@#$%
There is anti-vaccine bull that’s leaving people vulnerable, and leaving populations vulnerable. There is also pro-vaccine bull that’s getting people infected with live vaccines, because people have unusual vulnerabilities and/or immune deficiencies, and don’t have access to health care.
http://howdovaccinescauseautism.com
An important contribution.
Someone who is getting vaccinated by definition has access to at least some healthcare. That said, if you’re a dirt farmer in the middle of the Congo and you’re getting vaccinated by some helicoptered in volunteer then yeah, maybe you should be concerned about your lack of access to health facilities in event of a reaction (although you would get the same reaction from individual shots, so I don’t see the advantage still), but in the developed world this doesn’t make sense. The incidence of complications is so low compared to the risk of getting the actual disease that it’s really a no brainer.
Nope. If your kids are in the U.S. and still young enough to be on the vaccine schedule during well visits, then they’ve never had the older vaccines with thimerosal: Thimerosal no longer in childhood vaccines since 2001.
The vast majority of parents that I have come across that are against vaccination are not hippies at all. Not by a long shot, a great deal of them are pretty conservative and into liberal studies (like English, Art, general Humanities, even philosophy) - meaning not well versed in science and immunology at all. In fact while they will easily and casually correct me on grammar and spelling without irony I have found them to be woefully ignorant about what science really is or how medicine deals with diseases. They are not a herd at all, because while I am friends with many we sure as heck do not follow their lead. As intelligent and well studied as they can be, this particular issue is a surprising perceived vacuum to me. I do think what is in common is that most of them are unaware of what their grandparents dealt with, children getting ill and the fear - as if they never spoke to them at all. I sure as shit listen to what my parents and their parents learned and experienced, they survived despite great odds - the diseases that they had before vaccination are terrifying. I am surprised they were able to be educated because of how much time they spent being ill and facing death.
Someone who is not getting vaccinated can still get infected, with live vaccines.
In the run-up to the Iraq War, the Bush administration used live cowpox for smallpox vaccinations for cops and soldiers; they then passed the disease to their families, to anti-war protesters [airborne?], and so on, not all of whom had access to health care, not all of whom were at risk of exposure to smallpox, and so on; and because not all of us had access to health care, we didn’t all get treatment [at first I assumed my eczema was just getting weirder] and medical journals underreport the resulting infections
Uh yes. I Iive in France where a mercury additive is still included in most vaccines for children. In fact only 1 doesn’t and you need to know which one it is if you want the choice not to have it used on your child.
My guess from how you’ve stated this is that you don’t know enough about how the immune system functions to formulate good questions. Can you express what you think is the physiological problem with too many vaccines? Maybe you’re different, but everyone I’ve encountered so far who raises this kind of concern just says something along the lines of “It just stands to reason.” What’s the reason?
Please read the analysis of the CDC’s own study data on the link between Thimerosal (mercury) and autism:
Good news - no more Thimerosal in childhood vaccines
Not so good - multi-dose flu shots, which are suggested for pregnant mothers, do have Thimerosal. You can’t get a single dose, Thimerosal-free, flu shot without making some very special arrangements. Which is not to say the same CDC link applies directly to mother/fetus as it does to direct injections but why take a chance when we could make single-dose flu shots available?
Politely, I enquire of your good self, why the very fuck not?
Vaccine “schedules” are anti-science, and linked to the antivax movement. It’s factless.
It’s not so bad either, there is absolutely no link between Thimerosal and autism.
If you don’t join in the excoriation of anti-vaxxers, you are not of the body. HERBERT! HERBERT! HERBERT!
Use these totally fair rhetorical tricks to get the most LIKES on your BANANA!
if someone sounds calm or reasonable, be extremely aggressive and rude so that you’re sure to persuade them of how right you are - that always works!
if someone mentions that they’d rather not take mercury in their body in any form, be sure to understand that totally means they believe in an autism/vaccine link. There are no other reasons not to like mercury! (Mercury is good and righteous, I’m bathing in it right now.)
be sure to congratulate your fellow hive mind members when they are exceptionally rude and tedious. That is the only way to make sure everyone gets vaccinated!
