Posted on 01/24/2008 6:05:55 AM PST by Kaslin
Grant the anti-childhood vaccine fanatics this; they are dogged. No amount of data and no number of studies from any array of sources will sway them from their beliefs – or claimed beliefs – that thimerosal, a mercury-containing vaccine preservative once used in many such injections, is causing the so-called “autism epidemic.”
Therefore a California Department of Public Health study in the current Archives of General Psychiatry hasn’t either. Nevertheless, for the rest of us there are two valuable lessons. First, the lack of a thimerosal connection to the developmental disorder has once again been reaffirmed. And second, those fanatics really and truly are fanatical – as a British Medical Journal book reviewer put it, an “angry and paranoid universe.”
These people operate over 150 anti-vaccine web sites that claim not only a thimerosal-vaccine connection but a Massive World Wide Conspiracy to cover up of the alleged link. They are often hateful people who have sent death threats to Public Health Service officials who subsequently quit their jobs in fear.
As a precautionary measure – surely influenced by the anti-vaccinationists – thimerosal was removed from all childhood vaccines as of March 2001 (except flu shots, which contain a trace amount.) The angry paranoids and those who make a living catering to them confidently declared that soon the California data would show a dramatic drop in diagnoses.
Indeed they quickly asserted it had done so, as did former New York Times writer David Kirby, author of the influential 2005 book Evidence of Harm - Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy. Never mind that this alleged peak, in 2002, came far too early to have reflected cessation of thimerosal use. (Huffington now writes for the left-wing Huffington Post blog.)
Later the father-son team of Dr. Mark and David Geier published a study they claimed showed a dramatic 35 percent drop, also beginning in 2002. The Geiers make their living as expert witnesses and consultants for lawyers who make claims against the government’s National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
But now there has been enough time, and the news is good for parents and bad for the fearmongers. The Archives study evaluated autistic children referred to the state’s Developmental Services System and covered the years 1995 to March of 2007. It included children age three and above. If thimerosal-preserved vaccines cause autism, the researchers said, diagnoses should have started falling in 2004 – not 2002.
But as this chart from the paper shows, there been no plummet, no decline, no leveling. There hasn’t been the least bit of decrease in the increasing number of cases.
Further, the California findings are hardly anomalous. As the Archives paper noted, “Our findings are in concordance with the rigorous 2004 review of at least 12 previous published and unpublished studies by the IOM Immunization Safety Committee, which concluded that the body of evidence rejected a causal relationship between [thimerosal containing vaccines] and autism.”
Included in the IOM review were three studies looking at the entire populations of Sweden, Denmark, and Canada respectively. In all three countries thimerosal-containing vaccines were discontinued in the late 1990s and yet, as in California, autism rates climbed at the same pace.
The main problem with the “angry and paranoid universe” is that its members have terrified parents throughout not only the U.S. but the world into refusing to vaccinate their children. These parents become free riders, relying on those parents who do vaccinate to keep diseases at bay through “herd immunity.” That means that immunization rates in the wider population are high enough (for example, 85 percent for diphtheria) to protect those not immunized.
But if enough people free ride, herd immunity is lost and what follows is the return of childhood diseases we hardly think about anymore. Diseases like pertussis (Whooping cough) have made comebacks in countries as diverse as the U.K., the U.S., Australia, Japan, and Sweden after anti-vaccinationist scares. Pertussis cases went from fewer than 8,000 in the U.S. in 2001 to over 25,000 in 2005.
The anti-vaccine crowd aren’t merely harmless kooks. They harm their own children as well as others. It’s time our Public Health Service starts using publicity campaigns rather than just scientific findings to start fighting back.
“Forget the mercury...”
Injecting mercury into infants and children...and who thinks this isn’t harmless?
Illegal aliens avoided vaccination and screening for diseases. Lock up the government officials who continue to support illegal immigration.
