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

In politics, you can win power and impose your will. That's the best approach for a lot of these questions. No point waiting until the sweet day bye and bye when Republicans endorse global warming or socialized health care, just win the elections, pass the bills, and pack the courts to uphold them.

Seriously.

But medicine isn't like that. Even as a medical specialist with a degree on the wall behind me, I can't force someone to take a medication she doesn't want to or agree that her illness isn't caused by whatever she deeply believes is the cause. I can try to persuade, but I can't coerce.

If you don't like that dynamic, you should stay far away from the caring professions. But then you're a lawyer IIRC, so playing the game to win is your job, and you're not really required to consider the opposing point of view except to try to defeat it.

There's a fair point to be made that the societal effects of a multitude of individual medical decisions can and should better be managed with political or societal means. For example, no you don't have to vaccinate your kids, but then we won't let them attend public school. There would be pros and cons to that approach, but it's a fair way to run a society, with many successes to date (say, seatbelt laws or drunk driving penalties, no longer a personal choice but the law), and it's probably easier and more effective than convincing a bunch of people to do something that they strongly oppose.

I'm not society's doctor though, I'm this individual patient's doctor. And so I have to play the game on her turf. Other people doing other things can try to solve the problem in other ways.

Faux-apologies for ongoing faux-reasonableness here. Not impressed with the trolling, you should try harder to understand the details of what we're discussing here.

The good news is that there's a bigger subset of people who have less at stake in the discussion about their illness or disease, who are willing and in fact eager to be educated and reassured, who (I like to tell myself) actually benefit from spending some time talking it over with a sympathetic ear who's an expert in the field. I don't think there's a backfire effect there at all.

more of these folks than you might think, hurting. for example (compiled from several different pts), the parents of a child with a severe mental illness who were reluctant to start metformin in addition to the anti-psychotic because they didn't want to "add another pill." (when that same reluctance is why their child was admitted in the first place---they wanted to see how their kid did w/o his psychiatric meds)

it'd be easy to get blame-y and smack yr forehead, but really a little education was all it took in the end. which is much of what good physicians ought to be doing: educating patients about the risks/benefits of treatment. the serious hold-outs will hold out, but there's a lot more ppl on the fence that are just waiting for someone to at least ~validate~ their concerns---once that's accomplished, it's much easier to allay them.

xp: tbf I didn't realize that you were actually in the medical profession, Plasmon. I can see how, if you are literally counseling a patient, your approach is best. Of course, you're also in a special position of authority and power in relation to patients, and perhaps a "soft" use of said power is best. I don't really see a parallel between you advising a patient on his/her options and me trying to convince someone that they should consider that Barack Obama may actually have been born in the United States, or that global warming is real, or that evolution is scientifically supported.

i am totally pro-vax but it's also good to keep in mind that a lot of people have had multiple and legit bad experiences with healthcare professionals, which destroys a lot of the ability to trust someone who is supposed to be an expert on the subject.

The difference is that the question of vaccination is one where the parents opinion has an actual, direct effect: the child either gets the vaccine or doesn't.

What one old coot in Kansas thinks about Barack Obama's birthplace makes little material difference to Obama or to him. It makes next to no difference to whether Obama gets elected -- by far, the birthers are the people who were going to vote against him anyway and are simply identifying with a smear that validates their choice, rather than neutral observers who were turned against Obama because they were honestly convinced he was born in Kenya. In other words the false belief is produced by the tribal identity (produced and validated within it), and is not the cause of people taking on that identity in the first place.

The global warming denialists have a little more of an effect, if they resist buying a fuel-efficient car or otherwise taking personal measures to limit their environmental footprint. But there, again, the main effect is more that the people who support Republicanism have learned (been taught) to cast a skeptical eye on the scientific consensus about AGW, rather than people who did their own research into the subject and were not convinced deciding because of that to vote for Romney or McCain. Yes, you can show that certain aspects of environmentalism were not taboo to right-wingers even just a few years ago (McCain voted for cap-and-trade IIRC), but that sort of thing is quite different than making the same choice once the political battle has heated up and the lines dividing the two sides have been reinforced. It's a little like the (IMO misleading) framing of Obamacare as a "Republican idea" -- those ideas were never sincerely intended to become public policy, they were simply an attempt to tear down Clinton's proposals by comparison. As soon as the situation changed and that became the Democratic proposal on the table, they were bound to be rejected by the same people who had previously supported them -- and for the same reasons (motivated identity, which is far stronger than the understanding of the political or social benefit of a policy, and allows one to first support and then oppose essentially the same policy without hardly twinging the conscience -- the same pattern happens on the left, just look at the "evolution" in liberal views about surveillance and US military initiatives from 2006 to 2010).

With global warming, health care, and politics in general, the way to solve a problem is to win power and use it to implement the agenda you want. Most of the "analysis" of the specific questions (is this a good idea or a bad idea) is window dressing to that struggle, and people are easily swayed on the facts as long as their team wins.

