Study Confirms No Link Between MMR Vaccine and Autism 341
An anonymous reader sends word of a new study (abstract) into the relationship between the MMR vaccine and kids who develop autism. In short: there is no relationship, even for kids at high risk of developing autism. From the article:
[Researchers] examined records from a large health insurer to search for such an association. They checked the status of children continuously enrolled in the health plan from birth to at least 5 years old during 2001 to 2012. The children also had an older brother or sister continuously enrolled for at least six months between 1997 and 2012. "Consistent with studies in other populations, we observed no association between MMR vaccination and increased ASD risk among privately insured children.We also found no evidence that receipt of either 1 or 2 doses of MMR vaccination was associated with an increased risk of ASD among children who had older siblings with ASD." ... [An accompanying editorial said,] "Taken together, some dozen studies have now shown that the age of onset of ASD does not differ between vaccinated and unvaccinated children, the severity or course of ASD does not differ between vaccinated and unvaccinated children, and now the risk of ASD recurrence in families does not differ between vaccinated and unvaccinated children."
The antivaxers will ignore this... (Score:5, Insightful)
... Because this discovery was made by science.
They will just claim this is
1) Big pharma conspiracy
2) Jewish conspiracy
3) Both of the above
Antivaxers will only refer to science when it supports their own theories.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The antivaxers will ignore this... (Score:5, Funny)
Statistics are like a bikini: what they reveal is suggestive but what they hide is vital.
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Similarly, people who are racist may simply not like the look of the other race from an aesthetic point of view, but because that's so hard to prove,
Re:The antivaxers will ignore this... (Score:5, Informative)
Remember, Jenny McCarthy's science is being a mother. That trumps all other lesser forms of science.
Re:The antivaxers will ignore this... (Score:5, Funny)
And taking her clothes off in front of cameras. Don't forget that, because that's the equivalent of having a PhD in biochemistry, only better. Just ask her.
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Back off, man. I'm a scientist.
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You back off man. A scientist is no match for a stripper.
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Don't forget: "Mercury!!!!"
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What's Mercury got to do with vaccines?
Not much really. Hell they used to let kids play with mercury in science class, even allowing them to put it on their skin. Those were the kids in the 40's 50's and 60's and it turned out fairly well, I mean we did have that fuckup with the 70's but we seem to have done okay.
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Re:The antivaxers will ignore this... (Score:5, Informative)
" the idea being to add it to shots as something to enhance the body's reaction to a foreign body"
Wrong. the "mercury" in the vaccine is trace amounts of themirosol, which is a preservative used as an antibacterial/anti-fungal agent for multidose vials of vaccines. Its inclusion in single dose vials has been almost eliminated just to placate idiots like you who think it's dangerous or don't know what it actually does.
If you stick a needle into a multidose vial and it keeps getting punctured, there is a chance of contaminants getting introduced. The themirosol prevents that.
It has nothing to do with making the body react stronger to the vaccine. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Get educated:
http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBl... [fda.gov]
Re:The antivaxers will ignore this... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is a common thread with any dogmatic conspiracy theory. Any amount of evidence you throw at discounting the claims, the more they are able to dig in and claim it's a fabrication. Moon landing, JFK, 9/11, Han shooting first, Firefly being cancelled.. etc.
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I'd +1 you if I could - completely true. The whole antivaxxer movement is the epitome of pseudoscience, in the worst possible way.
You're pro-science? That explains it. (Score:2)
See? The science of Astrology explains it all!
Re:The antivaxers will ignore this... (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the doctors who announced he would no longer accept unvaccinated children as patients nailed it with the question "If you don't trust my judgment on the extensive scientific research on the safety of vaccines, how can you possible trust my judgment on anything to do with your children?"
If you really believe that the entire medical profession, literally every one of them, is either criminally incompetent or part of some massive conspiracy, then your only rational choice, when your child is sick, is to sit there and watch them die.
Re:The antivaxers will ignore this... (Score:5, Insightful)
The people you're describing drive me insane. We have a pediatrician who said what you did: either you trust her to recommend vaccinations, or you find someone else to work with. She doesn't want patients who continually argue against everything she says.
Here's a test. You know all those godless communist governments that want to take over America and sap our precious bodily fluids? They don't have profits, right, because they hate our freedoms. They also don't care about their disposable citizens. Right? OK. So why is it that those countries vaccinate their citizens? It's not for the profit motive of drug companies, because those are owned by the evil socialists. It's because they cheap out and practice preventative medicine so that they can keep working the proles 112 hours a week, and you can't do that when they're sick.
