Thanks to the partying and backslapping going on in the antivaccine movement over the reversal of the decision of the British General Medical Council to strike Professor John Walker-Smith off of the medical record, after a brief absence vaccines are back on the agenda of this blog. Antivaccine cranks view the decision as a vindication and exoneration of antivaccine guru Andrew Wakefield even though it is nothing of the sort and is in fact a decision based on questionable (at best) scientific reasoning. Actually, as some of my commenters have pointed out, Justice Mitting applied legal reasoning to science and scientific ethics, with disastrous results. So, as they say, in for a penny, in for a pound. I might as well finish off the week talking about vaccines, particularly given that my favorite antivaccine propaganda blog doubled down on its usual idiocy, not so much by adding yet another post about the Walker-Smith decision (it's already got plenty of those) but rather by publishing a post that perfectly captures the thinking (such as it is) behind antivaccine views. I realize that going after Age of Autism for its antivaccine views is rather like shooting the proverbial fish in a barrel, but sometimes it's just something that has to be done. Coming so hot on the heals of the flurry of self-congratulation and the nauseating level of Andrew Wakefield hero worship, it's hard to resist such a target-rich environment.
I'm referring to a post on Age of Autism by its Media Editor Anne Dachel entitled An Open Letter to Bill Moyers on When The Next Contagion Strikes. Apparently, Dachel is very, very unhappy with Bill Moyers for an excellent article he co-wrote with Michael Winship a week ago entitled When the Next Contagion Strikes: Vaccination Nation. In the article, Moyers used the movie Contagion as a backdrop to discuss why vaccination is so important and why the antivaccine movement is such a danger to public health. In particular, Dachel is very angry with Moyers because he quite forcefully argued against various forms of nonmedical vaccine exemptions and has information and opinion against it posted on his website. AFter complaining long and loud about all this, in particular a video on Moyer's website showing officials from the CDC and Paul Offit discussing the antivaccine movement and declining vaccination rates:
I kept going back to your dismissal of the vaccine-autism controversy as being "largely debunked." Debunked by whom? Have you ever looked into the web of financial ties between the vaccine makers and medical organizations, health officials, and the media? Have they ever looked into who funded those studies?The Frontline video asks, "Why is it so hard for some Americans to embrace this communal aspect of vaccines?" Parents were interviewed about the question and it was all academic about parental choice.
A pediatrician on the video blames the media and the Internet for parents' concerns about vaccines. The whole issue seems to be, do parents have a right to exempt their children from recommended vaccines? The underlying message is, Vaccines are safe, vaccines save lives.
Correct. Vaccine are safe. Vaccines do save lives. It is only antivaccine activists who dispute this, and they dispute it not based on science, but pseudoscience and fear mongering. Oh, and conspiracy mongering, too. Notice how Dachel doesn't start out her argument with science. Instead, she tries to cast doubt on the safety of vaccines by casting doubt on the trustworthiness of the government, medical organizations, and pharmaceutical companies. It's very much an ad hominem argument. Dachel doesn't say, "The science doesn't support vaccine safety and efficacy, and here's why." Rather, she says, "Everyone who supports vaccine is a bastard with a massive conflict of interest." Even if it were true that everyone who supports vaccines as safe and effective were, in fact, a bastard with a massive conflict of interest, that would not mean they were wrong. Vaccine safety and efficacy is a question that is based on science; it doesn't much matter who makes the argument. Oh, sure, knowing that someone making an argument has a financial COI is important because it allows you to put what he's saying in context, but in the end the data are the data, and the science is the science.
That is, of course, the problem for antivaccinationists like Anne Dachel. She can't refute the science of vaccines (like pretty much every antivaccinationist); so she attacks the messenger, in this case, Bill Moyers. In her open letter, she tries to "shame" him for his statements on vaccines based on his previous statements about journalistic integrity. It's a ploy that's both transparent and exceedingly pathetic. I can only imaging Moyers reading Dachel's open letter and reacting by shaking his head and shrugging his shoulders as if to say, "WTF?" Here's what I mean. After praising Moyers for criticizing press oversight of the government, in particular for how it failed utterly to do its duty in the run-up to the Iraq War, Dachel opines:
Your speech in Minneapolis was a rare wakeup call on state of the American media. I can't say enough in support of your message. What is a mystery to me as someone who has long followed press coverage of the controversy over vaccines and autism, is your unwavering trust in health officials and mainstream medicine when it comes to vaccine safety.
There are two sides in this heated debate, and it isn't just parents vs. experts. There is a growing army of well-credentialed scientists and doctors who challenge the safety claims of the ever-increasing vaccine schedule. This is not just an academic debate over choice as you presented it. The autism vaccine controversy isn't something that can be hurriedly dismissed with a claim that it's "a possibility science has largely debunked."
Actually, today, in 2012, it is, the efforts of Dachel and her merry band of denialists to try to argue otherwise notwithstanding. The question has been asked many times, studied to death, and answered, and the answer is: No, vaccines do not cause autism. Multiple large epidemiological studies have been done and failed to find a hint of a whiff of a trace of a correlation between vaccines and autism. The same is true for the issue of mercury in vaccines, and now that mercury has been out of most childhood vaccines for a decade it's not even an issue anymore. Dachel's first salvo boils down to yet another round of confusing correlation with causation, as she waxes hysterical:
What the public and especially a growing number of parents are acutely aware of is all the coverage that ignores what's happening to our children. At the heart of the debate is a nation of very sick kids no one can explain. Soaring rates of previously unheard of health problems now plague our children. Once-rare things like diabetes, seizure disorders, life-threatening allergies and asthma are now commonplace among children. One percent of our children now have autism and among boys alone, it's almost two percent. One in every six children has a diagnosis of a learning disorder. No one can explain why we have the most vaccinated children in the world and some of the sickest.
And obviously global warming is being caused by the declining number of pirates.
Dachel then, as usual, drops a whole bunch of antivaccine tropes so hoary that they were the result of bad leaves causing severe gastrointestinal distress in a brontosaurus. Yes, they're just that stinky. For instance, Dachel repeats yet again (ad nauseam) her rant that "not one of them" is an "independent study." Apparently to her "independent" means not funded by any pharmaceutical company or the government. No doubt, to her "independent" probably means "funded by antivaccine loons like me." To her, the media are sheeple who just accept any study they're told to. Following in rapid succession is the demand for a "vaxed versus unvaxed" that is the Great White Hope of the antivaccine movement to prove them right. As I've said before, it's so cute when antivaxers try to discuss epidemiology. But Dachel doesn't dwell long on epidemiology as she goes on to claim that there aren't any studies to show that adding aluminum and mercury to vaccines is safe. Even by the standards of AoA, that's a demonstrably false statement. For example, there's Thompson et al, which showed that mercury in vaccines is not associated with adverse neurological outcomes. That's a safety study. What about Price et al? That's a safety study that failed to find a link between mercury in vaccines and autism. I could go on, but you get the idea. As for aluminum, well, let's just say that now that thimerosal in vaccines has been exonerated as a cause of autism and neurological problems, antivaccine activists are desperately trying to turn aluminum into the new mercury--trying and failing.
Next up, predictably, we have the tried and not-so-true crank gambit of trying to make it seem as though there is a scientific controversy when there is not. Taking a page from creationists, who are always pointing to "scientists who doubt Darwin," and anthropogenic global warming denialists, who are particularly fond of creating lists of scientists who doubt climate change while (one notes that both of these denialists also fail to note that the vast majority of "experts" in their lists have no significant expertise in the relevant fields), Dachel starts listing people who "doubt vaccines" and pointing to some really execrably bad studies beloved of the antivaccine movement. Basically, they're the 2011 and 2012 versions of Mark and David Geier publishing in Medical Hypotheses and include Gayle DeLong's horrible paean to the ecological fallacy in epidemiological research, followed by Miller and Goldman's equally horrible invocation of the same fallacy using cherry picked data in trying to correlate infant mortality with vaccine uptake by nation, and my favorite recent example of bad science by cranks, Tomljenovic and Shaw's attempt to outdo the blaming global warming on the decrease in the number of pirates (i.e., confusing correlation with causation with respect to aluminum adjuvants and autism). When that doesn't work, she invokes conspiracy theories and COIs. I will admit, however, that she isn't as hilariously inept at this as her good buddy Jake Crosby. If you really want to see paranoid stupid turned up to 11, just look at Jake's latest post at AoA, in which he blames Salon.com's retraction of the infamous Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. fear mongering article on thimerosal in vaccines on--get this--Arthur Allen's brother-in-law. The mind boggles at such "six degrees of separation" nonsense, and Jake once again cements his reputation as AoA's antivaccine one trick conspiracy poney.
In trying to keep up her antivaccine cred, though, Dachel concludes her attempt to batter the reader with the claim that there is so much evidence linking vaccines to horrible outcomes by listing the anti-vaccine crank movie The Greater Good (reviewed by yours truly here), Habakus and Holland's antivaccine book Vaccine Epidemic, Olmsted and Blaxill's Age of Autism (of course!), and David Kirby's Evidence of Harm. In other words, we're not talking reliable sources here.
I will admit, though, that Dachel gets one thing right near the end, albeit not in the way she thinks she does:
Members of the press may not bother to read these books but parents do and what they're learning fuels the controversy. It's simply not true that false claims on the Internet are behind distrust in the vaccine program. In the real world, it's caused by too many sick children no one can explain and more and more courageous experts standing up to the pharmaceutical industry's hold on our children's health.
It's true. Parents do read these books. It's also true that they read the Internet, where it is almost impossible not to come across antivaccine websites if you do a little searching for information on vaccines. These books, as well as antivaccine websites, are chock full of misinformation, pseudoscience, and quackery designed to demonize vaccines as the cause of all health problems. Even if Dachel's assessment that there is an "epidemic" of autism were correct (it's not), that wouldn't mean that vaccines caused it. If there is a huge increase in the number of children with obesity, diabetes, asthma, and other health problems, it wouldn't mean that vaccines caused it. There are so many other things that have occurred in the last 30 years that could plausibly be part of the reason why there have been increases in various health conditions. However, none of that matters to Dachel. To antivaccine cranks like Dachel, it is, first and foremost, always about the vaccines. Any health-related issue among children will be seen through the prism of her antivaccine views, and she will try to find a way to relate it to vaccines. Because to the antivaccinationist, vaccines are the root of all evil and must be stopped. Their words might say otherwise with milquetoast caveats that "vaccines can save lives" but we're vaccinating just too much, but their actions say otherwise. Nothing--no evidence, no science, no data--can convince her or the other antivaccine cranks at AoA that vaccines are safe and effective and do not cause autism. To them, it really is a religious belief that is unfalsifiable.
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I was considering all of this today & wanted to posit that the spectrum of childhood illnesses is like an onion. There are many layers - many of which are hidden by the disease & disability layers on top of them (i.e. if I child dies of a childhood disease early on, the underlying seizures disorder, diabetes, etc. doesn't rise to the surface to become visible).
Now that we've removed the layers of typical childhood diseases through the vaccine program (measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, etc, etc, etc), plus improved medical care which has also reduced total infant mortality, we are seeing disabilities, chronic conditions, etc, that were always there, but not nearly as visible to the public.
I argue we aren't seeing an increase in these "new" conditions, because they aren't new. They were always there, either unrecognized, unreported, or just plain missed (or in the past where high infant mortality was the norm, the kids never reached the age where these did present themselves).
Boil it down to - if a child dies of TB or Pneumonia before showing signs of autism, they were still autistic, but no one ever got the chance to notice.
@Lawrence,
The way some the anti-ax crowd moan, they would look at death by TB as the preferred outcome. Astonishing really.
Yes, Anne pines for the good old days of the 19th century, when children were given the good chance to die like God intended, before they could manifest any autism.
Of course, Anne would probably say that autism didn't exist before vaccines were invented.
WRT Jake's musings, might I suggest we start calling it "6 degrees of consternation"? Or perhaps, since I imagine him turning red with the effort of trying to squeeze out so much illogic, "6 degrees of constipation"?
Clearly vaccination is linked to increased incidence of teen pregnancy--after all, if someone dies of a vaccine-preventable disease (such as pertussis) as a child they can't become pregnant/get someone pregnant as a teen.
I think you may have my new favorite blog. It's well researched and scientifically sound. I found you because someone linked to you about Mayim Bialik on Slate.com. Thank you for being here, and feel free to come visit my blog http://cheaplifeexpensiveeducation.blogspot.com/ where one can discuss pediatric topics from a real pediatrician - who does not support unproven naturopathy/homeopathy.
Anti-vaxxers, like alt med advocates, are increasingly pulling away from the mainstream: standard media are routinely vilified and abjured as being the work of the devil. By going after well-regarded fellows like Mssrs Moyers and Cooper, they severely limit their appeal. More and more, they sound like Natural News and the Progressive Radio Network. Here's the problem: altho' these niches are limited, scads of them are popping up all over the net creating an archipelago of nonsense or a constellation of many points of dimness for the un-enlightened.( Thinking Moms Revolution; Canary Party et al)
As you can see in AoA's summary of the Long Beach Woo and Andy Fest, anti-vaxxers have joined in with health freedom fighters including luminaries like Mike Adams, RS Bell and Tim Bolen. Woo-meisters ( @ the aforementioned outlets, NN and PRN) similarly are reaching out to anti-vaxxers making for a large, happy, incestuously whimsy-based union of disease promotion and fear-mongering: AJW will appear @ PRN. There's also talk ( @ both and the LB festival) about western goverments as *police states*; and we all know how police states manipulate information and punish threats: alt med and anti-vax are currently shaking the states' very foundations (e.g. David Lewis)
If these are the good people, I'm so glad I'm a devil- the conversation's much better and the outlook is more realistic.
Thanks for this. The growth of anti-science hysteria and bullying in all kinds of areas is very worrying. Global warming, evolution, vaccines...
Last week, I got a note home from my kids' school that there was a whooping cough outbreak and I should watch my kids for symptoms. It's a school full of privileged, well-educated people in a wealthy suburb of a major city. Why is some kid getting whooping cough?
Oh, sure, knowing that someone making an argument has a financial COI is important because it allows you to put what he's saying in context, but in the end the data are the data, and the science is the science.
That's the thing these people don't get. You can do perfectly good science with a conflict of interest - and good thing, too, as it's almost impossible to exist in the rarefied air of absolutely zero conflicts of interest anywhere in your life. The point is to put your COI statement right out in the open, so that your science can be reviewed in the proper context - as most legit scientists do, as Wakers did not.
@ Roadstergal:
They also don't seem to realize that they have a FAR more profound COI than any of those they decry. Having one's entire identity and worldview completely tied up in the assumption that vaccines cause autism is much more of an incentive to distort data than mere grant money or speaking fees.
Not all COIs are financial.
@Lawrence: Very important thought, yours. Kudos.
- while I'm here- I get angry when I hear *police state* tossed about cavalierly: last month I was fortunate to witness a slide show of photo journalist Yuri Kozyrev's work ( similar @ Time photo galleries Libya)- now that's a police state!( warning: blood, broken bodies etc)
Dear Orac,
I showed this article to my dear friends questioning vaccines. They are wondering who has all the answers. Reasonable, intelligent folks, looking for help. If these vaccine safety advocates are so stupid, why is their movement growing and growing. A deeper look into their science shows credibility and integrity. Most compelling? A 5th grader can figure out when someone turns the topic from viable, provable vaccine damage to the ravages of infectious disease that the argument has turned from factual debate to propaganda. One does not negate the other.
Vaccine damage and infectious disease are two entirely different issues. To continue to combine them is a mark of intellectual weakness.
I comment here only because Anne has done a remarkable job of maintaining her professionalism. Her posts are well researched and infinitely helpful to so many. That you would conduct yourself in this manner in the company of such a respected advocate, is shameful. It's my sincere hope you can funnel this energy into developing a manner of communication that is respectful and diplomatic.
You see friend, the glorious thing about the internet you so detest, is that it encourages thought. People otherwise thrilled to be told what to do are learning to think for themselves and question authority. While you continue to reach your ever shrinking market of the "scientific elite", we will minister to the people. With scientific fact, solid data, and oh, yes! THE TRUTH!
So very very sorry for you my friend. I know you believe with all your heart you are right. Some days, when I read what you write, for your sake, I really want you to be. You are trying so so hard to keep it going. It's my sincere hope that you are capable of understanding the science. I know it's complicated. Hard to digest. The Chauhans - my goodness, that is some truly heady delving into the auto-immune implications of static vs. dynamic chronic encephalopathy! Don't lose heart my friend. If a little mom like me with a medical dictionary and a telephone can figure it out - so can you! On a side note if you could take the (hateful)emotion out of your presentation, you could move mountains.
Sincerely, LJ Goes
#4 Cynical Pediatrician
Yes. It's really no wonder antivaxxers wallow in so much bitterness and hatred. Imagine having to come to terms with the fact that vaccines have been able to override God's omnipotence
Undercounting handwringing
I discuss this statistic at One in 6 children with a developmental disability?
The source is Boyle et al. (2011) Trends in the Prevalence of Developmental Disabilities in US Children, 1997â2008 Pediatrics. 2011 Jun;127(6):1034-42. Epub 2011 May 23. doi: 10.1542/peds.2010-2989)
Screening for and remediating learning disorders are my areas of expertise. I would say the one in six figure (16.6%) is possibly low. Dyslexia is classed as a developmental disability. Some dyslexia experts put the actual prevalence rate at up to 20%. The point is, we didn't evolve to read; some of us have neurological features that makes learning to read quite difficult without intensive, direct instruction.
Of course, Dachel and her fellow-travelers don't let facts get in their way. It's the vaccines.
@Shannon LC Cate
Immunologists' knowledge about pertussis and the protection that the acellular vaccine is evolving.
You don't say how old your children are. If they are approaching middle school, the immunity conferred by their infant vaccines may have worn off.
The acellular formulation is safer than the old whole-cell vaccine, but at a cost: it's less effective in conferring immunity.
Those are just two explanations, but if your state publishes vaccine-uptake rates for schools (I live in California and the Dept of Ed does publish those data at school level) you can find out if your school has a high vaccine uptake rate.
If it doesn't you might be in a concentration of vaccine refusers.
You mean like Andrew Wakefield (who committed scientific fraud), Mark and David Geier (who set up a dubious "institute" and, in a completely unethical move, chaired their own IRB to rubberstamp their human subjects research on projects involving chemical castration of autistic children), Rashid Buttar (one of whose protocols involves urine injections), and Roy Kerry (who killed an autistic boy with chelation therapy)? Wow. If that's what antivaccinationists view as "credibility and integrity" in science, I hate to see what you would consider fraud and quackery.
As I just showed in this post, her posts are anything but well-researched. More than that (or less than that, depending on how you want to look at it), they are incredibly misleading, which is not surprising given how proud she is of the efforts of herself and her fellow antivaccinationists in eroding confidence in the U.S. vaccine program. Every study that comes out, she has to find a way to twist it into a pretzel of "evidence" supporting her belief that vaccines cause autism. In fact, Dachel is all about false "balance" when it comes to vaccine reporting.
Actually, I love the Internet. Why else would I spend so much effort blogging? What you don't like is that the very Internet that allows cranks like Anne Dachel to spew their pseudoscience, misinformation, and cherry-picked data to slavering sycophants also allows me to refute their nonsense, as I did in this post.
Heh.
Ha.
Hahaha.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
I'm sorry. That was just so funny. I can't recall having seen a better example of the arrogance of ignorance in a very, very long time.
I am delighted that the editors of AoA and Dachel are sending letters to mainstream media sources and complaining about the *accuracy* and *bias* in their reports. They are slitting their own throats and only driving mainstream media away from them.
Usually, each of these crank letters are reproduced in their entirety on AoA affiliated websites...and follow-up articles are written to express their indignity when the letter is (barely) acknowledged by a form letter or never acknowledged.
No wonder then, that the only interviews their editors and Dachel are able to generate, are with other crank hosts of other crank websites.
h/t JaneMD
@LJGoes
Anne Dachel? Well-researched? You must be reading a different Anne Dachel than the one I've seen. You see, the media editor for Age of Autism quite regularly trolls online news articles to drop turds of misinformation before running off elsewhere. I tried for a while to keep up with her, but I just don't have the time to do so. Much of what she says is easily refuted by anyone willing to put the effort into actually checking her facts.
Wow. Just simply...wow.
Orac...don't be so harsh on LJ. Goes...she has some very *valid* research and some *extraordinary* articles, published on a *well-respected* website:
http://www.ageofautism.com/lj-goes/
@LJGoes
BTW, if you consider Ms. Dachel to be a vaccine safety advocate, then, please, direct me to even one instance where she has stated that a vaccine is good and should be administered to kids.
If Judge Mitting got it so wrong, then why did the GMC elect not to appeal or retry the case?
@Garbo
You'd have to ask them, but probably because Prof. Walker-Smith is retired and it really wouldn't be worth the cost to hold a new hearing.
Because the doctor in question retired, and thus is no longer a concern for the GMC.
ljgoes, please look up argumentum ad populum it might be a helpful place to start. Also I think the use of the word "minister" within such close proximity to "scientific fact" undercuts your argument. One does not need to proselytize facts. Nor do you articulate what exactly is wrong with a scientific elite and instead use it as a pejorative. I for one would like more of that particular class in existence. Also I suspect Orac is not confusing vaccine damage and infectious disease, but if anything pointing out that even if the evidence pointed to vaccines causing some of the claimed problems, which they clearly do not, it would still be preferable to lets say death.
Orac
prn comes close on a regular basis (less ignorance but more arrogance).
"Dachel then, as usual, drops a whole bunch of antivaccine tropes so hoary that they were the result of bad leaves causing severe gastrointestinal distress in a brontosaurus."
Apatosaurus. "Brontosaurus" is an invalid junior synonym. This is one of the unfortunate cases where Othniel Charles Marsh, in a rush to beat rival Edward Drinker Cope in describing new species, named too many dinosaurs during the Bone Wars. He named Apatosaurus ajax in 1877. He named another, more complete sauropod (Brontosaurus excelsus) in '79. In 1903, Elmer Riggs realized that Apatosaurus and "Brontosaurus" were similar enough that they should be placed in the same genus. Since Apatosaurus was named first, it get priority.
Whether the species A. excelsus is valid or not is another concern. But everybody needs to stop saying "Brontosaurus." That name's been invalid for over a century.
If that's true then why haven't you and your medical dictionary figured that out?
While I have to leave and can't do a proper evisceration, I submit for your entertainment a post by Ms Goes entitiled: " A Keynesian Look at Autism" ( @ AoA, about 2 weeks ago). Prior to becoming a psychologist, yours truly studied economics ( at another elitist enclave, naturally). An *interesting* analogy between Keynesian economics and vaccination is drawn. A pun is created that leads me to believe that she doesn't know that you pronounce 'Keynes', *kanes* not *keens*.
It seems that those who make forays into the life sciences *sans* formal education can also branch out into the social sciences maintaining the same disastrous lack of comprehension. I have called this phenomenon *woo spread*.
Far left loons such as Moyers sure do love their vaccines.
Failed fire scientists sure do love their glib political stereotypes.
To supplement what I posted earlier - women are also bearing children at a more advanced age now (into their 40's) which has already shown to lead to an increased risk for Downs and other developmental issues. Why couldn't autism also fit into this as well - since this is occuring mostly in Western Countries (where you also see the increased recognition of autism), this fits - and if you can show correlation between age of the mother vs. autism diagnosis (in a population) vs. the same in a country where births are generally at a younger age, it would be another nail in the autism - vaccine coffin.
I believe I've presented two very likely scenarios to explain the current increased recognition of autism - that was nothing to do with vaccines - and I continue to wonder, really, why these anti-vaxers are so stuck on the subject.
@ Science Mom: Lisa Goes has figured it out...with her medical dictionary. She is a "science journalist" at AoA and is also affiliated with the Canary Party:
"LJ Goes is an essayist, executive board member of the Canary Party, and co-founder of The Thinking Mom's Revolution. She is mom to three children, one who suffers greatly from *iatrogenic autism*."
*Iatrogenic Autism*?
@ Lawrence:
There's already an established correlation between parental age and autism incidence. See for instance PMIDs 22277122, 22230961, and 22085436. And that's just from the first 10 hits.
> If these vaccine safety advocates are so
> stupid, why is their movement growing
> and growing.
>
> Posted by: ljgoes | March 9, 2012 11:40 AM
The movement is growing because there is a plentiful supply of people like you who think that the popularity of an idea among uneducated Oprah fans has any bearing upon whether or not the idea is true. QED, mumsy dearest. And if you don't know what "QED" means, you can look it up in that dictionary you love so much. Or perhaps phone a friend?
I'd also like a bit of evidence that it is, in fact, growing.
Perhaps that medical dictionary doesn't really describe "confounding factors" or she skipped that section because it was too difficult.
There is a reason us "elitists" go to school rather than make all of our professional decisions on a dictionary or on random web sites.
>I'd also like a bit of evidence that it is, in fact, growing.
Me, too. When my child was first diagnosed with autism, there seemed to be a constant chorus of anti-vaccine advocates/biomedical shills attempting to sell parents like me on various expensive and untested treatments, like chelation, hyperbaric chambers, etc. That chorus has been severely reduced in recent years, which is a great relief to all but a minority of parents of autistic children. Until you have an autistic child, you will have no idea of how infuriating it is to have someone lying about your child, his condition and his prognosis (I did see the hatemongering term "tsunami of autism" the other day - from one of the remainder of what I call the "sewage leak of antivaxxers"
Lisa Goes (on RI about Orac):
Lisa Goes (on AoA about Paul Offit):
Project much, Lisa?
LJ Goes (#14):
Ah, the ever-popular argumentum ad populum! If an idea is popular, it must be correct - right? I guess that explains why Creationism is correct in the US and evolution is correct in the EU. Or why bleeding and purging worked so well in the 18th and 19th centuries. Please, get over the idea of "the wisdom of the masses".
Only if you don't understand science very well. The anti-vaccinationistas are generally very good at emoting and appearing sincere, not to mention the use of "sciency" terminology (much of which is utter nonsense), but actual science? Not so much of that.
Here's the argument in a nutshell: the "vaccines-cause-autism" advocates claim that vaccines cause autism despite the fact that no studies have shown a correlation between the two. That's what negates their argument. They then try to conflate the known "viable, provable vaccine damage" (remember, no rational person has argued that vaccines are 100% safe) with autism, which - as I just mentioned - has not been shown to be associated with vaccination.
This brings us to the issue of vaccine-preventable diseases: since we know what the risks of those are and we also know what the risks of the vaccines are, we can compare the two. When we do that, in something referred to as a "risk-benefit analysis", we see that the benefits of vaccination vastly outweigh the risks of vaccination.
You see, once you understand the topic, the two issues actually are connected!
If Ms. Daschel's writings are "well researched", why are they so often (usually?) at odds with the available data? Reconcile those two facts, if you can, LJ Goes.
Tone trolling - if you don't have any data to support your assertions, try to shut off discussion by complaining about the "tone".
Argumentum ad populum again - what "the people" like is not necessarily data, fact or "the truth". In fact, most people prefer a blatant lie they agree with over plain truth that they don't.
Having the data on our side is one of the things that help us to feel that we are "right" and gives us the courage to persevere in the face of popular ignorance. No need to be sorry for us - we knew the job was dangerous when we took it.
That noise you heard was the sound of thousands of irony meters all over the world exploding simultaneously from a massive overload.
