Vaccines Again

Posted on May 12, 2008
Filed Under Politics, Science |

VaccineOK, I promise that forthcoming posts will primarily be focused on philosophy. I’ve got a bunch of fairly technical posts coming up. I wanted to comment a bit about all the controversy over vaccines though. It’s been a big topic of discussion at the various science blogs as well as being in the news a lot. (Primarily due to both Obama and McCain apparently supporting the silly autism/vaccine connection)

What drove me over the edge to write something was this latest post from Respectful Insolence on an outbreak of whooping cough at a Waldorf School. Read the link and scan the comments. There are some really good points made. The key point to recognize is that these “idiots” who don’t vaccinate their kids aren’t just a threat to their kids. They are a threat to your kids.

Having said that though I have a few other thoughts.

First we have to ask why parents are so terrified of autism but not all the diseases prevented by vaccines. Merely calling them idiots does nothing except to perhaps make them even less likely to listen to science. Almost certainly they aren’t being irrational. They may not be critical thinkers but that doesn’t mean they aren’t thinking rational. (Too many conflate those two) I think that the issue is that they have seen autism and are terrified of it. They probably even have friends, family or acquaintances with autistic children and know the heartbreak as well as the exhaustion and stress of carrying for an autistic child. The media fear mongering and sensationalism doesn’t help matters.

What they don’t see are children with measles, whooping cough, polio and so forth. They don’t really comprehend just how terrible those diseases were or just how high the mortality rate was from those diseases.

The solution? I think doctors ought put up a video somewhere in their waiting room with videos showing just what those diseases were like. It has to be something visceral that will reach people emotionally. Merely saying “these are horrible” is insufficient. Any of you who’ve seen documentaries on these various diseases know what I’m talking about. See a few of those and a small chance of autism won’t have the effect it does now.

The second thing that has to be acknowledged is that just because vaccine ingredients probably don’t cause autism is not to say vaccines don’t have an effect. I think there’s a bit of a false dichotomy going on. I think many of us who’ve had their children vaccinated immediately see a before and after change in our kids. You can’t just pretend that isn’t there. You have to explain it to parents.

While I have no evidence I suspect there’s quite a bit of trauma to at least a significant portion of vaccinated kids. I know that after seeing what happened to both of my children that I’m going to try and have my next child have their shots spread out a little more. That is having a cocktail of a whole slew of vaccines all at once might not be as good as spreading each vaccine out. Say instead of it all in one day have it done over a month. I don’t know if this is a big effect. But I have a hard time seeing the trauma as insignificant. It kind of bugs me how many brush this concern aside without any evidence themselves.

Even if there is nothing to this I think it would be very comforting to parents to at least have researchers acknowledge the issue and do some studies. (There may be studies but I’ve not seen any real discussion of them)

The ultimate point is that merely griping about this will solve nothing. If you want parents to vaccinate you have to educate them. And the way too many are doing this is at best futile and at worst counter-productive. The first step is to acknowledge that these people are behaving rationally based upon their understanding. Trying to force them to just accept dogma is the worst thing you can do. That is, if anything, part of the problem.

Comments

8 Responses to “Vaccines Again”

Much of the vaccine debate began at a time when many childhood vaccines were made with a mercury based preservative called thimerosal. Thimerosal has since been eliminated from childhood vaccines in California but, last time I checked, it was still included in flu and other vaccines.

Mercury is a toxic heavy metal.

“Critical thinking” quickly results in the conclusion that toxic heavy metals should NOT be given to infants and small children if there are other alternatives.

That doesn’t explain why there is still such concern. Mercury (in pretty small doses) was removed from vaccines but people are still acting like vaccines are the problem.

It’s not included in any vaccine I’m aware of outside of flu vaccines. (See this CDC page) Even with regards to the flu you can get vaccines without it.

Almost certainly you’re getting more mercury from your water supply than you are from the vaccine. And if you eat fish then you’re certainly getting far more.

Sure, we can debate “safe” doses for infants, but the truth is that no one really knows what a safe dose is because for very good reasons it is considered unethical to do drug trials on children and infants.

Common people are not chemists or doctors, they depend on the government and the medical community to keep them safe.

The reason there is still so much concern is that the industry failed to police itself and drug their feet about removing poison from it’s baby products. This raised skepticism to the point of a public outcry.

Howard, the tragic (to me) thing is that thimerosol is safe. It is not a form of mercury that is neurotoxic in the doses people are exposed to. It is a cheap, effective preservative that has been shown to be safe as a component of vaccines. Thimerosol was NOT removed from vaccines because of safety problems, it was removed because of public hysteria over autism. It has now been removed from vaccines for several years, resulting in increased cost of vaccines, no improved safety, no change in rates of autism, and no significant reasurrance of the public, who still are often fearful of vaccines.

As “E” said thiomersal was taken out of vaccines for children 9 years ago. No differences in the rate of problems occurred. That’s pretty overwhelming evidence that the mercury wasn’t the problem.

The problem is that people are still crying “thiomersal” years after it’s become a moot point.

As you said common people depend upon the government and scientists to keep them safe based upon best knowledge. Clearly they were. What isn’t clear is why they thought they weren’t. (Well, that’s a semi-rhetorical point sense a bunch of quacks and then media exposure created an unwarranted fear in people)

Clark,
It has been a few years since I looked into this issue but at that time one could not in good conscience assert that “No differences in the rate of problems occurred.” There were studies showing falling rates of autism following the removal of thiomersal. And, of course, a lot of money coming from the vaccine industry to counter these studies.

As the thiomersal was removed from childhood vaccinations the data became contaminated by new recommendations that children receive flu vaccinations which at that time also contained thiomersal.

Also, the question of dose is complicated by the increasing number of childhood vaccinations recommended say 10 years ago vs. when we were kids.

Yes, people are still crying “thiomersal” years after it’s become a moot point, because of a lack of trust. You may view them as ignorant or stupid, but in my view the vaccine industry with all their high priced talent was pretty stupid for allowing it to happen.

Vaccines are probably the single largest contributions to public health since sanitation. But people are people and the industry needs to learn to deal with it without winning.

Please point me to your impartial data.

There are quite a few studies now Howard. The evidence is overwhelming. It’s been covered in most science magazines. If you want links to the papers the wiki appears to have links to most of them.

8 Gerald Smith on May 13th, 2008 11:17 am

I think another point to add to this is the current American concept of living in a world of no risk/danger. Years ago, John Stossel did a show on risks in America. He asked some people in his audience: what if we developed a cheap and clean form of fuel, but it killed 2500 people a year, would that be acceptable. Most stated that even one death was unacceptable. Well, that fuel turned out to be Propane, which actually kills about 3000 people a year.
The fact that we attempt to live in an antiseptic world affects us in many other areas, too. Health care demands: should everyone be on their own (Libertarian view), should we provide basic care, or should everyone have Cadillac level health care provided, regardless of the cost?
People seeking perfect solutions from government is becoming a bigger issue, even though logic dictates that they will generally end up dissatisfied with the results, and perhaps even left worse off. Or they will continue in the attitude that government should provide perfect vaccines that do not harm anyone, and that the chicken in every pot tastes like prime rib.

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