That's a very different situation than vaccine denialism, except at the level of public/social policy (allowing unvaccinated kids into public schools for instance). On the individual level, what the person actually believes is what happens.

In my experience, patients do not respond well if they understand me to be "on the other team" and interested mainly in defeating their beliefs. I can win those arguments, if I want to, but winning them won't lead to the change I'm trying to effect, won't help the people I'm trying to help.

Certainly it's true that there's a limit to what the art of gentle persuasion can accomplish, I admitted as much in my first post today. But in my experience there is definitely a wide spectrum of people with honestly held mistaken beliefs, or honestly felt unreasonable concerns, who will change their mind and their comfort level, and their willingness to go through with something, if I can convince them to share my point of view.

So that's what I do every day.

How to Quack-Proof Yourself Against Pseudoscience

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--QEDMN_2o--/qu7xqzdp0gin6ng0jk4b.jpg

http://m.nydailynews.com/news/national/florida-mom-kidnaps-daughter-anti-vaccine-bid-authorities-article-1.1830778

I think there's much more to it than vaccinations but anyway...

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/vani-hari-a-k-a-the-food-babe-the-jenny-mccarthy-of-food/

You know that stupid "What's in our beer?!!!1" post getting shared lately? Here's what happens if you actually know basic chemistry and something about how food chemistry actually works

Related:

http://www.science20.com/pfired_still_kicking/food_babe_hath_spoken_and_subway_bread_will_still_suck-131716

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-me-vaccines-movie-20140721-story.html#page=2

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/03/magazine/the-kids-who-beat-autism.html

^^ interesting read

http://www.clickhole.com/blogpost/my-doctor-told-me-i-should-vaccinate-my-children-t-653

So this was on my fb newsfeed today...

http://www.livingwhole.org/god-does-not-support-vaccines/

Fuck god

well this oughta thin the herd

Doesn't thin the herd of parents, just their innocent kids. :-(

I never thought I would write "Amanda Peet is my hero" but there you have it.

also thins the herd of other kids w/responsible parents, but i suppose those are also kids from wealthy families so it's all good amirite

http://www.avclub.com/article/rob-schneider-inoculates-himself-against-criticism-209721

http://vistamaglive.com/no-laughing-matter-rob-schneider-on-mandatory-vaccination/

I’m not the Rob Schneider of 20 years ago. I’m 49 and I’m not a kid anymore. You have to develop and grow. I was always curious: why did I become famous? I made some funny movies and now I get to reach out to people, and potentially help them learn something or inspire them to educate themselves to make better choices. I have to be careful on stage: I’m there to get laughs, but I do try to sneak in some messages along the way. I think it’s important to state my political and philosophical beliefs. Maybe there’s a conflict there, but I need to follow my instincts. Standing up against the tyrannical system of medical intervention in the United States is something I’m very proud of.

funniest thing he's ever done

any good he's ever done the world, he's just undone and then some

what a fucktard

I was pretty turned off by his WTF joeks

i expected as much from schneider, but i'm disappointed in blossom.

fucking California man

Heard that one reason H'wood and rich CA parents skip vaccines is that filling out that PBE form speeds up the admissions process of their fancy/magnet schools, allowing them to get applications in before others. As someone told my wife, "The schools are first come, first serve, and each requires you to actually go to your ped and have them fill out a paper with vac record etc. This delays the application to the public school. As an alternative, parents are signing the no vax sheet to cheat their way to a higher spot on the list bc they can turn the app immediately."

Super obnoxious, but at least it is a rationale not based in conspiracy theories and wiki medicine

yeah it's worse

Peet [has been](http://web.archive.org/web/20080907054818/http://www.cookiemag.com/entertainment/2008/07/amandapeet) more trenchant: "Frankly, I feel that parents who don't vaccinate their children are parasites."

...oops on the format..

she's awesome

http://boingboing.net/2014/09/30/why-people-believe-things-you.html

This helps explain things.

I think the next 20 years of so of human development will involve a greater understanding of how we actually think, how our brain (doesn't) works, and the culturally reinforced and/or unconscious epistemological processes for us to build a cognitive & narrative architecture for understanding the world, and who the heroes and villains are.

This helps too:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/books/review/on-immunity-by-eula-biss.html

On the other hand:

http://io9.com/the-anti-vaxxers-are-spreading-ebola-conspiracy-theori-1645815265?utm_campaign=socialflow_io9_twitter&utm_source=io9_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

Donald Trump's triumph over that is trumped by trumpeting

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2014/10/17/amanda-peet-jo-frost-hope-to-debunk-anti-vaccination-myths/

http://vistamaglive.com/no-laughing-matter-rob-schneider-on-mandatory-vaccination/

I’m not the Rob Schneider of 20 years ago. I’m 49 and I’m not a kid anymore. You have to develop and grow. I was always curious: why did I become famous? I made some funny movies and now I get to reach out to people, and potentially help them learn something or inspire them to educate themselves to make better choices. I have to be careful on stage: I’m there to get laughs, but I do try to sneak in some messages along the way. I think it’s important to state my political and philosophical beliefs. Maybe there’s a conflict there, but I need to follow my instincts. Standing up against the tyrannical system of medical intervention in the United States is something I’m very proud of.
― the portentous pepper (govern yourself accordingly), Friday, 26 September 2014 20:49 (3 weeks ago) Permalink

Rob. The Robmeister. Denying the science. Rob-a-rino.

lol didn't click the link and see that the article makes the exact same bad joke

I think everyone who reads anything about Rob Schneider makes that joke.

rob schneider is the joke

also the animal, the stapler, etc.

