Bill Gates Says Anti-Vaccine Effort Kills Children 832
Hugh Pickens writes writes "CNN has an interesting interview with Bill Gates who says that unbelievable progress is being made in both inventing new vaccines and making sure they get out to all the children who need them. The improvements could cut the number of children who die every year from about 9 million to half that. But Gates has harsh words for those who engage in anti-vaccine efforts, especially Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who falsified data to 'prove' a fraudulent link between vaccines and autism. 'It's an absolute lie that has killed thousands of kids,' says Gates. 'Because the mothers who heard that lie, many of them didn't have their kids take either pertussis or measles vaccine, and their children are dead today.'"
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if it were true (vaccines cause autism), as Penn & Teller wisely argued: Vaccines SAVE more lives than they kill/damage.
See the video for yourself - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfdZTZQvuCo [youtube.com]
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Specifically about Asshole Andrew Wakefield's ("who used to be a doctor but is now just a guy") fraudulent falsification of results in order to line his own pockets with money from a firm of lawyers who wanted to sue pharmaceutical companies.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
which in certain parts of the world contributes directly to overpopulation which has an even *higher* death toll from hunger and secondary effects like war.
But here's the rebuttal. Sick people eat, but they don't work. That reduces economic activity and wealth per capita, the latter which has a strong negative correlation with female fertility.
That's what you're missing in your concern about overpopulation. For example, malaria infects hundreds of millions of people a year yet only about a million die each year. The rest while sick (which can be a long time off and on with chronic malaria) aren't working and aren't improving their lives or their society.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Hunger isn't because of overpopulation. There is hunger in some regions because of a lack of infrastructure to move the food around efficiently.
Look at eastern Africa's famines of the 1980s, you had net exporters of food in Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe while only a couple thousand miles away millions starved to death in Ethiopia and Somalia. Those people didn't die because there weren't enough kilograms of food, they died because the surpluses couldn't be quickly and efficiently moved.
Likewise in Somali
Re: (Score:3)
I'm going to put forward this argument next time my mother uses famine in Africa as the reason I should eat my vegetables...
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
I must agree with him, and I didn't realise how bad this was in the US until I saw a documentary the other night on the "war against vaccination" in the US. Pretty much the people against vaccination keep changing the reasoning why the vaccinations are "bad".
One minute it's the MMR vaccines that cause autism, then it's the mercury based preservatives, then it's the amount of shots kids get, blah blah blah. Basically all the reasons have been refuted by scientific studies (Denmark was used quite often as they keep medical records on all their citizens).
One of the anti-vaccine idiots even had the balls to say that it was up to the scientific community to disprove that vaccines are dangerous.
Jim Carey and that other bitch both need to be hurt with hot pokers. The simple fact that autism becomes apparent at the time when kids get their vaccinations does not mean that the vaccinations cause autism. In fact, the studies showed that vaccinated kids had the same rate of autism as non-vaccinated kids.
Pseudo-science will always win because the media outlets can get "passionate" famous people behind the campaigns.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is worse than that. Just look at the number of famous, retarded actors who became scientologists.
Re: (Score:3)
Add Bill Maher to your list (Score:4)
I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that he's been on something of an anti-vaccination crusade, especially when it comes to flu shots. He basically is of the position that the whole campaign to inoculate people against H1N1 is in and of itself a conspiracy. He's adamant that you don't need vaccines if you eat right.
Re:Add Bill Maher to your list (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that he's been on something of an anti-vaccination crusade, especially when it comes to flu shots. He basically is of the position that the whole campaign to inoculate people against H1N1 is in and of itself a conspiracy. He's adamant that you don't need vaccines if you eat right.
I believe you are overstating his position. [huffingtonpost.com] If your immune system is weakened, get a flu shot. If you're a hypochondriac munchausens case, we'll, if it will shut you up, go ahead, get a shot. But I believe his point (speculating) is the vast majority of the healthy population doesn't need a flu vaccine. He certainly isn't boasting he's found the cause of autism.
snipped:
And it's precisely because I am a Darwinist that I fear the overuse of antibiotics, since that is what has allowed nasty killer bugs like MRSA to adapt so effectively that they are often resistant to any antibiotic we can throw at it. There are consequences to vaccines and antibiotics. Some people want to study that, and some, it seems, want to call off the debate.
I wouldn't stick Bill in with the pseudoscientists... he's a comedian and a talk show host... he wants a debate, not a paradigm shift.
Re:Add Bill Maher to your list (Score:5, Insightful)
If your immune system is weakened, get a flu shot. If you're a hypochondriac munchausens case, we'll, if it will shut you up, go ahead, get a shot. But I believe his point (speculating) is the vast majority of the healthy population doesn't need a flu vaccine. He certainly isn't boasting he's found the cause of autism
Not a smart point. If you are healthy, you should get a vaccine, because you could carry it to your old granny or your 3-week-old infant niece, and kill them. The vast majority DOES need a vaccine, that's how we get "herd immunity."
