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

what the hell is wrong with these people

Abbott to thread.

(she hates these morons)

what is this about?

oh no is abbott against vaccines???

xp WHEW

m@tt: jenny mccarthy has a kid w/autism (now cured???) and she, like many others, thinks that the autism was caused by vaccines he received as a baby. now there is a movement afoot to discredit vaccination so that more kids don't "catch" autism

it's one of these 'teach the controversy' bullshits where pretty much all pediatricians/ID specialists/immunologists agree that vaccines are a good idea and some fringe naysayers are naysayin

we can also use this thread to talk about other out-there medical movements/treatments but maybe there is another thread for that

I read an interview w/ Jenny McCarthy who claimed "you can't argue with anecdotal evidence."

yes you can!!

Robert Kennedy Jr. is also on the MMR vaccine causes autism bandwagon, I think.

Ugh, on xmas day my partner's aunt was saying how she'd bought McCarthy's book on this subject and how amazing it was that she cured her son's autism, and it was all I could do not to tear her head off with derisive laughter, I instead nodded politely cause I hardly knew the woman. She bought the book cause it was on Oprah.

&%^%#%$##

I assume the accepted actuality would be that her son didn't *have* autism to begin with, if he's all of a sudden "free of it"?

Robert Kennedy Jr. is also on the MMR vaccine causes autism bandwagon, I think.

― tokyo rosemary, Tuesday, January 13, 2009 8:30 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, he wrote an article for rolling stone a few years back (which i have not read)

my dad is a pediatrician and this shit makes him foam at the mouth

he should get that looked at

lol shut up

i have read kennedy's article and thought it was demogagogue-y if not outright demagoguery. like he was looking for an "issue" and found it.

she cured her son's autism,

good luck w/that!

The ILM "last.fm" thread would suggest McCarthy has a lot of work ahead of her.

hmmmm...this reminds me of back when spin magazine kept saying there was no connection between HIV and AIDS

i saw some shit on the today show about how they have "chicken pox" parties where ppl send their kids to some kid's house who has chicken pox to try and see if their kids can catch it or something...is that part of this whole anti-vaccine thing?

i thought that was a Simpsons episode

Jenny Mccarthy...wrote a book? And it was on Oprah?

What?

http://www.generationrescue.org/biomedical.html

i saw some shit on the today show about how they have "chicken pox" parties where ppl send their kids to some kid's house who has chicken pox to try and see if their kids can catch it or something...is that part of this whole anti-vaccine thing?

― ie: BANGING (M@tt He1ges0n), Tuesday, January 13, 2009 8:41 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

nah, that's basically just natural vaccination ie acquired immunity.

poor dude that wrote this book gets death threats

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/health/13auti.html?_r=1&ref=science&pagewanted=print

ha, that article is what prompted this thread, btw

that and i started immunology today

these antivaccine people remind me of those who thought letterboxing was blocking out parts of films they had seen in the theater

my mom brought us over to our cousin's house when i was five when they had chicken pox so we could maybe get it. . .LOL didn't work, i got it when i was in high school and it suuuuucked

who is worse: creationists or these anti vaccine people

i think the original study's based on like twenty kids or something? and the scientist opposed larger study samples because the range causes anomolous results. man.

xp i think it's just because chickenpox is a motherfucker when you're old

anti-vaccine people

x-post

18. Other ways to detoxify. Some doctors use and/or recommend other methods of detoxification including homeopathy, infrared sauna therapy, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, exercise, magnetic beds, herbal teas, and many more.

these people might be worse, insofar as not getting vaccines can be dangerous to public health and creationism is just dangerous to your ability to be not an idiot

xp i think it's just because chickenpox is a motherfucker when you're old

no shit, this is what i was saying. my mom was trying to have us get it when we were younger and it didn't work

anti- vaccine ppls. creationists have been around for a few thousand years.

it didn't work=obv. my cousins weren't contagious enough.

or maybe you're blaming them for your inability to get sick

you failure

maybe i should have eaten their pox scabs like Mom suggested

or maybe they weren't contagious anymore

these antivaccine people remind me of those who thought letterboxing was blocking out parts of films they had seen in the theater

― shook pwns (omar little), Wednesday, January 14, 2009 2:48 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hahaha otm

kennedy jr. seems like a good guy at first but the more you read about him the more you realize dude is kinda creepy

The ILM "last.fm" thread would suggest McCarthy has a lot of work ahead of her.

loud LOL

pretty sure these will also cure pretty much anything: http://www.quantumagewater.com/

maybe i should have eaten their pox scabs like Mom suggested

― Mr. Que, Tuesday, January 13, 2009 8:53 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

The concept of immunity may have existed long before [Thucydides], as suggested by the ancient Chinese custom of making children resistant to smallpox by having them inhale powders made from the skin lesions of patients recovering from the disease.

^^^^ from my textbook!

it's fun to make fun of britishers for having royalty and stuff but the fact that this doctor guy in the NYT article can't state his position without getting death threats is majorly fucked up

xpost: lolllllllllllllllllll

My school has let us help out at some big free public flu vaccination events. The first time I did it, it was offered free to kids and families, and adults had to pay like $25 or something. A woman asked us if she could get the vaccine for free if she came back with her grandson, except that the grandson wouldn't be getting a flu shot, just her. I wanted to yell very loudly "SERIOUSLY THEY TOOK THIMEROSAL OUT OF VACCINES IN BRITAIN AND AUTISM WENT UP!" But I did not.

She did not end up getting a vaccine, since she was unwilling to give us $25 or let her grandson get autism from our poisonous needles. I would have been more concerned about letting a first-year med student inject you using a technique learned roughly one hour beforehand, but that's just me.

hmmmm...this reminds me of back when spin magazine kept saying there was no connection between HIV and AIDS

Oh, that belief is still around and fueled largely by the work of Peter Duesberg at Berkley. Mbeki used Duesberg's work to advise his AIDS policies in SA.

http://www.duesberg.com/index.html

I just found out that another famous AIDS denialist (and Duesberg follower) Christine Maggiore died of pneumonia a couple of weeks ago. Her daughter whom she never had tested or treated for HIV, died at age 3.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Maggiore

i saw some shit on the today show about how they have "chicken pox" parties where ppl send their kids to some kid's house who has chicken pox to try and see if their kids can catch it or something...is that part of this whole anti-vaccine thing?

― ie: BANGING (M@tt He1ges0n), Tuesday, January 13, 2009 8:41 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

nah, that's basically just natural vaccination ie acquired immunity.

― i like to fart and i am crazy (gbx), Tuesday, January 13, 2009 8:45 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i remember parents doing this in the 70s and 80s. it was just a way to be sure your kid didnt get c.pox later when it would be much worse. so, yeah, what gbx said.

or maybe they weren't contagious anymore

maybe they weren't really contagious ;)

I was invited to some chicken pox parties when I was a kid but my mom held out in hopes a vaccine would come along so I wouldn't have to catch it at all...ended up getting it in 5th grade, i think the vaccine had been rolled out about the same time

I had it when I was four so badly that it was down my throat and under my eyelids. The kids in the hood should have come over my house, I probably could have infected the whole town.

I had chickenpox and the mumps as a kid, bleugh.

Interesting that you started this thread just today, gbx, as it looks like the British Journal of Psychology is coming out with an article tying autism to exposure to high levels of testosterone in the womb.

I went to a local chiropractor recently to get a massage and there was a whole anti-vaccination book in the lobby. It was impressively badly written, and included the point that vaccines may not even work, as there has "never been" a study comparing vaccinated to unvaccinated people's disease rates. I am not sure I can pay money to get a massage there again, because the massage was awesome, but I don't want to give money to stupid people.

my wife is a virologist and this shit makes her foam at the mouth

btw this was touched on a bit but not too much on this thread: wrongheaded pop medical movements/diagnoses

and this one

IT aspies

so sick of jenny mccarthy milking her kids autism for 15 more minutes of fame.

― sanskrit, Tuesday, April 15, 2008 3:14 PM (8 months ago)

she blames diets
she blames the vaccines
but she never seems to blame all the dicks she took in the 90s

― sanskrit, Tuesday, April 15, 2008 3:14 PM (8 months ago)

^^^^ REALEST OF TALK

I wonder if people get involved with this movement just because deep down they're terrified of needles.

I had a moral crisis over thanksgiving because my sister-in-law was like "can you copy a couple DVDs for me?" and I said "sure" thinking it was gonna be a copy of baby mama or something and she dropped off some crazyass anti-vaccine DVDs. to maintain family peace I held my tongue and kept telling myself that anybody with any sense isn't gonna be swayed by this bullshit.

a couple i'm very good friends w/ have a young daughter and are kind of buying this bullshit and i think skimping on her vaccines or intending to in the future, and it really takes all the willpower i have not to get into a shouting match with them about this because man you don't wanna tell people how to raise their kids, especially when you're not a parent yourself

I really try to be respectful when discussing this with people, but I do find it frustrating because unfortunately when enough people stop vaccinating, the risk for those diseases they have chosen to not vaccinate goes up even to people who have been vaccinated. (Not to mention the people who, for whatever reason, cannot receive those particular vaccines - i.e. allergy to eggs or immunosuppression, etc.)

BTW ZS: I might be wrong about the book! Maybe crazy aunt lady said she saw McCarthy *appear* on Oprah. I dunno. I'd had a few drinks.

I just found out that another famous AIDS denialist (and Duesberg follower) Christine Maggiore died of pneumonia a couple of weeks ago. Her daughter whom she never had tested or treated for HIV, died at age 3.

I started following Christine Maggiore about 10 years ago when I first went into HIV/AIDS primary care and thought, "she's gonna kill a lot of people" and damned if she didn't. When I heard that she had a 2nd kid, declined the AZT, and breastfed, I knew one of 'em would end up dead.

The LA Times did a great piece on her after LJ's death and Respectful Insolence has had a lot of posts on her and the AIDS denial movement since her death.

Kate - thanks for those links. I can't believe that I hadn't heard about her death until this evening. It'll def be interesting to read RI posts about the topic.

a - i have never had chicken pox, which i hope means that i got it as an infant and no one noticed, otherwise o_O
b - these antivaccine people are stunningly dumb fucks

As far as the antivaccine fuckwads go, they are usually the people who think they are oh-so-progressive by not vaccinating their kids. How progressive is it to allow the rest of your community to assume the low risk vaccines pose so you can benefit from herd immunity? Assholes.

As much as I don't want to see little children get sick and die for their parent's misguided convictions, I think it's gonna take a big, scary epidemic of a previously-bygone disease to kill a bunch of upper-middle class kids to get this quackery to die out. And the worst thing is that it's not a matter of 'if', it's a matter of 'when'.

xpost, no prob ENBB!
John Justen, get vaccinated tomorrow.

Let me also take this chance, as the ilxor public health nurse, to remind everyone to have their boosters. I diagnosed a whooping cough epidemic at my college radio station last year, so git those shots!

Wait, people are taking anecdotal evidence from a pornstar over the opinion of the majority of doctors?

I know it's pretty cliche but seriously wtf USA?

i think you are thinking of jenna jameson dude

To be fair, Jenny McCarthy is apparently Jim Carrey's girlfriend, which gives her a bit more fame than she'd otherwise have.

Also, yes, McCarthy has a book out about autism and "curing" her son; I caught her on Oprah one afternoon. She makes me cringe.

John, I can't believe you haven't gotten that vaccine yet, ffs.

Yeah isnt Jenny Mccarthy from 90210 or something?

jenny mccarthy will always & forever just be that girl on that dating show on mtv.

jenny mccarthy isn't the problem and has next to nothing to do with the problem
she sure is an easy target for rational skeptic smartaguy bloggerers though

Dude you cant cure autism.

i was actually completely unaware that there was a chicken pox vaccine, no lie.

^^^no, but she's annoying as hell, plus she spreads disinformation all over the place.

The problem is that people don't understand basic science or logical fallacies. Good luck fixing that!

yah i was just coming here to post that too xpost

how long has the chicken pox vacc been around?

Years. A decade, at least.

xp You probably want to get the vaccine; you really don't want to get chicken pox as an adult. No one tells adults about it because they assume you've had chicken pox. Unfortunately, this is a bad assumption to make. I had a friend who contracted chicken pox when she was 2 months pregnant. NOT COOL.

the problem is that the public health system in this county is grossly politicized (by businesses, non-profits, and our elected reps) and has a ludicrously awful track record of being slow, ignorant, purposefully obtuse, and flat-out lying to the public about the risks of you-name-it, for most of the last century, in fact. And you have trained, experienced medical professionals who get fed the fuck up with the system and decide that the way to "fix things" is to write a book or go on television instead of continually publishing peer reviewed research, and it ends up sort of working for them because patients don't read peer reviewed literature, patients read bestsellers and watch teevee.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to thread

well fuck wait a minute will this lay me up for a few days or just be a little irritating, because i am so not down with getting adult chicken pox. xposts

I mean fuck it watch And The Band Played On, you might take your chances with the ex-playmate too

this is not to say that i cant be bothered with doing it, im just trying to work out the timing.

ok this will probably sound really dumb but:
i had chicken pox when i was a kid, but it was a super, super mild dose - got it from my little brother and sister who had it way worse than me. as long as i've had it once, i can't get it again, right? even tho it was about the most mild case possible? apologies if this is an ignorant question.

xpost JJ, a friend of mine got chicken pox last year (he's 25) and he got it all over his PENIS!

xp - getting chicken pox could be very serious/unpleasant. You're an adult. Get the vaccine; that should only be mildly irritating.

TOMBOT - yes.

and down his throat

http://www.badscience.net/category/mmr/

just1n3, I like how you go for the ARGH factor here.

just1n3: If you had a mild case of chickenpox, you might not have built up sufficient immunity. Go to your doc or NP or PA and ask to have a varicella titer drawn to to if you're immune. Chance are, you're probably ok.

I had a bf who got adult pox and he was pretty rashed up, *covered* in sores, but apart from a fever not too sick (as you might get with measles, which as an adult can give you encephalitis or something horrible). I didnt catch it off him, so I guess having had it as a kid is a good immunity!

to see if you're immune

GAH DUDES i am not trying not to get this vaccine, i have just learned about it in the last five minutes and am confused and have sort of a complicated solo proprietor issue going on at the moment.

also just1n3 obv your friend should have kept his penis out of his throat duh

he is a big fan of max hardcore what can i say

justeeeeeen you should go to grad school while working full time and be in a really stressful long distance relationship (plus drink lots) and if you get shingles you're A-OK

John Justen: the vaccine will most likely suck a lot less then the disease. And you won't unwittingly expose others should you get the pox naturally. It's not a big whoop.

Usually if you've had it, you're good, but basically what kate78 said. Although it might be cheaper just to get the vaccination rather than have a titer drawn and then get the vaccine; I had some titers drawn last year for nursing school and someone in the clinic claimed they were expensive. (Can't remember, but I think insurance must have covered it.)

I'm going to be mildly controversial and say that my attitude on this is sorta "A pox on both your houses", as it were.

In other words: I think the people who aren't vaccinating their kids are making a mistake, and there's a lot of bullshit and misinformation being peddled on that side of the aisle. If I had kids, I'd get them vaccinated. People who are doing otherwise are contributing to a genuine public health risk, at best.