But tossing aside the Fox-news-watcher-ready wrapper, it's true: absent a profit motive, every organized country in the world immunizes their citizens so that they don't get sick as much. Do you really think China gives a crap about GlaxoSmithKline's margins? Hell no. They use vaccines because it's far and away the best possible investment into keeping people healthy.
There is literally no valid greed-based explanation for vaccinations. It's dumb when you consider the American health system, and utterly braindead when you look at the other 95% of the world's population.
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Just to toss another bit on the "greed argument" pile, the drugs to treat a disease cost 10 to 10,000,000 times more than the vaccines to prevent the disease. So if it was about greed, they wouldn't be giving vaccines. It's MUCH more profitable to treat a polio victim for the rest of their life than to vaccinate against it.
"But Chicken Pox doesn't have a treatment drug!!". It has lots and lots of drugs in the rare cases when it causes serious complications and sends the victim to the ICU.
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"then your only rational choice"
Aha, and therein lies the problem.
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440,000 deaths versus how many millions of people who would have died without medical care? If you want to make it purely about numbers, you still lose, hands down. Without modern medicine, warts and all, average life expectancy is less than 40 years.
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That's the thing. To some people, there isn't a difference. It's entirely binary to them. Either everything a doctor says is gospel handed down by God, or it's murderous conspiracy, with nothing in between.
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Do the antivax people have a thing with Jews?
Also: Today someone told me that circumcision causes autism. I laughed but they were serious.
You think 7 vaccines is a lot? (Score:5, Informative)
Think of it this way. You're living in your mom's womb, then you get born. Your mom's womb is pretty darn sterile. Suddenly, you're born and you're literally being assaulted by every germ around you, with probably thousands of them being encountered by your immune system every day.
How are a *few* shots (7 may seem like a lot to you) going to compare against thousands of things all hitting the naive immune system of an infant all at once, starting from birth, every day?
Or is it the fact that the particular antigen is injected into a muscle supposed to make it more scary?
It just seems to me that the amount of antigens presented to someone during a shot is just completely dwarfed by the natural exposure. It's just that the select few antigens in the shots just happen to be particularly helpful in helping you resist *actual serious disease*.
Also, I can't find your "varicella vaccine mortality rate of 1 in 30,000" information on the CDC website, Please provide source. What I found was this: "Other serious problems, including severe brain
reactions and low blood count, have been reported after
chickenpox vaccination. These happen so rarely experts
cannot tell whether they are caused by the vaccine or
not. If they are, it is extremely rare." I think we would hear about it if thousands of people died from the chickenpox vaccine.
Furthermore, they also say that only the FIRST dose has such an extreme reaction. So the "much higher than 1/30,000" claim you make is extremely dubious.
--PM
--PM
Re:You think 7 vaccines is a lot? (Score:4)
You are aware, are you not, that mothers pass antibodies to the fetus during the last trimester because they share, oh, I don't know, BLOOD?! There's even a name for it: 'passive immunity". Antibodies are also heavily transferred during the first couple of weeks' breast milk.
Their effect tapers off after a couple of months, which is why vaccines are necessary. (Or if the mother hasn't had a disease or its vaccine).
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Yes, and that helps keep babies alive. However, that doesn't change the fact that the baby is now being assaulted/presented with all the microbes outside the womb and must develop immunity to those thousands of microbes that s/he never saw before.
This is in comparison to the 7 or so that are in shots.
--PM
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Today, we are giving kids 312% more vaccines than we did 25 years ago.
Yes, and the viral load of each of those vaccines is 1/3000th of what the load was in the 1970's.
In other words, you are an idiot.
Yaz
Re:You think 7 vaccines is a lot? (Score:5, Funny)
Your mom's womb is pretty darn sterile.
You've obviously never met his mom.
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Are you saying that among the piles of natural things assaulting an infant, the 7 or so man-made and unnatural things we inject are harmless, just because of statistics?
If the first dose has a stronger reaction, it being foreign when the other doses are familiar stuff, that kinda suggests foreign stuff is bad.
I think anti-vaxxers are retarded. But your argument is just as ignorantly stupid. Try again.
