Uptick In Whooping Cough Linked To Subpar Vaccines 273
sciencehabit writes "Whooping cough, or pertussis, has exploded in the United States in recent years. A new study (abstract) confirms what scientists have suspected for some time: The return of the disease is caused by the introduction of new, safer vaccines 2 decades ago. Although they have far fewer side effects, the new shots don't offer long-lived protection the way older vaccines do."
The problem with vaccines (Score:4, Interesting)
Vaccines have a great reputation, largely resulting from the highly successful campaigns with smallpox and polio. However, these were done in a less litigious era, and unlike today's medical practice, they could operate without the fear of gigantic lawsuits if something went wrong.
These reduced-effectiveness vaccines are like many "safer", "greener", or otherwise "less harmful" solutions; they have their drawbacks, but only a fool would try to push their solution by advertising those drawbacks. Now we're seeing two effects. A re-emergence of pertussis, and decreased public confidence in vaccines.
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you can't sue drug companies over vaccines. there is a huge national bank account used to pay claims of health problems resulting from a vaccine
Re:The problem with vaccines (Score:5, Informative)
Be that as it may, the problem isn't the lawsuits themselves but the culture that fear has created in the medical community. I've worked in the field, and am now in IT support in that field. I can tell you right now that a lot of what goes on in the American medical system is people covering their arses in one way or another.
Re:The problem with vaccines (Score:5, Insightful)
The truth is those older vaccines probably hurt lots people. Which is not to say that they did not help millions more. Its not just the era of litigation that is the issue. We are a lot better at identifying the cause of health problems now than we were 40 years ago. We have gotten much faster and widely distributed news, so even a handful of bad outcomes becomes know to the public.
I suspect the anit-vaccs movement would be stronger not weaker if the older vaccs were still in use. A few negative outcomes with very clear established causation would be impossible to make go away in terms of news cycle.
What society is not good at is risk assessment. People are afraid to get their kid vaccinated due to the tiny risk they have some rare as yet unknown immune condition that could cause problems, but were willing to subject them to the risk of driving to the physicians office. These are the same people that demand the TSA strip search their fellow passengers but think nothing of the danger of keeping a large crowd of people confined to a small area.
We need to get much better at teaching cost benefit analysis with regard to risk management. Because right now a whole lot of people are spending a whole lot of money to make themselves less safe.
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We have gotten much faster and widely distributed news
Speed doesn't matter, quality matters. One has gone up, while the other had gone down. No one reports on how many lives are saved by vaccination because it isn't "news"; it's normal, it's expected, and it is pleasantly boring. Instead, we get headlines "HPV vaccine causes fainting spells" with the pertinent information (50-60 out of several million, no lasting negative effects) is buried 2 pages in. Because it sells. It sells and it makes money and it causes of culture of fear and worry that leads to
Re:The problem with vaccines (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is too much conspiracy thinking.
If the majority says it is good, and there is one wacko saying that it isn't. That wacko gets far more attention then the masses because, we have been trained to think everything is a conspiracy.
Not directly but we are being taught to be wary of forces that will make us the next Communist or Nazi state. Seeing how the generations before us fell into this evil mindset and just allowed to be taken over by the government.
We are now vigilant, too vigilant, every thing that comes across our plate saying trust us, this is good for you, we take it as skepticism, and most of us are not willing to do the actual science to prove it for themselves. So they don't believe the mass combined with being too lazy to check it out for themselves, creates these problems.
We want people to tell us what is best, but we don't believe these people because those same people could be lying to us to manipulate us.
Re:The problem with vaccines (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is too much conspiracy thinking.
It's not just that.
Vaccines happen at about the age where developmental problems become apparent, so people associate the developmental problems with the vaccines.
Apparently the different european countries have the same sorts of vaccine scares as the UK, but they all have them about different vaccines.
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The bigger problem with conspiracies is that nothing gets done about them. Whether it is some guy on th
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Vaccines have a great reputation, largely resulting from the highly successful campaigns with smallpox and polio. However, these were done in a less litigious era, and unlike today's medical practice, they could operate without the fear of gigantic lawsuits if something went wrong.
I know that makes a great right-wing talking point, but in fact vaccine makers are shielded from almost all liability, barring gross misconduct.
