No, I really don’t think it is. But fine, take another example - excessive alcohol consumption and heart disease. What’s known is that too much drinking is associated with increased risk of high blood pressure and heart disease, but just because someone is in this or that population that has a higher than average risk of heart disease, doesn’t mean you can attribute any eventual heart conditions they get to their membership in that group.
My point was just that - assuming (a) autism is an epigenetic, and not purely genetic, condition, and (b) the ZOMG-autism anti-vaxxers were right that certain vaccines can act as epigenetic triggers to autism, then you still wouldnt’ be able to go “this person has characteristic X which only shows up in people whose autism was triggered by vaccine Y, so we know the cause.”
Preventive vaccination against smallpox only eradicated the disease. I guess that was pretty stupid to do. We should have only vaccinated against it during epidemics.
I never said vaccines caused Autism (did you even read what I said?)… I’m refering to the whole vax/anti vax discussion on a much more general level not in response to any specific claims… Again, why can’t we be rational here? Did you seriously just try to “shame” me for not jumping on either band wagon. Hah.
No, you are just continuing the BS that this is a debate. You are giving validity to conspiracy theories. And now you are trying to play the victim.
Edit: to summarize: there is no debate. And there is no claims to being ‘rational’ when you pretend there is a debate. I don’t give a shit if that website is screwed up. But I do care that you continue to spread the BS that there is a rational debate going on (which you pointed out in bold letters). There isn’t.
And yes, you should be ashamed for spreading this BS. The only difference between this and the “debate” that goes on with Obama birth certificate deniers or evolution deniers, is that this one kills kids because of its misinformation.
Vaccinations for pertussis start at 2 months, and assuming you stick to the schedule (there are three rounds spread over four months), are effective at protecting the child by 6 months. A mom who has had a recent DTaP vaccination can pass along antibodies that will protect the infant via breastmilk (but this is not a substitute for the vaccine).
The fact that cases are starting to crop up in California was one of the big check marks in the “pro” column for me breastfeeding the nubbin.
I vividly recall while in the hospital post- and pre-birth being asked no less than five times by five different nurses and doctors if I’d had my DTaP vaccination. It’s definitely on the radar out here. And what a previous commenter said: if my daughter died because some asshole decided their little Joffrey was too precious to immunize, I’m not sure what I’d take my anger out on.
What i am giving validity to is, well reality (and just to be clear for the umpteenth time I’m not talking about autism but broader issues that this discussion got into before I jumped in). Read the CDC counter indications list. There are a number of medically recognized scenarios where vaccines don’t make sense and aren’t recommended. As I specifically said previously this is an issue for a very small percentage of the population. But its real none the less and to pretend that there aren’t fact based scenarios where vaccines aren’t recommended is just plain silly. There are recognized medical scenarios where vaccines introduce more risk than benefits. Again this is a small subset of the population that is effected but it is still smoething that HAS to be acknowledged in this Debate (yeah I bolded that word - suck it). Don’t trust me. Trust the CDC. To try and shame people for stating facts just promotes ignorance and disinformation…
I haven’t seen this point raised, so I will do so. Why have the number and frequency of vaccines more than quintupled since the 1970’s? The current CDC schedule recommends 23 vaccinations within the first 18 months of life. That is fucking insane. As a child in the 1970’s I received roughly 5-8 vaccine shots over my entire childhood.
On top of this explosion in vaccines, one of the main problems is that the healthcare industry has prioritized profits over people for a long time. Trust in the industry has eroded and they only have themselves to blame. And that includes doctors as well. Many of the consultants, researchers and doctors that work on the CDC schedules have monetary conflicts of interest that bring their recommendations into question.
And to the commenter who claimed vaccines aren’t money-makers, are you telling me that Glaxo, Pfizer, etc. are manufacturing vaccines out of the kindness of their shriveled hearts? Of course they are profitable. They are not as profitable as chronic-use drugs, and that is why we’ve experienced shortages of certain vaccines over the years. All of which simply shows that greed is the driving force in the pharma industry – profitable drugs aren’t manufactured in sufficient quantities not because they aren’t profitable, but because they aren’t profitable ENOUGH. That is sick. We need a non-profit model for the health industry now.
Yes, and there are medical scenarios where anti-cancer drugs, heart drugs, vitamins, and anti-depressants can’t be prescribed. Is there a debate on that? Stop playing stupid. The only reason this was brought up is to muddy the water and try to create a debate about the safety of vaccines, which the conspiracy theorists relish. It is like bringing up wristwatches when discussing evolution. There is no debate on evolution, and ‘debating’ about wristwatches in a desert doesn’t change that.
