I welcome any opportunity to debunk this rumor. It’s particularly pernicious because kids who aren’t vaccinated become little time-bomb vectors of disease. This fact points to potential health hazards for many communities.
A health risk created solely by selfish and uninformed parents who are making very serious decisions that can easily bring harm to their children and others based on faulty data. If you believe this blatant untruth and don’t get your kids vaccinated because of it, you really need to do some research from sound scientific sources.
I don’t want to die of some childhood disease becuase you are ignorant and frightened.
From the link:
Theodore Dalrymple reviews Paul Offit’s book on the anti-vaccination crusaders:
Paul Offit’s new book, as readable as a good detective novel, tells the story of how autism, a disorder of psychological development, came falsely to be blamed first on the MMR vaccine and then on thimerosal, a preservative found in several vaccines. It is a tale about bad science, worse journalism, unscrupulous political populism, and profiteering litigation lawyers.
I think you should do BETTER research. NO one should be vaccinated.
Comment by viola — November 24, 2008 @ 11:40 am
I am curious as to why you would die due to my ‘ignorance’ and ‘being frightened’? Are you up to date with your boosters? If so, well you’re safe then, no? If not, well why not? Precisely which disease would kill you?
I am not sure I would classify myself as selfish and uninformed.
But to each his own.
Comment by mamawork — November 27, 2008 @ 7:10 am
Boosters? Adults don’t get booster shots for basic childhood diseases like mumps, measles, etc., unless traveling abroad or other exceptional circumstances. When a population of unvaccinated children cause an outbreak of one these diseases, the potential end result for adults includes fatality.
Please do some basic research on epidemiology and common medical practice as well as fatality rates of various diseases for different age groups before making a flippant, and incorrect, statement.
And, “no one should be vaccinated”? Really. Maybe you should head to a third world country where no one is vaccinated and witness for yourself the suffering among the young and old alike from diseases that vaccination has all but eliminated in first world countries.
I stand by my statement of selfish, uninformed, ignorant and frightened.
Do take Wikipedia for what it is but use a search there for “autism and vaccines” to get started. Here’s the actual medical consensus as of late 2008 as taken from that exact search:
The scientific consensus—including scientific and medical bodies such as the Institute of Medicine and World Health Organization as well as governmental agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC—rejects any role for thiomersal in autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders. Multiple lines of scientific evidence have been cited to support this conclusion: for example, the clinical symptoms of mercury poisoningdiffer signficantly from those of autism. Most conclusively, eight major studies (as of 2008) examined the effect of reductions or removal of thiomersal from vaccines. All eight demonstrated that autism rates failed to decline despite removal of thiomersal, arguing strongly against a causative role.
Comment by davidkirkpatrick — November 27, 2008 @ 9:09 pm
Hello Dave
I do not have all the answers — Just a parent’s two cents on the discussion.
What troubles me about the vaccination discussion is that (most) of the Medical community takes it as FACT that there is no link. Without knowing the cause, how can something like vaccinations be eliminated as the cause?
When trying to solve a problem – logic would say that you look at each possible cause and figure out if is related to the problem.
I would love to see an independent study done comparing the rates of autism in vaccinated children vs un vaccinated children.
Wouldn’t a study like that make sense?
If there is no difference, wouldn’t that put this issue to rest?
Comment by jeff — December 9, 2008 @ 6:34 pm
I am curious. Perhaps you can help me understand better. Are you concerned about herd immunity when it comes to children not being vaccinated?
From what I have understood about herd immunity, *life long* immunity is required for a threshold percentage (each disease has a different one) to create and sustain herd immunity.
Do you know for sure that the vaccines for childhood illnesses like measles, mumps and chickenpox confer life long immunity?
I agree that the childhood diseases are much more dangerous for adults.
I am still trying to find out how long vaccine immunity lasts for, for each disease (it is reasonable to expect that each disease could have a different duration of immunity after vaccination – and that different people with their individual genetic and environmental circumstances could react to the vaccines differently)
Anyway, my point is that it is not correct thinking to assume that mass childhood vaccination confers herd immunity (ie *lifelong* immunity for the whole population) for each and every disease that is being vaccinated for.
If you have any studies that have been done on duration of immunity for specific vaccines I would be very interested to see them.
Comment by mamawork — December 14, 2008 @ 12:38 pm