Congress created the vaccine court that evaluates people who may have been injured by a vaccination (no action is 100% free of side effects in 100% of people 100% of the time, including taking no action which in the case of the target diseases is millions of deaths and maimings or stuff like allergic reactions in the case of giving vaccines).
If you are injured by a
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Well, is this such a bad thing?
I mean, the 'nut jobs' will be selecting themselves right out of the gene pool, right?
I've often thought at times, that the gene pool needs a little chlorine every now and then, and this looks like a natural way for it to take care of itself.
Re:The problem with vaccines (Score:4, Insightful)
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Some people cannot get vaccinated (Score:2)
Well, is this such a bad thing? I mean, the 'nut jobs' will be selecting themselves right out of the gene pool, right?
I know you are joking but yes it really is such a bad thing. The problem is that some people cannot get vaccinated due to things like allergies to vaccine components, a weakened immune system or other health issues. The more people that get vaccinated the stronger the herd immunity and the less chance an unvaccinated person has of exposure. These idiots who don't get vaccinated increase the risk to both themselves and the people who through no fault of their own cannot have the vaccine administered. If
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I think that the problem we have is only tangential to the vaccines. Our communication skills demonstrably have not evolved to rationally cope with ubiquitous access to communications. People get quite irrational and their selection biases show simply because they see an "OMG" post on Facebook or an alarmist segment on their evening news.
Upgrade our vaccines. (Score:3)
Can they just stack them? (Score:4, Interesting)
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"You said it worked for life, now you're saying it only works for a year? What, were you lying before, and you don't know what you're talking about, or are you lying now, and you just want my money on a yearly basis?"
It doesn't matter how elegant the solution is if nobody accepts the solution. Public trust in vaccines could take a huge hit with your proposed plan - you'd need one hell of a PR campaign to get people to accept it.
I've got a solution for that one too: (Score:2)
Of course this makes the neocon/libertarian baby Jesus cry, nevermind the fact that we'll all save money (and lives) in the long run.
I've got a small improvement for that. (Score:3)
Let me tweak that idea for you a bit. Despite the childish selfishness of many of their ideas, a few of the memes the right wing is shopping are essentially correct.
Their "government shouldn't pick winners" mantra is well supported by the entirety of US history; what the government should be doing in the marketplace is identifying losers. Penalizing bad behavior that would otherwise be rewarded by a free market is one of government's primary functions - for example, murder-for-hire would be incredibly pro
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I like the essence of your plan - give some tangible benefit in exchange for vaccination. But the specific has a problem. The tax credit is not enough to overcome the anti-vaxxer fear that they're actually hurting their child, and not useful to the living-off-the-grid crowd (they're not filing returns anyhow). Maybe a free solar panel per person per 5years, on proof of maintained vaccines for 5 years? I know the money could be turned into solar panels, but you might entice a few off the grid people. Th
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And if not, why not just do the weaker one yearly?
Ho ho! I smell a lucrative reoccurring contract here!
"Not had your Whooping Cough jab this year? INSURANCE PREMIUM UP 2000%. Yes, I know the price of the vaccine increases 20% per year, and we have a significant stake in the company... What's your point?"
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Some people are needle-phobic, and will refuse an injection for anything less than death, severe pain, debilitation, etc.. Some people think the time and expense is a waste. In recent years, only enough influenza doses have been manufactured for about 45% of the United States population, so a majority doesn't use them. I don't, and probably never will.
The safe version for the very young and stronger version for healthy older children is a reasonable approach. Lifetime immunity achieved in youth should be th
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That's bothering you because you didn't have your loonie shot. Now, THAT's loonie!
Prosiner's dilemma (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you get your children vaccinated?
It's much more likely that your child will have a bad reaction to the vaccine than to actually get the disease. And if everyone *else* gets vaccinated, there's no need for any specific child to take that risk. That's the dilemma facing parents nowadays - from their individual viewpoint, there's a higher risk from the vaccination than there is from the disease.
Taking polio (about 30 years ago) as an example, the chance of getting polio from the vaccine was about 1 in 750,000. Polio became largely non-existent in the US during the later years of the vaccination program, so individually it's easy to see why parents might not want to take the risk.
And yet if everyone makes the best choice for their personal welfare, polio runs rampant in the country with 35,000 cases per year.
This is a variant of the Prisoner's dilemma, where if everyone does what's in their immediate best interest then everyone suffers needlessly.
