Not complaining about the last, mind you–can anybody say “Thalidomide?”–but it’s an expense that most other industries do not have to bear to the same degree. AND to give Pharma some credit, they do manufacture and distribute at a loss sometimes for humanitarian reasons–one good example is Merck and river blindness: http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/83/8325/8325ivermectin.html
There will always be outliers with any medical procedure. If you look at the early polio vaccines, there were a lot of kids with bad reactions. But, most adults took the risk as the polio was worse. Duh.
Here in Whitesylvania there are pockets of non-immunized populations. We find them as they contract diseases for which there were ‘cures’. Stoopid Mammy and Pappy had the vaccines but the unlucky kids did not. So this poor child is in agony because their parents want to be contrarily stoopid.
Calling people stupid isn’t analysis, it’s venting hostility.
That wasn’t berating, it was praise. Many people who have no instinct for what it might feel like to have kids solve that by having kids, instead of realizing in a timely fashion that they don’t want to know what lifelong responsibility for a fragile and vulnerable person would feel like.
The idiots who don’t want vaccines are certainly endangering us all.
The know-it-alls who think that our current system for providing vaccines has no price and therefore doesn’t bear scrutiny are contributing to the problem, not addressing it.
But they’re banking on most other people doing the right thing. Given their beliefs that immunizations are bad for you, their attitude is basically “screw everyone else, they can get sick and run the risks I believe exist–as long as my downy little ass is untouched.”
You are, in fact, describing Homo Economus, Rational (Wo)Man as the prevailing ideology makes her/him out to be.
The vaccination issue shows just how much the systems based on this ideological structure depend on exploiting people being better than the ideology makes them out to be.
… then they’d be ‘alternative’ medical providers.
Seriously. The solution to Big Pharma is socialized medicine, not actual medicine for the rich and fake medicine for those who can’t afford it.
PhoenixRising, lots of us have children. Would you mind not implying that we’re unfit parents if we agree with Amanda?
Sorry it came across that way. I don’t think you’re unfit, I think if you take that kind of attitude, language and thinking to, say, your kids’ school and inflict it on other parents–you’re making a serious problem worse.
Talking down to people because you disagree with their actions is a fond tradition among progressives, and in this case it’s exacerbating a potential crisis in public health.
That endangers my child’s future health, which is something I feel strongly about maximizing.
My mother sent me over to play with the neighbor kid when she got the chicken pox in about 1974. I never caught it. Until I was 21 and in college and woke up burning next to my seriously freaked out GF. I had to go home to my parents’ house and be quarantined for 10 days and fell seriously behind. Plus, it hurt like a motherfucker. Thank “god” my folks were abroad and I could drink all their liquor.
Mrs. F is currently in her second trimester and we intend to get all the dang vaccinations. I used to live in West Africa and I saw what those diseases did to families.
Chingona,
my 5 year old came down with chicken pox when I was 9 mo pregnant. I had never had it.
It was hard on all of us:
me because I was afraid of getting it and passing it to a newborn, and because I couldn’t comfort her.
her because she needed mom and couldn’t have her.
It was a long 2 days before the results came back saying I was immune.
When the vaccine became available. the kids got it.
Just as when HPV vaccine became available, my oldest got it. (the baby will get in a couple years, around 10-11)
That way she’ll likely never have to take the call I took today: “you’re still squamous. Check back in 6mo.”
So what’s your solution? Since pointing out the many studies that show that autism and vaccines are not linked counts as “talking down” to people, and pointing out that they’re endangering other people’s kids is “talking down” to people, what means are we supposed to use?
I have a feeling that those kids in San Diego who were not vaccinated against measles and had to be quarantined were not all kids who had bad reactions to previous vaccines. So short of having a health scare that almost kills their children, how do we get through to people who have irrational reasons for not vaccinating?
Note: having a child who had a previous bad reaction to a vaccine is not an irrational reason for not vaccinating. We’re talking about the people who are so fearful that their child might be one of the one in 5,000 who has a bad reaction that they refuse all vaccines just in case.
“I used to live in West Africa and I saw what those diseases did to families.”
…which is probably what it will take here before (some) people realize how important vaccines are.
Having many Mormon relatives, with their emphasis on genealogy, I’ve seen way too many examples from my own family tree where (for example) 8 children were born but 4 lived to adulthood, etc. And it was usually disease that got them…
Phoenix, you may have missed the deadline, but you can file for compensation since your child had a vaccine injury:
http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/
You only have three years after the initial injury to file, though.
Thanks, Amanda. It’s hard to argue with parents who have to cope with an autistic child. As someone with an autistic brother, I can sympathize. But this really is a public health issue, and I wish the anti-vaccine people would grow a sense of responsibility.
Mnem, my successes in talking to anti-vax whack jobs and convincing them to change their ill-informed ways have been limited, so maybe I don’t have the right approach either.
It has sometimes been productive to point out to them that in fact, they are permitted to demand one vaccine at a time with waiting periods. This allows their children to recover from each assault and will help to isolate the cause should there be a reaction.