Re:You think 7 vaccines is a lot? (Score:5, Informative)
You keep referring to the CDC in this and other child posts - to back your claims. I'm in extremely strong opposition to your view on both the danger of the MMR vs the diseases it protects us from, as well as the autism claims. Let me call out a few which may be of interest;
From the CDC page entitled "Top 4 Things Parents Need to Know about Measles" http://www.cdc.gov/measles/abo... [cdc.gov]
- About 1 in 4 people in the U.S. who get measles will be hospitalized
- 1 out of every 1,000 people with measles will develop brain swelling, which could lead to brain damage
- 1 or 2 out of 1,000 people with measles will die, even with the best care
From the CDC page entitled "Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism" http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafe... [cdc.gov]
- well, suffice to say they have a different world-view to yourself
Please feel free to reply to this post with peer-reviewed medical evidence which articulates why countries where immunisation is low or non-existent are in less danger than those who have a high immunisation level, or alternately cite your source on the autism to MMR link.
We read those two numbers clear as day, but we are not allowed to look at vaccines as a possible cause? Are you kidding me?
If you're so willing to disregard the study linked in the topic which clearly addresses exactly that point comprehensively, and categorically denies it i know, RFTA, how gauche) then I assume you have an empirical model you can clearly articulate which shows the link? Or is it correlation == causation, facts be damned?
Re:Somewhere in the middle... (Score:5, Informative)
The mortality rate of the vaccine according to the CDC is 1 in 30,000. (The actual wording on the CDC site is that 2 out of 15,000 will have extremely severe reactions to the vaccine, and 1 of those will be fatal.
You are completely full of shit. From the CDC site [cdc.gov]:
I await your retraction before calling you out as a shill.
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There is also something particular to Chicken Pox which makes the vaccine even less desirable: length of immunity. If you actually catch Chicken Pox you get immunity for life. However if you vaccinate against it you need to continuously remember to get boosters - I believe currently every 10 or 20 years - otherwise your immunity may lapse. What is bad about this is that Chicken Pox for adults is known as Shingles which is far nastier than Chicken Pox. So in this case taking the vaccine to protect against a very mild childhood disease may lead to an increased chance of a more serious disease later in life...unless you set a 20 year alarm so you never forget a booster shot!
You're full of shit too. You speak as though getting chickenpox will prevent shingles which it won't [time.com] and there's other things that you have claimed that I find to be...less than accurate but don't have the time to find sources so I won't claim them.
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What is bad about this is that Chicken Pox for adults is known as Shingles which is far nastier than Chicken Pox. So in this case taking the vaccine to protect against a very mild childhood disease may lead to an increased chance of a more serious disease later in life...unless you set a 20 year alarm so you never forget a booster shot!
As far as I know, this is very inaccurate. Shingles is a neurological disorder which only affects people who have generated Chicken Pox antigens. Chicken Pox itself has two or three strains, which can be contracted at any point in your life. For instance, the common Chicken Pox (the one with the vaccine now) is something I might have been exposed to when very young, but I've never officially got it (no pox) and eventually I figured I was immune and was tasked as the person to take care of anyone who had
Re:Agreed but there is a point (Score:5, Informative)
"Chicken Pox for adults is known as Shingles which is far nastier than Chicken Pox"
Wrong to an extreme.
Shingles is a resurgence of the virus which causes chicken pox. Once you get chicken pox, the virus is dormant in your body, your immune system continues to fight it. When your immune system is weakened, you get shingles.
Vaccination against chicken pox not only reduces chicken pox, but never being infected with the wild strain of chicken pox reduces the probability of contracting shingles when older:
" the risk of getting shingles from vaccine-strain VZV after chickenpox vaccination is much lower than getting shingles after natural infection with wild-type VZV" http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/vaccines/varicella/ [cdc.gov]
Re:Agreed but there is a point (Score:4, Insightful)
And you are exactly right. The OP does have one reasonable point in his post - now that we've knocked out the 'big' childhood infectious diseases (measles, mumps, rubella, polio, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus and haemophilus) through vaccinations, we are working on immunizations where the cost - benefit ratio is much less clear.
