State of Emergency Declared in Washington State Over Measles Outbreak (cbsnews.com) 355
An anonymous reader quotes CBS News:
The governor of Washington state declared a state of emergency Friday over a measles outbreak that has sickened dozens of people in a county with one of the state's lowest vaccination rates. Gov. Jay Inslee said in a statement that the outbreak in Clark County "creates an extreme public health risk" that could spread throughout the state...
Clark County Public Health has confirmed 30 measles cases since January 1 and identified another nine suspected cases. Twenty-six of the confirmed cases were people who were not immunized for measles, the agency said... Only 77.4 percent of all public students there complete their vaccinations, according to state records cited by the Oregonian...Most of the confirmed cases -- 21 -- were with children between 1 and 10 years old. Eight cases involved people 11 to 18 years old, and one case was someone 19 to 29.
Time magazines also reports that authorities in the neighboring states of Oregon and Idaho "have issued warnings to residents."
In November the World Health Organization warned that measles cases worldwide had jumped more than 30% from 2016 to 2017, according to AFP, "in part because of children not being vaccinated."
Clark County Public Health has confirmed 30 measles cases since January 1 and identified another nine suspected cases. Twenty-six of the confirmed cases were people who were not immunized for measles, the agency said... Only 77.4 percent of all public students there complete their vaccinations, according to state records cited by the Oregonian...Most of the confirmed cases -- 21 -- were with children between 1 and 10 years old. Eight cases involved people 11 to 18 years old, and one case was someone 19 to 29.
Time magazines also reports that authorities in the neighboring states of Oregon and Idaho "have issued warnings to residents."
In November the World Health Organization warned that measles cases worldwide had jumped more than 30% from 2016 to 2017, according to AFP, "in part because of children not being vaccinated."
Lets be antivax! (Score:5, Insightful)
What could possibly go wrong?
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Intelligence is heritable, so if they are anti-vaxxers or their direct descendants, we may want to give them an IQ test before we treat them. It may be better to let natural selection run its course. We'll all be better off in the long run.
Clark County is directly across the Columbia River from Portland, so we may be able to purge the entire metro area of idiots.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with your theory is that you can get a disease, that you have been vaccinated for, if you're hit with a huge amount of the infectious agent. i.e. If you sit down next to someone who's leaking measles all over the place
You've kind of answered your own question here. If the intelligent people refrain from sitting down next to someone who is "leaking measles all over the place" then the Darwinian principle would still hold.
Re: (Score:3)
You realise that it's infectious in its incubation period, before people get symptomatic, right?
Re: (Score:2)
If that condition was visually apparent, it could sort of work, but it isn't.
Re:Lets be antivax! (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with your theory is that you can get a disease, that you have been vaccinated for, if you're hit with a huge amount of the infectious agent. i.e. If you sit down next to someone who's leaking measles all over the place
You've kind of answered your own question here. If the intelligent people refrain from sitting down next to someone who is "leaking measles all over the place" then the Darwinian principle would still hold.
It's not necessary to sit next to a measles infected person, or even be near a measles infected person to get infected.
https://www.cdc.gov/measles/ab... [cdc.gov]
"Also, measles virus can live for up to two hours in an airspace where the infected person coughed or sneezed. If other people breathe the contaminated air or touch the infected surface, then touch their eyes, noses, or mouths, they can become infected. Measles is so contagious that if one person has it, 90% of the people close to that person who are not immune will also become infected.
Infected people can spread measles to others from four days before through four days after the rash appears."
Re: Lets be antivax! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Lets be antivax! (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude. The flu vaccine is efficient. Why do you think the doctors and nurses take them themselves every single year? The problem is the flu virus mutates rapidly and there are several strains of the virus, unlike other viruses, so the protection it provides is limited in time until the flu virus mutates again. It also needs to be produced months in advance (it takes time to prepare it).
Re: (Score:2)
Aren't many of the celebrity anti-vaxxers from the left and/or secular side of the political spectrum?
Yeah. Anne Coulter, total commie.
