05-03-2008, 11:00 AM | #1 |
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Vaccines & Autism
I'm going to dive right into this, so if you're not familiar with the argument that vaccines may be implicated in autism, then you need to read up on that at least a little before reading on.
As a medical student, I find the arguments from the anti-vaccine camp to be more than a little short-sighted. It is human nature for people to cry foul when they get burned -- even when they know that they're the 1 in 100,000,000 case that gets burned. What makes the autism debate different is that (1) the link remains nebulous and so people's imaginations are free to run wild and (2) the incidence of autism in the United States has approached a diagnosed rate of 1 in a 1000 live births, permitting the anti-vaccine camp to argue that all 1 in 1000 have been vaccine-linked. Unfortunately, there are many problems with the anti-vaccine camp's arguments even should they prove to be correct about the link! 1. Weighing Pros and Cons Autism can be a debilitating life disorder; but infections from N. meningitidis, H. influenzae, or S. pneumoniae can be life-ending. One then has to consider the risks of contraction of these childhood diseases given vaccination versus non-vaccination. Ever since the introduction of the HiB vaccine (which is strongly pushed by family care doctors and pediatricians), the incidence of invasive HiB infections (which can lead to pediatric meningitis) have fallen from as few as 40 per 100,000 in the 1980s to as many as 1 per 100,000 in the 1990s. Anti-vaccine camp members argue that even 100 per 100,000 (or 1 per 1000) deaths from HiB do not justify the vaccine given a link to autism (which has an equivalent incidence of 1 per 1000 births), but again, we need to be clear here: autism is a debilitating problem with odds 1 in 1000 (if it were proven to 100% be tied to vaccines) whereas pediatric meningitis is a potentially terminal problem with similar odds of contraction in unvaccinated societies. Even when HiB infections are not fatal, the child can suffer from permanent nervous damage (e.g. hearing loss). 2. The Age Argument Many anti-vaccine arguers want to see pediatric vaccines completely taken off the market. This is absurd given the ubiquity of infectious agents like Clostridium tetani, Bordetella pertussis, and poliovirus. Any child who has ever eaten a worm or stuck their muddy fingers into the corners of their eyes, their mouth, or on an open wound has risked exposure to C. tetani. It lives in the soil, and unless you plan on keeping your child off the ground until he's 18, you're going to risk that he contracts tetanus and dies from it. Those in the anti-vaccine camp who at least argue for postponement of childhood vaccinations until the age of 8 or 10, I think, have a more rational head on their shoulders. Though I still think they're making the wrong choice. 3. Being Bossy vs. Being Pro-Choice The thing that upsets me most about the anti-vaccine camp is that they are not merely petitioning for a legal right to keep their children from currently-required vaccination programs for all children who attend public schools, but that they are attempting to induce a mass hysteria against vaccines and to convince people that you're better off without them. If they don't want to vaccinate their own children, that's their choice, but I don't think they have any right to tell the rest of us that we can't do it, either. 1 in 1000 children who gets autism (again, if the link were FULLY proven to vaccines) would still mean 999 in 1000 who aren't and who are now protected for life from many of Nature's most devastating illnesses.
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05-04-2008, 12:06 AM | #2 | |
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Re: Vaccines & Autism
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Something I'm wondering about though, is this vaccination thing a case of the mother getting a vaccination, causing the child to be born with autism, or a child getting a vaccination then developing autism? The articles seem to imply the latter, but not knowing how autism works I'm unsure of the connection between toxic chemicals -> autism. It would strike me that if the vaccinations are toxic, they would cause a number of different diseases depending on what the inoculation is against, not all vaccines period cause autism. I don't think these hysterics are going to convince too many people vaccines are a serious danger, though. Anyone who grew up in the era of polio should know a lot better than that.
