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

I've Got Whooping Cough. Thanks a Lot, Jenny McCarthy.

I thought I'd hidden all this shit on FB, but sometimes it sneaks thru:

http://usahitman.com/frwngafs/

With a name like USAhitman.com, it's _gotta_ be good.

"Five Reasons Why I'll Never Get a Flu Shot"

You can wade through the abstract at The Lancet here.

i don't know, this could take me all day. who has time to read entire abstracts?

I just found a page at UMN to summarize it for me instead.
The authors' main conclusion is that use of existing flu vaccines should continue, but better ones are needed.

yeah that sounds like it doesn't work in 98% of cases to me

i was being sarcastic -- abstracts are not long, and they can be very misleading if you don't have a good background in whatever the paper is about. anyone who refers to an abstract = they do not know what they're talking about

that said, there is a difference between relative effectiveness and absolute effectiveness, and surely we wish the flu vaccines were more effective (and that more people chose to be vaccinated). but given they they're virtually devoid of serious adverse effects, it's well-accepted that the benefit significantly outweighs the risk, and everyone should get one

otm

really the best reasons for not getting a flu vaccine:
1. you live alone
2. you have a job with paid sick time
3. you are young and in good health
4. your coworkers are similar individuals
5. you are an asshole who feels not getting a vaccination validates your lifestyle

you forgot my go-to excuse: lazy

I just got into a slightly heated thing on FB about the "aggressive vaccine schedule." That seems to be the trendy new way to be anti-vaccine. Classic and vintage vaccines are ok, but now we give "way too many" vaccines to kids, including newfangled ones that we didn't used to give, and "too many at once" which is "hard" on their "developing immune systems" and might cause "overload" or something. Bigpharma makes money on this btw.

I tried to be relatively nice about it, b/c I realize firsthand that it's scary as fuck to have to make these kinds of decisions for your kids, but there's really not much evidence that the current vaccine schedule is harmful.

big pharma makes more money if you end up in the hospital from the flu, iirc

Newfangled vaccines! Those untrustworthy researchers always finding new ways to prevent disease and death.

I think we're going to go retro with Ivy and get her the smallpox vaccine so she can have a cool scar. No chicken pox or HPV vaccine though. Too trendy.

have I bragged lately that I made it into my mid teens without getting chicken pox and got the vaccine the first year it was really available here?

xp maybe you can find a refurbished 1920s syringe on etsy

http://howdovaccinescauseautism.com/

Argh, all these pretend reasonableness anti-vaccine people who say stuff like "At the same time, I think we should take this with a grain of salt" and "Well we don't KNOW what giving so many vaccines so early does, and given the huge upticks in food allergies and autism..."

NO. THERE IS NO GRAIN OF SALT. YOU HAVE NO EVIDENCE THAT ANY OF THIS STUFF IS BAD FOR KIDS.

I love salt. And vaccines. So conflicted.

salt causes autism, look it up

only cure is an hour in the salt caves

http://m.saltcavesb.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.saltcavesb.com%2F#2799

salt contains sodium chloride, a chemical used to melt ice and destroy crops

LOLsob

http://www.healingnaturallybybee.com/articles/salt6.php

huge upticks in food allergies and autism

huge upticks in _reported_ food allergies and autism

we used to just call those kids picky eaters or put them in the special ed class

Don't know if your kidding but pretty sure increase in food allergies isn't just increased reporting. Unclear w/ autism

Increase in food allergies is real. One hypothesis is that it's an unintended consequence similar to those who shield their kids from vaccines. All this hyper-cleanliness, all this avoiding this and that food for kids, lack of early exposure to potential allergens, may be coming back to haunt us.

partially kidding

the hygiene hypothesis is pretty well-regarded, but the majority of studies are by parent survey, asking if their child had a skin, food, or respiratory allergic reaction in the preceding year, not based on allergy testing by a doctor or by reporting from medical practices. same studies mention that people have a poor understanding of allergies versus food intolerance or other reactions.

even if there are a lot more allergic reactions to food happening, reports are highly correlated with economic well-being

basically take the number of people who self-diagnose themselves with gluten intolerance, throw in the fact a fair number of them don't know the difference between intolerances and allergies, and then multiply by 1.25 to compensate for the 2.5 child per couple average

:)

yah ppl don't really know what "allergies" are I often find. like, getting an upset stomach in response to certain meds isn't an allergy.