OTOH, the triumphalist rhetoric that I'm hearing from the other side makes me very leery. I've seen firsthand how a drug that's been heralded as one of the medical breakthroughs of the recent past (statins) can do pretty fucked-up things to people who, through some fluke of genetics or biochemistry or whatever, get hit with supposedly rare side effects (in particular, bizarre memory problems) whose appearance and disappearance coincide respectively with administration or discontinuation of the drug.

But I know a fair number of doctors who won't listen to any dissenting opinion on the subject, just as I've encountered dentists who angrily dismiss any concerns about amalgam fillings (which is a whole 'nother issue). I don't doubt that statins save lives, but I also have no doubt that they do fucked-up shit to certain people, and that needs to be acknowledged, even if clinical trials have yet to demonstrate that it's happening to the extent that I suspect it is. (Not to mention that there's a lot of $$$ in these drugs, and in establishing a new, ridiculously-low baseline for serum cholesterol -- but again, different issue.)

Really, it's that lack of humility that bothers me -- that unwillingness to acknowledge that, for all the things that medicine has accomplished and will continue to accomplish, there are huge, gaping holes in our knowledge. I think we (professionals and laypeople) vastly overestimate our ability to foresee unintended consequences, and vastly underestimate the degree to which individual variation influences outcomes. Despite all our progress, when it comes to our understanding of the whole, we're still like people wandering through a labyrinth by candlelight, and if we forget that -- even for a moment -- then our thinking becomes incredibly reductive, the worst sort of Enlightment arrogance.

(The best country doctors had a sense of this -- the irreducibility of medicine -- and a really good old-school physician is often possessed of insights gained through a combination of experience and intuition...insights that might be difficult or impossible to prove through double-blind studies, because they often involve instinctive apprehensions of a patient's particular situation. Practical medicine doesn't have the luxury of repeatedly reproducing essentially identical starting conditions, as is the case in the physical sciences.)

For what it's worth, I think there is actually something going on with autism and vaccination. It's been clouded by hysteria and bandwagon-jumping, but I've been hearing "my kid got fucked up right after s/he got vaccinated" stories for too long to think that there's nothing to it. But I think the number of cases is extremely small, and that the reason may remain elusive for many, many years.

More importantly, I think that the public health value of compulsory vaccination is more important than the damage done by vaccines to individuals. I can't imagine any prominent doctor having the balls to say "Sucks that your kid's messed up, but even if vaccines did it, it's still worth it to the rest of us", and yet that strikes me as the real bottom line. Better 50 kids with autism than 5000 dead kids with measles.

(tl;dr)

i have to have a big medical check-up thing for immigration purposes pretty soon, and they check all the vaccines if i don't have medical recs for them, so i guess i'll find out then.

^^^^^ to Nylund

tombot: both my mother and sis have had shingles fairly recently - does not sound like a good time at all

oh no it's a great time! the best is when the breeze makes your shirt touch your skin and it feels like you've been stabbed.

Pretty interesting segment about this on "This American Life" a few weeks ago:

http://thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1275

Measles cases are higher in the U.S. than they've been in a decade, mostly because more and more nervous parents are refusing to vaccinate their kids. Contributing Editor Susan Burton tells the story of what happened recently in San Diego, when an unvaccinated 7-year-old boy returned home from a trip to Switzerland, bringing with him the measles. By the end of the ordeal, 11 other children caught the disease, and more than 60 kids had to be quarantined. (21 minutes)

Fuckin' Switzerland.

Remember that mumps epidemic in the Midwest a few years ago?

Scott: Hello. My name is Ed.

Mark: [speaks sing-songy throughout] He's sick of the Swiss.

Scott: That's right! I'm sick of their good reputation.

Mark: He's realllly sick of the Swiss.

Scott: I'm sick of their cheese. I'm sick of their chocolate. And, I'm especially sick of their blocky heroine, Heidi.

Mark: He's sick of the Swiss. He don't like `em.

Scott: I mean, every other nation in the world has taken their turn being maligned and slandered. But not the Swi-iss!

Mark: Icky, yucky, stinky, stupid Switzerland.

Scott: Well, that situation is over as of now. *Move* over America; there's a new asshole on the map! I've had it up to here with your skiing heroes! I've had it up to here with your mountains! I've had it up to here with your secret *bank* accounts! From now on, Switzerland, your name is mud.

Mark: If you roast `em all in a fondue pot, sure bet ya that they'll complain a lot. Whiny, whiny Switzerland.

Scott: Yeah. It's *war* between the Swiss and me. "But, they've never done anything wrong," you say.

Both: Ha!

Scott: What about the clock?

Mark: The clock.

Scott: Huh? If they hadn't invented the clock, I'd still be in bed. . .dreaming!

Mark: It's time. It's time. [looks at watch] Oh! It's time to hate the Swiss.

Scott: Zuricheads! Cuckoo cuckoos! Land locked losers!

Mark: Zuricheads. . .

Scott: Neutral ninnies! Boring bankers! Chalet pimps!!

Mark: Oh yeah, his name is Ed--he'd like to see the Swiss dead! He's sick of the Swiss!

Scott: [sticks finger in mouth and gags]

Mark: Hey! Got a problem with that Belgium?!

Nylund OTM.

For what it's worth, I think there is actually something going on with autism and vaccination. It's been clouded by hysteria and bandwagon-jumping, but I've been hearing "my kid got fucked up right after s/he got vaccinated" stories for too long to think that there's nothing to it. But I think the number of cases is extremely small, and that the reason may remain elusive for many, many years.

a professor who does autism research at a major research university explained it to me this way: there's a credible link between thimerosol (the mercury-containing vaccine preservative that they're blaming) and autism but it only happens to children with a particular genetic condition; that condition is very rare (less than 1% of the population) and so it couldn't possibly account for the number of cases that are blamed on vaccines. also he pointed out that the state of california stopped using vaccines with mercury preservatives something like five years ago and they haven't seen any corresponding drop in autism incidence since then.

it only happens to children with a particular genetic condition

A lot of research right now is focusing on kids with mitochondrial disorders, but yeah, it totally can't account for all of 'em.

i mean, nylund is otm---obv there's a lot we don't know/understand about the immune system and autism and what have you. i still think that mobilizing parents against vaccines per se is sorta irresponsible

For what it's worth, I think there is actually something going on with autism and vaccination. It's been clouded by hysteria and bandwagon-jumping, but I've been hearing "my kid got fucked up right after s/he got vaccinated" stories for too long to think that there's nothing to it. But I think the number of cases is extremely small, and that the reason may remain elusive for many, many years.

Um, I mean when you get vaccinated for chicken pox, they inject old chicken pox cells into you or whatever. That's kind of crazy but hey it works! But things can go wrong, but there's not one bit of evidence that it's autism, really, that I've seen. Maybe there is concrete evidence and I've missed it.

i do agree that vaccines can fuck you up. After I got my MMR vaccine--I started having seizures in my crib. Luckily my mom's a nurse so she did once start freaking out that I had autism. And hey I turned out pretty okay.

I've been hearing "my kid got fucked up right after s/he got vaccinated" stories for too long to think that there's nothing to it

This could quite easily be entirely due to coincidental correlation - MMR administration and autism diagnosis both generally occur in the 12-48 month age range.

Holy crap, please tell me the US isn't about to go through the same storm of idiocy we've had over here. Here's this morning's UK measles update. Ledge OTM.

Nylund, here's some science to counter your hearsay.

For what it's worth, I think there is actually something going on with autism and vaccination. It's been clouded by hysteria and bandwagon-jumping, but I've been hearing "my kid got fucked up right after s/he got vaccinated" stories for too long to think that there's nothing to it. But I think the number of cases is extremely small, and that the reason may remain elusive for many, many years.

the problem with "my kid got fucked up right after s/he got vaccinated" is that kids get vaccinated at exactly the age where kids are changing the most anyway? and it's the age where parents are likely to be scrutinising their children for any sign of abnormal development whether that's 'oh no my child is 2cm shorter than the mean height for 16 months' or 'okay my child really should have started producing words by now'.

Holy crap, please tell me the US isn't about to go through the same storm of idiocy we've had over here

My thoughts exactly.

there's a credible link between thimerosol (the mercury-containing vaccine preservative that they're blaming) and autism but it only happens to children with a particular genetic condition; that condition is very rare (less than 1% of the population) and so it couldn't possibly account for the number of cases that are blamed on vaccines

Plausible, well argued, non-hysterical, concise and perhaps the best articulation of the argument I've seen.

There's also the fact that the old MMR - the MMR I received - contained a mumps vaccine that's been linked (quite conclusively?) to encephalitis, which is why the Japanese use the MR rather than the MMR vaccine. (There was an outbreak of measles in universities in Japan in 2007, not because of current vaccine refusal but because the national immunisation programme hadn't been in place when those students were children.) So the worry that MMR vaccination could cause other disorders has some basis in previous experience. I'm still sceptical about the mercury-autism-etc link, though.

a professor who does autism research at a major research university explained it to me this way: there's a credible link between thimerosol (the mercury-containing vaccine preservative that they're blaming) and autism

i thought the evidence for this was v. sketchy at best. my mom, who is a developmental pediatrician, had told me that research has basically refuted this. the point is mostly moot since thimerosol has been eliminated from vacciniations for a while now, anyway.

For what it's worth, I think there is actually something going on with autism and vaccination. It's been clouded by hysteria and bandwagon-jumping, but I've been hearing "my kid got fucked up right after s/he got vaccinated" stories for too long to think that there's nothing to it

i have a lot of sympathy for the larger point in your post but this is some bad thinking. part of the problem with buying into this type of faulty caustion is that pressure is put on ppl doing useful, necessary research into autism to debunk these theories.

the point is mostly moot since thimerosol has been eliminated from vacciniations for a while now, anyway

Exactly -- this ties in with the second point MJtB made. However, this could (wild speculation alert) help explain where the panic stemmed from in the first instance: plausible evidence misunderstood and distorted out of all recognition.

JJ, I got stuck a million different needles before i came to the US (standard immigration practice) but I couldnt remember if chicken pox was included so my doc did a quick blood test and found i was immune. one shot and youre set for life, apparently. You should def get it. My sis-in-law got it in her mid-30s and she had them in her mouth, down her throat, up her nose, on her scalp etc etc she ended up getting some kind of plastic surgery to fix the subsequent scars on her face.

xxxxxposts

also this makes me want to slap that HIV denial lady:

"“How come what we offered was not enough to keep her here when children with far less – impatient distracted parents, a small apartment on a busy street, extended day care, Oscar Mayer Lunchables – will happily stay?”"

http://www.generationrescue.org/lets-go-shopping/images/Lets-Go-Shopping-192x177-flip4.jpg

yeah, nylund otm...

the history of vaccination is interesting - pro-vaccinationists had to fight people's mistrust and ignorance for so long to eradicate diseases that they've become paranoid and battle-scarred, so they attack or dismiss people who have doubts and raise questions, which makes doubters *more* suspicious, vicious circle, etc.

the thermisol thing was not handled well at all. initial denial from the medical community, the wingnuts smelled blood and had a field day with it, thermisol was quietly removed from vaccines, wingnuts still having a field day with it.

i mean i feel sick at the thought of anyone losing a child but not all of us have the money and time to loll about in our suburban mansions, thinking up retarded theories while we cook our kids a homemade lunch.

xxpost

btw if/whem I have kids, I'm going to supervaccinate them then wrap them in Saran Wrap because these fucking crazy ppl be making me crazy

HI DERE's Boy in the Bubble

put tin foil hats on them for good measure

I remember there was a segment on this on This American Life, and even though the anti-vaccination parents had caused this huge measles outbreak on the West coast they were still very smug about insisting that vaccinations were eeevil. I hate them like Carlos Mencia.

^^^^I heard this and was yelling at the radio a lot during the most smug parts.

You should REALLY read Bad Science on this:

http://www.badscience.net/2008/08/the-medias-mmr-hoax/#more-772

Before we begin, it’s worth taking a moment to look at vaccine scares around the world, because I’m always struck by how circumscribed these panics are. The MMR and autism scare, for example, is practically non-existent outside Britain. But throughout the 1990s France was in the grip of a scare that hepatitis B vaccine caused multiple sclerosis.

In the US, the major vaccine fear has been around the use of a preservative called thiomersal, although somehow this hasn’t caught on here, even though that same preservative was used in Britain. In the 1970s there was a widespread concern in the UK, driven again by a single doctor, that whooping-cough vaccine was causing neurological damage.

What the diversity of these anti-vaccination panics helps to illustrate is the way in which they reflect local political and social concerns more than a genuine appraisal of the risk data, because if the vaccine for hepatitis B, or MMR, is dangerous in one country, it should be equally dangerous everywhere; and if those concerns were genuinely grounded in the evidence, especially in an age of the rapid propagation of information, you would expect the concerns to be expressed by journalists everywhere. They’re not.

xp It was particularly amazing to me that one of the mothers interviewed based her opposition to vaccination on the fact that she always fed her family organic everything and couldn't *control* whatever substances would be injected into her child. Then when the kid (and a ton of others) got measles and had to be quarantined, she bemoaned having to constantly watch the kid and *control* his/her movements and daily life for several weeks on end.

does someone knowledgeable want to explain to me how the vaccine scare relates to the other big autism story, which is the supposed over-diagnosis and/or rising rates of autism in children? is there credible evidence that more children are, in fact, autistic--or that doctors are (mis-)diagnosing at a higher rate? if it is the case that more children are "actually" autistic, what are some of the suggested causes? if not, whats the deal with the over-diagnosis/mis-diagnoses? or is this all some thing that will taper off the same way weve seen stories about add/adhd/ritalin/prozac taper off recently?

http://www.lessig.org/blog/2008/12/the_only_solution.html

^^ interesting tangential mention of the anti-vaccine mvmt in the middle of lessig's presentation on public trust generally. there's a clip of rfk jr calling vaccine medicine "tobacco science"

The MMR and autism scare, for example, is practically non-existent outside Britain.

Or am I wrong, I thought people were now mostly satisfied there wasn't a link between MRR and autism (in UK) due to more research that debunked the theory?

Yup. It's about 10 years old, this particular scare, and MMR vaccination rates are back up again, but the damage is done, in that there is a huge unvaccinated cohort wandering around.

(lol @ link between Maximum Rock'n'Roll and autism)

http://valleywag.gawker.com/5129671/autism-the-disease-of-the-internet-era

wikipedia has a good entry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_controversy

There was an article on the BBC evening news last week about the possible a measles epidemic which actually outright called the autism link a "discredited scare" (they definitely said "discredited") and urged people who hadn't vaccinated their kids to get it done because it wasn't too late, etc.

I was surprised that the BBC was prepared to be so bold about the wording, not that I disagree, it just seemed uncharacteristic. If it helps any kid get vaccinated who'd been missed out before then great.

You see, this is the problem with the BBC- on the whole they think that being balanced means that they should give equal time to two sides of a story. This might work well in politics, but it doesn't in issues like this. So for years they would put a pro- and anti-MMR voice up against each other, despite the overwhelming balance of evidence against any link. They did the same with climate change.

Fortunately, the penny FINALLY drops, and they no longer do this in either case. Even the Daily Mail (the home of the health scare, for non-UK people) don't think there is a link between MMR and autism, but instead are out to bash Andrew Wakefield (see the Bad Science link for more on this).

