So I ended up in a discussion/argument (they were swearing and insulting the pro-vaxxers when their points were refuted. I did get a bit bitchy and snarky near the end along with the others.) on my city's Facebook page yesterday.
I'll admit it. I love to see these people ragequit arguments when their data doesn't add up. But it also terrifies me what these people believe and swallow without researching ANYTHING first. The amount of misinformation is just...staggering. I'll provide some examples. And then the pro-vaxxers are accused of not doing research and cognitive dissonance.
The crazy thing is they believe throwing out medical articles and studies give them more credibility. But then I read the article and its more than clear they didn't.
I'm pro-vaccine just because the effects are pretty easy to observe when you get down to it. People are vaccinated and the incidences of the diseases vaccinated for go down. Vaccination stops before a disease is eradicated and the number of people infected goes up.
This is the back and forth from the thread. Funny nicknames and commentary added for your enjoyment. Also spoilered in case of tl;dr. I am also an arrogant little shit. Please forgive me.
Spoiler
It starts out innocent enough with a person posting this and, silly me, I assume they're pro-vax and make a joke.
Anti-Vaxxer:
My thoughts are: FUCKING TIRED OF FUCKING MEASLES POSTS.
I said: Well they wouldn't exist if we vaccinated everyone.
"Science" even says they are NOT 100% effective. So that statement is not true.
I say:
Actually it would. The ones that can't be vaccinated and those that the vaccines aren't as effective for depend on "herd immunity" from the rest of the population being vaccinated. Which is why it's so important for as many people that can be vaccines do so because people like Rachel's friend's daughter who's allergic to everything or my cousin who has an immune system disorder may have their lives depend on that herd immunity.
Anti vaxxer:
Honest question:
Where was the 'herd' when 41,000+ people visit DL daily? Those "too young for the MMR" should have been protected, right?
Big. Fail.
And a vaccinated child can just as easily carry and spread the measles. So to just point fingers at the "unvaccinated" is ridiculous.
But it's ok, because they tried, right?
It comes down to personal decisions. Rights. I'm sick of the back and forth, and I think it's time I finally learned to keep my mouth shut lol
Good day, ladies.
(Spoiler alert: She doesn't actually leave. To make it easier she is now "Anti-Vaxxer" and the rest will have other nicknames.)
I explain:
Herd immunity doesn't work when there's a large enough population to infect and spread. Ideally in a herd immunity situation, if someone were to contract a disease it wouldn't be able to spread far and the outbreak dies before it gains ground because there's no one around that it can infect properly.
And she comes back:
Honey, there is no "science" backing your claim. You have no idea how many are unvaccinated in California. And there are 37 million plus! common sense though, will still tell you a majority are vaccinated. Can't always believe the media.......
I admit I got a little pissy at her comment and replied:
Someone else tackle that comment, I'm tag teaming out to grab some independent research papers.
Or we could just look at how no one is infected with small pox and polio is almost eradicated after massive vaccination campains. Kind of punches a few holes in the vaccines don't work argument.
Anti-Vaxxer:
And if you read my article, scholarly I might add not a blog, you'd see that the vaccinated can catch measles from the shot, and then spread it to those who didn't gain immunity from the failed shot. Measles, will never go away.
What about those kids (all vaccinated) that came down with polio - like paralysis? They can't seem to explain that one...... that's funny. Science knows everything right? They don't happen to know, but I'll tell you this, do you think they'd tell you that the polio vaccine was tainted, accidentally giving those children polio? Fuck to the NO! And make people question vaccine safety and efficacy?
Ugh. Science.
Basically, my choices as a mother, are not up for debate. I've made the best decision for my family, and though it may not go with what you believe or always told to believe, there is no need to bash or bully. It's nobody's business. It's ridiculous. The propoganda is working, scaring anyone who once believed otherwise to run out and get the MMR. They're making their money. They need a place to point their finger (unvaccinated) because of their failing shot. And if you can't see that, then all hope is lost. Too far gone. Look up the last time anyone in the US died from the Measles. We do not live in a third world country. An otherwise healthy individual will bounce back.
So "science" this all you want. I'm glad it's what helped you make your decision as a mother.
Ebola, measles.....what will they scare you with next?
