jenny mccarthy wants your kid to get measles: autism, vaccines, and stupid idiots

xp I'm inclined to agree, except that being hostile just guarantees that you'll be ignored.

people believe all kinds of things for powerful-but-wrong reasons. they rarely change their minds.

the one person i know who is into "energies" and homeopathy and other garbage like that also has a bunch of chronic health problems with no real remedy and no health insurance. i don't know if this individual is specifically a vaccine denialist but it wouldn't surprise me.

by "rudeness" i guess it could just be beginning with the conclusion, ie "get your kids immunized, otherwise you're endangering them and the rest of us." if you want to rail about fear and ignorance, well...

I found out last week my mom and/or dad never took me in for all my follow-up shots. So I'm in this fucked up non-immunity crowd for now, too. The irony of it is just painful.

whoa damn! there has to be a fix for that now, rite??

yeah I'm getting shots now, at age 26.

never too late for a good old vaccine.

sorry abbs but LOL

most, though not all, of the denialists in the above case were american, which made me wonder whether this prevalent mistrust is a consequence of the more direct and visible relationship (at least from the patient's perspective) between medicine and commerce in the states.

to use a clunky analogy, I know I find it hard to trust a mechanic when he tells me I need to give him several hundred quid to make my car's invisible and/or future problem go away... but even so I don't rely on infinite dilutions to fix my brakes.

Yeah I went in to get my blood checked (have to have MMR shots or proof of immunity to get into my grad school) and I had this 20 minute conversation about how much crazy non-vaccinating parents drove me nuts. "My parents had their downfalls, but at least they weren't crazy!" And then I saw the same doc two days later, she told me 'you have like no immunity at all' and wished I'd have known how to stfu. Moral: never brag about your parents.

ask the doc to jab it in extra hard, to make up

Yeah, I am well connected in the homeopathy/energy healing/vaccines are bad crowd due to my shameful hippie past and it takes a lot for me not to just burn down those friendships like fire when the anti-vax talk gets going. Actually, also when the "homeopathy fixes everything" talk gets going, too.

I like that all of the ILX health professions students appear to be working through this issue at present. (Pediatric/Geriatric exam tomorrow hooraaaaay).

Anyway this was in the ppt of a lecture I was working through earlier today, if you ever want numbers to cite (albeit 12 year old numbers):
http://i41.tinypic.com/11hqoe8.png

I mentioned briefly online that one of the reasons I don't support the Green party is their pro-alt.med stance, particularly wrt homeopathy (alt med is a bad umbrella term, as I would treat stuff with actual ingredients differently from how I treat magic water) and a friend of a friend replied "well I've had cancer and am pro-alt med" it's like argh I can't actually argue with that and still seem like a decent human being.

Did this friend-of-a-friend cure their cancer with "alternative medicine?"

a couple of people (including myself) felt that administering placebos was not a particularly effective way of protecting an infant against measles

this is just

i would argue it unjust

family friend of mine was Dx'd with ovarian cancer, decided to use crystals (for real), and it nearly killed her.

i am totally fine with ppl using homeopathy/naturopathy in add'n to allopathic medicine---there are many things we don't understand, and if what you're doing isn't harmful, then give it a shot. but i have seen ppl come to the brink because they were irrationally distrustful of the "medical apparatus" and that experience has dampened my enthusiasm for "alternative medicine." it, like Western medicine, serves its purpose, but to blindly privilege one over the other because of a gut instinct is pretty fukkin dumb imo

I guess it makes sense if you realize the one feeling the placebo effect is actually the parent, not the baby

"I dipped my child into the river Styx, he is now INVINCIBLE"

I'm in favor of any treatment however wacky people wanna use on themselves, sometimes you need a magic feather & I think it's wrong to take an Amazing Randi type approach to people who've got terminal diseases - I got no hate for the alt.meds until they come with some "this is the real truth, and 'western medicine' is poison big pharma" etc - & while there is no doubt big pharma's got a lotta bad actors pushing some bullshit meds a lot of the time, that does mean for example that you should eat goji berries instead of getting chemo

does not mean, gah

amazing randy???

i overheard some hippies enthusiastically discussing homeopathic cancer treatments in whole foods the other day, i almost pelted them with groceries

Amazing Randi is a magician & a famous hardline skeptic, mentor to Penn & Teller in many ways.

oh i thought it was like HI DERE WAHT IS IT MADE

btw did anyone see "Penn & Teller Get Killed"? I am against "psychic surgery" as much as anyone, but there is a really embarrassing scene wherein Penn shows one why he is full of shit in front of a big crowd. It had nothing to do with whatever little story there was in the movie. He also bones a chick, who is seduced by his ability to recite Velvet Underground trivia. Penn Jillette's head is a ridic place to see.