A medical dictionary and a telephone...do you mean that I wasted over eight years of college and graduate school when all it took to understand complex biological systems was a dictionary? Or is this simply a massive display of naked arrogance?
Tone trolling - again! However, I doubt that LJ Goes would be "moved" by the actual science even if it was presented without "hateful emotion". Call it a hunch.
Prometheus
dt:
She meant "raging fu*%wad" in a non-hateful way...
I found this about twin births and autism:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120119143334.htm
How many twins and triplets are SGA (Small for Gestational Age) and how many are delivered early due to fetal distress?
Low and VLBW (Very Low Birth Weights) are associated with increased risk of developmental disabilities:
http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/epcsums/lbwdissum.htm
@ dt & Thomas: "Rev LJGoes" meant "raging fu*%wad" in a spiritual way...
http://thinkingmomsrevolution.com/getting-personal/
> Perhaps that medical dictionary doesn't really
> describe "confounding factors" or she skipped
> that section because it was too difficult.
>
> Posted by: JayK | March 9, 2012 3:52 PM
Also note that we only have her word that it is a medical dictionary. I am starting to wonder if it might actually be the Aardvark-to-Zebra kind.
med·i·cine (n.): 1. Stuff used to make you feel better. 2. Any nonsense fabricated by idiots by extrapolating from the first definition.
@Denice Walter #30:
Might I suggest that this phenomenon could be better named *woo flop*?
Zach Miller:
If I were writing a scientific paper, I would use Apatosaurus, but brontosaurus is a perfectly good English word. I hope, if someone refers to their dog, that you don't feel the need to jump in and insist that they should be writing "My Canis lupus had to go to the vet last week."
Hello â Iâve never commented on a blog before; Iâm nervous to.
I havenât vaccinated my daughter. She is three. Iâm not sure if I will vaccinate her in the future. After researching the pros and cons the best I could, I decided not to vaccinate her. Iâm not convinced the chance of her being harmed from the disease is greater than the chance of her being harmed by the vaccine. Iâm not a scientist; Iâm an artist. But Iâm smart. Iâd like to communicate about the issue with a scientist without being called stupid/crazy. I hope that can happen here.
My only concern is the health of my daughter and I want to do what is best for her. I just wish there was a clear answer.
Re: "Vaccines are safe. Vaccines do save lives. It is only antivaccine activists who dispute this, and they dispute it not based on science, but pseudoscience and fear mongering."
New research on Hep B vaccines, published in the journal Apoptosis, indicates that hepatitis B vaccine induced a âloss of mitochondrial integrity, apoptosis induction, and cell deathâ in liver cells exposed to a low dose of adjuvanted hepatitis B vaccine.
Source: Hepatitis B vaccine induces apoptotic death in Hepa1-6 cells, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22249285
Safe?
The adjuvant used in the vaccine was aluminum hydroxide, which is increasingly being identified as a contributing cause of autoimmune disease (and other health problems) in immunized populations.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22235057
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19740540
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10230847
Fear mongering?
The discovery that the hepatitis B vaccine damages the liver (hepatotoxicity) confirms earlier findings (1999) that the vaccine increases the incidence of liver problems in U.S. children less than 6 years old by up to 294% versus unvaccinated controls.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10230847
Blood-letting, mercury and aluminium hydroxide as medicine ( both past and present-day medical practice - now that's pseudoscience ).
Oh Look...we can follow Lisa Goes on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Misuta-Project/185773624795935
Hi Katie #48,
There is a clear answer on vaccines...unless your daughter's doctor has told you there is a reason she should not be vaccinated, you should get her caught up in her shots.
Stick around here and read. Your research to-date has likely included bogus information. With so much information out there, it's easy to be confused. Science reigns here.
I'm not a scientist either. I have 3 children, all fully vaccinated. My anecdote on vaccines vs. the diseases they prevent has to do with my son. In 1997, he was too little yet to get the chicken pox vaccine. It was new back then and there were lots of unvaccinated kids, one of whom got the pox and brought it to my son's daycare. My oldest daughter was also at the same daycare. She had her chicken pox vaccine. My son caught the pox at six months and suffered terribly for a couple of weeks. You wouldn't think a 6-month-old would have the dexterity to scratch, but he did! He fully recovered, but the marks took several months to finally fade. His sister did not get sick because she was vaccinated. I would never want to see a child that sick and chicken pox is considered a "mild" disease. Imagine if it had been measles or whooping cough.
Be smart and get your precious little one up-to-date.
@Katie - as the father of two young boys, both my wife and I had them fully vaccinated. There is a lot of scare-mongering information out there, trying to make vaccines look less safe than they actually are.
Do real research - visit the CDC website & talk to your pediatrician. Your doctor is your ally and you should have the type of relationship with them where they will provide honest answers to your questions.
Katie,
In many cases there is a clear answer. The chance of having a harmful reaction to, say, the measles vaccine is significantly lower than the chance of a harmful reaction should she get the disease. You may argue (and some have) that the chances of getting measles in a Western industrialized country are fairly small (and they are certainly much lower than they were before mass immunization). However, as you may have heard there have been pockets of measles infections, primarily where people have decided that the risks of contracting measles are so small that they don't need to immunize.So yes, you can in many cases choose not to immunize and most likely won't have any problems. This is because the population around you has taken on the risks inherent in immunization for the sake of your daughter. As long as your daughter remains in the minority as one of the unimmunized, her odds of catching one of these diseases is low.This assumes, of course, that you never travel outside the country and that nobody from outside the country ever travels to your area. Of course, it is likely there are diseases that are endemic to your area which you might want to immunize her against.I personally wouldn't bother vaccinating your daughter against smallpox. The effects of polio can be so devastating that I would recommend the immunization, though the disease is on the wane worldwide. Exposure to rubella may not harm your daughter, but it may harm your next child. There have been well publicized outbreaks of pertussis, measles, and various other illnesses to say that the odds of catching the disease is non-trivial.You can't control whether she's exposed; you can only control whether she's protected.
Hi Katie: IMO, you should visit this website, for reliable information about the Recommended Childhood Vaccines. The website has some excellent information that is "user friendly" and great links to other sites:
http://www.immunize.org/
@Katie: welcome. There is a lot of information on the internet. Some good, a lot bad. For honest, factual information, there are a lot of places to go. If you aren't medically trained, some of the information may be too "medicalese" for you, just like for me, "statisticese" is a foreign language (math and statistics are NOT my forte...)
Some of the best places to go that summarize information are: Just the Vax, Every Child by Two, Antiantivax (Todd W.'s site - click on his name in the comments and you will be taken there). Immunize.com, as lilady linked, is another excellent site.
Let's start with the facts.
1. DEATHS (Mortality) from childhood diseases were (mostly) decreasing before mass immunization programs thanks to better medical care - antibiotics, modern sanitation, water treatment, dietary improvements.
2. Morbidity (or, bad outcomes from getting the disease - such as deafness after having mumps, or sterility) mostly did not start to decrease until the numbers of infections started to decrease due to immunization.
3. Vaccines DO have some risks. No one here denies that. Currently, the risk of an adverse outcome from a vaccine, almost ANY vaccine, is less than the risk of a adverse outcome from getting the disease. Here in the US, the risk/benefit rate is monitored. I'm 50, and have a small pox scar because small pox was still around when I was a child. Thanks to mass vaccination/isolation/treatment, small pox doesn't exist any more. My 5 years younger sister didn't get the small pox vaccine. My children haven't needed it. Victory! One vaccine dropped because WE HAVE ELIMINATED THE DISEASE! (Small pox, like many other childhood diseases, only has a human carrier. Get rid of the disease by enough vaccinations, you can then get rid of the vaccine. We were almost there with polio and measles...)
4. Many, many studies have looked at children. Vaccines do not make them less healthy, cause autism, ADD, diabetes, etc. While we don't know what causes many of these things, we have been able to (again, mostly - science never says "never causes") eliminate vaccines as a cause.
5. An anecdote: my daughter caught chicken pox at age 5. She was covered from head to toe, with pox in her mouth, throat, vagina. She refused to eat, drink, sit, lie down - she was miserable. I had to give her narcotics for the pain she was in; nothing else touched the agony. I would have gladly had her suffer for a few minutes of a vaccine injection over 3 days of agony (more days of pain, but only 3 days we had to give her narcotics for pain).
Your daughter is vulnerable. At 3, she plays outside. She is not protected against tetanus if she happens to suffer an injury that allows tetanus to grow. The treatment is FAR worse, pain wise, risk wise, and with a much higher incidence of death, than getting her vaccinated.
Please, talk to your doctor. She/he knows your child better than we do. If there are reasons NOT to vaccinate, the doctor will say so. If there are no reasons, get your child protected.
As usual- I type an "oracian" length answer to Katie and end up in purdah...
Guess I'll wait for it to show up!
Katie--
Both of my kids are fully vaccinated, and I try to stay current with adult vaccinations like influenza, tetanus, and pertussis. I don't want my kids to suffer the way I did with chickenpox, or the way my mother did with measles (she had long-term effects). And I would die of shame if I, or anyone for whom I was responsible, ever spread pertussis to an infant. If you have a son, take a moment to look up "mumps orchitis." Look at it this way-- the vaccinations are safer than the car ride to the doctor's office.
In the meantime, best wishes to you and your youngsters.
Katie here is the 2012 Recommended Childhood Vaccine Schedule:
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/recs/schedules/downloads/child/0-6yrs-sched…
There is also a "catch-up" schedule for children who are "missing" one or more vaccines...your pediatrician can explain that schedule.
@ Mephistopheles O'Brien: Small pox vaccine for children was removed from the Recommended Childhood Vaccine schedule in the USA in 1972...but remained "recommended" for travel out of the country for a few more years. It was used again in 2002 to vaccinate select emergency responders, due to increased risk of biological terrorism attacks. I "think" that military personnel are still required to be vaccinated.
Katie:
Another excellent website is www.pkids.org (they have some very poignant videos). Also, I suggest you read a bit more about those diseases as there is a reason vaccines were created so kids can avoid them.
Some of the major causes of neurological damage to children from deafness, blindness to severe neurological damage are measles and Hib, and plus to a lesser extent: mumps. If a child passes rubella to a pregnant woman, that baby has a good chance of being born disabled or not living long enough to be born. Chicken pox does not have as high a chance of causing permanent harm, though it can cause death and disability. But it is cruel to have a child suffer two weeks with open itchy wounds all over their body.
Of course, that is a common thing among all of those diseases: they make a child miserable for quite a while. Pertussis is often called the 100-day cough. Who wants to see a child coughing for three months? Especially since the coughing can be so bad it has caused broken ribs in some people. Measles causes high fevers, and eyes become so sensitive that the room needs to be darkened. I remember mumps as being very painful, and I was so swollen I could barely open my mouth to take in fluids, much less soup.
So please check a reliable source about vaccine safety, like the CDC Pink Book. Weigh the effects of getting a vaccine versus a child suffering through a diseases. And remember there is no such thing as herd immunity for tetanus.
If your daughter is three years old she is now at a greater risk of actually catching pertussis, measles and mumps for school and playmates. One major reason is due to the efforts of Anne Dachel and friends who are happy that herd immunity is going away.
Thank you for the link to the article. Having read it, I can say I don't see Ms. Dachel's concerns as quite the earth shattering example of evil ignorance as you depict them.
You have a battle of competing authorities in which science, and medical science in particular, seems to be doing an exceptionally poor job of winning. Scientists themselves have created an integrity problem.
All the egregious examples of 'scientist (read liar) for hire', BP, Big Tobacco, Big Coal ..., don't really weigh favorably in the balance when people are trying to decide who or what is right.
Nor do arguments like 'herd immunity'.
I had my children vaccinated to protect them, not the herd. I would guess most parents did the same.
As for government funding, though you may, I would expect that you would not want to defend the Bush administration's record on science for the public good.
If I had been undecided on whether to choose or reject vaccinating, I surely wouldn't have been convinced by someone willing to go the the mat extolling the virtues of, and the fine science behind big pharma.
Frankly, you come off as purely arrogant without the saving benefit of ignorance.
Vicki says:
"If I were writing a scientific paper, I would use Apatosaurus, but brontosaurus is a perfectly good English word. I hope, if someone refers to their dog, that you don't feel the need to jump in and insist that they should be writing "My Canis lupus had to go to the vet last week."
Well, of course not. I wasn't really criticing Orac so much as pointing out to everybody that there is no such thing as "Brontosaurus." As a paleo buff, it's just irritating whenever I see that term. It's like when people call dromaeosaurs like Velociraptor and Deinonychus "raptors." Jurassic Park spoiled that term for everybody--the proper usage is for predatory birds (owls, hawks, eagles, falcons).
Just a usage thing. Not meant to be critical.
Katie,
I am a creative director, also "smart", but I was once totally in thrall to all things alt-med and that included some very destructive, full-blown conspiracy theories. I was one of the "worried well." I won't bore you with anecdotes from my past where modern medicine triumphed and altie feel-good remedies did little more than empty my pockets, but I will tell you one thing: study critical thinking and logical fallacies.
You may be like I was; smart, professional and totally crap when it came to critical thinking, letting my fears get the best of me, being "right" and confirmation bias. Now there's a lot of talk about tone, "hatefulness" and what have you and yes, we tend to come off like know-it-alls. But Katie, many regular commenters here have some formidable scientific education under their belts, not to mention our prolific host who is a cancer researcher, surgeon and is very critical of medicine and pharmaceutical companies when they veer from ethical behavior.
This particular article talking about COIs is particularly instructive in critical thinking. Just because someone is "tainted" doesn't automatically make them wrong, and I think you'll find nary a post that attacks people based on personality and tone without there being a solid, scientific basis for the criticism. The snark is just frosting.
So this disembodied strangers advice? Step away from the fear, and use critical thinking and research before someone you love gets hurt.
Formerly Postmodern Pareidolius
Mr. Griffin...who is being arrogant and who is tarring all people who are educated...with the same brush?
What a smug ignorant troll you are. I am not interested in your politics and I am not interested in your (mis)understanding of immunology and herd immunity. Nor am I interested in your *Big Pharma* conspiracies.
You made the right choice. Don't listen to these infection promoters a.k.a vaccinators.
Mr. Griffin:
How were your children protected from measles before the age of one year? How were they protected from pertussis prior to completing the full four vaccine DTaP series? I would love to hear an explanation that does not involve herd immunity from your family or your community.
Why is it purely arrogant to produce evidence, and to expect evidence for claims that are being made?
The clear answer (from a science/medicine) point of view is VACCINATE, unless there is a clear medical reason not to (immunosuppressed, strong allergic reaction, etc.)
Who are the "competing authorities"? On one hand, you have actual scientists and on the other, self-proclaimed experts and sleazy, unethical "investigators" pandering to a vulnerable audience.
You've created quite a red herring here. We've known for decades that tobacco is a health hazard due to robust science on the matter, BP was pure corporate greed and not a scientific issue as well as your "Big Coal".
You, along with the "people trying to decide" are being swayed by emotional, fact-free arguments from non-authorities due to the lack of understanding of how to evaluate medical issues. I think that public health officials should do a better job of education but the ultimate failure is the arrogance of ignorance that you and your kind display.
You imply that Bush himself oversaw NIH funding of research projects. That's not how it works you know.
Pure tone-trolling. This reads to me, "kiss my ass or I won't listen to you". The ignorance is all yours with gems like, "extolling the virtues of, and the fine science behind big pharma." Because you clearly don't know what you are talking about.
The following are two classic examples of people who never had the opportunity to study Human Immunology 101.
Why do you lie all the time about human immunology, Th1Th2? You've lied and lied and lied on almost every thread.
Composer99, which is why we ignore Thingy.
Hi Katie!
I wasn't vaccinated against anything except smallpox, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis and (I think) typhus. Why? I'm old! The diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis vaccine was licensed in the mid-1940s, so I got that, and my grandmother insisted on the typhus vaccine because we were boating and swimming on a river.
The measles vaccine was introduced in 1963; the mumps vaccine in 1967; and the rubella vaccine in 1969. I think I had had all three by 1963 at the latest.
I distinctly remember having the mumps, because I couldn't swallow even my own spit for at least a day.
My children were all fully vaccinated (my daughter even had the HPV vaccine) and my grandchildren are all fully vaccinated. They are all fine and thriving.
You wrote,
Because you are hesitant, I'm thinking you might have been visiting websites like the National Vaccine Information Center, SaneVax, and so on. You need to know that the sites that go on and on about the dangers of vaccines routinely distort and exaggerate the dangers of vaccines and their ingredients. That's all they do: spread fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) about vaccines. It's not balanced information and it's not reliable.
If you have been reading Bob Sears' "Vaccine Book" consider these things: he has no special expertise in the science of vaccines (vaccinology) or in infection disease. He does, however, have a considerable financial interest in spreading FUD re vaccines. It sells his book; it earns him speaking fees, and of course, vaccine-fearing parents flock to his medical practice.
You might want to read Paul Offit & Charlotte Moser's "The Problem With Dr. Bob's Alternative Vaccine Schedule" http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/123/1/e164.full.
Another place to educate yourself would be the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's Vaccine Education Center. They have both print and video resources on vaccine safety and specific vaccines. http://www.chop.edu/service/vaccine-education-center/home.html
Do come back and ask specific questions, about specific vaccines and vaccine ingredients, if you have them. There are a bunch of pediatricians, family practice docs, and other experts who read this blog. They can answer your questions.
I continue to be impressed by the amount of, dare I say, arrogance displayed by so many in the anti-vaccine camp. They claim that some googling and reading of conspiracy theory sites, some linking of people to other people by 6 degrees of separation or more, a dictionary and a telephone, or even studying fire science somehow makes them experts in the subjects of epidemiology, immunology, or even basic biology.
Sorry, it doesn't.
Am I being an elitist? Am I really? I'm running a fever, so, whatever.
[Citation needed]
Trans: Hence why we, the vaccinators, are called ignoramus.
Ren:
I am called a meanie because I ask for real documentation for their claims, and I point out that vaccine inserts, news stories and random websites do not count. This was the laugh riot comment I got after explaining that vaccine inserts were not real evidence:
(another idiot who can't figure out that people who have breastfed are not referred to as "he")
@Chris
Well, "Chris" is a name that could go both ways. Unlike "René", which is clearly the male form of the name, "Renée" being the female. (Think "fiance" and "fiancee".) I remember the early days of being on here, when "Sid" used to refer to me as a woman.
I guess it's better than "Augustine" calling me a racial slur (for which he still hasn't apologized, I've noticed).
@ Katie:
People who use the internet to frighten others about vaccines are motivated by their beliefs rather than by science:
1. Many are natural health or alternative medicine advocates who often have a product, treatment, a book/ video, a worldview or themselves to sell: their ideas are in direct competition with science-based medicine which they often deride- they don't like pharmaceutical companies or the government either.
2. Other advocates who imagine vaccines as the cause of autism ( and other ills) are frequently distraught parents of autistic children who have difficult lives as round-the-clock caregivers of disabled children. Years ago, severely disabled kids were usually in institutions- also they might have been labelled as 'mentally retarded' rather than autistic- the label change came in 1994, so the "epidemic" may really be a name-change. These parents may attribute the cause of autism to external causes like vaccines rather than genetics as a coping mechanism- believing this helps them to feel better.
Alt med (1.) providers may directly affect the parents' beliefs as well (2.).
I was not alarmed by the 1998 studies that led many to fear vaccines because I had studied developmental neuro- physiology: I told my cousin who had a newborn child not to fear vaccines in 2001. I follow alt med websites since 2000.
I can believe that this is true; you don't seem to understand very well why ad hominem argumentation, such as Ms. Dachel resorts to immediately, is fallacious argumentation.
So let's get this straight. In your mind, "people" reason as follows:
1) There are scientists who lied about the Gulf Oil Spill.
2) That proves that mainstream scientists, even those in fields completely unrelated, have no integrity.
3) Therefore, the truth about vaccination must belong to figures like Andrew Wakefield, despite him being caught falsifying data, and the Geiers, despite them rubber-stamping their own IRBs, and...
I don't think you have the insight into the mind of "people" that you think you do. People who never learned critical thinking skills and can't spot this as an excellent example of why ad hominem argumentation leads to false conclusions, perhaps.
As regular articles on this blog have reminded us, there are people who, when they read about a child who is endangered by a disease such as leukemia or AIDS will donate generously to try and secure that child's healthy future.
If parents can't be motivated to do something that's good for their own children in order to try and secure healthy futures for multiple vulnerable children out there, I think it's because they do not understand the issues, not because they're as selfish as you depict.
Guilt by association? That's what you're resorting to, really? I am no fan of either Bush Sr. or Bush Jr. but the idea that something must be bad if their administrations supported it is just so inane it decreases what little credibility you had left yourself.
It's a wonder you ever managed to make the right decision of vaccinating, when you clearly can't think your way through the issues involved. If advocating vaccines is what you mean by "extolling the virtues of, and the fine science behind big pharma," and it's hard to figure what else that's relevant to the conversation you could mean, then your logic is wholly circular, claiming that to advocate for vaccines with credibility you have to not advocate for vaccines.
Then I suppose you will be pleased with yourself to know that you come across as being more than adequately supplied in both respects, and not just the one.
@ rw23:
Flop. Not bad. I usually envision *woo* as a viscous, oozing miasmic flow- a combination of pond scum, biofilm, motor oil and K-Y jelly- something you really wouldn't want to get on your hands or shoes- I imagine it spreading beyond its original confines because it recognises no limits and it can trickle down in a truly nauseating fashion.
In my experience, there is a lot of misinformation out there. The good information is not convincing though. I am interested in knowing what is the chance my daughter will contract a disease and if she does what are the chances the symptoms will be mild, moderate, severe or fatal. Ideally taking into account as many variables as possible, inluding medical history, social and environmental factors (including herd immunity and outbreaks). Then I would like to know the chances of a negative side effect (including severity levels). It would be wonderful if there was a computer to do the analysis say every hour giving new results based on changing variables.
@Chris: This is why I have the Thing in my killfile. That comment made no sense whatsoever, and I got tired of reading the droolings.
(Oh, and Chris - I think you're pretty remarkable for breastfeeding while being a "he"! LOL)
@Katie: I think we would ALL love that. But, this is the real world, and, as parents, we have to make the best decisions we can to protect our children. But we do that every time we put them in the car, the bath tub, the crib/bed, give them dinner...risk vs. benefit.
No one can predict how bad symptoms will be. My younger daughter had a very light case of chicken pox while her older sister, as noted in my comment above, had a horrible case. At the same time, one of their classmates ended up hospitalized with an infection from the pox and nearly died. All middle class, healthy children, with no risk factors.
Going back further, when mumps went around, my brother had a mild case, I didn't catch them, and our friend who we played with all the time (again, all healthy middle class children) was so ill she was out of school for 2 weeks because she couldn't eat or drink.
I'm very glad my kids didn't have to deal with the multiple lost school days as all the illnesses went around, or the misery of being that ill. When I was a child, I can recall chicken pox going around, and having only 5 of my classmates IN school because everyone else was out sick (until I got it - chicken pox goes in waves - so I was out while others trickled back). But I had, like most kids those days, a stay-at-home mom, so while having one of us sick for a week (x 3 as the pox spread through the house - each of us was out a week) was not great, it wasn't too inconvenient.
These days, with both parents working, having to be off work for 3 weeks with sick children is too great a financial burden. And recall - quarantine for most childhood illnesses needs to be done, so if your child is exposed to, say, chicken pox, you have 21 days before you know if she will get it or not. Can you delay a vacation for those 21 days? You can't, in all good conscience, take your child out where she might expose immunologically depressed children to chicken pox. So, you have to stay at home with her until she either gets it or the 21 days pass. Can you afford to do that? Many parents can't (and many don't bother - leading to more exposure).
Again, I write a long response, nice and polite, and it goes into moderation. I really think Sciblogs hates me... :(
Katie:
One cannot predict the outcome for one person, because there are too many variables. It is too complicated for any computer (and I have done some crazy analyses on computers, they are only as good as the humans who program and collect the data). All you can do is to look at historical data to see how populations have been affected. For example you look at the studies done by the CDC Vaccine Safety Datalink. There are also several studies available at PubMed on the historical effect of diseases, both before the vaccines and when vaccination declined (use words like "measles" and "history" and then on the right side of the page choose "free articles").
Though if you really want a definitive answer you are going to have to invent a device that predicts the future, a crystal ball that actually works. Or just make sure your daughter never leaves the house and does not go out into the community. And neither of those options are realistic.
One realistic thing is to check your county's health department, which may or may not have notices on reportable diseases. My county has a monthly Epi-Log which lists how many reports have been posted for certain diseases. It also includes articles, the latest is about the surge of pertussis.
I am sorry, but it is just a matter of probability and statistics, much like a game of dice. You take a gamble every time you get into a moving vehicle that it will not get into an accident. You can reduce the risk by obeying traffic laws and being in a vehicle with good safety equipment. You take the same gamble with infectious diseases. Every time you take a breath, eat some food, touch a surface or drink some water you are taking in microbes. Most of them are benign, but sometimes they are not. You can reduce your risk by training your immune system with a vaccine, all of them are safer than the diseases. It is up to you how you gamble with your daughter's health.
@gpmtrixie
Some parents keep their six months old at home
MI Dawn:
That quote was from another blog, ShotOfPrevention, where there are a whole other type of troll like behavior. That particular "gentleman" once declared there were no vaccines for bacterial diseases. Someone created some LOLcats in his honor:
http://i53.tinypic.com/jp90lh.jpg
http://i52.tinypic.com/2qapgzo.jpg
(the latter because he claimed "active ingredients" meant they were "live")
@O'brein
No they haven't. They've been forced to by your preciouse government. Wake up and smell the reality.
Mr. Schecter:
You must not understand that there are people who have more than one child. Perhaps in your fantasy land the five year old sibling can get himself to kindergarten, music class and soccer game. Or that no child leaves the house until the youngest is at least a year old, and all groceries are provided by a magic fairy.
Or that some women with children need to go to work to pay the bills. Like my sister when her loser husband left her because he did not like doing the "dad thing." (he tried to come back, but she decided taking care of one child instead of two was easier)
My daughter also had chicken pox when she was six months old from her older brother. I was not working, due to the medical issues of my oldest son (some due to getting a now vaccine preventable disease).
Have you noticed that we do not respect your level of intelligence here?
Amazing a feeding frenzy to get this person to vax her kid. It's like someone tossed chum into shark infested waters. You guys are truly sick.
MI Dawn
Absurd. Footnotes???
it was almost impossible to catch tetanus even before the vaccine
This story is exceedingly different from the normal experience.
Katie. Your child's chance of catching a mild illness are tiny. Big measles outbreak this year = 200 cases. That's four per state. Besides why would anyone think sites named "immunize" would offer unbiased info. And gov sites? Even sillier. They are in the vaccination business.
The anti-vax crowd are so pedestrians. Dig a little deeper folks.
Everyone truly informed knows that autism, diabetes, seizure disorders, life-threatening allergies and asthma are the result of chemtrails and nano particles. Not vaccines. Insiders also know that anti-vax groups are dupes to the evil masterminds who are using nano particles and chemtrails to get their way.
@Chris
You can't base your decision on what others do. Daycare at a young age simply alters the risk reward ratio. There's no reason for parents to expect the same risk when they have infants at home. The risk of infection there is simply lower. Others who place their infants in a daycare situation have higher risks than those who do not. As such the vaccination equation differs.
Oh, really? How much money does the government make from vaccines, Bob? Give us something you haven't and show us some facts.