So I read the article. And promptly laughed my ass off because the paper supported the pro-vax side when the basic information was taken:
I'm just curious. Did you read the entirety of the article you posted?
The two physicians that were infected had far milder symptoms and didn't develop some of the classic measles symptoms, including cough. In addition, one had a six month old infant at home outside the vaccination age and the child was not infected. In fact, they were unable to trace back any infections to the doctors.
Some people don't seroconvert as readily as others so they may still get the disease, but the disease will be milder and it appears almost noninfectious.
What you do as a mother is your business. What I have a problem with is bad science and throwing research articles out without reading and comprehending them first.
And I explain one reason this gets to me:
The reason I'm so adamant about is that you have a reason not to trust science and research as it did not live up to the hype or bad research hurt you or someone you care about.
Bad research is getting through in some areas which makes me just shake my head. We should be able to trust the medical community especially with our safety but there are those out there who cling to old dogma as strongly as any religious zealot. And that's wrong.
Science is meant to, through trial and error, give us an answer to a question with a repeatable solution. Data should be all that matters but human ego and profits get in where they don't belong.
So I don't blame you, Jessica, for feeling that medicine and science failed you because it likely has. I don't know your past so I can't say. That's why I get so angry that people get hurt because of bad science because it gives people reason to doubt. And that scares me more than Ebola or any disease really. If we develop a life saving medicines what will it matter if everyone is too wary to try it?
A new challenger appears! I will call her "closed borders":
I don't and won't vaccinate..
I'm not going to argue my side of things.
But, if this measles bs was truly eradicated in the US, stop blaming those who do not vaccinate..
It would actually be the fault of those who travel abroad...illegals and those vacationing alike, those vaccinated or not....or is it the fault of a live vaccine that is known to shed? Hmmmm.
And another! I will call her "Big Pharma":
Vaccines= money for the big Pharma. And LOTs of toxins and heavy metals in a little body with a not yet fully developed Nervous system & immun system... Causes autism, allergies etc.., Yup- no thanks.
I reply with:
From what I understand big pharma doesn't really make any money on vaccines. They're not cheap to manufacture and a lot of places literally give vaccines away for free. It's a one, maybe three shot course and then you can't make anymore money on that person with that vaccine. It's a losing business model.
The big money is in the cholesterol, erectile dysfunction, and similar drugs that you don't necessarily need but still have to take every day, sometimes multiple times a day, that are cheap to manufacture.
Up until this point the other pro-vaxxers in the thread have mostly been mocking the anti-vaxxers and the anti vaxxers mocked back which just doesn't help our argument at all and so I didn't post those.
Then a new pro-vaxxer arrives! I will call him "It's Not Autism" in reference to Dr. House's "it's not lupus":
Vaccines causing autism is factually incorrect. No, some story about a kid who is autistic and had a vaccine does not prove the vaccine made him autistic. If you don't like vaccines fine, whatever. But at least have correct information.
Anti-Vaxxer:
FYI, Autism is NOT the only concern. It's among many.
This still may not satisfy some of you, but any idiot can see this and understand it.
But someone here I KNOW will still have something opposing it. Even when it's right in front of your damn face. I'll bet none of you have even thought to read an insert. Well, I'll help you. Here is the Dtap.
(Highlights part about possibly causing seizures and autism)
I know that correlation doesn't equal causation, but just how many will it take......?
I can't take this amount of stupid so I resign myself to bowing out (Spoiler alert: No I don't. I'm such a sucker for this crap):
*sigh* I'm not even going to bother with this one... Nothing I can show you is going to convince you and you're not going to convince me so I'm out.
Well when everyone from the CDC on down can find no causation it kind of gives your argument no legs to stand on.
Especially when it allows diseases like Measles to come back.
So even if (it doesn't) it causes autism it does so in what? .01% of cases v. One of the most contagious diseases around in Measles? How many will that infect and kill?
My money is on a hell of a lot more than that .01%
It's not that people are challenging it Anti-Vaxxer. It's that people are doing so with information that has been proven to be wrong. Proven over and over and over.
But whatever Dont vaccinate your kids. I don't care. Just don't be upset when you don't get anywhere with your argument.
Anti-Vaxxer:
It's virulent, I never argued that, but "kill"?