"Many" doesn't mean "all", it means "many". In fact, the outbreak right now is in the middle of a majority left population.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But lets be a bit clearer... when people say anti-vaxxer they immediately think of the dipshits who don't get their kids the measles or TDaP vaccines. They don't think about all the fundamentalist religious freaks who refuse to get the HPV vaccine for their kids... obviously op
Re: Lets be antivax! (Score:5, Informative)
This site [precisionv...ations.com] cites five different pollsters all indicating that antivaxx sentiment rates are evenly split between parties.
Anyone here trying to make this into a right/left issue is pushing a false agenda.
So no, not majority left (unless you are pinning your claim on the fact that Republicans are in a minority.
Re: Lets be antivax! (Score:4, Interesting)
You're describing Clark County, the conservative sinkhole across the river from liberal Portland.
Re:Lets be antivax! (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets be antivax! What could possibly go wrong?
VMS sales, for example?
Re: (Score:2)
This is just nature weeding out dumb people. Please move along.
I still remember people in my grandparent's age telling me their horror stories of experiences either they or former (read dead) members of their family had with measles.
Re: Lets be antivax! (Score:2, Informative)
Odd, I had the measles, as did my brother. It knocked me on my butt for about five days, and at half-speed for another five. And not even close to life threatening. Niether of us even saw a doctor because it wasn't necessary since they can't cure a virus anyway.
The caveat I'll admit to is that our ancestors are from the North German Plain. Measles has been endemic there since Caucasians got there. If I was Native American the results might have been worse. I don't know if their genes have been sufficiently
Re: (Score:2)
That's the experience of most people who got measles, which includes myself. There was no vaccine for it in 1956. But because the disease has a number of horrible side effects in some patients, we don't want anyone to catch it now that a vaccine exists.
Re: Lets be antivax! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an absolutely perfectly example of the adage "the plural of anecdote is not data."
Measles has a death rate of around 2 per 1000, higher in very young children and adults. The serious complication rate (like permanent hearing damage) is a bit higher. It's absolutely unsurprising that in your sample of two, neither of you died. But if measles was endemic in a country of, say, a third of a billion people... that's a lot of fatalities.
Re: (Score:3)
Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it.
Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything.
'Are you feeling all right?' I asked her. 'I feel all sleepy,' she said.
In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.
The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Indeed. Look what happened to the Romans. Hardest bastards in the world, then Constantine went all batshit and in next to no time they turned into wops and become a laughing stock.
Re: Lets be antivax! (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't say so. The part of the Empire he personally oversaw managed to last another 500 years. Which is more than the USA has been in existence so far.
Re: Lets be antivax! (Score:2, Insightful)
HPV vaccine you twat.
Re: (Score:2)
Your father needs to go to a different doctor, who is not an incompetent "pill doctor". He needs to have a "medication reset" wherein only the underlying life or health-threatening medical condition (if any) is treated with medication.
Re: (Score:3)
"proven to contain". No. That's a really weird conspiracy-theory stance. No. They are *known* to contain various substances because they have a *purpose*, and were specifically added to serve that purpose. Some are to act as a preservative (e.g. thimerosal--a form or mercury). Others are to act as an adjuvant (e.g. aluminium). Adjuvants stimulate an inflammatory response which causes the immune system to notice and react to the virus part of the vaccine, and develop a proper immune response. Without
Put Jenny McCarthy in jail (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be a good beginning.
The bitch has thousands on her conscience.
Better suggestion (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultimately that might undo some of the damage she has caused, far more so than simply putting her in jail.
Re:Put Jenny McCarthy in jail (Score:5, Interesting)
Put Jenny McCarthy in jail
It would be a good beginning.
Perhaps, but an even better beginning would be to start introducing legislation making certain vaccinations mandatory. Failure to comply should be a heavy fine or tax to help pay for bullshit like this. Continued failure to comply is direct child endangerment and society takes children away from parents for things like that. Oh, and manslaughter charges for any parents whose unvaccinated children are involved in the deaths of someone else, just to make sure the asshats know we're serious.
We need to stop tolerating irrational stupidity in this country under the guise of "freedom" or "religion". This is a public safety matter.
Re: (Score:3)
Vaccinations are available in the entire country. The problem is that state schools don't make vaccination a requirement everywhere because 'discrimination'.
