More Fuel For The Vaccine Debate
Posted by WhiteCoat on September 12, 2008
I saw this table as part of an AM News article about enforcing vaccination laws that was just published a couple of days ago.
I don’t intend to start another good/bad vaccination debate. There are two reasons I am posting this table.
First, the statistics (if you believe them) show that these diseases are not “harmless” or a “nuisance.” Each of them caused multiple deaths every year.
Second, I would like to know how the antivax crowd explains the “ineffectiveness” of vaccines given that the number of cases and the number of deaths from most of these diseases has decreased by up to 100%.
No cases of polio whatsoever. Tetanus killed more than 80% of the people who had the infection. Now there are only 4 deaths per year post-vaccine. No deaths from measles, mumps, or rubella where there were almost 500 deaths per year pre-vaccine.
Now that less children are being vaccinated, measles is making a comeback.
That seems like a very good cause/effect argument to me.
September 12, 2008 at 7:14 am
Yeah, they may be effective, but I don’t want my kid to get autism…
Just kidding.
September 12, 2008 at 9:44 am
My understanding of the argument is that the data shows that the morbitity and mortality rates were already falling before the vaccines gained popularity and that there is an argument for the possibility of the death rates reaching current levels even without the vaccines. Also often cited in anti-vax posts is the possibility of re-classifying the diseases themselves. Whooping cough now more often labeled as bronchitis, polio as guillian-barre(sp?), etc. There are almost always old CDC charts and reports cited, and honestly, that’s all too dry for me to sort thru.
What are the dates on the pre-vax stats in that chart anyway? What role did nutrition and understanding of boosting the body’s immune system etc have on the number of deaths? (Like, if they’re from 1905, one would wonder if maybe they didn’t have enough vitamin A and C in the diets to help fight it off. OTOH, if it’s from 1970, that would be less of an issue and the data would seem more relevant to the current data.)
-lpnmon
September 12, 2008 at 9:47 am
I chose to vaccinate against diphtheria and tetanus, I would still choose to avoid the others. My family gets their tetanus/diphtheria shots regularly. My uneducated guess is that the outcome of most other diseases on the list (with the exception of polio) might be dependent on access to good medical care.
Hmmm…(tongue in cheek). More than 100 people die annually because of food allergies; maybe we need to outlaw food. Nearly 13,000 people died last year in alcohol-related vehicle crashes. We should go back to prohibition.
Nah…but in reality, the world is filled with dangers and threats. We cannot possibly protect every person against every threat, and I think we are going overboard with the number of vaccinations now required for children to enter school.
September 12, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Whitecoat - this is a timely post since flu season is soon upon us. Like a previous poster, you won’t change a strongly held position unless they have a family member suffer a preventable disease.
For lpnmon, I’ve given you a link to the CDC. It is written in simple English - not too dry at all:
http://www.hhs.gov/nvpo/factsheets/fs_tableI_doc3.htm
Since this is my field, I’ll address a few of your issues:
1. Why do some claim some diseases were declining even before the vaccines? Actually only a few diseases were declining - typhoid and tetanus being two. The decline in typhoid is directely tied to improvements in sewage systems in the early 20th century. This and good mosquito abate programs led to a significant decrease in yellow fever, which used to be an issue in the deep South annually. Tetanus was reduced because of the development in the 40s & 50s of rural hospitals. This gave access to emergency care to people who would otherwise not have had it. Prior to that, injuries which might have been dealt with at home or much later in a hospital far from home, could be dealt with rapidly. You weren’t even given a choice when your laceration from a piece of farm equipment was repaired - you got a tetanus shot.
2. Why does morbidity appear to decline, even in those who chose or did not have access to vaccinations, although they lived in areas with advanced healthcare? That is directly related to the advances in healthcare and pharmaceuticals in the last 70 years. Currently, we can keep your 3 year old alive and treat her meninigitis due to measles while she recovers from the measles and the possible secondary infection she might get, but we cannot avoid the complications that come with having meninigitis at age 3. She may survivie it, but with organs damaged. Prior to the era of intensive medicine and antibiotics, she would have died. These diseases, even when we can treat them, still are associated with significant permanent morbidity.
Likewise, when these diseases are allowed to continue to spread in a community, they have an impact on those who might have died before even being allowed to be exposed. Take the 12 or 15 yo child diagnosed with leukemia or lymphoma - that child might have immunity because he got his shots, but the immunity may be severely reduced due to treatment for his/her disease. When your child gets the measles or mumps and does not have an illness any worse than the one you had, you think nothing of it. But, your child probably passed that illness to hundreds of people without you even knowing it due to the nature of how it is contracted and the incubation period which allows transmission before actual disease shows up. That trasmission may occur to someone you may or may not know who is immunosuppressed - the child being treated for cancer, the person with rheumatoid arthritis, the child with asthma or many othr illnesses.
Decades ago - in the 40s or 50s, a child with leukemia died. Now, we can treat them, they can be in the community (along with many, many other people who are undergoing life saving, but immune reducing diseases) and are vulnurable. When you choose to not vaccinate, you are saying you don’t mind allowing your child to transmit a disease to people you don’t know and possibly having them die from that disease. Of course you don’t want that - no one would. But, the prodromal time for any one of these preventable infectious diseases keeps you from knowing that.
3. These diseases are not being reclassified at all. These diseases have specific organisms associated with them. The issue with pertussis (whooping cough) being incorrectly diagnoses often as bronchitis is because very few physicians have ever seen a case of pertussis, particularly in adults. Often, these patients are sent to specialist after specialist until they end up with an ENT or ID who actually does a culture of brochial fluid. Then, they are put on antibiotics. Surprisingly, in my practice, it is older teachers who are the most vulnurable to this.
As for polio and guillain barre - they are also two different diseases with different presentations. I can’t imagine a physician who would represent one for the other.
Does nutrition have any effect at all? Sure, good nutrition allows you to have a better immunize system. However, you will not develop antibodies to anything unless you are exposed to it. As I’ve said before, your child may get the chickenpox and not have a bad reaction - or your child may get the chickenpox and have an encephalitis which leaves him blind. Or, he could pass that chickenpox along to his neighbor, unknowingly in the two weeks prior to getting his rash, who is being treated for a lymphoblastoma and doesn’t have immunity because we’ve deliberately knocked it out. Now, while your son scratches and might develop just permanent scars, the neighbor child might develop systemic varicella which could kill him.
I hope it puts it in some perspective.
Marilyn, its odd that you choose DT only for vaccination. The risk of diptheria in this country is low and tetanus is also low and a preventable disease even after exposure.
Vaccines are not an attempt to prevent all ways to be maimed or die - certainly there are thousands. You might want to risk the odds of surviving an illness which is preventable, but in our global society, you or your family getting a preventable illness might be a death sentence for someone else. There are many other infectious diseases which are equally deadly and ones we have very poor treatments for - tuberculosis being one of the biggest threats right now.
Vaccines are a public health issue. That is why schools require documentation of vaccination, same as healthcare workers are required to have documentation - or you sign a waiver. Of course that is your right to waive, but if you spent some time understanding epidemiology you might understand why it is so important to have these vaccines to allow us to move forward beyond where we were in the early 20th century.
Spend some time on the CDC website, particularly the area of vaccines. There is continual study on them and the actual risks of vaccines has gone down - directly related to the progressively developing changes in how the vaccines are manufactured.
