Vaccines and autism

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This seemed to be derailing the post a picture thread so I thought maybe it deserved its own thread.

In that thread oddity posted a link to an article about rates of autism in places that don't vacinate and it got me thinking - we have a whole world to look at what does that show.

A big of googleing found one article I was really interested in It looked at autism rates in Denmark (where they have far fewer vaccinations)

I found it really interesting that it found

Fewer vaccines overall than in the U.S.. And the same autism prevalence of about 1%.

Also on the subject of Mercury

The thimerosal exposure was higher prior to 1992 than after. But the prevalence of both childhood autism and ASD is higher after the removal of thimerosal. This is the same result as shown in the 2003 study. The number of vaccines seems to be constant over this time period, so number of vaccines/aluminum/too-many-too-soon or other arguments don’t work either.

And another interesting note

How about taking just a single year. The prevalence for ASD in 1996-97 was 1.4%. What is the autism prevalence in the U.S. for that year? To answer accurately, I’d contend we need a count today, not an old one. But people promoting the idea that vaccines cause autism take the CDC reports as absolute measures of autism, comparing each report and telling us all about the epidemic. So, let’s take the CDC number for kids born in 1994: 0.8%. That study was reported in 2009.

So, we have 1.4% in Denmark and 0.8%, nearly half the Danish prevalence, in the U.S.. Denmark had no thimerosal, no Hepatitis B shot (birth or otherwise), fewer vaccines and less aluminum exposure. And much higher reported autism prevalence.

Obviously this article is biased against the anti-vaxx movement but it is what I would respond to anti-vaxxers so I thought I would start the thread with it.

I figured the medical quackery thread could handle this. Anti vaxxers have less evidence on their side than chem trail conspiracy theorists or Flat Earth proponents, and their socially dangerous choices should be illegal on a federal level.

I know I'm treading on sacred free-speech land here but perhaps we, as a society, need to start holding celebrities accountable for some of the crap they say and endorse.

Without the famous people endorsing this crap I doubt it'd have gained anywhere near the following it has after the fall of Wakefield.

krev82 wrote:

I know I'm treading on sacred free-speech land here but perhaps we, as a society, need to start holding celebrities accountable for some of the crap they say and endorse.

Without the famous people endorsing this crap I doubt it'd have gained anywhere near the following it has after the fall of Wakefield.

If a celebrity started espousing the safe and effective nature of drinking Drano, would it be infringing on his/her free speech to tell him/her to stfu?

Paleocon wrote:
krev82 wrote:

I know I'm treading on sacred free-speech land here but perhaps we, as a society, need to start holding celebrities accountable for some of the crap they say and endorse.

Without the famous people endorsing this crap I doubt it'd have gained anywhere near the following it has after the fall of Wakefield.

If a celebrity started espousing the safe and effective nature of drinking Drano, would it be infringing on his/her free speech to tell him/her to stfu?

No, but I don't think krev82 is suggesting that people tell them to STFU. There's some sort of enforcement implied.

I don't see it as stepping on their freedom of speech at all, sh*t you say has consequences.

As is we don't even hold the ones putting "doctor" in front of their tv name accountable much less the random other celebrities expressing their beliefs as if they were informed fact.

My view is that with fame and the knowledge that people are listening to you one takes on more responsibility to be mindful of their speech, the consequences are greater. I'm not sure what further penalty we can impose on those who misuse or abuse that responsibility but I think we can do something more.

If a celebrity started espousing the safe and effective nature of drinking Drano, would it be infringing on his/her free speech to tell him/her to stfu?

No, but it certainly would be if the police showed up to haul them off to jail, or otherwise inflicted consequences for saying something the government didn't like.

Look at Turkey for a great example: you can very easily end up in prison for 'insulting Turkishness'. And it's much worse in Iran and Saudi Arabia.

@farley3k
"I dont' mean this rudely but when you say "yada yada" as a way of basically dismissing science it makes me feel that there isn't really a point to discussing this with you."

I wasn't saying that I'm anti-vax or that I was unwilling to discuss anything. I was just saying we've all heard that C vs C ad nauseum. The person I was talking to is also not anti-vax, but believes that administering them in a delayed fashion makes more sense to her and her family and really, if she can limit their exposure, why not delay til age2 or 3 and in the case of hepB why not 10 or so?

We're constantly being bombarded with "facts" and/or "figures" supposedly spelling out the pros and cons of various courses of action. We also have numerous reasons to doubt any and all of our sources for various reasons, since there's a lot of money tied up in that whole system and a lot of people enjoy tertiary benefits when it comes to certain things being stamped as "because the law says so".