Re:Put Jenny McCarthy in jail (Score:5, Informative)
Gee. You think that measles is minor? How about a little more information for you.
1990 - 630,000 deaths due to measles
2011 - 158,000 deaths due to measles
Due to vaccinations, measles for the first time in 2018 had under 100,000 deaths. In fact, it's possible that we can eradicate measles (smallpox was the first virus to be eradicated). But the anti-vax crowd are to put it politely idiots.
Re: Put Jenny McCarthy in jail (Score:5, Informative)
Most kids are vaccinated (thankfully), so of course most children who develop autism have also been vaccinated. There is no difference in the autism rates of vaccinated and unvaccinated children. There is no correlation. And no medically plausible causal link.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/reference/vaccines-and-autism/
Re: (Score:2)
Hah. I remember talking with people in my grandparents age. I basically got that like for every 5-8 kid family, 1 or 2 died from measles before they were 5, and like 1 or 2 died from the flu before they were 2. Those do not seem like good numbers for me.
Especially when you consider both the effects of having measles and the fact that even today there is no actual cure for it. Either your body fights the disease or you die if you get infected. The only good option is vaccination.
Re: (Score:2)
Hah. I remember talking with people in my grandparents age. I basically got that like for every 5-8 kid family, 1 or 2 died from measles before they were 5, and like 1 or 2 died from the flu before they were 2. Those do not seem like good numbers for me.
Especially when you consider both the effects of having measles and the fact that even today there is no actual cure for it. Either your body fights the disease or you die if you get infected. The only good option is vaccination.
LOL. 1 or 2 dead out of 5-8? Even wikipedia lists measles death rate at 0.2% of those infected. And people wonder why anti-vaxxers feel like they're being lied to by pro-vaxxers, and distrust their advice.
He is citing figures from a few generations ago O Ignorant AC.
A death rate of 1 in 500 is the death rate now with modern medicine, historically it was 10% or greater. But let's take that number which is making you "LOL", 0.2%.
There are about 4 million babies born in the U.S. each year. Without vaccination about 8,000 would be dying every year even with the best medicine, and tens of thousands would have crippling injuries. Laughing really, really loud now? And among those who can't use the vaccine because t
Re: (Score:3)
The death rate from measles in an unvaccinated and unchallenged population is just under 1 person in 2 (~48%). This for example would be the Americas or Pacific islands prior to contact with the West. The only reason it's less today is because of two factors. Firstly, evolution. In the West, where measles was endemic, we are genetically selected for tolerance to it. Same as for certain influenza strains, the black death, and other historical nasties. Why? Because all the other people are *dead*. We
Re: (Score:2)
If there was aa causal link between vaxination and autism, you would have a point, but there isn't.
Re: (Score:2)
Stating a single statistic doesn't give a full picture. What is the rate of autism in non-vaccinated children? Then we would have something to compare. If the rate is the same then it sort of disproves your point.
Re: (Score:2)
Rate of autism in unvaccinated kids: 1 in 59.
Done.
Re: (Score:3)
Moron AC wrote:
It is an unfortunate fact of our society that you need a license to cut hair, and not to be a parent.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with your comparison is that the real issue is needing a license to cut hair, not parenting. The license only exists as a way to reduce competition in hair cutting, transferring resources from people who need haircuts (most everyone) to people who jumped through the hair cutting hoops (a small group with a lot of interest in keeping licensing requirements going), with a sizeable dead-weight loss to the economy from the wasted resources involved in getting the license and in less efficient hair c
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Rarely is measles fatal.
Only because people rarely get measles. The mortality rate is between 0.1 and 10%, depending on the country. Maybe 1 in 1000 to 1 in 10 is "rare" to you, but it seems pretty tragic to me when it is so preventable.
Re: Put Jenny McCarthy in jail (Score:5, Informative)
The statistic of 1 in 60 is for ALL children, vaccinated or not. A study done on 95,000 children, 15,000 of which were not vaccinated shows no link. There were actually more in the non-vaccinated group, but theorized that is due to parents who notice signs of autism before vaccination begins and then delay vaccinations due to fear that vaccines cause autism.
https://www.autismspeaks.org/s... [autismspeaks.org]
Re: (Score:2)
...1 in 60 vaccinated kids getting autism...