Seriously, go look up the LAST time there was a death from the Measles in the US. As, we don't live in a third world country.
Why haven't we heard of any deaths with the whopping 87 they consider an outbreak (to scare you of course)?
Oh, because people do NOT die from the Measles in the US. It's fucking 2015. Wake up.
Me:
It was 2003.
Anti-Vaxxer:
I never once said, every autism case was vaccine induced, Rachel. But it's there, enough to put it on a vaccine insert?
My arguments won't get anywhere. You're right. We can't open the eyes of everybody!!!
It's Not Autism:
No we don't but 1 in 100,000 die from measles and the complications it gives.
Also another reason it is so low is that we vaccinate against it! Don't try to use stats that are kept low by the very thing you are fighting against.
Me:
And it's okay to put these horrible, awful things in people in third world countries but not your kids? But why give it to those people in third world countries if they supposedly don't work in the first place? How is that not cognitive dissonance itself?
Anti-Vaxxer:
And she was what? 65? They can die from a number of things......
It's Not Autism:
Well, having correct information would help.
Anti-Vaxxer:
Butthurt....... lol
I can't help you anymore.
You better start coughing up scholarly links for those number It's Not Autism.
Enter a new pro-vaxxer! I will call her The Voice of Reason:
To be fair they put things like that in inserts to cover their asses against lawsuits.
It's Not Autism:
Awe cute. You resort to attempts to marginalized me when you have nothing to comeback with.
You never could help me to begin with Anti-Vaxxer. That whole your information is factually wrong thing. Nor can you affect my mood. You're not that important to me. Don't flatter yourself.
Already have and it's called Google.
Anti-Vaxxer:
You're so blind It's Not Autism. Did you SEE my "not a blog" post above?
Me:
And you better start reading the links you post, Anti-Vaxxer. The last one proved my point more than yours.
Anti-Vaxxer:
Quit arguing with me then.....
Me (okay, I am arguing. I just wanted to see her spaz. I'm a bad person.):
I'm having a discussion. I'm not angry or spazzing out.
Anti-Vaxxer:
I'm glad you have one person flattering you with likes....does that make you two feel powerful?
Again, let the butthurt begin....even idiots know there are two sides to the story.
It's Not Autism:
You are right. We've already completely exposed the incorrect info you're spinning.
Have fun using herd vaccination to protect your children.
There are two sides. Vaccinations causing autism is not part of either of them.
All the metals and other components in vaccinations is a much more factually correct and reasonable argument.
New Pro-Vaxxer joins. I'm calling her Not In My School:
It's Not Autism and Rachel, preach on! Maybe someday some science will perforate some skulls. Until then, revel in the knowledge that all research (legitimate research, that is) backs what we already know. The sad thing is that schools are letting these unvaccinated kids in in droves. That's what scares me.
It's Not Autism:
At least that's funny.
But hey the government also says that wearing seat belts are good for you.
Better stop wearing them. They cause autism.
Anti-Vaxxer:
Stay the fuck inside Not In My School...you're so fucking scared.
Your "science" can't even prove right now that it was an unvaccinated child.......
The Voice of Reason:
While I appreciate a good discussion I don't think it's fair at all to imply that those that vaccinate haven't done their research. Maybe we didn't come to the same conclusion but that doesn't mean I let some corporation decide for me what's best for my children. Insulting those that choose to vaccinate isn't any better than insulting those that choose not to.
Anti-Vaxxer:
Well you see It's Not Autism there have been no suspected correlations between autism and seatbelts.....as far as vaccines and autism. There have. Nice try.
It's Not Autism:
But it can prove that vaccines don't cause autism
(Separate post)
Actually no, they haven't. For every paper you link there are dozens proving it false.
Big Pharma:
Well... I do... They do cause autism..
Not In My School:
Wooooow! Really? You are a petty little thing aren't you? Go back to your tinfoil hat. I'll go outside all I want with my VACCINATED fucking kid but you can thank me for the herd immunity I provide your kids, your welcome.
Anti-Vaxxer:
No. It can't. And maybe you've heard of the whistleblower?
Falsified data?
You can't trust in your government that much to see that , that isn't a lie??
