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

OK again I could look this via NIH grant funding, but is anyone even looking, large scale, about the risks/benefits of this nutty vaccine schedule?

I gotta get back into infectious diseasees; this stuff gets me fired up.

Srsly I want to punch Jennie McCarthy in the face, and I'm a peace-loving hippy chick.

xp:geez

I had chicken pox as a kid and then shingles a few years ago. Like mh I thought you had chicken pox and then got better but the virus lurked inside of you until suddenly one day LIVE AREA SHINGLES LOOKING TO PARTY ON YOUR HEAD AND FACE.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001861/

Yeah, pretty much

btw I am gbx's age but made it to 14 without getting chicken pox so I got the vaccine.

Chik-Pox sucked. I think I was 8, and it was a horrible couple of weeks. I haven't had singles but I'm sure it is coming.

There's a shingles vaccine! They really only recommend it for people 60 and older, though.

I'll get a fake ID.

I don't think you have to worry about it unless you're immuno suppressed or super stressed (I got them when I temporarily lost my job and our apartment caught fire in the same week).

i also had shingles as a p healthy mid/late 20s person. was weirdly brought on by a sunburn, i think. it wasn't as incredibly painful as it seems described as for elderly ppl but it def sucked

plus not just on my head but on my EYE so yea fuk u shingles

A friend of mine got shingles when she was pregnant.

I used to get shingles twice a year due to sun exposure. Now: SPF 50, even indoors.

I had chicken pox as a kid and then shingles a few years ago. Like mh I thought you had chicken pox and then got better but the virus lurked inside of you until suddenly one day LIVE AREA SHINGLES LOOKING TO PARTY ON YOUR HEAD AND FACE.

Shingles are the worst. I am immuno suppressed so that's how I ended up with it -- my shoulder still gets the occasional ache and pain from the area that had shingles, but the idea of having it on the eye gives me so many nightmares. That must have been so painful.

Yeah, for real. My case was relatively mild, thankfully.

I have shingles right now! My ex got it last year. I suspect it's somewhat common among certain stressy types.

boys should get the HPV vaccine. p sure it hasn't been approved for boys yet (...clinical trials, ladies and gentlemen), but i likely will be. given that stupid boys are the actual vectors, vaccinating them would be more efficacious imo.

But how, from a public-policy standpoint, can we separate the stupid boys from the non-stupid boys to prioritise limited resources?

Look at their facebook pages.

can we separate the stupid boys from the non-stupid boys

it's easy, the second group is imaginary

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/01/rob-schneider-links-autism-vaccines_n_1641922.html

well fuck

u think u can trust some celebs but now this shit

deuce bigelow noooooooooo

How could one of comedy's greatest minds be taken in?

haha

i watched the frontline special on this. i hope mccarthy & carrey's dumbaby gets shingles on his dingle

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-09-10/ap-exclusive-private-school-vaccine-opt-outs-rise

Bibi Reber, whose children attend the Waldorf-inspired Greenwood School in Mill Valley, had her children vaccinated only for what she sees as the deadliest diseases. Greenwood has a 79 percent opt-out rate among its kindergartners.

"I don't think dirt or getting sick makes you a weak person; your immune system needs to work with things," said Reber, whose children attend the Greenwood School in the San Francisco Bay area town of Mill Valley. "We certainly don't want to go back to having polio, but on the other hand, I don't think we need to eradicate all the childhood diseases

Public health officials say that, regardless of why parents choose not to vaccinate their children, the result is the same: an increased risk of an outbreak of whooping cough or other communicable diseases.

Greenwood School offers a dynamic education that recognizes the developmental phases of childhood and fosters the emerging capacities of each child. And whooping cough.

Enlivened education is filled with vitality, enthusiasm and spirit of imagination. And whooping cough.

Comments on that article already bringing the crazy.

Dude, if a robust immune system is key, get vaccines but don't wash hands after handling raw chicken.

I suppose it's nice that the tradition of the old-fashioned childhood diseases will be kept alive forevermore by artisanal practitioners of suffering and debility. You wouldn't want to see the classic clinical syndromes of mumps or diphtheria vanish entirely under the tide of soulless modernization and health, like an old theatre with gilded painted ceilings torn down to build another condo building and another Starbucks.

We need a Society for the Preservation of Historic Diseases. We can outfit the sick children in britches and pinafores, have their nurses wear the old fashioned white caps with red crosses, hire only bearded doctors in suspenders who don't wash their hands. It'll be a mark of culture and sophistication to have an outbreak of whooping cough in your community, like having a soda fountain that makes its own secret cola recipe or a an old-time barber shop where they use straight razors.