We must accept the fact that sometimes we forced to take risks, and sometimes those risks will go badly. The risks are structured such that by taking the forced risk we are lowering everyone's total risk, and in the case of diseases, lowering it to a point where eventually no one will have to take the risk in the future.
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It's much more likely that your child will have a bad reaction to the vaccine than to actually get the disease.
What bad reaction? What likelyhood? Which vaccine? Don't assume this dichotomy because as far as I'm aware, in 99% of the cases it simply doesn't exist. What little side effects there are are nothing you would concern yourself with, certainly not compared the consequences of getting the disease in question.
from their individual viewpoint, there's a higher risk from the vaccination than there is from the disease
A viewpoint established by misinformation and mass hysteria. That's not meant as an insult - these people are being misled by pernicious echo chamber of plausible sounding myths.
Childbirth (Score:2, Interesting)
Tell that to runwaway juries making OB-GYN a no-go zone. American mothers have now become convinced (mostly be daytime TV, I'll warrant) that there should be an absolute, 100% guarantee that absolutely nothing will ever go wrong during the birth of their above-average snowflake. If not, here come the ambulance chasers taking in ~80% of the millions in lawsuit damages, doing nothing but increasing the an
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I was wondering how they were going to do it... (Score:2)
First off, let's get this out of the way. "Conspiracy Theory" is ultmately a mistrust in the systems we are required to live in. Especially lately, many of the things people have been label "conspiracy nut" over have come to light as either likely or simply the truth. This can be especially marked by the general non-acceptance of the Boston Bombing story. People just aren't believing any longer.
Now, the thing about vaccines is that it's supposed to be an inert version of a virus which is introduced to t
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As for the comment about allowing studies on the link between autism and vaccines: there were plenty o
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First of all, studies have been done. LOTS of studies. NONE found ANY link between vaccines and autism. Of course, the "vaccines cause autism" crowd either ignore these studies and continue claiming none have been done or change their explanation about how vaccines cause autism and then declare that no studies have checked on this. The latter approach is moving the goal posts and there is no arguing against that. Not that it's a valid argument, but that no matter how often you debunk the argument, they
Having had a whooping cough outbreak in the family (Score:3, Interesting)
For any parent, guardian, or patient to make an informed decision, we have to have two pieces of information: how well a medicine generally works, and what risks there are to take it. Number One Son does this with several medicines: Colcrys controls the symptoms of his Familial Mediteranian Fever, at the risk of messing with his liver. He takes the flu shot because of the risk to the 1 and a half lung he has left are higher than the risks of the vaccine itself.
A vaccine that doesn't work, or doesn't work well, means that vaccinated patients are accepting the vaccine risk for no significant reward.
I am not anti-vaccine, I am just against unneeded risk. My kids got a round of the Salk vaccine, because the Sabin vaccine might wear out. We also did the chicken pox vaccine, to try to prevent shingles later in life (both families have had extreme shingles outbreaks later in life). OTOH, my daughter will NOT get the cervical cancer vaccine, because HPV is preventable in behavior and the real side-effect rate to the vaccine is a lot higher than the manufacturer is reporting.
My own anecdote is that the reporting on pertussis is off by at least half to two-thirds. Little Miss fought a persistent cough (with antibiotics) for weeks until her allergist said "oh, you have whooping cough. You sound exactly like I did last week." There was no use testing her, because she'd been on antibiotics. Milady and I both caught it from her. The nurse ruined my test by doing it wrong, and Milady's doctor flat-out wouldn't test her (she just got antibiotics, because she was #3 in the house to catch it). The scuttlebutt in the health profession was that the Health Department was desperately trying to keep their numbers down, by hook or by crook.
With my kids' various lung-related issues, they needed a vaccine that actually helps prevent whooping cough. The current one isn't it.
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HPV is preventable in behavior? Pray tell, how? LOL.
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Re:Having had a whooping cough outbreak in the fam (Score:4, Informative)
OTOH, my daughter will NOT get the cervical cancer vaccine, because HPV is preventable in behavior and the real side-effect rate to the vaccine is a lot higher than the manufacturer is reporting.
Hate to say this, but going by teen pregnancy studies parents who make statements like this are the one's who's kids are most at risk.
Also, what sort of creditable study do you have that the risks are higher than what the manufacturer claims? If so, wouldn't the CDC be shutting them down?
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because HPV is preventable in behavior
Right, which is why states with abstinence-only sex ed have the highest incidence of teen pregnancy...