Re:Add Bill Maher to your list (Score:5, Informative)
Guess you fell asleep in grade school health class, so here's a refresher with as little medical/science junk as possible.
Antibiotics attack and kill the microbes. If they don't kill all of them, the survivors might reproduce into an infection resistant to that antibiotic.
Vaccines hype up your immune system so it can identify and kill the target microbe when/if you get infected, it's like giving your friends the heads up and phone number of that total creepazoid so you can hit ignore when he/she calls.
There, did that make sense to you? If you want to know more, pick up any pamphlet on vaccinations at any accredited medical facility, like a licensed physicians office, licensed pharmacy, the hospital, urgent care (if you have that), etc, just not the dippy new age stuff that got you into stupid in the first place.
There's a lot more to immunology, but this isn't the place to discuss it. You can find it if you want, but please stop listening to bubblegum pundits, they'll get you killed with their "medical opinions".
Re:Add Bill Maher to your list (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Add Bill Maher to your list (Score:4, Informative)
This is simply not true.
You cannot "train" you immune system. Letting the immune system fight the flu does not make it better at fighting anything else.
The end result for the immune system after fighting a virus infection is the same as you get by taking a vaccine; anti-bodies.
The historical "strengthening" of the immune system by letting it fight it's own battles only works on a population level. Those with a weak immune system dies; the ones who survive doesn't get stronger (but the % of the population with a strong immune system increases). Some ant-vaccination wackos base their argument on this (we serve evolution by letting the weak die).
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
I agreed with most of your post except this:
One of the anti-vaccine idiots even had the balls to say that it was up to the scientific community to disprove that vaccines are dangerous.
It is. Or if not prove, at least demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt. If someone's telling me to inject this cocktail of drugs and denatured organisms into my kids' bloodstream, I'm going to want some sort of assurance that it's not going to do harm. It's the reason the US has the FDA. So that drug companies can't just go off propounding their latest money-spinner without verifying that it doesn't cause irreparable harm to those that take them.
That said, I think most commonly-used vaccinations have long since proved themselves in that regard.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
It is. Or if not prove, at least demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt.
There's a big difference there. You can't prove a negative, just like you can't prove the non-existence of something. To use our favorite analogy: I can't prove that a god doesn't exist; the best I can do is look at the god you posit, and demonstrate that it's unlikely to exist. Replace "god" with "unicorn", "leperchaun", "santa", or "autism causing vaccine" as required. With vaccines, we showed that removing mercury from them did not lead to a reduction in autism rates - in fact, the rates were completely unaffected. The reasonable conclusion based on that data is that mercury in vaccines does not cause autism, but it doesn't "prove" that vaccines do not cause autism.
Re: (Score:3)
"Proof" here means evidence of a certain level of safety or confidence.
That's all fine and good, as long as we're operating on your definition of "proof". But it's not you that we're trying to convince, so your definition is largely irrelevant in this discussion. What matters is what the opposition means when they say they want "proof".
Anti-vaccination is a rigged game for sociopaths (Score:5, Interesting)
It's been done and didn't convince them. It was depressing hearing a radio program where a vaccination expert and a person in charge of a anti-vaccination group put there points to some parents with young babies who then voted on it. The doctor talked about the outcomes of a trial involving two million children in the UK while the other person indulged in character assassination and piles of emotional bullshit. She was playing a manipulative game where truth did not remotely matter while the doctor had to be professional and stick to facts. An unemployed high school dropout with a hobby was putting doubt into everyone's heads about the qualifications of somebody that has been working on infectious diseases for forty years.
Of course lies and emotional bullshit won because parents with a newborn baby were being told they would be bad parents if they exposed their babies to the mercury that isn't even in the vaccine that the program was about. It was depressing and to an extent was a glimpse into how evil some of the people involved are. They should get a different hobby that manipulates people in a more harmless way instead of this dangerous hobby that is convincing parents to put their children in danger.
Re: (Score:3)
When you don't vaccinate your child, it's not just your child that's at risk, it also includes all the others they are in contact with. Why the bloody hell do you think they send sick children home when parents ignore the standard "don't send sick children to school
Re: (Score:3)
No, parents are the CARETAKERS of children, not their OWNERS. You do not "own" other humans. Children are not toys.
Picking the weak strawman - why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it just the first example you can think of or have you been conned into rigging the game as well?
I'll take your word for it that the linked above example is over the top emotional bullshit because advertisers and PR people are paid to do such manipulative shit. You and I are not paid to do so and have no such excuse. We should not assume that all vaccination has problems because of an anecdote about advertising hype.