(Insert petty name calling and argueing between both sides here that doesn't accomplish much)
Back on topic:
Anti-Vaxxer:
Get their titers checked Not In My School before making that kind of assumption. You can hope that they have a little immunity from those shots.
The ones you can thank, are the unvaccinated that catch it, get natural assured immunity and then add to your 'herd'
(I'm really laughing my ass off and this point and having far too much fun than I should. Also do listen to the book in the link. Very good lesson for kids. Need to get a copy for when I have kids)
Me:
I just got my titers checked last year. Still in the immunity range. Would you like me to post my lab sheets?
And it's all good fun to throw research papers around but you have to actually read them to learn anything.
Please refer to my dad's favorite childhood book, Petunia the Silly Goose. I have included a link to the video.
Open the book before you assume you know what it says.
Closed Borders:
Have you all watched the Greater Good documentary?
Thoughts on it?
Me:
Autism has nothing to do with the myelin sheath. Autism is a fundamental difference in -how- the brain is wired, not damaged wires. As I put it "The house may be wired wrong but the lights still turn on." The latest theory is an overabundance of connections in some parts of the brain and a lack of connections in other areas. It could also possibly be an off ratio between white matter and gray matter. We still really don't know.
But breaks in the myelin sheath cause diseases like MS and a whole host of degenerative muscle diseases. It has very, very lite effect on cognition besides speech difficulties and memory loss. And most other autistic people I've met have memories like a steel trap.
I haven't seen that documentary and I will see if I can watch it later today. I'm not going to disregard a source until I've actually seen it. And then research to see who was funding it. I do that a lot with documentaries.
I should probably add that despite my stance on vaccines I'm one of very few who actually have adverse reactions.
The pertussis and diphtheria vaccine I got as a child (the booster if I remember correctly so I wasn't an infant). I got chills, started throwing up, got extremely cold and clammy and then spiked a fever after I think is what my mom said a couple hours after the vaccine.
Next booster with the tetanus vaccine that also had a pertussis and diphtheria booster I think caused the same effects. Oddly enough MMR just made me lethargic for a day and had no other effects. Flu shots do the same thing. I had symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome before those side effects though.
It's only the tetanus, pertussis, and diphtheria ones that do it but they recently switched from whole cell boosters to a cellular boosters. DTP vs the TDaP vaccine. Every since they switched to the TDaP I don't get those symptoms anymore. I'd still get the boosters even if I did though.
The anti-vaxxers have been quiet for now. We'll see how long that lasts. When they do pipe up again the awful correlation between rubella infections in pregnancy and autism waiting for them that I found out yesterday.
Yeaaaah so I never did get a collection of research papers and articles because I was having too much fun. I did link the CNN news story on the Wakefield fraud later on.
And I actually did learn a lot yesterday as I researched quite a bit to see if the anti-vaxxers had a valid point.
New things I learned:
- How attenuated viruses are made with non-human tissues. A very early step towards genetic engineering actually. In the case of polio it was accomplished by passing the virus through non-human tissue, like monkey kidneys, until they mutate into a form that doesn't cause symptoms but still provokes an immune reaction. I'm over simplifying it but it's fascinating. I knew attenuated virus vaccines were live vaccines but I didn't know the mechanism behind attenuating the virus.
- This in turn explained why some polio vaccines failed or accidently caused polio in some cases. The virus reverted into a symptomatic and infectious state. This happens with the oral vaccine but not the subcutaneous one as the one administered subcutaneously is a "dead" virus vaccine.
- Learned more about the immortal HeLa cell line like it's important role in developing Salk's vaccine.
- which led to reading about HeLa again to see if there were any new updates.
- Which led to reading about laboratory "weeds" of cell lines that have bee completely taken over by HeLa and similar immortal cell lines.
I don't think the other side or even some of the people on the pro-vax side learned much.
What is this anti-science thing with vaccines? They're anti-science until "science" can supposedly prove a point. Or this anti learning thing. I know my views have changed drastically in the last couple years when I've had my beliefs challenged by good data. When you have to resort to Mercola blogs or discreted papers, how do you not self examine and go "Wait, maybe I have the wrong idea here."
And these aren't like young 20 somethings. These are all people married and in their thirties or above except for me at 28 with no kids.
Ugh. The anti-vax thing is SO INFURIATING. It's such a no-brainer, the current evidence and research results are very clear in a way that the evidence in very few other big issues can be.