Please, enlighten us to the hoards of cash raked in by the big bad voodoo government officials who want to give kids autism, as you think. (And don't say you don't think that. Your association with Generation Rescue and AoA speaks very loudly of your fears.)
How much? A million? Two? Three?
Sid, you're a man with a "fire science" degree who seems genuinely perplexed that fire can spread: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/02/the_curious_case_of_patricia_….
Ren, the gov is made up of people. Are there not people working in the "vaccinate your baby" biz? The CDC is now even giving advice on how to throw a Superbowl party. Talk about mission creep.
Where have I said the vaccine gives kids autsim???
This story is exceedingly different from the normal experience.
Try telling that to someone who has actually had chickenpox, you lying piece of filth.
So vaccines don't cause autism, Bob?
The people who work that "biz", as you call it, are public health professionals who care about eradicating diseases and keeping people safe. Trust me, they're not in it for the money. Any nurse working public health could make three to four times the money (benefits included) if they worked at a doctor's office or hospital.
"Are there not people working in the "vaccinate your baby biz?"
Hahahahaha. In my head, it reads like you're saying, "Are we not men?"
@Liz
So you are advising against taking to your pediatrician about vaccines because they are ill-informed about the subject and you suggest they seek out vaccinologist?
Some people enjoy feeling important and telling others what to do even more than making money - especially when they don't know how to make money.
@88 - Sid
I've seen you use the following argument several times on this blogs other posts (if you need I'll dig them up):
Do you know why a serious outbreak is only a small number of cases? It isn't because measles is not infectious, but that much of the population is immune. This limits spread of measles.
What exactly do you think will happen if everyone follows your advice and stops getting their children vaccinated? The number of measles cases will likely go as immunity goes down. This has all been explained to you before.
When you make this sort of argument you forget that the number of cases is not fixed, but will vary as some function of the percentage of the population.
Your child might not get sick, but what about your childs' child (or if your child once older gets measles later in life because there is not longer enough people with immunity)?
I know it is a gamble. I'm trying to get information on the odds so I can make the best bet I can.
My state department of public health does list reports of some diseases by county. There has been one reported case of measels, a handfull of pertussis, not in my county. What is the best way I can use this data to calculate the odds?
Okay, that covers why you do what you do, Bob.
Now, how about that evidence of the tons of cash the government makes from vaccines?
Mr. government epidemiologist
Have you ever heard of a revolving door between government agency and corporations? Why don't you watch this 60 minutes expose called "Under the Influence" and then get back to the lurkers and rationalize your position.
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-18560_162-2625305.html
Could you explain to the "lurkers", who former head of the CDC, Julie Gerberding, works for now?
You're a good government pawn, Ren. They taught you what and how to think very well. You have absorbed the philosphy well. Kudos to you. Too bad you can't see it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
In economics, regulatory capture occurs when a state regulatory agency created to act in the public interest instead advances the commercial or special interests that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating. Regulatory capture is a form of government failure, as it can act as an encouragement for large firms to produce negative externalities. The agencies are called "captured agencies".
"If the government is to tell big business men how to run their business, then don't you see that big business men have to get closer to the government even than they are now? Don't you see that they must capture the government, in order not to be restrained too much by it? Must capture the government? They have already captured it." -Woodrow Wilson.
@Stewart
Yes, I understand the technical definition of epidemic. But I don't understand your side's fascination with the whole "what if everyone did" argument. I chose not to vaccinate in 1995 and amazingly the entire country did NOT follow my lead. Shocking. If the measles comes back people will be about as worried about it as they were in the sixties. Should sporadic cases reemerge, they will have the option to vaccinate as they see fit.
@99 - Katie:
I can't tell you exactly the best method of how to calculate the odds off the top of my head. It is complicated. Populations change.
Will your child ever leave your county? Will she travel abroad? What will the immunity status of the population be in N years in the future? etc.
If the measles comes back people will be about as worried about it as they were in the sixties
That is to say, very worried, particularly if they had young children. Some of us old farts remember the sixties, you lying piece of filth to the third power.
Katie:
For the US, the CDC pink book usually has very good stats on the risks of various consequences for disease based on contemporary data in developed countries and the risks of adverse effects from vaccination. If you don't live in the US your public health agency is a suitable substitute. So is the World Health Organization.
It's generally better to stick with publications produced by government & university organizations and consulting with your children's pediatrician, over and above any blog or Internet commenter, even this one. Start with what large aggregates of immunologists and pediatricians have to say, and work from there.
As far as a lot of anti-vaccine claims go, what I suspect you will find is that the vast majority of them do not stand up to even the slightest scrutiny, either in terms of their evidence or their logic.
Katie:
Go to your local community college and take a basic course in statistics. Then, if that is not enough, enroll in your local university to get a Masters in Public Health or other degree in epidemiology.
Really, it is that simple!
No, actually it is quite complicated and there are no simple answers. The best thing for you to do is go to your local library and check out books on the history of infection.
Not if you have your way, Bob. Not if they believe the things you write on your blog, on AoA, and on Generation Rescue. For someone who claims to want people to make their own decisions, your postings make it seem to me like you want them to make uninformed decisions. Those decisions are not free decisions.
What's bad for public health is good for you, remember? With that line of thinking, that agenda of yours, how can you honestly write that you want people to make an informed decision?
Whatever, Bob. Whatever.
Chris to Katie
You should also read "History of the black man" by Whitey.
It's 100% accurate and true. All facts inclusive. No spin.
@101 Sid
I took your suggestion that the number of measles cases per state was low as meaning that you don't think that the risks outweight the benefits, and were suggesting to Katie that she should take this as the/a basis of her decision (as Katie is asking about the chance of vaccination compared to getting the disease in the first place).
Are you saying you are not trying to convince Katie that it is not worth the risk to get vaccinated? I think your statement is something that could keep a person from getting their children vaccinated (not saying Katie will, I'm not a mind reader).
If you are not trying to convince anyone, maybe you should provide a disclaimer "This statement is true for current vaccination rates. Changed in the rate of vaccination may increase your risk of measles".
BTW: I never said the entire country followed your lead, but some have and are trying to convince others to follow suit.
We already have sporatic cases, what is the critical number of cases?
Unless a disease is totally eraticated isn't this going to lead to waning and waxing immunization rates forever? Each time with with people getting sick/handicapped/dead until the number of cases gets high enough to convince people to vaccinate? So not only the risk of getting immunized (which is small) but the risk of getting the disease before the outbreak is under control.
I get the feeling you don't like IF questions, but they are important to tell one what might occur in the future.
Shay
Poor Shay decided to go off of emotional memory instead evidence and reading this 1960's CDC memo:
"Complications are
infrequent, and, with adequate medical care, fatality is
rare. Susceptibility to the disease after the waning of maternal immunity is universal; immunity
following recovery is solid and lifelong in
duration."
Shay, could you tell the "science" bloggers how many people recovered from measles in the 1960's? How many died and what were the comorbidities? Was the risk homogenous? And why exactly was mortality sharply decreasing from previous decades BEFORE the vaccine was introduced?
@ Shay: And, some of us remember the fifties, before the Salk polio vaccine became available. Kids were very frightened about contracting the disease and ending up paralyzed or in an iron lung. My close childhood chum died from polio.
Hell, one of my earliest recollections was when I was 4 years old and was taken to the local firehouse for smallpox vaccine:
http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/10/5/03-0973_article.htm
My mom, who was in nurses training circa 1935 remembered diphtheria outbreaks during her childhood, and caring for patients.
Just because Offal wasn't alive during the bad old days and just because he is clueless about the spread of diseases and epidemics, he can "confidently" state that "(he) chose not to vaccinate in 1995". Just another selfish free-rider.
I actually have considered studying epidemiology to try to answer this question. I really would rather an epidemiologist here (or somewhere) would/could answer the question for me.
Just to clarify, I've read about the diseases a fair amount. I'm definitely clear that the chance of adverse effects from having the disease are much greater than the chance of adverse effects from the vaccine.
I'd like to take the data available on the severity of the disease and the data available on the rate (is this the right term?), and any data on the factors that influence the severity and rate to try to predict the odds of my daughter contracting the disease. It doesn't seem like this would be impossible.
So far only Sid Offit has offered anything. I'm hoping a scientist here can help me out. Or maybe offer advice on who would be the best person to help me with this.
Katie:
Become an epidemiologist. If you think "Sid Offit" (the troll known as Robert Schecter, and not the author of the same name) offered anything useful, then you really need to work on your education. Because around here he is basically considered to be an idiot.
We've honestly offered up how severe the diseases are. Did you miss the bit about the 100 day cough, or the swelling, or the sensitivity to light with the real chance of permanent disability and death? Seriously, what are you reading? Fairy tales? How do they compare to The Clinical Significance of Measles: A Review? Did you know that a serious disease followed the fall of the Soviet Union: Successful Control of Epidemic Diphtheria in the States of the Former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: Lessons Learned
Yes, Robert Schecter, you are an idiot. Stop pretending to be a well renowned author who writes biographies. You are not fooling anyone with your constant stupidity.
@ Katie: It is hard to teach statistics over the internet, but here is a primer for you that discusses incidence, prevalence (rate), morbidity and mortality:
http://www.health.ny.gov/diseases/chronic/basicstat.htm
I suggest that you check out the CDC Pink Book which will give you chapter-by-chapter information about every vaccine-preventable disease (including all the Recommended Childhood Vaccines), on that vaccine schedule I linked you to. Each of the disease "chapters" in the Pink Book also discusses incidence, prevalence, morbidity and mortality in a totally unvaccinated (or "vulnerable") population, the development/licensing of the vaccines and, any reactions,
that have been reported and documented, following immunization:
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/index.html
"So far only Sid Offit has offered anything. I'm hoping a scientist here can help me out. Or maybe offer advice on who would be the best person to help me with this."
I'm puzzled by this statement. Bob/Sid is an anti-vax crank, and I as well as other posters here have provided you with links to very reliable websites.
Why don't you look at some of those links, and provide us with some feedback?
Katie, I have a comment in moderation. I suggest you read it when it gets approved sometime tomorrow.
In the mean time I suggest you realize that "Sid Offit" is not the an author of several well regarded biographies, but Robert Schecter, a guy who sells real estate in California. On this blog he is considered to be an uneducated idiot. In short, ignore everything he writes.
Lilady
It is clear from the scientific literature that diptheria mortality decreased from from matters not related the DPT. Apparently your "scientific" education in 1960 didn't get much further than you mother's 1930's "scientific" education. Risk is not homogenous. Your emotional catharsis on mass vaccination does not contribute to the science.
Did I miss any of Offal's posts on this thread...(where he) "offered anything"...to Katie?
Gee, I'd like some feedback from Katie to determine if she has learned anything from what we have offered.
Chris
Ad hominem attacks are considered logical fallacies. They are par for the course for ORAC and his blog followers that he affectionately calls minions. It's pseudoscientific and psuedoskeptic of them. It's a hallmark signature of the cult.Chris has given a classic example. Instead of dealing with content, it's "don't believe "x" because of "this".
Logic is their pride but not the psuedoskeptics strong point.
Chris, now why is an engineer an expert in mass vacc
Katie, one thing you might consider for a more complete perspective.
First and foremost, your child is your daughter. You surely must be considering vaccination against rubella. For the sake of a couple of injections you're risking her (and yourself) having a disabled child should she come into contact at just the wrong time with someone not yet showing symptoms of a disease that's probably trivial for them but devastating for her and the rest of the family.
Some people describe chickenpox as a 'minor' childhood illness, though many here have disputed that. But noone disputes that it's much more serious for adults. And I know it. I had the 'minor' childhood illness. My husband caught it from our children when he was in his forties. He was in agony for days, and delirious with fever for about 30 hours. His beautiful pale (Irish heritage) skin has been forever marred by the scars. 20 years later, they're now fading but it's not much benefit when your skin is starting to age and wrinkle.
And she's three years old. Kindergarten, school, birthday parties are all possible contacts. The children she deals with only have to have had passing contact with someone else you've never seen to contract a mild case of a disease - if they happen to be one of those for whom vaccination was only partially successful. The only way to protect your daughter is to protect her.
As for pertussis and measles. They're much more dangerous for infants. Does everyone in your family or neighbourhood intend never to have another baby? It will be a bit late to start vaccinating if there's an outbreak just when someone's had a baby.
Little Auggie, you are a complete fool. I did not use an ad hominem with Mr. Schecter. I did not say his opinion was not valid just because he was an real estate agent, I said he is an idiot. That is known as an "insult." The hint was in the sentence "On this blog he is considered to be an uneducated idiot."
How did you miss that? Oh, wait, I know: you are a clueless troll. Which is not an ad hominem but an accurate description of your general stupidity.
Though in this case the insult is warranted because he makes idiotic statements. Just like you do. Which is why we generally ignore you. Unless it amuses us to point at you and laugh.
Chris...isn't it strange that no one misses the little turd when he disappears for weeks on end. I wonder if Orac puts him in moderation purdah during those peaceful times?
Can he be that much of a social misfit, so lacking in perceptive skills, such a sewer rat...that he doesn't realize that he is the object of derision here...each and every time he posts.
Too bad troll never got an education, never became a productive member of society and never got a job. He prefers to stay on the dole and troll the waters of blogs.
Some Christian he is. He needs to go back to church...if he is not banned by the congregation, speak to his pastor about getting some serious help and stop haunting the blogs where decent, educated people hang out.
Amazing a feeding frenzy to get this person to vax her kid. It's like someone tossed chum into shark infested waters. You guys are truly sick.
SId, Katie asked for suggestions about reliable information on vaccination. The result is that people are testifying to the various sources of information that they find reliable. Apparently you find this "sick".
Is this a libertarian thing? Should they be *charging* for their advice rather than offering it gratis?
I am concerned why Katie thinks Sid's advice is so helpful and why she has not given any of us feedback for the links and advice we gave her.
I think I'll hold off providing any more links/advice until Katie provides feedback...my time and my knowledge is valuable, even if I don't charge for them.
"A 5th grader can figure out when someone turns the topic from viable, provable vaccine damage to the ravages of infectious disease that the argument has turned from factual debate to propaganda."
You really need to stop watching, "Are you smarter than a 5th Grader?" for your reasoning skills and information.
Katie - Ren is an epidemiologist. Some antivaxxers actually tried to get him fired. They have also tired to cause trouble for Orac with his employers.
Orac and Prometheous are actual scientists. Lilady and Mi Dawn are nurses. Robert Sheckter aka Sid Offit is a commodity trader.
@Katie - consider also the children who aren't immune for reasons other than non-vaccination - the immunosuppressed kid on steroids, the post-transplant leukaemic, the congenitally immune deficient, the newborn. There are plenty of invisible, immunologically vulnerable people out there. In living among others we have responsibility for them too. I would never forgive myself if I or my child harmed another person by passing on a vaccine preventable disease, however unconsciously.
Katie
Pertussis.
There is still a lot of it about. Some "hard" data on the risks exist:
We do know that your child is 23 x more likely to get it if she is not vaccinated, than if she is.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/123/6/1446.full
@Katie, and another thing to consider....
If your child is not currently vaccinated against measles, she may be unlikely to encounter the virus unless she is quite unlucky (thanks to just about everyone else having their kids vaccinated and providing a ring-fence of measles-immune contacts through herd immunity).
But how long will this last? As she gets older, she will travel, and risks of catching the infection will rise dramatically. Will she go on a hockey trip abroad? If she heads for Europe she's in trouble - there were 30,000 cases there last year and 9 deaths.
If your daughter catches the measles when she's older (and she will) she will be even iller than she would have been had she caught it as a child.
The risks as a child are bad enough:
1 in 1000 will die
1 in 1000 gets brain damage from encephalitis
200 in 1000 need admission to hospital
80 get pneumonia
80 get otitis media
dozens get other significant, debilitating illnesses.
Get measles as an adult and this risks increase.
That's just measles. You want I go through some other childhood diseases for you?
(PS Not that it really matters, but I have a postgraduate thesis in immunology and am a qualified MD and infectious diseases specialist, who gets no income or kickbacks from any pharma source.)
Katie's comment at 48 provided a golden opportunity to commenters to be classy, and positive, and provide what they believe to be well-sourced and accessible information -- rather than lurk in the background and snipe at anyone foolish enough to stick their heads above the parapet and explain what they personally feel.
Obviously I have squandered that opportunity, as is my wont, but it is still there for Sid Offitt and Aug*sti*ne.
I'm getting the feeling that Katie doesn't WANT to hear what we are telling her, because we are telling her that her decision to not vaccinate was the wrong one. She likes what Bob told her because he told her she did the right thing.
I believe Katie is looking for the 100% guarantee - which, as a parent, is something that we all want for our children. Unfortunately, that guarantee does not exist (for anything - just like she can't guarantee, that if she doesn't vaccinate her children, that they won't get exposed later in life - which was posited above as well).
When a parent makes the decision not the vaccinate, they aren't just making it for year 0 - 2, they are making it for the foreseeable future - since most children won't remember if they were vaccinated or not. They might run into it again when they go off to college (most colleges require updated vaccinations), or maybe they decide to travel abroad.
Of course, the hope would be, a decade or so down the road, that polio will finally be gone, and we'll continue to make progress on the other fronts as well. And yes Katie, some of these diseases are much worse when people get older - so I would continue to recommend that you have a good discussion with your pediatrician, check out the links provided, and not rely just on the opinion on people here (either us or the trolls).
We can only offer you information - at the end of the day, it is your decision - make it a good one.
Sid @87 - I was limiting my comments to medical consequences, which I admit to not stating specifically. However, as has been pointed out repeatedly there are ways to avoid governmental requirements as well. These may create additional restrictions on your actions (e.g. you may not be able to attend public school unless you adopt and deeply adhere to certain religious beliefs).And the reality smells like coffee.
I may be ungenerous in thinking this, but I think Katie has already made up her mind (whether she admits it to herself or not) that she will never vaccinate her special snowflake. Her challenge here is to produce experts who will tell her authoritatively the exact risk that her specific child runs of getting each and every disease, the exact consequences that her specific child child will suffer if she does get the disease, and the exact risks and consequences that that her specific child will encounter from each and every vaccine.
Of course, no one can do that, certainly not strangers on a website, and so Katie can walk away saying smugly that of course she would vaccine if those scientist-types could show here the risks, but they can't so she won't.
Katie - I'm sure if you continue to do dig, you could get the statistics you need to figure out the risk comparison that you are trying to make. Heck, as far as I know, you might actually even find out that the risk of disease x risk of getting the disease is less than the risk of the vaccination (since the probability of getting the vaccine would be 1).
But here's the thing: remember that the risk of catching the disease is going to be small because other parents, such as me, vaccinate our kids, which keeps the prevalence of the disease in the community to be pretty small. Thus, your decision to not vaccinate says to me that you think the risks of vaccination are greater than getting vaccinated, but that you are counting on me to subject my kids to those risks in order to make it so that you don't have to.
Meanwhile, your decision not to vaccinate similarly provides more opportunities for the disease to persist, and while my kids are vaccinated, no vaccine is 100% certain, so you are putting my kids at increased risk.
We generally do not look kindly on folks who take, take, take from others in society and do not contribute themselves. Sid Offit, who has posted comments here, has stated it pretty clearly in the past that he doesn't care, and is happy to sponge off of our "sacrifices." Of course, there is nothing illegal about being a mooching asshole, but, fortunately, most members of society recognize that in order for society to work, we all must participate, and it is the rare few that selfishly think that no one else matters.
So remember in your decision, is it only about you? I'm willing to make decisions that not only benefit me, but also benefit society, despite the fact that they come with risks. However, I give this with the expectation that others also contribute.
In deciding to vaccinate, you are not only protecting your kids against disease, you are participating in a shared social contract to help protect everyone else. By vaccinating, I have done my part to help protect your kids. All I ask in return is that you help to protect mine.
The funny thing is that even Uncle Bob Sears realizes the problem with breaking the social contract, and advises those following his delayed vaccination approach to not advertise it because it will create ill-will.
@Augustine
I must have missed it. Was that your apology for calling me... What was that you called me when I wouldn't answer your question? That little racial epithet that, by your logic only, is so not an ad hominem, right?
Just apologize, and we can discuss your grievances. Also, I'm an infectious disease epidemiologist, not a government epidemiologist, or a wannabe epidemiologist like you and your cohort.
Sid @89:
I suppose in your world. 59.000 newborn deaths from tetanus in a single year counts as "almost impossible to catch." That's the 2008 figure, down from 787,000 twenty years earlier.
That is, in 1988 the worldwide death rate from tetanus was approximately 6.7 per 1000 live births. I wouldn't call something that killed 787,000 children a year, or even 59,000 a year, "almost impossible to catch."
@Chris
You attacked him as a man not his argument or opinion.You attacked his character in order to dismiss his argument.
A pedantic claim of "insult" does not exclude an ad hominem attack on the person.
You said:
You implied His intellectual ability and capacity is not to be trusted and unsound therefore ignore his arguments.
THIS is an ad hominem fallacy. You're in good company. It's the science based medicine torch. Orac uses this ruse often.
herr doktor bimler:
Well, I tried. It seems that no matter how I try to explain the complexities of random processes (which I used to do as a vibration engineer), many people want a 100% guarantee. Something that is as common as unobtainium.
But she decided that Schecter, a man who cannot reason himself out of a paper bag even if it was on fire, was a reliable source. So she it looks like she will take her chances by leeching off of the herd immunity of her community. Just like Schecter.
Though some day, one of the primary anti-vax leeches will have a child suffer a vaccine preventable injury. I really feel sorry for their kids.
(side note: yesterday while picking up compost and fertilizer at the hardware store I heard a wonderful rant about Ayn Rand from the Pod Delusion podcast, the memory of her ideas and her fans fit perfectly with my gardening supplies)
Another idiot who knows nothing about Human Immunology. Hey, why don't you "sacrifice" some of your time learning real stuff instead of bargaining, well?
Lilady with delusions
Oh, Lilady of cognitive dissonance, Can god talk to people? How do you know this? Do you pray? Whom do you pray to? Does being a "decent educated" person get you to heaven?
Are you a skeptic or a Christian? Which is it? You can't be both.Do you realize this. YOU are the elephant in the room. None of the true skeptics will address you.
Lilady of Grandeur
Let me see you put your skeptic skills to use. How did you soundly come to these aforementioned conclusions? What evidence do you have as proof. Are you just making stuff up? Are you letting your feelings guide your unsound logic?
Dt, the CDC pink book says that in the age immediately before measles vaccine (1963) that 3-4 million cases occurred annually.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/meas.pdf
According to your percentages then
3,000 - 4,000 died per year
3,000- 4,000 suffered brain damage
600,000-800,000 hospitalizations
240,000 - 320,000 cases of pnuemonia (influenza marketers aren't going to like you for that little nugget)
240,000 - 320,000 cased of ear infection. (how well does prevnare prevent measles?)
None of this actually happened.
You are thowing around some fishy percentages. Either the vaccine has made measles more dangerous or you are using unsourced, undated, and non scrutinized statistics.
A real skeptic would be skeptical.
Katie,
If you want a crash course in epidemiology from an actual epidemiologist, I HEARTILY recommend Ben Goldacre's excellent book Bad Science. He manages to make epidemiology fun as well as readily comprehensible!
You can also find him on the web at www.badscience.net for more entertaining and educational fun with a great group of commenters, some of whom comment here from time to time. :)
I don't remember the sixties, because I wasn't alive yet, but I bet my aunt remembers them, when she and six of her siblings (including my mother) contracted the measles. She became deaf as a result of her infection.
I was vaccinated against the measles, but I did get chicken pox in the 80s. My one brother and I had a miserable few weeks of incessant pain and itching. My youngest brother, then not quite two, ended up in the hospital.
And it was in the 2000s when my next door neighbor's newborn had meningitis.
I'm not a doctor or a scientist, but in MY research on vaccination, here's what I learned: the actual cases of "vaccine injury" are vanishingly rare. If your child isn't immune-compromised or if your family has no history of adverse vaccine events or allergic reactions to the ingredients in vaccines (which are all things you should talk to your pediatrician about, and are valid reasons for delaying or avoiding vaccination and ALSO the reason that it's so important for healthy people to be vaccinated), then the chance of anything adverse happening to your child as a result of vaccination is very very very very vanishingly small.
I learned that in this day and age of global travel, the idea that you're safe from not vaccinating because of the area in which you live is a myth that can be shattered with a single plane flight. (And let's for a moment also talk about non-contagious diseases like tetanus that an unvaccinated child can suffer lifelong damage from just by playing outside). I learned about how much danger unvaccinated children who might get "mild" diseases (for them) pose to others -- to infants whose immune systems are undeveloped enough so that diseases like whooping cough is life threatening, or to pregnant women, for whom rubella can severly damage their fetuses. I learned that the vaccination schedule developed for children by the CDC was the work of hundreds of doctors, virologists, epidemiologists and immunologists, while the "alternate schedules" hawked online were based on the funtime happy go lucky guess of a celebrity pediatrician in order to sell his book.
I read everything, on both sides, and the anti-vax crowd arguments do not hold water. You don't have to be a scientist to figure that out. It's the same as the creationist crowd. Some of them are scientists, and they fill their arguments with gorgeous, technical sciency terms and it's easy to get confused, but they have no rebuttals for when their science gets taken apart except to cry "conspiracy theory".
With whooping cough outbreaks making the rounds all over my hippie dippy crunchy coastal neighborhood in the fall of 2010, I held my breath and prayed every day until my newborn was old enough for her shots. I made everyone who came into contact with my newborn get their boosters and their flu shots. She's had every shot, on schedule, and she's a happy, healthy 18 month old.
I find it interesting, having read all these posts, that the other non-science Mom, "Katie," can read post after post recommending websites and books and information, and the only one she finds "useful" is a post from "Sid Offit" saying her chances of catching measles (one of many things to vaccinate against) is small. Tht doesn't sound like someone actually interested in "studying epidemiology" in order to make an informed decision about their child's health. There's a confirmation bias at work here. Katie has already decided not to vaccinate -- so she mostly hears "it's fine that you haven't".
I assume you HAVE a pediatrcian, Katie? Is he or she all right with your child's lack of vaccination?
- about that 100% guarantee/ and anti-professionalism-
These two pop up frequently: in fact a well-known woo-meister tells his followers to ask the doctor if s/he can *guarantee* that the vaccine will be "100% safe and effective" for that *particular* patient and put that *in writing*. Tall order, I'd say. Who in the world would demand this? It's unrealistic black-and-white thinking. Adults realise that every action you take in life carries risks and learn how to evaluate risk to benefit before making a decision. Shrieking interminally about *risk* while excluding *benefits* loads the dice against vaccines: but playing fair isn't their concern.
The "Cult of the Professional" often appears in woo-vertisement, oops, I mean, at *informational websites*: at heart, it denies in-equality in information and down-plays expertise by mainstream medicine and science while promoting alt med as superior and un-compromised by COIs- they nearly reverse the usual situation and give *more* credit if the advocate has *no* standard training and education- which is all propaganda, or so I've been told. This *em-powerment* allows nutritionists and non-scientists ( like the usuals @ AoA**) to stand on equal footing with medical professionals- at least, in their own fevered imaginations. While they talk about the 'establishment's' COIs, they don't talk about their own.