Which is no different from the number of unvaccinated kids who get autism.
Autism was first described as a medical condition in 1943. Before that, no records were kept on who was autistic. They were simply people who were "eccentric" enough to occupy jobs that nobody else was suited for.
Impetus (Score:3)
Want to Ignore It (Score:5, Insightful)
I just want to ignore the whole thing. If someone who chose not to get vaccinated gets sick, just give them some healing crystals and leave them alone.
But unfortunately, not everyone who gets sick will be by choice. The vaccines aren't 100%, so some people may get sick even with immunization. Some infants are too young to get vaccinated, and they can easily die if they get sick. Some people have medical conditions that prevent immunization, and they are also at serious risk.
So much as I would like to ignore the sick and tell them "I told you so," we just can't do that. Also, it's not fair to not take care of kids just because their parents are stupid.
It's time to say get a vaccine or don't go to public schools. The only exceptions should be kids with compromised immune systems that can't be vaccinated. If parents don't like it, they can save the schools money and homeschool.
Re: (Score:2)
What do California, West Virginia, and Mississippi have in common? They're the states that do not give any non-medical exemptions for vaccination. So it's well-established that we don't have to grant exemptions. It's time to stop.
Re: (Score:2)
"If someone who chose not to get vaccinated gets sick,"
The kids who will get sick didn't get to chose whether they get vaccinated. Their parents, on the other hand, were vaccinated years ago and are fine other than being homicidal maniacs.
Re: (Score:3)
It's time to say get a vaccine or don't go to public schools. The only exceptions should be kids with compromised immune systems that can't be vaccinated. If parents don't like it, they can save the schools money and homeschool.
School is not the only place where children interact, not to mention vaccination is not only relevant to children.
The question is whether unvaccinated people are a serious danger to the public health. The scientific consensus is yes, so vaccination has to be mandatory (except for medical reasons of course). Public health considerations must trump any personal freedom considerations.
Please consider the immuno-compromised. (Score:5, Informative)
A family we're friendly with have the most wonderful daughter, who went through a brain tumor and had chemotherapy until her brain was developed enough to use focused radiation to get rid of the thing. She's fine now, but for years she was immuno-compromised. An un-vaccinated child in school could have been a disease vector leading to her death.
People all around you have chemo, get autologous bone marrow transplants and spend a week with no immune system, etc. During that, your unwillingness to vaccinate can kill them. Not that killing your own kid is any nicer. Please get your family all of their shots.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm fine with people not getting vaccines but then the State should also not be required to admit them to a school unless there is a valid reason and a panel of independent doctors can provide proof to that effect.
Re:Please consider the immuno-compromised. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
You have to remember that the people deciding not to vaccinate are, in fact, complete sociopaths. A common 'rebuttal' to your line of reasoning is "I will not set my child on fire in order to keep your child warm." Yep, they actually think that the vanishingly small chance of an adverse reaction outweighs the substantial chance that measles would be a *death sentence* for cancer patients - the death rate among cancer patients catching measles is about 50%.
Out of sight out of mind... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nowadays, with vaccinations keeping these diseases under control, very few have had a family member who has been crippled, had a lifelong friend die, or even seen the afflicted in person. They lack the imagination necessary to place themselves in this world lost to medical progress and have become complacent, ignorant, and lazy with regard to the seriousness of the situation. It's absolutely disgusting.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't worry. As one antibiotic after another is rendered useless by overuse, we'll be back in a situation similar to the in a few decades.
Well, that is a worst case projection...no, a worst case projection has it next year, but that one's really unlikely. But the best case of we keep coming up with working antibiotics that don't have horrendous side effects, isn't very likely either.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
When the first vaccines came out, people lined up around the block and people fought shortages to keep up with demand. It was hailed as a miracle, and people couldn't believe they might finally be free of these unimaginable afflictions plaguing humanity.
Unsurprisingly, there were anti-vaxers at the beginning, too. They were afraid they would actually get the disease from the vaccine.