The CDC’s data and the doctors that analyzed and published disagree with you. I included the published study link - if you don’t want to read the whole paper, stick with the results.
Did you read your own link or just someone’s summary of it?
This is not the CDC’s own study–its one by David A Geier, Brian S Hooker, Janet K Kern,Paul G King, Lisa K Sykes, and Mark R Geier. They are affiliated with of The Institute of Chronic Illnesses Inc (14 Redgate Ct, Silver Spring, MD), Simpson University University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, 4CoMeD Inc, Silver Spring, MD, The Institute of Chronic Illnesses Inc., respectively, as your link clearly states. Incidentally, The Institute of Chronic Illnesses Inc seems to be located in a suburban house.
The only connection with the CDC is that the authors used the CDC’s VAERS database for vaccine adverse reaction reporting to do their study. Reports in VAERS are not subject to verification. This link discusses the problems with VAERS and, in particular, the problems with the Geiers’ use of VAERS.
Also, the Geiers are a case in which a bit of ad hominem is fair enough. You can read about them here. Mark Geier lost his medical license for giving the “chemical castration” agent Luperon to autistic kids without any sound rationale. David Geier is his son, who has no medical qualifications.
There’s a couple of issues with the study you link:
It’s authored by Mark Grier, a man whose license to practice medicine was suspended by the State Board of Maryland around 2007
The DTaP vaccine was available throughout 1991-2001 however the study you link looks at the years 1998 - 2000. The reason for selecting those specific dates is not stated.
The reason for selecting that date range is apparent when you note that:
everyone can submit data to the VERAS database (doctors and parents, members of the general public, people without children, etc)
“from 1990 to 2001 ∼75% of autism reports in VERAS were received at approximately the time of the publication of the British case series linking gastrointestinal symptoms, autism, and measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine by Wakefield” (1999)
I suspect if the same question from your linked study was asked about the years 1995-1997, then there would be no correlation between Autism and DTaP - and the correlation in the data between 1998-2000 is evidence of over reporting in response to the Wakefield study rather than a genuine correlation that existed before there was a public impetus to enter spurious records.
If you accept the data is valid and untainted then, the incidence of autism is tiny - there are 38 cases in the “high risk” thimerosal containing vaccine reported during 1998-2000 out of the 16,335,650 vaccines administered compared to 17 cases out of 14,794,210 “low risk” thimerosal free vaccines. The “excess” risk is about one in a million.
Alternatively, if you started out with a database that showed no link between thimerosal and autism, you could get the same “effect” that your linked study finds at p = 0.05, by persuading just twelve people to insert fake records into the database.
The VAERS link is an anonymous blog by someone who may or may not be as qualified as you claim the authors of the analysis. If you have a CDC published review of the quality of VAERS data, I would be interested to see it.
I don’t know any of the people who performed the study or their background - interesting claims about the Geiers’ from the same anonymous blog. I’ll have to look them up but frankly, they put their names with their science, while the argument against using VAERS & the claims about one of the authors is anonymous.
Since the publication is an analysis of VAERS data, it would be easy enough for the CDC to conduct their own investigation and refute it. The CDC has refused to comment on the article, it’s contents, or if/when it will be revising it’s Thimerosal info page.
You should probably investigate what VAERS is and was meant to represent.
Specific adverse events following vaccination are not necessarily events CAUSED BY vaccination. They are only events occurring in the same vague time period. Your conclusions are massively flawed (as is the study based on them) and you appear to not understand why this is the case.
Causality is pretty unimportant to the antivaxers, apparently.
To put it another way, if the 40 people who’ve commented on this thread each went to VAERS this evening and entered a record saying that their child had taken the thimerosal-free DTaP vaccine (VAERS code: 286) in 1999 and later developed autism (VAERS code: 10063844), we could reverse the findings of the study and make a new dataset that when analysed shows how mercury containing vaccines are highly effective at preventing autism.
Caveat emptor.