** -btw- Jenny and Dan chime in about what the JW-S decision *really* means.
Katie, the stock in trade of the anti-science and anti-vaccination folks
is dishonesty. Augustine and th1th2 here are two of the most fundamentalky
dishonest and unethical, but the intent is the same. They aren't concerned
about safety or health of anyone. (You could throw Sid in with them as well).
Other than a power rush it isn't clear what they want.
The point: you won't find any valid information from the antiscience
folks. Talk to a doctor and look at the information provided by folks
who understand the issues.
@ AllieP: I found that Katie's posts were confusing at first, then (IMO), downright disingenuous.
Each of us posted some simple reliable websites for her to visit for "user friendly" information about vaccine-preventable diseases including the CDC Pink Book...for the natural history of the diseases, statistics for morbidity and mortality before the vaccines were available and the extraordinary protection that is provided by these vaccines...with nary any feedback from Katie.
Absent that feedback, Katie then wanted us to provide some "hypothetical" statistics for morbidity/mortality in a vulnerable population and in a population with high immunization uptake-vs-some sort of statistics for an individual (hypothetical) child.
I might be somewhat cynical about Katie's sincerity, but I have had some experience with a troll who claimed concerns about her "niece" regarding immunizations. That troll kept me occupied for days asking esoteric questions, before tipping her hand and quoting whale.to.
So, Katie, if I have unfairly labeled you...I promise I will apologize.
Meanwhile, Back at AoA, Jenny McCarthy and Dan Olmsted have weighed in about the John W-S court decision and have drawn the illogical conclusion that it vindicates Wakefield:
http://www.ageofautism.com/
Boy Wonder Ace Reporter Jake Crosby has really gone off the rails with his six, sixty, six hundred degrees of separation regarding Salon's decision to remove RFK's "Deadly Immunity" article from their website. This kid really needs some serious mental health intervention.
Allie@140 -- well, now, your aunt is operating off emotional memory. Unlike Offit, who, because he has been protected by herd immunity from actually catching any of the childhood diseases we're talking about, is a far more reliable source.
Katie@113 -- all that Offit is given you is a counterfeit validation of your decision not to vaccinate. Comforting, perhaps, but hardly useful.
A couple of thoughts on herd immunity. One is that yes, some of us are willing to take a very small chance of harm to ourselves to save a stranger's life or health. If this seems odd to you, I assume you live someplace without a fire department: firefighters are taking a much larger risk when they go to work than I take getting a vaccine.
The other is that the anti-vaccine argument is an example of advice that people who are following it themselves need everyone else not to take. Because herd immunity is real. An unvaccinated child probably won't catch measles if everyone around them is vaccinated. If, instead, only 20% of the people around them are vaccinated, because their parents were that good at convincing people not to vaccinate, that first child is at much higher risk.
I don't know if Katie will be back, but anyway. Here's a little item to stiffen the resolve of anyone who's thinking they might skip a child's polio vaccination.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-09/band-beats-odds-to-become-worldwi…
augustine: "It is clear from the scientific literature that diptheria mortality decreased from from matters not related the DPT."
I don't usually respond to augie, but the above statement is a such a classic example of antivax evasion that it should be addressed.
augie is correct that overall mortality from diphtheria substantially declined before the DPT came into use. There are two kind of important things he did not see fit to mention. First, that mortality from diphtheria is still substantial if one gets the disease:
"The most widely quoted diphtheria mortality rate is 5-10%. It may reach higher than 20% in children younger than 5 years and adults older than 40 years."
Thankfully, diphtheria is relatively rare now, thanks to...vaccination.
"Since the introduction and widespread use of diphtheria toxoid in the 1920s, respiratory diphtheria has been well controlled, with an incidence of approximately 1000 cases reported annually. Before vaccination, at least 200,000 cases occurred annually in the United States."
Cases still arise in the U.S., partly due to travelers who bring it home:
"According to the World Health Organization (WHO), diphtheria epidemics remain a health threat in developing nations.[2] The largest epidemic recorded since widespread implementation of vaccine programs was in 1990-1995, when a diphtheria epidemic emerged in the Russian Federation, rapidly spreading to involve all Newly Independent States (NIS) and Baltic States. This epidemic caused more than 157,000 cases and 5000 deaths according to WHO reports."
Another look at what vaccination has done to dramatically reduce the incidence of diphtheria:
"Before the introduction of vaccine in the 1920s, the incidence of respiratory disease was 100-200 cases per 100,000 population in the United States and has decreased to approximately 0.001 cases per 100,000 population."
So what's most important these days to keep mortality from diptheria down, augie? Care to guess?
"Immunization patterns have the most influence on mortality patterns. Mortality rates have not changed significantly over the past few decades. Most deaths occur on days 3-4 secondary to asphyxia with a pharyngeal membrane or due to myocarditis. Mortality rates of 30-40% have been reported for bacteremic disease."
htp://emedicine.medscape.com/article/782051-overview#a0199
Interestingly (and depressingly) the first five sites that pop up on a google search relating to the decline in diphtheria are antivax sites such as vaclib and whale.to.
I gather this is the "literature" augie feels most at home with.
Adelady...what a great post about a great bunch of talented musicians. Here's the YouTube site for some more of their performances:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqga1CmJKBU
Vicki @144, you may not be aware of this, but that's EXACTLY the advice that Dr. Bob Sears gives in his vaccine book. He tells the reader NOT to tell their neighbors about their anti-vax stance, so they can benefit from their neighbors' immunity.
#69 Composer99
Because this humpty is arrogantly ignorant of even the most basic immunological concepts.
As to its response to Composer99 @ #73..
Hello humpty.
I have number of blatant examples saved in a file full of quotes of you reposting your made up "facts" over and over even after they've been shown unequivically to be factless.
Up with my favourites is the one about women carrying antibodies for diseases they've never had and thus being able to pass those onto their fetus.
hahahahahahahaha....
I'll dig out a few of the most obvious, not to mention humorous, ones for laugh.
#138 Th1Th2
Well. Well I remember posting the very same advice to Th1TH2, with only very minor differences in wording, on more than a few occassions.
Well? Well? Well? What's with that? Is it a tic?
@Katie
Anti-vaxxers are conspiracy theorists led by one disgraced, struck-off, fraudulent doctor (Andrew Wakefield) - who had his own plan to get rich from all this.
Vaccines have saved more lives than ANY other medical invention in history. They haven't suddenly stopped working.
Do corporations make money from vaccines? Of course. So what? They make money from selling penicillin as well, nobody questions that.
Totally safe? Nope, nothing is. Penicillin can kill some people, even though it's saved millions of lives.
Bottom line: every genuine, qualified medical doctor that I know (all 15 of them) has had their kids vaccinated.
Every. Single. One.
Make of that what you will.
#147
If I didn't vaccinate (which I do and on time too) I wouldn't tell anyone either out of pure shame!
Sauceress - please include "paralysis = polio." My favorite.
Oh yes idiot. They are the maternal IgG.
Now here's your Darwin award.
Thingy, you do understand that doesn't prove your point, right?
It's called VAPP, bozo. And do you know how they are classified? AFP.
So how do they lie about "paralysis = polio"? Simple. They'll just call it "non-polio". Oh yeah another Darwin award.
Sorry Thingy, you once again forgot to phrase your citation in a way that actually supports your point.
I see the delusional disease-promoting *SFB* troll is back.
Hi Autismum: We missed you. We've had a lot of fun with LJ Goes from AoA and regional executive committee member of the Canary Party. Offal Sid also dropped by with some of his inanities.
In the absence of SFB Humpty's Diarist, Sauceress...
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone. "It means just what I choose it to mean - neither more or less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."
This naturally acquired passive immunity has been demonstrated since 1892 yet still you don't get it? No wonder these infection promoters a.k.a. vaccinators will never win a decent debate with me. They'll just cringe.
This naturally acquired passive immunity has been demonstrated since 1892 yet still you don't get it?
That doesn't prove a woman can pass on antibodies for a disease she never had to a fetus.
Whether or not mothers have previously had infection and MOST importantly, whether you like it or not, maternal IgG are being transferred to the fetus, naturally.
Ahhh Nature...Some people just don't get it.
@ dedicated lurker: I told you that delusional disease-promoting *SFB* Troll a/k/a Humpty, cycles in and out of some sort of governement-run custodial care...my guess is that he/she/it is back in, again.
Where is the Th1Th2bot?
"Whether or not mothers have previously had infection and MOST importantly, whether you like it or not, maternal IgG are being transferred to the fetus, naturally."
Ah, but the question is, what diseases can these transferred IgG protect the baby from?
I'm quite impressed Thingy is actually citing a text on immunology. Shame she lacks the intelligence to understand the words she is reading. I wonder if they do a "Janet and John" version designed for children that she could look at.
Passive transfer of IgG can provide background protection, but only against specific infections that the mother has encountered or has been vaccinated against.
So if mother has never had measles, for example, there will be no specific anti-measles antibody, and the child will not be protected. Same for all the other diseases we are concerned about in children. Filling up the child with maternal IgG directed against other infections the mother had as a child herself (eg CMV, EBV, Parvo, Rhinovirus etc) won't make a blind bit of diference.
Now some maternal immunoglobulin does work in a non-specific way. Take IgA for example, the mucosal antibody. This can exert a protective effect against a variety of infections, so maternal IgA in breast milk helps protect the infant against gastrointestinal bugs. But that isn't what Thingy is on about.
Don't expect her to change her spots though, just because she has been proved wrong yet again.
"Don't expect her to change her spots though, just because she has been proved wrong yet again."
We also cannot rule out the possibility that Thingy is really an intelligent person who just likes to deliberately make people angry by pretending to be stupid. I mean, I would imagine that even a lay person would know that if a mother doesn't have IgG against measles, she wouldn't pass on anti-measles IgG to the fetus.
I propose that Lloyd (aka "Th1Th2") belongs to the word of faith movement. If you remember, that group believes that we are gods, or that we can be gods, and that whatever we say, if we say it strongly enough and with enough faith, it will leap into existence. Lloyd keeps writing that it is right and an entire body of science is wrong, it keeps copying and pasting from books without understanding the meaning or the context of those words, and it keeps using flawed logic to defend its magical beliefs (like the one where it can tell an infectious person is so just by looking at them).
Sounds like a clear-cut case of delusions of self-aggradizing, almost as if it's saying, "I know crap about immunology, but if I speak it loud enough and believe it with all my heart, I AM the immunologist I always wanted to be."
This is the same delusional *SFB* Thingy that:
Does not know the difference between antigens and antibodies
Does Not know the difference between IGM antibody and IGG antibody
Claims to have worked...or is working in the "health care field"
Avoids answering all questions by changing the subject by interjecting some copy pasta that It "Googled"
When pinned down about containment of a suspect measles case seen in a an examination room of a hospital emergency department stated "...at the hospital where 'I' work, we do "terminal disinfection". (Hence my statement that *SFB* delusional troll needs "terminal disinfection".)
I didn't know that Dr. Sears admitted vaccines work and urged people to make their neighbors take the [very slight, in most cases] risk, but I suppose it's consistent.
Since it's not the children's fault, I will accept that the children of such selfish people benefit as much from my keeping my vaccines up to date as do children too young for the vaccine, or those who can't have it for medical reasons, or the small percentage a given vaccine just doesn't take for. After all, if we want them to grow up to be more sensible or empathic people, first they have to survive childhood. Unfortunately, I suspect those children are being raised to evade taxes, cut in lines, bully retail workers into giving them things that polite customers won't get, and treat red lights as something that only applies to the rest of us.
Ahhh, so there are maternal IgG being transferred to the fetus regardless of maternal history of infection. Finally someone here made sense. So "what diseases can these transferred IgG protect the baby from?"
Now go and preach the good news.
Ahhh so why don't they vaccinate a newborn with measles vaccine immediately after birth knowing "the child will not be protected" since the mother "has never had measles", well?
Lilady, I have to say I admire your intestinal fortitude. First, you are able to read AoA, honestly the whole site makes my stomach turn. I can't read people who are so self-absorbed that they think anything they read or write on that site is good and honest. No self-reflection at all. Secondly, you are able to ignore the horrid troll who hounds you like the dog that he is and stay above it most of the time. And finally that you have given the Thing-Dong the best name on the 'net that is "SFB troll". I thank you.
That's the problem. There is not a difference between a layman, a doctor and a student MD. You all are ignorant about Human Immunology, at least with regards to maternal transfer of antibodies.
@ Ren: Thinking makes it so? Seems like there's a lot of that going around!
More seriously: over the past few months, I've read parents' accounts of daily life with an autistic child ( @ AoA, recently @ Thinking Moms' Revolution) ( A few years back I worked with family members coping with SMI; earlier, counselling patients with a serious medical condition).
Perhaps woo ( and playing immunologist) is the escape hatch- when reality becomes very hard, people often retreat into fantasy. In the age of de-institutionalisation, parents- especially mothers- may become full-time care-givers of severely disabled kids. Thus is a job that no-one is trained for and no-one expects to happen: our society hasn't yet evolved mechanisms to guide people in this role. Sure, there are patterns for being a parent- but not exclusively, a care-giver. Mothers imagine babies will develop into school-agers, then into independence-seeking adolescents and finally, into adults.
A diagnosis of autism changes that and dreams die on the vine. Parents must feel resentment and anger: "Why me?"
Stories at TMR detail everyday problems and coping: one describes how difficult it is to take a cruise when you need tp prepare and pack the "special diet" the child 'needs". Another describes a 'girls' night out' where the major topics of discussion focus on naive immunological theories of autism and treatment plans. Railing about doctors: who can't repair the "damage". In truth, all of this is heart-rending.
Thinking themselves far beyond SBM approaches, they will 'fix' their children. Retreats into fantasy may allow a person to rest from their harsh realities but turning this into a lifestyle can only- eventually- make matters worse: when the dream plan doesn't work out.
Agashem:
Yes, I do "slum" at AoA...to see what new fantasy "theory of vaccines causing autism", their science journalists have come up with. I also "enjoy" the Boy Wonder Ace Reporter's articles, just to see how far afield and how many degrees of separation justify his allegations of press tampering and COIs.
The Ugh dog that hounds me and every other woman who posts here, has a "mommy" complex. I suspect he was told by his real mommy that the reason why he is a social outcast, never got an education, is unemployable and on the dole, and...derives his "jollies" from the derision that is heaped upon him by other RI posters...is because he is "vaccine-injured". I chose to ignore his attacks on me, because of the filth he posted at me and because of the racial slur he posted at "Ren".
The *SFB* delusional troll is clinically insane.
@ lilady:
The trolls are surrogate woo-meisters and their means of swiping at us mimics anti-SBM manoeuvres: try to shut up or discount people who give out reasonable information ( including the CDC, NHS). Of course, those with more money choose to sue! I probably should ignore the "augurer" in the future but he is such an outstanding example! Women with social power are his worst nightmare. He probably despises the fact that we have both been *paid*( are paid) for our education-based expertise.
We should always remember that the lurkers see all!
-btw- check out "Thinking Moms' Revolution"- while it *is* slumming, I believe it does give insight into the plight of parents of disabled children who hang their hopes on pseudo-science. Altho' I know that they are wrong I do pity them.
@Denice Walter
I once knew a single mother who had a child with cerebral palsy. She couldn't understand that his brain was still in there, working, thinking, taking in the world. She treated him like a piece of furniture, hiring caretakers to clean after him and feed him. Well, money only went so far, and she had to look after him on her own.
One day, she snapped. She took him into the local high school and demanded that he go to class. She convinced herself that he was normal, that he didn't need any special care. When the high school folks tried to explain this to her, she turned violent. Even after she was charged with trespassing, she kept taking the child back to the school every morning, sitting in the driveway waiting for him to get out of his chair, off the truck, and into class.
Of course, that never happened. Social services eventually got the child into a loving foster home and she received the care she needed. Her case, while it is an anecdote and (I hope) an isolated one, shows that some parents of children with special needs can and do "snap". It has to be very difficult to look after a child 24/7, sometimes without help, many times without a hope for a "cure". The human mind can only handle so much stress.
This is why I have nothing but respect and admiration for the mothers and fathers of children with special needs. I really do feel for them and wish them the best. I donate to charities who help them. I don't like to make fun of them for looking for reasons for their situation. Instead, I mock and laugh at (and try to unmask) those who take advantage of these families, those who sell them books and tonics full of magic and false hope.
Eliminating vaccination (or bringing the vaccine program to it's knees, as some have said) will only cause more harm than good. More children will be hurt than "saved". This is what boggles my mind. They can't see that, and I really don't know why. But we can, and we have to do whatever we can to stop them from bringing that horror to fruition.
Thingy is still trying to argue that a mother can transfer antibodies she does not have to her baby.
I guess in Thingy's world, if a mother teaches her child every language she knows, the child can then speak every language in the world, including the ones the mother doesn't know. 'Cause she taught the child every language she knows, and that somehow includes the ones she doesn't know, and ...
I wonder if there is any subject on which Thingy would not fail an open-book test.
@ Ren:
Agreed. Navigation is made more difficult because distraught parents - fed a steady diet of nonsense by woo-meisters -may become proselytisers themselves, hitching their wagons to 'stars' like AJW : not only do they lift their self-esteem ( becoming minor celebrities) but a few may make money by becoming authors. When I peruse sites like AoA, I try to figure out who actually *is* a parent and give them a slight excuse- realising however, that they do spread ideas that can harm people- including themselves.
Question: amongst anti-vax proponents is their *anyone* at all who _isn't_ either a parent/ grand-parent of a child with autism or an alt med provider / woo-meister? I so far haven't found ONE, except Jake - who is working on becoming an investigative journalist/ epi with ASD: Oo, I am quaking in my 90mm heels.
#176
It's painful to see someone so hopelessly ignorant accuse others of ignorance. Obviously if the mother has never had measles or been vaccinated against measles she won't have any measles-specific IgG to pass to her baby. Otherwise no one would ever get measles, and vaccination would be unnecessary.
Denice Walter wrote
and
Reading AoA and TMR for accurate accounts of parenting autism is like reading the Journal of White Supremacy to understand the African-American experience.
AoA / Generation Rescue / SafeMinds / represent a tiny, tiny minority of autism parents, and (other than Boy Reporter) 0% of adult autistics. They are the parents who never got beyond the reaction to the diagnosis.
I am not going to leave links, as I don't want to get hung up in moderation, but if you want to read blogs by autism parents that celebrate their children's lives, I suggest you read, for starters, Kristina Chew's "We Go With Him" (her son Charlie has intense autism, has had problematic behaviors, and is minimally verbal) Shannon Rosa's Squidalicious (her son Leo has intense autism, has had problematic behaviors, and speaks "fluent requesting"). Children with autism grow up; some of them become parents. Melody Latimer's "AS Parenting" is a forum for autistic parents. Some of them, but not all, have children with autism. There are a host of blogs by autistic adults. Landon Bryce's ThAutCast is one, Lydia Brown's The Autistic Hoya is another. There's a directory to find more: The Autism Blogs Directory.
Autism -- even intense autism -- isn't a horrible, fearful thing.
From Lydia Brown's essay "Don't let your children grow up in a world where society devalues their lives."
I hope your attitudes will change, Denice.
"I might be somewhat cynical about Katie's sincerity, but I have had some experience with a troll who claimed concerns about her 'niece' regarding immunizations. That troll kept me occupied for days asking esoteric questions, before tipping her hand and quoting whale.to."
A-yup. "Katie" isn't even the first antivaxer to troll RI this way. The whole "I'm an artist" part of her thumbnail bio in her first comment immediately made me suspect her as a troll, as it made me think of how the antivaxers like to push themselves as free spirits untrammeled by such things as a knowledge of math, much less advanced degrees in biology or medicine.
Notice how "Katie" hasn't come back ever since she/he was called out as an insincere troll? If she were sincere, she'd still be here -- and she wouldn't be pretending that Sid was the only one who responded to her.
@ Liz Ditz:
You get me totally wrong: I realise that they are the *extreme* minority- however, the *realistic* parents you mention aren't out there broadcasting nonsense- that's my issue! Those who promote SB views are educators- we have quite a few who comment @ RI ( as well as commenters who are both autistic and SB)- there are also those who escaped the lure of autism woo like James Laidler trying to get through to the woo-entranced. Some others in the UK- Mike Stanton comes to mind. A tiny minority can do a great deal of damage. If an attractive doctor can spread woo, think how effective a devoted parent can be.
Liz Litz @ 184 --
I don't think that it's Denice who has those attitudes, but the parents of AoA, etc. And yes, if they took the time they invest in searching for a "cure" and put it into figuring out how to parent their autistic children, they and the children would be a lot better off.
Dr. Temple Grandin is autistic, and she spent her early years literally flinging her own poo everywhere. But her parents -- who admittedly had the means to allow for such things -- hired both a speech therapist and a nanny who played special therapeutic games with her. They also noticed her affinity for animals and her concern for their welfare. (This is back in the late 1940s and early 1950s, mind you, so it's not as if this is new stuff or rocket-science stuff.) She excelled in school, got advanced degrees, and used her understanding of animals to provide better treatment of them.
Autism isn't a death sentence. It isn't even a sentence of permanent extreme dependency, such as the severer forms of cerebral palsy. It's something that often requires somewhat different parenting, but which also often provides the person who has it with valuable insights on the world. (See also: Temple Grandin.)
Know how a lot of would-be chefs panic when confronted by Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking? I remember an autistic person of my acquaintance who read the book with the proper mindset -- that is, she treated it as she would a chemistry textbook, and assumed that if Julia said to do something, there was a very good reason for it. Since Julia breaks down each recipe into its smallest parts, and explains precisely what to use, how to use it, and when to use it, this provided a comforting structure for the autistic cook reading it. The fact that the book was so large didn't frighten the cook, because she understood that its size came from Julia breaking everything down almost to the molecular level, and thus making it easy to understand once read.
@ Denice Walter: I've "slummed" at the *Thinking Mom's Revolution*...since I found out the LJGoes who posted on this thread is the co-founder of that group (See my posts #21, #34, #44). I too, find these moms are constantly commiserating with each about their "plight" and their martyrdom because they are raising a developmentally disabled child. They have not resolved their own personal issues surrounding the birth of their child and have wrapped themselves within a destructive community of virulent anti-vaxers, while looking for the "cure" by subjecting their kids to restrictive diets and downright dangerous pseudoscience procedures.
When my child was born with a rare genetic disorder with autistic-like behaviors in 1976, I was too busy providing around the clock care to enable him to survive, beyond infancy. The "older" generation of parents of developmentally disabled kids had done the groundwork by advocating for school programs (Education of all Handicapped Children Act-PL 94-142, 1975). My generation worked to get children and adults out of institutions into group homes, to have funding for in-home and out-of-home respite care and for the establishment of early intervention, preschool and summer programs. It is up to this generation of young parents to get better insurance coverage for appropriate therapies, alternative appropriate residential programs, vocational and supportive employment opportunities for their kids' security once their parents can no longer provide the loving care and supervision for their children.
I have great empathy for the overwhelming majority of parents of disabled kids who don't indulge in martyrdom, who don't play the blame game, who don't spread misinformation and who provide a loving environment for ALL their children. I have no respect for the willfully self-destructive parents who wallow in self pity, who drive their family and friends away from them and who subject their children to a dysfunctional family environment.
BULLETIN: From LB/RB..."BMJ, Brian Deer Anti-SLAPP motion against Andrew Wakefield":
http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2012/03/bmj-brian-deer-file-anti-slapp…
@ Phoenix Woman: I "suspected", that "Katie" was a troll, but went along...until she confirmed it, with her statement about Offal...which was the show-stopper for me.
I thought "Katie" was sincere, until she thanked Schecter.
@ lilady: I've only skimmed the declaration & motion you cite ( 150+ pages)- but I get the distinct impression that AJW's case is about as substantial as that of my former tenant whose threatened suit against my pristine self was based entirely upon an imaginary lease- remember that? In other words, built of thin air, spit and sealing wax.
re TH1TH2
Humpty erected the exact same disingenuous straw man six months ago.
Due to it's ignorance of the characteristics of antibody and antibody formation, it thought its only avenue was to pretend that it was the actual physical transplacental transfer of IgG antibody which was being challenged.
So why, six months on is it attempting to pull the same deceitful stunt?
Why hasn't it looked up the information and got its facts straight?
I don't believe Humpty Dumpty troll is here to argue the facts with those who have necessary knowledge and training in the relevant fields. No, TH1Th2's target audience are the gullible, ill-informed True Believers (TM) and the uninformed fence-sitters. Hence its constant false presentation of itself as being learned and experienced in the relevant fields.
The ignorant, the gullible and the naive wouldn't know the difference. It's all about Th1Th2's self image as an authoritative, and notable antivaxx warrior. Meanwhile, in reality, Th1Th2 is just another wannabe. Hmmmm...a JAW.
~~~~
@Th1Th2
Thanks for the reinforcement on your wilful state of ignorance humpty.
~~~~
It's called JAQing off
So Katie, consider yourself as just another JAQoff.
Quoting Sullivan from lilady's link to LBRB
Yep, yep, yep and yep.
p.s.
My response re Th1Th2 has gone into moderation.
Cue the Wakefield worshipping trolls in 3..2..1..
"BMJ, Brian Deer Anti-SLAPP motion against Andrew Wakefield"
Is Proscientifica still offering odds that the BMJ will not dare defend the case?
@Mark M. Bottom line: every genuine, qualified medical doctor that I know (all 15 of them) has had their kids vaccinated.
See, this is the thing with anti-vaxxers. Their personal anecdote always trumps yours. I've said, every child in my extended family has been thoroughly vaccinated, including my son, who has also had the HPV, and not one, not one of these thoroughly jabbed kids is autistic. But they just ignore this information, or utterly discredit it. And they get furious about it!
I had a "friend" on FB who actually told me that my son should "hit me in the face" for vaccinating him against HPV. I saw an old man die of penile cancer, which developed from venereal warts, and told her what could happen, not to mention not wanting my son to infect his girlfriend. She sent me the most vicious personal message and then blocked me. (In my experience the most nasty, cruel people on the internet are the rabid pseudo-science crowd.)
I've just finished reading Brian Deer's document in support of the motion to dismiss....it's a gem.
There is abundant joy in lilady's heart and, Brian if you are lurking here...bravo and well-done.
âWhy slap them on the wrist with feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer.â - Katherine Hepburn
I think the pink book is very helpful. I'll read more of it. Also, the study about the rate of pertussis among non-vaccinated children being 23 times greater. I do think I'll be able to figure out some type of risk/benefit odds if I work at it.
As far as my responsibility to society, I have decided that my first responsibility is to my daughter. If it isn't in her best interest, I'm not going to vaccinate her.
I don't think it is a good idea to get so angry and mean toward people who don't vaccinate their children. When the medical scientific community responds this way, I honestly think you hurt your cause more than help it. Not everyone buys into scientific knowledge the same as you.
@Candy #193
"See, this is the thing with anti-vaxxers. Their personal anecdote always trumps yours. "
Exactly. One flippant comment which I often get from an anti-vaxxer in my family is "and yet somehow we all survived our childhoods" [without being vaccinated/being slept on stomachs as babies, etc, etc]. Sigh.
@ herr doktor bimler:
If you recall, as betting mad sums** about AJW's suit commenced ( by Mssrs Proscientifica & Prometheus), yours truly, in a diligent effort to prevent RI from becoming an on-like betting parlour thus sullying the name and reputation of our esteemed and tolerant host, suggested than whomsoever wins the bet( or loses, for that matter) should donate money to a charity that advocates/ distributes vaccines. We can all do that. How about eradicating polio?