Overreacting? But... (Score:2)
To me this seems like overreacting, as measles did me no permanent harm. My ancestors were exposed to measles from way back. Other groups of people have found it fatal. Even in my group (North-Western Europeans) measles has been associated with massive increases in still-births and deformed births. And I'm not sure just how non-fatal it was. That I lived through it and my ancestors did, doesn't say how many didn't, even as recently as one generation back.
I suspect what should be done is strict quaranti
Thanks, anti-vaxx shitheads (Score:2)
Lets have a big round of applause for the anti-vaxx shitheads who've managed to help bring back a dreadful and deadly disease through their own ignorance and stupidity.
So yeah, don't listen to 99.99999999% of all epidemiologists, doctors, and researchers, instead listen to a known genius like Jenny McCarthy, a washed up MTV dating game hostess.
Her film 'career' (cough) in such amazing works such as Diamonds, Scream 3, and Santa Baby means that she surely knows better than all those egghead scientists. I me
Get Child protective services on the case (Score:2)
I would like to see refusing to vaccinate your kids defined as child abuse. CPS rates you as an unfit parent and takes your kids away.
I just noticed something (Score:2)
All of the antivax cranks in this thread are ACs. What does this say about their willingness to debate?
from Twitter (Score:5, Insightful)
"If my kid is not allowed to bring a peanut butter sandwich to school, your kid should not be allowed to bring an easily preventable disease to school."
That pretty much covers it.
Re:30 in 7.4 million (Score:5, Insightful)
30 cases in 26 days in a State of 7.4 million people is a state of emergency?
Exactly. It would make so much more sense to wait, and let the situation spiral out of control before acting.
30 cases among 474,643 people (Score:2)
The governor is not communicating perfectly, but he is helping people understand the need for immunization.
Re:30 in 7.4 million (Score:5, Informative)
Regarding your supposition that those ill were unimmunized... yep, spot on.
Age
1 to 10 years: 21 cases
11 to 18 years: nine cases
19 to 29 years: one case
Immunization status
Unverified: four cases
Unimmunized: 27 cases
Souce: Clark County website [wa.gov].
TL;DR: The whole outbreak appears to have been rather preventable, but you apparently can't immunize against stupidity and willful ignorance.
Willful ignorance, not stupidity (Score:2)
you apparently can't immunize against stupidity and willful ignorance
We immunize against stupidity through education. Like any immunization, it's not 100% effective but it provides herd immunity since educated friends and family also help you avoid stupid mistakes. Willful ignorance is the real problem.
Re: (Score:2)
"you apparently can't immunize against stupidity and willful ignorance"
The worst of it is the stupid parents are all immunized; it's the kids that are going to die.
Re: (Score:2)
You can totally immunize against stupidity (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
"30 cases in 26 days in a State of 7.4 million people is a state of emergency?"
In 2017, there were 120 recorded cases in USA.
In 2018, there were 349 recorded cases in USA.
So yes, 30 cases in 26 days in one county is a dramatic increase.
Re: (Score:2)
It is an easily transmittable virus. That is the problem if you don't control it early on.
Re: (Score:2)
Also those WHO stats include vaccinated people that's why the rates are so low. But try telling anti-vaxxers that.
Re: (Score:3)
30 cases in 26 days in a State of 7.4 million people is a state of emergency?
Well the fire was confined initially to just a pot on the stove, but that was very localized, so we didn't feel it required any immediate action. Then once the cabinets above the stove caught fire, it still seemed really localized, do we thought we should just wait and see. Once we forced out of the kitchen entirely we decided to call the fire department, if it still continued to spread. Well once the living room drapes went up, we thought that emergency action probably was needed, and we did call the fire
Re:Right wing religious nuts (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, Clark County is in the middle of Washington's opium country. Don't trust those vaccinations made by 'the man'. But hand me the needle with some unknown mixture of heroin and Fentanyl.
Re:Right wing religious nuts (Score:4, Informative)
Those aren't mutually exclusive. Clark County is SW Washington's conservative sinkhole.
Re: (Score:2)
positive thinking
I'm allergic to that.
Re:Right wing religious nuts (Score:5, Insightful)
This outbreak is happening in liberal suburbs of Portland.
Anti-vaxxers do not follow the normal pattern of political polarization. Instead, it is common among extremists in either direction. Left-wing anti-vaxxers believe vaccinations are a corporate conspiracy. Right-wing anti-vaxxers believe vaccinations are a government conspiracy. Moderates on both sides vaccinate their kids.