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05-04-2008, 06:34 AM | #3 | |
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Re: Vaccines & Autism
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What it needs to say is that these people, by not vaccinating their children, increase the chances for virulent strains to perpetually exist. The truth of the matter is:
So you're right -- I completely neglected this very important point, and for that reason I would like to retract my statement that perhaps they should enjoy that "civil liberty" to decide for themselves. No, you're quite right: if they don't want to vaccinate their kids, they need to move to a nation which permits that. And if our country decides to be the one to permit it ("land of the free" and all that), then the rest of us will need to relocate to a country which does take epidemics like this a little more seriously, and will deny entry to foreigners who have visited or resided in nations which don't share our practices. . . . if that sounds unrealistic, it's because it probably is. So yeah ... virulent strains evolving out of human failures to practice good personal health will be a perpetual problem well into the 23rd century, I'd imagine. And even then, the point I made in this post is, even if the whole world underwent vaccination, it wouldn't mean "the end of the road for that virus." Smallpox was a miraculous exception ... so miraculous that the CDC is working very very hard on finding a new vaccine or a novel cure for the disease -- because of fears that we're going to be criminally re-exposed to it in the near future.
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05-04-2008, 07:56 AM | #4 |
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Re: Vaccines & Autism
I thought that they believed it was a mercury containing compound, thimerosal, in the vaccine that "caused" autism, but Norway or was it Denmark, well it was some Scandinavian country, banned it, but their autism rate hasn't changed it's trend (it keeps going up). I'm firmly on the side of "vaccines don't cause autism, they just happen to be had shortly before the symptoms of autism become apparent."
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05-05-2008, 02:32 PM | #5 |
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Re: Vaccines & Autism
Doppel, we took our immunology statewide today (just finished 10 minutes ago; insta-grade; 50/60 , not bad but not good enough to impress the big wigs if I do poorly in Neuro and Biochem), and anyway, I was reminded of a very good reason why we can't require everyone to get vaccines and thus why diseases will always have a chance to mutate ...
Allergies. Some people are allergic to vaccines. It's that simple. Theoretically any one person who is "allergic to shots" should only be allergic to a particular flavor of adjuvant and could be given another flavor. For example, I don't claim to know what the vaccines really are comprised of, but let's pretend that one HiB vaccine contains a speckle of LPS (lipopolysaccharide) for its adjuvant and another vaccine contains an inkling of PG (peptidoglycan). Given this, a person should only be allergic to one or the other but not both, and so if allergic to one could be given the other safely. However: a) the current world we live in is one where vaccines are (literally) administered or ceased on a cost-effective basis. (A famous example being the lack of a flu vaccine facility in the United States, the only two remaining in the entire world being in the UK, because it's simply not profitable to make flu vaccines.) So you better believe that the current world market is not one which is going to open its arms wide and smilingly say, "Yes, madam, we will make a special batch of shots especially for you. :3" No. They're going to tell her, "Kiss off!" and lump her in with all the zealots who elect to not be vaccinated. b) even if Point A were wrong, there's always the statistical chance that someone would be allergic to both ... or to three ... or to sixteen, etc. You get the idea. So yeah, Doppel. Unless you want to strap a person down execution-style and administer a vaccine to them that could well send them into anaphylactic shock, we can't ethically condone giving vaccines to everyone. To every able-bodied person, yes, but not to everyone period.