But it's close to home, it's about their kids, it's such an emotionally-driven issue for people that it's just a huge task to try and get the information through to them, and when you do it's easy for them to feel like it's a personal attack or a judgment on their parenting, which is a thing people get insane levels of uptight over.
The basic arguments have been settled, at this point probably thousands of times over, settled years and years ago. I got into an extended debate with a woman in a facebook group about a year ago on the subject, and she was super persistent, and fairly level-headed as an arguer, and we went around for a few weeks about it before it finally blew away. As a result, I went deep into the literature, read studies and analysis of studies and studies of trends in studies, chemical analysis, spectrogram data, watched interviews and documentaries, anything. I read all the stuff she asked me to, and watched all the videos she posted, although I'm pretty sure she didn't return the favor nearly as thoroughly.
She is an intelligent person with a great deal of education and a high degree of analytical perspicacity, which is why it was so confounding to me that she is so convinced on this particular topic. And I don't think that at the end of our several-week-long discussion she was in any way swayed, despite being big enough to admit a few times that I had successfully disproven or discredited to her some of the key bits of evidence she had presented.
I had already heard a lot of the anti-vax controversy, and already heard from reputable sources that it was nonsense, but that discussion was the first time I'd really dug into it and went down to the roots of the thing and really tried to build my own opinion from the best information.
And the fact is, none of the anti-vax arguments are confirmed by research or experimentation. Not one. Most are dismissable just by gaining a better understanding of related terminology and experimental methodology. Most of the arguments anti-vax folks put forth are based entirely on not understanding a word in a study abstract, or not understanding a basic chemical principle. It's understandable, but what blows my mind is that once the terms are made clear and the misunderstanding described, they continue to hold on to the conclusion that was based on that misunderstanding.
In the course of my discussion with that woman, we covered:
The Wakefield study that connected the MMR vaccine to autism (quickly proven un-reproducible by other scientists and discredited, later discovered that Wakefield had manipulated and falsified the results for monetary reasons).
About a billion other studies addressing other potentially harmful properties or effects of vaccines (despite her insistence to the contrary, literally 100% of these studies concluded that the vaccines were safe for their prescribed use - most of the studies had results that were so varied as to be inconclusive, and a lot of the others actually demonstrated the effectiveness of the vaccines).
Mercury in vaccines (the mercury-containing part is a compound which has different chemical properties than straight mercury, much like salt has different properties than sodium and chlorine, plus the levels of the element present are an order of magnitude less than what's in a can of tuna).
Other scary chemicals in vaccines (most of which, like formaldehyde, being chemicals that our bodies already contain and produce naturally, the others of which are benign but densely-named compounds in common use as preservatives or stabilizing agents).
The financial benefits and motivations of the pharmaceutical industry (which is kind of hit-and-miss proposition - a new vaccine just hitting the market can make a lot of money for whoever holds the patent, but most of the vaccines in common use that the anti-vax folks argue against are old vaccines that have been outside the initial protected period for a long time now, and the amount of money a pharma company makes from them is around 5-10% or less of the company's gross income, depending on the company and how many vaccines they have on the market - that's not an insignificant amount, but it's far less than the amount of money they'd have to be spending to maintain a conspiracy of silence that includes literally every medical professional in the developed world).
A mighty armload of personal anecdotes and collections of other people's anecdotes (the plurality of which is still not evidence, no matter how many nor how emotionally charged; in not one of those cases where the relevant people were examined and tested by independent scientists and laboratories did anyone find anything remotely supporting their case).
And one big libertarian argument to the effect that 'no one can tell me how to raise my family, it's within my rights as a parent to care for my children without the interference of the Government!' (while yes, we do have the freedom to treat our families in many terrible ways, this is not one of them, and it's not necessarily about your family, it's about your neighbors - your right to swing your diseases ends where my immune system begins, as it were).
There were a few other directions it went, I'm sure I'm not remembering all of it. But that's the basic idea. It was awful. I learned a lot, but it was still awful.
And a lot of the people I know that buy this stuff are generally not anti-science - many of them are skeptical and reasonable folks with generally well-founded personal values, but somehow when it comes to their children they turn into conspiracy nuts. It's a mind-boggling transformation, and I'm just as confused by it as you are.