Of course I’d appreciate some of the effort that pro-science progressives like to put into slurring the ignorant, privileged parents who refuse to vaccinate being re-directed into pushing for insurance coverage on vaccines that pays per shot, not per visit, but I have other primary issues that I’m working on.
Maybe you’d like to pick that one up, since you seem to grasp the connection between for-profit insurance and vaccines presenting an unnecessarily increased hazard to some children’s health.
I’m pretty sure that ‘You’re an over-entitled, scientifically ignorant ingrate who would change your ways if you’d seen a kid with tetanus die right in front of you, like I did’ was my all-time least effective comment in response to the statement ‘We’re not vaccinating’, though. So that’s been tested and, scientifically, it has failed to produce the desired change in behavior.
I think that an unspoken part of PhoenixRising’s complaint is that the parents of kids who are outliers with respect to vaccinations — and the kids themselves — get a completely raw deal. When they complain they’re considered whiners, and under the current medicolegal system they have to bear all the costs of being outliers by themselves. Instead, they should get lifetime care and an effing medal awarded in a public ceremony by the surgeon general, because they’re casualties in a war.
The people who flat-out refuse vaccines, on the other hand? They’re deserters. They’re counting on my kids and the kids of everyone around them to take the risks of vaccination so they can get the benefits.
(And yeah, it probably would be better for kids to get vaccinations at better-spaced intervals, although there would still be some bad reactions. In my neck of the woods, the extra cost of two or three more doctor’s visits a year for the first two or three years of life would cost some families enough money to make food scarce for a couple months.
My perspective on the autism-vaccine thingy is a bit different than many other people’s for a pair of reasons. Firstly, I have autism (if any of you have also read the earlier thread about childhood self-endangerment, my comment (#13 on the thread for those who would rather not follow a link) describes a pair of incidents of classic autistic behavior). Yes, I’m high-functioning. I can talk, care for myself, hold down a job, and get a college degree. Nonetheless, I am autistic. Meet me in the real world and speak with me, and you’ll notice that I’m different. I am highly socially awkward. I can’t read body language or facial expressions. I am very skilled in some areas and absurdly unskilled in others.
Secondly, autism (high-functioning, mostly) is rampant in my family. Of the six descendants of one pair of my great-grandparents, four (yes, four) have an autism-spectrum disorder of some variety - an incidence of 67%. When we look back at people before that, we see anecdotal evidence of autism frequently. I tell people who believe that vaccines cause autism this and they tell me that I’m lying. This is impossible, they tell me. Many anti-vaxxers - and their cousins in woo, the people who think that autism can be cured by chelation therapy - firmly believe that autism is a horrible disease with no positives and that all autistics and their families are damned to a horrible existence without hope. Quite frankly, this is offensive. I do have problems. I will not attempt to deny them. Yet I have a life, I am content with my lot in life, I have accomplishments, and I do not need to be “cured,” thank you very much. Also, what Todd (#26) said.
My opinion on the autism-vaccine theory in short: bogus.
Long answer: vaccines do not cause autism. Autism is a genetic disorder affecting the formation of synapses in the brain (for the non-neuroscientists: synapses are the connections between nerve cells; the more synapses you have in your brain, the more interconnected the various parts of your brain are). Autistic brains seem to have too many synapses in specific areas, leading to information overload. End result: loss of regulation of brain pathways (and thus improper functioning of their related behaviors and/or bodily functions), over-regulation of other pathways, and the inability to process certain types of information. Many autistics have abnormal blood levels of hormones (most notably elevated levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which is heavily implicated in mental illnesses such as major depression and the effects of psychotropic drugs such as ecstasy and LSD).
I sympathize with the parents of autistic children, especially children who are highly hyperactive, unmanageable and socially incompetent. Yet I firmly believe that the problem is not the vaccines. Vaccines are good things. Yes, there are some people who are injured by vaccines. This occurs rarely, however. Very rarely. Vanishingly rarely.
My theory on the reason for the rising rates of autism: it isn’t happening. Rather, society has changed, medicine has changed, and people’s perceptions of things have changed.
Firstly, 50 years ago, many children now diagnosed as autistic would have been diagnosed as mentally retarded. Due to better diagnostic analyses, these children are now being given a proper diagnosis. The diagnosis of “mentally retarded” is about as firm and precise as saying that everyone in a hospital is “sick.” Yes, it is true, but it also misses the point. That’s reason #1 for rising diagnoses.
Secondly, a century ago, a person like me (a high-functioning autistic) would have been described as “odd” (probably rebellious and/or hysterical too, as I’m a woman). I most likely would not have been seriously evaluated by a psychiatric professional. If I had ever met such a person, they probably would have said that I was “unfeminine” or some similar nonsense. The very idea that I might be autistic would never have been considered. The definition of autism has broadened. Today, people who 20 years ago would not have been considered autistic are. That’s reason #2 for rising diagnoses.