Re: (Score:3)
It's fine when people on the wings agree for the same reasons: some things are just obvious. If people on the wings agree with each other for radically different reasons (and disagree with the middle) that's a pretty good indication they're being massive dumbasses.
See also Brexit.
Re: (Score:3)
>50% of people voted for Brexit. Calling people stupid because they have a certain political view, is in itself stupid.
Re: (Score:2)
34% of people voted for Brexit. About 32% voted against it. The rest hadn't a clue what it actually was they were supposed to be voting for (the options given were no change, or magical unicorns that crap gold and make all your problems disappear).
That's why lots are disgruntled, as it's not really a representative number, considering abstentions. Certainly not a good figure to base changing the direction of an entire nation on.
And some people have political views that make absolutely no rational sense (
Re: (Score:2)
>50% of people voted for Brexit.
No, 50% of those who voted. Thing is there's quite a few people now who were ineleligible to vote at the time who are now of voting age and they're not happy.
And you know, the referendum wasn't binding. Binding referendums have much tighter rules and if it was binding it would have to be rerun because of fraud by the leave side. Trying to claim there's some sort of mandate is a real subversion of democracy.
There's a reason that binding referendums have tight rules. The le
Re: (Score:2)
Well, since nobody in the UK was allowed to join the EU as presently constituted (as opposed to a much more limited precursor institution), it seems that it's a one vote for not being in it compared to 0 to be in it.
Re: (Score:2)
Sheesh... "allowed to vote to join"....
Re: (Score:3)
The outbreak is in Clark County, the conservative sinkhole of SW Washington and the Portland Metro area. It is across the Columbia River, in a different state. They are also responsible for not allowing a new bridge to be built across the Columbia because there would be tolls on the bridge to pay for it, just like there were for the original bridge.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, but Clark County is populated mostly by people who prefer Democrats, including voting for Democrats [wa.gov] 52% to 48% in the last election. You are misinformed, probably because they may not be quite as left-wing progressive as other nearby urban areas, although that doesn't make them a conservative bastion.
Re:Vaccinations are bad (Score:5, Informative)
Vaccines haven't contained mercury for many years. Fake news.
Vaccines don't cause autism. This has been extensively studies and debunked. Fake news.
Not just debunked - **PROVEN** to be fraudulent (Score:5, Informative)
Andrew Wakefield et al concocted a scheme based on "litigation based testing" [wikipedia.org]:
Clear evidence of falsification of data should now close the door on this damaging vaccine scare ... Who perpetrated this fraud? There is no doubt that it was Wakefield. Is it possible that he was wrong, but not dishonest: that he was so incompetent that he was unable to fairly describe the project, or to report even one of the 12 children's cases accurately? No. A great deal of thought and effort must have gone into drafting the paper to achieve the results he wanted: the discrepancies all led in one direction; misreporting was gross. Moreover, although the scale of the GMC's 217 day hearing precluded additional charges focused directly on the fraud, the panel found him guilty of dishonesty concerning the study's admissions criteria, its funding by the Legal Aid Board, and his statements about it afterwards.
and
In a BMJ follow-up article on 11 January 2011,[24] Deer said that based upon documents he obtained under Freedom of information legislation, Wakefield—in partnership with the father of one of the boys in the study—had planned to launch a venture on the back of an MMR vaccination scare that would profit from new medical tests and "litigation driven testing"
Yep - the "father" of the "vaccines cause autism" HOAX seems to have agreed to split the profits with the families of the children in his "study".
How much were those projected profits?
Well, now that you asked:
the $43 million predicted yearly profits would come from marketing kits for "diagnosing patients with autism" and that "the initial market for the diagnostic will be litigation-driven testing of patients with AE [autistic enterocolitis, an unproven condition concocted by Wakefield] from both the UK and the US"
Finally:
In October 2012, research published in PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, identified Wakefield's 1998 paper as the most cited retracted scientific paper, with 758 citations, and gave the "reason for retraction" as "fraud".