Re: (Score:3)
Billions of children have taken vaccines. We have great statistics on the positive and negative effects of vaccines. The vast overwhelming majority of people benefit; a sad rare few are harmed. In the difficult calculus of medicine, we judge them to be worth it, and we even set up (in the USA) a formal system to provide for those rare sad few cases.
The problem is when people say that we need to prove they are safe, which is a nonsense thing to say because it preposterously presumes that we haven't already d
Re: (Score:3)
One of the anti-vaccine idiots even had the balls to say that it was up to the scientific community to disprove that vaccines are dangerous.
As much as I hate the anti-vaccine FUD, constructive science cannot use the same tactics. Science and Pharma companies also make mistakes, and some vaccines have been withdrawn for very valid scientific reasons after years of use.
When Bill Gates says "Because the mothers who heard that lie, many of them didn't have their kids take either pertussis or measles vaccine, and their children are dead today", it suggests that all mothers who refused that their child gets vaccinated by measles had their child die,
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
Why is the commenter worried? If his children have been 'vaccinated', then how can they catch measles?
Many vaccines are not (cannot be?) given until a certain age. If enough people go unvaccinated that outbreaks become possible, children too young to receive the vaccine can become infected. There is also, of course, the cost to society as a whole when there is an outbreak.
This is bullshit, and you know it. (Score:5, Informative)
Show us figures on what percentage of children in outbreaks of measles, for example, have been 'vaccinated'. Strangely enough, we never get to see those figures.
Let's look at your CDC link, since it has the exact info you want. In that case, all of the persons who developed measles had been vaccinated. So you win a point. Or do you? About fifteen percent of children vaccinated against measles won't develop immunity with the first jab, which is why a second is recommended. (Also, just for reference, the vaccine is most effective after 12 months of age, and not effective at all before six months.) So it's possible, maybe even likely that these students hadn't had their second jab (which would make 85% of the students immune, and 15% vulnerable — "The highest attack rate was 12% (9/74) for the 11th grade students (p 0.02)"). Furthermore, as I am sure you know, your immune system's memory (B-cells) 'forgets' threats over time, which is what creates the need for booster shots. The CDC indirectly notes this, "The attack rate was four times greater for students vaccinated 10 or more years before the outbreak than for students vaccinated more recently (p 0.05)". Lastly, the measles vaccine is very temperamental in its cold storage, with an acceptable range of 8 degrees, and any variance outside this range reduces its efficacy.
You lap up whatever the shills in the media tell you, then lambast anybody intelligent enough to question it...
The real reason I'm replying is that I want to address this comment above. I don't just lap up whatever I'm handed. Do you? When was the last time you were doing epidemiological field work? I just came back from northern Nigeria, where I was observing UNICEF and government health teams vaccinate kids, and independently surveilling measles outbreaks occurring now. Before that I was in Ghana, also working with government health teams to observe the vaccination of children, but I wasn't able to see any outbreaks. Why not? Because Ghana doesn't have outbreaks, because they maintain herd immunity amongst their under-five population. The region (like a state) I was living in for this period has a prevalence of higher than 90% for MMR vaccination, and Ghana hasn't had a measles death since 2003. In Nigeria the prevalence for vaccination in Kaduna State is around 13% for coverage of recommended vaccines, and it gets as low as 0% if you go to Jigawa State. So I'm not just lapping up whatever the "media" tells me (in fact the media is woefully silent on these sorts of matters, because most Westerners care more about Tiger Woods' indiscretions than dying kids in Nigeria), I've been in the thick of it and I've seen kids dying from measles. When was the last time (if ever?) you actually looked into this besides just lapping up what a few outcast theorists have told you to believe?
the real reason for the great reductions in some of the diseases they 'vaccinated' against - huge improvements in SANITATION.
Look, this is just bullshit, too. I've lived in Ghana, where there is sporadic running water (that you cannot drink without boiling) and no electricity and people defecate in the bush. And I've lived in Nigeria where the exact same is true. Yet in Ghana measles isn't a problem, and in Nigeria it is. This is just my anecdote, but if you look at where kids are dying from measles (or whatever disease) and you control for sanitation, you'll see that it isn't a factor. Polio (hep A, tyhpoid, cholera, etc) are spread by feces, so handwashing helps immensly there, and standing water breeds malaria (well, Anopheles mosquitoes that carry it), but there's about the extent of your sanitation argument. Once we get away from diarrheaol diseases and look at measles, sanitation isn't a factor at all (compared to rates of vaccination).
Re:This is bullshit, and you know it. (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
If you want to lock me up for not vaccinating my own kids, or otherwise penalize me, I can and will go elsewhere
PLEASE go elsewhere! We don't need any more potential disease carriers around here.
Having one less crazy in the general population is an added bonus.