This is a very valid set of points. While I deplore the anti-vaxers, I am also always suspicious when government mandates anything for the population that allows big business to make huge profits. We should have true national healthcare in which mandated vaccines are available at little to no cost to the patient, which would remove any suspicion of profiteering on unnecessary vaccines.
And just so you know where I am coming from–I am a cancer patient whose chemotherapy treatments alone have cost around $250,000 in just five months. If I didn’t have good health insurance, I’d already be bankrupted or dead. That would be quite a decision for a person to have to make, but I fear it must happen all of the time.
Are you implying that the CDC is recommending vaccinations for the purpose of making profits for pharmaceutical companies? Is there no other possibility why they might recommend them?
Missing from the summary:
What is the rate of autism diagnosis in the same time frame?
Less children getting vaccines (and results seen with increase in preventable deaths)… but autism rate hasn’t decreased? That sounds like some additional good data to dispel that “theory”.
If that’s the case,
Thanks Jenny
Sorry unvaccinated children
It wasn’t brought up to muddy the water but to clarify the nuances of REALITY. Acknowledging there are instances (again I want to specify here that are only issues for a small subset of the population) where vaccines aren’t recommended is especially important since we are talking about communicable diseases. No one cares if I don’t take my anti cancer or blood pressure medications because it doesn’t affect them. With vaccines there are many people who want to jump on board with manditory vaccines, delivered on a manditory schedule, so we are talking about a MUCH more complicated scenario. It only further complicates matters when people like you want to “shame” anyone who tries to lay out all the facts. Last time I checked shame wasn’t part of the scientific method.
Given how completely captured the USG is by Wall Street and big business it would not surprise me one bit. As I stated above, I detest the anti-vaxers, but when government mandates something that causes big business to profit, you should ALWAYS at least be suspicious.
Here is an example of what I’m talking about: I am a federal government employee, and after 9/11 they tried to mandate that all of us (several million, including contract employees) be given gas masks in case our offices were subjected to chemical attack. It was so transparently a ploy to allow the gas mask makers to make huge profits that I refused to ever be issued one. Now here we are 12 years later and all of that stupidity has been forgotten. Are we suddenly at less at risk of being gassed at our desks that we were back then? Of course not. The truth is that the whole idea was laughable from the very beginning, except for the whole screwing the taxpayers to issue unnecessary gas masks part.
So what is the debate on again? Oh, you don’t know? You’ve changed your view 10 times in this dicussion. Why don’t you read your initial post. Let me quote part of it:
Do you remember writing this? You are manufacturing a debate and then standing on the side cheering “teach the controversy!”
Vaccines are cheap. As a health intervention, they offer more bang / buck than any other public health intervention other than perhaps clean water supply. Many, though not all, are out of patent so very cheap indeed. There is money in this, but it is not a particularly high profit corner of the pharma industry.
In countries where you have a non-profit model for health, such as the UK or France, the taxpayer funded bodies that allocate health spend are VERY keen on vaccination. The evidence base is fantastic and cost effectiveness is even better.
The focus on vaccination is not being driven by big Pharma greed (though they have greed in spades) - it is being driven by doctors and public health experts that take a dispassionate view of the evidence.
The anti-vax scene only has traction because of the success of vaccination. If we lived with the prevalence of epidemic diseases in our communities that we did 100 years ago, the pretend risks would be laughed at compared to the ravages of illness people saw all around them.
I am in my late forties, but even when I was a child children in my village got rubella and whooping cough. It was commonplace for mothers to spend months at a time caring for a sick child with an illness we now never come across because of vaccines. In my parents childhood, polio was a visible scare on the community - that was a real risk, not this made up paranoid thing about autism.
Vaccines are one of the most important and positive contributions medicine has made to human welfare. The anti-vax movement illustrates both the extraordinary ability of human beings to delude themselves and also the parlous state of scientific literacy across whole swathes of society.
This seems pretty easy to deal with then. Look for a respected non-profit health organization and see if they have similar vaccinations recommendations. Compare with the CDC. Have you done this, or are you just spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the safety of vaccines?
Edit: you can also compare the vaccination schedules of countries with national healthcare systems.
Exactly. When I was going through chemo, a friendly acquaintance (with non-vaccinated children) was actually arguing that vaccines were so dangerous it was better for me to be exposed to the diseases instead. I thanked her for her honesty and told her I wouldn’t come within hailing distance of her family for at least a year to protect myself.
