Fifteen Years After Autism Panic, a Plague of Measles Erupts 668
DavidHumus writes "Some of the longer-term effects of the anti-vaccination movement of past decades are now evident in a dramatic increase in measles. From the article: 'A measles outbreak infected 1,219 people in southwest Wales between November 2012 and early July, compared with 105 cases in all of Wales in 2011. One of the infected was Ms. Jenkins, whose grandmother, her guardian, hadn't vaccinated her as a young child. "I was afraid of the autism," says the grandmother, Margaret Mugford, 63 years old. "It was in all the papers and on TV."'"
Re:Outbreak, not "plague"; dont be sensationalist. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you'd had measles as an adult you might feel differently.
hard to even parody (Score:3, Insightful)
And here we have an illustration of your garden-variety Daily Mail reader [google.com].
You .... (Score:5, Insightful)
DR;PW (did not read;pay walled)
Fear leads to Hate, Hate leads to Measles (Score:3, Insightful)
I enjoy telling the pharmacist that it's okay, I already have autism.
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It concerns me that there's a growing distrust of medicine. Every day it seems there are more and more people who insist, "Doctors don't know anything." It's a very disturbing phenomenon that's getting people killed.
The medical community needs to start doing something about this.
Bad things happen when... (Score:5, Insightful)
large numbers of people follow the advice os someone who has no training, no proof, or even a decent grasp of cause and effect.
Thanks retards (Score:0, Insightful)
I hope your kids die
Re:Fear leads to Hate, Hate leads to Measles (Score:5, Insightful)
It concerns me that there's a growing distrust of medicine. Every day it seems there are more and more people who insist, "Doctors don't know anything." It's a very disturbing phenomenon that's getting people killed. The medical community needs to start doing something about this.
Two things. Yes, medical professionals need to act more scrupulously. But also, education needs to be advanced. People don't understand science so when doctors tell them something they weren't telling them yesterday they get all in a tiff.
As long as the system is so clearly corrupted by money, though, people aren't going to trust health care professionals. As long as big pharma is taking meds off the market and replacing them with inferior versions in order to drive down demand for a generic and force people to continue to pay them, we're all going to know it's a scam. As long as doctors continue to prescribe whatever drugs the reps are wining and dinind them over, we're all going to know it's a scam. As long as hospitals continue to charge whatever the market will bear, we're all going to know it's a scam.
Should be charged with child abuse (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the infected was Ms. Jenkins, whose grandmother, her guardian, hadn't vaccinated her as a young child. "I was afraid of the autism," says the grandmother, Margaret Mugford, 63 years old. "It was in all the papers and on TV."'"
So she didn't listen to her physician. Sigh...
I'm of a mind that people like this should be charged with child abuse, regardless of their intentions. They are putting not only their own child at risk but other children as well. The science on this topic is unequivocal. Vaccines demonstrably save lives and not getting them demonstrably costs lives. Children who do not get the vaccines (without a documented medical needs exemption) should not be permitted to go to school or participate in activities with other children. Parents who do not vaccinate their children (again without a medical needs exemption) should have to explain to a court why they think they are entitled to put their child and others at risk of some very serious diseases. Yes I'm being harsh and yes I think it is appropriate the the magnitude of the problem. A vague fear of autism which is not based on credible scientific research is not sufficient grounds to not get vaccinated.
Re:You .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Modern society counteracts evolution by protecting the weak and stupid. Things are unlikely to improve unless we really improve the quality and availability of education.
Trust (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as the system is so clearly corrupted by money, though, people aren't going to trust health care professionals.
People didn't vaccinate their kids because they heard a (false) series of stories on the news. The problem wasn't that they didn't trust their doctor too little but rather that they trusted the news too much. If you saw a steady parade of (dis)information from a news source you regard as credible, why would you doubt it? Saying vaccines cause autism is a nice sound bite which is easy to understand whereas the counter argument that there is no credible evidence of any link is harder to explain.
As long as big pharma is taking meds off the market and replacing them with inferior versions in order to drive down demand for a generic and force people to continue to pay them, we're all going to know it's a scam.
Name one medicine that has been "taken off the market and replaced" with an inferior version.
You can't fix stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Things are unlikely to improve unless we really improve the quality and availability of education.