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OTOH, my daughter will NOT get the cervical cancer vaccine, because HPV is preventable in behavior
On the plus side for her, even if she contracts the virus the most likely outcome is that she will eventually clear it, as most infected individuals do. The risk for cervical cancer arises from the collision of a rather rare outcome with a extremely common exposure; nearly all sexually active adults will unknowingly carry HPV at some time in their lives. Unfortunately, the combination results in some 12,000 cases of cervical cancer per year, in the US.
The original research that identified the HPV-Cancer l
"austerity" (Score:2)
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What we now call "poor" is what was called "middle class" or even "well off" a couple generations ago.
See http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/09/understanding-poverty-in-the-united-states-surprising-facts-about-americas-poor [heritage.org]
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The point is, when the media cries "poverty", the average person doesn't think "car, house, microwave, satellite TV, computer, nice things of various sorts-see list" which are now more the norm than not. The average person thinks "falling-down tenement with leaky roof and no electric or plumbing and infested with rats and cockroaches" and the tenant-farmer shacks of the 1920s.
Even given the hand-to-mouth financial aspect, there's a difference in mindset between being poor, and having no money. Give $5 to a
OK, so this vaccine needs a booster (Score:3)
OK, so this vaccine needs a booster every decade or so. Lots of vaccines are like that. The vaccines against tetanus and hepatitis A and B all need to be re-administered every few years. No big deal.
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OK, so this vaccine needs a booster every decade or so. Lots of vaccines are like that. The vaccines against tetanus and hepatitis A and B all need to be re-administered every few years. No big deal.
Which is pretty much the same as diseases. You don't get AIDS from a single instance of a virus. You get it from thousands of them invading the body all at once.
Not just in the U.S. (Score:3)
For those not bothering to read the article, this is part which you need to know:
This year, the U.K. has had more than 1,200 cases of measles, after a record number of nearly 2,000 cases last year. The country once recorded only several dozen cases every year. It now ranks second in Europe, behind only Romania.
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There are probably some more accuracies we can derive using statistics between Germany and the lesser European countries
Re:Or (Score:5, Insightful)
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you have proof the DNA of the disease is the same then as now?
they might have that proof, actually.
but more than that they have the last years stats of the people who were vaccinated 20+ years ago. presumably the change didn't happen overnight either so there would be some overlap there as well where some age group got either one.
Re:Or (Score:5, Informative)
Kaiser Permanente introduced the vaccines gradually, and have children of the same age with one or the other (or both). This is the source of the 5.6x more likely to get it number.
The older one has more antigens. The older one also had more lawsuits, even though science to this day cannot prove it caused the other problems.
And statistically we'd still be better off with the old one, unproven problems and all, compared to the new one. But there was a telling comment by a scientist -- western societies would no longer "accapt" the old one.
Thank your lawyers. They got rich (Congress even set up a fund for "victims", even though no connection was shown) and people died in increased numbers because of their actions.
Re:Or (Score:5, Insightful)
I went to a conference on vaccines several years ago where somebody gave a talk on whooping cough vaccine. He said that there was a problem with the vaccine made from the whole bacterial cell, and it did have a small number of adverse effects, not as bad as whooping cough itself but more common than the other standard vaccines. At that time they were working on a new acellular vaccine, which wouldn't have as many or as serious adverse effects.
Now they have it. That's the tradeoff. Fewer adverse effects but less effectiveness.
None of this is unproven. It's well proven. You can look it up in the textbooks.
If we didn't have so much resistance to vaccines in general, they could have gotten away with a more effective vaccine that had more common adverse effects. It would have been less comfortable but with fewer deaths.
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you have proof the DNA of the disease is the same then as now?
That's a possibility. Virulence factors can change over time. It's been hypothesized that the near complete absence of Rheumatic Fever might be due to less virulent streptococcal A bacteria. Or it might be due to increased treatment, better nutrition, sunspots or something else. It's hard to prove.
FTFA
As much pertussis as we're seeing now, we're still seeing in most places pretty good control in the very young," who are at the highest risk of dying form pertussis, Halperin says. "We're seeing lapsed immunity in school-age kids and we have to solve that. But those kids aren't dying."