Thirdly, society itself has changed. A century ago, a person who was socially incompetent (even totally nonverbal) but who was nonetheless physically healthy could work on the family farm or do menial labor and thus be productive. These days, there are fewer jobs that both provide wages sufficient to live on and can be done by a person with mental handicaps. Also, the attitude of society towards such people has changed. In those days, families made efforts to hide them away (especially if they were middle- to upper-class) or minimize the perception of their disability. This was true of people with all sorts of disabilities, not just autistic people. These days, the social acceptability of hiding the physically or mentally handicapped child away from company is decreasing. It is not gone, but it is much, much less than it was. Many families have swung completely in the opposite direction. They are open and vocal about their family member and demand attention and support. Thus, society’s perception of the incidence of autism has tended upward. Reason #3.
Finally, consider how much health in general has changed. Many people with autism-spectrum disorders have physical ailments as well. In previous times, they may have died or have been invalids. Now, they survive and may be effectively treated for their physical ailment. Even if the absolute number of people born with autism remains constant, the number of living, non-invalid autistics is larger. Just as there are more living, non-invalid people alive today who were born with spina bifida, harelips, deformed limbs, hydrocephaly, and cerebral palsy than there used to be. Such conditions are now either no longer automatic death sentences or were never death sentences but are now more treatable, allowing those born with them to live more normal lives. So, in a sense, I am contradicting what I said previously - there are more autistic people today. But this increase does not even begin to account for the larger diagnosed number that exist today. So call this reason #4, with a caveat.
This obscenely long-winded rant brought to you by Esteleth, a high-functioning autistic who thinks that society, not her, is what needs healing.
Mnem, we’re 7 years out and have already been through the whole process, which in our case included the best and most unlikely outcome: My kid ‘grew out of’ all her symptoms, and we got fired from all the special ed stuff, about 3 months after she began to speak.
Which was a randomly timed event almost exactly 4 years after the reaction.
So now she’s perfectly normal; a healthy, active state champion athlete and all-around typical mix of (endless source of joy) plus (intermittent pain in the butt).
Thanks, though. We don’t need help that way, but we’d like for our experiences to inform and motivate other parents to carefully examine the timing of vaccines.
Darn, I must be in moderation.
You and me both, Lisa KS.
Here I went and wrote a damned essay (1044 words long, according to Word) and it’s not up yet.
However, don’t think that I’m bashing Amanda or the mods at all. I’m sure they’re having to wade through a bunch of nonsense in the queue.
Gargh spam filters. My apologize if it turns out to be a double-post.
1) Infectious diseases in industralized nations aren’t nearly as dangerous in industralized nations as they are in developing ones. Measles mortality is less than 1 in 1,000 in America while it’s 100 per 1,000 in half of Africa. Similarly, America’s history with these infectious diseases has little relevance for the present due to the dramatic changes in public health infrastructure (i.e., sanitation and urban design). Most of measles/pertussis/etc.’s morbidity and mortality rates are due to pre-existing disease burdens and immunosuppression, not access to medical care for the specific infectious disease.
2) If the vaccination debate is about autism, then why were eerily identical arguments used in Jacobsen v. Massachusetts?
Vaccination is as much about autism as abortion is about the fetus’s right to life. That is to say, not at all. It’s about the precautionary principle, corporate responsibility, and the right of the government to potentially harm an individual for the public welfare.
PhoenixRising,
I have a question about your personal experience. Did the doctors give you any indication as to what your daughter’s reaction was related to? Each vaccination does have an associated risk, so perhaps it wasn’t the grouping but perhaps one particular vaccine within the group that caused your daughter’s reaction.
Well.
Speaking as a parent of an ASD kid - and one who’s recently diagnosed, so I’m still a little shell-shocked from all of it - even if you told me it would up his chances of ASD, he’d still have gotten all of the vaccines.
My grandfather had polio, didn’t walk until he was three, and had issues his whole life stemming from it. I thought as a child that polio had been ‘eradicated’ and didn’t understand until I was an adult that that wasn’t so.
I don’t really believe that ASD has any link to vaccines, but even if I did, we know for sure that vaccines are linked to kids not getting measles and polio.
Fair enough, Louise. I overstated. I am too close to one particular situation. The more neutral version: Many (not all) distressed people find comfort in a mechanistic causality. Because there was the antecedent, now there is the consequence. Because there is the consequence, there must have been an antecedent.
When I said that for affected families the vaccine story might feel better (less bleak, more invigorating) than no story, which is what mainstream doctors and epidemiologists give them, I did not mean to speak for everyone coping with autism. And I should not have focused so single-mindedly on the pain of having a child with this condition. I didn’t mean to say it’s pure agony. I know that’s not true.
I agree with Louise and the “autism hell is only aleviated by death” statement. That is about the most ablist statement I’ve heard in a long time and is probably why parents who are out killing their disabled kids are getting off so easily by the courts. Really, get some help.
