Respectful Insolence

1

Is there a stronger phrase than "nailed it"?

Posted by: cm | February 24, 2009 1:13 AM

3

Brilliant link. I live in a state that lost four infants to pertussis in the past year. Measles may have been diagnosed in a sister clinic by one of our doctors who did her training in India (thus may have actually seen measles). When parents tell me that they don't want to vaccinate their child, it gets harder and harder for me to not say they are idiots. I still have to be civil, but boy do I think they are stupid. However I now have a baby and can tell any parent I do not hesitate to vaccinate my baby. Poor critter. :-)

Posted by: gaiainc | February 24, 2009 2:15 AM

5

My healthcare provider offer something similar to this in the nurse's station. It makes for sobering reading. We need more people to understand the devastating cost in lives and in suffering of these diseases.

Posted by: Clare | February 24, 2009 2:22 AM

7

@Primus: Good moderation takes up what little slack is left in the wake of the community ethos at Making Light.

I think the disemvoweller might dissuade trolls, too.

Posted by: Melissa (oddharmonic) | February 24, 2009 2:34 AM

9

Wow, just wow for the way he put it.

Posted by: BB | February 24, 2009 8:27 AM

11

"I am amazed that in a post that's garnered 400+ comments, only one antivax troll has popped up. "

I'm not surprised. The data are sobering. How do you argue against vaccines when confronted with life before vaccines, or in countries where vaccines are not common place? Most of anti-vax 'research' has been focused on autism-vaccine link, and seems that very few of them look at the consequences of non-vaccination policies.

I think most anti-vaxxers, while deluded, want to alleviate suffering. Seeing how much suffering is linked to non-vaccinations must give them pause. Have any of them addressed this kind of data? I'm very curious as to how they would do it (aside from ignoring it as Pharma propaganda).
--dj

Posted by: Daniel J. Andrews | February 24, 2009 3:31 PM

13

This is one of the best comments of the lot:

#12 ::: bbrugger ::: (view all by) ::: February 20, 2009, 03:00 AM:

I tell people who want to debate vaccination to go look up the following string- Hawaii. 1848. Measles, flu and whooping cough.- then get back to me.

In the somewhat stark words of one website's timeline "Flu, Measles, Diarrhea, and Whooping Cough come to Hawaii for the first time. Nearly every child born this year was killed, and whole families were wiped out."

Posted by: Phoenix Woman | February 25, 2009 10:43 AM

15

You and Jim Macdonald have been paraphrased. Maybe it will draw readers to you both for details.

Posted by: Sally | February 27, 2009 3:00 PM

17

While I am in agreement for most vaccines, I am strongly against the chickenpox vaccine. I got chickenpox as a kid, and although it is annoying that is about it. The problem is the vaccine is not good for life, how many kids do you think will remember or care to get the booster in their twenties. If you get chickenpox as a child you will not get chickenpox again. As several of you have stated getting chickenpox later in life is much worse, even fatal. I know that shingles sucks as well but I have never had the chickenpox vaccine and if I have anything to say about it I will infect my kids with chickenpox at a young age so that they will not need the vaccine either.

Now all of the other vaccines I will be following although I believe they should be pushed back and started after 6 months since for the first 6 months you do not have an active immune system.

Posted by: Dan | March 13, 2009 2:27 PM

19

I believe they should be pushed back and started after 6 months since for the first 6 months you do not have an active immune system.

Gosh, pretty big fuck up by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC for recommending some vaccines earlier than six months. Guess they don't know much about babies and immunity.

Thank God we have you.

Posted by: Dr Benway | March 13, 2009 3:04 PM

21

About the chickenpox, I have a degree in microbiology and having studied virology in most of the population once you get the chickenpox you have immunity to getting it again. Maybe the virology books are out of date and if new research shows you can get chickenpox multiple times please post a link to it so that I can read up on it.

As for the comment about waiting 6 months, again with my degree in micro I had to study two semesters of immunology. Prior to 6 months babies are mainly living off of their mothers immune system although theirs is beginning to form. Again I like to keep up on the current research so if you have any articles showing that babies have an active immune system prior to 6 months and what they are teaching in the American universities is old crap then I would be more then happy to educate myself and pass those articles on to the immunologist doing current research in the field who taught the class.

Posted by: Dan | March 14, 2009 1:39 PM

23

More on that pertussis death in Australia:
http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/?p=1976

Now explain very very carefully how you would propose to prevent more infant deaths from pertussis. Well, that is after you explain to us how to prevent shingles.

Posted by: Chris | March 14, 2009 5:14 PM

25

"About the chickenpox, I have a degree in microbiology and having studied virology in most of the population once you get the chickenpox you have immunity to getting it again."

I've had the chickenpox twice. I'm not the only one I know, either.

Posted by: Antaeus Feldspar | March 14, 2009 11:19 PM

27

I was aware the Chickenpox lies dormant in your system, in the nerves such as the spinal column if I remember right, however, even with that the recurrence rate of CHICKENPOX is extremely low. Now shingles is another story all together and although you are correct in that it is the same disease it is completely different symptomatically and is less fatal then adult onset chickenpox which can be quite deadly. This may become more common since the last I heard was that the chickenpox vaccine was only good for 5 years which means everyone who received it will need booster shots and how many adults do you think will be willing to get their chickenpox vaccine?

About the child who died of whooping cough, had the mother been vaccinated, because by my understanding, if the mother is immune then the baby is also immune for the first 6 months until the IgG degrades. Thus giving the grace period for the babies immune system to fully form. Also the first paper that was given above is about T-cells in newborns, while those are developed early, they are not what vaccines are intended to promote. The idea behind vaccination is to stimulate the production of IgG which will confer long term immunity. In the second paper, although I couldn't read the whole thing only the abstract it specifically states

These demands shape a distinct neonatal innate immune system that is biased against the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines. This bias renders newborns at risk of infection and impairs responses to many vaccines.

I am not against vaccines, I have received all except the chickenpox vaccine, and my kids will receive all except maybe the chickenpox vaccine (I still have not been sold on the benefits versus risks on that one). Bordetella pertussis is a horrible disease which I did study in Pathogenic Bacteriology. As I said I do not doubt the power of vaccines, nor do I question their usefulness, and certainly I am as against the anti-vaccine people as the rest of you, I just question their effectiveness prior to 6 months, and I question the actual usefulness of the varicella zoster virus vaccine at this time. If they can make the vaccine give longer immunity, then I would be sold on it, but with the current statistics that I have read of 5 year immunity I believe it will be too dangerous as adults are quite unlikely to want to keep receiving the chickenpox vaccine.

Sorry this post is so long but I wanted to make my points clear.

Posted by: Dan | March 16, 2009 12:57 PM