Vaccinate or GTFO.
Re:This is bullshit, and you know it. (Score:4, Insightful)
A serious question for you: from what you have written it appears that you have set a threshold for chance of injury for your child to be 1:10,000. If this is the case, then do you allow your children to be in cars? What about other risky behavior where the chance of injury is high (contact sports for example)? With respect to Guillain-Barre, this can also be caused by food poisoning from campylobacter jejuni. C. jejuni poisoning most commonly occurs with chicken (which carry the bug). Do you forbid your children from eating chicken?
It would seem that to be logically consistent you would need to curtail these activities. However, in the talk about risk to children from vaccination, there are other much more prevalent (and immediately deadly) risks to which parents seem to have no problem exposing their children. As someone who apparently has made the choice about acceptable risk for your children, how do you logically reconcile foregoing one (extremely debatable) "risk" versus allowing many other well documented and serious challenges to your children's life and limb?
Again, I am not attacking your beliefs (although I do not agree with them). I am wondering at the thought process behind your beliefs in the context of other risks that you willingly put your children through.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
Wow, you really are a fool. You have no idea about herd immunity, nor do you understand how vaccines have changed the world.
Polio is still a massive problem in the 3rd world, as is TB and other diseases that have been all but eradicated in industrialised nations. All it would take is a generation if idiots like you to put the industrialised world back to where the 3rd world is.
Having lived in Cambodia and seen first hand what polio, TB, measles outbreaks, and the like can do, well, I can assure you that vaccination is worth it. Whether it is 100% effective or not. Again, herd immunity.
Your arguments don't hold up when looking at outbreaks from an immunologists point of view. The whole idea is herd immunity, not that the vaccine works on everyone. Once vaccination rates are above 90% it's quite difficult for a disease to move from small outbreak to pandemic. Your argument that there's no mention of how many vaccinated people caught the measles means nothing, it's actually the worst way to back your argument up - There's no data on this therefore it must exist!
Questioning something with an intelligent argument backed up by research and logic is valid, questioning without any intelligent argument and using a lack of data to back your argument up is beyond stupid.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, is this the same Dr. Hadwen who is known for his "denial of the germ theory of disease" [wikipedia.org]? The same Dr. Hadwen who spoke in the late 1800's and early 1900's against vaccination?
Yes, I'm sure he has a lot of relevant medical opinions. Maybe he can tell us all about how the Black Bile Humor [wikipedia.org] causes most of our diseases, and recommend Bloodletting [wikipedia.org] by leeches as a remedy for every ailment we get, as well?
Sorry, pal, but questioning his medical opinion today is pretty much mandatory for anybody who professes to have an understanding of science, biology, and disease.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that there is one other slightly subtler sub-factor: the difficulty of intuitively comparing small risks. The vaccines that draw the most fire today are the ones for comparatively non-scary sounding diseases. Everybody knows that things like polio and smallpox were Seriously. Bad. News. Things like Measles and Mumps, though, just don't sound that scary. However, Measles, for example, does have a
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
"One thing I've never understood, however . . . is why we care so much about ensuring that EVERYONE gets a series of vaccinations? I mean, as long as I'm vaccinated and I vaccinate my kid, what the fuck does it matter if five kids in their class don't get vaccinated? "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity [wikipedia.org]
If there aren't enough vaccinated people around, and the disease is in the community, and you or your family can't have the vaccine for some reason (e.g. egg allergy, for a common one) ... then you're fucked. It's in your interest that as many people as possible around you get the vaccine too.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
You might want to rethink your stance on Chicken Pox vaccines.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/varicella/dis-faqs-gen.htm
"Many people are not aware that before a vaccine was available approximately 10,600 persons were hospitalized and 100 to 150 died as a result of chickenpox in the U.S. every year."
"Can a healthy person who gets varicella die from the disease?
Yes. Many of the deaths and complications from chickenpox occur in previously healthy children and adults. From 1990 to 1994, before a vaccine was available, about 50 children and 50 adults died from chickenpox every year; most of these persons were healthy or did not have a medical illness (such as cancer) that placed them at higher risk of getting severe chickenpox. Since 1999, states have been encouraged to report chickenpox deaths to CDC. These reports have shown that some deaths from chickenpox continue to occur in healthy, unvaccinated children and adults. Most of the healthy adults who died from chickenpox contracted the disease from their unvaccinated children."
Re: (Score:3)
>Yeah.... that and fucking mercury based preservatives sounds extra healthy doesn't
OMG Mercury!!! Run!
Seriously though, ethyl mercury [wikipedia.org] is an entirely different chemical from methyl mercury [wikipedia.org]. One bio-accumulates, the other doesn't. One is far more dangerous than the other. It would probably benefit you to learn the difference.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Bill's charitable work is actually quite awesome. Among other things, his foundation is very good at making sure that their funding goes to projects that actually work (surprisingly unusual in the non-profit world).