Education cures ignorance, not stupidity. In the immortal words of Ron White, "you can't fix stupid".
Re:You can't fix stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
I prefer, "some people are educated way beyond their intelligence."
Re:This is just fear-mongering itself. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like driving without a seatbelt on. You're fine, because you're unlikely to have a car crash. Maybe you can drive like this for a decade, until one unlucky day, a drunk guy goes through a red light and into the side of your car at 30 miles per hour. Suddenly not having a seatbelt becomes a huge problem.
Similarly, this community could sit there with its low vaccination levels quite happily, because it's surrounded by a big country mostly composed of people with the common sense to get vaccinated, and because of that, measles has a hard time getting around and reaching these poorly-vaccinated areas. Until one day, someone who happens to have the virus moves in, and it has the run of the place.
Re:hard to even parody (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't really blame her; she's probably doesn't have the kind of technical background that innoculates you against quackery. Nor do I really blame Andrew Wakefield; he's proven himself to be a poor scientist and generally a colossal douche, but in science there are mechanisms in place to deal with that (peer review etc). The real blame does indeed lie with the newspapers, who don't have a fucking clue about science and will send out the same guy who does the cinema reviews to cover a medical story. He of course studied Hispanic literature or whatever and doesn't know the first thing about science reporting, and falls prey to every logial fallacy and unconscious bias along the way.
Newspapers should take truth and accurate reporting seriously. They should have a science editor with a scientific background who can check the work of the reporters. If they're not going to do it, and the consequence is panics and deaths, then perhaps we (i.e. our government) need to do it for them via a regulator.
Re:You .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Modern society counteracts evolution by protecting the weak and stupid.
Ironically, this is also exactly what vaccinations do.
So is counteracting evolution good or bad?
Re:Fear leads to Hate, Hate leads to Measles (Score:5, Insightful)
The answer to different medics having different opinions on a non-certain condition isn't to ask non-medics.
If you were building a bridge and two different concrete experts gave you two different opinions, you'd ask a third one or decide which you trust more based on other information. You wouldn't ask a shaman to invoke the spirit of the mountain into wet sand, and build your bridge with it.
Re:hard to even parody (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Trust (Score:5, Insightful)
Journalists have a long history of lying to their readers but somehow they are still trusted implicitly.
Re:Fear leads to Hate, Hate leads to Measles (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a link between the fever that kids get as a result of the immunization that can cause autistic spectrum disorder due to an underlying mitochondrial disorder, but this only happens in less than .01% of the time.
Citation please. You seem to be stating a fact without any sort of substantiation.
Re:Outbreak, not "plague"; dont be sensationalist. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not statistically significant I'd say, but nonetheless incredibly funny.
Yeah, I'm a misanthrope. Deal.
Re:Jenny McCarthy (Score:5, Insightful)
Barbara has fallen for a good bit of woo over the years. Back in the day when she had Uri Geller on, she bought his schtick hook line and sinker; and this even after Randi came on and did the same psychic tricks.
Re:hard to even parody (Score:4, Insightful)
Yea, if anyone is to blame it's him.
It's not even a case of poor science, he flat out lied and knowingly acted unethically; for his own self interest and pay off.
Re:Outbreak, not "plague"; dont be sensationalist. (Score:5, Insightful)
Take a look to see if there are any corresponding changes in rate of autism? Here's a nice chance to run a natural experiment--the non-vaccinated become the test group...
There wasn't.
This would have became apparent relatively quickly; this measles outbreak may be 15 years after the fact, but the autism rates would have been affected within the first few years if there was anything in this. They weren't.
The research that linked autism with this vaccination was soundly debunked within a few years of being released. The original paper was fully retracted in 2004, and the researcher found guilty of misconduct and fraud.
The full sorry story is documented on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] and many other places.
The really sad part is that even a decade after the story was retracted, there are still some people who are convinced that they shouldn't immunise their kids.
The trouble is that we live in a world where these diseases don't scare us any more because we don't see them. They ought to. If you want to know what happens to populations without immunity that are exposed to measles, try reading up on what happened when the Conquistadors introduced it to South America.