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05-05-2008, 07:58 PM | #6 | |||
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Re: Vaccines & Autism
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Tangent: I'd love to get 50/60 on an exam. I took my Biochemistry exam this afternoon and felt I'd be lucky to get 25/100! This isn't just because I'm taking a huge course load, the professor wrote on our hand-outs, "the exam will have no surprises, everything comes from the practice midterm and your homework" and 25% of the exam was homework-practice based material. What the crack? The course curve is insane, too. 55% is a B-, 85% is an A (not an A-...an "A"). I could literally not turn in the homework or take the midterm and just ace the Final (50% of course grade) to get a C in the class. Before curving! Frankly, this whole matter leaves me annoyed...last Quarter I had a fudge win, exceptionally fun Organic Chemistry course where I learned a lot, had a lot of practice, and earned a respectable grade without curving whatsoever. I was able to leave that class feeling satisfied I'd approached my best given my time constraints and with a new, optimistic outlook on the biological sciences. Quote:
Of course, vaccinations are more of a gamble than insulin - a diabetic off of it has a sure chance of dying, whereas a person first has to contract the a disease before they get to the bridge of surviving it or not. Vaccines aren't even an issue if they never contract it. Quote:
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05-06-2008, 05:17 PM | #7 | |
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Re: Vaccines & Autism
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05-06-2008, 06:58 PM | #8 |
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Re: Vaccines & Autism
Dami was being snide about it, but actually we did discuss an amazingly devastating flu pandemic -- the so-called Spanish flu. It was one I'd never heard of before medical school, but it turns out in 1918 it caused the deaths of minimum (confirmed) 20 million and an estimated maximum of 100 million. An oft-quoted line is "The Spanish flu killed 25 million in its first 25 weeks; AIDS killed 25 million in its first 25 years." I think it lends some historical perspective to this. Laypeople think "Oh, those scientists and their bird flu, getting everyone all scared over nothing," but the truth of the matter is that the scientific community has regrettably "cried wolf" on accident twice in a row (first with SARS, then with bird flu) and this has had the adverse effect of weakening credibility in the scientific community's claims that a strain of influenza similar to the H1N1 strain (Spanish flu) is likely to occur within the next 25 years. Even with modern medicine, it could prove to be the most disastrous epidemiologic event since 1918.
To understand more about how influenza works, I can create a thread for those interested (it would be in my interests, too, to go back over this material), but in brief I can say that influenza is a remarkably unique virus in that it was meant for birds, but through swine it was able to get into humans. It's pretty wild. Because of this, really all flus (by definition) are "bird flu"; and the part about the swine that you guys can take home from this post is, flu epidemics always start out in SE Asia. Why? The WHO believes that this is because of many Vietnamese farmers who cohabit with their foul and swine; the foul get sick, they pass it on to the pigs, the pigs -- infected by 2 or more strains of flu at the same time -- are where the viruses can exchange any one of the eight separate fragments of their genome, and then the newly-recombined virus spreads from the pigs not only backwards into the fowl again but also forwards into the Vietnamese farmer. This is one example (of many) we've discussed about how no amount of money can substitute for basic humanitarianism, i.e. if a rich man wants to quit getting the flu then he needs to quit his fucking bitching and help those poor farmers out who are currently so fucking poor they sleep with their pigs.
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05-06-2008, 11:26 PM | #9 | ||||
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Re: Vaccines & Autism
Awesome, I wonder how many times I can get damicatz to delete my posts when I point out that he's a psychotic ideological douche.
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05-07-2008, 12:17 AM | #10 | ||||
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Re: Vaccines & Autism
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California's state constitution provides for the creation of a public school system, so that exposes your "I was talking about state constitutions" argument for the bullshit redirect that it is. But hey, since you put forward the argument it's your job to prove it, so list for me all the states that prohibit themselves to have a public school system. It's cool, I'll wait. Quote:
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05-07-2008, 12:40 AM | #11 | ||||
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Re: Vaccines & Autism
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07-31-2010, 05:51 PM | #12 |
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My parents are very anti-vaccine, for that and many other reasons. They are very educated people and have done a lot of research on the subject. As such, I've never received a vaccination. However, I highly doubt that I am a liability to humanity. Even if I were to catch some hyper-contagious, antibiotics-resisting strain of swine flu (and look how "deadly" that turned out to be), there would be an equal chance of catching the virus from the vaccine itself. After all, that's what a vaccination is: you're exposing yourself to the disease so that your body will recognize it.