What I actually liked about the article, is that it didn't say what its actual opinion was. It just said, "this was the experience in our practice. Take it or leave it. We can't say what's going on, but based on our experience, this is what we saw.". It didn't try to claim, that one side was right or wrong, but "we didn't see any of x and very little of y, among those who did not do these things". All it did, was say hey, maybe you should just think about it. The way things were laid out, it seemed more than anything to be saying, this might be an interesting phenomena to do a study on.

If I had it to do over, would I delay vaccinations on my kids a bit. by like a year or so, to allow their immune systems time to be fully active? Maybe. Because I still believe that vaccinations are necessary. But, maybe I want to spread it out a little bit. Why not, if I can limit exposure?

So my "yada yada" was really... I didn't really feel like I wanted to get involved in all that, since neither myself nor that other person are anti-vax. She still believes in the efficacy of the treatment, just not the schedule. She's just taking steps, because she's seen some stuff that say to her, that says maybe frontloading this stuff before year one isn't the best possible way to do things. She's trying to minimize risks as she sees them.

Should be covered by the linked article, but it wasn't a study. It was one mid-sized(or large?) practice and what their experience was. It seems like a thing that would be fairly legit, since studies are paid for by someone and generally they are trying to find a certain thing. If they don't find it, they sometimes test again til they do. A practices experience would be very black and white and would be difficult to monetize. They could always lie. But so can anyone else.

Good fact-finding tho f3k. Some interesting stuff there.

oddity wrote:

I wasn't saying that I'm anti-vax or that I was unwilling to discuss anything. I was just saying we've all heard that C vs C ad nauseum. The person I was talking to is also not anti-vax, but believes that administering them in a delayed fashion makes more sense to her and her family and really, if she can limit their exposure, why not delay til age2 or 3 and in the case of hepB why not 10 or so?

Thank you very much for clearing up what you meant. Internet forums are not a great medium for nuance and often intend it missing.

Np man. Have a great day.

Hopefully both of our fully vaccinated children will share a hi-5 in the future.

Malor wrote:
If a celebrity started espousing the safe and effective nature of drinking Drano, would it be infringing on his/her free speech to tell him/her to stfu?

No, but it certainly would be if the police showed up to haul them off to jail, or otherwise inflicted consequences for saying something the government didn't like.

Look at Turkey for a great example: you can very easily end up in prison for 'insulting Turkishness'. And it's much worse in Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Damn. If only there were some middle ground...

http://www.jennymccarthybodycount.co...

Someone is already keeping Jenny McCarthy accountable.

Tots stolen from coldstream's post:
I’m Autistic, And Believe Me, It’s A Lot Better Than Measles

Very well written, I hope we see more thoughts on this issue from those on the spectrum.

As a parent with a young kid I don't see this as a freedom of speech issue. It's a basic health and public order issue. Maybe there's a compromise by allowing anti vaxxers to homeschool their children, but I'd support federal and state laws that demand all daycares and schools (private included) bar non-vaccinated kids from attending. Also, I'd change civil law so that if your kid gave another kid Measles, you're fiscally responsible.

Playing devil's advocate here...

I actually think my son may be more likely to die prematurely as a result of his autism than he would as a result of catching measles. Elopement, fall injury, being unable to communicate serious medical issues, seizures, not cooperating with treatment for potentially life threatening breathing problems. Those are all very real concerns for me. I have a coworker whose son (also with severe autism, but probably higher functioning than my son) had his first seizure a couple of weeks ago. He's now immobilized for a month with a broken hip as a result. I can't fathom what that must be like for someone who can't communicate and very likely has no idea why he's in pain and not being allowed to move.

My son can't speak for himself, but I'm pretty sure he does suffer as a result of his autism... Maybe not much so far in his short life, but it will add up. Quite likely much more suffering than he would have from a case of the measles. Granted, his autism is pretty severe so far; I don't foresee him writing blog posts. But my fear of autism and my son's future has nothing to do with my feelings of his value as a person. It has to do with my fear that he will suffer in some way.

---

Of course this is totally irrelevant since the vaccine has nothing to do with autism risk and nothing pisses me off more than anti-vax people. Well, maybe anti-psychiatry scientologist types.

Reposting from the other thread:

I'm just quoting this so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle. The entire argument Oddity presented is 100% false. It's "a pretty big secret" because it's a lie.

Edit: Also babies get and die from diseases preventable by vaccines. Delayed vaccination is barely better, if at all. There is no "well both sides are extreme, the best option is probably in the middle" argument here.

jdzappa wrote:

As a parent with a young kid I don't see this as a freedom of speech issue. It's a basic health and public order issue. Maybe there's a compromise by allowing anti vaxxers to homeschool their children, but I'd support federal and state laws that demand all daycares and schools (private included) bar non-vaccinated kids from attending. Also, I'd change civil law so that if your kid gave another kid Measles, you're fiscally responsible.