As far as vaccinations go, I have vaccinated both of my children, but I am a slow vaccinator. We do one at a time. My son was rushed to the ER by ambulance 2x because of the MMR virus and hep B virus caused seizures. Seizures that are rare, but can cause brain damage. I do believe that in most cases, the benefits outweigh the risks, but I also have some sympathy for the fear that people have of vaccinating their kids.
I think part of the problem is distrust of Big Pharma and a lack of full disclosure and a general trend of misinformation. I mean, even if Thimerisol does not cause autism, WHY IN THE HELL are we putting unecessary mercury in our infant’s vaccines? It defies logic. I do think it is unwise for kids not to be vaccinated in most cases, but it seems like karma to me. If this is what it takes to get pharmaceutical companies to shape up, then so be it. I think these checks and balances are not necessarily always a bad thing.
Ha! I got a tetanus shot last week too! It was the classic “step on a rusty nail” thing.
Amanda, I don’t know if this is what you got, but when I went in, they gave me a vaccination not only for tetanus, but they lumped in with a vaccination for whooping cough — because it’s making a comeback now that people aren’t vaccinating their kids so they’re trying to build up herd immunity again.
Anyhow, I wasn’t an anti-vaccination nut, but I considered myself to be vaccination-agnostic (which wasn’t really a big deal since I don’t have kids) for a long time. I think that vaccinations are by and large a good thing, but I found a lot of the stuff that happened in late 2001 to be extremely suspicious, particularly adding the “thou shalt not sue vaccination manufacturers” part of the Patriot Act–right when a lot of questions were being raised about the amount of mercury in the combined MMR–It just seemed a very suspicious thing to do and so it was easy to think that they were trying to hide something serious.
Amanda, I’d urge you to be very careful about your certainty level here, particularly given your lack of formal scientific training. I know you like and understand much science, but you are over the abject belief line here IMHO.
Good science has a good bit of uncertainty about it. It is very foolish to impute that certainty apriori because all scientific evaluations have blind spots, make value judgements about inclusion, restrict the situation to make it more studyable, etc.
The links between big pharma and the CDC are extremely problematic, and most of the best scientists have long left the CDC anyway. You cannot assert that the same organization that has been infiltrated with Dr. Kerouac Types and gutted by Bushco partisans and their pogroms is somehow putting out good information in other areas. After all, they totally fucked up with this year’s flu vaccine, in part because they lost most of the best people.
What this adds up to is a distrust of the entire system.
As for autism and vaccinations, there is solid research that the timing is coincidental. If it wasn’t MMR, it would be whatever is recommended at the time. There may yet be a link shown, but I’d be totally surprised because I have seen research and seen presentations of clinical studies demonstrating that the brain changes start very much earlier than that - like, possibly before birth. Autistic children typically start out with a somewhat smaller than average head circumference, and then grow excessive amounts of white matter during their first year such that their brain and head become very much larger than average.
There is also strong indications from panel and cohort studies that autism is an epigenetic phenomenon anyway, and likely one borne of an exposure in utero that wasn’t present or was far less pervasive in earlier times, so blaming the parents for poor breeding choices doesn’t cut it. (My brother is Aspy, so this is a personal issue here).
Oh, yeah, my mother had mumps when she was 40 and it was absolutely brutal! I stayed home from school to care for her, took her to the doctor on my own (my learners permit didn’t say anything about that over-21 person in the passenger seat being alert), and so on for two weeks.
Long story short: IF YOU ARE AN ADULT WHO HASN’T BEEN VACCINATED, HASN’T HAD YOUR MMR BOOSTER, ETC. GO DO IT!
Seriously - as an adult, mumps can make you sterile, chickenpox can make you blind, and mumps, measles, and chickenpox are all extremely nasty to you.
Each vaccination does have an associated risk, so perhaps it wasn’t the grouping but perhaps one particular vaccine within the group that caused your daughter’s reaction.
Umm, yeah. We’ll never know which one, if it was one, because they were combined on the catch-up schedule.
Point being, if it was one item we can’t isolate which one, and if it was the combination the whole megillah was avoidable.
Which is why less is more, and lots of parents and some pediatricians advocate spacing.
Kate’s point, which is that autism is both no joking matter and most likely epigenetic, is a good one.
My son has Aspergers and when we look back, we recognize that some of his behaviors even in infancy were unusual. Aspergers isn’t as abrupt in its appearance and tends to occur later in childhood, so we generally tend to look back and see the little quirks he had as a toddler in a different light. His single minded focus over a toy was kind of cute when he was little, but it should have been a dead give away.
Haven’t read all the comments yet, but I’m about to.
My problem with vaccines as they currently stand is it’s too many too soon, or the disease in question is ridiculously benign. No 3 month old is going to contract tetanus, for example. And chicken pox and the flu (for immuno-normal children) are not a big deal whatsoever. From what I understand, measles is pretty much the same level of lethality as chicken pox, but I’d have to do more research (like, when it gets important) before I decide that.