Now, I don't approve of how he made his money, but I do approve of him using his money to help people rather than just hang out and be rich with Warren Buffett all day.
Re: (Score:3)
I do approve of him using his money to help people rather than just hang out and be rich with Warren Buffett all day.
I guess they still "hang out and be rich". In 2006 [Warren Buffet] made American history by making the largest ever charitable donation by an individual – $37bn to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. [looktothestars.org]
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. Bill got this on right. Modern Western society has gotten so comfortable assuming that their every need will be taken care of by someone that they, in about a generation, have forgotten the horror of all the childhood diseases. The chance of dying from whooping cough, if you get it, is orders of magnitude higher than the incidence of autism (once you take out the current over-diagnosis - autism is the new trendy thing to think your kid has, just like ADD ten years ago).
I even hear of people refusing *polio* vaccines. Mine was the first generation of children that didn't have to spend all summer dreading signs of the flu and wondering if you were going to be *living the rest of your life in an iron lung*. Believe me, if you have ever seen that - you are going to get your kid all the vaccines they make,
Re: (Score:3)
I think it is time to get rid of the Bill Gates "Borg" icon. While I believe it was relevant a few years ago, with his hero mod status I think he deserves a halo.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
You fail at "I have a basic understanding of the world I live in 101". Go to www.gapminder.org . Watch the videos, peruse the data.
In short: the only path out of overpopulation is development. Again and again, we see that when infant mortality rates fall the families become precipitously smaller. Because all humans understand the concept of "I have a kid, he probably won't die, and if I have only one (perhaps two), he can go to school and have a life better than mine beyond my wildest dreams".
Vaccination, because it enhances child survival, is a crucial tool against overpopulation and for development.
Hell has, indeed, frozen over. (Score:5, Funny)
I actually *agree* with Bill Gates on something.
I'm scared - hold me...
Re:Hell has, indeed, frozen over. (Score:5, Funny)
> I'm scared - hold me...
I might, but only if you've had all your shots...
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Hell has, indeed, frozen over. (Score:4, Funny)
I dunno, does saving a few million kids really make up for what he did to poor netscape navigator?
He's right (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:He's right (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347.full
http://download.thelancet.com/flatcontentassets/pdfs/S0140673610601754.pdf
Wakefield has been widely discredited for quite some time. His results have never been duplicated, studies have failed to demonstrate a link between vaccines and autism, and the scapegoat additive thiomersal (or thimerosal) was taken out of vaccines in 2001 to no effect.
Wakefield's not even a doctor anymore... (Score:5, Informative)
Of the 12 children in his study, children who supposedly developed entercolitis and then regressive autism after the MMR vaccination, only one of the 12 had regressive autism. Three didn't have autism at all. Five had developmental problems noted in their records before their MMR vaccine. The development of problems wasn't nearly as sudden as claimed (often months elapsed). Nine of the children's bowel tests were reported as "non-specific colitis" despite testing normal. Many of the children were recruited from lawyers who were hoping to sue the vaccine makers (can we say 'confirmation bias'?).
Most of these latter revelations have just come to light [telegraph.co.uk]. I can only imagine how hard it must be to be in your position, to want to find an answer for causation. Especially if your child did have entercolitis and then regressive autism. But you should be aware that there isn't a shred of evidence to support this claim. Not a shred.
Also, Dr. Gupta is bordering on irresponsibility (imo) when he says to Gates, "There has been a lot of news about is there a connection with autism, for example. What do you make of all that? Dr. [Andrew] Wakefield wrote a paper about this [in The Lancet in 1998] saying he thought there was a connection." He may be a journalist, but he is a doctor first, and he could have formed his question in a way that more clearly stated what he surely knows to be facts (that Wakefield isn't licensed anymore, that the paper has been retracted and proven to be fraudulent). It's this sort of undue politeness in dancing around the truth that leave doubts in the minds of parents like yourself.
I've seen children dying of measles (in Kaduna State, northern Nigeria), and it's a terrible thing to have to see. In the case of Nigeria, it's a rumor about infertility drugs concealed in vaccines that led to a lot of resistance-to-consent amongst certain communities, and there too the damage of such a provably fraudulent statement has been a long time in undoing. I know it's tempting, maybe even easier to just believe whatever some conspiracy theorist says, but it's important to trust in the thousands of scientists who are advancing the science of saving lives, rather than the few psuedo-scientists who are trying to advance their own notoriety and financial positions.