Can be interpreted as either the bacterium is the same and the host defenses are better in younger children due to a less effective (but still reasonably useful) vaccine or it could be that current Pertussis
Re:Or (Score:5, Insightful)
Please don't confuse vaccines with medication (antibiotics). There is plenty of evidence that antibiotic use leads to resistance. There is plenty of evidence that vaccine overuse leads to less disease, and extinction of the pathogen. Completely different situations. Completely different conditions. Completely different theories. There is nothing they have in common. Don't worry. Common mistake.
Re:Or (Score:4, Informative)
It's possible, in theory, with some vaccines. But the original pertussis vaccine was a killed bacteria vaccine, which means that the entire organism was present. For it to mutate to survive the immunity it would have to turn into something completely different, so resistance is not a factor in this case.
Some new vaccines may use a limited number of antigens instead of whole organism. If they use few enough, the organism could conceivably mutate to not express that antigen anymore. But even newer vaccines that are in wide circulation include many antigens, so that's still not likely.
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Well of course they aren't. That's why we still have 10% of the population dying from smallpox and polio ... right?
Re:Or (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, maybe vaccines aren't effective period. Just a thought.
I guess that would explain all these horrible outbreaks of polio, mumps, and measles we've been having....
Oh, wait, we aren't having large outbreaks of these diseases? Well, then I guess vaccines work.
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Or, maybe vaccines aren't effective period. Just a thought.
I guess that would explain all these horrible outbreaks of polio, mumps, and measles we've been having....
Oh, wait, we aren't having large outbreaks of these diseases? Well, then I guess vaccines work.
No, they don't.
See, what has happened is that folks who are naturally immune have peed in water. Now, since the essence of their immunity has gone into the water, we have been drinking the homeopathic cure!
But don't tell anyone! The homeopathic industry needs their revenue for all the R&D they have to prove the effectiveness of their products with their scientific studies.
Like this one:
"Drink this Homeopathic medicine for your sickness. Do you fell better?"
"Yep!"
"There you go! A 100% effectiveness rate
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Whatever. I still don't support homeopathic marriages or adoptions.
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in the past 100 years expeted lifespan has jumped 30+ years in the western world.
our quality of life, relatively disease free, was previously unknown. it's still unknown in the parts of the world where they cant get vaccines.
100 years ago being crippled by polio was so common one of our greatest presidents was one such victim.
100 years ago becoming deaf from mumps was common; how many deaf kids do you see today? ya. almost none.
we live longer and better. and vaccines are a huge part of that.
if you want to think differently, i suggest you google smallpox, or visit pakistan or northern india where they still have polio cases.
look at old history photos of what disease wards used to look like, the myriad different diseases and the pain and sufferign caused by them.
or just look at the number of measles (one of hte msot contagious diseases in human history; a person with measles walks through a room, that room remains contagious for 4 hours afterward) cases in our own country. prior to the vaccine in the mid 60's there were >500K cases every year. Within 5 years it dropped to fewer than 100 cases per year. It's been declared effectively eliminated in our country and the rest of the western world.
the people who think vaccines are bad, or overrated, have no clue what they are talking about, and would be shocked to death by the difference between todays world and that of just 100 years, and the amount of disease and suffering that people had to put up with.
TLDR: you're an idiot. vaccines are one of the greatest triumphs of mankind.
Re:Or (Score:5, Insightful)
And, unfortunately, this means they become a victim of their own success. People today (and I include myself in this) don't remember when polio or measles or smallpox ran rampant. They don't remember the fear of catching one of these or how serious it is. I've read enough accounts so that I understand intellectually, but I'll never know in a "living it day to day" way. Something for which I'm extremely thankful.
Sadly, some people, in ignorance, assume that these diseases were "basically like colds." You get the measles, stay home for a few days until the bumps disappear and you're good to go. They ignore all of the death or life-long disabilities these diseases brought with them. Next, they buy into the "vaccines are so risky" crowd's talk (vaccines have "toxins" in them. [scary voice]TOOOOOXXXXIIIINNNNNNSSSS!!!!!!{/scary voice]) and mentally increase the risk of the vaccines.
The end result is that these people decide not to vaccinate because they see the vaccines as more dangerous than the diseases when the reality is the exact opposite. In such a big way, mind you, that saying "the exact opposite" still feels like an understatement. And when large groups of these people make these faulty risk assessments, they increase the risk of not only them and their children, but of people who can't be vaccinated for valid reasons (too young, immune system issues, allergies, etc.).