I remember when I was a kid chicken pox was considered no big deal. Now that there’s a vaccine, chicken pox can kill you? I’m 24, so unless the pox randomly mutated into some super deadly virus, the scare about it is utterly ridiculous.
Personally, I plan to selectively vax on a later schedule. My kids will not get the flu or chicken pox vax, possibly not the MMR (again, further research) and all others won’t start until they’re at least 3 and their bodies can handle it a lot better.
And I hate knee jerk reactions on either side of the issues. “Vaccines will kill you!” is just as bad as “Give your kid 14 shots in their first year or they’ll kill all the kids in the neighborhood!!!” in my not so humble opinion.
I doubt many posting here would ever accept the label “promiscuous” on their medical records because they had a prescription for birth control and were not married.
The same sort of “all people who dare to question the official party line on vaccines are dangerous wackos” led to me insisting that “vaccine resister” be removed from my children’s records because I dared … I DARED QUESTION the schedule piling on vaccines together so extremely and drew up my own that still included all the shots, but on a schedule that made more sense. They still got the really important ones (like the infant pneumonia one) right away, I just held off on the HepB and spaced out the others.
Of course questions about vaccination that go beyond “will it make my baby cry?” are not allowed in this extreme frame that is being echoed by this post.
Okay, yes, so I was a little worried about the kid of someone I’ve never met.
Very glad to hear it all ended up working out.
When/if we have kids, we will probably want to do a spread-out vaccine schedule if we possibly can. You’d think that common sense would say that piling vaccines on top of each other would be more likely to cause adverse reactions, but when have insurance companies ever acted out of common sense? Most people in my age group have done or are planning to do it this way if they have the financial means.
Not even close. Measles is very lethal. The World Health Organization was triumphant that they cut measles deaths to a mere 345,000 worldwide in 2005 through their vaccination campaign.
Measles is a very serious, very deadly disease. The fact that it came close to being eliminated in this country is lulling you into a false sense of security.
I’m ancient enough to remember a kid in my neighborhood who was a polio survivor (it was the early 60s). He wore a brace on one leg. My uncle survived polio in the 1930s (he was an immigrant from Albania where vaccines were generally unavailable), and was crippled for life.
My daughter has had every vaccination recommended by her pediatrician, from the Hep-B vaccine when she was barely months old to the HPV last year (she’s 13). My younger brother was one of the first kids to receive the MMR vaccine. Myself, I suffered through measles, mumps, chickenpox and rubella as a kid (the “old fashioned way” to gain immunity!) We did have DPT, polio and smallpox vaccinations in school - I remember lining up for the shots. The last year I got a polio vaccine was the first year of the oral vaccine - a red dot on a sugar cube.
We wiped out smallpox and were on track to wipe out polio, but now we have idiots trying to stop it. The Waldorf school that got closed for whooping cough is right up the highway from me *shudder*. There’s no way in hell I’m not going to immunize my daughter.
From what I understand as well, some of the recent outbreaks have not come from people not vaccinating - they resulted from poor vaccine storage and tracking in some isolated rural areas.
There is also the consideration of booster shots for those of us who had the early MMR (1968 to 1978 or so). This led to middle school out breaks for years until they figured out the problem of insufficient vaccination. If you have not had a booster and you are 30 to 40 years old, you might consider getting one.
Ashley: I wouldn’t call measles “benign”, the complications can be crippling and even deadly. Rubella may be mild, but it poses extreme risks for the fetus of a pregnant women who contracts it, with horrifying birth defects the usual result. Your kid with a “mild” case of rubella can destroy the life of a child and his or her family by just being in the same room with them - even before the symptoms appear.
I still have a chickenpox scar on my face, 45 years later. (Since I could grow them I’ve always worn long sideburns to cover it.) I would prefer that I wasn’t scarred.
As I said above, our daughter had the vaccine schedule recommended by her pediatrician, and has suffered no ill (though I can’t say it’s the same as what you were recommended.)
Just a note from my understanding the chicken pox vaccine is given to prevent people developing shingles later in life. Because chicken pox is a virus (varicella-zoster) it stays in your system for life and if you become immuno-compromised later in life you can develop other diseases associated with the virus.
As I say whenever I get into the vaccine debate, I only know the vaccination history of 4 people. All 4 were given their vaxes on the schedule that was around in the 80s and 90s.
I had no reactions, no VPD (vaccine preventable diseases)
My half-sister had no reactions, but still contracted chicken pox.
My husband had several grand mal seizures when he was 2, and had measles AND whooping cough.
My stepsister had no VPDs, but had periodic seizures between the ages of 2 and 8.
Again, the plural of anecdote is not data, but I know too many people who’ve had adverse reactions to think that vaccines are totally benign. A good idea, yes, but just as I’m not going to follow doctor recommendations and rub a potential allergen in my kid’s eyes the moment they exit the vagina (they give erythromycin in the off chance that the mother has some disease which is regularly tested for. My husband’s allergic to that drug, I’m allergic to most antibiotics), I”m not going to shoot my kid up with 8 vaccines before they’re 6 months old.