As for autism - this is such a hot and delicate topic, I hesistate to comment. Thimerosol was removed from all childhood vaccines in January of 2003. Yet, in the 5 years since, new cases of autism are still being diagnosed. Autism is now classified as being one of the 5 disorders that fall under the Pervasive Developmental Disorders. Although it would be nice and easy to explain these disorders away with environmental exposure (like thimerosol), it is now being found to be far more complicated than that.
I recognize it is each parent’s choice, for right now, to vacccinate or not vaccinate their child. But, when you or your child is diagnosed with a life threatening illness and part of the treatment involves damaging your immune system, you will look at each person who coughs a bit differently. Each cough might be the cough that lands you in the ICU. Yes, we might be able to keep you alive, but there is always a price to pay & it doesn’t involve money.
Sorry for the length - this is my life’s work and so poorly understood by many.
September 12, 2008 at 1:54 pm
[...] Filed under: Forensics, Social Commentary — williamthecoroner @ 2:54 pm Hat Tip, WHITECOAT. It’s amazing, how you don’t see these childhood diseases, and how willing people are to [...]
September 12, 2008 at 2:41 pm
There is a certain % of people who get off thinking that their knowledge of a condition or phenomenon is different, special or more insightful than what is understood by experts using evidence to be the case.
It doesn’t really matter to them what evidence shows, they get some sort of weird secondary gain thinking THEY did something SPECIAL for their children that those conformist ignorami who vaccinated did not.
September 12, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Speaking of overprotective parents: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/ODD_ANGRY_DAD?SITE=AP
September 12, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Oh hell, I’m sorry. Posted this on the wrong blog…
September 12, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Wow - I was surprised at how fatal Tetanus was. I have seen one case in my career - a guy from Mexico. He did OK probably due to the intensity of care he got in the unit.
September 12, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Marilyn, its odd that you choose DT only for vaccination. The risk of diptheria in this country is low and tetanus is also low and a preventable disease even after exposure…
…There are many other infectious diseases which are equally deadly and ones we have very poor treatments for - tuberculosis being one of the biggest threats right now.
Anonymous, I appreciate your informative and insightful post. I do not discount expert advice, but I am also aware that in a room of 4 experts there can be 5 different opinions. Makes it difficult for a layperson to know who should receive their trust.
A couple of things…tetanus is not so rare when one lives alongside horse manure. My backyard is full of it :-). As for the tuberculosis, my dad had it in 1967 (I was 13), some foreigner brought it into his workplace. He was put in the county hospital for 3 months, and spent another 6 weeks isolated at his parents’ home because he was not allowed to be near his children. We lost relationships because at the time tuberculosis was thought to be a “dirty” and “lower-class” disease. We also lost property because he was the sole breadwinner, it was difficult to make ends meet. The TB wasn’t rare to *us*. Is there a vaccination against it? Nope…
So…I still would evaluate each individual vaccine, research it, and decide on a case-by-case basis which I would choose. One of my children has considered entering medicine. I have in no way put any kind of “fear” into her to shun vaccination, she needs to be in a condition to protect her patients. So I am not completely anti-vac, nor am I in favor of shooting kids with 26 vaccines before they are 5. I would not choose for my kids to be someone else’s lab rat, and some vaccines are still unproven. The Gardisil now required for middle-schoolers in my locality is one example of that.
September 12, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Marilyn, what do you think about what I said? Do you feel good about yourself when you scoff at the experts? Do you think this makes you a better parent because, despite given you lack of scientific knowledge, you were able to “evaluate” all these things and reach a special non-standard conclusion?
If you want to be a good parent, give your kids a hug every day and read to him a half hour a night. Don’t mess with his health or the health of the community and put Whitecoat’s kids at risk of preventable diease. Really, this isn’t the way to set yourself apart from others.
September 12, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Nurse K,
First of all, I may not be a doctor or nurse but I did major in biology in college and am capable of interpreting information. I am also capable of realizing that every expert is not always correct. As I have said many times, I worked with a mainstream physician when coming to my choices for my children. I am not a backwoods, greasy-haired hippie swimming against the societal stream.
As for my children, they are adults now. And guess what? They are getting vaccinated. My son received a bucketload of vaccines before he headed off to Iraq (so a lot of YOUR sons won’t have to) and my daughter who is going into the healthcare field is also getting her vaccinations so as to protect the patients with whom she will be in contact.
Just because one has a degree (or several) does not make one smart. Don’t patronize me. I have heard too many health “experts” have to backpeddle on their various pontifications; I am not putting my health completely in their hands. How many drugs/vaccines have been removed from the market because they turned out to be dangerous? Quite a few.
I seriously doubt that Dr. Whitecoat’s children are in danger from mine. Unless they get close to one of them right now while they are shedding their measles virus WHICH CAME FROM THEIR VACCINATIONS.
September 12, 2008 at 8:13 pm
I forgot to mention…for Nurse K…I would have been more accurate to use the term “non-professional” opinion rather than “uneducated” opinion. I do possess an education.
September 12, 2008 at 8:31 pm
My point exactly. “They” have been wrong for 50 years—thank God you’ve come along with your biology degree and passion for health to set all these pro-polio, pro-measles vaccine people straight. Just completely ignore the numbers in that little table in the blog post.
Note, of course, that your children magically both ended up at vaccine clinics when they were not having to obtain your consent to receive them.
I dare you to try to tell someone from my grandparents’ generation that the polio vaccine, for instance, was a bad thing. Everyone knew someone whose child was at least crippled from that disease. I still have patients occasionally who are in their 60s or older who have walked with canes and leg braces their whole life from it. Try to convince them that the world was better off when children were in iron lungs and walking in leg braces.
Again, thank you for your service to humanity, Marilyn. As someone who is myself immunocompromised and who had pertussis in high school (my vaccine probably kept it reasonably mild, but still months of no diagnosis and that really awesome cough really sucked), I thank you. I wonder if it was an anti-vac person’s child who gave it to me at Target or something.
September 12, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Marilyn,
I don’t mean to be picking on you and i do think you are educated. But, as with technology - my years of eduation don’t alow me to make all my components work the way they’re supposde to. Fortunately - my son went in to thank business and all I need give him is a nice dinner with a bottle of good wine.
Now - if one of your children received MMR - yes, its a live virus, just like Zostavax - but its an “attenuated” live virus. That means the pathogen has been “attenuated” or changed such that the virus can allow your child to develop immunity, but the virus cannot provide disease since that portion has been removed. Specifically, MMR is one of the few vaccines with very, very few side effects. It is often recommended during travel vaccine recommendations since measles is still endemic in many parts of the world. So - no Whitecoats kids are not at risk from your kids since they are not shedding live,complete vaccine - they are shedding live, ATTENUATED vaccine.
The most recent live vaccice - Shingles has been studiend endlessly. There have been NO documentate cases in which the shedded virus has caused any varicell cases.
Certainly, tetanus is not rare in your area. But, now it is common to inocculate at each and everytime one of you needs to access medical care. Since the vaccine provides antibodies at good levels for 10 years and our record-keeping for the last 10 years has been so good - it becomes a moot point.
Actually, there is a vaccine for TB, but it has issues. Patients who have received BCG (in the Orient in the 50’s & 70’s) will always test positive for a TB skin test & will require a chest X-ray. There are other issues related to TB in these patients - you can see those issues on the CDC website.
The issue right now, is treatment for TB. That is one reason quinine has been removed from the US market. Is was used “off lable” for years for leg cramps with no well controlled, double blinided studies, but is still of use on areas of endemic TB as a cheap treatment.
Again - this is a global isssue. It is not one of just your own kids, the kids in your communities or the person sitting beside you on the airplane.
It has become a public health and global issue.
