Study showing vaccines cause autism is 'elaborate fraud'.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:
farley3k wrote:

I believe that she has a son with autism and felt he was cured by diet change etc. and I believe she feels it was brought on when he got a vaccine. Like 99% of people personal experience trumps science all the time.

That is what she's said. Unfortunately autism is one of the more over-diagnosed disorders out there, and there it's not something that's "cured". If her son was "cured", he never was autistic.

To you, to her he was. I appreciate your reliance on facts and science but that isn't how people really live most of the time.

farley3k wrote:
SpacePPoliceman wrote:
farley3k wrote:

I believe that she has a son with autism and felt he was cured by diet change etc. and I believe she feels it was brought on when he got a vaccine. Like 99% of people personal experience trumps science all the time.

That is what she's said. Unfortunately autism is one of the more over-diagnosed disorders out there, and there it's not something that's "cured". If her son was "cured", he never was autistic.

To you, to her he was. I appreciate your reliance on facts and science but that isn't how people really live most of the time.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. People don't rely on facts and science? Next thing you'll tell me is that these people congregate in large groups all around the world.

The actually congregate in legislative buildings.

That is not true at all Lobster, NE Journal of medicine released a story about that mouse acupuncture study, there is an ESP study set to hit shelves. And as I said, the AMA, arguably the tip medical authority in the US has this entire wing about "alternative" treatment. I wish it was something confined to Huff Po and the Xian Science Monitor.

Amoebic wrote:

You're still helping build herd-immunity. You never know which surfaces you touched may next come into contact with someone who is immuno-compromised. If it's something everyone needs to get, might as well get it and not be part of the problem. When there is a shortage,

This is an excellent angle I hadn't really considered. I usually view it as an unnecessary immunization, for me that is, but will have to consider it in this light.

Ballotechnic wrote:
Amoebic wrote:

You're still helping build herd-immunity. You never know which surfaces you touched may next come into contact with someone who is immuno-compromised. If it's something everyone needs to get, might as well get it and not be part of the problem. When there is a shortage,

This is an excellent angle I hadn't really considered. I usually view it as an unnecessary immunization, for me that is, but will have to consider it in this light.

Serious question, though: if the flu vaccine doesn't prevent you from getting the flu, how does it help? You can carry a bacterial infection a la Typhoid Mary without getting sick yourself, but you can't do the same with a viral infection; you can't transmit the flu without actually having it. And if you do have it, I really really hope that you're washing your hands a ton and hopefully not going out in public.

Minarchist wrote:
Ballotechnic wrote:
Amoebic wrote:

You're still helping build herd-immunity. You never know which surfaces you touched may next come into contact with someone who is immuno-compromised. If it's something everyone needs to get, might as well get it and not be part of the problem. When there is a shortage,

This is an excellent angle I hadn't really considered. I usually view it as an unnecessary immunization, for me that is, but will have to consider it in this light.

Serious question, though: if the flu vaccine doesn't prevent you from getting the flu, how does it help? You can carry a bacterial infection a la Typhoid Mary without getting sick yourself, but you can't do the same with a viral infection; you can't transmit the flu without actually having it. And if you do have it, I really really hope that you're washing your hands a ton and hopefully not going out in public.

It doesn't guarantee that you won't get the flu, but it greatly reduces your risk, which also reduces the risk of infecting the next guy, and so on and so forth..

I dunno, there are far too many flu viruses to be able to inoculate against them. There have even been years when the CDC itself said "we thought the wrong strains were going to be active this year, the flu vaccine is mostly worthless (like in '03/'04). I think it's a good idea for at-risks and elderly, but I don't really see it helping the general population much.

Minarchist wrote:

I think it's a good idea for at-risks and elderly, but I don't really see it helping the general population much.

See Amoebic's point about herd immunity above. My work provides the flu vaccine for free, taking up all of ten minutes of my year. There's no rational reason not to get it.

Problematic is the fortunate psychology we have. For the most part it is rare that we know someone who is killed by these diseases, as opposed to 70 or 80 years ago. The flu epidemic of the teens is a note in history. It was our grabdparents who were confronted with losing siblings and friends to Hooping Cough, Pneumonia from the flu.

Let me say from personal experience, Pneumonic Flu will kick your ass for a year. It is a pretty long recovery period if you neglect a flu to that point. My mother had it when I was a kid. She was an otherwise healthy woman in her young 30's, and it took her almost 2 years to fully recover.

But MMR, HPV, Hepatitis, Menengitis is so much worse. If you do not get your kid immunized, you are also putting your grand kids at serious risk. A nursing kid gets its anti-bodies from the mother in the womb and from milk. No shot, no anti-bodies. And in the short term, you are putting peers who may be allergic at risk with the loss of herd immunity. Because god knows parents don't keep their sick kid at home where they belong.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:
farley3k wrote:

To you, to her he was.