Re: (Score:3)
It's not that he's a pseudoscientist: many pseudoscientists are sincere but misguided. Wakefield FABRICATED EVIDENCE to MAKE MONEY. But here's your proof: it's long, but as you say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347.full [bmj.com]
http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5258.full [bmj.com]
Re: (Score:3)
They probably could sue their parents, I'd rule in their favor if I was on the jury. But one of the things about parenthood is it gives you a unique power to brainwash your kid. Anti-vacc parents will have anti-vacc children, for the most part, making a lawsuit unlikely.
Re: (Score:3)
There are people who don't realize that their parents are fallible by the time they have become adults?
Not that I support kids being able to sue their parents for this nonsense. Parents have to filter through a lot of information and make best guesses as to factuality and hope for the best when raising kids. If they were liable for all of their shortcomings then I don't think you could find a single perfect "innocent" parent.
Re:He's right (Score:5, Insightful)
Anti-vacc parents will have anti-vacc children
Anti-vacc parents are more likely than me to have dead children. Who will sue them now?
Re: (Score:3)
The simpler solution is to simply make it unlawful for unvaccinated children to attend public schools.
Re: (Score:3)
Oh come on. How do you go from "criminally liable for not vaccinating kids" to "death penalty for allowing cross-racial dating"? It's a slippery slope, but it's not frictionless...
I can go the other way, too. You spanked your child? 5 years jail. You decided your child was bad, and beat him harshly? How dare you! What do you mean you sexually abused your child?
Oh wait. Those things are already illegal. And I doubt you're upset with that, either. Last I checked, it's the parents' job to protect the child too
Re:Please Show Me Evidence. Seriously. Please. (Score:5, Informative)
Link please?
I'm all for vaccination--let's just get that out of the way up front. Wakefield has been up to no good. But Bill Gates is now on record saying that thousands of children have died as a result of Wakefield's work. I have yet to see any empirical evidence of this. Indeed, the only evidence I've seen at all (that Wakefield has had real impact) is anecdotal and often turns out to be attributable to other forces (e.g. illegal immigrants who don't know they can get free vaccinations, religious parents who refuse vaccinations anyway, that sort of thing).
It bothers me that in an argument about the unempirical, biased work of one scientist, we are trotting out in opposition not truth but different lies. This is a very big problem! And yet we are all so angry at Wakefield that no one appears willing to call Gates on the carpet to explain what he is talking about and where his data is coming from. So have we decided that lies and invented statistics are okay so long as they support something we like? Come on, people. We're better than that.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=measles+outbreak [lmgtfy.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Even more obvious: http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=anti-vaccine+deaths&l=1 [lmgtfy.com]
Naturally. (Score:3)
Everyone, let's take note of that so we don't make that mistake a ridiculous number of times every day for like ten years. Because that would totally suck.
Now, let's all mod me up +1 Funny, for a little while, then really really sad.
Re: (Score:3)
The problem with this is that it's not a knee jerk response. What it is is something worse, it's bullshit science which has been deliberately prepared to generate a particular result, a result which has caused deaths. I always thought it was bullshit, but it's totally understandable for parents to believe it. There was "scientific" proof. Personally I think Wakefield ought to be charged with murder for every one of those. Junk science is a huge threat in this world.
Microsoft and vaccines (Score:5, Funny)
If you think about it, the way you develop a vaccine is to:
Embrace : copy the original
Extend : modify that version
Extinguish : wipe out the original
Bill Gates is right at home.
Re:Microsoft and vaccines (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, go with what you know. Getting to use it to save lives, all the better.
obligatory Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo97VouL0ls [youtube.com]
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Polio is a particularly nasty case. We're close to eradicating it, but probably won't without forcing people to get the shots. I personally was opposed to the chicken pox vaccinations at first, but when I started to do a bit of digging, it became pretty clear that the disease is more dangerous than usually assumed and a shot with a booster later on if needed is really a small price to pay.
Re:Topical (Score:5, Informative)
I've heard her on the radio where she managed to convince people that a vaccine with no mercury in it would give their children autism via mercury poisoning. That's not logic, that's fucking sympathetic magic. That nasty sociopath manipulates people for fun as her hobby and speaks like an accomplished and well practised confidence trickster.
One of her arguments can basically be summed up as this: nobody with any sort of education or experience can be trusted because that will cloud their judgement.
That viewpoint holds everyone reading this in contempt. She is not on the side of anybodies children, she only wants to play games.
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If there are that many unvaccinated kids... (Score:4, Insightful)
Bill Gates, the pope and... (Score:5, Funny)
Once, Bill Gates, the Pope, and the Anti-Vaccine Man was on a plane together. As things always goes in jokes, while in-flight the pilot died of heart attack, while at the same time the engines caught on fire.