Re:hard to even parody (Score:3, Insightful)
I do blame her. She probably should have listened to her doc, who will probably have told her in no uncertain terms that it would be a GOOD idea to have her granddaughter vaccinated. Instead she listened to some quack on TV. Guess what? Your local doc can most likely tell you a lot better about your chances and dangers of vaccination. It might not be a good idea to get shots against malaria in northern Scotland, the side effects sure outweigh the benefits, but it might be one hell of a good idea when you plan to go to Central Africa, despite all side effects.
Only if her doc told her it would be a good idea to not vaccinate her child, the blame has to be shifted to said doctor. If she just listened to some quack on TV, yes, she is to blame!
Re:You .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The boring truth (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no evidence that mercury that used to be in some vaccines ever caused a problem.
While that's true, there's also no evidence that using mercury in shots was ever a good idea. There have long been other preservatives, they simply never received enough testing to be moved up to the next level. Now they have, and now there's double extra no excuse for using mercury. It's still used in multiple-injection vials, which have been used to give injections to children in the USA well past the time at which point such action was supposed to have been banned, citing bogus "need" to vaccinate with what is probably the least useful vaccination, and one which was in particular known to be useless at the time at which it was administered because it did not really apply to that year's strain.
Mercury is bioaccumulative. Using mercury where it is unnecessary to maximize profit is unacceptable. It would be like using lead. A little smidge of it won't kill you, but it's still unacceptable.
Re:You .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:hard to even parody (Score:5, Insightful)
The insidious bit of this particular story was that there was a supposed cover-up in which doctors were hiding the "truth" for various reasons. At that point her choice was:
a) Newspaper: if you get the MMR jab, your child might get autism, which is an incurable disability requiring a lifetime of support. Even Tony Blair refuses to say whether his kids have had it so it must be true, and the government/NHS is lying to you.
b) Doctor: if you don't get the MMR jab, your child might get measles which in a few cases can lead to complications or even be fatal.
Ordinary, lottery-playing people aren't really in a position to judge the probabilities involved, even were the newspapers' position true.
Re:hard to even parody (Score:5, Insightful)
The newspapers facilitated him for their own self-interest. So they're all just awful, awful people, Wakefield and press alike.
Re:hard to even parody (Score:4, Insightful)
Wakefield was discredited by his peers in medicine and is held up as a hero by goons on the internet. Phil Jones was discredited by a bunch of goons on the internet and is held up as a hero by his peers. I'm not sure that the two are comparable.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Fear leads to Hate, Hate leads to Measles (Score:5, Insightful)
It is distrust of medicine as a science - look at what people are faced with:
- Doctors who wont prescribe birth controls, because of the doctors faith, not the patients.
- Anyone with the title "Dr" (of what, from where) can appear on TV and flog the latest magic beans from the amazon as a cure for everything, unopposed.
- Advertising for every 3 month cycle of trendy "natural/traditional/herbal/secret" cures also attacks pharmaceuticals as "unnatural chemicals"
- Any a time a doctor screws up its a news worthy event
- Everyone has a friend who went to a doctor (or doctors) that misdiagnosed something major (anecdotal: I know someone who saw 4 doctors before the last finally noticed the fist sized tumour growing a creeper up her spine).
- All doctors are paid by drug companies to play golf, everyone knows that.
Is it any wonder when something as scary as "MMR causes autism" hits the headlines, people take notice and don't ask their doctors. Everything in the media screams "don't trust doctors", why take the risk of autism, doctors have been wrong before?
As a parent of ASD diagnosed twins it certainly crossed my mind did it start when they were immunised. Certainly it was a traumatic time and I felt their behaviour changed after, but no, the symptoms were there before but they just were not advanced enough for it to be obvious. It didn't help that doctors kept telling us "they are twins, they will develop late" (see!). My wife and I as two reasonably intelligent people, knowing the MMR link was debunked, still wanted to put off further immunisations - the fear was there, even though we knew it was not to blame. How can you blame other people with less discerning processing and intelligence to make better decisions with so much bad information.
That said I really feel some parents want something to blame - "its not my genes, it was that evil MMR which was just a scam by doctors to sell drugs.". I looked for it when we got the news - something else was to blame, not us. I can imagine others do something similar.
Re:Outbreak, not "plague"; dont be sensationalist. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but you know what kills more people? The actual disease!
