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

^^^no, but she's annoying as hell, plus she spreads disinformation all over the place.

The problem is that people don't understand basic science or logical fallacies. Good luck fixing that!

yah i was just coming here to post that too xpost

how long has the chicken pox vacc been around?

Years. A decade, at least.

xp You probably want to get the vaccine; you really don't want to get chicken pox as an adult. No one tells adults about it because they assume you've had chicken pox. Unfortunately, this is a bad assumption to make. I had a friend who contracted chicken pox when she was 2 months pregnant. NOT COOL.

the problem is that the public health system in this county is grossly politicized (by businesses, non-profits, and our elected reps) and has a ludicrously awful track record of being slow, ignorant, purposefully obtuse, and flat-out lying to the public about the risks of you-name-it, for most of the last century, in fact. And you have trained, experienced medical professionals who get fed the fuck up with the system and decide that the way to "fix things" is to write a book or go on television instead of continually publishing peer reviewed research, and it ends up sort of working for them because patients don't read peer reviewed literature, patients read bestsellers and watch teevee.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to thread

well fuck wait a minute will this lay me up for a few days or just be a little irritating, because i am so not down with getting adult chicken pox. xposts

I mean fuck it watch And The Band Played On, you might take your chances with the ex-playmate too

this is not to say that i cant be bothered with doing it, im just trying to work out the timing.

ok this will probably sound really dumb but:
i had chicken pox when i was a kid, but it was a super, super mild dose - got it from my little brother and sister who had it way worse than me. as long as i've had it once, i can't get it again, right? even tho it was about the most mild case possible? apologies if this is an ignorant question.

xpost JJ, a friend of mine got chicken pox last year (he's 25) and he got it all over his PENIS!

xp - getting chicken pox could be very serious/unpleasant. You're an adult. Get the vaccine; that should only be mildly irritating.

TOMBOT - yes.

and down his throat

http://www.badscience.net/category/mmr/

just1n3, I like how you go for the ARGH factor here.

just1n3: If you had a mild case of chickenpox, you might not have built up sufficient immunity. Go to your doc or NP or PA and ask to have a varicella titer drawn to to if you're immune. Chance are, you're probably ok.

I had a bf who got adult pox and he was pretty rashed up, *covered* in sores, but apart from a fever not too sick (as you might get with measles, which as an adult can give you encephalitis or something horrible). I didnt catch it off him, so I guess having had it as a kid is a good immunity!

to see if you're immune

GAH DUDES i am not trying not to get this vaccine, i have just learned about it in the last five minutes and am confused and have sort of a complicated solo proprietor issue going on at the moment.

also just1n3 obv your friend should have kept his penis out of his throat duh

he is a big fan of max hardcore what can i say

justeeeeeen you should go to grad school while working full time and be in a really stressful long distance relationship (plus drink lots) and if you get shingles you're A-OK

John Justen: the vaccine will most likely suck a lot less then the disease. And you won't unwittingly expose others should you get the pox naturally. It's not a big whoop.

Usually if you've had it, you're good, but basically what kate78 said. Although it might be cheaper just to get the vaccination rather than have a titer drawn and then get the vaccine; I had some titers drawn last year for nursing school and someone in the clinic claimed they were expensive. (Can't remember, but I think insurance must have covered it.)

I'm going to be mildly controversial and say that my attitude on this is sorta "A pox on both your houses", as it were.

In other words: I think the people who aren't vaccinating their kids are making a mistake, and there's a lot of bullshit and misinformation being peddled on that side of the aisle. If I had kids, I'd get them vaccinated. People who are doing otherwise are contributing to a genuine public health risk, at best.

OTOH, the triumphalist rhetoric that I'm hearing from the other side makes me very leery. I've seen firsthand how a drug that's been heralded as one of the medical breakthroughs of the recent past (statins) can do pretty fucked-up things to people who, through some fluke of genetics or biochemistry or whatever, get hit with supposedly rare side effects (in particular, bizarre memory problems) whose appearance and disappearance coincide respectively with administration or discontinuation of the drug.

But I know a fair number of doctors who won't listen to any dissenting opinion on the subject, just as I've encountered dentists who angrily dismiss any concerns about amalgam fillings (which is a whole 'nother issue). I don't doubt that statins save lives, but I also have no doubt that they do fucked-up shit to certain people, and that needs to be acknowledged, even if clinical trials have yet to demonstrate that it's happening to the extent that I suspect it is. (Not to mention that there's a lot of $$$ in these drugs, and in establishing a new, ridiculously-low baseline for serum cholesterol -- but again, different issue.)

Really, it's that lack of humility that bothers me -- that unwillingness to acknowledge that, for all the things that medicine has accomplished and will continue to accomplish, there are huge, gaping holes in our knowledge. I think we (professionals and laypeople) vastly overestimate our ability to foresee unintended consequences, and vastly underestimate the degree to which individual variation influences outcomes. Despite all our progress, when it comes to our understanding of the whole, we're still like people wandering through a labyrinth by candlelight, and if we forget that -- even for a moment -- then our thinking becomes incredibly reductive, the worst sort of Enlightment arrogance.