OTM re. the BBC and 'balance'. If they represented the argument according to the evidence on each side they'd spend a second on anti-MMR for every hundred hours of pro.

These kind of make me wish I had a baby to put one on. I wuv Ben Goldacre.
http://222610.spreadshirt.net/en/GB/Shop/Article/Index/article/confrontational-baby-bib-4417369

a public health intervention in a bib, spark up friendly conversations with vaccine-phobic parents in public with ease!

I like it!

Is it true that most people who get chickenpox as children grow up to have herpes zoster in old age?

one of the mothers interviewed based her opposition to vaccination on the fact that she always fed her family organic everything and couldn't *control* whatever substances would be injected into her child.

People, especially upscale West Coast Americans, have developed this cult of food & body control, where everything that goes in must be rigidly controlled for nutritional, ethical and even spiritual reasons (often a tangle of the three). The self is validated and protected by the extent to which control is exercised, and is threatened to the extent that it breaks down. In some cases, the pathology is fantastically rigid, and the ingestion of even a tiny particle of meat or non-organic produce can become the most horrendous sort of physical/emotional violation.

These disorders are so common as to have become normalized and integrated into other culturally-acceptable belief systems, notably the profound distrust of Western medicine that persists in certain spiritual communities. Given that we live in an era when "unfit" parents are sought out and judged harshly, with a corresponding rise in parental paranoia and overprotectiveness, it's not surprising that the body-controlling medicine hate cult would seize upon more-or-less forced vaccinations of children as a threat.

challops.

xpost I wouldn't say "most," but yes, you can get shingles secondarily later in life after you've been infected with chicken pox.

btw, I know two people who have had herpes zoster (a.k.a. "shingles") in their twenties and thirties during very stressful times in their lives, so shingles isn't just for the old folks!

My wife got Bell's Palsy a couple of years ago and that's apparently also connected to the chickenpox virus.

There was a guy in my class in high school who got shingles junior year. That really sucked for him; he said the breeze on his face generated by walking down the hall caused excruciating pain.

My mom got shingles a couple of years back. By all accounts it was horrific.

I had a older professor who came down with a shingles-type post-pox issue that paralyzed half her face for a week: she had to go around reassuring people she hadn't had a stroke.

Re: vaccinations this seems key and point-busting for a lot of the worriers: the point is mostly moot since thimerosol has been eliminated from vacciniations for a while now, anyway

Also this -- I've been hearing "my kid got fucked up right after s/he got vaccinated" stories for too long -- doesn't sound necessarily significant to me: surely part of the panic over these things is that a lot of disorders become apparent and get diagnosed right around the time children are supposed to be getting these vaccinations, right? The prevalence of various scares seems like an extension of that -- something is wrong with your child, and the only real medical event available to start worrying about is the fact that they were vaccinated, because other than that there's no big stand-out action or exposure to blame it on.

I find Jenny McCarthy kinda cool and funny, usually, and I'm occasionally impressed that she seems smart and genuine when talking about this vaccination stuff, but she also seems just wrong, and I hate the dynamic that gets set up when she's on TV along with some staid medical professionals, getting all ring-the-alarm "I'm a mother" emotional while two guys sit there looking uncomfortable and saying "we're really sorry, but there's just no medical evidence here" -- it probably makes for good TV and gets people on her side, but that seems like a bad thing, and the whole display just depresses me by being set up like some sort of feel-good mother-against-power movie.

my mom had shingles a couple years ago; it seemed like the most painful event of her entire life

this kind of shit pisses me off in the same way celia farber and her bonkers hiv/aids work (citing the padian study as evidence, etc) pisses me off.

as i was saying upthread, there seems to be a documented - but very rare - link between vaccines and autism, but people are so afraid they assume their kid is automatically going to be in that .01%

Well you said a link involving thimerosol, which is no longer in vaccines.

i'm sorry, but i can't stand for how much credibility this "cause" has garnered for something that sounds, to me, like it was lifted verbatim from the minutes of a John Birch Society chapter meeting.

This could quite easily be entirely due to coincidental correlation - MMR administration and autism diagnosis both generally occur in the 12-48 month age range.

I agree that coincidental correlation is a very strong possibility, and it may be the ultimate answer.

i have a lot of sympathy for the larger point in your post but this is some bad thinking. part of the problem with buying into this type of faulty caustion is that pressure is put on ppl doing useful, necessary research into autism to debunk these theories.

That (pressure) is a shame if so, because I think positive evidence for the causative factors behind autism is what everyone needs (and, hopefully, wants) most. In other words, once we have a strong physical model for the mechanism that causes autism, it's far easier to tell directly whether there's any reasonable means via which vaccines might be implicated, rather than depending on statistical inference.

I will say, though, that one of the points of my post was that anecdotal evidence used to be one of the mainstays of practical medicine, and that we overestimate our resources if we think that we're "past" it, or that everything we need to know (and ought to believe) can be demonstrated through double-blind studies and clinical trials. Hell, we even overestimate ourselves when we think we know how these things work! There are loads of drugs whose mechanism we don't really understand, but we use them anyway. Ninety percent of the decisions that doctors make reflect something far closer to statistical correlation than a true understanding of causation; in most cases, we don't know jack-shit about "how" or "why", really.

So I think that what I'm resisting here is this notion that we're faced with a choice between snake-oil hokum hand-wringing on the one hand, and the crushing mathematical quality of über-reductive, a=b, "that-can't-possibly-be-true" thinking. Yes, anecdote is not the singular form of data, but I also know that there are a shitload of things for which the data aren't in yet, but which are nonetheless of great significance. Medical history is littered with prior examples of this, with which we're all familiar, and there have been times that word-of-mouth and practical experience have been our only bulwark against -- for example -- taking thalidomide when pregnant. (And that's a good example, by the way: they still have no real idea how thalidomide causes birth defects.)

I'll tip my hand here a bit: I have direct experience with a case in which (a) an infant had (what appeared to be) a moderately violent reaction to vaccination, and (b) that infant went on to have major neurological issues. Do I think that (a) translates to (b), or that "vaccines cause autism"? No, but it did put my antennae up, and makes me wary when anyone gets too dismissive on the issue. (Still, I probably made a mistake when I said I thought there was "something going on with autism and vaccination" -- I should have said "autism and neurological problems".)

As I said before, if I had kids, I would vaccinate 'em. But I also think it's a certainty that certain vaccines fuck some kids up, in some way. The question, though, is how many and in what way, and right now I don't see any objective evidence that it's more than a very small number -- certainly not enough to justify the level of hysteria. But slamming that door shut, or proclaiming my moral superiority over a bunch of moms who "loll about in (their) suburban mansions" or whatever, feels like total hubris to me.

This is some black helicopter type shit, imo. No disrespect.

tru

So, basically,

"Vaccines cause autism" = BOO
"Vaccines can't possibly cause autism" = BOO
"Honestly, we don't know what the fuck is going on, but get your damn kids vaccinated anyway" = YAY

xpost

CR Nylund continuing to be on all kinds of TM. Esp. WR2 to the reasonable defense of intuition, anecdotal evidence and uncertainty. At this point, however, "decent science vs. nutjob luddites" seems like the better horse.

""Honestly, we don't know what the fuck is going on, but get your damn kids vaccinated anyway" = YAY

I would change this to "We're injecting people stuff and things may go haywire for a small percentage of the population but you should deal with it, unless you enjoy getting the measles."

and anything else is black helicopter/"let's teach the controversy" bullshit

We pretty much already tell people that irt vaccine reactions, gullaine-barre, etc...

We pretty much already tell people that irt vaccine reactions, gullaine-barre, etc...

Definitely, though I think that massive research is needed to determine who's likely to have those reactions, and why. I mean, basically, my suspicion is that there's a strong, but exceedingly complex, genetic component to all this. That would, if true, potentially explain why certain families seem to get hit hard with this stuff -- for reasons other than parental hysteria, that is.

I also think it would be prudent to consider postponing some of these vaccinations when possible. The vaccination schedule has become quite aggressive, and while the intent behind that is admirable, it might be excessive in some cases. The schedule that makes sense for a kid in urban or suburban daycare might not make sense for a kid with a stay-at-home mom in the backwoods.

I know two people who have had herpes zoster (a.k.a. "shingles") in their twenties and thirties during very stressful times in their lives, so shingles isn't just for the old folks!

That's what happened to me too...extreme stress can bring it on if you've had the chicken pox. It's terrible.

there IS massive high-profile research on this (my source for autism research anecdotes, btw)

I had a older professor who came down with a shingles-type post-pox issue that paralyzed half her face for a week: she had to go around reassuring people she hadn't had a stroke.

Assuming that we can ever even identify the genetic component/mitochondrial disorder/whatever, it probably would be cost-prohibitive to screen kids for this, espescially when there wouldn't be very many of them. And not vaccinating these kids is no guarentee that they won't be exposed to some other antigen that would cause the same problems.

Definitely, though I think that massive research is needed to determine who's likely to have those reactions, and why. I mean, basically, my suspicion is that there's a strong, but exceedingly complex, genetic component to all this.

seriously. . . i had an adverse reaction to a vaccine and i don't think a dime should be spent on research to figure out why. i don't care. my parents don't care. the benefits to being vaccinated far outweigh the costs.

Poo, I thought it was only referred to as Bell's Palsy when there was no clear source? Whereas hers was, I think, immediately identified as a herpes-simplex thing. But yeah, same issue.

You could be right Nabisco, our doc just said it was Bell's Palsy and that it might have something to do with herpes/chickenpox, there was no clear source.

Assuming that we can ever even identify the genetic component/mitochondrial disorder/whatever, it probably would be cost-prohibitive to screen kids for this, espescially when there wouldn't be very many of them.

That's sort of putting the cart before the horse, though, isn't it? I mean, if there is an identifiable component, that'd be valuable information in and of itself, and cost isn't a reason not to investigate. Figuring out whether we could afford to screen people is a separate issue, though I'm willing to bet that our archetype of the rich lolsuburban family could probably afford to screen Kid #2 if Kid #1 got hit.

i had an adverse reaction to a vaccine and i don't think a dime should be spent on research to figure out why...the benefits to being vaccinated far outweigh the costs.

The second half of this statement has nothing to do with the first! One can think that "the benefits to being vaccinated far outweigh the costs" and still think that it would be good if we could predict who would have a bad reaction, and maybe figure out a way of immunizing them -- later in life, or using a different method -- that wouldn't make them subsequently get into IDM and counting bricks and shit.

u trying to wipe out ilx's future users before they even get a chance, dogg?

well what do you call a bad reaction?

seriously. . . i had an adverse reaction to a vaccine and i don't think a dime should be spent on research to figure out why. i don't care. my parents don't care. the benefits to being vaccinated far outweigh the costs.

― Mr. Que

This seems like an example of flipping to far the other way, into some kind of inflexible nutjob position WR2 "vaccinations are GREAT!!!" I mean, if specific genetic factors make one likely to react adversely to vaccines, I think it'd be great to identify that. (Or chemicals used in vaccines or whatever...)

Re: vaccinations this seems key and point-busting for a lot of the worriers: the point is mostly moot since thimerosol has been eliminated from vacciniations for a while now, anyway

I have to go back to this, because if you look at the "green our vaccines" movement, they have moved on to question everything in vaccines as being possibly damaging and therefore reason to not vaccinate.

I'm sympathetic to people's concerns (even if I sound like I'm not upthread), I just think there's a whole lot of bad science and scare tactics being tossed out there. If you read some of the literature the anti-vaccination people publish, some of them seem to believe there is a big conspiracy to hide the connection between autism and vaccines, and that the CDC, NIH, etc. are in on it. I have no idea who they think does have credibility in the world of science at this point.

Also, it just annoys the piss out of me that we keep the focus on vaccines when it seems clear that it's a lot more complicated than that, and we're wasting time looking at something that has not panned out.

This seems like an example of flipping to far the other way, into some kind of inflexible nutjob position WR2 "vaccinations are GREAT!!!" I mean, if specific genetic factors make one likely to react adversely to vaccines, I think it'd be great to identify that. (Or chemicals used in vaccines or whatever...)

vaccinations are great, though. that's not really debatable nor is it a nutjob position.

do you not think vaccinations are great?

I have no idea who they think does have credibility in the world of science at this point.

― Sara R-C

Million dollar question in lots of areas these days.

The people who have credibility in the world of science for them are the people telling them what they want to hear.

is the anti-vaccination position really just a grassroots thing these days? or can I follow the money and find some rich asshole looking to make big cash from this? Because my suspicion regarding the anti-vaccination position is that these sort of "let's challenge science" things generally have some big players looking to make big coin (e.g. global warming denial).

well what do you call a bad reaction?

Fair point. I think a kid that gets sick for a few days with no lasting ill effects is something that any reasonable parent should be able to deal with, and we don't need to throw $$$ at that. It's the "lasting ill effects" that I'm talking about -- neurological damage, massive psychological/behavioral changes, etc. There's zero doubt that at least a handful of kids have those reactions, probably as a result of some weird-ass autoimmune response that's partly genetic. It'd be valuable to know how that happens and how to stop it, because even if you don't give a shit about overprivileged suburban white toddlers, it'd probably shed light on other things too.

And yeah, conspiracy theory talk is pretty much paranoid bullshit. However, you don't need a bunch of people in a dark room to get much the same effect, policy-wise. It's pretty obvious that one of the reasons that the ADA won't budge on amalgam is that they don't want to get the shit sued out of them, but there's no reason why a secret cabal of Illuminati dentists would have to meet on a mountaintop to make that happen. A consensus based on self-interest can do a lot of what people fondly attribute to conspiracy.

xpost you can follow money and find rich assholes looking to make big cash from, like, anything.

i dont know, has anyone been running a "turn dead kids into fuel" empire?

Oh, and of course vaccinations are great. But "i don't think a dime should be spent on research to figure out why" some people might have adverse reactions to them is a questionable (nutty) extension of the (sound) underlying argument.

I mean, I've totally heard that argument used against environmentalism -- that environmentalists are just in it for $$$, control, etc. -- so I'm very wary of it.

xpost

I think a kid that gets sick for a few days with no lasting ill effects is something that any reasonable parent should be able to deal with, and we don't need to throw $$$ at that. It's the "lasting ill effects" that I'm talking about -- neurological damage, massive psychological/behavioral changes, etc.

― Charlie Rose Nylund

These aren't neccessarily different things, though. The process that in one person causes mild symptoms could cripple another.

Yeah, the "follow the money" argument can cut both ways on a lot of key issues. But I want to understand who benefits and how when I listen to someone's political argument. Everyone has an axe to grind, and I want to understand that axe before I decide on the merits of their "evidence".

I think you guys are looking for the manufacturers of Mumps-B-Gone(R) and JiffyQuarantine(TM), pictured below

http://www.hermes-press.com/fat_cat2.gif

proclaiming my moral superiority over a bunch of moms who "loll about in (their) suburban mansions" or whatever, feels like total hubris to me.

