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

Barry Glassner's _The Culture of Fear_?

People do shift back and forth along a continuum of internal <-> external loci of control. Fear, almost by definition, is an experience of an external locus of control. Fear is a powerful motivator to "do something", even when that something has little benefit and significant downside. Sins of omission are worse than sins of commission, that kind of thing.

You can draw some nice societal parallels. After 9/11 everyone feels scared and powerless. Bush invades Iraq in part to give the country a sense of control and power again. (Thomas Friedman: "Suck on this!", the Ledeen doctrine "pick up a crappy little country and throw it against the wall").

The impulse is authoritarian. Alice Miller is good on this. So's Bob Altermeyer.

I'm still always just a little leery of listing too far back in the "this isn't a disease" direction - it's hard to get public funding for housing for any population whose pathology isn't strictly classified as a treatable disorder. "treatment" is sort of the middle-ground term between "cure" (crazytalk) and "assistance" (harder to fund).

Excellent point. Another job for the Disease Police. Of course a fair amount of serious medical research has far less benefit to the human condition than less scientific/technological approaches to caring for those in need.

Yeah, I was gunna ask; can you write a bit using this line of thinking on current American politics and the multiple pathologies on display lately?

kingfish that request is a little cheeky after Plasmon has already written more, and with more clarity, than you or i will manage in a month

plasmon! I am v glad you are on this board, and in the "profession," as it were.

i guess "shocked" isn't the word, but I am dismayed by many of my peers total disinterest in discussing, uh, "issues" like this.

yeah man Plasmon your posts are a joy. the profession will be richer for your diligence!

btw plz give a lunch lecture on external/internal loci of disease to my class thx

sort of not kidding btw

lol at mccarthys wikipedia

Most recently, she has written books about parenting, and has become an activist promoting the incorrect claims that vaccines cause autism[3] and that chelation therapy is effective against autism.

Very interesting posts, Plasmon. Thanks.

(Had not thought about it before but definitely v. familiar with impulse to find external causes for my own comparatively minor medical problems - most of them could be happily put down to "here is some genetic bad luck" and obviously that would be as out of my control as finding something more specific, but it is somehow a whole lot more reassuring to think "well I was fine until THIS happened to me / this is a result of xyz abnormality which is maybe because I was born premature", etc)

Thank you, Plasmon. I believe you've stated a lot of things that I've believed to be true, with more clarity than I'm capable of.

The idea of the medical system as a police, and with some conditions being more valid than others, is going to give me a lot to think about.

Wow, Plasmon, thanks. That's probably the best and least condescending explanation for the anti-vax mindset I have ever read.

(and yeah, on a personal note, you really contextualized a recent year-long go 'round I had with a specialist that led me to begrudgingly accept a (misguided and incorrect, it turns out) SICK stamp, which really did impact my behavior and mindset as far as settling in to a "sick role." I have been feeling kind of blerg about that whole situation and seeing a nice, clinical explanation for my behavior is helpful.)

I think one interesting wrinkle wrt autism and control, that I stabbed at earlier, is that it is ~not~ the patient him/herself seeking the external diagnosis for his/her condition, it's the parents. So you have a party external to the patient seeking an external explanation, while the patient himself may be indifferent to the etiology.

*bookmarks plasmon's post*

yeah I already emailed it to some med school pals

(hope that's ok plasmon!)

Seriously the #1 biggest disappointment with medical school I've had is that I came from the social sciences, but the social sciences are completely ignored at my school (and from what I have gathered, at most other schools), except for a class on Ethics that just totally misses the point and essentially can be boiled down to a handful of vague clinical scenarios and the theme of "you should not be a bad doctor". (The one enjoyable part of this is that inevitably everybody ends up posting Facebook messages of like "I HATE ETHICS" and then like their aunt or someone will be like "Umm...isn't it kind of important to be an ethical doctor?" and basically we all come across like amoral monsters.) Like, in grad school I had the opportunity to go to these Clinical Social Science Case Conferences, where usually one of the anthro MD/PhDs would present a patient they had treated, and how they attempted to conceptualize how the patient dealt with their illness and how they interacted with the various structures of medicine, and this was probably the one thing that made me be all "Wow I really would rather be an MD."