Of course true hipsters will roll their eyes at these increasingly corporatized North American diseases, making a point of exposing their little darlings to dengue or yellow fever instead, or at least have them contract a nagging case of neurocysticercosis.

Would be a good skit on Portlandia.

Reminds me of this, albeit vaguely http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=uWENUcEKE1s

Our artisanal disease sommeliers have the training and experience necessary to recommend the infection that's right for your child. Nothing disfiguring or damaging to their long term intellectual or reproductive abilities, don't worry, just a quick sprint around the block for little Jethro's immune system and the proud feeling for the family that he's now entwined in humanity's endless struggle with death and decay. Our expert photographers will capture professionally lit medium format photographs of little Ruby's febrile exanthem and upload them to the social media platform of your choice -- with your permission, of course.

haha

On a possibly related note:

http://m.gawker.com/5942391/sheryl-crow-has-a-theory-that-cell-phone-use-caused-her-brain-tumor

Wasn't she a smoker? That's a far more likely cause of a tumor than a cell phone.

Hanging out with Lance Armstrong would probably cause brain damage, to be fair.

<3 u, Plasmon.

I really didn't think highly educated Bay Area yuppsters would suddenly have something in common with our dear playmate Jenny.

Can't say I'm surprised.

Most of the patients I see who subscribe to pseudoscientific explanations of medical problems arer better educated and/or better off. They expect to be able to understand exactly what's happening to them, either by following their own research (usually U of Google) or by adopting someone else's just-so story. They also tend to reject explanations of "bad luck" or "just one of those things" even when the story they prefer is nebulous at best ("stress"). There's probably some connection to their station in life. It must be adaptive for people to believe that their choices determine their fates and their situation can be improved if they just work a little harder at figuring it out. Those attitudes serve people well in school or business or life in general, and they're broadly speaking scientific, in the way I explained above at much greater length.

They do unfortunately lead to absurdity. I had a masters student with migraines this week who assured me that he headaches are due to her scalp being "too tight". Even though she recognizes the role that stress and other psychological factors play in triggering her symptoms (long story), she believes that what she needs to do when she gets a headache is relax "so the plates in my skull can shift around", thereby relieving the pressure and pain. Craniosacral therapy has apparently given her this model, which she has found more helpful than the medications I prescribed. In this case, little harm in her pursuing (what I take to be ) quackery. Not so much with the vaccination question, because of herd immunity, or the lack thereof.

"she believes that what she needs to do when she gets a headache is relax "so the plates in my skull can shift around""

I love these explanations.

"It must be adaptive for people to believe that their choices determine their fates and their situation can be improved if they just work a little harder at figuring it out."

I think this is key. There's a bit in Ben Goldacre's book that is about diet specifically but I think can be applied to bullshit cures etc in general:

People die at different rates because of a complex nexus of interlocking social and political issues including work life, employment status, social stability, family support, housing, smoking, drugs, and possibly diet, although the evidence on that, frankly, is pretty thin, and you certainly wouldn’t start there.

But we do, because it’s such a delicious fantasy, because it’s commodifiable and pushed by expert PR agencies, and in some respects this is one of the most destructive features of the whole nutritionist project, graphically exemplified by figures such as Dr Gillian McKeith PhD. Food has become a distraction from the real causes of ill health, and also, in some respects, a manifesto of rightwing individualism. You are what you eat, and people die young because they deserve it. You hear it from people as they walk past the local council estate and point at a mother feeding her child crisps: “Well, when you look at what they feed them,” they say, “it’s got to be diet, hasn’t it?” They choose death, through ignorance and laziness, but you choose life, fresh fish, olive oil, and that’s why you’re healthy. You’re going to see 80. You deserve it. Not like them.

Seems like whenever yuppies object to food stamps its always on the basis of the nutritional value of the food bought.

"Oh no! Its just subsidizing their squalid diets!"

I should really quit paying attention to Gawker comment sections and bullshit arguments on Facebook.

Magical thinking, like Malcolm Gladwell books

Wasn't she a smoker? That's a far more likely cause of a tumor than a cell phone.
― NR’s resident heavy-metal expert (Nicole), Wednesday, September 12, 2012 3:16 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

She has a brain tumour - no connection to smoking whatsoever.

Thing I've noticed in the last year is that I've gotten a far better grasp(or think I do) about why American bullshit weirdness is currently the way it is by reading these books that mix c

That mix cog.science and politics and conspiracy theory. All this idiocy makes so much more sense.

Plasmon is my favorite poster in the history of this board, just thought I'd say so