― Charlie Rose Nylund, Wednesday, January 14, 2009 12:45 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

actually i was talking about the hiv-aids link denial woman would basically said children who live in urban areas with parents who have to work should have died instead of her child. dont be a dick.

as i was saying upthread, there seems to be a documented - but very rare - link between vaccines and autism

mj2b can u give me ref for this? not asking as a challenge def genuinely curious. i can find a bunch of studies like this which conclude:

We could find no convincing evidence that early exposure to thimerosal had any deleterious effect on neurologic or psychological outcome.

but i take it you are talking about something else? also did/do u go to stanford?

i did, but i didn't study medicine or public health, i studied education and teaching, and i attended just a few lectures on autism (since i see more and more students with asperger's every year), but that was the guy who spoke at the lectures and he very clearly stated that position in his lectures. he also very clearly said that there's no way that even putting together all of the known and suspected environmental factors you'd have enough incidence to account for the "autism epidemic", and he put the "epidemic" down to growing public and medical awareness of a continuum of disorders rather than a real epidemic.

i mean i'm a layman like everyone else and i'm basically just regurgitating what i heard from one very credible source ... still, if anybody's entitled to an informed opinion i think it would be that guy

another thing though is that because of that guy's job he is privy to info from two big unfinished research projects on autism: CATS (california autism twins study) and SEED (study to explore early development) ... i am sure that ten years from now there will be a lot of answered questions about autism thanks to all the recent studies.

xpost

no i'm the same most of what i know about this comes from talking to my mom about the research she does and shes pretty consistently maintained that the autism/vaccine link is bogus.

i do know that the etiology is understood to be v. complex or maybe that the little we know about the mechanics of hetereogeneous disorders make them harder to understand so any position is taken, at least a little bit, in the dark.

when where u at stanford btw

actually i was talking about the hiv-aids link denial woman would basically said children who live in urban areas with parents who have to work should have died instead of her child.

Ah. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

I went looking just now to see if I could put that quote in context, but the website (for her daughter) is gone, and the Archive.org copy was blocked by robots.txt. Why in the world would someone robots.txt a memorial page?

ENBB thank you for getting my ire in before I had the chance to do so!

who is worse: creationists or these anti vaccine people

― Mr. Que, Wednesday, January 14, 2009 2:49 AM (20 hours ago)

OH my GOD the antivaccine people are. Creationists are fucked up BUT they're not saying "here kids, get rubella and die because I can't handle the potential idea of my kid being kind of different mentally." Creationists view autistic kids as a special child from God, which is a little condescending but a lot nicer and kinder.

Fucking up everyone's kids vs. fucking up your own kid

^^ The funny part is that if you take the "up"s out of that sentence and wait 18 years, it works the other way around

See actually it is probably difficult to convince everyone about herd immunity (let alone to get everyone to listen). Sure. What really makes me DISTRAUGHT here is the whole eugenicsy bent to it, like the worst fucking thing in the entire world would to be autistic. Mad sympathy here for parents who have kids with autism, don't get me wrong. No sympathy for people who take the risk of killing their kid and other kids after DECADES of use of these vaccines and kind of fucking things up for everyone!

IMO it's totally fine to be anywhere on the autism spectrum tho it is going to complicate your life.

I have a rotten mental illness but whatevs, this is life, right? OTOH I would be tempted to sue my parents or something drastic if me & my sibs were not vaccinated at their behest!

everyone thinks they are special. it isn't true. lol america.

See the thing is you can't claim to be irreplaceable for being unique. They'll just put another unique in your former post.

Plus, you know, the kids aren't really gonna get the autism from vaccinations, and if they've got it already, it probly came from someplace else.

It's not freaking contagious! (I know you know but ANOTHER thing here is people kind of act like it is?)

I suppose I mean: it is not communicable from one person to another.

I know everyone knows this.

I mean did no one read THE VELVETEEN RABBIT? (I know that was Scarlet Fever but still that is the saddest death of a peripheral character ever.)

http://www.blacktriangle.org/blog/?page_id=1701

I found this pretty mind boggling. The original Wakefield paper in the Lancet contains this graph which is, as far as I can tell, deliberately misleading.
From what I remember (just having skim-read it again now) the graph that was "supposed" to show a rise in autism correlating with the start of MMR actually showed just a distribution of birth dates of people in the system (dept of developmental services).

Just one way in which anti-MMRs will do anything to distort the truth.

I may have been reading too much www.badscience.net but I really am beginning to think the media does have to have some responsibility in how it gives time and credibility to these people. There is a culture now of trusting the 'lone voice against the system' and no culture of simply asking 'prove it'.

Does anyone want to hire me to do a show about overlooked glaring truths with funny enactments of peer-reviewed medical journal articles? I could throw in some Olbermann-style bellowing & paper-throwing if anyone wants.

Hey - hope I didn't make you mad posting at the start but I saw this thread and thought immediately of you!

No way I was so glad! I was like "oh man thank god bcz my opinions are STRONG and I wanted them to be noted and E did it for me high fives." :D

My earlier comment was genuine.

I'm 200 posts too late but I already heard/read about her crazy theory. I've yet to encounter someone here who has this mad opinion.

Chickenpox is nasty and way more dangerous if you have it as an adult. Also as a woman (if you want to conceive) it's better to be immune: if you catch it during pregnancy it can be harmful to the foetus. (Ophelia had it when I was pregnant with Elisabeth. Not being entirely sure whether I was immune to it, I did a check-up.)

even if vaccines do cause autism that knowledge won't help parents teach a disabled young person how to negotiate the world

I wonder if she didn't see the signs he was autistic beforehand? Maybe because he grew older and the signs were clearer? DOes that make any sense? I realize autism can be detected early on but sometimes, if it's mild, you can only tell when the kid is older. I hope he is "cured".

You can't cure autism though

Well, science can't, but Jenni McCarthy can

It's probably worth noting also that a lot of people on the autistic spectrum do not consider themselves disabled.

Going back to the whole 'scientific proof' thing, the problem is that to appease the MMR haters, you need to prove a negative, ie. that MMR does not cause autism. This hasn't been done. However, one of my links above was to a study of Japanese children after they stopped using MMR and went for single vaccines there. If there was a link between MMR and autism, you would expect the incidence of autism to fall when this change was made, but in fact it fell.

I do wish all the people on this thread who are paraphrasing something they have read somewhere, or beginning their arguments with "it seems to me" would link to a credible scientific source to back up what they're saying.

Those who are anti-vaccine in general would do well to remember that any medicine has its risks and they are only on the market if the benefits have been judged to outweigh those risks.

you would expect the incidence of autism to fall when this change was made, but in fact it fell rose.

Argh, ffs.

Clearly your typo is a rogue side-effect of the MMR vaccine.

Someone needs to invent a vaccination against autism just to fuck with the anti-vaccine brigade.

lolz

Researchers Retract a Study Linking Autism To Vaccination
By ANAHAD O'CONNOR

Ten of the 13 scientists who produced a 1998 study linking a childhood vaccine to several cases of autism retracted their conclusion yesterday.

In a statement to be published in the March 6 issue of The Lancet, a British medical journal, the researchers conceded that they did not have enough evidence at the time to tie the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, known as MMR, to the autism cases. The study has been blamed for a sharp drop in the number of British children being vaccinated and for outbreaks of measles.

''We wish to make it clear that in this paper no causal link was established between MMR vaccine and autism as the data were insufficient,'' the researchers said in the retraction. ''However, the possibility of such a link was raised and consequent events have had major implications.''

The study came under fierce criticism last month when the editor of the Lancet said that the lead author of the report, Dr. Andrew Wakefield had failed to reveal that he had a conflict of interest when he conducted the research. At the time, the journal editors said, Dr. Wakefield was also gathering information for lawyers representing parents who suspected their children had developed autism because of the vaccine.

In a statement published on the Lancet's Web site on Feb. 23, Dr. Richard Horton, the journal's editor, wrote: ''We regret that aspects of funding for parallel and related work and the existence of ongoing litigation that had been known during clinical evaluation of the children reported in the 1998 Lancet paper were not disclosed to editors.''

After the 1998 study appeared, British health officials pleaded with parents to continue vaccinating their children, and a number of other studies were unable to confirm a link between autism and the MMR vaccine.

Dr. Wakefield, who could not be immediately reached for comment, hired a lawyer to demand an apology from the Lancet after the journal released its statement last month, said Dr. Jeff Bradstreet, a colleague.

Dr. Bradstreet, director of the International Child Development Resource Center in Florida, said that Dr. Wakefield had not become involved with the lawyers representing the parents until after the study had essentially been finished. ''This has been blown way out of proportion,'' he said.

In the statement released yesterday, the researchers said that they could not reach one author of the study to ask if he wished to participate in the retraction. Two other authors, including Dr. Wakefield, did not sign the statement, according to the Lancet.

They recanted: good.

That it took them eleven years to do so: bad.

That Wakefield even did that in the first place: wtf people.

You know, though, that is what I love about good scientists: their humility. I mean, can you imagine a religion or a politician coming back 11 years later and being like, "oops lol that was wrong, sorry"?

Dr. Wakefield is probably Jessica's son.

Let us not forget these brave men and women who held their ground against relentless Illuminazi pressure for eleven years.

Some sanity returns:

Thousands of parents who claimed that childhood vaccines had caused their children to develop autism are wrong and not entitled to federal compensation, a special court ruled today in three decisions with far-reaching implications for a bitterly fought medical controversy.

The long-awaited decision on three test cases is a severe blow to a grass-roots movement that has argued -- predominantly through books, magazines and the Internet -- that children's shots have been responsible for the surge in autism diagnoses in the United States in recent decades. The vast majority of the scientific establishment, backed by federal health agencies, has strenuously argued there is no link between vaccines and autism, and warned that scaring parents away from vaccinating their youngsters places children at risk for a host of serious childhood diseases.

The decision by three independent special masters is especially telling because the special court's rules did not require plaintiffs to prove their cases with scientific certainty -- all the parents needed to show was that a preponderance of the evidence, or "50 percent and a hair," supported their claims. The vaccine court effectively said today that the thousands of pending claims represented by the three test cases are on extremely shaky ground.

Awesome

Problem is that it won't necessarily change much in the believers' minds, at least. Vehemently held paranoid beliefs tend not to be arrived at thru rational thought, and as such tend not to be changed by such minor things like facts or actual reality.

In other words, it ain't gunna change the folks who call into Coast to Coast AM about this.

it'll just intensify their persecution complex, probs :(

Oh, no question -- it'll all be seen as part of the 'conspiracy' or whatever. But something like this is still good to see.

conspiracy theories are gonna abound now

xp

http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/02/safeminds-response-to-autism-omnibus-court-decision.html

Ugh I was reading a women's mag the other day and it had this several-page article on young up and coming slebs doing good work, charity etc. Amongst people working with the UN and whatnot was this fucking cow, with an article going on about her work against vaccines "due to an additive in them that is believed to cause autism".

The fact these falsehoods get so casually spread about in the general media and lauded as someone doing good is so disappointing.

that comments section is filled with straight up RETARDS

/pipecock

"yes, i am doing my part by ruining science and the health of children in general"

i hope this particular conspiracy theory is more 9/11 truthers and less jfk w/r/t how much it permeates mainstream opinion

I think having actual findings out there that are like 'srsly this will not curb autism, it will just help your kids get deadly diseases' will stop people who were on the fence about it & maybe make the crazies seem like they are indeed crazies.

oh goody comments! there weren't any when i posted that

Wow, I'm generally jaded about net.cranks but the ageofautism.com commenters really do makes the Above Top Secret forums look like William F. Buckley

Oh the temptation to go there and post "dont come crying to anyone when your child dies of a measles complication". So... want ... to.

Do we trust them now to take care of our kids? PLUEEZ.

PLUEEZ

Where does this "surge in autism" come from anyway? I dont know *anyone* with autistic kids, but I know plenty of self-diagnosed geek twits telling anyone who'll listen that they're aspie.

Age o' Fautuism

trayce i doubt that comment would get past their mod police, i imagine they only allow certain types to get past (imo)

i.e. ones that support their opinion

haha if you posted an antagonistic comment i'm sure you'd get an email in reply saying "YOUR I.P ADDRESS HAS BEEN LOGGED!!!!!"

There is no surge in autism, I believe there is a general rise in cases but this does not coincide with the introduction of MMR.

and your field of expertise is....

Blog reading!

The Internet, M.D.

; D

everyone's area of expertise is anecdotal evidence

lolz =)

Yeah TBH we're as bad as they are cos we go on what we read but at least its the bloody Lancet.

http://www.mwscomp.com/mpfc/tfgumby.gif

Brain specialist, yesterday.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with considering first-person accounts as long as you bear in mind there are 8 billion of them.

i read the abstract of a paper that suggested the 'general rise' in autism has to do with the public awareness of the importance of folate levels in expectant mothers, the widespread supplementaion of which led to more full term births of infants with certain brain disorders??

BAHAHA Trayce.

"No, the brain in your HEAD."

Oh man, elmo, that means my 'Folic Acid is for Everyone' shirt is responsible for all this.

I don't know what distinction you're making, but I think the documented rise in diagnoses is what people are referring to when they say "surge."

(Obviously there are whole discussions to be had about whether it's not better diagnosed -- as in "caught more often" -- or overdiagnosed or whether there's actually a higher incidence.)

^^ sorry, that was to ledge

lol see for those anti-vaccination rocket scientists it's much easier to point to something as tangible as an INJECTION of a FOREIGN SUBSTANCE

We talked about that upthread, how autism is diagnosed at an age where the only real child-related events people can point to are gestation, birth, and vaccination

Yeah I am assuming its not that theres more autism but rather more "oh this is autism" diagnoses rather than "oh the kids retarded".

rather rather rather

Obviously there are whole discussions to be had about whether it's not better diagnosed -- as in "caught more often" -- or overdiagnosed or whether there's actually a higher incidence.

― nabisco

overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed overdiagnosed

I don't know what distinction you're making, but I think the documented rise in diagnoses is what people are referring to when they say "surge."

ok, I was presuming 'surge' is used to imply a specific, large, and unprecedented rise, since the introduction of MMR; instead of a gradual rise since, like, whenever, probably.

I do not see a way to lower profits for Pharma anymore. I see this is a gold mine for both Pharma and the vaccine court's fund. I see a mad rush of parents that may have been on the fence, to the doctor for "catch-up" shots. The vary same thing that put My Liam over the edge. I can not express my sadness.

Posted by: Matt Flynn | February 12, 2009 at 05:08 PM

Matt's link goes to this http://www.sophisticatering.com/

Where does this "surge in autism" come from anyway? I dont know *anyone* with autistic kids, but I know plenty of self-diagnosed geek twits telling anyone who'll listen that they're aspie.

Things seemed to hit critical mass when this article appeared in Wired in 2001. If memory serves, I believe this was the first time I heard of Asperger's.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers.html

I remember a lot of autism talk following Bill Gates' rather unsettling testimony to Congress during the Microsoft anti-trust hearings.

OK, the neurodiversity movement is kinda weird

http://nymag.com/news/features/47225/

Gates was born ambidextrous, so he has lots of issues.

pretty sure the autism explosion is due to changing diagnostic practices, not to an actual increase in incidence

...which i'm also sure that someone has pointed out upthread?

i read the abstract of a paper that suggested the 'general rise' in autism has to do with the public awareness of the importance of folate levels in expectant mothers, the widespread supplementaion of which led to more full term births of infants with certain brain disorders??