I guarantee you that almost none of these anti-vax folks would be complaining about the MMR if measles was as rampant today as it was before the vaccine was introduced. The ones that would still be complaining would be shouted down by the crowds flocking to get the MMR.
Re:Or (Score:5, Insightful)
Or maybe people should stop refusing to have their child vaccinated because of $CONSPIRACYTHEORY. Just a thought.
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Or maybe people should stop refusing to have their child vaccinated because of $CONSPIRACYTHEORY. Just a thought.
Why do you hate natural selection?
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Google "herd immunity".
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Don't use the disease analogy; use predator/prey relationships to analyze it.
Too bad stupidity is not a disease we can vaccinate against.
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The trick is that "innocents" can get caught in the blast. One of the reasons that we strive for herd immunity is because the vaccines aren't 100% effective.
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because in the evolutionary war between humans and germs, the germs win.
there's more of them, and they breed faster.
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Because this isn't just natural selection. If it just affected kids of those who didn't want to vaccinate, it might be "Natural Selection", but it affects people who CAN'T be vaccinated for valid reasons (allergies, immune system issues, or just plain too young).
For example, Person A decides they won't vaccinate because they think it's all a plot by Big Pharma. Their kids wind up carriers for measles. They cough on their hands and touch a supermarket shopping cart*. An hour later, you put your 4 month o
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$CONSPIRACYTHEORY
Ooh, ooh . . . let me play . . . I'm good at this!
"The government has been working on vaccines that cause autism to use against political enemies by the IRS, which will be running Obamacare, which is why the IRS sorted out the political enemies' tax exemption forms, because those political enemies are against Obamacare, so they won't get the Obamacare autism causing vaccines, which is why the IRS planned to delay processing the tax exemption forms, until the paper borne version of the virus could complete testing in Libya, but the Libyans discovered that the IRS papers distributed to them by the US embassy were the cause of their autistic births, and then stormed the embassy, which was covered up by the government to look like an average Islamic riot, which was working, until the Associated Press found out about it, and was planning to publish, but IRS found out about that, and told then the FBI to tap the phone lines of the Associated Press, so they could find all the journalists and the government leaks, so they could be given a potent adult version of the autistic causing vaccine, and therefore silence them all up, and so this is why the Associated Press reporters are acting all autistic now, and . . . "
Re:Or (Score:5, Insightful)
Or maybe people should stop refusing to have their child vaccinated because of $CONSPIRACYTHEORY. Just a thought.
This.
From the article (emphasis mine):
During the 1980s, U.S. parents successfully sued manufacturers, alleging that the whole-cell vaccine also caused long-term brain damage. A 1991 Institute of Medicine report concluded that this was unproven, but by then many pertussis vaccine manufacturers had withdrawn from the market, leading Congress to create a federal vaccine injury compensation program for families who could show a strong case for vaccine damage.
Sound familiar?
One of the first areas in the US hit by a modern pertussis outbreak was here in California. It wasn't among poor people who couldn't afford the vaccine, like you might expect in emergent epidemics. Instead, it was in Marin County, home of highly affluent post-hippy folks like (say) George Lucas. These folks have been reading all of the holistic alternative medicine literature for years and have convinced themselves that every single article is another threat to the precious, precious unborn babies that they plan to have spring from their middle-aged wombs, and so huge numbers of them have decided to stop vaccinating altogether. Shock, horror, when the result is a resurgence of a disease that had been all but unseen in the area for decades, and a couple of those precious babies actually die.
You see the same thing all over the world. In France, there's some kind of conspiracy theory going around that the measles vaccine is bad. Measles is one of the most contagious diseases around. In 2011, there were 118 cases of measles in the entire United States in the first five months; in France, which has only about twice the population of California, there were 17,000.
On the positive side, people, including childless adults, can help to stop the spread of pertussis by getting a booster vaccination, which helps to increase herd immunity. If you catch whooping cough as an adult, you won't die, you'll get a very lousy respiratory illness for a while. But if you don't catch pertussis, you can't spread it to people who are more vulnerable, like children and the elderly. Right now, doctors believe you need a booster about once in your adult life. It's easy to get -- you can get it bundled with your tetanus vaccine, which if you're smart, you're getting every 10 years or so anyway. Last time I got a tetanus shot, I got the pertussis booster with it, and there was no change in price (i.e. both were fully covered by insurance).