You are educated, obviously. So use your background in biology to go to the actual doubl-blinded, controlled studies. You learned that in your education when you received your degree. You know how to read a study and how to evaluate if it is valid or not. Go find out yourself. There are multple studies cited by the CDD, NIH and WHO. Yes - they are promoting world health so they cite those sutdies. But, when you really look at websites which are anti-vax, look into the citations and use your education to put it to the test of significance. They don’t stand up to controlled, double blinded, large volume studies.
I wish you & your family the best!
September 12, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Let’s, for the sake of argument, say that you COULD get measles from the attenuated vaccine (even though you can’t). Still, with the vaccine in widespread use, there is a 99.9% reduction in the number of cases as there were pre-vaccine.
September 12, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Some numbers on measles in the USA (from the CDC Pink Book Appendix G, the underscores are used to maintain table formatting):
Year__Cases___Deaths
1961__423,919_434
1962__481,530_408
1963__385,156_364
(^^ first vaccine licensed)
1964__458,083_421
1965__261,905_276
1966__204,136_261
1967___62,705__81
1968___22,231__24
1969___25,826__41
1970___47,351__89
1971___75,290__90
(^^^ MMR licensed in USA, never contained thimerosal)
1972___32,275__24
1973___26,690__23
1974___22,690__20
1975___24,374__20
1976___41,126__12
1977___57,245__15
1978___26,871__11
(^^^ Measles Elimination Program started)
1979___13,597___6
1980___13,506__11
1981____2,124___2
You can check the CDC Pink Book Chapter on measles about the Measles Elimination Program.
What I find interesting in regards to measles is the statement that “sanitation caused a decrease in the diesease”. Which falls apart when the data shows that after a reduction of the use of their version of the MMR in Japan that measles returned to the point that college campuses had to be closed to stop the spread of infection. Also, measles was almost gone from the UK, but due to Wakefield’s shady lawyer paid research the takeup of the MMR was reduced and measles is now endemic in the UK.
September 13, 2008 at 9:58 am
Nurse K,
It is not recommended that immunodeficient people get certain vaccines (even attenuated ones) because the vaccines can make them sick. It is theoretically possible for a person shedding attenuated virus to transmit that virus to an immune deficient person.
Btw, your blog is great. I love it and visit regularly.
September 13, 2008 at 10:11 am
I’m not a week post-op from a bone marrow transplant, Marilyn, I’m diabetic. I’m not worried enough to stay away from MRSA central, but I have extra glucose in my blood streams at times to feed any and all bacteria or whatever that may not otherwise multiply as fast. I can’t imagine how dead I’d be now if I had to take care of these dozens of influenza cases yearly without a flu shot or pneumovax shots. There’d be no one left to take care of these people or we’d all work sick.
I’m glad you like the blog; however, dude, read what I said above. 99.9% reduction in # of cases and this WITH an increase in the overall population/more densely populated cities. The vaccines work and we’re living longer. If you can’t see this, I really do question your intelligence, sorry. If you’re not unintelligent, there is some secondary gain you’re getting from this.
September 13, 2008 at 10:53 am
Anonymous,
I did not think you were picking on me. I truly appreciate the way you lay out your information, one of the better-expressed pro-vax supports.
The bottom line for me was that my kids reacted badly to vaccines and so with my top-ten medical school pediatrician we discussed and decided that not vaccinating would be best for my family. When it comes down to a choice between damaging my child or protecting someone else’s my kid comes first to me, as is the case for any parent, I’m sure . What bothers me most in this argument is that for most “pro-vaxers” this is a “one-size-fits-all” proposition, and that is never the case when dealing with the human body. I often use my own issue for an example of this; I do not respond to the “standard accepted” treatment and it took a lot of “outside-the-box” thinking (please forgive the over-use of cliche!) to get me symptom-free. And it takes a lot of arguing and pleading to stay that way.
I don’t read many of the anti-vax sites for the reason you offer; a lot of the argument doesn’t hold up to science.
September 13, 2008 at 11:59 am
Marilyn, I too appreciate your choice & your right to make your choices.
However, it is very important to get your facts straight. The reasoning behing immunodeficient folks not getting vaccines is dependent upon which vaccines you are speaking of.
Lets say, you’re speaking of a live viral vaccine - Zostavax (shingles - varicella zoster). To give that to someone who is immunodeficient, lets say someone who might be undergoing chemotherapy, yes - that vaccine could indeed cause disease. It has not happened, but it could. We know it has not happened because chicken pox or herpes zoster is a reportable disease and a physician is obligated to report it to their health department (again - monitoring with real data).
It is not possible to give someone attenuated vaccine and have them shed live virus - that is just not possible! When circumstances have arisen when someone has gotten a disease (this happened most often with polio decades ago and most recently with influenza) after receiving an attenuated vaccine, we do studies on the actual DNA of the disease causing agent and what was given (which we already know). Each and every time, the DNA is different. That means, the patient was already infected at the time they received the vaccine.
We know there can be huge fluctuations of DNA in viruses (which is why there is no vaccine currently for the common cold - again caused by a very smart virus which can mutate rapidly). In the case of influenza, it is always a set of 3 strains, determined by the World Health Organization which tracks influenza. That disease always starts in the Orient and travels to South America then to Afria, Europe & North America. The viral strains change (mutate) as they travel, person to person. The WHO looks at which viral strains cause either the most frequent illness or the most frequent death, or both & chooses the top 3. Sometimes, and last year was evident of that, the choice of the 3 viruses was good, but by the time the illness arrived in the US, the strains had mutated so much they were not among the most frequent strains which were causing illness here. Some viruses are more stable and those illnesses which are caused by bacteria (meningococcus for example) are very stable with regard to their DNA so it is much easier to make a vaccine.
However, that is not the reasoning behind not giving an attenuated vaccine to an immunodeficient person. The reason there is because someone who is immunodeficient cannot make their antibodies. The vaccine becomes useless since they CANNOT make antibodies - its not that it will harm them - it will NOT. Their problem is not being able to manufacture antibodies.
This is why Zostavax (the shingles vaccine) right now is in such short supply. It is now recommended that any adult who has never been vaccinated with Varivax (varicella - childhood chickenpox) receive Zostavax PRIOR to being treated for any form of cancer. Why? Because we know that cancer treatment will reduce their own immune system (since most people prior to the chicken pox vaccine have immunity due to having had or been near someone who has had the disease), we want to Boost their immune system. Just undergoing cancer treatment is enough to allow the virus to come out from the neural ganglia where they reside - all your life - and cause the adult form of varicella zoster - otherwise known as shingles. This is a disease becoming more and more a problem the longer people live and the more they are treated for things like cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, etc and it can be a debilitating disease. Sometimes, people will come through it without long-term issues. Most often, they are left with neuropathic pain and if it has affected their head, particularly their optic nerve - they can lose an eye. All because they got chicken pox when they were young.
I hope I have been able to clear up some misconceptions about who and who should not receive vaccines, the difference between attenuated and live, implications about receiving an illness in childhood and what that can do to you when you are 70 or 80.
The fact that your now grown children reacted badly to the vaccines was probably not related to all vaccines. We know the pertussis which was part of the childhood DPT series caused significant side effects - headache, fever, chills, etc. Sometimes it resulted in hospitalization. The cause was normally due to the pertussis (whooping cough) component. It was later discovered this was because the whole cell (although attenuated - remember, this is a bacteria, so will not mutate once attenuated) was causing the side effects. This issue nearly brought all vaccination to a halt world wide. So many patients suffered side effects, no company was willing to manufactur vaccines. In Japan, reasearchers had developed an acellular pertussis which did not cause these problems, but the issue had already made both patients, physicians and most importantly drug companies wary. Nearly all drug companies went out of the vaccine business due to fear of financial losses.