** mad sums = 100 pounds, euros or dollars (US, CAN, AUS, NZ) or more.
#187
" I have no respect for the willfully self-destructive parents who wallow in self pity, who drive their family and friends away from them and who subject their children to a dysfunctional family environment."
I not only resent those people and the way they talk about my boy as if he were a casualty in their imaginary war but the way parents like me get cast in the role of traitor to the cause. Like Candy, I've had BS spouted at me for taking care of my son's health by vaccinating ("someone should stab you in the eyeballs for what you did to your son")
One of the cleverest things the antivaxers have done is get parents to spoonfeed other parents their crap. You can't be in a group of autism parents without the "have you tried this [quackery]" line coming up. Guilt of vaccinating is topped up with the guilt and fear you might be missing the next big thing.Criticizing the woo is always taken as a criticism of the parent sharing it, who is usually doing so only with the best of intentions. It's an uncomfortable space to be in.
My child is hard work (this week has been especially tough)! Sometimes I think he must photosynthesize: there's no way he eats enough to have that much energy. I don't think "why me?" when times get bad but I do think, "what the hell am i going to do about this?"
He's a mystery in so many ways but the rewards for unraveling just a little bit are so amazing (like his "lovely daaaaaay").I don't want to change who he is, I want to help him grow. Sorry if that's a bit personal but the things Lilady, Denice and Ren wrote struck me.
Jane MD back - way to defend the cause group. My three week old is napping nearby and while I am breastfeeding, I in NO way believe my maternal antibodies will protect him from dangerous infant killing Hib, Pneumonia, pertussis or diptheria. I am counting the days till he can get his first set of vaccincations - 36 days btw.
Here's a question for the group - knowing anti-vaccinators are all over destroying my safety of herd immunity - at what age do you begin relaxing a little? I use a year since my child will have gotten almost all of the required vaccines. I do everything else in my power to keep him around fully vaccinated children - my daycare requires full vaccination records and I avoid a known community member that is rumored not to vaccinate. I feel that unvaccinated children/people are essentially dangerous mavericks that threaten MY life and MY child.
Anyone else?
Katie:
Hi Autismum: I've been to your blog and have seen pictures of your adorable son. At the end of the day or at the end of a difficult week, knowing that you have done your best for your child, is its own reward.
@ Autismum:
I sincerely thank you: I survey woo and believe my own unique education, experiences and ( somewhat odd) skill-set enable me to combat nonsense that harms people- especially by documenting bad ideas and modes of transmission ( really bad ideas can be as threatening to health as virii).
My best to the photo-synthesiser!
I was being sincere. I do wish someone with an epi/biostat background would do their best to calculate the risk/benefit ratio for my daughter. And keep calculating it, so as the community's herd immunity fails, I'll know when the odds switch to the side of vaccinating (if they had initially been on the side of not vaxing).
JaneMD:
Well, definitely after the MMR and varicella.
My son had neonatal seizures who only got vaccinated with DT vaccine, during a time when our county was having a pertussis outbreak (and when there was a measles outbreak that killed over 120 Americans). I did ask the vaccine status of any child he came into contact with.
My kids all got chicken pox a year before the varicella vaccine was available. The youngest was six months old, and was being fully breastfed. So the "maternal antibodies" and "breast feeding protects" claims are lost on me. So is the claim that is okay to let kids spend two weeks covered in itchy open wounds (pox). Anyone who thinks children should suffer these diseases is cruel and sadistic.
#202
@Denice, I know I've posted this here before but it's so lush (his "lovely daaaay") http://autismum.com/2012/02/24/soul-man/
Katie, all you are doing is trying to justify your decision because the information is not being given to you on a silver platter. Now, the study on pertussis is part of the research from the Vaccine Safety Datalink, which I gave you a link to on March 9.
You should lurk more on this blog, and read more of the articles here on vaccine, like the one I linked to. Then you might get to know how we regard certain people who post here. Some are quite knowledgeable, and others are not considered sources of good information (like those who don't read the studies, and post studies that have been ripped apart on this blog and elsewhere).
Then you will realize how saying "So far only Sid Offit has offered anything." is now going against you, especially since it comes after several useful bits of information. This showed that you were only looking for information that you agree with, in short: your mind is closed to anything that does support your decision.
Perhaps you should work prying open your mind to the information being provided here.
#201
@Lilady, this week ended on a high - a glorious Saturday of rugby. The boy is adorable (and hilarious too), thank you xx
@ JaneMD: Congratulations on the birth of your baby.
I agree with you about protecting your baby from vaccine-preventable diseases. It's been a (large) number of years since my babies were born, but knowing the "climate" out there in some communities, if I were a new mommy I'd make absolutely positively certain that my babies' doctor had a strict immunization policy in place.
Here is the 2012 VIS with recommendations for Tdap vaccine. It is recommended that anyone in close contact with an infant under one year of age receive the Tdap booster...without regard to the 10 year spacing between Td boosters. Maybe you could download a copy and speak with the director of baby's day care agency, to "suggest" that their staff be educated about Tdap and be provided with the vaccine, free of charge.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/vis/downloads/vis-td-tdap.pdf
Katie @ 203: I do wish someone with an epi/biostat background would do their best to calculate the risk/benefit ratio for my daughter. And keep calculating it, so as the community's herd immunity fails, I'll know when the odds switch to the side of vaccinating (if they had initially been on the side of not vaxing).
Katie, the problem is (as others here have already said) that it's not possible to do this sort of calculation on an individual basis. We can outline the odds of getting a particular vaccine-preventable disease where a child is or isn't vaccinated (as you've noted, 23x more likely for an unvaccinated child in the case of pertussis.) We can point out that the risk to a child is significantly greater if they contract a disease than it is from the vaccine.
What we can't do - & it's unrealistic to expect otherwise - is calculate the actual risk to an individual in the way you're asking: risk is calculated on a population basis. If we lived in a world where everyone infected with, say, pertussis & is infectious but not yet sympomatic went around waving a red flag or ringing a bell, then maybe. But we don't.
Your post gives the impression that you want to take advantage of herd immunity (& the public-spiritedness of others) without actually contributing to it yourself.
There's a new update on AoA...nah, not THAT...there is a news blackout on THAT!
Here for your enjoyment is the latest "Justice for Wakefield" fund-raising video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMArUYLfXYU&feature=youtu.be
Me thinks they will be running fundraisers twice weekly for the foreseeable future to get Andy out of the legal quagmire he put himself in.
I don't know what kind of knowledge. Maybe first-hand knowledge, or spiritual knowledge?
I think the way to influence parents to immunize their children is to listen to their concerns, then do your best to alleviate their concerns. And realize that your best might not be enough to alleviate some peoples concerns. You just have to keep trying; trying to figure out why some kids have bad reactions. Trying to figure out what does cause autism.
I honestly wish I wasn't concerned about an adverse side effect. Getting angry at me because I am concerned is not going to help. Yelling at me, laughing at me, and calling me stupid is not going to help. It's just going to make me not like you, respect you, or trust you.
You all need to talk to a Cultural Anthropologist. Or someone who does Community Based Participatory Research.
#195 Katie
I don't follow what it is you mean by that. Can you give an example?
Katie:
Or, as I tried: mathematical knowledge. I suggest before you make statements you are clear on what you mean.
I never called you stupid, and I am not yelling at you. What I did say is that you have already made up your mind and have asked for information that we have already explained is not available. You made that clear when you said that only one person gave you useful information. You only thought is was useful because you agreed with it, even though it was wrong.
Nor are we angry. We've encountered this mindset often, and it is a bit annoying to repeat the same information over and over and over again. All we ask that you do is pry upon your mind to new information.
Autismum
Photosynthesize is just plain absurd. He is probably doing cold fusion.
This has happened where?
Now I can laugh at my typos: "All we ask that you do is pry upon your mind to new information." It should be "All we ask that you do is pry open your mind to new information."
Okay, that was not the only typo. But I was amused by the "pry upon a mind" phrase.
"I do wish someone with an epi/biostat background would do their best to calculate the risk/benefit ratio for my daughter."
I can't imagine how an individual calculation for a healthy vigorous child with a conventional family and social life would differ from any other such child in any significant degree. And what you have to remember is that life and environment are not static. If one of your neighbours sells their house to a family with a pregnant mother or an immunologically compromised family member, rushing out to get your family updated on their vaccinations could be too late. You have no way of knowing whether you or any other person in your family/social circle has come in contact with an asymptomatic person developing a transmissible disease - maybe at a shopping centre or church or anywhere at all.
And I must repeat. Your focus is on your daughter and her current and future health. She absolutely must be immunised against rubella to protect a pregnancy. And she must be immune to pertussis and measles if she or anyone she ever knows now or in the future has a baby. If you want to pick and choose among vaccines by ranking importance, necessity or urgency, start with those and move on from there.
Katie sez:
When my kids were young, many years ago, I went through the vax-or-not question. Having survived mumps, chicken pox, rubella, and measles in my own childhood, missing out on the others, I decided that I wasn't going to put my offspring through those painful experiences.
The antivax crowd is on its fifth or sixth generation â their 'objections' and denial were old when I was young. The objections were as unfounded then as they are now. Understanding that simple fact was a big help in my decision.
The biggy was the question, "what if one of my kids infects and thereby damages an innocent bystander â or is just faced with the possibility that [s]he had caused the damage (or death) of someone because of my terrible decision?" I care enough about my kids (and grandkids and great-grandkids) that I refuse to put them in that situation. I also care about society at large, which was yet another part of my decision; since my kids well-being and the interests of society at large are not in conflict, the idea of 'mine' vs'not mine' was not an issue.
YMMV, of course. You're not required to consider this aspect of your daughter's life in our shared society, after all.
adelady:
How does she know that someone has just returned from a vacation in France that is incubating measles, a person who is contagious but no symptoms? That person could be in the small child chatting with his mother at the toy store, or the college student behind her at the grocery store. How do you calculate for the friend bringing over the toddler they just adopted from overseas, who is contagious with measles?
Katie, you are gambling with your daughter's health. You have been given the population odds, so work with those. There is no crystal ball to tell you exactly what her individuals odds are.
"I honestly wish I wasn't concerned about an adverse side effect. Getting angry at me because I am concerned is not going to help. Yelling at me, laughing at me, and calling me stupid is not going to help. It's just going to make me not like you, respect you, or trust you."
Katie, If you're worried about autism as an adverse side effect, don't. Your daughter is beyond the age when autism is finally confirmed as the appropriate diagnosis for unusual behaviour.
Yelling at you? Well, I would be if you were my daughter and we were discussing my grandchild's health and her future. Fortunately, one daughter is a nurse who cried (along with practically every other staff member) when a child she hadn't even nursed died in her hospital from pertussis. No chance of any of my grandchildren not being vaccinated.
What about your own vaccination status? You should check with your local hospital. If they have a policy of excluding unvaccinated people from the children and infants section, what will you do if your daughter has an accident requiring a day or two in hospital and you can't visit?
@lilady
My child goes to a private daycare and I vetted the provider beforehand on her vaccination requirements. Since she is limited in her number of children she can take, there isn't anyone there over the age of 5. She is an ex paramedic who is totally pro vaccine.
I've been Tdaped and flu'ed as had HubbyJD. Child1 already got MMR and Varicella, hep A part 1, and flu #2 at his 12 month visit. I try to avoid taking any chances.
@Katie: you can easily read as posted the risk of side effects of various vaccines. However, almost all are minor versus the risk of DEATH by not getting vaccinated. For example, the varicella vaccine has a 20% risk of minor swelling at the site after administration. My son got it, so what? He is now protected from varicella. As previously stated, you can't predict the individual risk for your child.
Incidentally, the risk of diarrhea while on augmentin (amoxicillin-clavulonic acid) is 20%. However, its used to treat bacterial pneumonia so I bet you'll still give it to your child. Or, you could vaccinate for pneumonia, decrease her risk of pneumonia hugely and decrease her ear infection risk by 50-70%.
However, I will now be suspicious of people I meet on the street named 'Katie' because I do not want your unvaccinated child coming anywhere near my infant. Your child's 'cold' could be pertussis.
I'm a sensitive person. When you call someone else an idiot for believing something I believe, I guess I internalize it.
Right now I feel like you all are circling in for the kill. Picking apart what I say word for word. Would you rather be right, or get what you want?
I think I have a somewhat unique view of the issue, not agreeing with the medical/scientific community, but less radical than some. You want me to pry open my mind to new information. I want you to pry open your mind to a different perspective.
Since I have a child with a severe speech disability (and a history of seizures as an infant and toddler) I recently watched The King's Speech movie on DVD.
The movie (and its commentary) mentioned a little known uncle of Queen Elizabeth II, Prince John. He had epilepsy and learning disabilities, plus he died at age fourteen.
The library had the DVD of the two part BBC television program, The Lost Prince. It had me in tears, twice (I listened to the commentary). In so many ways he reminds me of my own son (though my son's last seizure was as a toddler, they were just as frightening). I sincerely doubt Prince John had anything more than a smallpox vaccination.
Narad...No one laughed at her or yelled at her. I merely pointed out her troll-like behavior and her statement about Offal, "So far only Sid Offit has offered anything."
Katie, now offers up these "suggestions":
"You all need to talk to a Cultural Anthropologist. Or someone who does Community Based Participatory Research."
Couldn't we all get along and consult a cultural anthropologist and set up Community Based Participatory Research?
Yeah, that certainly worked out for me when I was investigating a measles outbreak or setting up special clinics to provide immune globulin for a food-borne disease outbreak.
Gee I wish I had a cultural anthropologist to advise me how to set up a TB case contacts testing clinic in a Sikh temple or when I was testing contacts at a horse racing track...the cultural anthropologist could have mucked out the horse stall, where I was doing Mantoux skin testing.
Maybe we should NOT follow the recommended childhood vaccine schedule, but rather ask for input from civilians like Offal and Katie.
Katie,
You can't predict the future. You're scared of making the 'wrong choice', of possibly causing harm.
The temptation is to do nothing, Let God choose, or nature take its course, etc. But what if THAT is the wrong choice?
Imagine how you'd feel if one of those diseases (that you allowed them to get) permanently damaged your child. Or even killed them.
Okay, the odds of that are pretty small.
But so are the odds of an adverse reaction.
So your questions must be: Which is more likely - and which is the most dangerous?
Make the right decision based on the odds, and you've done your bit. The rest really is in the hands of fate - and isn't something you can affect or should be worried about.
Think of authorising surgery to fix some condition that would be 95% fatal otherwise, but the patient is one of the unfortunate fraction of a % who dies under general anaesthetic. Was surgery the right decision? Of course.
You can either believe the majority of the doctors on this one, or a tiny minority of loud people who make a damned good living out of conspiracy theories - or are pushing for fat compensation claims.
Play the odds, get the shots.
Katie:
Then disconnect yourself from the Internets. Get a good pediatrician and family doctor and listen the her/him.
I have never called you an idiot. Show me the words I used to call you an idiot. I called Robert Schecter an idiot because that is what he is. The only way I called you an idiot is if you are his sock puppet.
Again, you have used words that need more explanation.
What perspective do I need? I had a career as an aerospace engineer that required the used of lots of statistics and other bits of applied math. Then I gave birth to a child who had seizures, and from then on several other speech and learning disabilities, plus some rather illnesses that required hospital treatment (including one that is now vaccine preventable). When he hit puberty it was discovered to have a severe genetic heart condition that will now require open heart surgery.
So tell me, what other perspective do I need? How do I deal with those that ignore the science, mathematics and statistics?
@Thingy #176
"You all are ignorant about Human Immunology"
My irony meter burst into flames with this statement. You owe me a new one.
"Seroconversion rates to any of the three viruses were not different in children with or without preexisting ENt antibody."
Do you even understand the study you are citing? This is a study on seroconversion rates depending on presence of maternal antibodies. Nowhere is it implied that a mother can magically give antibodies that she never had to her fetus.
I want you to pry open your mind to a different perspective.
If your intention in this thread is to convince readers that you're right about non-vaccination, then your original comment -- "My only concern is the health of my daughter and I want to do what is best for her. I just wish there was a clear answer" -- is looking a little disingenuous.
Crud the typos are getting worse. Katie is still being closed minded, and even though I know what it is like to ride in ambulances, deal with several therapists, been to several IEP meetings, dealt with several specialists and paid several hospital bills... I am the one who is the meanie.
Katie really does not have a clue, and she is refusing to learn.
Katie, grow a backbone if you think I am being mean. Because what you have received is nothing compared to what many of us as endured. For example let me point you to one of AoA's most infamous articles. It was removed, but the damage was done after they showed some doctors and journalists having a Thanksgiving feast featuring a baby.
All we ask is you open your mind, and yet you resist. What are you scared of?
A series of videos explains the science of critical thinking. In other words it explains how to think about subjects in a non-gullible way. This short video here talks about the "precautionary principle"; but warns that it can be misused. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vjaqM4yd_RA
In deciding complex issues it is best to avoid "short cuts" that our brains tend to take. Many of those short cuts can end in a logical fallacy. I think this is very apt for Katie's situation.
Lucky, lucky you JaneMD...for having a great daycare set up.
A couple of years ago, I contracted pertussis and it was awful. I am so fortunate that I wasn't anywhere near a vulnerable infant or adult and after a few days of an antibiotic I was not infectious. I suffered through 8 weeks of rib-cracking coughs and swilling down several bottles of codeine cough meds, which was not fun.
One of my friends recommended our private daycare and the provider and I get along great because we have the same mindset. A vaccine exemption policy at daycare would have been a deal breaker for me. If I were in private practice, I would support firing non vaccinators within 6 months of continued refusal because of the danger they present to the rest of my patients.
Katie: you came to a science/medicine, pro vaccine blog. What kind of answers did you expect? You got scientific, medical, well researched answers. If you don't want to accept them due to your 'unique' view, which as you have heard discussed here is NOT unique at all. You do not appear interested in our answers. You claim to be open to new information, but you are clearly not.
You haven't even clarified what your 'worries' are. Your child is past the age of an autism diagnosis. You won't discuss which 'adverse events' you are concerned about specifically.
Oh, and other people elsewhere have posted at length that autism used fall into the category of mental retardation and the 'epidemic' is probably much more related to expanding which kids lost their mental retardation diagnosis and are labeled autistic. Also, aspergers kids used to be just socially awkward and became engineers. Now we consider them 'ill' because we've included that as part of the autism spectrum.
For everyone else, I am not disagree with the existance of autism or aspergers. I'm just saying that we used to not call it anything. We've now found a way to label it differently; whereas in the past those with aspergers would have been been attracted to jobs with alot less social contact.
Same with dyslexia and learning disabilities. Society expects everyone to read and write well, while before it wasn't expected and you could make good money at manual labor jobs so it didn't matter very much. People aren't getting 'sicker.' Our expectations and labeling is changing.
Katie, you say you aren't coming from a science way of thought but a spiritual one. You say you have concerns about vaccinating your child but you don't say what those concerns are. Are they, also, spiritual, in nature?
And when poster after poster details for you the dangers of contracting diseases and the ravages such diseases might inflict upon your child, you characterize it as "circling in for the kill."
The "kill" in this case would be, I suppose, convincing you to take measures that though they may provide the temporary discomfort of a needle jab and some local swelling (my daughter had a mild rash that didn't seem to bother her at all after her MMR) to protect your child from horrific and life threatening diseases.
Honestly, what scares you so about vaccinations that you avoided them in the first place? Why don't you detail that and then the people here can explain why those fears are unfounded. (Hint: your 3 year old is not going to suddenly "come down" with autism.)
JaneMD, I had those same fears when I had a newborn. Every time I heard about a new pertussis outbreak. All I could do was make sure my shots were up to date, my husband's shots, my daycare providers and the grandparents. I definitely breathed a sigh of relief when she turned 1 and could get her MMR, which she got 2 days after her birthday. I stopped going to certain new mom's groups when I overheard them talking about their anti-vax views. They had older children in "Waldorf" schools with lenient vaccination policies -- little pocket universes where pertussis can and did take hold in my county, and where measles could break out at any moment.
All the "new mom" commiseration in the world wasn't going to comfort me if I exposed my newborn to measles.
She got her flu shots this year and still had a horrible cold for two weeks in February. I can't imagine what she might have been in for without them.
I didn't know the HiB vax reduced ear infection rates! Is that really a thing? I had horrible ear infections constantly growing up, and my toddler has yet to have one (knock on wood).
@Katie
Fine, I'll do it.
Just tell me:
The age of your daughter, vaccination and medical history, family circumstances, sibling details and vaccination and medical history, what your jobs are, where you live and what your and her activities and hobbies are, your holiday destinations and likelihood to travel, details of your family friends and professional contacts and their vaccination and medical histories.
Then tell us which specific vaccine reactions you wish me to factor into your daughter's risk assessment. I'll do a detailed analysis of risk for each of the vaccine preventable childhood infections based on that.
Can I keep calculating it in the future (another of your wishes)? Well, you will have to provide me with regular updates on all the above information, and the risk benefit calculation will alter dependent upon the vaccine uptake rates in your community, which I won't be able to forecast just yet.
Happy to proceed now? I can even give you an email for you to send all the data to. Ready when you are... I am on leave now and would like a challenge
PS. I actually have a better idea Katie. Just speak to your own doctor, and if need be ask to be referred to a pediatrician who can talk you through all of this stuff. Giving all this detail to a stranger on the internet isn't really a good idea.
;)
@AllieP
Yep, Hib and Pneumonia vaccine are given to prevent lifethreatening illnesses like meningitis and pneumonia. They had the unintended benefit of preventing ear infections.
BTW, I treated someone who refused vaccinations for 'spiritual reasons.' The child had pneumonia requiring hospitalization with bilateral ear drum rupture due to a double ear infection. And, yes, our culture grew strep pneumonia, a strain that the pneumonia vaccine covered.
Yes, strep pneumonia is everywhere, is not eliminated at all in the US and will always be required. I'm psyched that we now have a 13 strain vaccine being offered now, up from 7 strains!
Done. But you're not going to like the results:
h_ttp://bit.ly/AyHIYt
@Katie
Just as I thought. She requires an exact computation for her specific child -- daily, it appears -- and anything less is an excuse for her not to vaccinate. So she will now walk away, not vaccinating -- which is what she intended to do anyway -- and saying smugly, "well, I gave those scientists the opportunity to convince me, but they couldn't do it." And if her child gets the measles and suffers brain damage (as happened to the unvaccinated patient of a pediatrician who is a family friend) she will of course blame everyone but herself.
Katie, since you're the one making this decision for your child, don't you think you should have considered these factors first? If you lack the capability for broaching your decision in an evidence-based manner then why are you asking strangers on the interwebz for your DIY risk assessment?
This is a problem right here. There is no "unique view of the issue"; there is evidence and there is faith. And considering you honed in on Sid's completely inexpert rantings because he told you what you wanted to hear (and I didn't even see any calculations for your child's risk) rather than consider the many good sources of information that were politely provided to you, you aren't interested in information that doesn't support your decision. You want the rest of us to validate your non-evidence-based beliefs.
Katie--
I watched my mother die a horrible, slow death from post-polio syndrome. And she was one of the lucky ones. Other kids who got polio at 16 didn't survive long enough to have children.
I knew a family whose bright, beautiful, little girl was completely deaf because her mother had rubella when she was pregnant.
I knew a woman who was mentally retarded and completely dependent on her family because she'd suffered a high fever when she had measles. Her mother, who was an MD, had to quit her practice to care for her daughter full time. Do you believe that mother didn't wish a measles vaccine had been available for her child?
My grandfather was rendered sterile when he got mumps as an adult (fortunately, after my grandmother had had my mother.)
I read a description of a Canadian man dying in Africa of lockjaw-- and it was so horrible, I've kept my tetanus shots up to date ever since. (And herd immunity isn't much help against tetanus. Your daughter could get it from pricking her finger on a rose thorn.)
If you're having trouble understanding how statistics work, forget the statistics and read some descriptions of the diseases you'd be vaccinating against. Imagine what it would be like to watch your darling, little girl asphyxiate from chicken pox pustules in her throat-- the way one of my high school teacher had to watch her sister die.
Forget all the stuff about relative risks and herd immunity, and think hard about what vaccines prevent. Because at the end of the day, *that's* what vaccines are really about.
Why are vaccinators so easy to debate with? Because they are a bunch of ignoramus. When will they ever learn?
LEVELS OF IMMUNOGLOBULINS IN SERA OF NORMAL SUBJECTS BY AGE
Now go and check where you belong.
Well, I'm not a cultural anthropologist but...
It's possible that Katie, through no fault of her own, was exposed to the common viral contaminant known as anti-vaxx: why do I say this? She appears to exhibit FUD as well as the tell-tale meme- i.e. wanting to know the exact risk for one particular person. The alt med advocates I survey have generally elevated fears about vaccines in a number of ways- first, the write about rare events or tragedies that happen to vaccinated children that cannot be related ( i.e. they tell you that a girl died after getting Gardasil but leave out inconvenient facts like it having involved an auto accident or an un-diagnosed cancer). Next, while they scream about risks, they leave out benefits. Other tactics include maintaining that vaccine uptake didn't decrease disease but a cleaner environment did. ( Massive cleanups must have occured in the west post-1965).
More generally, they promote mistrust of the medical establishment, pharmaceutical products, the media and governmental regulations. In short, mistrust authories but rely upon largely un-educated nutritionists and vitamin salesmen for medical advice. If you read sources like the subject of this post ( Anne Dachel) and *believe* them, you would need to be suspicious of most of the information provided by standard sources. Perhaps you should ask yourself, why believe her then?
Understanding science is not easy or automatic: most people don't study these issues in detail. Alt med prevaricators rely upon this fact to mis-inform and mis-lead people.
FilipinoMDstudent @169: Robert J. Hanlon would disagree: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." ;)
dt @237: Your list of factors isn't even at 1% of all relevant factors to model (simulate);Katie herself may not know how ludicrous that question is so I'll try for some perspective on that.
Katie, I've had the pleasure of working on a Supercomputer, the owning organization is here: http://www.knmi.nl/index_en.html
Calculationtime is sold (hired) in 10 minute increments minimal. What you're asking is to have one of those dedicated to your daughter for the rest of her childhood life, considering the KNMI caters to about half of Europe (broad stroke, but close enough)with respect to computertime, the cost of that would quickly run you into a couple million debt before a few months had passed. And you'd still get the same answer all the regulars here already gave you: any risk to taking a vaccine are vastly and overwhelmingly eclipsed by the enormously greater risk of catching the disease(s) in question.
If the mother "has never had measles or been vaccinated against measles" she will still pass her maternal IgG to the fetus to provide immediate protection to the newborn from measles up to 6 - 9 months, in a non-specific and non-enhanced capacity. Don't complain. This is what you're going to expect in any "primary immune response" to infection or vaccination.
Why not?
You depend on me putting my kids at risk to protect yours, a risk that you consider to be unacceptable for yourself, and in return run around and increase the risk that my kids have to face.
Why should I not find you a horridly, disgusting person?
You put my kids at risk of disease, while sponging off of our decision to vaccinate. There is nothing that pisses me off more than people who put my kids in danger.
Katie...I provided you with an excellent website (Immunize.org), for information about vaccine-preventable diseases. Take a look at this picture...there are plenty more about the consequences of non-vaccinating children:
http://www.immunize.org/photos/meningococcal-photos.asp
Oh, and have a nice day Katie.
L.W.:
Yes, she was certainly moving those goalposts.
