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

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!