Hepatitis B, Varicella (Chicken pox), pneumococcus, rotovirus and Hepatitis A are all safe and effective. Whether or not they need to be given to everyone is an interesting question. Hepatitis B is certainly reasonable for persons living in areas where the virus is endemic (South Asia in particular) and is reasonable for persons who plan on being drug addicts or health care workers. The problem is that most people who end up in the former life style aren't the type to seek medical attention early on. Varicella immunization, as you point out, wanes after a decade or so (as does tetanus, diphtheria and especially pertussis) and chicken pox is a largely benign illness (although complications do occur). The pediatric community has decided that a nuanced approach to this won't work so it's "everybody gets everything all of the time".
This appears to be pretty safe (again, the number of distinct antigens in all vaccines is dwarfed by the number of different proteins presented to your immune system every time you go out in a crowd) but there are theoretical concerns. You can make the argument that antigens presented by a vaccine are qualitatively different from your garden variety protein. You can also note that autoimmune diseases (where the body overreacts to antigens) is common, sometimes severe and undoubtedly increasing in the Western world. Thus, one can be concerned that pissing off the immune system could cause problems.
It, however, has never been demonstrated that vaccines are causally related to any autoimmune phenomenon or disease.
So, in the best of all worlds, one would have an informed discussion about the risks and benefits of all 14 [cdc.gov] recommended vaccines. Which would take a couple of hours. Which, of course, doesn't happen.
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"unless you set a 20 year alarm so you never forget a booster shot! "
So, go see a doctor at least four times during my adult life? That's a standard that I can meet. When you see a doctor, they check your immuno records. For those who don't currently see a doctor once every five Presidential terms, let's find a way to get them more medical care.
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There are some valid questions regarding our vaccine policy and it's impacts on health, which you can't find because shills on both side drown out any discussion.
The same problem exists with gun control, abortion, and a hundred other subjects...
Too often, the extreme sides prevent any rational conversation from happening.
Re:Somewhere in the middle... (Score:5, Informative)
I am a medical professional, a pediatrician to be exact. I don't share your concerns about the rising number of vaccines and the prevalence of autism. First, although the number of vaccines has increased, the number of epitopes that the immune system responds to has actually decreased. Look at page 126 of this article:
https://www2.aap.org/immunization/families/overwhelm.pdf
Secondly, its not clear that the prevelance of autism is increasing:
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9495906
It is true however that both of those facts make it much harder to not un-separate vaccines into a "proper" discussion.
Re:Somewhere in the middle... (Score:5, Insightful)
T 1. Why have vaccines and autism rates both grown exponentially in the last 25 years? (no, detection does not come close to answering)
According to at least one study, changes to the diagnostic criteria and including outpatient diagnosis accounts for much of the rise. In essence, creating an autism spectrum diagnosis resulted in more diagnosis. That doesn't mean actual cases are on the rise since there is no way to rediagnosis those prior to the change. As for vaccines, correlation does not imply causation, something the recent study on the vaccine / autism link proves yet again.
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I am not officially on the Autism Spectrum Disorder. My son is, for behavior very much like mine.
Re:Somewhere in the middle... (Score:5, Informative)
The first question is related to how in 1989 Kids up until age 18 received 7 vaccines. [...] Today, it is 72.
You're so full of shit. According to The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia [chop.edu], in 1989 the CDC recommended 8 vaccines for kids (the same 7 it recommended through the 70s, plus Hib). The 2010 schedule includes the 8 from 1989 plus hep A (dangerous in kids, lethal in adults), hep B (40% lifetime risk of liver cancer in 95% of newborns who contract it [wikipedia.org]), flu, varicella (not the innocent, cute little illness antivax wingnuts claim it is), pneumococcus (lethal), and rotavirus (potentially lethal).
The evil drug companies took the 8 vaccines from 1989 and added 6 more potentially lethal or crippling diseases, for a total of 14. One-four. Maybe the 72 number is an innocent mistake reflecting the total number of shots, although I sincerely doubt it's that high as DTaP and MMR are each 3 vaccines combined into 1 (as they have been since the early 80s). That narrows it down from 14 to 10 unique vaccinations, and they simply don't take an average of 7 shots each per vaccine.
Yes, I get testy about this. As many times as antivaxers tell me to "do my research!", it seems that none of them can be bothered to.
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1. Why have vaccines and autism rates both grown exponentially in the last 25 years? (no, detection does not come close to answering)
Oh for goodness sake, are you claiming these are the only things that have grown rapidly over the past 25 years. Sugar consumption has grown rapidly. Maybe, just maybe, the mother's freakin' diet has something to do with autism. Why, yes it does [usatoday.com]. That one study does not explain the majority of cases of autism but it is a big red flashing neon sign pointing in a direction to look. In addition to eating too much sugar, which we now know can trigger autism, there are many many other things mothers are ex
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Are you counting Andrew Wakefield as one of these "medical professionals"?