The rates of death and disability are so low they are acceptable vs the disease. It is a very simple tradeoff.
Re:hard to even parody (Score:4, Insightful)
Erh... when I have a medical question, should I consult a doctor or a newspaper? Hmm...
Well, what do I say? There are people who call tech support to argue with them that their "friend" told them they should do something different...
Re:hard to even parody (Score:4, Insightful)
I do blame her.
She had access to a Dr who does have that technical knowledge. All she had to do was ask.
Re:Outbreak, not "plague"; dont be sensationalist. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, but it does depend on outcome. A sample size of 10,000 and an outcome of 5,001 vs 4,999 doesn't tell me that the first option is clearly superior.
going to have to re-learn these lessons (Score:5, Insightful)
"We don't need these restrictive regulations, we don't have those problems any more."
Re:Outbreak, not "plague"; dont be sensationalist. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, would you? And how many children would they need to study for it to be statistically significant?
Statistically insignificant is a perfectly valid result - it means the difference is less than your margin of error. In other words, neither option is superior.
Re:Outbreak, not "plague"; dont be sensationalist. (Score:5, Insightful)
Take a look to see if there are any corresponding changes in rate of autism? Here's a nice chance to run a natural experiment--the non-vaccinated become the test group...
There wasn't.
This would have became apparent relatively quickly; this measles outbreak may be 15 years after the fact, but the autism rates would have been affected within the first few years if there was anything in this. They weren't.
The research that linked autism with this vaccination was soundly debunked within a few years of being released. The original paper was fully retracted in 2004, and the researcher found guilty of misconduct and fraud.
The full sorry story is documented on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] and many other places.
The really sad part is that even a decade after the story was retracted, there are still some people who are convinced that they shouldn't immunise their kids.
The trouble is that we live in a world where these diseases don't scare us any more because we don't see them. They ought to. If you want to know what happens to populations without immunity that are exposed to measles, try reading up on what happened when the Conquistadors introduced it to South America.
This is a classic "outlier" or "three sigma" case.... people do not see any more the illness, and they think that vaccination is useless. I was born in 1962, so mine is the last generation to actually have suffered through all the then common children's diseases: mumps, measles etc. The only thing I was vaccinated for was smallpox.
now color me paranoid, but not only my son and daughter have been vaccinated against everything there's a common vaccine for, but if it was at all possible I'd have them vaccinated for smallpox too. I know "it's not there any more", but....
It has been proven, time and again, that human mind is not able on average to ascertain risk/rewards for low occurrence events, or to put them in relation to existing risks. This was a case in point.
Re:hard to even parody (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd like to see the papers that ran those lies as fact sued also. I can understand the original stories perhaps but once the truth became fully known they had an obligation to sensationalize that just as heavily as they did the original lie. Instead they were strangely quiet about the fact they were taken in and little was said about it. This is where their responsibility for the deaths begins.
Wakefield's Patent (Score:4, Insightful)
For your convenience, here is one of Wakefield's actual patents [espacenet.com]
Re:You .... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm 63. That's old enough to remember the newspaper headlines over an outbreak of polio and seeing pictures of iron lungs in magazines, and being quarantined when I got measles.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/01/what-america-looked-like-polio-children-paralyzed-in-iron-lungs/251098/ [theatlantic.com]
I was in first grade when the first polio vaccine was administered to us.
This was a rite of passage alright. A passage from fear and disease.
Human lifespan increases in the second half of the 20th century were from decreased childhood mortality. It is not just a 'rite of passage'.
Re:Fear leads to Hate, Hate leads to Measles (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a reason for the growing distrust of medicine.
I generally trust my doctors. However, since they are human beings, they are as subject to confirmation bias as anyone else. Probably like more than a few people here ln /., I'm "obese" and have "metabolic syndrome." However, my cholesterol levels are where they should be, and historically always have.. even after 20 years of Type II diabetes.
However, my doctor wants to test my cholesterol every six months (even though there's absolutely no diagnostic value in doing so). Why? The logical side of me wants to just chalk it up to that "confirmation bias": I MUST have high cholesterol because I fit the profile, so the last 10 years of good cholesterol numbers don't mean anything. Additionally, my work provides free yearly cholesterol screenings as part of our corporate wellness program.. so even when I provide those lab results to the clinician he still orders a cholesterol screening.