Even putting aside all the issues, there's absolutely no argument for forcing parents to inject anything into their children. It is simply ethically and legally wrong. I would rather get a life-threatening disease than have the government control what I put into my body, especially if it is risking my own health. |
07-31-2010, 06:43 PM | #13 | ||
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Once someone is capable of giving their own consent, if they don't want vaccines then on their own head be it. But properly tried, tested and certified vaccines being denied to young children because their parents don't care if this happens to them? No. EDIT the first: Also, way to bump a thread that's over two years old, EK.
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08-01-2010, 05:45 AM | #14 |
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EarthKwake, if I were you, I'd be yelling at my parents just now.
Firstly, this link would be helpful. Secondly, would you rather have autism or say tetanus? Maybe a bad case of chicken pox? Heaven forbid polio? As a note, you're less like to get autism that one of the life-threatening diseases not getting your vaccines can lead to.
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08-01-2010, 06:33 AM | #15 | |
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Anyway, also keep in mind that while you are "training" your immune system to fight those specific strains of virus, you are also actually weakening it against other diseases. It's called Immune Suppression. Take a look at this. If we live in a germophobic bubble where the only exposure to actual disease is vaccinations and (god forbid) hand sanitizer, then when a truly virulent strain of swine flu or bird flu comes around, the population would be decimated. In most cases, it's actually better to get the disease and overcome naturally than stilting up our bodies with drug after drug (this of course excludes those whose immune systems are already shot in the first place). |
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08-01-2010, 08:03 AM | #16 |
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That view point can only be held by someone who is completely ignorant of how the human immune system (and immune memory) works. -_-; No matter your views on vaccines, EarthKwake, I would suggest purchasing a college-level textbook on immunology and reading it. It is not easy material, which is certainly a contributing factor to the continued ignorance of many anti-vaccination spokespeople, but if you managed to get through the book, you would at least realize that what you just said in your latest post is not wrong because I say so, but wrong based on 70+ years of clinical evidence.
Every time you give a bacteria or virus a chance to infect you, you are giving it a chance to evolve. Therefore, as the number of infections rise, the number of opportunities to evolve also rise, and the evolution of a superior strain of bacteria or virus is imminent. Conversely, as the number of infections diminishes, the number of opportunities to evolve also diminish; and when the number of infections approaches/reaches zero, the pathogen is pretty much screwed.
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08-01-2010, 09:42 AM | #17 |
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I love vaccines but I had to take a tetanus shot a month or so ago and oooooooh boy it made me so sick I felt like I was going to die.
Just completely unrelated. |
08-01-2010, 12:18 PM | #18 |
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This thread just got turned up to 11
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08-01-2010, 09:49 PM | #20 |
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I didn't get lockjaw but I got an allergic reaction to the vaccination and it was a terrible experience.
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08-02-2010, 02:22 AM | #21 |
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In EarthKwake's defense, he can go around without vaccinations so long as all the people around him are vaccinated. He's a huge threat to himself, but not the population. The mutation possibility exists, but its going to vary between different species of bacteria and viruses. Influenza is really a mild disease, but it can knock people out for a while, so I can imagine people wanting to avoid side effects of the vaccination if they're not intimidated by it. I wouldn't boast about lacking immunity to so many of the other pathogens out there, though.
Gelatin, most likely.
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08-02-2010, 09:27 PM | #22 | |
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08-02-2010, 09:41 PM | #24 |
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But the superior choice is obviously to get it while you are younger, instead of gambling on some miracle preventative "cure" to last you through your entire life. That's why parents 40 years back would get their children together if one got the measles or chicken pox so they would all catch it, and then overcome it so they wouldn't have to worry about getting it in old age. This was of course before the entire hypochondriac "oh my god, every disease will kill me unless I pump my system full of drugs" era which we live in now. People have been getting sick for thousands of years, and yet humanity has yet to crumble at the feet of illness (with the exception of the Bubonic Plague, which had less to do with a lack of vaccinations and more to do with a lack of general hygiene).
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