This lead to the three men having to jump out of the plane, and of course there are only two parachutes. Bill Gates declares that as the smartest man Earth, he must be saved, grabs one of the parachutes, and jumps. The Pope looks at the Anti-Vaccine Man, and says "here, young man, take mine. You still have years in front of you" to which the Anti-Vaccine Man replies "No, it is a known fact that those contraptions can fail at times, so it is better to jump without one" and jumped out of the plane. The Pope shakes his head, jump with the remaining parachute, and after landing safely holds a speech declaring that while God is good, even He can not help retards.
The End.
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Once, Bill Gates, the Pope, and the Anti-Vaccine Man was on a plane together. As things always goes in jokes, while in-flight the pilot died of heart attack, while at the same time the engines caught on fire.
This lead to the three men having to jump out of the plane, and of course there are only two parachutes. Bill Gates declares that as the smartest man Earth, he must be saved, grabs one of the parachutes, and jumps. The Pope looks at the Anti-Vaccine Man, and says "here, young man, take mine. You still have years in front of you" to which the Anti-Vaccine Man replies "No, it is a known fact that those contraptions can fail at times, so it is better to jump without one" and jumped out of the plane. The Pope shakes his head, jump with the remaining parachute, and after landing safely holds a speech declaring that while God is good, even He can not help retards.
The End.
That doesn't sound like something Bill would do. He wouldn't bother justifying his move to those idiots.
Re:So... (Score:4, Informative)
You're wrong. Vaccination relies on masses of people being vaccinated. Vaccines do not provide 100% protection. So even if you are vaccinated, if the guy sitting next to you in class is a bag of germs, you can still be infected. Vaccination greatly reduces the *probability* that you will be infected, but it does not *eliminate* it.
The anti-vaccine people have harmed many thousands of people, directly and indirectly.
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Vaccines also don't last forever. You should all be getting a tetanus booster once every ten years. Tetanus is something you don't need to catch from another person; you can assume it's pretty much everywhere in the environment.
Another one that doesn't last is whooping cough (pertussis). In my region of California there have been a number of outbreaks of whooping cough in the last couple of years, mostly in affluent Marin County where parents think they know better than doctors and have stopped having their
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Not quite. It's included in the tetanus booster. It's called DTAP [medscape.com] for Diptheria, Tetanus, Acellular Pertussis.
Yes, but like I said, in the U.S. you generally have to ask for that specific version. Otherwise they may just assume you want the tetanus-diptheria version, because it's cheaper (and it's believed adults only need the pertussis component once). Your experience might be different, for example if you live in a country with universal healthcare.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but if everybody get a chance to get vaccines, then the only people who are at risk because of not wanting vaccines are the people who have chosen it for themselves, correct?
Kids don't generally get to make that choice to be at risk.
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Actually, given the choice, most kids of immunization age will skip a shot. Of course they'd also eat nothing but cake and ice cream, so perhaps it's best their parents make the choices.
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Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:4, Informative)
You are wrong. Vaccine immunity is a statistical thing rather than an absolute. A typical vaccine might fully immunize about 80% of the recipients of the vaccine. Others might have weaker immunity or none at all. This means by not immunizing you not only endanger yourself but the people who have had the vaccine and not obtained full immunity.
The immunity of the population is cumulative as function of the total number of people immunized and the efficacy of the vaccine.
This is why laws requiring everyone that doesn't have a compelling medical reason for getting the vaccination are justified.
Re:Why would some people think that ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Countries with high child mortality rates have a greater problem with overpopulation. That is, if you know half your kids will die of pertussis, you will have more kids. It is paradoxical, but preventing child mortality actually decreases overpopulation.
Re:Why would some people think that ? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, how in the hell could better vaccines and better health care help lower the world population? They can't.
Yes they can, and they do. As parents become more confident that their children will survive, they have fewer of them, and invest more resources in each child. Vaccines, good healthcare, good nutrition, and good education, all reduce population growth.
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>how in the hell could better vaccines and better health care help lower the world population?
Populations who have lower rates of disease, and better access to health care, tend to have smaller families because they don't have to have more kids as a hedge against their own death rate.
Smaller families becomes a snowball effect to more wealth, and even better access to healthcare.
Oh, and what's so bad about population control?
Re:Why would some people think that ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Reason for the hullabaloo wasn't as stated (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Reason for the hullabaloo wasn't as stated (Score:5, Informative)
Wakefield was doing everything the conspiracy theorists usually ascribe to the immoral, illicit and illegal activities of "Big Pharma". Actually breaking up the MMR into 3 separate individual immunizations would do nothing but increase the profits of big pharma and the administering physicians.
Re:Reason for the hullabaloo wasn't as stated (Score:5, Insightful)
He was a liar and a scam artist. He fabricated a scientific study. Does it matter who pursued him?
I don't understand you people who want to beatify the guy. What the fuck is wrong with you?
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To be fair, it is a nice ass.
