Vaccines Don't Cause Autism

[Kylyssa]

I put up the first draft of my Vaccines Don't Cause Autism page and already I'm getting a shitstorm of private messages telling me I'm callous and unkind.  It's unfinished but I wanted to get it up before the first day of September.  Please drop by.

[Tank]

Spot on blog!

[Kylyssa]

Thanks, Tank!

[pinkocommie]

Very nice!  Shared it on Facebook.  

[The Magic Pudding]

My mother sometimes mentioned nursing babies with whooping cough when immunisation was discussed.
She didn't go into graphic detail, but I think I can fill in the gaps now.
Babies suffering shockingly for a few days and then death.
I imagine a young woman would carry such a memory all her life but wouldn't want to talk about it too much.
I and all my siblings were immunised.

[philosoraptor]

Thanks for posting this.  It's always bugged my shit that people spread misinformation about this.

[DaveD]

Also shared on FB. If I get any feedback I'll post it here.

[Kylyssa]

Thanks for the support, folks!

Thanks for posting this.  It's always bugged my shit that people spread misinformation about this.

And it's also annoying that they are so self-righteous about it.  I'm up to eight private messages and one forum comment (on Squidoo) telling me how unfair I'm being and that I have to tell the other side of the story.  The other thing they are saying is that it's a complex issue that I'm oversimplifying.  A few have suggested that my autism makes it impossible for me to put the proper weight to peoples' opinions.  I don't even get what they mean for sure - in a contest of science versus emotional opinion, science wins.  

Here's exactly how I see it, in a nutshell-
A crooked doctor came up with a money-making scam reliant upon the results of a study he conducted and fixed to get the results he wanted.  Said study was published and sensationalized in the media and now millions of people are failing to get their children vaccinated due to misinformation induced fear and some of those children are dying.  There really isn't an "other side" to it.  

Maybe it's that I'm autistic and I'm not getting what I'm saying on the page that's so offensive but it's essentially just the truth as I see it with a seasoning of my opinions on the matter.

[Squid]

The CDC did an extensive study looking into the vaccine-autism thing and concluded there was no link.  Also, it may be worthy to note that Wakefield was struck from the medical register in the U.K. but he moved here in 2001.  Unfortunately, here in the U.S. anti-vaccination groups have welcomed him with open arms as some kind of hero.  Very sad.

[Cecilie]

There's a Penn & Teller: Bullshit! episode about this.

[Tank]

The CDC did an extensive study looking into the vaccine-autism thing and concluded there was no link.  Also, it may be worthy to note that Wakefield was struck from the medical register in the U.K. but he moved here in 2001.  Unfortunately, here in the U.S. anti-vaccination groups have welcomed him with open arms as some kind of hero.  Very sad.

Your post may read that he was struck off before he moved to America. He has only just been struck off, when he moved to the US he was still officially a doctor.

[Businessocks]

I'll try to explain, Kylyssa, what might be the reason so many people are commenting on your blog that you need to consider "the other side."  I think it's wrong that they are blaming our autism for not understanding the emotional impact; that's just wrong.

But, I must admit, I do think it's an unfair statement to say that "millions" of people are refusing immunizations because of celebrities' opinions on them and the link to autism.  I think that the autism debate is a red herring to many non-vaccinating families.  I honestly have never met or talked to a single non-vaccinating family who made their decision based on a news story starring Jenny McCarthy.  Rather, these families have researched and read medical journals and reports and compared the numbers for themselves (one family I know has a dad who is an M.D.)

So even though I won't express the popular opinion here, I feel I'll try to explain that the issue really is much more complex.  In short, for many families, the problem with vaccines are the lack of true, scientific testing before releasing vaccines on the market.  You can find nutjobs claiming anything for or against vaccines.  What makes me sad about the vaccine-autism debate is that it takes the focus away from the unethical practices of vaccine manufacturers and real, known risks that parents (in my opinion) have the right to weigh in their decision to receive and reject certain vaccines and timing schedules.  And I also hate how the debate equates all vaccines as being equal and having the same risk-benefit numbers for very different populations.  

Take the Hep B vaccine, for instance.  Clearly, for adults and teens who may engage in multiple sex partners, for health workers exposed to potentially ill people, etc. the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks.  But scientific anaylsis of the risks vs. benefits for infants receiving the vaccine are very different.  Likewise, the polio vaccine, when first introduced, produced cases of polio.  In fact, the live virus vaccine was used in the U.S. until 1999; it took parents whose kids were paralyzed after receiving the vaccine to get the killed virus vaccine made the standard.  

On ethics alone, vaccines are often tested on populations that are poor and ill-informed, who believe these vaccines are being given to them out of compassion, not out of a desire to use them as guinea pigs.  All the time, the manufacturers are getting rich, and the western world doesn't have to risk their children.  I'll share this one quote:

Cleveland children, 1976

Fourteen years later, after isolated reports linking the virus and human cancers, Fraumeni decided to look at another group that had received contaminated vaccine.

The group had been the subject of experiments conducted in the early 1960s at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital. To determine the effect of different amounts of the vaccines, researchers at the hospital inoculated newborns from mostly lower-income black families with doses ranging up to more than 100 times the dose recommended for adults.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... z0yNSa26Ar

Time and time again, contaminated vaccines have been pulled; vaccines have been rushed to the public before proper scientific testing; scientists have sounded alarm bells about the hazards of using animal tissues in vaccines.  Still, the public is supposed to feel stupid for questioning them?  Or parents who opt out are depicted as ill-informed?  I don't think that's fair.  I'm not saying that's what your blog does, but I think it might be the impression some people who have not vaccinated may be reaching at yet another "Vaccines don't cause autism so get your kids vaccinated" argument.  