― obi don quixote (elmo argonaut), Thursday, February 12, 2009 5:52 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

this, btw, is similar to increasing rates of cancer: the longer we live, the more likely we are to get cancer. better healthcare/lifestyles ---> higher rates of cancer

would be curious to see a retroactive study of post-war psych diagnoses (say, PTSD/depression) corrected for the fact that soldier mortality rates are so much lower (ie - we can save pretty much anyone's life on the battlefield now). impossible, i know

BAH I hate the argument that vaccines are a big profit $$$ for pharmaceutical companies (and that's the only reason health experts and national organizations want us to get them). Surprise _ Increased Spending on Drugs Is Linked to More Advertising, and it's not MMR vaccines that are getting double-page spreads in Newsweek every week.

Sales increases of the 50 most advertised drugs made up almost half of the $21 billion growth in retail spending on prescription drugs from 1999 to 2000, NIHCM found. The 9,850 other drugs on the market accounted for the rest of the 12-month rise. Prescriptions for these 50 drugs rose by 25 percent in the same period, compared with a 4.3 percent increase for all other drugs combined.

I don't know why I am arguing this to you sane people but OTOH it is interesting.

That's from this AARP, which is good too.

Can't find anything about it on the Coast To Coast AM site, but Ian wrote this in his blog:

IP: "Freely"
Monday, February 9, 2009, 12:33 AM CST (General)

by Ian Punnett

Update! For years I have maintained an open mind on the claim that childhood vaccines either introduce or trigger autism in toddlers that previously had shown no signs of being autistic. Many a past radio guest has presented what seem like credible evidence and at least anecdotal testimony that the traditional MMR vaccines cause autism, period, and that people ought to refuse to have their children vaccinated just to be safe.

While I think I gave all those claims a fair airing, in the end, my wife and I decided that the risks outweighed the benefits in favor of the shots and so our boys immunized. Other than being cursed to be my sons, they are developmentally normal in ever way. I have never regretted immunizing my children. Tonight, I have never been so grateful...

would be curious to see a retroactive study of post-war psych diagnoses (say, PTSD/depression) corrected for the fact that soldier mortality rates are so much lower (ie - we can save pretty much anyone's life on the battlefield now). impossible, i know

Sort of related, I've read a couple different things about the trauma/orthopedic care of soldiers who fought in Iraq that really impressed on me just how more is within the bounds of treatment now. There was a ton of injury even in the first Iraq war where they'd let a guy who was alive but severely wounded stay out there and die, or just didn't have the abilities for life-sustaining critical care we have worked out now. The good side is obviously the reduction in deaths, but the bad side is there's more people who suffered those kind of traumas and survived, which is kind of a big depressing question mark when it comes to the psychological aftermath.

^^^ that's what prompted the thought, actually. veterans of the iraq war may be unique in that, even though there's fewer of them (compared to vietnam, say), many of them will be multiple amputees and/or suffering from other debilitating traumas that we've only recently been able to manage. how they're reabsorbed into society and the healthcare system will be something to watch. i've read at least anecdotal (ie - "human interest" magazine) stories about how many soldiers w/severe physical trauma are suffering equally debilitating psychological problems :(

on the other hand, less dudes are dying, and the advances we've made in prosthetics are astounding

i wanna say that the typical timeline for severe battle trauma goes like:

* battlefield
* field hospital
* OR in the green zone for immediate stabilization
* OR @ like Rammstein for intermediate stabilization/surgical intervention
* OR back in the states for the beginning of long-term surgical care

...but that this happens over the course of like 48 hours instead of weeks/months

anyway, different thread...

For what it's worth, vaccines are so low on the pharma-profit scale, that there are so few vaccine manufacturers that when a single one loses a single facility, there are worldwide shortages. All this talk of the vaccine-cash connexion is incredibly incorrect.

I know for real it is the craziest lie I have ever heard.

Vaccines are one of the noblest things made by humans.

article about growing # of kids showing up to school w/o vaccines
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-immunization29-2009mar29,0,406104,print.story

http://www.jennymccarthybodycount.com/Jenny_McCarthy_Body_Count/Home.html

velko that is the worst thing in the world.

Nicole's site is a bittersweet piece of consolence.

For Bjorklund -- whose children attend Stoneybrooke Christian Schools in San Juan Capistrano, where 18% of entering kindergartners had vaccine exemptions last fall -- doubts about vaccine safety resonate.

"Part of the reason is that there's been such a huge rise in autism . . . and what's the cause?" she said. "Just because the pharmaceutical companies say we need it doesn't mean we need it."

i get so angry about shit like this

bjerklund or bdorklund, i can't decide

Final followup on Andrew Wakefield

THE doctor who sparked the scare over the safety of the MMR vaccine for children changed and misreported results in his research, creating the appearance of a possible link with autism, a Sunday Times investigation has found.

Confidential medical documents and interviews with witnesses have established that Andrew Wakefield manipulated patients’ data, which triggered fears that the MMR triple vaccine to protect against measles, mumps and rubella was linked to the condition.

The research was published in February 1998 in an article in The Lancet medical journal. It claimed that the families of eight out of 12 children attending a routine clinic at the hospital had blamed MMR for their autism, and said that problems came on within days of the jab. The team also claimed to have discovered a new inflammatory bowel disease underlying the children’s conditions.

However, our investigation, confirmed by evidence presented to the General Medical Council (GMC), reveals that: In most of the 12 cases, the children’s ailments as described in The Lancet were different from their hospital and GP records. Although the research paper claimed that problems came on within days of the jab, in only one case did medical records suggest this was true, and in many of the cases medical concerns had been raised before the children were vaccinated. Hospital pathologists, looking for inflammatory bowel disease, reported in the majority of cases that the gut was normal. This was then reviewed and the Lancet paper showed them as abnormal.

Despite involving just a dozen children, the 1998 paper’s impact was extraordinary. After its publication, rates of inoculation fell from 92% to below 80%. Populations acquire “herd immunity” from measles when more than 95% of people have been vaccinated.

Last week official figures showed that 1,348 confirmed cases of measles in England and Wales were reported last year, compared with 56 in 1998. Two children have died of the disease.

With two professors, John Walker-Smith and Simon Murch, Wakefield is defending himself against allegations of serious professional misconduct brought by the GMC. The charges relate to ethical aspects of the project, not its findings. All three men deny any misconduct.

Through his lawyers, Wakefield this weekend denied the issues raised by our investigation, but declined to comment further.

"Just because the pharmaceutical companies say we need it doesn't mean we need it."

i wonder if part of the attraction of the anti-vaccine/vaccine-skeptic 'movement' is that it can be so neatly folded into an anti-corporate stance?? like hatin vaccines is some punkrock antiauthoritarian shit or something'

i mean skepticism is healthy, esp when dealing with the pharmaceutical industry, but this shit is mind-blowingly wrong-headed

i think so gbx but i also think its linked/part of a wider backlash against "invasive" "western" medicine and the general decline in satsifaction and trust in health care providers.

i think the autism movement bothers me so much in part because there ARE a # of things that the medical community and health care providers have done and are doing that are wasteful and dangerous (unnecessary surgeries, obv conflicts of interest in prescription, not consistently implementing best practices in hopsitals &c) but none of these have anything to do w/vaccines. im sure someone's pointed out most of the big pharam co.s dont want to invest in vaccines which arent particularly profitable and make more $$$ from ppl getting sick then the ever will from vaccination

i think the autism movement bothers me so much in part because there ARE a # of things that the medical community and health care providers have done and are doing that are wasteful and dangerous (unnecessary surgeries, obv conflicts of interest in prescription, not consistently implementing best practices in hopsitals &c) but none of these have anything to do w/vaccines

^^^ totally. it's sort of stunning (like, literally) that ppl will get whipped into a frenzy about a likely non-existent problem like vacc--->autism and yet be all yawn whatever w/r/t like basic medical care for underserved populations

( as well as other wasteful/dangerous medical practices, ob)

lol my virology prof had nothing kind to say about anti-vaccine ppl 2day

the backlash in some circles against "modern western" medicine is so funny to me...

not discounting that there is a lot of beneficial stuff that falls outside of that norm...but....it's like all these people romanticize stuff that dates back to the XX century in china and stuff, it's like...didn't people only like to be like 45 back then?

45 would be extremely elderly.

been thinking a lot baout this, as a kind of phenomenon. not to get all dj martian but systemic thinking is really hard. narrative thinking is kind of easy; this happened, then that happened! especially if it's personal (this happened to me/her/us, then that happened). conspiracy theories explain big problems with narratives: "someone is behind all this!!" which is key to their power but also what's wrong with them. it gets even more difficult when there really are lots of bad, shitty or selfish decisions being made as part of a big systemic problem; any explanation, narrative or otherwise, is necessarily political.

(i don't have any education in the philosophy of mind or brain science tho, just talking out my ass)

evidently

;-P

Read a paper that concluded that in pre or non-scientific communities, neutral or even harmful treatments could spread more effectively than helpful ones. Because a bad treatment get used for longer (due to their not curing the initial problem), that gives more opportunity for other people to observe its use, and just that observation is enough to encourage them to try it, regardless of its perceived efficacy.

note to self, if you're gonna edit yr post to change plurals to singulars at least finish the job.

Jim Carrey joins the idiot circus:
http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/?p=2200

Only appropriate.

narrative thinking is kind of easy; this happened, then that happened! especially if it's personal (this happened to me/her/us, then that happened).

lol r u reading animal spirits???

i am an animal spirit

no i am not! but i should

i think i had in my head the crowd of torture defenders actually! there's this reflex among those ppl to cut out all big picture/long term/data-oriented discussion in favor of immediately personal hypotheticals; "omg what if OSAMA had your DAUGHTER"

luv u, onion
http://www.theonion.com/content/amvo/vaccine_rejectors_put_kids_at_risk

did this get linked here?

http://www.newsweek.com/id/200025

i feel like we talked about in on ilx but i can't remember

Oh god. I am currently working for an administrator in the state Department of Health and just fielded a call from a total luncatic ranting about the link between vaccinations and autism. This guy was completely fucking NUTS. Even as I repeatedly tried to explain that I wasn't the one he needed to speak with he kept going and said my boss was going to hide behind my skirt rather than listen to the truth. Towards the end he said he had a 19 year old son who has autism (:-( )because of the vaccines. I eventually hung up on him and feel bad but SWEET JESUS.

you could have said "no, sir, the reason your son has autism is because god hates you."

Ha. He probably would have tried to save me. I think hanging up was the best decision even though I'm pretty sure that's not the recommended way of dealing wtih the crazies (of which there are TONS btw). He hasn't called back . . . yet.

yeah, i think you did the best thing.

I don't know if he would fall into the same category of crazies/stalkers discussed in The Gift of Fear, but hanging up/refusing to engage is usually the best way to deal w/them.

Yesterday security called because there was some man downstairs with a container of food that he said was contaminated and needed testing.

I was just glad they didn't let him up here tbh.

you could at least commend him for not being wasteful

http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2009/10/doctors-fire-children-parents-refuse-vaccinate.html

fuck yeah

No shit they should.
I'm being driven bonkers by my colleagues who won't get their flu shots. Actually got in a fight with an OT the other day. How can so many health professionals, who otherwise practice EBM, be so fucking stupid about vaccines?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScGC7nFDxM

How can so many health professionals, who otherwise practice EBM, be so fucking stupid about vaccines?

lol when you work mental health you will hear people who're in a position to really affect patients' lives spouting all kinds of superstitious handed-down knowledge about which DSM dx's are "hopeless" etc, being a professional doesn't mean people absorbed ANY of the instruction imo it just means they got good at passing tests

oh dear god the comments.

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sucks sooooooo beutifull and young
just becouse the stupid fluu shot we got to fight the luminati is doing all this shit

so many video responses too...

it doesn't seem like there's any kind of confirmed link from the flu shot to the dystonia, but that cheerleader shit is pretty crazy.

the luminati is doing all this shit

its sad i mean she cld have cheered for a pro football team all that waste dam u luminati

Babiberries (2 minutes ago)

she iz very pretty

no homo

ok which one of you wiseguys made me lol here

hahahahahaha

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Another beautiful girl...RUINED BY SOCIETY!!!!

if only this could have happened to an ugly fat person!

how wld we even tell a difference??

:?

What a disaster for amazingly beautiful cheerleaders.

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lol this board is full of nothing but liberals laughing and praising the suffering of another human being. Fox news dosnt celebrate the suffering of people like the liberal bias on you tube does.
---

Ok I'll stop for a while.

"she iz very pretty

no homo"

has kind of broken my ability to stop laffing

People, especially upscale West Coast Americans, have developed this cult of food & body control, where everything that goes in must be rigidly controlled for nutritional, ethical and even spiritual reasons (often a tangle of the three). The self is validated and protected by the extent to which control is exercised, and is threatened to the extent that it breaks down. In some cases, the pathology is fantastically rigid, and the ingestion of even a tiny particle of meat or non-organic produce can become the most horrendous sort of physical/emotional violation.

wasn't this a todd haynes movie?

Wired magazine has a nice cover story about "the Epidemic of Fear"

Article online now: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_waronscience/all/1

http://www.zazzle.com/vaccine_fillers_thimerosal_mercu_customized_bumper_sticker-128656797762235700

The follow up on the Dystonia cheerleader is pretty fascinating/outrageous/infuriating/etc., incidentally - she's now "cured" of all of her symptoms because of special treatments she got from an oft-discredited anti-vax figure named "Dr. Buttar" (i.e. she had basically just been suffering from a psychogenic situation, as had been diagnosed by everyone with any sense of reality):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD1BAxVnFdc&feature=player_embedded

hmmmm...this reminds me of back when spin magazine kept saying there was no connection between HIV and AIDS

Funny M@tt mentions this - I had been digging through some old Spins not too long ago and came across a few of these articles, (which I would have skipped over obliviously in the early '90s), and which are so fucking insane that one can't possibly believe they were printed in a national magazine. Anyway, the huge celebrity proponent of this HIV-doesn't-cause-AIDS movement was Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters, who played lots of benefit concerts organized by the now deceased Christine Maggiore. Reading these columns knowing Maggiore and her child would be dead 10 years later make them even crazier.

I guess the bass player (who was also in Sunny Day Real Estate) was the driving force of the band being involved - I'd be very curious to hear their take on this nowadays.

Agh, it's all so creepy.

I had been digging through some old Spins not too long ago and came across a few of these articles, (which I would have skipped over obliviously in the early '90s), and which are so fucking insane that one can't possibly believe they were printed in a national magazine.

It was kinda the big reason I avoided Spin during the late eighties/early nineties, honestly -- I realized I missed out on some wonderful music writing after the fact, but that whole ignorance they espoused with regard to AIDS did overshadow it.

posted this somewhere else but--suzanne somers is also a celebrity nutjob:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-09/does-suzanne-somers-cause-cancer/

I realized I missed out on some wonderful music writing after the fact, but that whole ignorance they espoused with regard to AIDS did overshadow it.

Even at the time, I read the AIDS articles because they were just so unbelievably batshit that you couldn't believe they were printed in the same magazine as the rest of the writing.

So wait. The cheerleader is fine now? I am totally going to go find all the "OMG FLU VACCINE KILLZZZZZZZZZZZ" posts from my many vaccine denying FB friends (I know a lot of hippies who grew up and had kids and now think that vaccines are evil and babies should have chiropractors and homeopathy isn't a load a crap) about this woman and rub their noses in it.