(The best country doctors had a sense of this -- the irreducibility of medicine -- and a really good old-school physician is often possessed of insights gained through a combination of experience and intuition...insights that might be difficult or impossible to prove through double-blind studies, because they often involve instinctive apprehensions of a patient's particular situation. Practical medicine doesn't have the luxury of repeatedly reproducing essentially identical starting conditions, as is the case in the physical sciences.)

For what it's worth, I think there is actually something going on with autism and vaccination. It's been clouded by hysteria and bandwagon-jumping, but I've been hearing "my kid got fucked up right after s/he got vaccinated" stories for too long to think that there's nothing to it. But I think the number of cases is extremely small, and that the reason may remain elusive for many, many years.

More importantly, I think that the public health value of compulsory vaccination is more important than the damage done by vaccines to individuals. I can't imagine any prominent doctor having the balls to say "Sucks that your kid's messed up, but even if vaccines did it, it's still worth it to the rest of us", and yet that strikes me as the real bottom line. Better 50 kids with autism than 5000 dead kids with measles.

(tl;dr)

i have to have a big medical check-up thing for immigration purposes pretty soon, and they check all the vaccines if i don't have medical recs for them, so i guess i'll find out then.

^^^^^ to Nylund

tombot: both my mother and sis have had shingles fairly recently - does not sound like a good time at all

oh no it's a great time! the best is when the breeze makes your shirt touch your skin and it feels like you've been stabbed.

Pretty interesting segment about this on "This American Life" a few weeks ago:

http://thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1275

Measles cases are higher in the U.S. than they've been in a decade, mostly because more and more nervous parents are refusing to vaccinate their kids. Contributing Editor Susan Burton tells the story of what happened recently in San Diego, when an unvaccinated 7-year-old boy returned home from a trip to Switzerland, bringing with him the measles. By the end of the ordeal, 11 other children caught the disease, and more than 60 kids had to be quarantined. (21 minutes)

Fuckin' Switzerland.

Remember that mumps epidemic in the Midwest a few years ago?

Scott: Hello. My name is Ed.

Mark: [speaks sing-songy throughout] He's sick of the Swiss.

Scott: That's right! I'm sick of their good reputation.

Mark: He's realllly sick of the Swiss.

Scott: I'm sick of their cheese. I'm sick of their chocolate. And, I'm especially sick of their blocky heroine, Heidi.

Mark: He's sick of the Swiss. He don't like `em.

Scott: I mean, every other nation in the world has taken their turn being maligned and slandered. But not the Swi-iss!

Mark: Icky, yucky, stinky, stupid Switzerland.

Scott: Well, that situation is over as of now. *Move* over America; there's a new asshole on the map! I've had it up to here with your skiing heroes! I've had it up to here with your mountains! I've had it up to here with your secret *bank* accounts! From now on, Switzerland, your name is mud.

Mark: If you roast `em all in a fondue pot, sure bet ya that they'll complain a lot. Whiny, whiny Switzerland.

Scott: Yeah. It's *war* between the Swiss and me. "But, they've never done anything wrong," you say.

Both: Ha!

Scott: What about the clock?

Mark: The clock.

Scott: Huh? If they hadn't invented the clock, I'd still be in bed. . .dreaming!

Mark: It's time. It's time. [looks at watch] Oh! It's time to hate the Swiss.

Scott: Zuricheads! Cuckoo cuckoos! Land locked losers!

Mark: Zuricheads. . .

Scott: Neutral ninnies! Boring bankers! Chalet pimps!!

Mark: Oh yeah, his name is Ed--he'd like to see the Swiss dead! He's sick of the Swiss!

Scott: [sticks finger in mouth and gags]

Mark: Hey! Got a problem with that Belgium?!

Nylund OTM.

For what it's worth, I think there is actually something going on with autism and vaccination. It's been clouded by hysteria and bandwagon-jumping, but I've been hearing "my kid got fucked up right after s/he got vaccinated" stories for too long to think that there's nothing to it. But I think the number of cases is extremely small, and that the reason may remain elusive for many, many years.

a professor who does autism research at a major research university explained it to me this way: there's a credible link between thimerosol (the mercury-containing vaccine preservative that they're blaming) and autism but it only happens to children with a particular genetic condition; that condition is very rare (less than 1% of the population) and so it couldn't possibly account for the number of cases that are blamed on vaccines. also he pointed out that the state of california stopped using vaccines with mercury preservatives something like five years ago and they haven't seen any corresponding drop in autism incidence since then.

it only happens to children with a particular genetic condition

A lot of research right now is focusing on kids with mitochondrial disorders, but yeah, it totally can't account for all of 'em.

i mean, nylund is otm---obv there's a lot we don't know/understand about the immune system and autism and what have you. i still think that mobilizing parents against vaccines per se is sorta irresponsible

For what it's worth, I think there is actually something going on with autism and vaccination. It's been clouded by hysteria and bandwagon-jumping, but I've been hearing "my kid got fucked up right after s/he got vaccinated" stories for too long to think that there's nothing to it. But I think the number of cases is extremely small, and that the reason may remain elusive for many, many years.