The Lancet article that Wakefield used to start this scam has been retracted [thelancet.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm.. I think the flu shots still contain thiomersal, which has an organic derivative of mercury in it, but that's no problem. If you worried about the individual atoms that comprised a molecule, instead of its molecular traits, you'd never have salt (which is essential to humans), as it would both explode and poison you with the sodium and the chlorine that makes it up.
Thiomersal is safe as a molecule.
Re: (Score:2)
Use single-dose vaccines. (Score:2)
Scared of Mercury? Okay, avoid Mercury in vaccines (Score:2)
People who are scared of Mercury can have vaccines without Mercury.
Maybe we should not eat tuna.
Re:Vaccinations are bad (Score:5, Informative)
They contain mercury which is a neurotoxin.
Water contains hydrogen, which is an explosive.
Fortunately, chemistry doesn't work like that or smokers would die of explosions instead of lung cancer.
They also cause autism.
There is zero evidence to this.
And thiomersal was removed from most vaccines, not because there was any evidence it was harmful, it's just what the conspiracy theorists and antivax con-artists latched onto so the CDC asked manufactures to remove them. Of course the CDC missed the point, the antivaxxers went after thiomersal not because they have any evidence, they were just against vaccines and it was the easiest target.
Removing thiomersal didn't cause them to trust vaccines, it just caused them to switch to a harder to remove target [shotofprevention.com].
Re: (Score:3)
They contain mercury which is a neurotoxin.
Water contains hydrogen, which is an explosive.
Fortunately, chemistry doesn't work like that or smokers would die of explosions instead of lung cancer.
You're missing something far more fundamental. The MMR vaccine hasn't contained mercury for 2 decades (in any form since as you quipped ethylmercury and elemental mercury are not the same thing).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Immigrants are much more likely to have been vaccinated than the ignorant antivaxers in Washington state.
Re:Mix the anti vax idiots with (Score:5, Informative)
the 10's of thousands of medical unknowns flowing across our open southern border and it is no wonder measles, tb and such are making a real come back
Measles vaccination rate in America: 92%
Measles vaccination rate in Mexico: 96%
Measles vaccination rates by country [worldbank.org]
Also, you may want to look at a map. Clark County, Washington is a long way from the southern border.
Clark County is a prosperous suburb of Portland, and not many poor Mexicans can afford to live there. It is only 4% Hispanic, and they are not causing this problem.
Re:Mix the anti vax idiots with (Score:5, Interesting)
the 10's of thousands of medical unknowns flowing across our open southern border and it is no wonder measles, tb and such are making a real come back
Measles vaccination rate in America: 92%
Measles vaccination rate in Mexico: 96%
Measles vaccination rates by country [worldbank.org]
Also, you may want to look at a map. Clark County, Washington is a long way from the southern border.
Clark County is a prosperous suburb of Portland, and not many poor Mexicans can afford to live there. It is only 4% Hispanic, and they are not causing this problem.
LOL, Mexicans literally have to worry about sick Americans bringing diseases into their country!
LOL? (Score:2)
What's so funny, dude?
Yes, the people of Mexico should have a proper level of concern if there is an outbreak of illness among their northern neighbors that could affect them.
Re:LOL? (Score:4, Informative)
What's so funny, dude?
Yes, the people of Mexico should have a proper level of concern if there is an outbreak of illness among their northern neighbors that could affect them.
It's funny because of all the racist rhetoric in the US about "dirty Mexicans" bringing in diseases.
And yes, it's perfectly appropriate to "LOL" about serious issues.
What's inappropriate is laughing at the suffering of others or using humour to disguise offensive views [theguardian.com].
But using humour to point out a particular racist argument is flawed? That's perfectly legit.
Re: (Score:2)
And most vague unsupported general claims about statistics are just BS.
Your move.
Re: (Score:2)
Migration across that boarder has not been this low since 1971. The measles outbreak is clearly due to low takeup of vacination.
Re:Vaccine and Autism Link Is Rare But Does Happen (Score:5, Insightful)
The first word of that URL after the domain completely invalidates what you just said. Also, frankly, fuck you because you are hurting people indirectly by trying to convince them that vaccines are bad when they save a lot more lives then they could ever hurt, in all of history, ever possible.
Re: (Score:2)