At the same time, the VAERS program was begun (Vaccine Adverse Effect Reporting System). This is a program, which is still in effect, allows protection for the manufacturer, person administering - physician, nurse, pharmacist, and the patient in the event of a side effect. With regard to pertussis, almost all countries now use acellular pertussis (currently Adacel - a combination of diptheria, pertussis & tetanus) as their form of innoculation. The funding for the VAERS program is from a tax paid by the manufacturer on each DOSE - not each vial, but each DOSE. Any reaction and subsequent damages due to a vaccine are automatically litigated through the VAERS program, which you can see on the CDC website.
Your pediatrician (it doesn’t matter if he/she was in the top ten or lower ten of the medical schools) at the time were wary of any repercussions of vaccines. Most pediatricians knew, at least in the 80s that reactions were due to the pertussis component and chose to continue childhood vaccines but using DT, not DPT. Yours did not and now your children are having to be vaccinated as adults.
The development and history of vaccines is an interesting one, and one frought with many misconceptions - partially due to not knowing the physiology (ie, you being unaware that an immunocompromised person just cannot manufacture their own antibodies, thus an attenated vaccine is useless), what parts cause allergy, what the actual words mean - attenuated, DNA shift or drift, etc.
There is no criticism here, but I always encourage folks to go to the actual websites you can trust - CDC and NIH are two. There is much, much misinformation on the internet and without some kind of basis in how to evaluate it - it all looks believable and equal. Its not. I encourage anyone to think “outside the box” - just don’t think so far outside physiology. And, I disagree with you, that we as parents must also think of the world globally - for our children will be in that global world even if they choose to not move from the street you live on. You may think you are making a choice of putting your child first, but without thinking of who might sit next to them on the school bus, the airplane or the movie theater - you really are not thinking of your child at all.
September 14, 2008 at 10:22 am
Nurse K,
I’m glad you like the blog; however, dude, read what I said above. 99.9% reduction in # of cases and this WITH an increase in the overall population/more densely populated cities.
When did I ever say I thought that vaccines weren’t working? I only said MY choice was made in conjunction with MY doctor. And that I think we are OVER doing it when it comes to vaccinating small children. Are you telling me I should have chosen to damage MY children to protect someone else’s? Not in my lifetime. There are good reasons for some people not to vaccinate. I am arguing for the freedom to make educated choices, not for those whose choices are based in hysteria. Although I do think there is a little blind hysteria on the side of the rabid pro-vaxers as well.
September 14, 2008 at 11:58 am
What blind hysteria? Did you know that the growing number of unvaccinated children has lead to a resurgence in nearly eradicated diseases like measles?
Your children were protected because they weren’t exposed, due to the majority of kids (the herd) receiving vaccinations. When fewer people vaccinate, the “herd” protection is diminished. Your kids were lucky to have been born before antivax hysteria took hold. Your grandchildren and great-grandchildren may not be so lucky.
IMO, people who choose not to vaccinate should be required to home school their children.
September 14, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Marcia…
IMO, people who choose not to vaccinate should be required to home school their children.
I did.
As for blind hysteria, when a person makes a choice to protect their own children from harm under a doctor’s supervision (as my family did) it is unseemly to attack that person with the same venom that one attacks the also-hysterical counter-cultural anarchist-types who shun all types of medical intervention.
And, when an argument descends into name-calling and insulting a participant’s intelligence the argument is over.
September 14, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Marcia…
IMO, people who choose not to vaccinate should be required to home school their children.
As I said, I did…and forgot to mention oh my gosh I have science majors in the family.
September 14, 2008 at 3:01 pm
What was the “damage” that happened to all your children which, by the way, didn’t happen when they got the shots as adults?
The reasons the vaccines are working is because the vast majority of all kids are vaccinated, Marilyn.
September 14, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Nurse K,
I acknowledge that vaccines have spared much death and injury from terrible diseases.
Why is it so difficult for you to acknowledge that there are some individuals who should avoid or defer vaccination?
September 14, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Just wondering what the reasons were…You didn’t answer my question.
September 14, 2008 at 5:51 pm
The reasons the vaccines are working is because the vast majority of all kids are vaccinated, Marilyn.
That’s exactly what leads the antivaxers to feel so comfortable forgoing vaccines for their kids. The vaccines are working; the diseases are practically eradicated; therefore, it’s safe for them not to take risks on their kids. Or so they think.
Welcome back pertussis and measles. What’s next?
September 15, 2008 at 4:34 pm
What was the “damage” that happened to all your children which, by the way, didn’t happen when they got the shots as adults?
Not damage. Reaction.
Temperature of 104+, rigid, jerking, spazzing, flailing little body, screaming till blue in the tiny little face…Tylenol didn’t help…
Happened again after the “half-dose” experiment. With my next batch of kids, I’ll get them all vaccinated and bring them to the ED and let one of the nurses rock them for 24-36 hours.
And pray they don’t end up with neurological problems or other brain damage after repeating the entire series.
September 15, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Forgot to add:
Your turn to answer my question, Nurse K.
September 16, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Hmmm, I wonder if Unherdof read this post?
September 16, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Regarding the ‘health care will save the unvaccinated anyway’ argument- i hope your kids are and remain healthy. Measles, mumps, etc end up killing sickly people, and there isnt a whole lot the best of medicine can do when a disease infects a kid with a compromised immune system.
September 16, 2008 at 2:48 pm
How disingenuous that you don’t want to start a debate and promptly start a debate.
Nevertheless, did it ever occur to you that there’s a middle ground? I have a vaccine-injured child, one that has been recognized as such by the NIH. He was genetically immune-compromised from birth and shouldn’t have been immunized because of his poor immune status. Unfortunately, his immune-compromised status wasn’t diagnosed before he was immunized. I think that’s because it’s very difficult for pediatricians to spot these kids, who I think may be more common than most people realize.
But there’s an answer that doesn’t involve ending vaccinations. Why can’t we test antibodies to see which vaccines are needed? That’s what we do with our child now. It’s expensive but the cost would come down if it were more common. We’d probably find better, easier, less expensive ways to do it. And we’d have the side benefit of being able to identify which people lose vaccine coverage at earlier ages and need boosters.
I don’t want to sound too harsh but, frankly, it’s not just anti-vaccine people that make debates like this difficult. You’ve added your share of fuel to the fire.
The reason for making this post was to obtain an explanation on why there was such a marked decrease in communicable disease shortly after vaccines were introduced.
I dislike the name calling and pejorative comments, but I don’t have the time to police every comment on this blog. I have actually deleted a couple of the more egregious comments in this thread.
I wouldn’t have an issue at all with people showing immunity in lieu of receiving vaccines. Many schools and healthcare employers do this already. The goal is to reduce the pool of susceptible individuals, not to give everyone shots just for the heck of it.
If disagreeing with and reality testing the theories of antivaxxers makes me disingenuous or an instigator, then I am guilty as charged.
September 16, 2008 at 2:49 pm
People who don’t vaccinate their children are murdering everyone their sick child transmits a disease to.
Lamont
I don’t know that I would go that far.
I don’t believe that the antivaxxers intend to have their children get others sick.
September 16, 2008 at 3:08 pm
We moved to Mexico when my son was 7 years old. He missed his MMR booster shot. He contracted German measles when he was 9. A year to the day later, he got the mumps. 10 days later my husband contracted mumps for the second time in his life. It took him a year to recover fully.