I also find it offensive when people who are sick with the flu or have 3 people at home sick with the flu come into the office or attend a party and say “I’m nursing a bunch of sick people back home” (and carrying the disease to everyone you come in contact with).
Personally, I don’t want to give a vaccine to a child unless that product has been on the market for over ten years.
I think the government steps over the line when they force parents to protect their child against sexually transmitted disease.
Hmmmmmm. Maybe we could start enforcing these crucial matters at our sovereign borders!
can we????please????
We'd elimiated polio in America too until some good hard working undocumented workers saw fit to enjoy "the good life" by breaking a "few" rules.
. What's it to you ? Why can't people make their own decisions ? Or does everyone have to see it your way ? I think you, like many others in the medical community, are a control freak.
agreed....now apply that principal to a school bus loaded with kids, and one on the bus has TB, and is coughing up a storm....now to be fair, one poster earlier said that someone had an allergic reaction to the shot, and was forced to get the other 2 in the series, i would have told the health department to go to hell....
I’ve asked and asked this about the HPV vaccine. Both guys and gals can get HPV. Both guys and gals can get cancer from HPV (which is the stated reason for giving girls the HPV vaccine, to prevent a possible cancer complication later).
Since the guys can GET HPV and spread it to unvaccinated women, and guys can get cancer from HPV, why is it just women getting the vaccine?
Not safe for the general population?
Easier to politically sell the HPV as strictly a “women’s issue” (like abortion)?
Guys can get and pass along HPV to women. Either they should all be getting or no requirement.
Unless is just doesn’t WORK on men. Anyone have a stat that says that? Or will we be getting strains of HPV that mutate because men get it and keep boffing women until a new variant can take hold?
again, i state, if you do not vaccinate your child, and he or she comes down with a communicable disease that the vaccination would have prevented, and my child gets seriously sick or dies, then YOU are crimally neglegent, and should be prosecuted....
I'd say you have to factor in how serious the disease itself is, should you contract it. Considering that all shots carry some risk, some diseases are not serious enough to vaccinate for. Do most people really need flu shots? And when I went to East Africa some years ago, I noticed on a map that my destination was in an area where typhoid is common. I asked the hospital, which specializes in exotic diseases, if I should get a typhoid shot. They said not to bother. Just don't drink unbottled or unboiled water. And even if I got the disease, as a healthy, well-nourished Westerner with a strong immune system, typhoid would not pose a real danger.
Speaking of exotic foreign countries, my guess is that immigration from the Third World (without disease screening by our immigration authorities) has more to do with the reappearance of formerly vanquished diseases in America than a few parents who won't vaccinate their kids.
And by the way, since I don't plan on training my daughters to become crack w****s, Merck knows where they can stick their Gardasil. Let them find another way to attract a market—one that hasn't involved bribing government officials to order its use.
If you vaccinate your OWN child, why would he get the communicable disease that you would blame on someone else?
Some people follow kooky old testament or veggie diets and yet the market adapts to provide such foods regardless of the ficitious nature of their arguments.
Can you explain to me what a vaccine is?
“Some people follow kooky old testament or veggie diets...”
I love my beef, pork, etc., but I see nothing kooky about a vegetarian diet. Some vegetarians ARE kooky, but others simply feel better not eating meat.
valid point....never considered that one.....
I’m with you there. That “dedication to work” thing only goes so far. How are you helping your employer by making half the office sick? Me, if there’s nothing pressing and I’m not 100%, I’ll bug-out to keep from “spreading the love.” Fortunately we have flex-time, so I can simply make up the hours later...
I’m not suggesting mercury is harmless but just pointing out the fact that even if these vaccinnes had zero mercury, it would be completely foolish to trade 50,000 to 1 odds of getting a very bad side-effect for the 1 in 50 million odds of getting something like polio.
Not my kids. One of my boys had a bad reaction (fever etc.) to the first pertussis shot. He didn’t get the rest. The Dr. gave us the option - the fever/reaction wasn’t that bad but... So we opt’d out for him.
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