Only if we can also ban them from parks, grocery stores, malls, and any other public place ever. So no, there is no compromise here.

SixteenBlue wrote:
jdzappa wrote:

As a parent with a young kid I don't see this as a freedom of speech issue. It's a basic health and public order issue. Maybe there's a compromise by allowing anti vaxxers to homeschool their children, but I'd support federal and state laws that demand all daycares and schools (private included) bar non-vaccinated kids from attending. Also, I'd change civil law so that if your kid gave another kid Measles, you're fiscally responsible.

Only if we can also ban them from parks, grocery stores, malls, and any other public place ever. So no, there is no compromise here.

That is not necessary. As I pointed out, vaccines work outstandingly well individually. The risk from getting a lethal or any sort of disease from an unvaccinated person by a vaccinated person is minimal. The real risk is for kids who cannot be vaccinated for various reasons - and those kids should probably not visit all those public places anyway, because they're generally immunocompromised.

For that matter, kids who are unvaccinated should probably avoid those public places as well, precisely because they're the ones most at risk.

I do get a bit tired of the "more kids are getting autism!" argument. Hasn't the argument been made over and over again that we're simply better at diagnosing it now? Kind of like the explosion in ADHD diagnoses. When astronomers were discovering new planets in our solar system I don't think a bunch of people thought "Holy cow! What's making all these new planets!?" they realized we were just able to finally see the planets because our technology and understanding had increased. Why can't we have the same view of medical classifications? Now if people were sprouting a third arm, yeah, you've got an argument because that's something we could easily track. Autism, though? It's always been around, people just didn't call it autism.

Well, even if you do grant that there's more autism, not just improved diagnoses of same, if anything, that would appear to be a COUNTER argument about the vaccines. As far as I know, they haven't particularly changed in the last twenty years.

If they give you autism now, they should have given you autism in the 1970s and 1990s, so if they're somehow related, the rates shouldn't be changing, no?

It's not that we are getting better at diagnosing it. I believe that the definition of what is considered autism has expanded over the past several iterations of the DSM. (I thin that is the name of the book in question)

I'm still blaming organic bananas.

Paleocon wrote:

I'm still blaming organic bananas.

IT WAS THE ORANGES!!!

Don't just come into this thread and drop that discriminatory remark and then just think you can walk away. Bananas aren't the problem here, it is short sighted thinking like yours that ignores the real problems while simultaneously constructing a false target for the masses to consume.

Paleocon wrote:

I'm still blaming organic bananas.

Hold on, I had something for this....Jenny Mckumquat?

No, wait, Cherry Mccarthy!

Do we have any good data on the current misdiagnosis rates for childhood mental disorders? I'm not really sure how we could even measure that objectively.

krev82 wrote:

Do we have any good data on the current misdiagnosis rates for childhood mental disorders? I'm not really sure how we could even measure that objectively.

That's a good point. Jenny McCarthy 'cured' her son's autism with colloidal therapy, which means he was never autistic.

krev82 wrote:

Do we have any good data on the current misdiagnosis rates for childhood mental disorders? I'm not really sure how we could even measure that objectively.

One study from 2007 found that 32% of children who were diagnosed as being autistic when they were under two year-olds-old were diagnosed as not being autistic at the age of four.

IMAGE(https://40.media.tumblr.com/d15746933d0b37839cea7b48b663eb51/tumblr_njivufqhue1qa4szeo1_1280.png)
IMAGE(https://31.media.tumblr.com/19c2ede4060e3f3b77022160588e8faf/tumblr_inline_njjlxcjtHA1r0slpa.png)

Re: "measles parties"

Those parents should be charged with child endangerment and their children removed from the home for their own protection.

Yes, I am sincere in that statement.

I know that people do this with chickenpox. While that's horrible in my opinion, it's not on the same level as intentional exposure to the motherf*cking measles.

Farscry wrote:

Re: "measles parties"

Those parents should be charged with child endangerment and their children removed from the home for their own protection.

Yes, I am sincere in that statement.

I know that people do this with chickenpox. While that's horrible in my opinion, it's not on the same level as intentional exposure to the motherf*cking measles.

Failing to vaccinate your child is the height of irresponsibility and is, in mind, clearly and patently as much an act of criminal negligence as can be committed. If you are not vaccinating your children, you are a bioterrorist who is willingly placing your child in danger. These people are worse than people who beat their kids with sticks or drive them around drunk. Put their negligent butts in jail and call CPS.

Vaccination is the singly most significant scientific advance in the history of the human race. No exaggeration. Hell, we're less than a hundred years removed from an influenza pandemic that killed maybe a HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE. And these morons want to just skip preventing a series of entirely avoidable diseases so they can feel special.

Bioterrorists. Screw these people.

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