I wish all the science were in place about vaccines to make the decision easy for parents.  But I don't think it is.

[Kylyssa]

I'll try to explain, Kylyssa, what might be the reason so many people are commenting on your blog that you need to consider "the other side."  I think it's wrong that they are blaming our autism for not understanding the emotional impact; that's just wrong.

But, I must admit, I do think it's an unfair statement to say that "millions" of people are refusing immunizations because of celebrities' opinions on them and the link to autism.  I think that the autism debate is a red herring to many non-vaccinating families.  I honestly have never met or talked to a single non-vaccinating family who made their decision based on a news story starring Jenny McCarthy.  Rather, these families have researched and read medical journals and reports and compared the numbers for themselves (one family I know has a dad who is an M.D.)

So even though I won't express the popular opinion here, I feel I'll try to explain that the issue really is much more complex.  In short, for many families, the problem with vaccines are the lack of true, scientific testing before releasing vaccines on the market.  You can find nutjobs claiming anything for or against vaccines.  What makes me sad about the vaccine-autism debate is that it takes the focus away from the unethical practices of vaccine manufacturers and real, known risks that parents (in my opinion) have the right to weigh in their decision to receive and reject certain vaccines and timing schedules.  And I also hate how the debate equates all vaccines as being equal and having the same risk-benefit numbers for very different populations.  

Take the Hep B vaccine, for instance.  Clearly, for adults and teens who may engage in multiple sex partners, for health workers exposed to potentially ill people, etc. the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks.  But scientific anaylsis of the risks vs. benefits for infants receiving the vaccine are very different.  Likewise, the polio vaccine, when first introduced, produced cases of polio.  In fact, the live virus vaccine was used in the U.S. until 1999; it took parents whose kids were paralyzed after receiving the vaccine to get the killed virus vaccine made the standard.  

On ethics alone, vaccines are often tested on populations that are poor and ill-informed, who believe these vaccines are being given to them out of compassion, not out of a desire to use them as guinea pigs.  All the time, the manufacturers are getting rich, and the western world doesn't have to risk their children.  I'll share this one quote:

Cleveland children, 1976

Fourteen years later, after isolated reports linking the virus and human cancers, Fraumeni decided to look at another group that had received contaminated vaccine.

The group had been the subject of experiments conducted in the early 1960s at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital. To determine the effect of different amounts of the vaccines, researchers at the hospital inoculated newborns from mostly lower-income black families with doses ranging up to more than 100 times the dose recommended for adults.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... z0yNSa26Ar

Time and time again, contaminated vaccines have been pulled; vaccines have been rushed to the public before proper scientific testing; scientists have sounded alarm bells about the hazards of using animal tissues in vaccines.  Still, the public is supposed to feel stupid for questioning them?  Or parents who opt out are depicted as ill-informed?  I don't think that's fair.  I'm not saying that's what your blog does, but I think it might be the impression some people who have not vaccinated may be reaching at yet another "Vaccines don't cause autism so get your kids vaccinated" argument.  

I wish all the science were in place about vaccines to make the decision easy for parents.  But I don't think it is.

But you misread - it isn't a "vaccines don't cause autism so get your kids vaccinated" write up.  It's a "vaccines don't cause autism so the belief that they do is not a rational reason to skip vaccinating" write up.  It only addresses the people who choose to skip vaccinations based on that one myth.  It is only intended to address that single reason.  Millions of other people may skip vaccinations for other reasons, some of them reasonable but every reason doesn't need to be addressed on a page singling out a single reason.  The public isn't supposed to feel stupid for questioning vaccines in general but to question their own motivations if, and only if, their motivations for skipping vaccinations are based on all or part of the MMR study misinformation.

[Kylyssa]

When my brother died of it, meningitis vaccines didn't exist or weren't yet in use.  When my mother lost over half of her eleven siblings, vaccines were not routine.  Somehow, in the sixties, my brother and sister got measles even though my parents were vaccine compliant with all their children.  My sister suffers partial deafness due to the bout of measles.

Vaccines save millions of lives.

[Tank]

When my brother died of it, meningitis vaccines didn't exist or weren't yet in use.  When my mother lost over half of her eleven siblings, vaccines were not routine.  Somehow, in the sixties, my brother and sister got measles even though my parents were vaccine compliant with all their children.  My sister suffers partial deafness due to the bout of measles.

Vaccines save millions of lives.

I agree with Kylyssa. But Vaccination may harm or kill a few. It's a question of odds as ANY medical intervention represents some level of risk to the individual. The point about mass vaccination is that if the risk of the vaccination doing harm to any one individual is 1,000,000:1 you should expect 300 harmful events when vaccinating the population of the USA. However what if the odds of 'harm' were 1,000:1 per infection and the probability of infection was 25%? That would be 75,000,000 infections and 75,000 examples of 'harm' in the USA. A ratio of 75,000:300 or 250:1 of not vaccinating vs vaccinating.

The trouble is in the media. They will report the '300' cases of harm and not even think about the 299,999,700 that we not harmed and were protected from the disease in the first place. Undoubtedly for each of the '300' people harmed by a mass vaccination there is a personal tragedy involved, but the cost of not vaccinating is a personal tragedy for 75,000.

Smallpox is something we have never had to face and that is 100% down to vaccination. "The overall case-fatality rate for ordinary-type smallpox is about 30%" 3 in 10 people infected with Smallpox died.

Vaccination is a lottery for the individual, but it is one that we fail to play at our cost, as a community.