The virulent strains running rampant in a 3rd world country along our border is a national threat, if you ask me.
September 16, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Lamont,
I think it’s the other way around… a person who does not vaccinate their child puts their child at risk of being “murdered” by someone who is a carrier of the disease in question. Everyone else has been vaccinated.
September 16, 2008 at 3:48 pm
I am sorry, but what exactly is the point of the chart? I mean, it lists 2004 deaths and 2006 cases and pre vaccine cases and deaths. It really does not have good information. If they were trying to be honest, they would have used either all 2004 or 2006 information.
I also questioned why they used different data from two years. It makes me suspect that some of the data from 2004 may have been less compelling. Nevertheless, I am still impressed at the decline in disease shortly after the advent of immunizations.
September 16, 2008 at 3:57 pm
If the so-called “murdered” child had been vaccinated, he or she wouldn’t be endangered by a “disease carrier.” If both parties had been vaccinated, there would be no disease to transmit.
Unless the child is genuinely immunocompromised or can’t be vaccinated for some other valid medical reason, (determined by doctors, not by the parents’ sixth sense), the non-vaccinating parent bears responsibility for the outcome.
September 16, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Vaccines like the MMR should be compulsory except for those with a valid medical reason. This is a public health issue and, like quarantine for infectious disease cases, the rights of everybody else in the general population are more important than the “rights” of paranoid and, in most cases, ignorant parents. To counterbalance the compulsion with vaccines, tests for people who are immuno-suppressed and thus genuinely cannot be immunised without severe risk should also be compulsory.
This is a case where the experts know best and the parents do not. There are some parents who are capable of understanding the issues and making an informed decision. It sounds like Marilyn is most likely in that group. However when dealing with the general population laws must be structured not to deal with the few but with the many. The reality is that the majority of people lack the training in the scientific method to appreciate the studies, most people’s understanding of statistics is so rudimentary as to render pointless discussing things like averages, standard deviations and confidence intervals which are necessary to follow epidemiological papers. Furthermore, like truly informed political discourse, there is no rational reason for people to gain the necessary understanding of the scientific method and statistics to be able to appreciate what is going on.
There will always be a few tragic cases where people who should not have been vaccinated slip through the net and have a bad reaction. However if the current situation continues there will always be more—a lot more—tragic cases where children act as a modern-day Typhoid Mary and infect others due to not being vaccinated. With the current hysteria and decrease in vaccination rates we are potentially going to see the re-emergence of killer diseases in the western world which could and should have been eradicated. Do we want the few tragic cases or do we want a lot more dead people on our hands? I vote for the former and the only way to achieve it is to make vaccinations compulsory.
September 16, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Please stop with quoting ‘experts’, experts are researching cancer, experts are studying obesity and diet, there is controversy on all of it, and not enough concrete answers or those problems would be solved. I stopped clipping news with ‘experts’ opinions being tainted because there was so much of it. “Experts” are still human and thus are biased one way or another. You are fooling yourself if you do not understand that simple fact.
I do have a question for the experts here, I am looking for a genuine answer instead of name calling and or subject changing. Why would a vaccinated child have to worry about a disease he has been vaccinated for?
The effectiveness of vaccines is not 100%. Look at influenza shots. A small subset of healthy fully immunocompetent patients getting flu shots will still get the flu.
One of my kids is immune deficient. She still gets the vaccines, but still can’t mount the response that a child with a normal immune system could. She almost died from an invasive strep infection that normally would have been covered by the Prevnar vaccine.
In addition, there will always be those that cannot take vaccines for medical reasons. We are protecting them - and ourselves - by reducing the potential reservoir for disease.
September 16, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Anonymous, thank you so much for your measured, well-informed, well-reasoned and informative comments. Have you considered (or perhaps have you already) written anything for publication on this topic? I’m not talking about scholarly journals but in media read by parents — parenting magazines or websites, say, or general-circulation newspapers, magazines. You have a gift for clear, reasonable explanation of the compelling facts on this issue and I think you could do a great deal of good in dispelling parents’ fears and getting at least the more reasonable and responsible folks to rethink their anti-vaccination attitudes.
September 16, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Mark Buehner Says: “…. Measles, mumps, etc end up killing sickly people, and there isnt a whole lot the best of medicine can do when a disease infects a kid with a compromised immune system.”
Not always, Roald Dahl’s daughter was healthy until measles killed her due to encephalitis:
http://www.blacktriangle.org/blog/?p=715
Also, I found this article recently on PubMed. Sorry, I only have the abstract (don’t know how many links I’m allowed, so I’ll give the information to find it):
Vaccine. 2001 Dec 12;20(5-6):949-53.
The frailty hypothesis revisited: mainly weak children die of measles… it concludes with “We doubt measles infection ever eliminated mainly weak children; it always killed a broad spectrum of children, most of whom were “fit to survive”. Hence, it seems unlikely that measles vaccination has contributed to the survival of more frail children.”
September 16, 2008 at 6:42 pm
WOW! No cases of black plague either!
That solves it…not!
On a more serious note, I always find it strange that people get alarmed when they find out my kids are not vaccinated (at ALL), but why should they worry if their kids have been?
September 16, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Is there a source for information on bad vaccine reactions? Is that data actually collected, collated, and made available?
I have relatives who don’t vaccinate, which disturbs me….although I share some of Marilyn’s hesitance about too early, and too concentrated, a schedule.
What I want is to be able to compare current negatives of vaccination to the former negatives of not having vaccines…..
September 16, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Mr Anonymous: When you choose to not vaccinate, you are saying you don’t mind allowing your child to transmit a disease to people you don’t know and possibly having them die from that disease.
That’s nonsense of course. Anyone who has been vaccinated can still be a carrier, and can still get the disease.
And on forcing parents to vaccinate their children: ok, as long as the government also forces the vaccinated children not to engage in behavior that gets them AIDS, gonorrhea, cervical cancer and diabetes; and secondly if the government makes people pay for their own behavior, instead of the taxpayer having to cough up the money to rescue those enaged in the modern lifestyle.
September 16, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Earl: Is there a source for information on bad vaccine reactions? Is that data actually collected, collated, and made available?
Too lazy to look it up, but the US government does. The 1 in a million risk for vaccination has caused about 20 deaths since 1970, or maybe that was only polio and not all cases. Post the link here if you find it, shouldn’t be too hard.
What you have to realise is that one in a million chance of death is higher than the chance of winning the lotto.
September 16, 2008 at 7:09 pm
An excellent description of what it is like to acquire tetanus and die from it can be found in a book called “The Great Bridge” about the Roebling family and the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. The elder Roebling got tetanus from an work injury and died in incredible agony. This should be mandatory reading for the anti-vaccination crowd.
By the way, I wasn’t a “weak child”, but I got measles and nearly died from it. If anyone attempts to make vaccines for diseases like measles unavailable to any future grandchildren of mine because of some crank health theories, they had better be running very very fast, from me.
September 16, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Earl, one more thing. I have even heard it claimed (haven’t seen the numbers or checked the references) that vaccination against smallpox has caused more deaths than smallpox itself. That would be interesting to check as well: smallpox was eradicated because the carriers were killed. Interesting strategy…
September 16, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Marcia: Unless the child is genuinely immunocompromised or can’t be vaccinated for some other valid medical reason, (determined by doctors, not by the parents’ sixth sense), the non-vaccinating parent bears responsibility for the outcome.
I agree Marcia. Everyone should. I suppose you also agree that the taxpayer shouldn’t cough up for people with irresponsible life styles. And while we’re doing that, let’s also stop with government pensions for those who didn’t save, after all they had 65 years to do it.