I'd say it primarily comes from distrust of the government and distrust of the pharmaceutical industry. Lots of people are anti-science, but even more people are inherently ignorant about science and only praise/condemn it depending on how it lines up with their personal beliefs. And that's the case here, I think.
I know one couple who had natural birth and no vaccinations to avoid "the industry." They're both pretty intelligent, but they are really into conspiracy theories.
To an extent, aversion to "Big Pharma" is somewhat understandable. Except a lot of that doesn't stem from the actual medications, but from doctors being financially motivated to over-prescribe medications when they aren't absolutely needed. Because of that, some people falsely assume every big vaccination wave is simply a ploy to make money. The other side of the coin is the libertarian / anti-government stuff.
But in the end, the anti-vaccination argument boils down to this: "I'm okay with another parent's kids dying so long as I get to avoid an imaginary 0.000001% chance of my kid having autism -- a condition which is non-lethal and merely an inconvenience to me."
We eradicated various diseases in the States via vaccination for a reason -- because they killed a fuckton of people every year. Often in horrible ways. These dipshits would prefer reintroducing those diseases, potentially killing millions, than risk an incredibly rare chance of getting autism. A chance which, according to actual research, is entirely imaginary. They heard one bad thing from a flawed study, and now all these people are paranoid.
You can't talk logic to them. They use their own "logic."
It's interesting to see what kind of anti-vaxxers you've encountered, Pogo. Most of the ones I've met are very anti-intellectual in this area but your area has more educated and level headed people. Guess it just goes to show how pervasive the misinformation is if it can affect so many different groups.
Discussing with my dad last night he brought up a good point. My parents were born in 1959, only four yeas after the Salk vaccine was announced and two years after it started being distributed.
He said when he was young it was extremely common to see peers with the twisted limbs and muscle degeneration from polio. He said in some places it seemed like one out of five people he knew had some complication of polio. It was real and in your face back then.
He and my mom also have the scar from the smallpox vaccination campaigns. Smallpox was a real threat and they all breathed a sigh of relief in 1980 when it was declared eradicated. My great I grandfather on my mom's dad's side had lost very young siblings to small pox and it was something you always feared. Then it was gone. Mom was especially relieved since when she got the chicken pox at sixteen the case was so bad, having sores down her throat and under her eyelids and poxs so close together you couldn't fit a pin between them, the hospital she was in called in the CDC and isolated her because they thought she might have had smallpox. She still has scars all over her body from the ordeal. They're faint now and mostly seen as areas of depigmentation on her arms, but if you look closely and realize what they're from, it's pretty terrifying to imagine being in that state.
The only reason that the anti-vaxxers movement seems to have any ground what so ever is that from my observations, most of them were born after 1975. They never saw what our parents saw.
And dad said it was a difficult choice when I was a baby when it came to the polio vaccine. He and mom had heard all the horror stories of the children that actually contracted polio from the vaccine. But they researched everything they could and decided to go with the injectible vaccine since it wasn't associated with those cases. They felt it was better that I be protected from what they saw growing up and take the very, very small risk of side effects. And then when I had side affects from the pertussis, diptheria, and tetanus vaccines it was hard for them. They wondered if they did the right thing because I was violently ill. They felt they'd made the right choice and they were vindicated when I recovered with no lasting damage.
My parents were so overprotective because it had taken five years and half a million dollars in infertility treatments just to get me here. They didn't want to make any mistakes. But even then they felt whatever risk was present from vaccines, they'd take it so I wouldn't suffer the more devastating side effects of the actual illnesses.
So I can see from the point of view of anti-vaxxers to a point. The difference between them and my parents though was despite not having the ease of pulling up research articles on the internet, my parents had to do it the hard way. And after sifting through the data they found that the benefits outweighed whatever miniscule risk there was.
In the end I guess the anti-vaxxers campaign feels like a slap in the face to the previous generation that's scarred from small pox vaccinations and took the risk so that small pox became something to read about in history books with polio hopefully soon to follow. It's a luxury to be able to say no to vaccines that was bought with the mass vaccination of other children. And I find that to be incredibly selfish.