Just a note from my understanding the chicken pox vaccine is given to prevent people developing shingles later in life.
That is theoretical and theoretically possible, but not demonstrated even in the Japanese populations that had the varicella vaccine available many years before it was out in the US.
As I say whenever I get into the vaccine debate, I only know the vaccination history of 4 people. All 4 were given their vaxes on the schedule that was around in the 80s and 90s.
I had no reactions, no VPD (vaccine preventable diseases)
My half-sister had no reactions, but still contracted chicken pox.
My husband had several grand mal seizures when he was 2, and had measles AND whooping cough.
My stepsister had no VPDs, but had periodic seizures between the ages of 2 and 8.
Again, the plural of anecdote is not data, but I know too many people who’ve had adverse reactions to think that vaccines are totally benign. A good idea, yes, but just as I’m not going to follow doctor recommendations and rub a potential allergen in my kid’s eyes the moment they exit the vagina (they give erythromycin in the off chance that the mother has some disease which is regularly tested for. My husband’s allergic to that drug, I’m allergic to most antibiotics), I”m not going to shoot my kid up with 8 vaccines before they’re 6 months old.
You’d think that common sense would say that piling vaccines on top of each other would be more likely to cause adverse reactions, but when have insurance companies ever acted out of common sense?
It’s common sense to the bottom line that if you save three needles, syringes and office visits, you take home more money. For-profit medicine in a nutshell. Beyond that, it’s the typical Republican socialze-the-costs approach: All the treatment that my kid got after the life-threatening reaction itself was…you guessed it…early intervention. Which is a federally funded program.
So as much as I’m grateful that those services were available for my kid, it’s outrageous that our private insurance got to shift the costs onto the taxpayer after denying that their mandatory vaccine schedule, which we didn’t know to resist because anti-vax cranks are unscientific selfish jerks, had anything to do with the injury.
I’m such a vaccination crank that I do what my sister the midwife refers to as ‘the citizen’s arrest’: On Saturday night, there was a young mom in the bookstore with her 3 week old baby, in the children’s section. I complimented the cuteness, then quietly, but not at all subtly, told her that nearly every death of an infant under 3 months in our county is caused by whooping cough getting on a baby who is too little to have had her shots. And that there are some crazy people I know from my kid’s school whose kids are carriers because they’ve never had shots.
She was out of there so fast the pink lace head-garter flapped in her breeze.
As I say whenever I get into the vaccine debate, I only know the vaccination history of 4 people. All 4 were given their vaxes on the schedule that was around in the 80s and 90s.
I had no reactions, no VPD (vaccine preventable diseases)
My half-sister had no reactions, but still contracted chicken pox.
My husband had several grand mal seizures when he was 2, and had measles AND whooping cough.
My stepsister had no VPDs, but had periodic seizures between the ages of 2 and 8.
Again, the plural of anecdote is not data, but I know too many people who’ve had adverse reactions to think that vaccines are totally benign. A good idea, yes, but just as I’m not going to follow doctor recommendations and rub a potential allergen in my kid’s eyes the moment they exit the vagina (they give erythromycin in the off chance that the mother has some disease which is regularly tested for. My husband’s allergic to that drug, I’m allergic to most antibiotics), I”m not going to shoot my kid up with 8 vaccines before they’re 6 months old.
Ms. Kate is partially right about the CDC. Their recommendation for the HPV vaccine up to age 26 is mostly just giving money to Merck. The stats (average # of partners at that age, etc) don’t bear out the recommendation, but hey, what the hell? However, the fact that thimerisol is not longer in the vaccines does make the autism issue more clear.
Bah, I’m caught in moderation. Here’s a second try, sorry if this pops up more than once:
As I say whenever I get into the vaccine debate, I only know the vaccination history of 4 people. All 4 were given their vaxes on the schedule that was around in the 80s and 90s.
I had no reactions, no VPD (vaccine preventable diseases)
My half-sister had no reactions, but still contracted chicken pox.
My husband had several grand mal seizures when he was 2, and had measles AND whooping cough.
My stepsister had no VPDs, but had periodic seizures between the ages of 2 and 8.
Again, the plural of anecdote is not data, but I know too many people who’ve had adverse reactions to think that vaccines are totally benign. A good idea, yes, but just as I’m not going to follow doctor recommendations and rub a potential allergen in my kid’s eyes the moment they exit the vagina (they give erythromycin in the off chance that the mother has some disease which is regularly tested for. My husband’s allergic to that drug, I’m allergic to most antibiotics), I”m not going to shoot my kid up with 8 vaccines before they’re 6 months old.
Todd,
we generally tend to look back and see the little quirks he had as a toddler in a different light. His single minded focus over a toy was kind of cute when he was little, but it should have been a dead give away.
My kid is eight. I’m guessing yours is younger.
