Vaccine Doctor Dismissal

Posted on January 29, 2010
Filed Under Politics, Science | 4 Comments

The doctor who perpetrated fraud regarding a vaccine link with Autism will finally be banned from medicine. Yes it’s not done yet, but it looks like it’ll happen soon. It’s hard to underestimate the damage to children this guy has done. Not to mention the irrational panic he’s caused in parents. Those parents who aren’t vaccinating are causing outbreaks of whooping cough, mumps and measles and other diseases. Not only that but it’s led to a general distrust of vaccines such that we saw many parents not vaccinating their kids this fall for swine flu. Speaking as someone who spent a few weeks in the hospital because of swine flu, I know just how terrible that is. (And, months after I came down with it prior to Thanksgiving I’m still on oxygen at night!)

I think even worse is that people like Andrew Wakefield have led to a general distrust of science. Some of the scandals in climate science (however overhyped and outright misrepresented by the media) have also contributed to this. All of this in turn has lead to a lot more people adopting pseudo-science like homeopathy. In some cases, such as some highly dangerous alternative treatments for autism, the treatments are far, far more dangerous than even any theoretical danger posed by purported mercury in vaccines. What’s worse is that people don’t apply the same skepticism they have of medicine to these alternative medicines.

Most of these alternative treatments are based upon highly dubious or outright falsified theories of how the body works. They also have no testing of success beyond anecdotal evidence. If these people have these purportedly successful treatments, why not demonstrate it?

What’s worse is that they often sell to their victims the idea that there aren’t side effects. Even if we concede that they have positive effects why should we assume they are panaceas with no side effects? To say something has no side effects is basically to say that it doesn’t do anything.

It’s very sad just how influential these movements have become. While I think the media frankly bears the brunt of the blame for all this due to how it explains science I also think that the way we do medicine also contributes a great deal. Many doctors just don’t communicate nor do they ask leading questions. People don’t feel like they are being listened to or understood. Add in the fact that all of us have had to deal with incompetent doctors at times (I went through a slew before getting one I’m very, very happy with) and it explains a lot of the trust issues. Many studies suggest alternative medicine is as much a factor of people’s psychological needs that doctors just aren’t meeting.

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Comments

4 Responses to “Vaccine Doctor Dismissal”

I totally agree. If you would like to get an even better appreciation for vaccines, I highly recommend the book “Vaccinated: One Man’s Quest to Defeat the World’s Deadliest Diseases” by Paul Offit. It outlines the history of most vaccines and tells about what things were like before vaccines.

One particularly interesting thing he mentions is that after the rubella vaccine came out many schools for the blind and deaf were closed because pregnant women were no longer being infected with rubella.

I’ve been dealing recently with an aunt who spent her career as an RN and therefore should know better, who keeps trying to talk me into a whole raft of alternative treatments — like sticking my head in some guy’s box so he can shoot “vibrations” through me and restore perfect vision. She gets mad when I tell her it’s all bunk, and swears in the most irrational way that alternative medicines work. Her favorite story is that she kept taking some homeopathic “kelation” therapy despite the eye-rolling of the doctor who was treating her heart condition through conventional medicine. “And kelation worked!” she chirps. She doesn’t even seem to hear me when I point out that she was under conventional therapy the entire time, so how in the world can she say it was the homeopathy that did it, instead of the conventional medicine?

Anyway, thanks for linking to this story. The wider publicity given to this man’s fraud, and the more often we preaching “vaccinate!” the more possibility there is that somebody’s life will be saved because they listen to the rational voice instead of the hysteria.

And I’m glad you pulled through the flu, and hope that the need for additional oxygen passes soon, along with any other lingering symptoms. What an illness THAT turned out to be, despite so many people shrugging off the warnings as media hype.

Thanks for the heads-up about this story. I for one am so very, very grateful for vaccinations and what they have done for our lives. I think of the horrid diseases we simply don’t even know about because of immunizations. I’m not one who dismisses all concerns about vaccinations, but the existence of some risks in extreme cases truly are the exceptions in my mind and should be treated as such.

Ardis, oh, how I can relate to your experiences. I think many people mean well, but it can be dizzying how many alternative suggestions have come out of the woodwork–including voodoo (I kid you not).

My family members (on both sides) have lots of alternative medicine “quacks.” I’ve learned to just keep my mouth shut. But I think it’s become even more personal to me since coming down with h1n1.

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