Add on that I find it downright insulting that an Anti-Vaxxer that still believes vaccines cause autism would rather risk their child dying than have an autistic child. That really just breaks my heart. That people would rather have a dead child than one like me or the severely autistic little boy I used to babysit with parents who love him so much regardless.
My little brother is a low-functioning autistic. He's nonverbal and he's turning 27 in March. My parents are looking into residential facilities for him. Up until about 2006, my mom (who WORKS in the medical field) thought that it was her fault that he was autistic because she got us vaccinated. I would help take my brother to the doctor's office whenever he needed a checkup and I began to notice how uncomfortable the doctor's got when she began to make her hypothesis known about what caused my brother's autism. I recognized it pretty easily: They wanted to tell her how wrong she was, but they also didn't want to upset her. I looked into the subject myself, I was able to show her how the correlation between the vaccinations and the "autism boom" happened to occur right around the time we started to get more and more efficient with autism diagnoses in and of itself. And to show her that there isn't any direct link to show that autism relates directly to any kind of brain damage. Then I tried to reinforce the notion that anti-vaccination groups are led by celebrities and former playboy models, meanwhile the pro-vaccination movement is led by people who dedicated their lives to scientific research and the betterment of mankind. It was at that point where she had to admit that it seems unlikely that the vaccine did anything to my brother. She basically was stuck, trying to look for a reason as to why it happened and fell on the first one that seems like it COULD make sense out of the chaos and stress it is to raise an autistic child.
Now, with diseases that were all but eradicated in my generation coming back at an alarming rate, she agrees that vaccinations are an absolute must.
It's good to hear a story of someone who was able to come around on the subject.
I know some folks with autistic children, and it's such a mind-boggling and confusing thing to come to grips with, I've watched them do it. I can totally see how it's easy to latch on to any information you can get that seems to make it make sense.
And in the discussions I've had about it, the thing you mentioned about the 'autism boom' has come up again and again. It's a tough one to explain and kudos to you for getting it across so succinctly - that there hasn't necessarily been a huge leap in the number of people who have autism, rather there have been several huge leaps in how the condition is defined and how much we have been able to diagnose it.
Incidentally, and somewhat ironically, the woman I had the one big discussion with in that facebook group posted an article to that group today. It was about confirmation bias.
With all this I struggle to understand why pro-vaccination people, otherwise known as normal people, care that there are those who choose not to vaccinate their kids.
There's no downside for us. We're protected to a reasonable degree are we not?
<-- realises this is possibly an ignorant opinion.
I'll copy a post I did in a different discussion (on Chik's page actually) regarding the "autism boom" since it's actually really easy to see what happened once I started researching the supposed vaccine induced autism boom and discovered it was one of the reasons I slipped through the cracks for so long. The Asperger's diagnosis wasn't an official one until 1994 and until the early 2000s it was thought it was almost entirely exclusive to males since girls tend to present slightly different on the entire spectrum, but especially in the high functioning range.
But here's the post.
It's always interesting when people claim that there's been an explosion of autism diagnosis since the MMR vaccine and therefore must mean there are more kids with autism.
In reality the answer is that there aren't more children with autism, children with variations on the autistic spectrum were just finally given a formal diagnosis.
Before 1994 there wasn't a diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome and high functioning autism wasn't widely recognized. With the changes to the DSM in 1994 that included criteria for those high functioning individuals it appeared like there was an explosion of autistic children. It wasn't that more autistic children were born in the last decade. Instead it was that children and adults who were previously labeled eccentric, rigid in regard to schedule, or just plain awkward socially that fit the previous criteria a little bit but not enough were brought under the umbrella of the autistic spectrum. They always existed but were never recognized as being on the spectrum. Suddenly they were and the diagnosis of autism jumped sharply.
Naturally that's a very condensed version of events but the treatment of autistic people really seemed to change in the mid 90s. My mom's best friend has a son on the very low functioning end of the spectrum, the one I used to babysit, and life was pretty hard out in the sticks with very little in the way of modern behavioral therapists at the school. Poor guy was forced to do a homework page perfectly before he could move to the next one by the special ed teacher. At the end of the school year he was still on page one and she'd really only been yelling at him to make him work. He was already basically non-verbal until he was around eight and that just made him regress so much. It took years before he started to be outgoing again. Fortunately he's had a lot better teachers and in his twenties while he still doesn't like to talk he does like to give bear hugs. I never would have imagined that when he was five.