September 16, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Rehnja,
We are alarmed at non-vaccinating parents because of the concept of herd immunity. If a very small percentage of parents (e.g. 1%) opt out of vaccinations it is unlikely that a disease epidemic will result; however, if a significant minority of parents opt out (e.g. 25%) then vaccine-preventable infectious disease epidemics will (not might) occur. Herd immunity is thought to require 80% + vaccination rates. If your attitude towards vaccines spreads to significant numbers of other parents, the vaccine-preventable diseases will spread to the children of our country.
September 16, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Berend De Boer,
Smallpox was the deadliest infectious disease known to mankind. In the 20th century alone it killed over 300 million people. Vaccinia immunization did not cause more deaths than smallpox itself.
September 16, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Berend,
Non-sequitur. You’re talking about financial penalties for unrelated issues, and neither of those scenarios is in line with my thinking. I may sound like a fascist, but I’m a progressive fascist.
As others have said, it’s a public health issue. And please read Herd’s post, directly below yours, for a succinct explanation of why vaccinations should be mandatory for everyone except those with a valid medical excuse.
September 16, 2008 at 9:17 pm
I’d be happy for others not to vaccinate out of ignorance–well, not happy, but happier–if that meant they then forfeited insurance coverage for all the diseases they don’t vaccinate for.
September 16, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Marcia, I find it astounding that people want to inject stuff into other people’s children and call that an issue of public health. Let’s hope that day never comes.
And it can’t be a public health issue because if you vaccinate your kid, he or she should be safe right? And if the vaccination doesn’t work, you vaccinate again till it works, or invent vaccination that always works.
As you point out, only fascist/communist regimes have ever claimed they had the right to life and death over someone’s children.
The whole term, herd immunity, already points to the view that sees people as nothing more animals and that they can be treated as property of the majority.
September 16, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Herd, you’re right. My reply should have been a bit more extensive, I referred in particular to the vaccination with a live virus, before safer alternatives became available. So we’re talking about the 19th here I suppose. But as I said, I haven’t looked up the number. And the numbers from the 19th probably also included those killed by vaccination, so just a total from a given century isn’t helpful without a good break-down.
September 17, 2008 at 1:01 am
Berend, the reality is that it is very, very much a public health issue. As I said in my earlier post it is the same sort of thing which leads to compulsory quarantine for infectious disease cases. Public health is dealing with threats to the health of a community, ie an entire group of people. If there are sufficient unvaccinated people wandering around that herd immunity is reduced below the critical level which, as others have indicated, is somewhere in the region of 80%, then a disease which was for all practical purposes eradicated can come back. The MMR-autism link falsehood has lead us to a situation where we are coming far too close to that 80% point. Measles has already increased significantly in frequency in both the US and UK. People have died as a direct result of what I referred to above as paranoia.
It is not just Facist and Communist regimes which have a right of life over people’s children though. I suggest that cases where Jehovah’s Witness parents have denied their young child a blood transfusion and then been overruled when their child has been made a ward of court be researched by those who do not believe me. I am not claiming that the US state has a right of death over people’s children, which would be truly horrific. What I am claiming is that the US state has a right to protect the health of the general population, as long established by quarantine laws, and that the same doctrine, for the same reasons, needs to be applied to vaccinations of children.
As for intervening in people’s lives to stop them doing stupid things, that is not something which governments should often do. Where they should do it is where those stupid decisions will have a significant impact on the rights of others. Not wearing seatbelts in a car is a good example. In an accident a person who does not wear a seatbelt will likely become a human projectile and stands a very good chance of injuring others in the process. Therefore it is not for the health and safety of the individual themselves that such laws are in place but for the health and safety of others. The same can be said about CCW laws. In order to protect the health and safety of others CCW laws require background checks, courses on firearms law, target shooting tests and the keeping of fingerprints on record. Where the course of action will only result in the person taking becoming eligible for a Darwin Award then the government has no business interfering.
September 17, 2008 at 7:46 am
There are two comments that I would like you to consider. First, vaccines are moving from infectious diseases to sexually transmitted diseases. Gardasil is one such vaccine. The fact is that there are ways to prevent the STDs other than vaccines, and the decision process should be different when deciding whether to get one. There is one other STD vaccine that is mandatory already, and that is hepatitis B. Also, the vaccines are moving from life-threatening diseases to those that are more benign. Varicella is one such example. Treatment for rhinovirus and otitis medea for infants are two others-they are totally unnecessary for breast fed infants. While the experts claim that vaccines are not risky, the very existence of the VAERS system suggests otherwise. I remember the swine flu scare in the 70s. No one got the flu but plenty of people ended up with Guillian Barre from the vaccine, and the payout for the side effects was upwards of $6 billion. The big clue was that physicians were vaccinating their patients for swine flu-BUT not their families.
I also want to know why we should leave all of the decision making to experts instead of using our own research and decision making ability. If we had relied on the experts, my beloved husband would now be without a leg. Three infectious disease experts told him that he had no choice but to amputate and that antibiotic treatment was futile. We insisted on the specific treatment and used our own research to tell the experts the dose, the duration, and how to treat the side effects. That was 4 years ago and my husband still has the leg. Experts can be wrong. In fact, when I tried to give the physician the research material, he was not interested in reading it.
September 17, 2008 at 10:35 am
Hello all: I am a new parent (my daughter is 5 months old). I was nervous about vaccinating her, but also scared not to. I know it’s important. I think so many parents are in this situation. I found a book that helped tremendously - The Vaccine Book by Bob Sears (http://www.askdrsears.com/thevaccinebook/inside_the_vaccine_book.asp). Based on what I’ve read on this blog so far, I think you ALL would probably appreciate the book and/or website. It’s the only source I found that was balanced on the issue. The book is written by a pediatrician who has done 13+ years of research on this issue because of parents like me - we know vaccination is important, but are leery about the AAP’s “recommended schedule” and some of the potentially harmful vaccine ingredients. Dr. Sears describes each disease, how common it is, how treatable it is if contracted, consequences of contracting it, the vaccine to prevent it, how effective it is, the ingredients of the vaccine (by manufacturer), possible side effects and how common they are, any controversial ingredients, etc. It provides important facts, that personally, I feel I can trust. It is a “smart “ approach because the author recognizes that most parents know that vaccines are important and want to vaccinate their children, but just want a safer way to do it (or at least a way in which they feel more comfortable). Toward the end of the book, he provides an alternative vaccination schedule that makes me feel more comfortable vaccinating my daughter. Our pediatrician’s schedule (which follows the AAP’s recommended schedule) advised giving our 2-month-old daughter 8 vaccines (3 shots and one oral vaccine, but one of the shots contains a total of 5 viruses). I was not comfortable shooting our 10 lb infant with all of those viruses at once, not to mention a large volume of aluminum (and most vaccines contain aluminum). I am more comfortable with the alternate schedule. I think if the parents who are nervous about vaccinating had an alternative schedule they felt comfortable with, more would choose to vaccinate this way rather than skip it all together (obviously not a good solution). I am pasting the link to Dr. Sears’s website/book so that other parents like me may find some peace and reasonable solutions here. http://www.askdrsears.com/thevaccinebook/inside_the_vaccine_book.asp
Thanks for reading
September 17, 2008 at 1:17 pm
David Newton, what do you want to do about persons with AIDS? Quarantine them?
The problem with vaccination is that it can kill. Protecting the population by forcibly vaccinating children with death as result is simply beyond the pale as a measure. I suggest you guys just get better vaccination or vaccinate twice if you don’t think your vaccination helps.