James Randi is most famous for this: http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html

ok i am dumb, i thought he was really calling himself the amazing randi

oh, HE IS

I was too young to remember this but my parents told me stories of when my grandmother was dying of cancer in china, they would buy pills from people in the street who claimed they had some magical chinese herbal cure for cancer. people who take advantage of families in that situation go straight to the ninth circle imo

real talk

there is no doubt big pharma's got a lotta bad actors pushing some bullshit meds a lot of the time, that does (not) mean for example that you should eat goji berries instead of getting chemo

otm

James Randi is a professional magician, that's his stage name.

a little drunk atm & im not that great @ talking about this stuff in a clear & considered way but: i have a lot of sympathy for people that are skeptical about the "medical establishment" & are interested in finding non-invasive non-traditional methods for treating disease. there are certainly multiple instances where the medical establishment has failed its duties & i think (in general) the current structure for health care delivery is deeply, deeply flawed.

@ the same time its incredibly frustrating - especially as sum1 who's entire future is tied up with health care research - that thoughtful, engaged ppl are ready to dismiss any and all medical advances and treatments as "the same". as poorly structured/incentivized/administrated as the current model is there is no excuse for administering placebos in place of real vaccines (i mean wtf) or ignoring proven, thoroughly researched treatments.

anyway if ppl are still interested in reading abt some of the challenges of finding & modeling group immunity thresholds this article is a little jargon-y but good imo.

This ILX health professions student has personally watched a patient nearly die from a massive caffeine overdose caused by twice-an-hour coffee enemas. I detest alt.medicine with a passion.

I'm embarrassed that a PhD in English literature is used to indicate "educated." Together they foretell a troubling future.

But I'm hesitant to disparage her or her supporters because the antecedent to this opinion is widespread. Scientific education in the United States is dismal therefore no one should act surprised when this ludicrous argument is motivated. Furthermore, the illiteracy on this thread should also be noted and checked.

If I were the so-called benevolent dictator I'd establish strong disincentives for my people to pursue the humanities in favor of strong incentives to purse math and science. In the last decade, the humanities have exploded; the ICES reported there’s been a 25% increase in degrees awarded in both the humanities and social sciences. In this same time period, both engineering and physical science (with the exception of a small increase in biology) were stagnant and formal science declined.

― 3WNUet52, Thursday, 29 April 2010 17:51 Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This is some bs - argue about the science of vaccinations by all means but citing poor literacy and claiming an education in English literature is not an education is plain wrong. Many pro-vaccine people can't spell. Many people with PhDs in Literature have solid basic scientific knowledge and agree with vaccination.

"strong incentives to purse math and science" = you fail at science, by your own standards.

There's an argument to be made about the imbalance of science vs arts/humanities education but I don't think the anti-vac hysteria is necessarily a symptom of that.

On a wider issue I do think the scientific community has a huge problem getting people to place evidential peer-reviewed scientific research above anecdotal evidence and hysteria, whether it be about vaccines or climate change or alternative medicines or whatever.

On a wider issue I do think the scientific community has a huge problem getting people to place evidential peer-reviewed scientific research above anecdotal evidence and hysteria, whether it be about vaccines or climate change or alternative medicines or whatever.

yeah, and from what I've seen just because something has been peer-reviewed is no guarantee of its scientific...validity either. seems that there's a ton of bogus journals and fly by night operations out there that exist to validate quacks.

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2010/02/whooping-cough-evolves-to-esca.html

^This will make it difficult to determine how much of the rise in pertussis is down to these strains evading the vaccine and how much is down to a drop in vaccinations.

I can't see anyone pushing to bring the whole cell vaccination back after the scare stories and litigation of the 70s and 80s.

allopathic medicine

(maby xposts) u shouldn't really use this term, it's a bogus coinage only used by alt-med crazies.

uhhhh

in the states it's sometimes used to distinguish between the two medical degrees you can get, MD (allopathic) and DO (osteopathic)

seems like even that is a controversial usage mostly practised by the alt-med camp (full disclosure i only just read that on wikipedia so what do i know)

yeah i guess it is? weird, cuz when i was applying for med school, the All Med Schools in US OMNIBUS or w/e I had was explicitly divided into Allopathic and Osteopathic schools

i watched that episode of frontline just now. that phd lady is a total moron! 'no one gets polio anymore,' 'why do i have to vaccinate an infant against a sexually transmitted disease' (hepatitis B is not *just* an std!!!) etc etc

like how does she feel ok holding herself out as an expert on this topic without bothering to learn about simple mathematical models of how diseases spread/don't spread in populations?? bleh

Oh FFS
If autism does not affect your family now, it will. If something does not change—and change soon—this is almost a mathematical certainty.

cracking up at the Amazing Randi tbh

This book provides a terrifying insight into what has been happening behind the scenes as efforts redouble to silence Dr. Wakefield . . . It is a wake-up call to those who think (he) is anything other than a modern day hero fighting for all of our children." ----Robert Rodriguez and Elizabeth Avellain, Troublemaker Studios, Austin, Texas

i guess machete is gonna chop up some guy working for the cdc or something, huh

The defense of Wakefield as some kind of savior of the children is particularly obnoxious given that he was sanctioned for, among other things, performing unnecessary colonoscopies on children without consent, causing serious injury to at least one kid - http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/12/an_autistic_child_pays_the_price_of_andr.php.

my friend and i often marvel over how jenny mccarthy's kid could have made it to kindergarten before anyone noticed he was autistic but the other day it hit us she lived with jim carrey so how the hell would you know the diff