Katie,
I have a degree in Social Anthropology (what Americans call Cultural Anthropology) from London University and I have done fieldwork in Africa looking at traditional medical practices. I also have more than 20 years experience as a biomedical scientist working in UK laboratories, so I hope I have a good grounding in both social and natural sciences.
If I look at the anti-vaccine movement from an anthropological perspective as a cultural group with its own set of beliefs, and consider how these might be changed, it's hard to know where to start. Their beliefs are rooted in an essentially paranoid dismissal of all evidence that comes from experts who have spent their lives studying immunology, vaccines and public health. They believe that all science is tainted by 'Big Pharma' corruption. Instead they look to celebrities and to crank doctors who have been found guilty of gross professional misconduct and unethical behavior, who have no qualificatons in relevant areas, or who have made up their own vaccine schedules based on guesswork. Personal ancdotes are seen as more compelling evidence than carefully conducted scientific studies of large numbers of people.
Many of the beliefs held by anti-vaccine advocates are demonstrably wrong. When I first got involved in this area a few years ago I naively thought that if someone wrote something that was incorrect, all I had to do was politely point this out and provide evidence. I quickly discovered that I was mistaken. For example, I came across a YouTube video that claimed that the formaldehyde in vaccines causes cancer, which is a common claim you may have come across. I commented out that our bodies produce more formaldehyde in an hour than is contained in any vaccine, so such tiny quantities cannot possibly be harmful, and posted a link to evidence that this was true. I was told that I worked for 'Big Pharma', that I was a child murderer and someone told me they hoped I and my family would die of cancer.
Trying to reason with people like that is impossible. They subscribe to an irrational belief system and are immune to reasoned argument. The only evidence they will pay attention to is evidence that they think supports their preconceptions and prejudices, no matter how lousy the quality of that evidence. Changing the minds of people like that is as unlikely as persuading a Cargo Cult member that they are mistaken, or changing someone's religion.
From the evidence I have seen the chances of your daughter having a serious reaction to any of the vaccines in the entire schedule are negligible. I assume you are willing to take the risk of taking her in a car? That is far more dangerous than any vaccine yet most of us think that the risk is worth the benefits of traveling by car. According to the CDC 894 children aged 10 or under were killed in road traffic accidents in 2009. Far more were seriously injured.
In comparison, according to the HRSA between 1988 and 2012 there have been 1,080 claims of deaths that were alleged to have been caused by vaccines reported to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. That's about 45 per year. Bear in mind that the majority of those deaths were not accepted by the court as being caused by vaccination. Even if we look at VAERS which is filled with reports of injuries and deaths that are alleged to have been caused by vaccines but which do not bear close scrutiny (e.g. many deaths are alleged to have happened weeks or months after vaccination, and include car crashes, suicides and drownings), only 229 deaths were reported as having been caused by vaccines.
Whatever way you look at it, traveling by car with your daughter is very much more dangerous than vaccinating her.
The benefits of vaccination are undeniable (that doesn't stop some from refusing to see the evidence, of course). I have seen the results of vaccine-preventable diseases first hand in my family (my son caught pertussis as a baby because of an outbreak caused by people not vaccinating their children) and in Africa and Asia. I consider a parent who does not vaccinate their child just as irresponsible as one who drives drunk with their child in the car. I think you are putting your child and other people at unnecessary risk for no good reason. I am not accusing you of stupidity, but I don't think your decision not to vaccinate is a rational one.
Because you have stopped learning since you graduated from high school.
Hint: "without preexisting ENt antibody" ---meaning, passively transferred maternal antibody "not enhanced" by immunization.
OMG, I'm laughing so hard. The thing doesn't know that IgG is specific, very, very specific. If you're not exposed to the antigen you WILL NOT make the IgG. I mean, seriously, thing. This is the best one from you yet... Antibodies against measles from someone who's never had it?
I can't stop laughing. This one I'm taking a screen shot of to keep in my "worst of the worst" collection, like the guy selling 2.5 pH "water".
Thingy,
Please look up IgG and learn a bit about it before you post any more links or embarrass yourself by making any more comments about this. I spent decades measuring IgG levels, doing protein electrophoresis and using antigen specific IgG and monoclonal antibodies, so I hope I know a bit about it. As I'm feeling kind, here's a little lesson in immunology for you.
Yes we all have IgG, but measles-specific IgG that makes someone immune to measles is only made by our bodies after primary infection with or vaccination against measles.
Women who have never been exposed to measles or vaccinated do not have measles-specific IgG, and their babies will not be immune to measles through passive immunity. That's why such babies are sometimes given human normal immunoglobulin (HNIG) if it is thought they have been exposed to measles, or they can be given MMR early as they don't have maternal antibodies that can interfere with an immune response. This article might help you to understand this a bit better.
And the 1158 mg/dl of IgG a normal adult would have are specific for what?
Because you have stopped learning since you graduated from high school.
Looks like somebody picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.
The question is, are there maternal IgG being transferred to the fetus that will provide that "primary" immune response/protection to the newborn against measles from a mother who has never had measles?
If you know the word "primary" it means "first encounter".
First off, maternal transfer of IgG is an "active" physiological process. The selection of IgG is not based on naivety or specificity. Secondly, the transfer of maternal IgG to the fetus is a form of "passive" immunity whether it be a primary or otherwise. Just think about this. You infection promoters would love to inoculate newborns as if it's always a primary---newborns don't have baseline antigen-specific antibody that will neutralize those vaccine antigens you're giving them. So why are you injecting them with $#!+ if you already knew they have "no immunity"?
All the other antigens one is exposed throughout a lifetime, including, but not limited to, viruses, bacteria, fungi, food proteins, dust mites, other allergens. Within those 1158 mg/dL are specific IgG antibodies against these things. In short, IF YOU ARE NOT EXPOSED TO IT, YOU WILL NOT MAKE IG G AGAINST IT. IgG against Aspergillus WILL NOT protect you against measles. Period.
Ever heard of primary immune response?
Is HNIG specific?
Yes, I have.
Again, if you are NOT exposed to it, you WILL NOT make IgG that can cross the placenta and protect the child against it, with "it" being any pathogen or allergen or immunogen of your choosing. This has nothing to do with "primary immune response".
If what you postulate is true, then all children would be immediately immune to everything. This is not the case, and you know it is not.
This is my last comment at you on this matter.
Anyone interested in reading for comprehension can check this out: h_ttp://www.textbookofbacteriology.net/immune.html
Ren
Th1Th2 is completely clueless as to the basic characteristics of IgG,(antibody in general for that matter), and how IgG is formed. Well obviously.
I explained antigen specific maturation of naive B cells and how antibody formation is triggered by B cell-antigen interaction last time humpty was spouting this same nonsense 6mnths back.
Th1Th2 has remained wilfully ignorant as usual. I mean it could look it up couldn't it? Janeway's Immunobiology text is freely accessible on the web and there is always wiki which gives a reasonable overview (last time I checked) of the process.
@Th1Th2
Very kind of you to continue in reaffirming claims of your ignorance of immunology by providing so many examples. Thank You.
Nothing to do with "primary immune response"? But your statement would initially require someone to be exposed to the disease or "primed" with the vaccine in order "to make IgG", no?
There's no such thing as "magic" in Human Immunology.
I am not surprised at all.
Don't tell me it would take you another decade just to find out whether or not HNIG is specific,huh, Krebiozen?
@Sauceress
I'd hate to be this kid's teacher in school.
"Okay, Thing, what's the primary step in the water cycle?"
"Rain!"
"No, it's evaporation."
"You don't understand what primary means, then."
"What?"
"Your statement would initially require rain to be created or 'primed' with evaporation in order start the water cycle, no?"
"No. And tell your parents I want to speak to them. Now get back into the water tank before your gills dry out."
Ahhh suddenly a lull. Yup, better be this way or ORAC's fortress will crumble into pieces.
Just imagine the mess they have created for a long time.
Th1Th2, the lull consists of people wondering how you can fail to understand the most basic of logical concepts: If you wish to prove a specific statement, provide evidence for that specific statement, not a similar one. Now start asking like an honest human being, and not like a used car salesman.
Let's keep the dialogue at "a lull"...you never know when *SFB* Troll's head will explode.
"Just imagine the mess they have created for a long time."
The last time that happened I got stuck with the task of cleaning up the blog...24 hours in hazmat gear and dozens of Reg Bag Waste bags hauled to the hazmat dump site.
Good idea. I honestly don't understand how anyone can be so stupid and yet operate a computer.
"Hint: "without preexisting ENt antibody" ---meaning, passively transferred maternal antibody "not enhanced" by immunization."
And this proves your point how exactly? Again, what you cited is a study comparing the response to the vaccine by children with maternally transferred antibodies versus children without maternally transferred antibodies. Nobody here is denying that IgG is transferred maternally. And again, nowhere in that study is it implied that mothers can magically give anti-measles IgG to their children if they don't have those anti-measles IgG in the first place. Next time, try to understand the studies you are citing.
Ahhh suddenly a lull. Yup, better be this way or ORAC's fortress will crumble into pieces.
Poor baby, you had to come back and positively whine for attention?
No, the study is about and I quote:
It's not about, as you have asserted, the "presence or absence of maternally transferred antibodies" since maternal IgG is always present in newborns. You're not denying it right? So how do these maternal antibodies become "enhanced"? Through immunization (or infection). And what was the result of their findings?
Obviously, mothers who have never had exposure to measles (either by natural infection or vaccine) will not have measles-specific antibody. So what's the big freaking problem with that? Does that mean their maternal IgGs (without preexisting ENt antibodies) being transferred are incapable of protecting the newborn during primary exposure?
Th1Th2
Why do you keep cut-and-pasting other people's stuff and pretending to have some sort of medical training?
Mark M, it is because she is a delusional manipulative lying troll. Just ignore her, she is not worth your time.
Katie
Why did you completely ignore all the perfectly reasonable replies to your questions, despite claiming to be a neutral observer?
As if we don't know...
"It's not about, as you have asserted, the "presence or absence of maternally transferred antibodies" since maternal IgG is always present in newborns."
Ah, so I see the problem. You think I am saying that IgG is never transferred to babies. Well, you need to reread what I typed because I never said such a thing. Nobody is denying that IgG is transferred from mother to fetus. What I am trying to explain to you is that IgG against measles cannot be transmitted to a fetus if a mother doesn't have these IgG against measles in the first place.
Furthermore, you misrepresent what I said. Quoting myself from #270: "what you cited is a study COMPARING THE RESPONSE TO THE VACCINE by children with maternally transferred antibodies versus children without maternally transferred antibodies" [emphasis mine]. Ergo, I recognize that the study you cited explores the effect of maternal antibodies on the effectiveness of immunization. What I meant by "presence or absence of maternally transferred antibodies" are the specific antibodies studied in that paper, which include measles, mumps and rubella, which may or may not be transferred to the baby depending on whether the mom has them or not.
"Obviously, mothers who have never had exposure to measles (either by natural infection or vaccine) will not have measles-specific antibody."
Ah, so you get it after all! No exposure/vaccination, no IgG. Why are you even arguing?
"So what's the big freaking problem with that?"
Because you keep saying that maternal antibodies can protect against measles when this is not always the case.
"Does that mean their maternal IgGs (without preexisting ENt antibodies) being transferred are incapable of protecting the newborn during primary exposure?"
Oh, now I see the second problem. You think that IgGs are nonspecific. Of course transferred IgGs can protect newborns against diseases. But, quoting my first post here: "but the question is, what diseases can these transferred IgG protect the baby from?" That means the IgGs transferred can protect the baby only from diseases that they are specific to. If the set of IgGs transferred doesn't contain IgGs against measles, then the transferred IgGs cannot protect against measles.
Yes you did (it again). "Ah, so you get it after all! No exposure/vaccination, no IgG. Why are you even arguing?"
Check #s 181, 183, and 252.
Maternal IgG being transferred to the fetus is protective against measles and other diseases regardless. Any previous maternal infection will only make it more enhanced and specific to the disease in question upon secondary exposure. Hence, the immunological distinction between primary and secondary immune response.
The transport of maternal IgG to the fetus is an active physiological process regardless whether the IgG is naive or immunized (enhanced). But you do know the result of the study, don't you?
There FTFY.
Obviously, this is not always the case in the state of primary exposure not only with measles but with other childhood infections, that is, from sickness to immunity. But you forgot one thing though: maternal transfer of IgG is a naturally acquired passive immunity given to newborns. And we're talking about of almost an adult concentration of protective IgG provided to newborns in which they cannot produce in a short span of time.
Nonspecific by which it means maternal IgGs has broad specificity. Check #173.
Again, check #173
Wrong. Maternal IgG from naive mothers would definitely be protective in newborns against measles and other diseases regardless of specificity.
Th1Th2
You're basically trying to tell a bunch of doctors that your medical training is better than all of theirs.
And yet you haven't had any.
Nonspecific by which it means maternal IgGs has broad specificity.
There's another keeper.
@Thingy 277
"Yes you did (it again). "Ah, so you get it after all! No exposure/vaccination, no IgG. Why are you even arguing?""
Sigh. I meant IgG specific for measles, not IgG in general. I was hoping you were smart enough to understand that.
"Check #s 181, 183, and 252."
Okay, I'll humor you.
181 Quote: "Thingy is still trying to argue that a mother can transfer antibodies she does not have to her baby."
- I don't see anything here saying that IgG isn't transferred to fetuses. All this quote means is the same as what I have always been saying: if a mom has no IgG against measles, she can't transfer anti-measles IgG to her baby.
183 quote: "Obviously if the mother has never had measles or been vaccinated against measles she won't have any measles-specific IgG to pass to her baby."
- Again, I don't see anything here saying that IgG isn't transferred to fetuses. The author of this quote said measles-specific IgG, not IgG in general.
252 quote: "The thing doesn't know that IgG is specific, very, very specific. If you're not exposed to the antigen you WILL NOT make the IgG."
- And again, nothing indicating denial of transferring of IgG to fetus.
"Maternal IgG being transferred to the fetus is protective against measles and other diseases regardless."
Yes, as long as the mother had the disease or has been vaccinated for the disease. Otherwise, no IgG for that disease. Why can't you understand this?
"The transport of maternal IgG to the fetus is an active physiological process regardless whether the IgG is naive or immunized (enhanced)."
And again, nobody here is denying that IgG is transferred. We're only saying that if a mother has no IgG specific for measles, then the fetus won't be protected against measles.
"But you do know the result of the study, don't you?"
Yes, I can read the abstract. What's your point? Btw, that study still doesn't support your stance.
"maternal transfer of IgG is a naturally acquired passive immunity given to newborns. And we're talking about of almost an adult concentration of protective IgG provided to newborns in which they cannot produce in a short span of time."
For the last time, we don't deny that IgG is transferred. Stop pretending that we do.
"Nonspecific by which it means maternal IgGs has (sic) broad specificity. Check #173."
Hmmm, quoting 173: "Thus, PROVIDED THAT RELEVANT MATERNAL IgG HAS BEEN TRANSPORTED TO THE FETUS, newborns are not susceptible to most viral and bacterial infections..." [emphasis mine]. So, apparently, even your own quotes don't support your stance. Try again. IgG is very specific for antigens.
"Wrong. Maternal IgG from naive mothers would definitely be protective in newborns against measles and other diseases regardless of specificity."
And this is the proof that you need to take a remedial class in biology/immunology and learn about how immunoglobulins work.
Ahh so you're saying maternal IgG transferred from otherwise naive mothers has no neutralizing capacity in newborns against primary measles infection?
Ahh so you're saying maternal IgG transferred from otherwise naive mothers has no neutralizing capacity in newborns against primary measles infection?
Dawn breaks over Marblehead.
Wait, Narad. She/he/it will come back with yet another breathtakingly addled non-sequitur. Thingy is the gift that keeps on giving.
Wait, Narad. She/he/it will come back with yet another breathtakingly addled non-sequitur.
Oh, I know. It has already admitted that it knew what the point was; I don't even know why it bothered with the second remark aside from Wanting More Attention Right Now, but I couldn't resist the swipe.
Just wait 'till you read FilipinoMDstudent's answer.
Just wait 'till you read FilipinoMDstudent's answer.
How many times do you have to be reminded that if a response is desired, it will be because people are talking to you and not about you?
What is it that you don't deny? That the transferred naive IgG is protective against (anti-) primary measles infection?
Why did you reply? Didn't I tell you to wait? Geez.
"Just wait 'till you read FilipinoMDstudent's answer."
No need to be impatient. I'm still here. Anyway, regarding your question:
"Ahh so you're saying maternal IgG transferred from otherwise naive mothers has no neutralizing capacity in newborns against primary measles infection?"
And here's my answer. I'm quoting this from an Obstetrics book [Williams Obstetrics 23rd edition, Chapter 58, page 1210]:
"Passive immunity is provided by IgG transferred across the placenta. By 16 weeks, this transfer begins to increase rapidly, and by 26 weeks, fetal concentrations are equivalent to those of the mother."
From this, we can assume that fetal concentrations of IgG from placental transfer can reach only up to the same as in mothers. In other words, if the concentrations in the mother aren't good enough to protect her, we can assume that these aren't good enough in the baby as well. So, my answer is, yes, as long as the mother doesn't have significant amounts of anti-measles IgG, she won't be able to transfer significant amounts to her baby.
@287
And we have come full circle. The Thingy cycle is complete.
Hi Katie
I have been reading this blog daily for a couple of years and have learnt a great deal from the regular qualified experienced responders to people asking questions - let me qualify that - genuine questions.
I spent 8 years at University including doing an independant piece of research submitted for my honours degree in psychology. I studied the scientific method every year of those eight years and for four of them studied statistics - just to be able to complete a 2 year honours thesis. This gives me a BASIC education.
Science is complicated - so much so that now I regularly have to go back to original sources and do further reading these guys recommend to follow some of the particularly complex discussions here.
I have always found these guys will take all the time and patience needed to help genuine learners - and their time is valuable. I was surprised with your comment regarding Mr Schecter. You describe yourself as sensitive but you actually came across as disrespectful of the time and effort being made to help you understand a complex area.
Th1Th2
You clearly have no medical training whatsoever. Zero. Nada.
Yet here you are, arguing with actual doctors, about medicine.
That's quite some inflated self-opinion you have there.
Do you post on quantum physics blogs as well? I think you should. Your innate, home-taught genius will surely be welcome by experts in any subject.
Who needs to learn when you already 'just know'...?
Although I'm a regular reader of this blog, this is my first time to engage Thingy. I just wanted to try how much I can take. So far, he/she hasn't posted anything substantial.
Please ignore the Thingy troll. They tend to go away when they are starved.
Did you also assume from the quote you've provided that when it says "Passive immunity is provided by IgG" refer to anti-measles IgG or IgG in general (#280)?
The reason I asked is because you have not answered my question. I'll repeat. Do maternal IgGs from mothers without history of measles exposure (IgGs in general) protect their newborns from primary measles infection?
Although I'm a regular reader of this blog, this is my first time to engage Thingy. I just wanted to try how much I can take.
If you wish to indulge this pursuit, the first thing to realize is that your speech has to be exceedingly precise. Its main rhetorical gambit is to seize upon something that can be misread, no matter how tortured the interpretation, and flog it ad nauseam whenever it needs a diversionary maneuver. The following, for example, is low-hanging fruit:
It also is helpful to use insults that it does not understand. It will seek to borg these, as it does with all unfamiliar vocabulary, but will consistently get them hilariously wrong.
Th1Th2
Do you have any medical training whatsoever?
Bueller...? Bueller...?
Again, dear fellows, ignore the Thingy troll.
@Narad
Yeah, I kinda realized that I have to be careful with my wording. Thingy already quote-mined me earlier and misrepresented what I wrote. I guess that's a lesson for me. Thanks for the advice.
Thingy has yet to show evidence that women who are seronegative for measles can somehow transmit significant amounts of anti-measles IgG to their offspring transplacentally. Unless he/she shows evidence, I'm gonna take a break for a while. It's kinda tiring to repeatedly correct him/her over and over again.
*seronegative for measles IgG
Chris -
Don't sweat it, I'm loving this.
Even I can answer Th1's question now, as can anyone else who's followed this thread. The refusal to acknowledge valid points, the repetition, the incorrect use of medical terms, the arrogant pretence of 'beyond-doctor' expertise...
Well and truly pwned, Th1.
(Keep it up though, 'Katie' might be watching!)
Check out #243.
Do NHIG and IVIG come to mind? Don't tell me they were prepared from immune donors.
Now go and take your break.
Yeah don't sweat Mark M because #301 would be your last post. Guaranteed.
Regarding Normal human immunoglobulin - this is pooled IgG from multiple donors. It therefore contains reasonably high quantities of specific antibodies against certain commonly found diseases. Most blood donors have anti-measles IgG.
Pooled IgG from donors will therefore contain reasonably high levels of anti-measles IgG, so it can be used to provide protection against measles.
History lesson:
To prevent Hepatitis A, before specific vaccines were commonly used, people were given some immunoglobulin. Since most of the people this pooled immunoglobulin came from had themselves had Hep A as children/whatever, the IgG had reasonable levels of anti-Hep A IgG, and so a shot of this protected people for around 3 months or so.
In places like UK/USA, so few people have had Hep A as children that the pooled IgG used to give to travellers was losing its protective effect. The people got shots of IgG, but it was failing to prevent Hepatitis A on exposure, because it had low levels of specific Hep A IgG.
This isn't a problem now, because we use active vaccines.
According
dt,
About 96% of the USA population between 1999 and 2004 had measles IgG antibodies, so as you say it is safe to assume that pooled HNIG will have sufficient anti-measles IgG to protect a newborn. HNIG administration is necessary in newborns exposed to measles if they were born to mothers who are not immune to measles, because they don't have any anti-measles IgG from their mothers.
I'm reading:) I must be a glutton for punishment.
@Katie - or you want to get educated, that's not a bad thing.
@ Katie:
Efforts bring rewards. I know many people gravitate to alt med advocates because they want to learn about things that affect their lives- however, often the information provided is un-realistic or promotes an agenda, like an ad does.
Many commenters @ RI can point out good sources of information and methods of discerning what is useful. Have fun and come hang out with us.
Katie, the reason that nobody can give you a real answer about the benefit/risk ratio for your daughter is that the answer depends upon how representative you are of the general population.
The reason is that the main reason why you might hope that your daughter is at low risk from being killed or suffering lifelong disability from a vaccine preventable disease is that your daughter is at very low risk of being exposed to these diseases because most people do vaccinate, and as a result these diseases do not spread readily through the population. So perhaps your daughter can freeload, and let other people's children take all of the risk, small though it may be.
On the other hand, you are a sample of one. What if you are more representative than you imagine? What if all your neighbors are beginning to think the very same thing? Then the risk of these diseases as your child grows up will be much higher the experience of past decades might lead you to expect (and indeed, we've already seen indications that this is happening in some parts of the country). In that case, your child needs vaccination, not merely to help maintain the protection of your entire community, but to protect herself personally. But unfortunately, nobody monitors the vulnerability of individual communities in real time (which would be an extraordinarily expensive undertaking), so chances are that you will never know about a failure of herd immunity until it is too late.
So nobody can answer your question accurately. But it seems to me that ultimately, you do have the information you need to make a decision. You know that the risk of serious harm from vaccines is very, very tiny, and that almost all adverse reactions are mild and transient. You can't know the likelihood of exposure, but you know that these diseases are unpleasant at best, and sometimes cause death or personal disability. And you know that vaccination is the socially responsible thing to do.
If you know some doctors, you might want to ask them what they do for their own children. I come from a medical family; I grew up around other doctors and their kids, and as a scientist in a biomedical field, I interact with doctors all of the time. I can tell you that the people who have the most knowledge of vaccination and disease tend to be fanatics about getting their own kids vaccinated as early as practicable.
@FilipinoMDstudent
Having a good time with the Thingybaiting? It's a pretty fun way to pass an afternoon, I'll admit (even if it is utterly pointless in the end).
Ows really? Show me the numbers. While you're at it, let's ask the experts at Walgreens shall we? What is normal human immunoglobulin?
Isn't it a travesty these bunch of so-called "scientific thinkers" don't know the meaning of the words "general", "not specific" and "normal"?
Same as above. Show me the Hep A-specific IgG level contained in the same HNIG that is also used to treat measles and other disorders.
Try to pull put out a package insert and then tell me the anti-measles IgG level contained in HNIG. I think it's "safer" this way than relying on your assumption.
Too many assumptions, not enough data. What is your serologic basis that the newborn had been exposed to measles?
@missmayinga #310
It was fun initially. I was eager to see what would happen if I explain very clearly and adequately. But as I progressed, it got kinda painful. Nothing could ever prepare me for Thingy's debating "skills" which include going around in circles, misrepresenting what you say, and my personal favorite, citing sources which don't support his/her arguments.
FilipinoMDstudent: You left out her/his/its mastery of what is referred to locally as "Thinglish."
Ows really? Show me the numbers. While you're at it, let's ask the experts at Walgreens shall we? What is normal human immunoglobulin?
I would love to a fly on the wall of your manipura chakra when the realization sets in of just how much of a fool you're making of yourself.
Ahhh history. I guess you failed terribly on that subject. Why? Because Hepatitis A prophylaxis, like measles, involves the use HNIG (unselected IG) from unselected donors and not from those who have had the disease otherwise you'll call it hyperimmune IG.
A little late, but this struck me:
This is shockingly similar to the resident ScienceBlogs AGW denier luminary Jonas N. I wonder if they could hook up and go live in the mountains and not bother anybody?*
* One free Internets for whoever gets that reference.
Sorry, I know it's silly to give actual evidence and assume it will make a difference to Thingy, but I can't resist when the evidence is so clearly and simply given in an abstract like this (PMID 11391343):
@FilipinoMDStudent
That's true, it does get pretty tiring after a while. The fun of it is mostly just the mindless challenge - it's like doing a Rubiks Cube or something. You can beat her arguments as many times as you like, but there'll always be a new one.
@317
Is that a Thingy quote? Jesus. I suppose she thinks she's the only one on the entire planet who knows anything about Immunology. All hail Thingy, the sole luminary in a world of darkness.
Grr. HTML Fail. Full quote:
We assessed results after postexposure prophylaxis against measles with immunoglobulin administered intramuscularly. Children were given 0.33 mL/kg of immunoglobulin from commercially available lots containing various titers of measles antibody within 5 days after exposure. In children receiving immunoglobulin with a titer of less than or =16 IU/mL, 57% had clinically evident measles. Immunoglobulin preparations with higher measles antibody titers are required.
Here's your problem thingy--you're failing to understand how the terms general and specific are used in the statement
general: containing antibodies directed against multiple different antigens"(e.g., against several antigens which include Hep A)
specific: containing antibodies directed at a one particular antigen" (e.g., against hep A alone and no other antigen)
Hope that clears up your confusion...well, this small portion of your larger confusion anyway.
As much as I hate to open this can of worms...
Th1Th2 (#311):
Unfortunately, the "experts" at Walgreens made a mistake on this one - or, at least, they were sloppy with their choice of words. All immunoglobulins are "specific" to a narrow range of epitopes - what they should have said is that the pooled immunoglobulin preparations (such as HNIG) are not selected to be enriched in antibodies against any particular infection. This is in contrast to the so-called "hyper-immune globulins" that are pooled from a population known to be immune to a particular infection (such as zoster immune globulin).
There isn't such a thing as a "non-specific antibody", since the hallmark of antibodies is that they "stick" to a narrow range of epitopes. Of course, some of the epitopes may be extremely common (e.g. antibodies against common cell surface proteins), but that doesn't make the antibody "non-specific".