So?

I don't really give a sh*t about her subjective experience of being misinformed, because it doesn't change that she is misinformed, and sadly her being misinformed has put many, many children with legitimate immuno-deficiencies and accordingly cannot be vaccinated at serious risk.

And, of course, there's some irony that she's so skeptical of doctors and scientists, yet apparently never questioned the autism diagnosis.

It is great that you don't care, but I will wager that far more people care about her opinion than yours. So just calling her names, insulting her or acting like she is stupid won't help anyone.

farley3k wrote:

To you, to her he was.

So?

I don't really give a sh*t about her subjective experience of being misinformed, because it doesn't change that she is misinformed, and sadly her being misinformed has put many, many children with legitimate immuno-deficiencies and accordingly cannot be vaccinated at serious risk. Knowing why she's ignorant doesn't make her any less ignorant or dangerous.

And, of course, there's some irony that she's so skeptical of doctors and scientists, yet apparently never questioned the autism diagnosis.

farley3k wrote:

It is great that you don't care, but I will wager that far more people care about her opinion than yours. So just calling her names, insulting her or acting like she is stupid won't help anyone.

If no one cares, am I not free to do as I please?

I can, of course, just as easily turn the tables and say that if they don't care about my name calling, they care about your defense of the pretty lady even less, but do we really want to go down that rabbit hole? It's very childish, and it doesn't change the fact that she's basing an incorrect opinion on a fake study, and using it to cause real damage.

EDIT: For reference, the spread of her ignorance is causing situations like this:
http://www.slate.com/id/2232977/

Regarding the uselessness/usefulness of flu shots: You're not always going to be aware of the bullet you dodged, just the ones that hit. You may come down with the cliff notes version of the latest go-round and feel that the shot you got was pretty worthless, but that may have been a particularly nasty form of nastiness that got through because it's the newest mutation, or you compromised your own immunity by drinking too much the night before/being stressed/didn't sleep enough/whatever. You may not notice the older or more predictable strains floating around that it could've helped you avoid.

Things like Flu vaccination don't really help herd immunity very much IMO. Why? Because the strains evolve/swap parts etc. very quickly in comparison with other diseases that are vaccinated against meaning that the vaccination actually helps bring about new forms of that particular strain because we do not vaccinate everyone - it's like the whole bacteria war thing in hospitals and stuff: we didn't kill 100% of the strains and so now we have "super" bugs that need new measures to take down and which are far more harmful than the original bacteria were. Compare this to the evolution of things like Smallpox, Measles and Mumps and there's a big difference.

Then there's also some evidence (perhaps beginning to mount) that vaccination against one form of flu actually decreases your general resistance to all other forms of flu.... which could also be a bad thing.

Duoae wrote:

Things like Flu vaccination don't really help herd immunity very much IMO. Why? Because the strains evolve/swap parts etc. very quickly in comparison with other diseases that are vaccinated against meaning that the vaccination actually helps bring about new forms of that particular strain because we do not vaccinate everyone - it's like the whole bacteria war thing in hospitals and stuff: we didn't kill 100% of the strains and so now we have "super" bugs that need new measures to take down and which are far more harmful than the original bacteria were. Compare this to the evolution of things like Smallpox, Measles and Mumps and there's a big difference.

Then there's also some evidence (perhaps beginning to mount) that vaccination against one form of flu actually decreases your general resistance to all other forms of flu.... which could also be a bad thing.

I'd love to see verifiable evidence if you can provide it. Maybe give me the search terms you used to find it, as the ones I'm using are making my (regular google) google-fu lacking, I only seem to come up with sites spouting quackery like homeopathy websites or bewellbuzz (which parades the ZOMGmercury issue about flushots and links to anti-vaxx propaganda sites). I keep coming up with anti-big-pharma scaremongering, and it's becoming a bit tiresome.

Via Google scholar, I'm only coming up with info contrary to what you've mentioned.

For the luls:
IMAGE(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v243/Liolai/flu.jpg)

I lol'ed.

There is this very lengthy article in the Atlantic. There are other somewhat older studies, but I'm having a hard time pulling them at the moment. Aetius may be able to find more, if he's around; I seem to remember him having quite a lot to say on the subject of flu vaccines.

Good question Amoebic - i thought i saw it on Ars and promptly went there but it wasn't. I only visit the BBC, Ars and a couple of local news sites though so i'll keep looking.

