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.
I am not as much anti-vaccination as I am anti-thimerosal/mercury-in-my-vaccine, or anti-vaccine-made-from-aborted-fetuses-cells.
There are doctors who have concerns about vaccines, because of the fact they are introducing the virus into the body in an unnatural way - meaning the normal body defenses of the skin and such are bypassed. Perhaps the skin defenses could fight off the virus. If the virus made it into a wound or opening in the skin then the blood and lymph systems would ramp up to attack it at a less deep level than deep in an internal muscle. A jab deep into a muscle bypasses a couple levels of defense that may have been able to take care of the virus and allow that person’s biological defenses to strengthen to deal with it in the future.
The fact is that vaccines have their problems. Particularly the preservatives in them. Also contamination, dare I mention the earlier polio vaccines from monkeys that transferred a virus to people that is responsible for cancer in people.
That being said -do you have a theory which explains the rise in autism? Is there a gene? Do you think it COULD be environmental?
Will check back later. I haven't had time to read the whole thread so you may have already addressed this.
Really? First of all, since your children have most likely never met my children, why don’t you lay off the personalization of the issue?
Since you have had your children vaccinated (haven’t you?) how could an unvaccinated child pass along the disease? Aren’t they immune? Or is there a dirty little secret about vaccinations? Are you aware that vaccinated people can still be disease vectors?
Are you criminally liable for passing along the flu to someone? After all, you could have been vaccinated or just taken precautions like washing your hands better. Have you ever sent your kid to school with a cold? Maybe you should be held criminally liable if they pass it along to someone else’s kid....
If you choose to vaccinate your children and they are injured or killed due to a complication are you willing to accept criminal liability for that decision? If you want others to accept liability for their decision not to vaccinate then you should be willing to accept liability for your decision to vaccinate, shouldn’t you?
I was gonna try to present some nice facts and figures to you, then i re-read your opening statement, went back and looked at my post, and realized that you (personally this time) have an anger management problem, so I will just ignore you for now....
I can understand how you would feel attacked by my asking you to stand up and face the natural consequences of your argument.
I also am amused by your attributing anger management issues to my response to your desire to throw my butt in jail. Maybe you should get a Psych 101 book and look up “projection.”
I can also understand your need to not respond now, I’m sure like most 5th graders your unsupervised Internet time is quite limited.
Or maybe, just maybe, you don’t have a good answer to any of my questions and would rather run back to DU where they welcome infringements on others’ liberty.
I’ve had literally a couple of THOUSAND inoculations against various diseases, and then boosters. I’ve gotten sick once from one. I got a several staph infection from another (an air injection, rather than a needle). All of them (well most) were given in the military.
I never signed a waiver, had to take them for world-wide deployments, but, nearly every time I took one, they asked me “Are you allergic to eggs?”
That’s why there are waivers, because many people ARE allergic to eggs and MOST if not all vaccines are grown as live specimens in chicken eggs.
OK.......here we go.
1) I did not attack you personally or professionally, since you posted the article, I usually hit the first post to respond to the article, anyone who has posted here for more than 5 minutes knows that.
2) That means i did not attack your children.
3) Post 22 and 23 disagreed with me, but chose to start a dialogue instead of personally attacking and attempting to get a point across by intimidation.
4) Your point was presented to me in the dialogue started by the cooler headed individuals( see post 29 )
5) In my post 37 I acknowledged that point, and admitted that I had not thought of that point.
6) The point was refuted in post 58, stating that sometimes the vaccines do not take effect, or are adminstered improperly.
In closing, I would like to say that I am a resonable person, when reasoned with, and that 99% of the people on this forum are calm, cool headed and ready for a reasonable discussion. You, sir, are none of the above.
OK, I’ll bite
1. You didn’t respond to post #1, you were responding to my post. Use of the words you and your certainly implies you are talking to ME. You say anyone who has posted here for more than 5 minutes should know. I have been a FR member for several years longer than you. You flatter yourself to think that all of us have taken the time to get to know your posting habits.
2. When you talk to me about “your kids” that means my children. I never said you were attacking my children.
3. Please point out any personal attack or intimidation in my post.
4. Your response was to my post, which was number 14. Since I was responding directly to your response, I did not go back and read all new posts to see if someone else had made the same point in a different thread. You responded directly to me, I responded directly to you without using my time to see what else had been said in another vein of the discussion.
5. Again, 37 is not in the series of posts between you and me.
6. This is the “dirty little secret” of vaccination that I was alluding to. Vaccines are neither permanent nor foolproof. Yet the side effects are, in some cases, permanent.
In closing, please point out the statements I made in post 14 that were anything but calm, cool-headed and intended to develop a discussion. Your response to that post was to “lock your butt up.” Is that an example of calm, cool-headedness or civil discussion? I’m not sure how to classify it so maybe you can help me.
That pretty well answers the question of why parents would have to sign something before their children are vaccinated. The vaccine may make them ill, or the vaccine may be ineffective against a particular strain.
What I meant was is that people have gotten sick from “weakened flu viruses” rather than the dead kind. However, I personally got ill from one flu shot that was supposed to have been “dead virus bodies” and I wasn’t the only one. So, to this day, I dont know.
USUALLY I don’t get a flu shot any more even though I think I can still get them free at the AF Base if I take my lazy butt over there when they are giving them, but I simply don’t like standing in LINES any more if I don’t have to. I got tired of that in the service.
if I get the flu, I get the flu and I’ll have antibodies for it. I’m a healthy male and I don’t usually stay sick long, so to me taking a shot seems silly at this time. I suppose when I’m 60 and perhaps have a weakened immune system, I might start taking them again (that’s another 10 years away though).
Then I hope for yor sake, and more for her sake, that she never has even one youthful indiscretion, that she remains a virgin until she is married, and that she marries a man who is also a virgin, because over 50% men who are sexually active with more than one woman have HPV and will transmit it.
That, for me, is plenty reason to have young women get the Gardasil injection; I would bet that even on this board the overwhelming majority of men had more than one sex partner before their wives and thus have a 50% chance of having HPV.
Karl and that the problem. I don't vaccinate my kids I started with my first but after her first rounds she stopped eating and got very sick for a week. When they are a touch older and have a more mature immune system Ill probably get them vaccinated then.
But they wanted to give my 2mo who stayed home a vaccination for hepatitis! WTH? and chicken pox? great we now have 20yos getting it because unlike the one weeks worth of itching you get as a kid (that for the most part last a lifetime) the vaccination wears off..
No one would say that cars should be outlawed because of the risk (no, not even Nader).
Nor would anyone say staying in bed and not driving should be illegal (e.g. you *have to drive to work*)
lol I love that mentality... How about if someone leaves their thermostat too low or does not make their kids wash their hands... If your little one gets the flu from them should they go to jail..
Well so long as your happy using the govt for force healthcare decisions on people..
Shingles is not as bad as getting ChickenPox as an adult which with a limited lifetime vaccine can happen.
I go with 25 thats the time for fully go through all development. If a drug reduces fertility and you give it to a 3yo youre not going to know (hopefully) by 13..
Right when it comes to *YOU* we should have medical treatment forced upon us (or our kids)... Nice...
YOu want to cut down on this crap
1) Law about hand washing with prison time as a punishment for failure
2) No one can leave their house if they have a runny nose/cough/or temperature failure to do so will lead to arrest.
I agree.
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