Suzanne Somers, 63.
http://www.foxnews.com/images/232619/0_61_suzanne_somers.jpg

"Dr. Buttar" just fired his PA and tweeted about it.
http://twitter.com/DrButtar

she is very pretty (no homo)

http://a1.twimg.com/profile_images/355408732/Rashid_Smiling_Beach_2_bigger.jpg

Oh wait - it was a joke! Funny, funny guy.
http://twitter.com/kimmyatdrbuttar

Shouldn't they be dealing with patients or something?

they are Ned--the tweets help "heal" people

@bikerkristy Hey Mom

in all honesty I stopped reading here

Watching Dr. Buttar and Abie practice their martial arts in our gym. Abie has a big tournament this weekend. 5:41 PM Nov 10th from TwitterBerry

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=9477472

nothing new or mindblowing, just jenny bein' jenny

Blerg. An old friend of mine posted that on Facebook, commenting that it was a "great example of a 'panel of experts' refuting a fact, seen in practice every day, because it adds fire to idea that vaccination can contribute to the onset of autism." Which is kind of confusing but I think he's saying that the "panel of experts" are refuting the "fact" that changes in diet impact autism because to find that changes in diet impact autism is to lend support to the idea that vaccines cause autism. Whatever. It's all so annoying.

I couldn't make it through much of the piece, but it seems she's essentially saying "I disagree, because my child reacted differently to the diet"?

Yes. And because her child is autistic, while this "panel of experts" merely has PhDs and research experience and peer reviewed studies, she is in a better position to tell everyone what really works as a "cure" for autism.

(I'm scare quoting "cure" because many autistic adults or adults on the autism spectrum don't feel they need to be "cured," thankyouverymuch - http://www.autisticadvocacy.org/)

i can't really make heads or tails of what your friend meant either. i guess after a few readings it looks to me like "this panel of experts shows that it's not diet so it must be vaccination that causes autism" but i'm not sure it really makes sense.

also, good luck getting an autistic kid to eat a totally different diet. autistic kids tend to be a lot more easily overwhelmed by sensory data and often only tolerate a pretty specific range of foods, fabrics, etc., and based on my anecdotal experience (yes now i am an authority too!) you probably should not handle that the same way you make a picky kid sit at the table until he tries the vegetables.

(apparently the "wrong" usage of "refute" is pretty much as old as the "right" one, but still always have to bite tongue against cheap pedantic shots of "well, if they've refuted it then they're clearly right and there's no need to make a fuss, QED")

ps jenny you are totally right about "curing" autism being a questionable goal but i think that if you make choices during childhood that help with social integration (like mainstreaming in the classroom vs. full time separation into special ed) it can make a kid's life easier in the long run. i think of working on "managing" and "adapting" to autism as still worthwhile, hope it is not paternalistic (more than any other parenting choices anyhow) but i do think it is pragmatic.

Maria, I'm far from an expert (neither a doctor nor a scientist nor a social worker nor on the autism spectrum, just involved in the disability rights community as an ally) but what you say makes sense. And I think you can avoid the paternalism if you involve the autistic community or groups like ASAN in the process somehow.

Here's a good blog post about eating and autism: http://thiswayoflife.org/blog/?p=213

Should have added: the comments are where it's at for that blog post.

I feel so bad for her poor kid.

her = J. McC.'s

All having to be told he can't do X and Y because he is a magical crystal indigo child that mommy cured.

Article becomes a bit arsey but I don't really blame him: another anti-vaxxer's attempt to sue to silence:
http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/index.html#4fisher

on a related note:
--
Politicians and celebrities shamed for science gaffes

* 12:00 05 January 2010 by Andy Coghlan
--

Did you know that when you eat meat, it stays in your gut for 40 years, putrefies and leads to a disease that kills you? "That is a fact," according to the model and charity campaigner Heather Mills, one of several celebrities whose statements in the media last year have been scrutinised and where necessary challenged by the British-based charity Sense About Science in its latest "celebrity watch" review.

Since 2007, the charity has published the annual review after receiving alerts of scientifically questionable or incorrect statements by public figures. "We try hard to explain why it was wrong, and why what might appear to be true isn't," says Ellen Raphael, the charity's director.

Other celebs have been pulled up this year for apparently not realising that natural substances such as hormones are chemicals, and that ovulation is suppressed naturally by pregnancy and prolonged breastfeeding. Actress Suzanne Somers, for example, was quoted as saying that the contraceptive pill must be unsafe "because is it safe to take a chemical every day, and how would it be safe to take something that prevents ovulation?"

Actor Roger Moore, meanwhile, was taken to task for claiming that foie gras causes Alzheimer's disease, and Sarah Palin for dismissing evolution.

Soccer star Robin van Persie, who plays for London club Arsenal and the Netherlands national team, ended up in the review for publicising a treatment in which horse placental fluid was dripped onto his injury. "We'll be on the lookout for more sporting examples this year in the run-up to the World Cup finals in South Africa this summer and the 2012 Olympics," says Raphael.

Any readers disturbed by Mills's meaty assertions can take comfort from Melita Gordon, a gastroenterologist at the University of Liverpool, UK, quoted by Sense about Science: "Meat proteins, like all other proteins, are digested by enzymes and absorbed in the small bowel before they ever reach the colon. Any remaining indigestible matter is mechanically transited through the whole bowel in a matter of days and expelled in your faeces."

NAME AND SHAME IMO

I want to be famous so I can make up random shit and have everybody believe me over doctors and scientists and people with professional experience in a given field.

Clouds cause schizophrenia!
Mothers wearing high heeled shoes lead to childhood obesity!
Lima beans are poison!

You're right about the last one.

Hey, it might just get you on Oprah

^^^last one is true xps

No way. I love lima beans.

OR MAYBE I AM JUST DEMENTED FROM LIMA BEAN POISONING!!!!

tell me of the clouds of yr youth

I swear on new years eve
in the afternoon
I saw a cloud that looked exactly like a dolphin
the cloud was just hanging over the ocean
I said "that cloud looks just like a dolphin"
and then I said "now it looks like an airplane"
but it was always a dolphin

MTV game show or reality show appearances cause autism! Now that I would buy.

aw, i like that

xp

Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You may know me from such educational videos as "Science: The Root of All Evil" and "The Half-Assed Approach to Mental Health Care."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article7006525.ece

good. fuck that guy.

No mention of the paper's own enthusiastic and long-lived contribution to the scare, of course.

Good commentary on Wakefield and the anti-vax people, too: http://hoydenabouttown.com/20100129.7207/and-still-they-defend-him/

Vaccine-Autism Study Is Retracted

A major British medical journal on Tuesday retracted a flawed study linking the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism and bowel disease.

20 years from now when the international plot to make everyone in the Western world autistic is uncovered, we're all going to feel a little foolish.

WSJ article on studies that looked at higher rates of autism diagnosis in certain LA neighborhoods:

L.A. Confidential: Seeking Reasons for Autism's Rise
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703422904575039351632663996.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines

the nuts are out in force over the Lancet's retraction - big editorial on the fucking HuffPo about why the retraction of the study doesn't mean anything

hate these ppl so fucking much I can't see straight

think i hate opportunistic, enabler physicians even more tbh

tho tbf, if a parent just flatly denies vaccination, i'd have a hard time as a pediatrician 'firing' their child as a pt, esp since they didnt have any say in the matter

xpost w/your first post: well no doubt - I mean you have to feel bad for the parents of children about whom there are no good answers - cf. that one episode of law & order with facilitated communicator debunking. but man something about the moon-landing qualities of this only in the sphere of actual medical science, really chafes at me

well, yeah, me too! cf -- peers of mine that either a) deny evolution or b) are hardline pro-lifers, but w/e

(also sometimes i think i'd better understand my world if i actually watched law and order. btw may i suggest "Ellen O." as the title for an ambitious song cycle about one young woman's transit of the american legal system, just sayin)

wait ppl in your program deny evolution?????

i think the article jenny linked has a really good explanation of why while im sympathetic to the parents of these kids there position is both dangerous and cruel

yeah dude. don't think there are any young earthers, but there's definitely a few ID types and/or what i guess i'll call "evolutionary fatalists" who would say that even though anti-biotics and bacterial and viral life-cycles basically ~prove~ brainless evolution it's actually just part of the master plan etc.

have had at least one conversation where the person basically agreed with allllll the major themes w/e of evolution but still refused to go so far as to admit that we, you and i, used to monkeys. like evolution + human exceptionalism

he got a 39 on the MCAT btw

echoing the terrified sentiment re: fellow med students denying evolution O_O

john the huffpost people are anti-vaccine? or did i read you wrong? wtf is going on tbh

I understand the ppl who are like "God created evolution" but I don't understand ppl who say it didn't happen

here's what huffpo ran this a.m.

hxxp://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/the-emlancetem-retraction_b_446749.html

I delinked because we don't need autism/vaccine crazies comin in here, that is a lol-free zone imo

gbx's fellow med students, that is - im sure there's scary ppl like that in my pharm school but tbh I have no desire to find out

Are vaccines the only contributing factors to autism? Of course not. Other pharmaceutical products like thalidomide and valporic acid, as well as live mumps virus, have been associated with increased autism risk in prenatal exposures, so we already know that a variety of drugs and bugs can likely make a child autistic.

1. fuck you; 2. shut up; 3. fuck you.

just criminally irresponsible. anti-science nutjobs, yr best case against the 1st amendment

http://gawker.com/5463290/vaccines-still-dont-cause-autism

Other pharmaceutical products like thalidomide and valporic acid, as well as live mumps virus, have been associated with increased autism risk in prenatal exposures, so we already know that a variety of drugs and bugs can likely make a child autistic.

http://www.lilela.net/wp-content/uploads/ouroboros_lezard_tatou.jpg

I understand the ppl who are like "God created evolution" but I don't understand ppl who say it didn't happen

Pretty much. The people in the former category strike me as a classic case of comfort zone. "My faith can't be wrong! Ergo I will back myself into this corner, cross my fingers and hope for the best."

But, there are now at least six published legal or scientific cases of children regressing into ASD following vaccination - and many more will be revealed in due time.

n=6, ok dude

that being said, what i think is irresponsible isn't an interest in investigating immune rxns that might aggravate underlying genetic issues that may predispose to autism; i'm actually 100% in favor of looking into that! it's science!

what's reprehensible, however, is advising parents to flatly refuse vaccination out of a ~fear~ of autism. autism diagnoses are (likely) on the rise due to both a broadening of the autism spectrum AND an increasing ability/tendency for physicians to diagnose tykes who used to be "weird kids" w/autism or some version of it.

i was kinda surprised that there were so many pro-life ppl in my program (well, 3).

that huffpo article is written in such bad faith and is so fundamentally confused that its kinda ruined my day

If we know that vaccines can cause these injuries, is it not reasonable to ask if they can cause similar injuries that lead to autism? (Stay tuned as those 1,300 cases come under closer scrutiny).

i mean just really

Temple Grandin: http://jezebel.com/5462363/a-bunch-of-social-yak-yaks-temple-grandin-and-autism

xp spent too long writing this, not that you could tell from my cack-handed grammar

i mean, it's like obesity: yes, there are some genetic underpinnings that will make some ppl more likely to put on adipose tissue. however, that does NOT account for the explosion of obesity in america; the gene pool changes pretty slowly in human populations, and definitely not fast enough to explain the actual epidemic we're facing.

which would serve to support the anti-vaxxers argument, up to a point: hey, autism is on the rise! genes don't move that fast, ergo: it's explained by the environment! however, this is confounded by the diagnostic bias that (I think) has been fairly well identified. moreover: it ignores a few thing---

a) we've been vaccinating ppl for a long time. you'd think we'd have loads of autistics running around by now. HOWEVER: it's possible that the increasing diagnostic acuity is just us, as a society, catching up with what we've already wrought. so, big uptick in ASD cases because we're better at finding it, levels out eventually because there's only so many ppl genetically predisposed to react to vaccination.

b) "reacting with vaccine" is just a sloppy way of saying that ASD might be autoimmune in its etiology. which means: even if you don't vaccine yr kid, they might STILL "get" ASD if they have, say, a viral infection or eat fucking pasta or whatever the fuck. unless there is something ~unique~ to the battery of vaccines we use that interacts ~specifically~ with some antibody or receptor w/e, then there's no good reason to flatly reject "vaccines" as the Enemy, writ broadly. you may as well suggest that kids shouldn't play outside or eat certain foods or....wait

c) assuming that certain, specific vaccines (or, probably, their adjuvants) ARE found to interact in some way with ppl with known genetic markers for, say, mitochondrial disease. this STILL isn't a reason to tell parents "DON'T VACCINATE YOUR KIDS." I'd wager that the population prevalence of these genetic markers is either a) fairy well-known or b) not far from being found. moreover, if the inheritance patterns can be roughly assessed, then clinicians will be able to advise parents about their child's risk of "getting" ASD from an immunorxn with vaccine. if they're saying it's a mitochondrial sensitivity (NB i know nothing about these disorders), then chances are the inheritance will be easy to assess (ps - it's maternal). at the end of the day, as a CLINICIAN, the result is the same---MOST PEOPLE DONT GET AUTISM FROM VACCINES. like, really, almost NO ONE. the risk as we know it is very, very low. whereas: if you are NOT vaccinated, your risk of getting something ~worse than autism~ is markedly increased.

I found out this month that an old, old friend of mine and my wife's -- like, for more than 20 years, was maid of honor at our wedding -- is an anti-vaxxer. She has two little boys. She decided not to do ANY vaccines for them. One of them came down with whooping cough. I literally do not know a single person who has ever had whooping cough BECAUSE THEY ALL GOT VACCINATED. And yet she apparently thinks it's an enormous coincidence.

I suppose saying "grats on killing yr kids" would not be an appropriate thing to do

Appropriate given her choices for her own children: yes, probably!
Resulting in any kind of continued pretense at friendship: no, probably.

Pasta, gbx?

ok, this:

And last September, a chart review of children with autism and mitochondrial disease, published in the Journal of Child Neurology, looked at 28 children with ASD and mitochondrial disease and found that 17 of them (60.7%) had gone through autistic regression, and 12 of the regressive cases had followed a fever. Among the 12 children who regressed after fever, a third (4) had fever associated with vaccination, just like Hannah Poling.

bad faith in the extreme, imo. i'll read the article in a bit, but just going off this graf:

Four children went through a regression after a ~fever following vaccination~. What this illustrates is NOT that vaccines give kids autism, it's that ~fevers are associated with vaccines~. Which is something we know!!!! Well, what the paper is trying to get at is that mitochondrial disease AND fever might be risk factors for autism. However, unless some huge segment of the population has mitochondrial disease (i don't know!), then it's wildly irresponsible to advise parents to refuse vaccination. It's just FOX News style begging the question "i'm not saying i'm just saying" button pushing.

btw jenny mccarthy Did You Know that there is an inconclusive (but intriguing!) link between rubella infection and the auto-immune mediated diabetes mellitus type 1???? maybe i will write an equally bad faith editorial that says that if we stop giving MMR vaccines, we'll see a wild uptick in diabetes!

kingkong: i think some anti-vaxxers say that gluten is linked to ASD. again, presumably because of some autoimmune rxn.

here's the thing: the anti-vaxx "movement" feeds on the totally natural, parental desire to protect children from harmful environmental elements that adults (and this is crucial) *ought to be able to control*.

you can choose not to feed yr kids certain food, you can choose to not inject them with vaccine, etc. and this ~may~ reduce their risk of "getting" ASD. however, you don't CATCH autism! if we assume that its etiology can be traced into the murky world of immunology, then it is no longer the purview of parental authority. you could not vacc yr kid, only feed them vegan food, and never let them play in the dirt, and they STILL might end up with some kind of ASD. the problem isn't REALLY the environment, it's how your child's body is reacting to it.

now, this isn't to say that we should just throw our hands up and let the world devour our children. if you can actually PREVENT yr kid from getting autism by limiting exposure to something really specific, then great, do that! but if, say, autistic regression is shown to follow ~fever~ then well, shit, that's gonna be harder to do. kids get fevers all the fucking time. sometimes it's from a vaccine, most of the time it's not! and they still have to have this mitochondrial disorder!

which, i guess, is why it gets back to *control*. controlling a kid's diet is tricky (what will he eat at school or at his friend's house or when he GROWS UP or ahhhhhhhh), controlling what's in the air is impossible, but saying y/n to getting an injection is easy as pie. hence: the anti-vaxx movement hones in on that ONE THING. which, also, just so happens to be like the single greatest public health advance we've ever made.

so fucking svengali a-holes serve that up as the Major Thing You Can Do, turn it into a "cause" that concerned parents can champion and spread the word about, and then keep them on the hook by devising complex, high-maintenance lifestyles that require constant maintenance/tweaking to either forestall the looming threat of autism, or (ugh) "cure" it.