Um. (Score:2)
Actually, if you think detection can't come close to answering, you're probably mostly buying the antivaxxer accounts--and I'm being quite charitable there. Admittedly, a good part of it also comes from changing the diagnostic criteria, which is a Problem because as my dev psych professor brutally put it, it's the end of the goddamn bell curve--literally so, as a certain amount of autistic behavior is within the range of normal, which means that if you want to increase the number of people with autism the
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Sorry, mortality rate for getting Chicken Pox is 2 - 4 per 100,000.
You've also go associated problems with having Varicella, like arthritis, osteomyelitis, hepatitis, and intracranial vasculitis. Along with secondary bacterial infections in the blisters.
30% of new born babies who's mother has chicken pox around delivery time can pretty much kiss their short life goodbye.
http://www.immune.org.nz/disea... [immune.org.nz]
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In a way, you are correct, but unintentionally so.
There is a correlation, but the causation is one layer higher.
Vaccines are safe, and save lives. And that's the problem. Whenever a young life is saved, that is one person who would have been culled from the pack that now grows up and likely will procreate. Nobody can deny that.
That means that genes that earlier were weeded out now survive and spread in the population the next generation. Including genes that code for weaker immune systems, which appears
Apples and oranges (Score:3)
1. Why have vaccines and autism rates both grown exponentially in the last 25 years? (no, detection does not come close to answering)
Changes to the definition and protocols for diagnosing it account for the rate changes just fine.
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You don't get 72 vaccines.
You get 49 doses of 14 vaccines by 6 and 69 doses by 18 if you follow the recommended schedule.
http://www.nvic.org/CMSTemplat... [nvic.org]
Part of the reason we do the vaccines this way is because we now know more about the immune system and how effective the shots are / how long they last.
Part of the reason we do the vaccines this way is because the less-toxic versions that have been developed since the 1960s are also less effective and must be administered more often.
Part of the reason we d
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You whine about shills and them spew the talking points from the anti-vaxers. Seriously? Regarding point 1. You do realize causation does not imply causation, right? The most likely and confirmed cause is later age of parents, which has also risen. The fact that parents are older when they have kids than in the 80s has nothing to do with vaccines.
I'm pretty sure that causation does imply causation.
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Awesome. Well done.
Today I had someone arguing that circumcision causes autism (I know, I know, but they said it). I told them circ rates are declining while autism rates are apparently rising. They said "Correlation does not imply causation!" and I scratched my head before saying "Yeah, but causation does imply correlation". They then went to special pleading, so I considered the point won.
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I believe the anti-vaccine group do not say ALL vaccines are bad. They are saying that they suspect that one of the vaccines or a some yet undetermined factor(s) coupled with a particular vaccine may cause autism. This study indicates that the MMR vaccine is not the culprit. The pertussis vaccine was a notorious vaccine that caused high fevers in many children. If it has been studied and found to be safe (which I doubt), I hope someone will educate me. Does everyone here believe all vaccines are absolutely safe?
Nothing is absolutely safe. Absolutely nothing. Pertussis is a straw-man argument; Yes the OLD vaccine caused fevers and discomfort, no, the fevers and discomfort were not particularly dangerous. No one has used whole cell pertussis vaccine for a couple of decades now.
Is the risk-benefit ratio highly skewed towards benefit with general pediatric vaccinations - yes.
in other words, (Score:5, Funny)
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Not in most of its solid forms, it isn't.
Inland Antarctica is a very dry place.
That's the problem with such studies (Score:4, Insightful)
The normal people knew it already.
The conspiracy nuts will think it's just another layer of the whole conspiracy.
Bluntly, if it was just for them, I'd say "let Darwin win at least sometimes". The problem is that they're a threat to everyone around them, too.
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The normal people knew it already.
No, bullshit, sorry. "Normal people" are not sufficiently technically skilled (probably you included) to be able to "know" except by appeal to authority, i.e. trusting that certain organisations if humans properly apply the scientific process. It is therefore even more important for controversial subjects than in general (and it is also useful in general) for results of importance to be verified and for that verification to be published, because each such occasion is an opportunity to bring more people on s
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AC is right. You don't "know" it; any more than the anti-vaxers know what they think they know. (Actually, that's not entirely accurate, at least anecdotally. I know a few anti-vaxers, they are intelligent and well-paid (make more than me), and none of them think they know anything extra, beyond what we all know.)