We refer to these oddities as ‘her unique strengths’. For example, she was 7 when she won the 8-and-under category in her sport at the state level. Which is so weird we were asked to prove her age, like the Little League pitchers with a 55 mph fastball and 5 o clock shadow.
The ability to choose something and explore it deeply in all its aspects is a strength, once you find the right school.
Ms Kate-
Can you provide a link for this claim. Everything I am finding online is saying that both chicken pox and shingles are caused by the same virus.
I’m all for giving the vaccines, but spreading them out a bit more. I’m due at the end of next month, and from my understanding, the normal plan is to vaccinate for HepB before the baby even leaves the hospital. I know I’ve been tested for everything left, right and sideways - can he really pick up HepB between the hospital and home? I printed out the CDC’s recommended vaccination schedule, as well as the schedule published by the UK’s NHS, and scheduled an appointment with the pediatrician I’m planning on using to see if there’s any way to spread the vaccines out a bit. I worked in a vet clinic, and we didn’t even recommend giving all the shots at once to smaller animals, because of the risk of vaccine reactions. 4 or 5 shots at once seems a little much to ask any 10 pound creature to handle.
Whooping cough has intermittent vaccine coverage, too. I was vaccinated as normal, but contracted it as a teenager.
Also, the chicken pox vaccine can be very useful for those of us who didn’t contract it in childhood. Becuase I got vaccinated when I was 13, I don’t have to worry about being exposed to the disease as an adult.
Unlike my mother, who never got the chickenpox, and is in her sixties now. It would be a potential disaster if she ever got it.
Whooping cough has intermittent vaccine coverage, too. I was vaccinated as normal, but contracted it as a teenager.
Also, the chicken pox vaccine can be very useful for those of us who didn’t contract it in childhood. Becuase I got vaccinated when I was 13, I don’t have to worry about being exposed to the disease as an adult.
Unlike my mother, who never got the chickenpox, and is in her sixties now. It would be a potential disaster if she ever got it.
“Ms. Kate is partially right about the CDC. Their recommendation for the HPV vaccine up to age 26 is mostly just giving money to Merck. The stats (average # of partners at that age, etc) don’t bear out the recommendation, but hey, what the hell?”
Oh, please. And what about those of us who are 25 and haven’t had enough partners to make it unreasonable? I should just avoid the shots to… what? Avoid making strangers uncomfortable?
Nope, 10. He’s twice exceptional. Scores through the roof on math and science, but struggles with basic penmanship and following instructions.
Well, you all do “know” someone who had mumps–me. Just one side of my face blew up.
My mom was horrified b/c she thought that I’d had all my vaccines. Idiot country doctor forgot about that one.
After I recovered, I had to return and get the vaccine anyway b/c it protects against measles and rubella as well as mumps. I was not happy.
Idiot doctor screwed me over again b/c he didn’t record giving me the vaccine.
So when it was time for college, I only had proof of one booster shot from a different less idiotic doctor. My current intelligent doctor told me he could test for the immunities, but if they weren’t there, I’d have to get another shot. I said if I had to get stuck, he might as well just give me the vaccine.
Vaccines are not 100% safe nor are they 100% effective. That’s why I get particularly pissed off at the anti-vacciners. Not only are they piggybacking off the majority who do vaccinate, but if there is an outbreak, they help spread it to those for whom the vaccine didn’t work.
They ARE caused by the same virus - the problem is that the assertion that the vaccine prevents shingles is just that - an assertion.
Shingles is typically found in temporarily or permanently immune compromised individuals (think Magic Johnson here). There is no evidence that such individuals will remain sufficiently immune from varicella in later life even if they are vaccinated to not contract the virus and develop shingles even if they have no classic spot symptoms.
Todd, is it possible for a playdate with my 10 year old son, or are you just passing my guy off as your own here?
(younger son is 10 and dabbles with aspyness, but receives no special services for the time being)
Todd, we’re waiting for the ’sequencing problems’ (following 4 step directions given by another, rather than complex math solved on her own initiative) to either persist until clinical or clear up like everything else.
Unique strengths, that’s what they are.
Yes, but chicken pox is the initial outbreak if you dont get chicken pox you wont have the virus in your system (I recognize not in all cases but in most). I would say this is an argument to get a booster vaccine so you never get the virus since chicken pox later in life is quite nasty.
“I mean, even if thimerosal does not cause autism, WHY IN THE HELL are we putting unnecessary mercury in our infant’s vaccines?”
Leora, in the late 1920’s, a group of 21 children was infected with staph from a diphtheria inoculation, and 12 died. Thimerosal was the only compound known that prevented contamination of the vaccines with staph and fungi while not diminishing its effectiveness. You may never have had the misfortune of studying organic chemistry, but in general you don’t just whip up a new compound with the same function but lacking mercury. When you consider how people were ravaged by these diseases in the first half of last century, I doubt anyone really gave a damn about the mercury risk, though it exists, to be sure. Happily, advances have been made. I guess Big Pharma is good for something.