While hepatitis A antibody levels have been declining in the US and the EU - due primarily to public health measures - the antibody levels in pooled, non-selected immunoglobulin is adequate to prevent hepatitis A (see: Farcet MR et al. Hepatitis A virus antibodies in immunoglobulin preparations. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2010 Jan;125(1):198-202.).
In addition, while the measles antibody titres have also been declining, the amount of measles antibody in pooled immunoglobulin preparations was found to also be adequate for prophylaxis (see: Rabenau HF et al. Comparison of the neutralizing and ELISA antibody titres to measles virus in human sera and in gamma globulin preparations. Med Microbiol Immunol. 2007 Sep;196(3):151-5.).
Here's the funny part. I didn't have these references in my head - I had to look them up (on MedLine) and it took me less than five minutes to do it. It would take only a few minutes for certain wanna-be experts (I'm talkin' to you, Th1Th2!) to look up the literature and discover whether their fevered imaginings were reality or fantasy.
Of course, I have no doubt that Th1Th2 will immediately segue to yet another fact-free rant about he/she/it is so much smarter than anybody else on the planet and knows more about immunology, microbiology, virology and epidemiology than any of experts in the field. You can't reason with unreasonable people. However, I hope that I've managed to clear up any "misunderstandings" that may exist for people other than our resident troll.
Prometheus
Since infections like measles are/were common, most immunoglobulin deemed suitable for treating/preventing this infection can come from a "non-specific" pool of donors, and the resultant "nonspecific" product will actually contain sufficient specific anti-measles antibody to avert infection.
But take rare diseases like say Lassa fever, or West Nile for example. To treat someone who has been exposed to these diseases with immuloglobulin, you need to have obtained immunoglobulin from those who have suffered the infection and recovered. Only they will have specific anti-Lassa or anti-West Nile virus antibodies.
Of course, according to thingy, common or garden pooled "normal immunoglobulin" would be fine to treat these rare infections, because immunoglobulin is all nonspecific, and just kinda does stuff for everything.
I'd love to imagine thingy mortally infected with Lassa fever, and see her face when I tell her "We'll just give you some basic HNIG rather than the specific anti-Lassa stuff, because, as you know, it's just as good!"
PS Thingy, if you are listening.... Can you tell me why millions of kids die from diseases like neonatal tetanus? Surely "Mom's Magnificent Molecules" would stop that happening?
@313
This Thingy technique has always been my favourite:
I've yet to Thingy quote a paper that actually supported it's arguments when read, or put into proper context.
Sorry for the disjointed responses to old comments. Katie saying
reveals she's here with an agenda and was lying through her teeth the whole time.
Also, very tedious and incompetent tone trolling. She'd be convinced if only we were nicer! What a sad, sad Colgate Twins acolyte.
I guess maternal IgG from seronegative mothers (titers less than 8mIU/mL) do protect newborns after all from primary measles infection, symptomatic or otherwise.
I'm astounded these stupid infection promoters can't even answer a simple question I posted in #295.
I hate it when people do this, but I'm still catching up:
Dat meen je niet! Awesome to see my compatriots are still doing well in science.
I didn't have these references in my head - I had to look them up (on MedLine) and it took me less than five minutes to do it.
That's still longer than the troll took to type in a pastiche of what brighter people have said in the past about something different -- which by the rules of trolling (i.e. proving one's superiority by getting smarter people to waste their time) means YOU LOSE.
OK, finally made it to the end.
Some final remarks:
Oh, this will be GOOD. Doop-dee-doop-dee-doop... scrolling up...
It has been answered. Over a dozen times. The reason you think it has not been is because your question is crap. It is, in fact, Not Even Wrong. I have nothing more than high school biology and even I can tell you that when you write "IgGs in general", you have know idea what you are talking about. It means that you have no idea how the immune system works. If you persist in saying that this is a valid question after several individuals with frickin' PhDs in immunology have tried to explain this to you, you are, in fact, clinically insane.
But we already knew that. We are, of course, talking about the person who has a definition of "intravenous" that would include the cigarette I am smoking now, and the person who insists that children will not get sick as long as they stay on the sidewalk.
Anyhoo.
For the benefit of the truly curious, whom I think we can now all be certain that Katie is not one of, I'd like to lay down the law; not one I came up with, but one who escapes both my feeble memory and my current allergy medicine-impaired Google-Fu.
The law that says that when you walk into an Internet forum, odds are that amongst all the readers, there is no subject in the universe that you know more about than they do. Prime examples: see #317 here, or the entire Jonas thread on Deltoid.
Thingy here knows more than (I will do this anonymously, because I am doing this from faulty memory and I do not want to wrongly attribute -- I do, however, encourage one and all to throw down actual qualifications): at least two PhD's in immunology, at least two RNs with specific immunization experience, a PhD in cultural anthropology and at least three MD's or MD students.
Thingy has never, during its entire stay, provided a single iota of academic (or ANY other) qualification. Still, it feels confident enough to blurt out it knows more about immunology than anyone present.
Back to that law, though. I'd love to get a little roll-call, as it were.
I'll start.
I develop computer models for a living. Have done so for the better part of a decade. As such, I can but laugh at Katie's demand for a day-to-day risk assessment for her child's risks. You couldn't even hindcast the damned thing without perfect knowledge. Katie, if you return, I'll be more than happy to lay down the basics of chaotic systems for you.
Fat chance, I know.
Anyone else care to join in?
You're the one who's confused because the word "specific" was not used to describe HNIG but being "not specific".
Umm, the point of that quote was to show that if the titre of measles antibodies in the immunoglobulin is too low, then the post-exposure prophylaxis against measles is less effective. Thus, measles antibodies are a necessary component of immunoglobulin for it to be an effective treatment against measles.
I have no idea how you arrived at the idea that this somehow supports your position.
I will answer your question in #295; no.
IgGs in general (from mothers who have never been exposed to measles)will not protect the newborn from primary measles infection.
You seem to think otherwise. Please explain to us the mechanism by which IgG that is not specific to measles would protect against measles.
They did. Repeatedly. See #323 for one example. Now, try to demonstrate some honesty for once in your life.
Again, what is your serologic basis, other than your assumption, that will warrant the use of HNIG? A seronegative titer would also reflect non-exposure thus non-infected state.
Normal IgG has intrinsic capabilities to neutralize measles virus during primary infection. Do you deny this?
Check out #176.
For once in your life why don't you post them. Honestly, I have yet to read any explicit admission that maternal IgG from seronegative mothers is protective against primary measles infection in newborns.
Th1Th2 (#332):
Wow.
Just.......wow.
What, exactly, is "normal" IgG in the Th1Th2 microverse? Does Th1Th2 think that all IgG molecules - regardless of their variable chain specificities - have the ability to bind with measles virus and neutralise it? It seems too ludicrous to imagine, yet there it is, writ in glowing electrons across my screen.
I can't imagine that anyone else (apart from Th1Th2 and children under the age of 12) doesn't know that antibodies are produced after exposure, not before (with a few minor exceptions, like the antibodies to foreign ABO blood type glycoproteins, which are present at birth).
Given that, how could a mother who is not immune to measles (i.e. hasn't had either the disease or the vaccination) pass IgG against measles to her unborn child? In the simplest terms, you can't give what you haven't got.
Once again, Th1Th2 has proven that there is no aspect of science that is so well-known that he/she cannot screw it up.
Prometheus
As far as Th1Th2 is concerned, there's no such thing as "similar", things are either perfectly identical or nothing alike. That is not the thought process of a sane mind.
Prometheus said
That would be me. Not that others were particularly unclear or anything, but your recap was a nice.... recap.
There have been request to Orac in the past to ban the Thing, and I'd made a statement to the effect that every time someone slaps it down, I learn something. The string of comments for this post are an excellent example.
I knew, just from common sense, that a mother couldn't provide protection from pathogens that the mother had not been exposed to. But now I have a much clearer understanding of how "Mom's Magnificent Molecules" (great line, that) work and how they don't work. If "Mom's Magnificent Molecules" can stop all infections, known and unknown, all we need to do is figure out a way to make our bodies produce them, and we could wipe out all infections. Of course, that's what vaccines do (right?).
So, for fighting my ignorance, thanks to dt, Prometheus, JGC, FilipinoMDstudent, Mark M, Ren, and the others for taking the time to explain thing so that even an old communications guy can understand. Also, a special thanks to Orac for providing this forum, and extra special thanks to Th1Th2 for being the idiot it is.
The confusion of Th1Th2 knows no bounds...
Th1Th2 (#333):
And the reason Th1Th2 hasn't seen this "explicit admission" is because...maternal IgG from seronegative mothers is not protective against primary measles infection in newborns.
Th1Th2 appears to be claiming that IgG which does not react to a disease organism (the meaning of "seronegative") is somehow capable of interfering with that organism's ability to cause disease. Even given Th1Th2's known eccentric definition(s) of "disease", this is nonsensical. "Seronegative" IgG couldn't even block the development of an adaptive immune response - by definition, again.
I say it's time to stick a fork in Th1Th2 - he/she is over-done!
Prometheus
I think that the Thing is claiming that since IgG from a large number of random donors is protective, IgG from any single donor must be, or it's logically inconsistent. The Thing fails to realize that a sufficiently large fraction of the population has immunity to measles that the random sample of donors will be protective, even if any single donor might not.
I also think that being able to understand Thing-think even to that extent scares me.
They are called natural antibodies. Calling Vincent Racaniello.
You monkeys!
You will not expect optimum immune response during primary exposure, infection or vaccination. The last time they did that turned into a disaster.
Look above idiot!
Fortunately, mothers would have at least 1158 mg/dl of ready-made IgG for their newborns. You scumbag should stop telling lies. That's a great disservice to humanity.
Like I said, Orac's fortress is beginning to crumble into pieces. You are all screwed.
I have been toying with the idea of a Thing-dong bingo card, here are a few I have come up with, I think I need help to fill 25 (I think) spaces, however. Here's what I have so far:
"AFP = polio"
"Do you deny this?"
"Children stay on the sidewalk"
"Infection promoter" (the ultimate insult and should perhaps be the 'free' centre square)
"Maternal IgG is protective against measles regardless of maternal history"
Anyone else care to help fill the card?
For fuck's sake, you're talking to a creature with magical, nonsensical definitions of "intravenous" and "infection". Why does this surprise you?
Anyone else care to help fill the card?
Do you want more its attempted arguments or its mangled attempts at insult?
Contrary to your assertion, it does react and will yield a titer of less than 8 mIU/mL. Liar.
Oh, any of its repeated lies would be a good start. We can add "liar" to the list. Of course, it probably means something else to her.
From Vincent:
"Human serum contains high levels of antibodies specific for α-Gal because the human gut contains bacteria that produce this sugar. Over 2% of serum IgM and IgG antibodies are directed against α-Gal. This antibody binds to the membrane of enveloped viruses that contain α-Gal antigens and triggers the classical complement cascade, leading to lysis of virions and loss of infectivity.
The anti-α-Gal antibody-complement reaction is probably the main reason why humans and higher primates are not infected by enveloped viruses of other animals."
Sorry, couldn't find the words "human pathogenic viruses" or "measles" in there.
Must get new glasses....
Keep reading Johnny, just keep reading.
I'm not gonna babysit. UTFG!
@ Agashem:
Anyone else care to help fill the card?
"terminal disinfection"=suspect case of measles 'containment'
Anyone else care to help fill the card?
Killed vaccines cause infection!
Rinderpest eradication methods are appropriate for measles and polio!
Taken together, I guess that means we're obliged to slaughter anyone who's been vaccinated against measles or polio.
Oh, any of its repeated lies would be a good start.
* "I am no stranger to Medicine because I am in this system."
* (a) IV fluids do not contain KCl. (b) Vaccines that contain KCl are being passed off as nutritional supplements.
* (a) Intravenous typhoid, malaria, and pertussis vaccines are administered to humans. (b) Anything that winds up in the bloodstream is administered intravenously, anyway.
* Because Dryvax is purified to <200 viable bacterial organisms per mL, if one states that it contains 200 antigenic components, one is referring to bacteria.
If measles viruses had envelopes with alpha-Gal epitopes, no one would ever get measles. But they don't, so we do, and Thingy is wrong yet again.
Interestingly Kary Mullis (inventor of PCR and darling of HIV=AIDS denialists) has a patent for a kind of antibody (an 'adaptamer' made from a highly folded single strand of DNA) that has an alpha-Gal epitope attached, so it will attach itself to a pathogen which would then be targeted by anti-alpha-Gal.
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/savvy-scientist/what-comes-after-antibi…
Dagnabit, I forgot previewing would digest that after the fact.
* Because Dryvax is purified to <200 viable bacterial organisms per mL, if one states that it contains 200 antigenic components, one is referring to bacteria.
It wasn't "AFP = polio." It was the even dumber "paralysis = polio."
Add "naive." And "sterile."
Another funny thing about Th1Th2: It tries very hard to present the impression that it's leading unwary opponents inexorably to some sort of rhetorical slaughterhouse...but when the coup de grace comes, it's not even intelligible, let alone correct. It's like getting a crash course in maieutics from a malfunctioning pulp-fiction robot.
A parrot trained with daily readings from Avicenna's Book of Healing would get more medical facts straight, and might even understand them better.
Anything that winds up in the bloodstream is administered intravenously, anyway.
I'll drink to that!
* Vaccination is "minor sexual assault" to prepare one for being "raped" later on.
* Vaccines "inherently thwart" internal sterility.
* "Hib does NOT produce any toxins whatsoever." (Note: "any whatsoever" later clarified to mean "except endotoxins," duh!)
* Varicella could be eradicated by eliminating vaccination and pox parties, which would "break the chain of infection."
* Smallpox vaccination was halted to prevent a vaccinia epidemic.
* Smallpox deaths were "almost always iatrogenic."
I think I'll hang this up.
An "iatrogenic" death can be diangosed from a video. And if the person in the video hadn't been treated, they'd have been fine since they only had a cold.
"Even oxygen you breathe is injected directly into the bloodstream"
Did you all forget that anyone who becomes infected with any disease knows this instantly, as does anyone who looks at them and exercises "due diligence". Also, anyone who exercises due diligence can perceive that someone with an infectious disease has been in a room, even an hour after the fact.
I can see why my original post could be called disingenuous. Renâs little trick on me in post 239 really hurt. And Iâve learned that when an insult hurts, there is usually some truth in it.
I did my best at calculating the odds that my daughter would get pertussis. It isnât very specific, but at least it is something. I took the number of cases reported in my state last year, divided by the population of my state, multiplied by 23. I was shocked to find it was 1/189. Based on the Pink Book info, in the 1-4 years age group, about 10% of cases result in hospitalization (1/1890), 5% in pneumonia (1/9450). Based on the DTaP VIS the chance of a seizure is 1/14,000, chance of non-stop crying for three hours or more is 1/1000, chance of fever over 105 degrees F is 1/16,000.
My conclusion from these calculations is that the odds of my daughter contracting pertussis and having serious illness is greater than the odds of a serious adverse reaction to the vaccine. So, drum roll, Iâm going to talk to my pediatrician about getting her vaccinated with DTaP. I would thank you for the helpful information you provided, but Iâm a sore loser.
I still have questions and wish there was much more information (and that it would be handed to me on a silver platter). I still think you are too polarized in your views. And, Iâm mad at you for being mean to me and Iâm never going to speak to you again (with the disclaimer that Iâm fickle and reserve the right to change my mind).
p.s. If none of the âtrollsâ commented here it would be boring for you.
Th1Th2
Please define your use of the term ânaive antibodyâ as it relates to a ânaturallyâ occurring glycoprotein in the human body.
By what mechanisms is this ânaïve antibodyâ expressed in the human body?
What triggers it's expression/formation?
Please refer only to the ânaive antibodyâ present in vivo
Please do not link to research papers you obtain by googling the term ânaïve antibodyâ which refer to antibody sequences obtained from gene libraries for use in molecular applications.
For example papers along the lines of,"In vitro selection and affinity maturation of antibodies from a naive combinatorial immunoglobulin library" quote below, do not support your contention of the involvement of "naive antibody" in in vivo immune responses.
Thanks in advance.
Katie, this is a rough calculation but at least you are trying. A proportion of the population in your state is going to be immune which makes your denominator smaller and your child's actual risk higher. You also have the unknown factor of your immediate exposure population, i.e. are you communing with "like-minded" parents who also don't vaccinate or in a geographical cluster of non-vaccinating parents?
Since you are on the right track, please also read this: http://photoninthedarkness.com/?p=187#more-187 for the risk calculation of MMR versus measles and complications. So please ask questions, specific ones. We're full of it here. :D
@Katie
Really glad you weren't what some thought you were (namely just someone on a fishing expedition but without an open mind to the answers you'd get because you had already made up your mind on the issue).
Sorry if some came on strong, but as you can see from the comments of some posters here (eg Th1Th2) there are people who are totally impervious to rational argument, logic and reason, and just indulge in repetitive troll-like behaviour.
The regulars here tend to be able to spot suspicious posting behaviour and yours unfortunately started to look like it, particularly when you appeared to take the rather fact free posts from one of the other regular trolls (Sid Offit) at face value, and appeared to ignore the dozen or so helpful answers others gave you, and then dropped out of sight without a comeback to the debate.... I'm glad you did some of your own analysis and came up with an answer that satisfied you.
Here's a little more info for the uninitiated regarding the switching of antibody isotopes,i.e. IgM, IgD, IgE, IgA and IgG...
Wiki: "Antibody"
Now about that "naive antibody" Th1Th2?
Bah...blockquote fail
Please extend the above quote down to the end of:
Amazing. Thingy still thinks that babies born to mothers who are serogenative for anti-measles IgG are naturally protected by IgG "regardless of specificity". And he/she still thinks that IgG is nonspecific and he/she doesn't know what naive even means when speaking of immunology. This just keeps getting better and better.
@366 Katie
Congrats on working out the stats - and a big thank you for taking on board what everybody posted and taking it with more grace and humility than many other people do. As for the 'meanness' you really need to get more science-based blog reading. This was mild, and in fact, rather polite and hospitable. People also tend to get defensive about vaccines as an issue, because this isn't just about one person potentially hurting themselves, but one person potentially hurting innocent kids. That naturally gets people riled up. (I'm not entirely sure whether you were missing an emoticon there... but hey I'll say the above anyway)
@Katie - that may be one of the best posts that I've seen around here from someone who was leaning in one direction, but used Science and Logic to come to the opposite conclusion. And certainly, apologies if we may have been a little harsh, but we do take the health of children very seriously.
Even using your rough calculations, you can see the risk is much higher than you would anticipate.
Katie:
That is probably true, although some of the more vexing trolls actually *do* get boring through their persistent repetition. I am sorry you were hurt; I wasn't part of that, but I apologize on behalf of the community here. We frequently get disingenuous posters coming over from antivax groups (sometimes the same one multiple times under different names), and that makes us jumpy. People like you, who really are honestly looking for information, are the exception to the rule. I hope very much that you'll come back (even if just to lurk) and that we get more people like you! Open minds are hard to find.
I'll add to the pile-on and say, "Congrats" to Katie for working out the odds, having the grace, courage, and guts to admit in some things she was wrong in her beliefs and will talk to her pediatrician. She is a rare gem in the antivax mentality world.
@Katie: please stick around, read, comment, and continue to learn. For those of us who read RI always, and comment (sometimes often, sometimes infrequently), having someone like you, who learns and grows, is wonderful. Best wishes to you and to your precious daughter.
Do not include me among those who are going to jump on the "Kudos to Katie" bandwagon.
As I noted, the whole premise of doing the calculation she has done is based on the fact that folks like me vaccinate my kids. It does not make me feel any better that she has now discovered that our contributions to reducing the prevalence of disease is not sufficient to protect her child better than a vaccine would. In fact, I find the whole concept of this type of analysis to be extremely offensive to us who do vaccinate, regardless of whether it comes out as the best strategy in a cost/benefit analysis for an individual.
I liken it to everyone going out for pizza, and when the bill comes, everyone throws in some cash. Katie collects it and discovers that there is more than enough to pay the bill and leave a tip, so she decides she doesn't have to. Why should she have to? Everyone else contributed enough, and as long as she got the pizza she wanted, that's the most important part. Just the kind of person you want around, right?
But wait a minute! Katie recounts the money, and discovers that, in fact, she miscounted the first time, and the group is a little bit short. So she decides that, yes, she will add some cash in to cover everything.
Would you all praise her decision to now help pay for the pizza, since what the rest of the group gave wasn't enough? Or would you question the fact of why she wasn't contributing in the first place?
That you would be willing to pay for part of the pizza only if you find out that the rest of the group does not provide enough money does not make me find you any more acceptable in my community.
@Katie--
Hooray! You are doing the right thing for your child.
One thing I noticed when I looked at vaccine and anti-vaccine sites on the internet was the huge difference in tone between them. The anti-vax sites were very emotional and fear-mongering, while Wikipedia, for instance, was written in an unemotional tone even when discussing horrifying possible complications of measles. (Something like, 'this complication is always fatal, but it doesn't happen very often.')
It's well known that people can calculate odds of a bad outcome differently, depending on which way a situation is presented. (That's not a slam at your intelligence. Everybody seems to do it.) So it pays to think twice about what the odds really are.
Katie,
While you're talking to the pediatrician, I'd suggest also discussing other vaccines.
As you probably know, the set of vaccines being recommended now is different from what you or your parents were probably given. I don't know how old you are: I'm old enough that I had both a smallpox vaccine and the BCG vaccine for tuberculosis, neither of which your pediatrician is going to recommend. But there are vaccines that weren't available when I was a child. Nobody is going to give me the chicken pox vaccine: I was born in the U.S. before 1980, so assumed to be immune. I had to ask for the hepatitis B vaccine, but I got it. (This site is indirectly responsible for that: last year someone pointed to a list of CDC vaccine recommendations, and I read it, and found that I should get that one.)
Katie,
I'm very impressed that you went to the trouble of figuring that out, that it has changed your opinion and that you are prepared to say so here.
I do think you could refine your estimate to make it more accurate - any statisticians here please feel free to jump in and correct me. You have estimated the average chance of an unvaccinated person of any age in your state getting pertussis each and every year. You really need to look at the vulnerable age group alone and your daughter's chances of contracting pertussis while she is in that age group.
Over 90% of pertussis cases occur in under 10s, but this group makes up only about 13% of the US population (from CIA Yearbook and US Census). That takes your yearly estimate up to about 1 in 25, which works out to about a 1 in 4 chance of her having pertussis before the age of 10. These are terrible odds when what is at stake is watching your child fighting for breath for six weeks, which I can assure you is a horrible experience.
Vicki,
You mentioned BCG. Today I was wondering when BCG vaccination was started routinely in the USA. I know it was in the 1950s in the UK. To my surprise I found a couple of articles that seem to suggest there has never been universal vaccination against TB in the USA and that instead screening and treatment have been used. Does anyone know if that is right?
In the UK we were given the tuberculin test at school and if we didn't react we got the BCG, anyone who did react (there were a couple in my class I recall) was sent for a chest x-ray in case they had TB.
Of course as there is (or was) an effective treatment for TB, as opposed to viral diseases like polio and smallpox, the public health system had a choice between universal vaccination and screening plus treatment where necessary.
By the way, I was never vaccinated against smallpox. My father, who was a doctor, thought that the risks exceeded the benefits. I was born in the UK in the early 60s when there were still occasional imported outbreaks, but the vaccine back then did have a fairly high rate of nasty side-effects, and I'm still here, so I suppose it was the right decision.
Krebiozen:
And then you would react to the skin test from then on.
The BCG has never been used in the USA, but it was used in Canada. As my Canadian classmates told me when I lived overseas, and they always reacted to the annual school tine tests.
Chris,
Thanks, I have learned something new. I always assumed I was immune to TB but I just read that BCG lasts for around 15 years before immunity starts to fade. I live in a part of London where TB is not uncommon, a colleague contracted TB a few years ago (and was off work for a long time), and my wife is American and so would never have had BCG, so this concerns me a little. I think I'll have a chat with my GP next time I see him.
I think "Katie" has been following the illustrious writing career of Sid Offal...today he is the guest journalist at AoA:
http://www.ageofautism.com/2012/03/vermont-seeks-to-terminate-parental-…
Today's dreck from Offal is a libertarian rant against pending legislation in Vermont to remove vaccine philosophical exemptions.
Offal, with his "expertise" in public health and epidemiology discusses the fact that BCG vaccine has never been used routinely for infants in the United States. Noticeably absent from Offal's knowledge of this TB vaccine are the reasons why the BCG vaccine was not used routinely:
http://www.chop.edu/service/vaccine-education-center/a-look-at-each-vac…
The short explanation is that BCG vaccine is not a very effective vaccine to prevent TB. In countries, where TB is endemic, the vaccine is still used for infants, because infants are at extreme risk for TB meningitis, due to their immature immune systems. BCG vaccine can also skew the results of Mantoux skin testing...yielding false positives. When a young child is Mantoux tested due to an exposure to an active TB case, how does a physician determine if the skin test result is a true positive or a false positive because of the BCG vaccine given at birth or shortly thereafter?
Katie, during my career in public health, I saw active TB patients in a public health clinic and I was responsible for monitoring their care for the long duration of their treatment. Unfortunately, young children from a foreign country who had the BCG vaccine and who were exposed to an active TB case and who had a positive Mantoux test, had to undergo bronchoscopy testing in a hospital, to determine if they had pulmonary TB.
Does Katie still think that the advice of Sid/Bob is valid? Is she still upset that "Ren" who is an infectious diseases epidemiologist "hurt her feelings"?
I learned recently that it is a complicated disease from reading When Germs Travel. Which really brings home the fear my stepmother experienced when father had a positive TB test while stationed in Korea (we stayed in the USA). Turned out to be a false alarm.
Just now I read that there is ongoing research for a new TB vaccine, since the BCG is very old technology and simply does not work that well. Plus I just learned that World TB Day is on the 24th of March. On that note: Happy Pi Day!
Lilady,
It was me, not Katie, asking about BCG in the USA. I can assure you I don't frequent AoA and hadn't seen that article until I followed your link. It is merely a weird coincidence that Mr. Schecter has written about the same subject I asked about on the same day.
Also, there is an effective treatment for TB and it is not very contagious (relative to measles for example), so testing, isolation and treatment is an effective strategy. This is not true of viral illnesses like measles, or toxin-mediated illnesses like pertussis and tetanus, of course, where vaccination is the only rational way of preventing them.
Krebiozen:
Well, fortunately it is not very contagious. One reason why the level became reduced were the early 20th century sanitariums removed the contagious from the general population. But, still, it is getting harder to treat due to more antibiotic resistant forms (and the course of treatment is months to a year). Hence the more frenzied research for an effective vaccine.
I mentioned the latter in a comment that is in moderation.
Additional books to the one I listed in moderated comment are The Plague and I by Betty McDonald (about her time in a TB sanitarium) and Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder (about Dr. Paul Farmer who worked with multi-drug resistant tuberculous treatment in Peru and Siberia).
@ Krebiozen: I stand corrected, thanks.
Here is the NHS website for indications for the use of BCG vaccine:
http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/BCG/Pages/Introduction.aspx
In my County, we have a diverse population that includes people born in foreign countries where TB is endemic...some of our patients were from countries where HIV infection is endemic (and untreated), as well. As you know co-infection with HIV puts patients with LTBI (latent TB infection) at extreme risk for active TB...and miliary (extra-pulmonary) TB disease, including TB meningitis.