Both of you, you only "know", what you are told.
The difference is, they have lost their faith. That makes them apostates.
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Sorry, but the initial claim about vaccines causing autism were made by a man who was proven to be lying and had to his papers retracted.
There never was any credible evidence for this, and it has been perpetuated by idiots like Jenny McCarthy. Who is too stupid to take medical advice from.
Which means expecting someone else to disprove a collective delusion is a fucking waste of time.
Watching Sponge Bob causes cancer ... now, you disprove it as I sit here and go la la la ... that is essentially the epic st
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It's not a camp man. It's just people. I hope you won't call them stupid to their face at least. Not helping.
I'd bet a dollar you don't have a kid of your own, and you haven't had to face this. Otherwise you would not be so strident in your arrogance.
I had to face it, and luckily for me, the thimerisol had already been removed when I insisted on reading the vaccine labels myself in 2001. So I also got to dodge the question.
And now I get to have my asshole opinion, which means absolutely shit, because I have
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No, the science community doesn't need to do anything. Your thesis that once a paper passes peer review it is automatically inserted into the canon is just completely wrong. You need to understand what science is.
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You say "peer review" as though that means something:
http://www.vox.com/2014/11/21/... [vox.com]
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Yeah but practically all of the anti-vax people are fully vaccinated, because they had parents who weren't asshats. Darwinism wouldn't weed out the right individuals, although it would weed out their genetic lineages.
Re:That's the problem with such studies (Score:5, Insightful)
Because not everyone can be vaccinated. Infants can't be vaccinated, along with people with certain kinds of immune problems. Those individuals are kept safe by herd immunity.
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Because the way vaccines are alleged to work is that almost everyone needs to be vaccinated. What you believe to be "alleged" is just your own misconception, although not uncommon.
of course there's no link (Score:2)
How vaccines cause autism (Score:5, Insightful)
http://howdovaccinescauseautism.com/
You are preaching to the choir (Score:2)
Good luck convincing the faithful. Some rare one may be, but if it was that easy, there would be no major religion by now.
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and they have even anecdote to boot.
I'm with you. My kids are vaccinated. I'm not an antivaxxer. I recognize the science is valid.
However, what about the anecdotes? I even have one myself.
One of our friends daughters went in for a vaccination shot, reacted badly to it, (high fever, seizures, rushed to hospital...) She was around 3, she was communicative (limited vocabulary and speech), walking, made eye contact, etc,.. came home from the hospital - massive regression to earlier state, and subsequently diagnosed as autism.
You can show me as many studies as you like. But the anecdote still sits there. I know the little girl. It happened.
The vaccination event in that childs case clearly seems to have triggered the onset of autism.
And that deserves an explanation. And a better one than "Your a crazy loon, we have a study that shows your reality didn't happen."
So I don't know. Maybe the studies aren't big enough. Can they catch a 1 in 100,000 event? Or 1 in 1 million? Maybe the risk is that small. Or maybe the child would have developed autism anyway so the vaccine as a trigger event was just that and triggered something today that would have happened anyway next month or next week or the next time the kid caught a cold so the overall autism rates aren't effected; and all the vaccine did was move the onset date to "today" instead of "some other day".
I just don't know. I believe the science. I think the benefits of vaccination are clear, and the studies show pretty clearly that autism is not a significant risk. However, I also believe the anecdotes -- not enough to let them change my behaviour with respect to vaccination, but enough that I think we haven't laid this issue to rest yet, and think it does to be explained properly.
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Except when you look at these anecdotes, like all of the cases in the Wakefield study, you find out there were signs of autism before the vaccination. People like to have something to blame.
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You're McCarthy.
You're in power, and there's a small minority of people that threaten you and your way of life.
There really were communists infiltrating Hollywood. There really are anti-vaxers that could damage herd immunity if their numbers grow large enough.
I'm just saying. You're McCarthy. Don't overreact like he did.
And never has been one. (Score:3)
Then it was the vaccine itself - So0 thte stupid fucks stopped vaccinating their children - No change.
Thn they listened to a porno princess whoo's qualifications were? none.