[edit]
I've found this story which wasn't the one i remember reading but this might be part of the picture:

One of the most disturbing aspects of the S-OIV/swine flu/H1N1 pandemic of 2009 is how severely it affected healthy, middle-aged adults instead of the elderly and infirm. Recent work, reported in Nature Medicine, suggests that it is because this population has "an antibody repertoire shaped by seasonal infections," and that these antibodies can recognize, but not fight, the new strain. This preponderance of nonprotective antibodies, combined with respiratory infections, can lead to immune complex mediated disease.

Vaccinations/jabs would have a similar effect by introducing seasonal 'hobbled' strains. Obviously the Swine flu vaccinations were different to those though... Still looking for the actual article.

[edit 2]

I've had quite an extensive look - as you found, google is practically useless because of all the 'shouting' sites out there. I'll keep an eye out for it in the meantime.

Minarchist wrote:

I dunno, there are far too many flu viruses to be able to inoculate against them. There have even been years when the CDC itself said "we thought the wrong strains were going to be active this year, the flu vaccine is mostly worthless (like in '03/'04). I think it's a good idea for at-risks and elderly, but I don't really see it helping the general population much.

The WHO and CDC do a good job monitoring which strains are active and use that information to predict which ones will become troublesome in the winter. Since the 50s when they started doing this they've only picked the wrong strain to make a vaccine from twice which means they're batting .900+.

Immunizing the general population reduces the number of people that get sick and die, which is a good thing anyway you look at the numbers. More importantly, monitoring the strains that are active is essential to provide an early warning for the next truly lethal epidemic. As the 1917 pandemic, which killed about 100 million people around the world, showed the flu isn't anything to mess with. We dodged a bullet recently with H1N1, but it's only a matter of time before we have another lethal strain emerge. And with much higher population densities and modern air travel, the next epidemic will hit hard and fast.

Think of it like car insurance. You don't expect to get into an accident, but you buy insurance anyway--and you're very thankful for it when you need it.

...you didn't happen to read the article I posted, did you? They raise doubt about the efficacy of the vaccine to actually prevent any deaths. Too much in the way of cohort studies, and total lack of placebos/double blinds. Interesting read, if you get a few minutes.

Minarchist wrote:

...you didn't happen to read the article I posted, did you? They raise doubt about the efficacy of the vaccine to actually prevent any deaths. Too much in the way of cohort studies, and total lack of placebos/double blinds. Interesting read, if you get a few minutes.

I read it. I also read several books about the 1917/18 flu pandemic. When a flu strain becomes lethal, it becomes particularly lethal. In the US the 1917/18 outbreak began at an Army training camp. It wasn't babies and old people who first got ill, it was young men in peak physical condition. And that strain of flu went on to have a mortality rate of between 10 and 20 percent.

Had the WHO and CDC existed back then, we could have had a vaccine for that flu strain and about 700,000 Americans (and tens of millions of other people) wouldn't have died.

I understand the scientific concerns the article raises, but I also understand the concerns of people who study pandemics. As the eradication of polio and small pox showed, vaccinations work. We can quibble over just how effective it is for the average year, but I'm not really concerned about the average year. I'm concerned about the next deadly outbreak. That we have to spend a billion or two a year to have an early warning system and vaccine production capacity in place is a small price to pay to possibly prevent half a billion or more deaths.

Heck, I'm all for doing things that the article recommends, like taking swabs of everyone who is sick to make sure it was the flu and confirm the strain as well as confirm that it was the cause of death. But as the people who study pandemics point out, our public health infrastructure is crap as compared to where it was in the 50s and 60s. No insurance company today is going to pay for those tests, just like they don't pay for autopsies, even though both of those things are exactly what public health experts say there should be more of to provide the real data needed to improve healthcare.

KingGorilla wrote:

I have a sliver of sympathy for Wakefield. His premise was simple-I need to make my more costly and new medicine look good and sell it. Then the sh*t storm spiraled out of control. And what has become lost is how some groups like anti science, anti-medicine will cling to anything. But it also shines a light on our terribly flawed pharmaceutical structure. I am still unclear where the line is that he crossed that homeopaths, or other alternative snake oils have not, or where Pfizer has not with their marketing. Was his sin trying to peddle it on a legitimate journal?

What group is the anti-science, anti-medicine group? By anti-science one would presume this was a religious thing, but I've found some of the biggest anti-medicine (especially anti-vaccine) groups of folks tend to be the more in the left leaning people (which tend not to necessarily be the anti-science groups in the religious sense). I'm just curious if I'm getting my groups confused.

This was a huge point of contention in the Lobster family when we had our daughter, now three years old. I'm glad that I was on the right side, and that the danger was nonsense as I'd expected (and read), but I'm not going to gloat about it. Things like this really go right down to the heart of parents wanting to do everything they can for their children, and it was a tough series of conversations/arguments.