To clarify my posting above about young children and bronchoscopy; it is difficult to induce a young child to provide a sputum specimen, hence the need to hospitalize them and anesthetize them for a bronchoscopy.
@ Chris: I recall a young pregnant patient who came to our clinic for prenatal care. As per our protocol, she was Mantoux tested and found to be "positive. Her chest X-Ray showed a granuloma and she was started on TB meds.
She was a recent emigre from a country with pockets of MDR (Multi-Drug-Resistant) TB and her family history revealed a brother who died from TB. When the culture/sensitivity sputum test was complete, it was determined that her TB disease was MDR. Her pregnancy precluded the use of the TB drugs that would have cured the TB.
She spent five months in total respiratory isolation in our County hospital, until the baby was delivered by C-Section at 36 weeks gestation. The obstetrician and the obstetric team that delivered her baby and the pulmonary surgeons/operating team who removed her diseased lung one week later, were garbed in protective respiratory masks. (The delivery room and the OR were cordoned off for 3 days, while undergoing decontamination).
Yes, she was cured of her MDR TB and her infant was safely delivered, due to the extraordinary medical care she received.
Newborns and children are immunollogically naive to vaccine antigens during primary immunization and yet you don't have any problem "with regards to specificity". What a bunch of contradiction you have there.
Direct question, thingy: Exactly what problem do you beleive we should have with the fact that the newborns and children have not been exposed to the antigens contained in vaccines they are given as part of the routine childhood immunization schedule?
Be specific.
Huh, did I hit the mark? Well, aren't you the ones saying newborns are exposed to millions of antigens? But neither one baseline antibody titer is done in normal newborns and children prior to receiving their first specific vaccines.
Ignorance or quackery. I say both.
Quoting Th1Th2:
"I'm astounded these stupid infection promoters can't even answer a simple question..."
What, like you do?
For the umpteenth time then: what is your medical training?
Can you answer a simple question?
Go on, I dare you.
(And Katie: bravo! I apologise for suspecting you were an anti-vaxxer 'plant', it's a tactic they use a lot. Good on you for doing the maths.)
PS. My last post would be 301, according to Th1. Just can't get anything right...!
PS. Can't resist it...
"Ignorance or quackery. I say both." - Th1Th2
You sure do!
Thingy, you've ignored my direct question. Please hold any or all claims that you have hit some unspecified mark until you've answered it.
I'll repeat it for your convenience: Exactly what problem do you believe we should have with the fact that the newborns and children have not been exposed to the antigens contained in vaccines they are given as part of the routine childhood immunization schedule?
Katie, good on you.
I'm sure your paediatrician will bring it up, but I'm going to go all motherly on you and nag a bit.
Your child will grow into a woman. You don't need just to look at her chances of serious disease in the next 5 years, you need to think about her reproductive health as an adult. Rubella vaccination is absolutely vital. And measles is extremely dangerous to littlies (everyone really). You have no way of knowing where and how she will be living at that time nor what kind of friends and neighbours she will be in contact with. So you can't know how well her own infants will be shielded from exposure to devastating disease.
Get the pertussis done. Listen to the doctor's advice about a catch-up schedule for other vaccinations.
And do come back. It's good to see someone like you grow in understanding and willing to protect the next generation from avoidable disease.
It's checkmate. What is it that you don't understand? Can't you see nobody is helping you?
Now cue that cheesy cricket sound...
Perhaps you're confusing chess with mumblety-peg.
Wait, does the troll actually think it has answered the question?
Th1Th2
What's the matter, cat got your tongue?
Or has it eaten all your medical certificates?
Pwned beyond belief.
For those interested in TB, some disturbing news on resistant strains (via Mike the Mad Biologist)
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/highest-mdr-tb/?utm_source=fe…
Yeesh! that's a long one, but I can never remember the HTML for doing links (I'm afraid I regard HTML code as something lower than COBOL)
"Yeah don't sweat Mark M because #301 would be your last post. Guaranteed." - Posted by: Th1Th2 | March 13, 2012 3:29 AM
I think, along with everyone here except Th1, that a LMFAO is in order. :)
cue that cheesy cricket sound
If your crickets sound cheesy, or if your cheese sounds like crickets, there is something seriously wrong. Perhaps you are using the wrong recipe for Casu marzu.
Or with an insane combination of chess and darts? I'm still wondering why anyone would believe that IgG which is unable to prevent a woman from getting measles acquires that ability during its journey across the placenta.
Since waiting for Thingy to respond in an intelligent fashion is like waiting for a cow to suddenly grab a guitar and start playing "Kumbaya," I'll answer the question for those who might be interested: the reason we are not alarmed by the fact that newborns and children are immunologically naive to vaccine antigens during primary immunization is that the antigens are not the disease organisms.
This is a point that Thingy, with her delusions, will never grasp. She believes that anything connected to or associated with a pathogen is automatically pathogenic - even associated just by having the same chemical composition as any product or part of a pathogen. To illustrate how silly this is, an analogous claim would be: "This is a uniform jacket. It looks exactly like the jacket of a soldier from the enemy country of Examplistan, even though it's not. We took a jacket away from an Examplistan soldier, studied it in detail, and had our own clothing manufacturers make a jacket from scratch that was exactly like it. But because a live Examplistan soldier would be very dangerous, this jacket, which has never been anywhere near Examplistan or touched by anyone from Examplistan, and does not have anyone at all inside it, is just as dangerous as that live soldier would be."
Actually it ain't my job to clean up your messy house. I'm just giving you a reminder that your house stinks with contradiction, ignorance and quackery. So listen, put your house in order, or I'm gonna do it for you. Have you forgotten the General Rule?
Checkmate again.
You seem to be profoundly confused about chess.
(You should totally go with this talking like a '30s gangster routine, though. Positively chilling.)
Like how stupid you are by not realizing how would immunologically naive newborns and children seroconvert to a particular vaccine during primary immunization, right? right? right?
Good.
Close, but the proper idiom in this case would be "youse is." Trust me.
Th1Th2
Well, I am signing off now. You'll obviously never mention what medical training you have - as if you ever could!
No point in repeating the question, we all know the answer. The clue is that everything you've said has been comprehensively shot down in flames.
By real doctors.
Thing is, if you tried to impersonate a doctor in 'real life', you'd be thrown in jail. Know-nothing quack amateur literally putting kid's lives at risk? Yeah, that's you and all the rest of your paranoid, ignorant friends.
I hope this thread remains up for years, because at least you've shown the world how anti-vaxxers are pure arrogance, incapable of rational thought, argument or even learning the basics of what they talk about.
Still, no doubt you'll persuade more gullible saps with your ever-so-clever cut-and-pasted 'medical knowledge' - and eventually some kids will die because of it.
You're a fraud and a disgrace. Enrol in medical school or STFU.
Still, no doubt you'll persuade more gullible saps with your ever-so-clever cut-and-pasted 'medical knowledge'
Actually, Th1Th2's shtick doesn't even play in downtown Antivaxville--it was ultimately ignored to death at MDC, which is the source of all its venom for the "pro-pox."
It has never convinced anyone of anything, anywhere.
(crickets chirping)
Still waiting for the Great Pumpkin?
OK. Maybe these "scientific thinkers" need a translator. Very well, I'll use the same gambit they enjoy hearing everyday while reciting their Vaccine Creed.
How do vaccinators "prime" the immunologically naive's immune system?
Let's find out who's the brightest of them all.
Oh Johnny,
LMFAO. Your battle has just began and you're already losing it.
*thunderous applause*
Bye bye, loser. You're talking to yourself now.
(Had to check one last time. What a deluded clown!)
No, sweetheart, let go of those goalposts. You don't get to change the subject like that. First you get to tell us what the hell that has to do with your profoundly ignorant previous question about IgG. A question that has been answered a dozen times by professional post-doctorate experts in immunology on this very thread.
Thingy, I do hear crickets chirping.
I'd hoped I'd instead hear a response to the direct question I asked @ 391 (and repeated @395) but if all you have to offer is silence, I'll admit I'm not surprised.
JGC
Stop it you are only encouraging the idiot
It can't formulate a coherent thought, it has proven that to us ad nauseum.
Best to play bingo ;) much more effective and fun.
"...an antigen is an infection"
(from the archives)
"The more similar a vaccine is to the disease-causing form of the organism, the better the immune response to the vaccine."
Not sure how this proves that the antigens in vaccines are disease-causing. Apparently, Thingy also doesn't know the difference between antigens and virulence factors. And yet he/she says that we are all ignorant about human immunology. Comedy gold! Keep it coming, Thingy!
"Apparently, Thingy also doesn't know the difference between antigens and virulence factors."
Check out Thingy's bizarre interpretation of an analogy here: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/05/another_swing_for_the_fences_…
This:
Is why I don't take antivax tone trolls too seriously. (Hell, look at augustine, Bob/Sid and Thingy. At least until the gag reflex kicks in.)
Lilady:
Remember, Lilady, to stay consistent with pro mass vaccine propaganda, an anecdote is a deceitful lie until proven otherwise. But there is never enough "proof" so therefore it is always a deceitful lie.
DO NOT use anecdotes if you wish to be scientific.
*the above is null and void if you are a hypocritical science blogging skeptic who is for forced/coerced indiscriminate mass vaccination.
I'd suggest a drinking game, but nobody would make it through the thread conscious. :-D
Calli -- betcha my uncle Patrick could, but then he's had sixty years' experience.
How was I supposed to know that you don't appreciate Carlos Mencia's humor?
http://www.comedycentral.com/episodes/vqet4f/mind-of-mencia-puppet-viol…
Do you mean insults are offensive? Are they designed to invoke emotion? Are they OK? Are they not Ok? Are they better than Ad Hominems? Are they becoming of a professional scientist?
Th1Th2 (#390):
Once again, proving that the main difference between genius and ignorance is that genius has limits.
The reason we vaccinate people, including newborns, is that they are immunologically naive - i.e., they haven't been exposed to the disease-causing organism and, thus, lack protective antibodies.
What vaccination (or infection with the wild-type organism) does is stimulate a group of B-lymphocytes that are responsive to one or more of the epitopes expressed on the vaccine or organism to differentiate into antibody producing cells (and a few memory cells). The antibody-producing cells produce - surprise! - antibodies.
Obviously, it is much more complicated that that, but the complexity doesn't change the fact that vaccination doesn't require any sort of circulating (soluble) antibody - the antibodies it requires are those expressed on the surface of the B-lymphocytes (which are not referred to as IgG or IgM).
I suspect that Th1Th2 will next attempt to claim that he/she was referring to those cell-surface antibodies all along, but those antibodies cannot cross the placenta, so the point is moot. His/her next move will undoubtedly be to call me a "liar" or "scumbag" a few more times, but I take those feeble attempts at insult as a sign that he/she perceives - at a very dim level, perhaps - that his/her argument has just been blown into quark plasma.
What would be the proper chess term to describe a game where the opponent has been utterly defeated in the opening move by a single pawn? That would be what always happens to Th1Th2 when he/she comes to play at Repectful Insolence.
Prometheus
BCG was never routine in the U.S., but I assure you I received that vaccine as a child in New York City.
Yes, there's a treatment for TB: it involves taking medication for a year, and often what is called "directly observed therapy" to ensure that the patient doesn't stop before their infection is cured.
-----
Also, some pertussis in adults simply isn't diagnosed as such: people think they have a cold, and the cough lingers, but we're used to the idea that colds aren't curable, so the patient may not go to a doctor. That's one way that pertussis is spread to infants, in fact: an adult who thinks they just have a cold visits a household with an infant, or is in the same place as a parent carrying a baby, and the coughing spreads the disease.
Vicki:
Thanks, I stand corrected. Yellow Fever vaccines are also not routine in the USA, but I have had two. So I can see how that happens.
And all adults should get a Tdap vaccine, especially if they are going to around children. And that goes for Katie, if she is not going to vaccinate her child, make sure she herself does not transmit pertussis.
First off, there's no such thing as he plagiarizes most of his act... but fine, that nitpick aside...
I wonder what ethnicity Carlos Mencia is? Hey, I wonder, could we have found augie's true identity?!
Inquiring minds want to know!
Thingy I have no idea how someone can be so scientifically dumbs. Though I see it all the time, but from reading this blog's comments regularly I won't even try to prove you wrong as I see you don't understand a thing about immunology, and I have no where near the knowladge the people commenting here as I only have a pararsitology course and infectious diease class under my belt this early in school.
Though one thing does piss me off it places me off. It is theses people from AoA that are trying speak for me people like myself, people on the Autism spectrum. It detracts from the actual research being done in this area. While I may appear to be normal, and as science doesn't work with anecdotoal evidence, I can assure that I still have autism and it as of yet can not be cured. Orac I thank you for you blogs it does a great job of exposing some of the utter stupidity that these quacks preach.
How did you know that the person including the newborn is immunonologically naive thus lacks protective antibodies? Do you normally test them before they receive their first vaccines?
How did you know the "naive B cell" would be responsive to the vaccine antigens?
Ouch! So give me one particular test which is routinely done to measure the amount of antibodies expressed on the surface of B cells.
I am not even referring to them. I explicitly am referring to maternal IgGs from mothers who have never had measles. Will it be protective against primary measles infection in newborns?
Wow, it is still talking.
Thingy, precious, do newborns get measles?
Yes you are ignorant. You just said it, you're "not sure".
So obviously, this child just didn't stay on the sidewalk, right Thingy?
Uhh, Thingy? This is a rhetorical construct used to convey the meaning "This does not argue that the antigens in vaccines are disease causing" to illustrate your ignorance re vaccines, antigens, and--well, let's be frank--adaptive immune response as a whole.
That you're choosing to read instead as an admission of ignorance on FilipinoMDstudent's part only furhter highlights your own lack of comprehension.
TH1TH2:
If you exercise due diligence and keep newborns in sterile clothes, you can tell by looking at them they are immunologically naive. Immunological naivety is obvious. What would we need testing for? You are an infection promoter; any test that involves contact with an infant is a primary infection to "prime" the doctors with knowledge.
You tell me. What are B cells for? Well? Well? Well? Well? (cue crickets.) Maybe if you knew anything about immunology, you wouldn't be so ignorant. Let me enlighten you with a quote that proves my expertise and your ignorance:
Checkmate. Don't think we need to hear from you anymore.
Well, vaccine experts knew measles vaccine causes primary measles infection. How come you idiots don't know it?
I'm an infrequent poster and long-time lurker. I want to encourage those that try to engage with Th1Th2 as I frequently learn something from the discussion. Having said that, the debate will continue to be circular so long as Th1Th2 refuses to use a conventional definition of infection.
Humpty
Groan..for all the time it spends here trolling it could do a bit of reading and actually learn something about B cells, the immune system and immune responses!
Humpty
How did/do you know the "naive B cell" would be responsive to the wild type antigens?
So what have you learned specifically about "naive B cells" who have not been exposed to vaccine or wild-type antigens?
"Inquiring minds wants to know." LMFAO.
Thingy, stop repeating phrases you've just heard but do not understand. It makes you sound even more like a mentally challenged parrot.
And answer the question, troll. Do newborns get measles?
Should they get measles, infection promoter?
My brain hurts.
I've been trying to follow thingys thought patterns and realised I can't. They don't seem to follow those of a sane human and they don't match those of psychiatric illnesses I'm familiar with.
I'm asking a serious question here: does thingy actually pass the Turing test?
"does thingy actually pass the Turing test?"
That question has been debated before. I believe that the consensus is, "no."
Not the question, troll. Do newborns get the measles or not? Answer or admit you're disseminating as well as dense as a post.
And answer the question, troll.
You realize you're attempting the moral equivalent of nailing Jello to a wall, stuv.
Th1Th2 (#434):
"How did you know the 'naive B cell' would be responsive to the vaccine antigens?"
You know, I'm pretty sure that Th1Th2 would fail the Turing test.
This "conversation" has devolved - as most interactions that involve Th1Th2 inevitably do - into an expedition into the depths of Th1Th2's ignorance.
For those wondering about the answer to Th1Th2's question, the only way to see what a particular naive B-lymphocyte will respond to is to see what its surface antibodies will bind. That said, we know from centuries of experience that almost everyone (the exceptions being people with severe congenital immune deficiencies) has a population of B-lymphocytes that will respond to measles virus epitopes. We know this because almost everybody (with the exceptions noted above) will develop anti-measles antibodies when they are infected with the measles virus.
Presumably, those whose genome lacked the necessary diversity to recombine in ways to yield antibodies that would recognise the measles virus epitopes died off when Rinderpest made the jump from cattle to humans - probably about 5,000 to 8,000 years ago (although molecular phylogeny suggests a final divergence of rinderpest and measles as recently as the 12th century - see Furuse Y, Suzuki A, Oshitani H. Virol. J. 2010, 7:52).
Not to beat a dead horse (or cow), the fact that an immune response to the measles virus is essentially universal (in humans) indicates that there are naive B-lymphocytes in (almost) every newborne that will respond the measles virus epitopes.
I eagerly await the next face-palm-provoking Mega-fail from Th1Th2.
Prometheus
You do realize that I am talking to an infection promoter, don't you? So how do you plan in getting them infected with measles?
Do newborns gets HIV? Do newborns get the pertussis? chicken pox? Hib? polio? rotavirus? etc...etc...
It depends on someone else's infection-promoting agenda? Are you a druggie? smoker? alcoholic? fat-ass, lazy bastard, filthy prick, ignorant and uneducated? You tell me.
Thingy:
Yes.
You are an idiot. How do you even manage to find the letters on the keyboard?
Oooh, scratch a troll, find a clinically insane sociopath.
Since you have not answered the simple question "do newborns get the measles or not?" (which they do, even when they stay on the sidewalk), you have now admitted that you are disseminating as well as dense as a post.
Newborns get the measles. Even without vaccines. Or are you now denying that as well?
So, the question is "will it blend"? LOL. No seriously, will it bind?
And your answer was:
Are those surface antibodies found in naive B cells that you say will bind with measles viral antigens/epitopes anti-measles antibodies?
We know that "almost everybody will develop anti-measles antibodies when they are infected with the measles virus", hence you will say, and I guess everyone else will agree, that they are immune when they are exposed again to measles virus. That's secondary immune response but we're not debating about secondary immune response, are we? What I wanted you to answer is this; Are maternal IgGs from mothers who have never had measles protective against primary measles infection newborns?
"Respond" meaning anti-measles?
I do not deny your infection-promoting agenda.
They don't seem to follow those of a sane human and they don't match those of psychiatric illnesses I'm familiar with.
My money's on Korsakoff's.
Sterile clothes.
Sterile clothes.
STERILE CLOTHES.
I think we have officially beat every other Thingy remark.
It seems like you're so smart that your kids have gotten them all huh.
It seems like you're so smart that your kids have gotten them all huh.
She just doesn't have a supply of sterile clothing. And she let her kids play in the dirt.
[edited for clarity]
What part of "No" did you not understand? At least a dozen people have told you that it doesn't, including Prometheus. Let me pile on:
NO.
So they don't bind. Anyone else has a different answer? Anyone?
Anyone else has a different answer? Anyone?
Hmmm... Oh, yes: "Snort my taint."
"Are those surface antibodies found in naive B cells that you say will bind with measles viral antigens/epitopes anti-measles antibodies?"
Thingy, thingy, thingy. You can't just come here, pretend to know as much as scientists and doctors and expect people to take you seriously. You actually have to take classes on biology/immunology (and actually pass these classes).
My God, you're still going! Maybe another few kicks, then.
Dr Th1Th2, you really are the gift that keeps on dribbling.
"If you keep babies in sterile clothes..." (your post 439)
Sterile clothes??? LOL! How's that done then? Do you buy them from the tooth fairy? Irradiate them?
You complete and utter imbecile - and a foul-mouthed one at that, as we can see from the above.
More please! You're amazing.
Shut up and answer.
(your post 439)
Look closer.
I know you're just being facetious. Do you know if it's a normal routine to wrap these immunologically naive newborns or children with sterile clothes prior to their receipt of vaccines?
Well, you need to have evidence that will suggest binding capacity of the immunologically naive to such vaccine antigens. "Will it blend"?
You said it's obvious and you don't need to test. Whoa what kind of high-degree quackery is that?
That wasn't a sidewalk. That was a cesspool where sick people congregate.
Due diligence. Yes
Sterile clothes. I have never said this. I've known these stupid infection promoters for quite sometime now and I know when they are lying.
Epic fail.
Shut up and answer.
Cool your jets, you needy little shit. It's not the fault of anybody here that your sad-sack routine doesn't have anyplace else where it's tolerated.
"Sterile clothes. I have never said this."
You just did.... :-D
(Although, yup, I've checked, it was indeed someone else. It's easy to fact-check when you know how, do try it one day.)
I would apologise, but hey. You're still a dick.
There once was a girl named Ophelia
who shunned shots for measles, mumps and diptheria.
Her excuses were inane.
Then measles atttacked her brain.
And now she has permanent amnesia !
There once was a McCarthy named Jenny
when nude, would make a pretty penny.
She thought it would be green
to declare vaccines mean.
Never mind the lives saved are plenty!
Do newborns get the measles, yes or no?
For those who are new here, this is where the sidewalk bit originated:
I hope this delusional person does not care for any children.
"Shut up and answer."
Tell ya what, Thingy. prove to us first that you know what you are talking about. Define the following and explain how they work in your own words:
1) Naive B cell
2) Antigen
3) Virulence Factor
4) Immunoglobulin G
If you've been following this thread, you would know that your question has long been answered.
Check #173.
Since I've let the team down and ruined the otherwise perfect 100-0 score vs the Trollthing, I will now join its side temporarily as punishment and answer all the questions they refuse to, in authentic Thingi.
So, in answer to you, Thing says:
No! Of course babies don't get measles. Where is the evidence? Idiot! I'm a self-taught 18th-level immunolocutandpastist, with several HOURS of Internet training. Beats your six years at med school and long professional careers!
WATCH ORAC'S FORTRESS CRUMBLING BEFORE MY GENIUS... oops, no - it's still here.
Definitions:
1) A naive B cell is a type of Duracell battery
2) Antigen is who lives with Uncle John
3) Virulence factor is really good sunscreen
4) Immunoglobulin G is the chief orc in Lord of the Rings
In other news, my real name is Kim and I live in a padded box in the middle of a swamp. They let me out on Sundays, but only with the muzzle on because of my tendency to eat passing cats. I enjoy lard baths, spitting and TV documentaries like the Twilight saga. I am in fact a real doctor, but the University I studied at has since been closed down for linking to too many porn sites.
I trust this settles the matter.
Oh sure. 1) and 4) will bind to 2) and 3)
Yes, correct!
The numbers 1 + 4 can indeed add (or 'bind') to 2 + 3.
The answer is 3 and 7. Or 10. Depends how you read it, any will do.
Never a better definition or explanation seen on God's green Earth!
Go Team Thing!
"Oh sure. 1) and 4) will bind to 2) and 3)"
Does this mean you admit that you can't define these four basic immunology items? I'll give you one more chance. Define these four and explain how they work.
Please give Team Thing enough time to cut-and-paste from Wikipedia, thank you.
We'll be right back.
Thingy is taking really long to answer. Makes me more excited how he/she will stupefy us with his/her response.
More than likely she has gone to bed. It is midnight on the American/Canadian east coast. Even though I am on the American west coast, I am about to shut down until the morning.
Have fun with her. I feel guilty about replying to her complete idiocy.
Shall we look two pages back at your own reference, you moldy jar of pickled ram's balls?
Nothing to see here people. Move along.
(Hint: It's an alternative complement pathway, that is, without antibody participation.)
Good night, Narad. Keep reading...and learning.
Mark m @ 477, best ( funniest) post this year :) I hope you stick around :)
The idiot isn't even annoying in this thread, can't wait for it to return to dribble more shit so you can all rub its face in it
BRING ON THE LULZ
@ Narad: I believe we have been down this road with Thingy before, about transmission of Group B strep to a neonate during the birth process from its mother whose vagina is colonized with the bacterium. Here is simple terms, for the simpleminded and delusional troll is an article about this potentially deadly bacterial infection in neonates:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001366.htm
By the way, I've observed the *SFB* Troll and Its periods of "activity", when It deluges this blog with Its inane blathering. During other extended periods, It "disappears". This only confirms for me that the delusional SFB Troll, cycles in and out of some type of "custodial" care, where It has access to a warm bed, three square meals a day...and a computer. Just as an educated guess, I believe It receives Its care in a mental hospital or a substance rehab center...or perhaps a facility that provides custodial care for the dually diagnosed (mentally ill AND substance abusers).
Notice even when it posts repeatedly, then suddenly goes "quiet" after a while...because Its access to a computer is cut off by Its caretakers.
"suddenly goes "quiet" after a while...because..." ....
.... he/she/it occasionally realises that the rest of us are just waiting to fill up our bingo cards. Or maybe redesign a whole new set.
And we're back for the second half of the show!
Narad, Team Thing's position on older posts is clear: nothing to see there, move along. Those posts are a little embarrassing to us now.
New posts will be entirely different and very clever, as though written by the world's pre-eminent medical genius.
Hint, hint, losers! That's telling you!
GO TEAM THINGY!
(I can't take it, I'm laughing so much)
I was just wondering why neonates get the infections Thingy thinks can never happen. You know, neonatal tetanus, varicella, herpes etc.
I guess there is a global medico-pharma-industrial conspiracy to induce pseudocyesis in women, then at the time of faked labour to introduce a human-alien hybrid baby bioengineered in a large test tube, and pretend to the mothers that they actually popped out their vaginas. I can't think of any other way to create a baby lacking in all those yummy protective maternal IgG molecules. It's the only logical conclusion.
There once was a mom from Fresno
who declared, "Nature is my manifesto!"
Vaccines, her child she denied
'till it caught whooping cough and died.
She must have been totally schizo !
Twas once a sad troll called the Thing
Who thought they knew how to sing
But every exhale
Was naught but a wail
Like a herd of wild bulls - all shitting
I guess this child's clothes weren't sterile enough.
Note to self: Poe's law.
The hilarity never ceases @ RI- however, unlike some *other places* I could mention ( Oh, guess!) our brand is totally intentional!
@ dt: you left out 'media' and 'governmental'. Wheels within wheels , as we say. SSSShhhhh! about the babies.
"(Hint: It's an alternative complement pathway, that is, without antibody participation.)"
So now, I have another favorite Thingy debating "skill": the changing of the subject when his/her source has been shown not to support his/her argument.
And he/she still has yet to answer my simple questions. Come on, Thingy! Can't you even define and explain the functions of naive B cells, antigens, virulence factors and Immunoglobulin G? We all want to hear your answer!
*Cricket chirping*
There once was a tedious troll,
Who came out with statement so droll,
that âinfection free mums
Have babes in their tums
Who will never get sickâ â We went âLoL!â
So we have a maternal IgG denier in the house. Cue the quacking duck sound...
Thingy, newborns do get measles. With no vaccinations anywhere in sight. Why is that?
@498
You should brush up on your reading skills Thingy. You have been claiming that maternal IgG will protect against diseases that the mother has never been infected with. Using a logical extension of your claim, @490 dt is pointing out that the only way neonates could get these diseases is if they didn't have any maternal IgG. Hence the alien theory.
He is not saying that mothers do not pass IgG to their offspring. Please learn to read.
Cue the quacking duck sound... for Thingy.