Then it was proven that the "researcher was operating in tandem with a lawyer to make money off sympathetic juries. A lie based on lies, but they still believe.
Then Autism speaks sychophants started foaming at the mouth when certain people were removed from the "autism spectrum", because they really needed and demanded that rising epidemic.
You are as likely to change these people's minds about vaccines as you are to convince a fundamentalist Christian that the world wasn't created in 4004 b.c.e.
In fact, anti-vaxxers are just the liberal version of creationists.
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You are as likely to change these people's minds about vaccines as you are to convince a fundamentalist Christian that the world wasn't created in 4004 b.c.e.
There are precisely 0 fundies that believe that. They know the world was created BC, none of this liberal progressive "bce" bullshit. More seriously, that's a over-broad stereotype and about as funny as a racist joke.
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They did quietly remove the liquid mercury, long after the anecdotal stories circulated about how kids went autistic overnight after vaccination.
I did notice that.
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You forgot that the "porno princess" now claims her child is not autistic.
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Michele Bachmann is a liberal now?
No, she just hates science.
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I think you thinking of Jenna Jamesson, not Jenny McCarthy.
Ah. Thank you for clearing that up. I don't want any McCarthyism getting into my porn feeds.
Okay, so you did some "study"... (Score:2)
But did anyone ask Jenny McCarthy about it?
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No, but we did ask Bennet Haselton.
I think I found the true link... (Score:3)
I found an interesting article [io9.com] about autism. And I'm treating it just like the anti-vaxxers. I found it on Facebook. I'm applying no scientific analysis of the contents. I'm spreading it around without putting any real thought into it, expecting everyone to just mindlessly forward it to as many people as they can find.
Does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah I'm the same. I have these heated wars break out in my facebook feed.
Even more fun though is we have a friend who is expecting her second child in about 3 months and a person in the same friend group who is an anti-vaxer. Because there has been an outbreak of whooping cough (due to anti-vaxers) the expectant mum has said she wont be anywhere near the other mum or their child until her child has all the jabs.
That said the current government has just introduced new legislation that says if your kids ha
Re:Does it matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
That said the current government has just introduced new legislation that says if your kids haven't had their jabs you lose all child related wellfare. Dependent on your income that could be as much as $15k a year per child.
Good. If I'm paying for someone's kids, I want them to at least have a chance of being healthy.
Fatality rate of measles can be high (Score:3)
In the US, with proper care and diet, measles is about .5% fatal or less to someone who was not vaccinated. Even if you don't die you've got a significant (~1%) chance of having some sort of brain damage (I'm including deafness/blindness in "brain damage".)
If you have a vitamin A deficiency, though, measles can be up to 25% (or so) fatal.
Measles isn't a joke and like polio, we should eradicate it if we can.
--PM
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That's something I've also noticed. Internet conspiracies have very mobile goalposts, so while their conclusions are always the same, they frequently manage to adapt and change to continuously counter facts. If you hit on last years version of the conspiracy (in this case, autism as opposed to 'too many too soon' or some other such excuse) then you're the one they call a dummy because they're totally over that and on to something else now. Completely countering them (not that many will accept being demon
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Measles DID kill many people prior to vaccination being available. The most common deaths were for young children though so yeah it probably didn't kill many grandparents as they never had a chance to live long enough to become grandparents.
As I have said many times, having children is hereditary; because chances are if your parents did NOT have any neither will you. But, in the case of measles remember it also tends to cause men to be sterile if caught at the wrong age. Tim S.
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But, in the case of measles remember it also tends to cause men to be sterile if caught at the wrong age.
Close, no cigar. You're thinking of mumps [wikipedia.org] (the other 'M' in MMR).
Pity ... (Score:2)
It's a pity we have to spend research money on crap like this.
It diverts resources from useful things, so that stupid people who think Jenny McCarthy is a fucking credible source of medical information can still choose to be stupid people and not listen to facts.
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Re:How do we state findings? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:How do we state findings? (Score:4, Insightful)
It would be more accurate to say "12th study confirms no link between MMR vaccine and autism", with a subtitle of "versus no studies showing a link"
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http://www.antivaccinebodycoun... [antivaccinebodycount.com]
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No, the correct headline is "Study finds immunized siblings of autistic children not at higher risk of developing autism than non-immunized siblings of autistic children."
Additionally, this study says the precise opposite of what you said the headline should read, finding that siblings of aut