RES, it is true that if you never had the fulminant infection, you wouldn’t have the latent virus.
Unless you are immune compromised, as most shingles cases are. Then you might contract it later, regardless of vaccination status, because you are … immune compromised!
The simple answer: no data yet exists to prove disprove, as shingles is usually found in mid-life or later, so it is simply an assumption, not a fact, that shingles will be prevented by vaccination.
I don’t know why this would indicate that the vaccine was causing autism. Problems for people who turn out to be autistic, yeah sure.My mother told me of the panic and fear that came every summer when parents wondered if there would be a polio epidemic that season. I was born the year that Salk began his vaccination trials, I can barely imagine my parent’s relief.
At eight I was out of school for two weeks from the measles, and learned later that my mom and dad were hours away from hospitalizing me, when I finally made a turn for the better. Our neighbor’s youngest boy was 80% deaf because his mother contracted rubella in her first trimester. Since my dad worked at the local county health department, I heard stories all through my childhood of mini epidemics, mumps, measles, rubella, whooping cough, and on and on, even typhoid.
Try typing “plagues” on wikipedia. We’re all just one mutation away from disaster.
Thanks for calling me a misguided liberal. Do I have to hand in my feminist card too now?
I have a pretty long memory, thanks. Also, you may be shocked, the ability to research and think for myself.
I saw Dr. Bernardine Healey, former head of the American Red Cross, pitching the vaccines-as-cause theory this very morning.
Who’s paying her, anyway? She sounds like one of those global warming deniers from Exxon, saying it’s a huge failure of public health research, and implying (much like Expelled), that there’s a conspiracy afoot.
The woman is dangerous. And a hooo-er.
I worked with some of this country’s finest autism researchers in my time at the Child Development Center at Very Large University Research Hospital.
There’s no freakin’ link!
The really good researchers are going back to video of diagnosed kids when they were tiny, and finding similarities in their gross motor behavior—long before they got the dreaded MMR vaccine.
I don’t know how relevant this is now, but I find it interesting that vaccination came to the developed world through Muslims and women. A quick reference from Wikipedia:
‘In 1718, Lady Mary Wortley Montague reported that the Turks have a habit of deliberately inoculating themselves with fluid taken from mild cases of smallpox and she inoculated her own children.[2]Before Edward Jenner tested the possibility of using the cowpox vaccine as an immunisation for smallpox in humans in 1796 for the first time, at least six people had done the same several years earlier: a person whose identity is unknown, England, (about 1771), Mrs. Sevel, Germany (about 1772), Mr. Jensen, Germany (about 1770), Benjamin Jesty, England, in 1774, Mrs. Rendall, England (about 1782) and Peter Plett, Germany, in 1791.[3] In 1796 Edward Jenner inoculated using cowpox (a mild relative of the deadly smallpox virus). Pasteur and others built on this.[1]’
I can’t be the only one who, every time vaccines come up in discussion, recalls the “tiny baby coffins” speech in House.
I’m with Amanda on this one.
Ok, a couple of things here:
To all the people worried about multiple vaccinations at the same time: do you have any evidence that this is harmful, or are you just running with your gut? The last time I checked, the Institute of Medicine report I noticed on the subject concluded exactly the opposite.
Ms. Kate, I don’t know where you’re getting your news, but the recent outbreaks across the country were all in unvaccinated populations.
Mnemosyne: having a child who had a previous bad reaction to a vaccine is not an irrational reason for not vaccinating.
And those children are the ones who should profit from herd immunity without contributing to it.
I’m lucky, I never had an averse reaction to anything — even the localized pain from a tetanus shot is something I only notice when I concentrate on it. And I got all vaccinations available when I was a kid: My mother had lost childhood friends to diphteria and polio.
PhoenixRising: I’m pretty sure that ‘You’re an over-entitled, scientifically ignorant ingrate who would change your ways if you’d seen a kid with tetanus die right in front of you, like I did’ was my all-time least effective comment in response to the statement ‘We’re not vaccinating’, though.
Wasn’t there a House episode with a scene like that?
Ashley, I remember when I was a kid chicken pox was considered no big deal. Now that there’s a vaccine, chicken pox can kill you?
Generally, if you cannot avoid a risk, you are likely to play it down. If you can avoid it, you’re likely to consider it much more severe. Riding without a seatbelt wasn’t a big deal when there weren’t seatbelts. Also, what does not kill you doesn’t necessarily make you stronger. It might simply leave you handicapped.
Also, chicken pox like to stay with you. A friend recently got shingles all over her head, which, if wikipedia is to be believed, is caused by the chicken pox virus making itself comfortable in your body after you got well all by yourself, and waiting for a chance to make a comeback.
She said she wished chicken pox had killed her. Because it hurt like bloody hell for three weeks, and she has still occasional attacks of nerve pain months after. (The doc says it’s likely to fade. Lucky.)
Esteleth, that was one of the most cogent essays regarding autism I