Um, I mean when you get vaccinated for chicken pox, they inject old chicken pox cells into you or whatever. That's kind of crazy but hey it works! But things can go wrong, but there's not one bit of evidence that it's autism, really, that I've seen. Maybe there is concrete evidence and I've missed it.

i do agree that vaccines can fuck you up. After I got my MMR vaccine--I started having seizures in my crib. Luckily my mom's a nurse so she did once start freaking out that I had autism. And hey I turned out pretty okay.

I've been hearing "my kid got fucked up right after s/he got vaccinated" stories for too long to think that there's nothing to it

This could quite easily be entirely due to coincidental correlation - MMR administration and autism diagnosis both generally occur in the 12-48 month age range.

Holy crap, please tell me the US isn't about to go through the same storm of idiocy we've had over here. Here's this morning's UK measles update. Ledge OTM.

Nylund, here's some science to counter your hearsay.

For what it's worth, I think there is actually something going on with autism and vaccination. It's been clouded by hysteria and bandwagon-jumping, but I've been hearing "my kid got fucked up right after s/he got vaccinated" stories for too long to think that there's nothing to it. But I think the number of cases is extremely small, and that the reason may remain elusive for many, many years.

the problem with "my kid got fucked up right after s/he got vaccinated" is that kids get vaccinated at exactly the age where kids are changing the most anyway? and it's the age where parents are likely to be scrutinising their children for any sign of abnormal development whether that's 'oh no my child is 2cm shorter than the mean height for 16 months' or 'okay my child really should have started producing words by now'.

Holy crap, please tell me the US isn't about to go through the same storm of idiocy we've had over here

My thoughts exactly.

there's a credible link between thimerosol (the mercury-containing vaccine preservative that they're blaming) and autism but it only happens to children with a particular genetic condition; that condition is very rare (less than 1% of the population) and so it couldn't possibly account for the number of cases that are blamed on vaccines

Plausible, well argued, non-hysterical, concise and perhaps the best articulation of the argument I've seen.

There's also the fact that the old MMR - the MMR I received - contained a mumps vaccine that's been linked (quite conclusively?) to encephalitis, which is why the Japanese use the MR rather than the MMR vaccine. (There was an outbreak of measles in universities in Japan in 2007, not because of current vaccine refusal but because the national immunisation programme hadn't been in place when those students were children.) So the worry that MMR vaccination could cause other disorders has some basis in previous experience. I'm still sceptical about the mercury-autism-etc link, though.

a professor who does autism research at a major research university explained it to me this way: there's a credible link between thimerosol (the mercury-containing vaccine preservative that they're blaming) and autism

i thought the evidence for this was v. sketchy at best. my mom, who is a developmental pediatrician, had told me that research has basically refuted this. the point is mostly moot since thimerosol has been eliminated from vacciniations for a while now, anyway.

For what it's worth, I think there is actually something going on with autism and vaccination. It's been clouded by hysteria and bandwagon-jumping, but I've been hearing "my kid got fucked up right after s/he got vaccinated" stories for too long to think that there's nothing to it

i have a lot of sympathy for the larger point in your post but this is some bad thinking. part of the problem with buying into this type of faulty caustion is that pressure is put on ppl doing useful, necessary research into autism to debunk these theories.

the point is mostly moot since thimerosol has been eliminated from vacciniations for a while now, anyway

Exactly -- this ties in with the second point MJtB made. However, this could (wild speculation alert) help explain where the panic stemmed from in the first instance: plausible evidence misunderstood and distorted out of all recognition.

JJ, I got stuck a million different needles before i came to the US (standard immigration practice) but I couldnt remember if chicken pox was included so my doc did a quick blood test and found i was immune. one shot and youre set for life, apparently. You should def get it. My sis-in-law got it in her mid-30s and she had them in her mouth, down her throat, up her nose, on her scalp etc etc she ended up getting some kind of plastic surgery to fix the subsequent scars on her face.

xxxxxposts

also this makes me want to slap that HIV denial lady:

"“How come what we offered was not enough to keep her here when children with far less – impatient distracted parents, a small apartment on a busy street, extended day care, Oscar Mayer Lunchables – will happily stay?”"

http://www.generationrescue.org/lets-go-shopping/images/Lets-Go-Shopping-192x177-flip4.jpg

yeah, nylund otm...

the history of vaccination is interesting - pro-vaccinationists had to fight people's mistrust and ignorance for so long to eradicate diseases that they've become paranoid and battle-scarred, so they attack or dismiss people who have doubts and raise questions, which makes doubters *more* suspicious, vicious circle, etc.

the thermisol thing was not handled well at all. initial denial from the medical community, the wingnuts smelled blood and had a field day with it, thermisol was quietly removed from vaccines, wingnuts still having a field day with it.