Yep, I know so many people whos self claimed "allergies" are "oh I cant eat eggs" and its more just "I dont like eggs". I compare this to my mate Ash who, if he so much as glances at a peanut or cashew, will be hospitalised with a closed throat. THATS an allergy.

Some grass makes me break out in welts. Thats an allergy, albeit a mild one. "Chilli gives me a headache" is more "eh I dont like spicy food and Im projecting". I went thru years of BS because a GP decided my vague tireness/poor health was due to "food intolerances" and I got made to cut all this BS out my diet - no amines, no MSG, no salicilates, no dairy. This meant 80% of all fruits and veg, ALL dairy and even some meats, were off the table.

All that did, was make me MORE sensitive to stomach upsets/headaches from eating too much tomato or chilli. Crock of crap. And cost me a lot of money.

A lot of improperly diagnosed food allergies seem like "I/my child is special and delicate"

kids do die from peanut allergies though

Only special delicate ones.

cool jokes about dead children

Wasn't there a recent study that women who ate nuts regularly during their pregnancy were fare less likely to bear children with nut allergies?

I was careful to note a difference between actual life threatening allergies, and hand wavy intolerances.

that's also why I said "improperly diagnosed" as a qualifier. I am aware of the relatively rare but very real and dangerous food allergies that do exist

I know so many kids with very real allergies, to peanuts, to cats, to strawberries. Reactions run from rashes to vomiting to hospital. When I was young, the only allergies anyone had were to bee stings, and no one talks about fucking bee stings anymore. Perhaps because there are so few bees?

I also know a couple of kids with real Celiac. Makes me hate the gluten-free fakers.

and there are soooooo many of those. I know maybe 3 actual celiacs, and about 12000 others who naturopaths told them not to eat wheat.

Wasn't there a recent study that women who ate nuts regularly during their pregnancy were fare less likely to bear children with nut allergies?

I thought it was the opposite, at least as far as peanuts were concerned.

Oh well. There's no way to ever find out.

iirc both theories have been posited, as well as theories about a cause being children not/eating peanuts too young

dunno if any of this has substantial evidence yet

What doesn't make sense to me is why there would be a significant uptick either in children not eating peanuts young enough or eating them too young.

With the uptick in autism, I sometimes wonder if it's related to the uptick in older parents.

Like, autism risk pretty clearly increases when the parents are older, and I think the number of older parents has also increased significantly, but I don't know if the increase in older parents is enough to account for the increase in autism.

Thats an angle I never pondered. I am guessing studies have been done. When I was kid I'm sure the general consensus was "try not to have your first child after 35 (or whatever later age)", because of all the risks of downs syndrome and similar.

Also, older parents seem to be common among the anti-vaccine demographic, but that's just my totally unscientific observation

xpost There was once a story about disproportionate autism among children of Microsoft employees (or something like that), many of whom might have been somewhere along the spectrum (as such) any way, but many of whom definitely partnered up late.

parents who seek nonmedical exemptions from vaccines are whiter and of higher SES but i don't recall any data that they're older. might be though

used to be caustic abt the gluten-free crowd but now i think there's something genuinely up w the wheat. meanwhile i have crohn's but bread is all i care about in the world :(

xp just checked and yes they're older too

I don't think I have enough knowledge to posit any real theories, just sarcastic posts responding to studies that seem really inconclusive

Regarding Josh's point, though, I think there are a lot of people with cat allergies regardless of age, if my mid-to-late 30s peer group is representative