I think someone should fund an international campaign with a ticker that shows a running count of the number of children who have suffered and died as a result of Jenny McCarthy's anti-vaccine campaign. Get it up on billboards in major cities and run some sort of "how many kids did you kill today?" campaign on TV. Shame Jenny and celebrities like her into using their influence to spread the truth to even even wider than they spread their initial lies. Saying "Oops, my bad" an
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I hate to say it, because I HATE cigarette smoke, but most of the evidence for second hand smoke causing cancer, etc. is tremendously trumped up and in some cases just as falsified as the wakefield BS.
of course second hand smoke:
A. aggravates allergies and people with conditions like asthma
B. smells like absolute shit and sticks to clothing, wood, plastic, damn near everything
C. annoys even healthy people
but the evidence that it causes the big C in other people, which is what the big deal was really truly a
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You're not going to get cancer by inhaling a little environmental cigarette smoke.
If I go to a bar once in a while, I won't get cancer from the smoke, even if the smoke is so thick it's more like a fog.
I don't envy the bartender who has to be there the whole day.
What if I am sharing an office with a coworker who does likes to smoke inside? What if I am allergic to some chemical inside the smoke?
Outside (and in your home, provided you live alone or everyone is OK with it and you do not have children living with you), sure, smoke as much as you want, it won't affect me.
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I hope you enjoy your old age, then, because it's gonna suck for you when you break a hip and there's nobody around young enough to lift you off the bathroom floor.
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On surviving the first five years of life. (Score:5, Informative)
However, the World Health Organization reports 164,000 deaths per year from measles (which is the leading cause of death among children), not the millions claimed by Mr. Gates.
Gates was speaking about all preventable diseases in children - and from here it looks like he got his numbers right.
Major Causes of Death in Children Under Five in Developing Countries and the Contribution of Malnutrition [usaid.gov] [source: WHO and The Lancet, 2005]
Pneumonia 19%
Diarrhea 17%
Malaria 8%
Measles 4%
HIV/AIDS 3%
Although approximately 10.5 million children under 5 years of age still die every year in the world, progress has been made since 1970, when the figure was more than 17 million. ...
Today nearly all child deaths occur in developing countries, almost half of them in Africa. While some African countries have made considerable strides in reducing child mortality, the majority of African children live in countries where the survival gains of the past have been wiped out, largely as a result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Surviving the first five years of life [who.int] [2003]
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I realise we all do this pretty much, but this guy seriously changed my view of "developing countries":
Ted Talk: Hans Rosling, debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen [youtube.com]
The this one:
Ted Talk: Hans Rosling, new insights on poverty and life around the world [youtube.com]
Now - these two talks are 41 minutes total, they are on statistics, and while that is often a very boring subject ... whoa. That guy has pretty much blown my mind on how to read statistics.
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First, the report you show is five years old. The WHO's latest numbers are for 2008. In 2008, according to the WHO, 164,000 children died from measles. I am not disputing that (or the 2005) numbers. What I am disputing is that withholding the MMR vaccine is killing millions of children each year. While millions of children under the age of 5 may die each year, 54% of them are from malnutrition, not lack of vaccines. Of the causes listed, only measles and malaria have vaccines. That accounts for about
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Astonishing. Some people get a bit sniffy in the winter? And the vaccine for a rapidly-mutating virus doesn't always work? Except the people who don't get it - what if they weren't going to get it anyway?
I think we've just discovered a massive fraud.
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I disagree. You don't have the right to harm your child. Medical decisions are a bit of a gray area, but not so much with vaccines. There are medical reasons to avoid vaccinations - immunological disorders and so on - but unless the kid has one, they should be vaccinated. Regardless of what the parent thinks.
Your unvaccinated kid won't get anywhere near my kid, particularly if he's immunocompromised for some reason. Even if he's not, he's a lot more likely to get measles - even if he's vaccinated. It's a no
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Never happen. He's an atheist.
(Yes, I know about Peter Stark)
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So what about the suspected link here? An illness that kills less people than the regular flu gets global attention (and HUGE vaccine demand),
Normal seasonal flu kills hundreds of thousands of people each year.
As such, "less people than the regular flu" doesn't say a lot. Your link also says that they still think it's a net positive, meaning more people would have died without than contracted narcolepsy with.
A lot more than "better than normal flu" is required to make something harmless.
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As for that narcolepsy link: If it's on the Huffington Post, it's automatically wrong. They are setting themselves up as the internet epicentre of pseudoscientific crap.
How about a link from the Finnish National Institute For Health And Welfare? [www.thl.fi] Link is to the English version of their pressrelease.
Or...World Health Organisation? [who.int]
Re:Lie in summary (Score:5, Informative)
The BMJ, the Lancet, Neurotoxicology, The American Journal of Gastroenterology, The UK General Medical Council. How many peers do you need?