Cool man, so long as I don't have to worry about farfalle.

ha i think we shd just take a hard line w/ these ppl and just say, look, you may be right, but i don't give a shit. let's say vaccines cause (or "cause") autism in some very small fraction of kids, that's the price we all pay to make sure none of us is dying of fucking TB anymore. cost benefit, you lose, sorry, you're not special.

but i'm kind of a nazi abt that. or a leninist, maybe.

the more i think about it, the more diabetes type 1 is an interesting contrast:

we know that its etiology stems from an autoimmune rxn that destroys pancreatic beta cells, which means no more insulin. we're not REALLY sure what sparks that reaction, because, you know, the immune system is ~weird~

consequently, we spend time and research $$$ looking into the cause, but really mostly we care about the management. because unless we can someday pinpoint the fucking galaxy of possible environmental factors that "cause" DMT1, we shouldn't worry too much about preventing it. vague polygenic factors + obscure environmental factors = \(°_°)/

better to focus on how to ~manage~ it, which we're getting pretty good at. however, daily injections won't "manage" autism. it's weird and inscrutable and it scares us. a child that develops DMT1 is still a "normal" kid, they're just "sick" and you have to teach them to watch their sugars. you can't do that with autism.

honestly, i think that's another sort of ugly thing that underwrites the anti-vaxx movement: the stigma of mental/neurological pathology. raising a kid with DMT1 is a hard row to hoe, but by god we'll manage it, we're PARENTS and that's what PARENTS do. but sweet mother of god what if our kids gets AUTISM, that would just be awful (for us, who are scared and can't imagine dealing with that).

and yeah, goole, i'm hardline, too. to an extent.

IF we can definitively trace the development of autism to one specific thing, in one specific vaccine (either the adjuvant or the viral/bacterial stuff), that, in the presence of an underlying genetic pathology (which will likely be known already!), then what i'd be comfortable with a very very small (and easily identifiable!) patient population pursuing a different course of vaccination.

which is something we already do with kids that are immunocompromised!

but as long as the anti-vaxx ppl keep suggesting that it is VACCINES that are the problem and not (presumably) some tiny cohort's (likely inevitable) autoimmune reaction, then they will continue to be endanger (in a v real, medical, possibly life or death way) far more children than they purport to be protecting (from a mental illness that does not, as far as i know, kill anyone).

btw just read that temple grandin thing and basically she is otm. esp this

Grandin does say "I think there's something going on with some type of environmental contaminant." She adds, "I think we are going to be hearing more about epigenetics and autism [...] How things like toxins and diet and other things turn on the switches that regulate how certain genes are expressed."

JMcC et al will be inclined to latch onto this, but srsly this is right on. Autism is weird and complex and w/e and we'll continue looking into it but mostly we should focus on how to raise autistic children well, not on "curing" them.

ok i have spent waaaay too much time on this, lol midterm on friday :(

but you have done good work here with your OTMness!

yes, you are killin it gbx

i could go look at pubmed i guess but i assume there have been like, retrospective cohorts & case-controls done with this kind of stuff?

Hahaha I was in a small group just now but we were just talking about this. It was led by a pediatrician and she was just like "Thank God, you do not know how many hours I have wasted futilely trying to argue with these people". Getting a pediatrician to talk about vaccine truthers is guaranteed to be awesome, btw, unless it is one of the bad ones who believes that crap somehow.

That article about autism incidence in L.A. kind of angers me, weirdly, since tbh the Autism bubble is nowhere near as widespread and serious a problem as the map of asthma incidence that snakes up the 710 freeway.

^^^ well that is the thing, tho, isn't it!

ppl are terrified---TERRIFIED---of their child developing something that falls anywhere on the autistic spectrum, but are very willing to expose their children to any number of other environmental threats that MIGHT KILL THEM. vaccine? just say no to autism! drink all the mountain dews? w/e. care enough to get riled up about evil vaccine manufacturers that want to kill yr children for profit? write a letter, go on TV! get upset by the intimate relationship between poverty and poor health? *cracks a mountain dew*

the autism thing is just ~frustrating~ on a level that i really cant articulate esp because im very interested in own small way in autoimmune rxns to environmental stressors and so much ~work~ and time and energy is getting put into debunking completely retarded theories its just ugh

get upset by the intimate relationship between poverty and poor health? *cracks a mountain dew*

ha im sure ive posted abt this before but it KILLS ME that its so hard to get ppl interested/concerned/upset abt major systemic problems in how health care is delivered and yet ppl refuse their kids vaccinations its just urrrrrrgh

I believe that the public lynching and shaming of Dr. Wakefield is unwarranted and overwrought, and that history will ultimately judge who was right and who was wrong about proposing a possible association between vaccination and regressive autistic spectrum disorder (ASD).

lol sub-bush

To be fair I have had so much soda in my lifetime (I am having a Cherry Coke Zero now!) that if someone tried to speak ill of Mountain Dew in front of me I would be all defensive. "Maybe I WANT to get diabetes!" Plus as long as they are selling Mt Dew Throwback (with an old-timey dude on the can!) I can convince myself that sugar instead of corn syrup makes it OK.

Actually the small group we just had was for Evidence-Based Medicine class, it was a meta-analysis of stroke risk associated with oral contraceptives, and it ended up being that about 400 extra strokes per year are associated with oral contraceptive use instead of condoms, but if all those people used condoms instead of oral contraceptives, it would be associated with about 600,000 extra (presumably unintentional) pregnancies every year, and of those pregnancies there would be some morbidity and mortality associated with pregnancy (but still fewer strokes). That figure totally blew my mind, and I'd never seen it before! I think the freaky, one-in-several-thousand side effects have some extra resonance on people, or something.

PS Mountain Dew Throwback is awesome. It has real sugar and an old-timey cartoon guy on the label! *Pancreas catches on fire*

i think gbx and i have talked abt how u&k soda is during midterms (hes a fan of mt dew but i like mexican sodas)

the oral contraceptives thing is r interesting and i think there is oftentimes a willful ignorance towards the idea that there are always risk and tradeoffs w/ modern medicine ~ need to think more abt this tho

I don't know why I talked about Throwback twice, I think I am v tired today.

Mexican sodas are unfuckwithable between Mexican Coke and Jarritos, though. </Metabolic Syndrome>

there is oftentimes a willful ignorance towards the idea that there are always risk and tradeoffs w/ modern medicine

^^^this. there are few magic bullets in medicine. it's sorta funny that vaccines are actually one of them (most of the time). ;_;

also i have consumed one (1) mountain dew today

other, infuriating, goal post moving anti-vaxx strawman i hate:

pharma makes SO MUCH MONEY from vaccines! *arches eyebrows*

^^^ i had this argument w/ someone b4 and its like "you realize that big pharma doesnt give a fuk about vaccines and makes hardly any money from them" "well that's what they WANT you to think" "..."

other things that cost money

-- trains
-- bicycles
-- wind power generators
-- condoms
-- etc.

the whole argument is predicated on the idea that vaccines are ACTUALLY useless, despite all evidence to the contrary. if anything, the only thing scandalous about $$$ and vaccines is that they're not cheaper and more widely available

just read that whole article and wow, you would think that a goof like kirby who's made his bones trolling the medical community could at least have the sense to do better than that garbage, which is just 700 words worth of confounding variables, small sample sizes, conspiracy theories and str8 misinformation

from what i know of this guy he's a rightwing nut, why does huffpo even run his columns?

huge traffic numbers

from what i know of this guy he's a rightwing nut, why does huffpo even run his columns?

― rasta batman gigolo (k3vin k.), Wednesday, February 3, 2010 9:40 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Because Huffington is a fucking moron when it comes to health/diet issues.

Genius w/ nipple slip coverage, tho.

this whole vaccine = autism drives me crazy mad. what the hell is wrong with people?

also i thought autism wasnt curable only manageable? my best friends son is autistic and has read everything on the subject. she believes in the triggered gene argument which im also inclined to believe.

also didnt jenny mccarthy not even notice her kid was autistic until he was in school and the kids teacher informed her?

what would be nice is a set of handy links refuting these anti-vax talking points, none of which has to do with autism:

- vaccines have mercury in them; proper tests have not been done to show that children aren't harmed by the mercury in vaccines (yes i know that in the US vaccines no longer contain thimerosol, but in europe they do, plus the swine flu vaccine definitely has thimerosol in it regardless of where you live)

- vaccines are a cash cow for pharmaceutical companies; we don't need them but big pharma has convinced govt that they are necessary; we are propagandized into believing it - both by the companies theselves and by the government - in order to fill the coffers of these companies

- along the same lines, proper independent testing is never done on these vaccines; if you look at the funding for every group who does testing you can trace it back to a pharmaceutical company or other vested interest; so when you're told "it's safe" that's a lie

- nobody gets measles or mumps any more; why do we need a vaccine?

you can read variations on these points in the comments thread of this CBS News story that implies "vaccine defenders" are paid off by big pharma:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/25/cbsnews_investigates/main4296175.shtml

the general thrust is that there is a "mandatory vaccine racket" that could be harming children, but we'll never find out, because every study is tainted by pharma cash

haha and just to be clear, that's what CBS HAS TO SAY ABOUT THE MATTER.. so you can imagine the comments

vaccines are a cash cow for pharmaceutical companies

Making this up, but profit from a one-off dose of vaccine must be pretty small beer to corporations whose main income surely comes from regular drug treatments for chronic illness, no? Even when given to large chunks of the population.

Is it hypocritical if my stance is "of course vaccines are a good idea, shut up and take them" but my feelings on psych drugs are "I was on antidepressants and they seemed a) p bad for me personally and b) not scientifically fully understood, and I don't trust the testing methods, so, let some company sell me a bunch of chemicals to wash through my brain every day I THINK NOT" etc?

(wd justify this partly by thinking our understanding of neurochemistry is very far behind our understanding of e.g. immunology, but I'm no scientist)

(No idea on handy links - feel some could probably be obtained from hoking through Bad Science, but don't currently wish to expose myself to the Dawkinsesque smug righteousness of the commenters)

well there were billions of swine flu jabs manufactured i think - volume, baby

"MMR is out of copyright, it’s generic, anyone can make it, you could set up a factory and make it yourself if you wanted; it’s not a money-spinner."
http://www.badscience.net/2003/12/mmr-never-mind-the-facts/

yeah but what about the yearly flu vaccine! it's a racket that is possibly giving our kids mercury poisoning!

damnit where is that graphic of mercury in vaccines vs. mercury in sardines

are you saying that mercury in sardines is good for you?

maybe not if you have lots of sardines every day, just like happens with vaccines!

i am late for school so i'm only gonna address the two i can off the cuff and w/o having to resort to "links"

- vaccines are a cash cow for pharmaceutical companies; we don't need them but big pharma has convinced govt that they are necessary; we are propagandized into believing it - both by the companies theselves and by the government - in order to fill the coffers of these companies

vaccines being a cash cow for the people making them is a strawman argument, and only holds water IF "we don't need them." but we do. and while i realize that being a scion of modern medicine makes my opinion suspect or w/e, pretty much the entire body of medical and public health literature would back me up on that. but i dunno maybe having measles kicking around would be keep things ~interesting~

- nobody gets measles or mumps any more; why do we need a vaccine?

q for u: do you know ~why~ no one gets these things anymore? and psssst btw ppl HAVE gotten measles, recently, in the united states! actually, here is an internet link for you: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5708a3.htm

sweet dude

- vaccines have mercury in them; proper tests have not been done to show that children aren't harmed by the mercury in vaccines (yes i know that in the US vaccines no longer contain thimerosol, but in europe they do, plus the swine flu vaccine definitely has thimerosol in it regardless of where you live)

the cdc has a good page dealing with these concerns and further links to independent, peer-reviewed research. they also have extensive information regarding thimerosal and h1n1 and other flu vaccines. thimerosal is still being used as a preservative in h1n1 and other flu vaccines but a) u can get doses w/o it for v young children and b) the dangers still arent fully understood, anyway. i mean it sounds callous but:

In the meantime, it is important to keep in mind that the benefits of influenza vaccination outweigh the theoretical risk, if any, for exposure to thimerosal. Each year, an average of about 36,000 people in the United States die from influenza, and 114,000 have to be admitted to the hospital as a result of influenza

but i also i mean - if your determined to see the gov't as a propaganda wing of Big Pharama then anything the cdc or the nejm or whomever is going to print is just ~~part of the machine~~. also a lot of the science w/r/t to thimerosal for e.g. is still uncertain esp w/automimmune rxns. and i can see that it seems frustrating or condescending but we ~don't know~ some of this stuff yet - we dont have a complete picture of all the interreactions yet.

so while the weight of the evidence seems to be that no, cf this in pediatrics - i mean its still guarded, y'know?

ilx doesnt seem to like that link but just google Thimerosal-containing vaccines and autistic spectrum disorder: a critical review of published original data.

Will the Vaccine-Autism Saga Finally End?
Not likely. You can retract a scientific paper, but not a mass movement.

http://www.scienceprogress.org/2010/02/vaccine-saga/

haven't read all this thread, and unrelated to autism, so take this as unrelated/in the general, but it kind of bothers me re:flu vaccine the hate that people throw at ordinary people who aren't as smart or well-educated as them, especially when, not to get all tinfoilhat, the paranoia was ramped up by news networks etc. at a time when vaccines were in short supply.

Also my own little anecdote: my friend was in a risk category and worried about the vaccine, and i told her hey these are the people that know shit, that calculated the risks, that did the research, telling you you need this. So she got it, had a reaction almost immediately, and was badly sick for almost a month. Boy, did i feel bad.

these are the people that know shit, that calculated the risks, that did the research, telling you you need this.