But I remember his mom going through the same torment, wondering if she had caused this by getting him vaccinated. I wasn't supposed to hear that as she was whispering to my mom but well my hearing is outright abnormally strong. Fortunately they had a doctor with a good head on his shoulders who pointed out that her husband had a lot of traits of autism, but not enough or severe enough to put him on the spectrum so there was likely a genetic component. The relief she got was amazing. It was like someone had lifted an elephant off her shoulders to find out she didn't do this to her little boy.
So it is hard not to blame yourself as a parent when your kid isn't "normal" and wonder Did I do this? Could I have prevented it? Those parents I can see where they're coming from.
Yet most of the anti-vaxxers I know that crow from the mountain tops that vaccines cause autism have never (knowingly) met and autistic person in their life. Them I don't see where they're coming from. I don't see their dog in the fight. And then what happens when they don't vaccinate their kids and they end up being autistic or Asperger's syndrome anyways? Now what do they blame?
Edit for Vet:
The reason we get so upset is that not everyone can be safety vaccines. People on chemo therapy can't receive life virus vaccines since their immune system is usually shot. People with egg aergies generally can't get vaccinated since most vaccines are manufactured using chicken embryos. My own cousin is at risk because of an extremely rare immune system disease. They all depend on herd immunity not to get I'll. And in the case of people likey cousin or people with cancer, a wild type virus infecting them could mean death.
Herd immunity doesn't work when people decide they don't want to vaccine their children. We've taken into account the previous group of people in herd immunity but it starts to fall apart when healthy people choose not to vaccinate. It's like cutting too many fibers in a rope. Cut enough and the rope will fail.
In addition, there's no reason these diseases shouldn't have already been eliminated. A young man in puberty that gets the mumps shouldn't have to worry if he can have children or not as an adult because it affected his testicals and now may be sterile. A child shouldn't be deaf or get encephalopathy and die two years later from the measles. Babies shouldn't end up never seeing their second month of life because of whooping cough and they're too young to be vaccinated.
It's just a very selfish thing to say "Even though I can, I won't, because I want you to have to protect me."
The way I see it is like a boat taking on water. Some people won't be capable of throwing water out with a bucket but you don't throw them overboard. But you need a certain amount of people to be throwing water out to keep the boat afloat. Anti-vaxxers are the people that put the bucket down and say "I don't want to do this anymore" and quit and watch while you work. Enough people do that and no matter how hard you work the boat will sink.
^this. Plus, herd immunity doesn't just protect those that can't be vaccinated. It protects all of us, with this caveat:
We are protected to a reasonable degree only as long as most other people are too.
Basically, the continued effectiveness of vaccines is dependent upon a certain percentage of the population receiving them. If the percentage of the population that's unvaccinated is high enough, the disease can more readily find new hosts and continue replicating itself, and the more it replicates the higher the chances it'll mutate into an new strain, and then it can start spreading freely among the vaccinated population, and then nobody's safe anymore.
If only a small percentage of the population is unvaccinated, chances are low those people will come into much contact with each other, and diseases will have no opportunity to spread. Despite what the Libertarians might say, we really are all in this together, and there is a pretty significant downside for us if we don't work together on it. Vaccinations are only truly effective if most people get them. So it's good to get up in arms about folks who want to not get them for no good reason. Because if enough people do that, it could be bad for everybody.
I've heard that anti-vaccination is becoming a Republican thing too now?! But the liberal anti-vaxxers are like "it's not natural and organic" whereas the Republicans are like "MAH FREEDOM". Is this going to be the next way that Republicans pander to people across the aisle, since pandering to homophobes is on its way out?
I've heard that anti-vaccination is becoming a Republican thing too now?! But the liberal anti-vaxxers are like "it's not natural and organic" whereas the Republicans are like "MAH FREEDOM". Is this going to be the next way that Republicans pander to people across the aisle, since pandering to homophobes is on its way out?
Looks like the Republicans are trying to stop that from happening. Chris Christie and Rand Paul have certainly made some harmful statements regarding vaccines, but a bunch of others are trying to make sure that sentiment doesn't catch on within the party.