The public health risk is scare mongering. Vaccinated people can be carriers as well and are therefore a public health risk to those that are not vaccinated. They can also go to countries with low level of vaccination, by the millions, and return home.
The problem is that all the anger is directed at a single group, common decent people, who have made a different decision. Every other group with whatever risky behavior they engage in, are not targeted to change their lifestyles or practices. If you look at the current infectious diseases, measles is a extremely tiny portion of cases, and it’s usually a harmless disease. And that compared to all the STDs that are raging around.
September 17, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Pat: You are obviously a very thoughtful person with a lot of knowllege in this area. It shows in how well you present your position, for which I thank you. As a thoughtful, knowledgeable person, you might like some additional information to consider.
Sexually transmitted diseases (STD) ARE infectious diseases (contrary to the implied meaning of your second sentence). You are correct in noting that there are behavioral strategies that prevent the sexual transmission of infectious disease. However, there has never been a single time in history when the incidence of any STD has been affected by appeals to behavioral change. STDs always spread, until a medical treatment contains them, and even then, they never leave the population. Never. Since we are trained to use evidence as the basis for the care we offer, and since the evidence shows that behavioral appeals have never had a measurable effect on rates of STD infection in large communitties, we look for alternatives. Vaccination is a promising strategy that may actually reduce the spread of STDs. I am not dismissing your observation about behavior, it is just that we healthcare types tend to look at the human condition as it is (rather than as we might wish it to be) and try to reduce the burden of disease in all people, even people who do not take our advice on how to avoid the diseases they later ask us to treat.
Hepatitis B can be sexually transmitted, but it is not exclusively transmitted sexually. Any contact with the body fluid of an infected person (for example, the kind that I have as a nurse when caring for a patient who is bleeding) can transmit it. In fact, HBV can even be transmitted on fomites (inanimate objects contaminated with the pathogen) by people who handle the object with no way of knowing that they are at risk. Here again, vaccination will protect most people in these situations in which behavioral measures are not adequate.
As a nurse, I am always happy to see people choosing safe health practices, and I try to encourage them to do so. However, healthy behavioral practices will not protect everyone. The world is just not fair, and conscientious people will get these diseases along with careless ones. Besides, my job is to help the sick without regard for how they became ill. We do not evaluate the worthiness of our patients; we care for them. Whoever they are, where ever they have been, whatever they have done. We think that every life saved is a victory. Vaccination saves lives. Therefore, we vaccinate, and urge our patients to do the same.
Best wishes, Pat, and good health!
Berend de Boer: Yes, there are risks in vaccination. However, these risks are overwhealmingly exceeded by huge reductions in disease and death, not only in the population at large, but in the vaccinated individual, throughout his or her lifetime. Read history, my friend. I have. (Gots me a college d`gree in it and ever’thang! Sorry, just trying to lighten up a little.) Before vaccination, infectious diseases had been the scourge of humanity, with up to 50% of all children born alive dying before their fifth birthday. This is still true in regions in which vaccination is uncommon. That is not hyperbole. That is the number. Vaccines do not kill 50% of our children, or even 0.05%. History is on the side of the vaccinated. So is epidemiology. So is microbiology and molecular biology. So am I. I hope you will join us.
Whether you do or not, be well, my friend!
PS: Pat, the above is also, “why we should leave all of the decision making to experts instead of using our own research and decision making ability.” I am not an expert, Pat, just a dumb nurse. However, I have worked with experts, and while they are never infallible, they are right far more often than I am, so I exploit their expertise to my benefit, to my patients’ benefits, and to my childrens’ benefits. It is a gamble, but the odds are stacked in the favor of those who know the most, and those who know the most support vaccination. It is not popular to suggest that experts know more than “regular” people. Sounds terribly patristic and all, but within their fields of expertise, they do know more, and those who take their advice usually do better than those who do not.
September 17, 2008 at 5:37 pm
I was paralyzed and almost died from a tetanus vaccine at age 27. This was after having vaccines throughout my childhood. At the time I was in the hospital there was an outbreak of gullianbarre due to flu vaccines. In England my children would not be allowed vaccines, here most doctors push it. I always have one question. If a child is not vaccinated how is he endangering kids who are vaccinated? Aren’t they protected by the vaccines they received?
September 17, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Pat, I’m not sure where you get your information that otitis medea is not a concern for breast-fed infants, but it is incorrect. I have personal experience as a mom of breast-fed infants, one of whom fought several ear infections. I believe it would be more correct to say that the incidence of ear infections in breast-fed infants is lower, but it is not eradicated by any means.
And I guess we disagree on the “expert vs. me” argument as well. I certainly don’t have time to read medical journals, or the money to attend them, in order to have access to the latest information available on the state of health in our country. I read, and I am educated, and I ask plenty of questions, but I will let the “experts” guide my child’s health any day.
September 17, 2008 at 6:00 pm
[...] More Fuel For The Vaccine Debate I saw this table as part of an AM News article about enforcing vaccination laws that was just published a couple of [...] [...]
September 17, 2008 at 7:18 pm
When a disease is sexually transmitted, herd immunity is not necessarily the driving force, and individuals can choose for themselves whether to take a vaccine or rely on their own behavior. While people generally have a uniform risk of acquiring measles or pneumonia, the risk of acquiring hepatitis B or HPV is not uniform, and the vaccines should not be administered (or publicized) assuming that everyone is equally at risk. As I don’t work in a healthcare environment and I have no other risk factors, I don’t need a Hepatitis B vaccine, nor do I need an HPV vaccine. In other words, it is not a matter of behavior generally that should be used to decide; it is the behavior of me specifically that is the deciding factor as to whether I get a vaccine related to an STD. This is why I dislike the mandating of such vaccines for children to go to school.
As to Otitis medea and infants, the infection can be avoided by complete breast feeding and no day care. Partial breast feeding won’t work-it has to be total. Generally, (again from the experts) pediatricians push solid food at 2-3 months and find many ways to discourage breast feeding for the first 2 years when the immune system is developing. What they also don’t know is whether such an infant would be better off postponing vaccines until the 2-year mark when the immune system is developed and the child can better handle the medications because they have NEVER studied the question. They don’t know the impact of all of these vaccines on a developing immune system-again because they have NEVER studied it. Instead, they have dismissed the question as unworthy of study. Question: do all of the vaccines reduce the ability of the body to withstand infection so that later in life the weakened system becomes susceptible to them and to certain cancers? NO one knows because no one has studied it. Because none of these issues have been studied, I wouldn’t be so quick to say that vaccines are perfectly safe.
I can give many examples of where the medical profession has a consensus only to be proven wrong later. One example has to do with stomach ulcers. It was generally accepted that they were “caused” by stress because it was impossible for bacteria to survive in stomach acid. The experts were wrong in their perception and it took ten years after H. pylori was identified for treatment to change to include an antibiotic. My husband was going to lose a leg because of another perception that antibiotics are ineffective for the treatment of bone infection in patients with diabetes. Again, they were wrong. How many people unnecessarily lose their leg because their physicians will not use the antibiotics? As we have discovered, quite a few. If we hadn’t done our own research and told the physician what to do, my husband would have been a victim to his physician’s incorrect perception.
Generally, physicians confuse group identity with individual identity based upon very poor quality studies that get written up in the medical literature. Because I do read the medical literature, I know that what physicians say to each other is often very different from what they say to their patients. I also know that the evidence is often non-existent to support their recommendations. I also know that physicians have a very poor concept of risk, and base their recommendations on their misperception of risk.