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During the 1980s, U.S. parents successfully sued manufacturers, alleging that the whole-cell vaccine also caused long-term brain damage. A 1991 Institute of Medicine report concluded that this was unproven, but by then many pertussis vaccine manufacturers had withdrawn from the market, leading Congress to create a federal vaccine injury compensation program for families who could show a strong case for vaccine damage.
They don't even really need to make a 'strong' case. All that is required is a doctor's certification that X occurred before time T after Y vaccine's administration and the family is awarded Z in compensation. The key here is that families do not need to prove a causal link between the vaccine and the harm just that it happened. In theory this is the balance for congress making it very difficult for citizens to sue vaccine manufacturers. http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/vaccinetable.html [hrsa.gov]
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It would probably be good to get it bundled with your zoster shot, since zoster is fairly common among older people, it's quite painful, and it can often lead to permanent painful neuropathy.
This isn't something that I should worry about. My doctor should take care of it for me. I don't have time to read a stack of literature on every disease I might get. It would be like trying to watch every video on Youtube.
Re:Or (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Or (Score:5, Insightful)
Our "ability to adapt as a species" would mean simply letting people die if they weren't already immune. Unless you're aware of some Lamarkian pressure I don't know about.
Use of vaccines does create a selective pressure for vaccines to adapt, which is why they're used for the most dangerous diseases or in the most at-risk groups, or so broadly that a disease doesn't have a chance to adapt before it loses all of its possible niches. Adios, smallpox. Time to get your coat, polio.
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...which is why they're used for the most dangerous diseases
Like chicken pox? I'd be interested to also know your thoughts on the HPV vaccine considering the disease it protects against is already incredibly rare.
Re:Or (Score:5, Informative)
HPV was/is incredibly common, now the particular strain that the vaccine was targeted for was quite rare, but it so happens that the vaccine also provides protection against most of the other strains as well. And yeah... if I can protect future generations from not only the pain and shame of genital warts (90% of which are caused by one of the strains the vaccine protects against) but also cut the rate of cervical cancer while I'm at it (admittedly the actual target of the vaccine) at the cost of... well statistically the vaccine is as safe as a saline injection so I would argue a cost of essentially 0.
Re:Or (Score:4, Informative)
Why do you think that HPV is "incredibly rare"?
Population of US : ~251 million [http://www.census.gov/popclock/] [census.gov]
Population of US with HPV : ~79 million [http://www.cdc.gov/std/HPV/STDFact-HPV.htm] [cdc.gov]
That is ~31% of the population of a country which is aware of the disease and actively fighting it.
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The bad news: Chicken pox is 10x more dangerous to adults and the prevention of the disease during childhood without protection as an adult will likely lead to higher rates of Chicken pox in adults.
The good news: Chicken pox isn't really dangerous, so the 10x increase i
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thing is a lot of these diseases dont prevent reproduction of the victim. some of them are fatal, or can be, but many arent. they simply make the quality of life nearly unbearable (polio cripples, mumps causes deafness, etc) compared to health people. and there's also garuntee of getting the disease before reproduction instead of after. so any evolutionary pressure is weak or non-existant
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Sure it may, but why think that without evidence. Do you see any correlation between vaccines and anti-biotics that we don't?
Re: Or (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. If anything antibiotics and vaccines have completely opposite mechanisms of action.
An antibiotic taken as a medication kills bacteria directly, assisting the immune system and making its job easier. In the case of bleaching every surface in your house, it means that the immune system never sees the bacteria in the first place. The same is true of other external use of antibiotics (killing of bacteria before it gets into your body).
A vaccine provokes your immune response against a pathogen without exposing you to the risk of developing the disease (or a greatly reduced risk). Your immune system does all the work, and as a result it is able to do the job entirely on its own much more effectively at a later time.
Comparing the approaches, the disinfectant approach is like bleaching your house 3x/day, and the vaccine approach is like rolling around in the mud and not washing before dinner. I'd be very hesitant to associate the problems of the one with the other.
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Re:Or (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I see all the denial is coming from one side. Doctors and scientists have never said that vaccines are 100% effective or that they are 100% safe. Like all medication, there are risks and side effects. For the vast majority of people, the side effects are rare and not serious. There is a large database to keep track of side effects and a special vaccine court [wikipedia.org] set up to hear cases of side effects. The court was started to bypass the lengthy trials that normally is associated with a civil suit and is a no-fault system. However in the case of autism, the court (and science) has found no credible link. The initial claim of a link has been discredited due to fraud. Even the study that first suggested a link has been retracted due to this fraud.