If you are a parent and you do not vaccinate your children, your not only putting your children at risk for extremely deadly diseases, but you also put the rest of the community at risk as well. Vacinations are not 100% effective. Some people who get vaccinated are not protected. The reason that vaccinations work is that everybody uses them, which reduces the prevalence of disease to a point that very few people will rarely ever get it. The anti-vaccination movement has done more for these diseases than they have for the humans they are trying to protect. Some of these diseases are becoming more prevalent because less people get vaccinations these days.

I would be a nice experiment to put all the un-vacinated people into a single community and see how fast they change their mind about them. We protect these nutjobs by being responsible, reasonable, and vaccinated.

Hell, just take them to an ICU with an infant suffering from whooping cough. It's horrific and highly contagious.

This generation does not remember how horrific all these diseases were before we had vaccinations. Before them, childhood was a dangerous time in your life and quarantining yourself from society when there was an outbreak was the only way to protect yourself.

Vacinations are the single greatest medical advance this century, hands down.

lostlobster wrote:

...Things like this really go right down to the heart of parents wanting to do everything they can for their children, and it was a tough series of conversations/arguments...

I know that exact feeling. Parents, including myself, have tons of irrational fears. "Stranger danger" being another. Kids are far more at risk from their own families and friend than they are any stranger. Anyway, the problem here is that if enough people refuse to be vaccinated, they will lose their effectiveness and well-meaning parents with vaccinated children will see their children get sick and die...yes die.

If these diseases start cycling through our communities at higher rates, kids will die. THAT is why I get so f*ckin' pissed at these people. Their movement's success can be tracked by the number of deaths from diseases we thought we have been protected from for decades. And these deaths will likely be mostly infants.

That is how f*ckin' sick and delusional these people are. They are self-centered ignorant assholes who could give a two sh*ts about the consequences of their actions.

Even if it were true that vaccines have led to higher incidence of autism, whcih it isn't, I would take that trade off. The alternative would be devastating, especially in this day and age.

OG_slinger wrote:

stuff

I get where you're coming from, I'm just not sure the flu vaccine, in particular, is effective, because no one has ever actually studied it. As I said up-thread, I'm all for the vast majority of vaccinations, but the flu vaccine? There's just no solid, vetted evidence. It's important to find out if it really works or not, since the billions of dollars a year spent on it could conceivably go to other things that have a more proven track record of saving lives.

I noticed the article which SpacePoliceman posted earlier mentioned that the daycare didn't require the children to have immunizations, but isn't it still mandatory for public school attendance? Why would anyone run a daycare and not require the kids to be vaccinated? Hard to wrap my head around this thinking. I always thought this was a public health issue so there wasn't anything other than a temporary medical exemption. Huh...

Minarchist wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

stuff

I get where you're coming from, I'm just not sure the flu vaccine, in particular, is effective, because no one has ever actually studied it. As I said up-thread, I'm all for the vast majority of vaccinations, but the flu vaccine? There's just no solid, vetted evidence. It's important to find out if it really works or not, since the billions of dollars a year spent on it could conceivably go to other things that have a more proven track record of saving lives.

People *have* studied the efficacy of flu vaccines. It's just that Jefferson has a different interpretation of that data and has some criticisms on how the data was collected. If you really want to find the answer then we would need to pony up the cash to do a epidemiological study were everyone involved is swabbed and the strain typed and every person who died was autopsied to find the actual cause of death. And even that would be up for interpretation because the flu necessarily doesn't kill you outright, it just compromises your immune system to the point that you can die from something your body would normally fight off. Short of that, you'll still have two camps arguing over the data.

Personally I'm OK with assuming the effectiveness of flu vaccines. We know that vaccines of other diseases strengthens people's immune systems and protects them from falling ill when exposed. It would be a bit strange to say that vaccination works for all those different diseases, but mysteriously doesn't work for the flu. If that was the case, then we would constantly suffer from the flu as we could never develop resistance to all the different strains floating around.

OG_slinger wrote:

Personally I'm OK with assuming the effectiveness of flu vaccines. We know that vaccines of other diseases strengthens people's immune systems and protects them from falling ill when exposed. It would be a bit strange to say that vaccination works for all those different diseases, but mysteriously doesn't work for the flu. If that was the case, then we would constantly suffer from the flu as we could never develop resistance to all the different strains floating around.

There's only one strain specific to each vaccine.... There's so many types of Flu, we may as well be vaccinating against the human cold. Same can be said about resistance to cold virii. By your logic we would all be laid low by colds in order to have some immunity.... that's not and isn't how it works...

One other thing i think vaccines do is make people believe they are invincible and ignore the risks. Every time there's any kind of outbreak people have to be reminded to wash their hands etc...