Physicians also have good political instincts and will “go along to get along” It was this reason that physicians vaccinated patients for swine flu-BUT not their families. The physicians knew the vaccine was unnecessary and did not want to put their own families at risk. However, there was a federal mandate (ie Gerald Ford) to vaccinate everyone, so they did.
Also, professionals generally give advice. A lawyer gives advice, an engineer gives advice. Why is a physician the only profession that presumes to give orders? Why do we accept their orders when we decide for ourselves whether to accept the lawyer’s advice, or the engineer’s advice?
September 17, 2008 at 9:00 pm
As someone who is always reading about this, the points and the tone made by “Pat” are very reasonable and believable, it makes me think he has nothing to hide. However, any undecided, read what “David Newton” says. He is saying you probably do not have the capability to decide for yourself what is best for yourself or your family, and, the State cares more about your children than you do. With all due respect Mr. Newton, you are what is called a “useful idiot”. Do not get upset about that though, because you are in the majority and I believe soon will get your elitist way in most everything. First they came for the ….
September 18, 2008 at 10:22 am
It never ceases to amaze me how certain people with no medical training whatsoever think they know more about medicine and epidemiology than doctors and nurses who have devoted years to the study of same. Your position is arrogant in the extreme, not to mention counter-intuitive and idiotic. I’ll leave off the “useful” part.
September 18, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Note to Marcia
I don’t know who you are referring to as arrogant. Quite frankly, you have no idea what my medical training is as I have not provided it. You seem to assume that I have none. However, credentials are not a substitute for knowledge, and just because someone has ‘MD’ behind their name does not mean that they should be the ones giving the orders. You are dismissing my argument not based upon its merits but upon the fact that I have not listed my credentials. This is called an ad hominem attack. Instead, see if you can challenge my statements.
It might astonish you to know that I often go to medical conferences and explain medical studies to the physicians because they can’t read the medical literature. I teach physicians how to study and read medical papers. And yes, I frequently tell a physician how not to treat because it is my job to improve patient outcomes.
Who polices the physicians? Who should police the physicians? Why shouldn’t there be watchdogs? Why not their patients? Finally, if physicians are wrong, why not find that out? They are not always right. I am one of the watchdogs and work to make sure that common medical practice is not harmful to patients. Too often, I find otherwise.
You may not have a physician’s credentials or knowledge, BUT you know yourself and your body far, far better than any physician. As a parent, I KNOW my children better than any physician and I know when they need medical attention and when they can ride it out. I KNOW that I am not at risk for HPV or Hepatitis B because I KNOW my behavior does not put me at risk. That is why medical treatment should be a partnership. A patient is not the physician’s employee subject to his orders.
If you want to see how bad things can get, read “A History of Childbirth in America” by Wertz and Wertz. The routine obstetric practices in the 1950s were downright criminal and only changed because of a cultural shift that resulted in an awake, conscious father in delivery observing the birth. It was routine to tie a woman’s legs together to allow the MD a chance to get there in time if he was running late. That is just one of the egregious practices. So many of the routines during childbirth even now are there for the convenience of the MD and are not medically warranted. Also, the time to a C-section has gotten shorter and shorter in part because the physicians do not understand the difference between a “norm” and an “average”. They want all women to be “below average” in delivery time, plus they can charge more for the C-section. Why should everyone be below average even when it is an impossibility?
September 18, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Actually, Pat, I was responding to Warmwater, not you.
September 18, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Marcia
My questions are still there. Address the argument and not the credentials of the person behind it.
September 18, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Pat, the credentials of the person making the argument are relevant. I trust the opinions of people who have made their life’s work studying a problem (yes, the “experts”) over those of people who have pursued the same information as an avocation. I don’t really need to know what your particular credentials are; you’ve already spilled enough clues to indicate you’re not a doctor or medical researcher.
This is not to say experts are always right, nor to deny that lay-people’s hunches sometimes trump the experts’ opinions. I diagnosed my husband’s histoplasmosis correctly when two different doctors thought he had some form of atypical pneumonia. My hunch was based on the fact that he wasn’t improving on a variety of antibiotics combined with clues I gleaned from the internet. A pulmonologist confirmed I was correct. Lucky shot.
But so what? Getting one right answer doesn’t make me a diagnostician any more than watching every episode of Trauma, Life in the ER makes me an emergency physician. No one should place any confidence in my medical opinions as anything other than uninformed opinions because I didn’t go to medical school, study thousands of pages of medical texts, attend lectures, work alongside experienced mentors, or spend years examining patients, reading journals, attending conferences, doing research, or conferring with colleagues. You seem intelligent, so I assume you get where I’m going with here.
You may have studied more about a subject than most people (although we have no way of knowing what you studied, whether it was scientifically valid, or whether it was based on some kind of “alternative” theory), and you may be peripherally involved with the medical community, but that still doesn’t make you an expert. If you can provide credentials, links to abstracts of articles you’ve written, or some other proof of your knowledge, I may be persuaded to revise my opinion.
Now, I’m sorry that you think my comment about arrogance is an ad hominem attack, but frankly, that’s how people come across when they challenge “experts” in general, and claim they know more about medicine than an MD. It sounds like hubris.
I probably haven’t covered everything you wanted addressed, but my daughter is nagging me to go to the grocery store, so I’m going to stop now.
September 18, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Also Marcia,
I realize using the phrase I did could be offensive, I do not intend that, however you seem to feel a Dr or Nurse is an expert on … what? Surely you know their expertise is limited. In medical school for instance, the study of Nutrition was minimal. Maybe that has changed but it is just an example. Drink a coffee at a Starbucks near a medical facility and look at the people in their medical uniforms coming in, I have done that many times and have seen the most unhealthy looking lot you could imagine. Yes, ancedotal, I know, but try it for yourself. Fields are so specialized today that no one can be an expert in all of them, or many of them.
Therefore, on medical matters, the opinions of Doctors and researchers certainly weigh on my decisions but they are not the final say. As with building a house, I find the best I can and hire them. Their expertise is appreciated and in cases of the utmost importance, but I hire people who have skills I do not.
September 18, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Marcia
I may have dropped clues but you have reached the wrong conclusions. I have been a health outcomes researcher for over 20 years. My role is to investigate physician decision making and to be the watchdog. If you want information, take a look at http://www.lulu.com/Dataservicesonline. I also have a considerable body of work in the medical literature.
When I said that I attend medical conferences and teach physicians how to read the medical literature, I meant it.
However, I argue from the merits of the problem and not based upon my credentials.
September 18, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Pat said “As to Otitis medea and infants, the infection can be avoided by complete breast feeding and no day care.”
Do you have any documentation for that? Because my kids were all completely breastfed up through age six months and not in day care, yet they got ear infections. Though after six months, they kind of need solid food (even the stubborn kid who refused to eat solid food at first was finally eating solid food by the time he was a year old, and he was still getting breastmilk until he was over two years old).
What was really no fun was when my six-month old daughter got chicken pox.
__________________________________________________________________________
rehnja said “WOW! No cases of black plague either!
That solves it…not!”
What is that supposed to convey? That you do not know much about plague in the USA?
1) It is not vaccine preventable.
2) It is transmitted by fleas and rats, so it mostly controlled by sanitation (unlike measles, which is making a comeback in the UK, Switzerland and Japan… which I do not believe have had issues with failing sanitary practices).
3) It still occurs in the USA, mostly in western states:
4) A young man from Connecticut recently caught plague in Wyoming:
http://www.courant.com/news/health/hc-bubonic0827.artaug27,0,7841468.story