The cynical side of me walks into the doctors office and sees freebies (pens, clipboards, etc.) advertising Lipitor and it's real hard to begin to wonder if the doctor works for me or the drug company. Somebody who's a bit more paranoid is going to see the correlation between all these cholesterol screenings and the statin drug freebies and go all Jenny McCarthy.
I deal with it the same way every time. When I go to the lab to have the actual lab work done, I decline the cholesterol test, give them a photocopy of my most recent screening from work, and ask that they add it to my chart for me.
Re:Fear leads to Hate, Hate leads to Measles (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Outbreak, not "plague"; dont be sensationalist. (Score:4, Insightful)
Mod parent down all you like, but cracking the numbers is actually a pretty good idea.
If the non-vaccinated kids have significantly lower rates of autism, we accept that the MMR jab is responsible in some way, even if we don't understand how yet.
If not, we accept that the whole MMR avoidance thing is utter bullcrap.
Sounds like a fair way to run an unbiased experiment to me.
They quit using the "mercury" preservative that purportedly causes autism over a decade ago, and the rate of autism diagnoses in young children has kept going up.
The doctor that started all of his has been shown to be a fraud, sponsored by an ambulance chaser.
Your experiment would be interesting, but it's not necessary. And the outcome wouldn't convince the True Believers anyway.
Re:hard to even parody (Score:5, Insightful)
J schools are the problem.
Or maybe it's just that the media thrives on controversy, not on informing the public.
Re:Outbreak, not "plague"; dont be sensationalist. (Score:5, Insightful)
and i would be willing to bet people that had one autistic child is statistically more likely to have a second autistic child...
You would win that bet [nytimes.com]. The risk is about twenty times higher, 1 in 5 instead of 1 in 110.
Re:Outbreak, not "plague"; dont be sensationalist. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And that's why you should listen to experts (Score:4, Insightful)
When the people who know what they're talking about are in widespread agreement about some issue, that's generally an indication that what they're saying is the best understanding of the issue available.
But people who are motivated to reject it still will. Cf. evolution, global warming, the shoah (aka holocaust).
Re:hard to even parody (Score:3, Insightful)
Newspapers should take truth and accurate reporting seriously. They should have a science editor with a scientific background who can check the work of the reporters.
Sure, but who's going to pay for that? It's way cheaper to just print whatever's trending on Twitter. The public has clearly indicated that they don't really care.
"Controversial" just means ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Once again, Barbara, this isn't a "controversial" opinion, it is a murderous one.
"Controversial" just means the media talking heads are talking about it. It's a propaganda tool that lets them discredit anything, sew doubt in the viewers'/listeners' minds, and divide and distract the population.
1) Pick an idea held by many people. (If that's because it's well-researched, produces prosperity and/or political stability, or otherwise sound, it's particularly suitable because it will be strongly held.)
2) Find some ideal held by a few that contradicts it. (If it's some unresearched or refuted-by-research tinfoil-hat idea, an attractive political ideology that leads to strife, etc. that's especially effectivce as well.)
3) Talk about them as if the first is in question and the second is just as well founded.
4) Because you're talking about them, label them both "controversial", thus lowering the credibility of the first and throwing the issue into doubt.
5) Confused viewers tune in to try to figure out which is right. Never tell them, so your raitings stay high.
6) Profit!
If this leads to children suffering from and dying of loathsome diseases, political strife, tyrannies, wars, economic collapse, and so on, laugh all the way to the bank and goto step 5).
People die because of this.
You betcha!
(And then they wonder why people are waking up, turning them off, and getting their news and analysis from the Internet.)
Re:going to have to re-learn these lessons (Score:4, Insightful)
That's because like we do with diseases, those regulations were meant to prevent bad behavior. But regulations don't remove the behavior, just as vaccinations don't kill off the bug causing the disease.
Deregulation is only possible after when human greed goes the way of smallpox.
Re:Jenny McCarthy (Score:5, Insightful)
She's not the problem. The teaching of critical thinking, or lack thereof, is the real problem.
Re:Jenny McCarthy (Score:4, Insightful)