Re:Or (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Just no. The 'damage' that vaccines do is barely statistically significant, the benefits they provide are so fundamental that there are core aspects of our culture and society that have changed since their introduction. Your argument that vaccines are going to destroy our immune systems or cause the diseases to mutate shows a lack of understanding to how vaccines works; they train the immune system in the exact same way contracting the virulent disease would. Not only does it not weaken the immune system (in fact it strengthens it) it also prevents a large reservoir of the disease from ever building up in the population. Smaller reservoir means that mutations are less likely simply because the numbers are smaller.
Vaccines have saved more lives than the next 5 medical breakthroughs combined with the possible exception of basic sanitation (if you can call that a medical breakthrough). Trying to argue that "The vaccine debate is a religious one on both sides " is ludicrous, like saying the debate between the theories of relativity and the flying spaghetti monster are on equal ground. They're not, one is backed up by a mountain of evidence so large that people forget that the mountain isn't a natural feature of the world. Before vaccines, parents lived in real fear that their children would catch any one of a half dozen diseases that would maim or kill them, today parents spend hours worrying about a syndrome [wikipedia.org] that has a .05% chance of happening to their newborn.
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Smallpox vaccine causes shingles in people over 50.
The United States hasn't included the smallpox vaccine in routine immunizations since the 70s. I don't think you could get it if you asked for it. Most doctors and pharmacies don't even carry it. You might be able to get it if you're in the military and are being deployed to certain regions known to be iffy about chemical/biological weapons.
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In this case it seems there was some middle ground found. A new Vaccine was released and the debate now is whether it is as effective as the old one.
There are lots of risks in life, when it came to vaccinating my children (and for that matter, myself) I held to the belief that they were better off with the vaccine. The herd immunity/social responsibility issue was not the prime driver for me, though it's a nice bonus. I'll go further, I think that the odds were so lopsided that it is markedly irresponsible
Re:Or (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, maybe vaccines aren't effective period. Just a thought.
I suggest you try thinking harder next time.
Smallpox would still be around if they didn't work, and other diseases would be much more common.
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May I ask why not?
By the way, did you know that mercury is no longer in vaccines (and was never in elemental form) and MSG is a food additive?
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They DO put MSG in vaccines, and many other nasties I didn't even mention like Formaldehyde. And mercury is still in there. Mod me as flamebait cause you disagree with hard facts, I don't care I got karma to burn.
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Give Libertarians an inch ....
I'm Mr. Darwin - what's up? (Score:5, Insightful)
With population exploding, shouldn't we return to an era where the weak were culled out?...
Unless you live in Africa, population is not exploding. The population growth rate is slowing, the UN predicts that the world population will stabilize around 2090 and fall afterwards. Most (more recent) predictions think that this estimate is pessimistic - it's looking like population will stabilize around 2050 and decline afterwards.
Most industrialized nations have negative population growth already, the US *would* have negative population growth if you discount immigration. Even with immigration, the US population is slowing and will turn the corner sometime in the next couple of decades.
... back in the day old people had the grace to die of diabetes or a heart attack, now they live until 90, but don't work the last 30 years of their lives, effectively eating the seed corn of the new generation.
I think the problems you are seeing is due to a lack of an evolved sense of morality. On your part.
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>With population exploding, shouldn't we return to an era where the weak were culled out?
You first.
--
DJ ZyklonB - spinning your best tunes from 70 years ago.
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Population is not exploding. Hell without immigration the USA would have a negative growth rate. Even China and India's growth rates are slowing, very few nations have exploding population rates.
People living longer should work longer (Score:3)
>>- back in the day old people had the grace to die of diabetes or a heart attack, now they live until 90, but don't work the last 30 years of their lives, effectively eating the seed corn of the new generation.
If you're able and society needs you to work, then you should work, even in the last "30 years of your life" and even if you've done far more than provide for your own retirement.
Good human beings don't live solely for themselves--they also work to help others out.
However, I'm NOT in favor of t
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Something is subpar when it doesn't live up to expectations. Some degree of side-effects is actually expected, within limits that wouldn't change a vaccine is subpar or not.