Today's Google doodle: Jonas Salk's 100th birthday

https://www.google.com/logos/doodles/2014/jonas-salks-100th-birthday-5130655667060736-hp.jpg

Ugh, I posted yesterday on FB about the measles outbreak and disneyland and am now in an argument with a)an old friend (she was my wife's maid of honor) who is an anti-vaxxer (both of her kids got whooping cough), and b) a college acquaintance who is a UFO nut.

Out of perverse curiosity, what did the first friend say *about* the fact that her kids got whooping cough.

Well, they got it a couple of years ago (and both have occasional breathing problems even now), but, hey, they both lived, right? So no harm, no foul!

And whooping cough is generally transmitted via fluoridated water, iirc.

the ignorance is just breathtaking.

The amusing thing is, I posted in the first place not just because I hate anti-vaxxers, but because I'm traveling to Anaheim in April and now need to ask my doctor if I need a measles booster, since I last had a measles vaccine maybe in my 20s. The first response was from a friend mentioning Jenny McCarthy. Since that, here are all of the anti-vaxxers posts:

Jenny McCarthy has absolutely no bearing on whether I choose to vaccinate or not, and the anti-vaxxers are appalled that everybody thinks that we are blindly following her. Her science is seriously flawed. (I.E. lack of science whatsoever).

If you promote vaccinating children and you haven't gotten boosters in decades, you are part of the problem.

I love that one - I'm part of the problem for not getting regular boosters against a largely eradicated disease, to protect myself from ignorant people.

It's presumptuous to think that all doctors (with medicine AND science on their sides) vaccinate on schedule all recommended vaccinations. We've had three doctors that shared not vaccinating their kids. One was close to schedule but what is called "slow pokes" at a very delayed schedule, one was super-selective about which ones and the other was none.

UFO nut: How are vaccinated people threatened by non-vaccinated people? Allegedly if you're vaccinated you should be immune, right?

Anti-vaxxer: None of the vaccinations are 100% effective, most need boosters later in life to maintain immunity, and there are millions of people who are somehow immunocompromised and unable to receive vaccinations, not to mention babies or very young children who are too young for certain vaccinations.

UFO nut: If they're not effective and they have risks associated with them then why get them. Can't people choose what they put into their own bodies? Freedom of choice? I'd like to see what percentage of those that contract a disease were vaccinated for that disease. It would also be nice if there were no risks associated with them. Sadly, there are.

Anti-vaxxer: The rates of death or serious side effects from these diseases here in the US is a lower number overall than the entire population of my one medium town here in Ohio. The chances of contracting the disease are fairly small and the chances of having serious complications is even smaller. Vaccine injury is very real. Vaccinations purposely deliver heavy metals and other substances into a body that are toxic at certain levels. Sure, a vaccination might not be toxic to most, but how do you know what body systems have underlying issues due to vaccinations? Nobody would ever agree that purposely putting murcury in your body is okay, but there are trace amounts of thimerasol in a number of vaccinations, and then we expect a 15 pound baby to get four of them in one visit and for their body to somehow manage all the unnatural chemicals in the vaccinations. The rates of asthma, allergy, auto-immune diseases and cancer have increased exponentially since we started injecting and spraying our foods, our home lawns, using so many medications and allowing other pollutions to continue. The rate of asthma is higher in the inner cities than the country.

[UFO nut], you can often find statistics in random newspaper articles about outbreaks. This particular Disneyland outbreak is approximately 75% unvaxxed and 25% fully vaxxed. Measles overall is quite safe as far as diseases go - like chicken pox, you're pretty ill for a while and then usually get better. Before the vaccination for measles, less than 1000 in the US died from it every year. That's where the balance comes in - inject toxic chemicals for the greater good or don't.

. . . at which point I whipped to post-hoc fallacy and the LD50 for thimerosal on her. No response yet.

Anti-vaxxer: None of the vaccinations are 100% effective, most need boosters later in life to maintain immunity, and there are millions of people who are somehow immunocompromised and unable to receive vaccinations, not to mention babies or very young children who are too young for certain vaccinations.

THAT IS AN ARGUMENT IN FAVOR OF VACCINES what the hell ;alksdjfl;askdj;lkasdjkdkdkdkdkdkd

The rate of asthma is higher in the inner cities than the country.

I love how this is just casually thrown in there totally devoid of context

you can often find statistics in random newspaper articles about outbreaks.

oh, thank god