But THIS, man. I kind of want to rummage through PubMed or Google Scholar looking for an article to accompany this and assemble my finest team of nerds to discuss this, like I was able to do back in grad school.

protip 4 u C-L

I sat in on a bioethics consult two weeks ago here at the university hospital and it was like "oh thank god there are working physicians actually working through his stuff in a meaningful way." See if you can get a chance to attend one at yr hospital; really great stuff. I'd love to post even vague, tantalizing details but they'd be enough to triangulate the pt in this case, so no dice.

WTF: Bill Maher is an anti-vaccine nut?! And a germ denialist, to boot???

funny typo "his" haw

Hahaha I am trying to think about the right way to position myself into such a thing, since my way into the Bioethics Committee meetings would be through the lady who runs the Ethics course, and she makes me sad inside. The easiest thing to do would be to lie and be all "I am SO INTERESTED in Ethics class, I want to get more Ethics", even though I spent last week's lecture looking through an article in the Bulletin of Medical History, but I wonder if "Look, your class sucks, I am dying here, let me play at full speed" would work.

we've got a student comm on bioethics, which coordinates with the on site bioethics consultant. tho she is, I guess, our de facto "ethics" course director (it's actually rolled into a larger course that addresses cultural stuff, law, complementary med, etc. which is so sprawlin and half assed and sucky) so maybe it's the same in yr case.

we're actually setting it up so that we(comm members) get pages via google voice when there's a consult requested. neat!

Not nec trying to be cheeky w/ my request, it's just that Plasmon writes well and at length on this stuff, and with the proper ILX extended deconstructory style tha. Nabisco used to do on all the politickin' threads.

Plus, I'm happy that Alice Miller & Dr Bob Altenmeyer got mentioned, as I feel their stuff is bleedingly crucial to understanding WTF has been going on, and I wish more people would read & rep for them(other than me). Heh.

is there an ilx rolling med school thread?

yes!

ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US

haha

plasmon sent your post to a couple of med students in my program - its really thoughtful. thanks.

link plz? xp

medical school

holy shit gbx are you still getting laid at this very moment?

he is a perpetual sex machine. md.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jenny-mccarthy/whos-afraid-of-the-truth_b_490918.html

the huffington post is generally sucky, but fuck them

way too much retarded stuff to even begin unpacking, but this is some great science -

The idea that vaccines are a primary cause of autism is not as crackpot as some might wish. Autism's 60-fold rise in 30 years matches a tripling of the US vaccine schedule.

it EXACTLY matches a 60-fold increase in American use of the term "shart"

the internet causes autism, as well as hispanic people

Who's afraid of the truth? Usually the people it would hurt the most.

~makes u think~

all my health care bros check out that "study" she linked to for a good laff

I do not think I will get laffs from it, this shit pisses me off so bad

My hatred for Jenny McCarthy has increased twenty-fold since she stopped appearing on Singled Out. Hence, MTV game shows caused autism.

I could use a laff

keithlaw I'm still not clear on how or why a woman who is known primarily for shedding her clothes is seen as an authority on immunology.

Jenny McCarthy’s honesty, humility and humor have enabled her to transcend the boundaries of her roles as comedian, actress, host, best-selling author and influential activist in the world of healing and preventing autism.

Shes claiming she's met "hundreds" of "recovered" autistics? WTF?

People dont recover from autism ffs, do they?

trayce, haven't you met hundreds of recovered gays?

Oh of course, yes, how silly of me.

Seriously, are parents just going "oh little oscar is really quiet and never behaves himself - HE HAS AUTISM!" or something.

vaccines aren't necessary! nobody gets measles any more!!

If you could vaccinate the whole world and no-one got measles for a generation or two, would measles come back if you stopped?

exactly! it's like unions, we just don't need em anymore

Sorry, fit of giggles, read that as:

exactly! it's like onions, we just don't need em anymore

modern onion farming is a sham perpetuated by onion patent holders

i mean answer me this - i made an omelette the other day with shallots and it was FINE!!