This is still true.

the kind of ratings-trolling that US networks have done surrounding vaccines has been disgusting and borderline criminal

ratings trolling?

same kind of ratings-trolling they do on every issue

Laurel: yeah it is and i don't wanna spread more FUD by recounting that

i dnno, i there's more i have to say re that and que's q and stupid idiots but busy and haven't read the thread

zvook i don't think anyone here hates regular people who are skeptical about flu vaccines, i mean it's natural given all the anecdotes you'll hear to be wary of putting anything you're unsure about in your body. doesnt mean they shouldn't get the shot or vaccinate their kids, or that their misinformed decisions are any less dangerous, we just have to do a better job of spreading, yknow, scientific info and reasons why it's important for everyone to get these shots. it's the mccarthys and the wakefields of the world that are the actual evil ones, they're the ones jeopardizing public health by spreading the misinformation/fearmongering and reaching a large and easily-persuaded mass of people with it

man i really hate using such loaded words as "evil" when "ignorant" "foolish" and "should be smacked upside the head with a giant catfish" should suffice

yeah i'm really coming with an axe to grind from out in the world and elsewhere on the net, plus i get that a lot of this anger is concern at root, but sometimes it comes off as, or is, ppl sneering and clapping own back for being well-off/historically not fucked over by authorities more often than not. xp

i think two things a) most ppl itt have been pretty clear and sympathetic towards layman (which most of us are, really) and understand that real ire shld be directed towards ppl fear-mongering and b) in this specific case i *think* the majority of ppl who are really concerned abt this tend to be pretty well-off themselves

i know ive said before itt and c-l and gbx made this point p recently: there are huge problems w/ the way medical information is communicated, with health care practices and with the health care industry in this country. part of my frustration is that we AREN'T spending time and resources on these issues and instead keep having this particular debate

if i ever read the thread i'm sure i'll agree. also agree that i rate everything could deal with this quickfastinahurry

- nobody gets measles or mumps any more; why do we need a vaccine?

mumps outbreak, 2009!

Coincidentally I am working through a lecture about testicular pathology right now!

(Mumps is the major source of acute testicular inflammation in unimmunized populations, with a high risk for permanent infertility, btw)

Have to smile at the ILX-med group avoiding studying by posting here. I've got a formative OSCE in the morning and lack all motivation to review at this late hour so i'm similarly wasting time. A ~lot~ of time, see below ad nauseum.

gbx, I like your attempt to draw parallels between T1DM and ASD. Bbut it doesn't really map out: there is no known brain lesion that causes (or even is associated with) ASD in the way that pancreatic beta-cell destruction renders a patient diabetic. There isn't a plausible mechanism for a connection between a change in immune status brought on by vaccination and a change in the child's socialization/communication skills, so any account of ASD's pathophysiology that relies on autoimmunity is oh-so-much handwaving at this point.

There are lots of brain diseases that we're pretty sure are autoimmune in mechanism, if not in origin (ultimate causes are hard to find in medicine). Multiple sclerosis is the paradigm example of an autoimmune disease of the brain. Another autoimmune neurological disease, ADEM (acute disseminated encephalomyelitis), is similar to MS in several ways, but unlike MS has been associated with vaccination. Most cases of ADEM happen in school aged kids, so the initial MMR is rarely if ever to blame. ADEM also happens after viral infections, far more frequently than post-vaccination, and its thought that vaccination against viruses such as measles actually results in a net reduction of cases of ADEM.

As a side note, the strongest evidence for a neurological disease caused by a reaction to vaccination is Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS). GBS does occur in kids, but again, mostly school aged. flu shots and "booster" shots are the most likely suspects. Again, GBS is far more often thought to be post-viral or post-bacterial (Campylobacter, Mycoplasma) than post-vaccination.

Another side note: we have a plausible mechanism for post-infectious GBS ("molecular mimicry": Campylobacter epitopes shared with peripheral nerve myelin, immune cells get confused and attack the peripheral nerves once the infection is cleared) but lack any great theory for how a flu shot triggers GBS or how a virus (or less often a vaccine) triggers ADEM.

If you want to draw parallels/contrasts between ASD and autoimmune diseases, I'd suggest you start with ADEM and GBS. I think they have very little in common. For instance, both ADEM and GBS are monophasic, while ASD is not.

The main point i'd like to make is about the nature of autism as a disease. This is tricky to explain. Most of what i want to say is a gloss on Ian Hacking, especially 'Mad Travellers' -- an excellent book that I'd recommend to anyone who found the WSJ article upthread (about the tendency of autism diagnoses in LA to cluster in wealthier zip codes) interesting.

ASD diagnoses have been increasing rapidly. The natural question is why.

One argument, which I think is misguided, is that an increasing number of children are suffering, essentially, some kind of brain damage (or at least brain altering pathology), which is extrinsic to them and changes irrevocably the natural course their lives would otherwise have taken (and this change = autism). The child (and the child's brain) is healthy and normal at point X, then something happens that causes damage (or at least change), so that the same child is autistic at point Y. In its simplest form, this model accommodates a few explanatory pathologies: infection, toxin, malnutrition, etc. You can make the model more sophisticated: the child might be genetically susceptible to whatever the external factor is, so that the same MMR jab given to the child and his sister leaves one autistic, the other unaffected. Or you can have a dynamic, evolving picture, with autoimmunity at the center: something triggers abnormal function of the autoimmune system which either damages the child/brain in a one-shot deal or alters the child/brain's function in an ongoing sense in conjunction with altered nutrition or harmful exposures or whatever.

I would argue that all of those models share a common extrinsicality to their explanation of a given child's diagnosis of autism. They are understandably hugely appealing for reasons i'll come back to after sketching an alternate model.

I would argue that we might consider autism-spectrum behaviors as intrinsic to the life of the particular child in whom they appear. Brain lesions do not explain autism, nor does any other obviously discernable physical state (like seizures, say). Any explanation of autism needs to bridge the bio-psycho-social: the child's brain and biology, the child's experience of living (much of which is often opaque to us given the autism we're trying to explain), and the social (familial, societal) context in which that occurs. Which is not to argue that (given the results in LA county) rich families "cause" autism. Or that modernity (2010 vs 1980) does either. But that what we're seeing in the increasing rates of diagnosed cases of ASD is an interaction between the culture, the times, the families and their ideas, the children and their experiences, and yes, the physiology and pathophysiology of the children and their developing brains.

You might say: why paint with such a broad brush? Is there any evidence that broader social factors cause autism? Any evidence that there is ~no~ specific biological cause of it?

Well, no. But as I explained briefly above we do have several good models of what happens to the brain when it gets "attacked" extrinsically by the immune system (and of course, from other causes as well). Autism, neurologically speaking, doesn't look anything like those diseases. I can't prove a negative (that there is not and never will be any known biological process sufficient to cause autism). And i can't "prove" the model of "intrinsic" ASD, in part because the model is over-determined for multiple causes ("everything" plays into it). I will point out here that, neurologically speaking, it is not at all controversial to argue that experiences modify the brain -- that the life lived by a particular person (say, "enriched" education on one hand, or "traumatic" experiences on the other) is capable of changing the structure and function of the brain, right down to the level of epigenetic factors that modify how and when a gene is expressed by neurons and their supporting cells. We don't know the details of how that happens in a particular person, but we know that real brain changes are happening to all of us, constantly, in response to real/perceived situations. So saying that autism is intrinsic in my sense is not the same as saying that it's imaginary, or "all in the mind", or whatever. Changes in the brain from lived experience are concrete and real, but (unfortunately for science) variable and individual and dynamic, so they're hard to reduce to a purely pathophysiological model (like infection or autoimmunity) that can explain multiple cases across an entire society.

My explanation is probably sloppy, I hope you can follow the gist. I'm not up to writing rigorously at this hour. Recommend again Ian Hacking's "Mad Travellers", which explored this vein in more depth than I can manage tonight.

Back to the original question: why are we diagnosing more and more kids with autism? The extrinsic explanations are appealing: maybe it's an infection, maybe kids are eating too much garbage or drinking from the wrong kind of plastic bottle, or maybe its the MMR, triggering some disordered autoimmunity.

One reason why the extrinsic explanations are appealing is that they lead to testable hypotheses (ie, actual science) and possible interventions. If we can find a murine retrovirus, we can start antivirals. If we can blame thimerosol we can reformulate the vaccines, or cut them out all together and whoops! -- lose herd immunity. While Jenny McCarthy and her minions are certainly anti-Science, they're actually quite scientific in another sense: they've got a cause-and-effect model for what causes autism and they're following through on it. Their absurdity and inhumanity stems from their refusal to consider contrary evidence, but insofar as they get to choose the inputs into their model (heavy on Wakefield, light on everything since), they're at least internally consistent.

Next we could consider a cartoon version of the bio-psycho-social model i suggested above. Many people argue that autism rates have largely been unchanged over the years, "but now doctors are better at recognizing it". That gives some credit to the times we live in and the people we are, so kudos from me. But it raises a difficult question: where were the autistic children in 1975? how about in 1891? Renaissance Florence? Ancient Greece? Underlying this analysis is the assumption that autism is pretty much unchanged over time and across places and cultures. Again, it implies that autism itself is caused by something ahistorical and a-cultural (infection or autoimmunity or what-have-you) and we've just finally discovered a test that reveals the truth that's been hiding in plain sight all these many centuries past.

But that's the thing: there is no objective, impersonal test for autism. We can go back and test the bones of the Romans for lead poisoning but we can't retroactively diagnose one of Bach's kids with autism. in fact, it's hard to even know what that would mean. So here's an even more difficult question for the "just better at recognizing it" crowd: what would it be like to be an autistic child in France in 1891? or the parent of a child with autism in Heian-period Japan? That's a very hard question to answer, as long as you stay in character of the times and the place: we don't know what autism meant to them, the concept would be foreign and anachronistic in that context. Not only the concept of autism itself but many related ideas -- childhood and development, appropriate behavior with the family and at school -- would be similarly foreign and anachronistic. So even though the language we use to define autism seems universal -- delay/difficulty in communication skills, impaired socialization -- it certainly bears the stamp of the time and place of its coinage.

The trouble with the intrinsic model of ASD is that it doesn't lead anywhere fast. If my argument holds, and ASD is the product of some immensely complex and multidirectional interaction of a child's brain, his lived experience and his social context, it doesn't lead to much in the way of prevention or cure. Symptomatic management would be the rule indefinitely, as it is today.

Another major problem with the intrinsic model is that it can come perilously close to blaming. To make it clear on my part: I'm absolutely not saying that autism is the "fault" of the children who are autistic, or their parents, or even our society at large. This isn't meant to be a jeremiad, either -- "look how sick we all are in our modern, toxic world". I think the forces involved are almost completely out of our control as individuals, including as parents (I have a toddler and one on the way). I think the appearance and evolution of new/different ways of being human (like autism) are emergent from the chaos and incredible complexity of our situation as self-aware, recursively constructed entities. It's not your fault, if you've got Asperger's, it's not Jenny McCarthy's fault that her son is autistic, it's not "society's fault", either.

But just because it's not someone's fault, and it's not imaginary, doesn't mean it's "caused" by some incredibly obscure pathophysiological process. That's not how socially constructed conditions work: they don't have a clearcut cause, no one's to blame. They just ~are~ part and parcel of life in our world in the year 2010.

Obviously this is not the usual medical model of understanding autism, or much else really. You could even say the idea that autism is socially constructed and therefore "intrinsic" is incommensurate with the medical approach, because it leads to no tests and no treatments. That's a fair point.

So why bother making this argument at such great length?

Two points: First, I would hope that we might see autism more in terms of other alternate/unusual ways of being than as a disease. I think that's more accurate -- I think autistics have more in common with hikikomori (shut-in Japanese teenagers) than patients with multiple sclerosis (which has its own social and psychological factors but is fundamentally a disease of a biological process damaging the brain). And i think its more humane -- what i've read from Temple Grandin and other high-functioning autistic people is that they themselves see their ASD condition as part of who they are, not as something afflicting them. Having said that, I recognize that the trend in medicine and in the popular mind's understanding of the medical world is precisely in the opposite direction -- I don't think HuffPost commenters are going to be giving up the quest for a magic bullet anytime soon.

Second, personal reasons. I'm almost done my training in Neurology, and i've found precious little in my studies to encourage this kind of thinking about people or diseases. Way back when I read a book of Oliver Sacks case studies (including an account of Temple Grandin) and decided neurology was the place where I would find both objective medical models of biological pathophysiology and subjective accounts from people living through the experiences of diseases of the brain from the inside. Turned out to be much more the former than the latter. My loss.

Anyway, sorry about the length. Thanks for your patience and interest if you've read this far.

I'm skimming at work and there's plenty of reasonable and interesting stuff in yr post there but I think what you're describing is Asperger's or the "higher" functioning end of ASD. Kids with profound Autism are recognisably impaired far beyond potential social causes. I don't think we're gonna find 1 cause of ASD either, which is one reason we talk about a spectrum yeah? But it's important to remember that the deep end of the spectrum is a lot more severe than just oddity or lack of social imagination.

plasmon that was utterly absorbing, thank you

Yeah Noodle's concern is mine - my experience in working with the severely autistic is that it doesn't seem correct to describe them as just people with a different way of thinking about things or of interfacing with the world; we're talking about profound self-care difficulties, communicative impairment (as vs. different styles of communication, which in milder Asperger's might be a fair descriptor)...I mean, there is a real possibility that the behaviors we see in difficult cases of autism really are just a very, very different lens through which the person is viewing the world, but I'm skeptical of that model, just because of the severity of the behavior & its impact on kids I worked with. it'd be hard to describe a lot of the more chaotic & destructive behaviors in terms of the response it might be seeking.

I guess in general I come across that severe autism alongside other disabilities and maybe that has an effect but if I remember correctly there are far more people whose ASD diagnosis falls at that end of the spectrum. There's a danger in conflating ASD with Asperger's, naturally enough cos it's kind of the "public face" of the spectrum, but we do need to remember that it's a v. broad spectrum and can be radically different at one end from the other.

isnt it possible to recognize that autism can be "another way of being in the world" without resorting to a model of disease?

has anyone read about ramachandran/others work on autism and 'mirror neurons'? shit is dope

If my argument holds, and ASD is the product of some immensely complex and multidirectional interaction of a child's brain, his lived experience and his social context

sounds like we're living in a greg bear novel ;_;

isnt it possible to recognize that autism can be "another way of being in the world" without resorting to a model of disease?

"disorder" is the term, right, though you could argue (probably persuasively) that "disorder" is just the psych version of "disease." while I can dig that families/friends/interested parties might be coming from a "if people would look at this as just a difference, not a deficiency, it'd be a cooler world" standpoint, there's also a need for funding for both research & treatment (including housing; many autistic people are just too much to handle at a home level). You won't get much funding for something that you've gone out of your way to classify as a different way being.

I haven't read ramachandran but just reading a summary of the mirror neuron idea - I mean - this is what's tricky about talking about psych pathologies. the underlying pathology results in a person who thinks, feels, behaves differently. the person is not the pathology, and I'm guessing yr point is, "there's nothing 'wrong' with autistic people." but, I mean, this is a classic question with psych maladies: if we say there's "nothing wrong," then why are we devising treatments at all? at root is the way that people have a pretty animal horror of anything that codes as "unwell" I think & that's a whole ball of Levi-Strauss & Foucault iirc

i wasnt associating the ramachandran thing with the the being-in-the-world question for what its worth

i recognize its a thorny question anyway and not one which i have a strong opinion about in any direction