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Unvaccinated kids, and the dangers they pose to others
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Anonymous
No, you misunderstand the argument for vaccines! It is not "you should get vaccinated because fewer people get the flu." It is, "your risk of being injured or killed from the vaccine is LESS than your risk of being injured or killed by illness." This calculation is made at the time of introduction of the new vaccine to the population, so the risk of being injured by the illness is measured by its natural prevalence, not its prevalence in the vaccinated society. At some point there is a tipping point at which enough people get vaccinated that the calculation changes for the still unvaccinated -- those who haven't gotten vaccinated when the population vaccination rate has passed the point of creating herd immunity can get the benefit of vaccination w/o actually getting vaccinated, thus introducing what is known as a "free-rider" effect. |
Anonymous
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Diseases mutate in those who go without vaccines. So, yes, those who did get vaccinated are still at risk of getting sick with a mutated form because of the people who didn't get vaccinated.
There are disease that were nearly eliminated because of mass vaccination programs. Nearly. (think Polio and Small Pox) But they're making a comeback because people took herd immunization for granted and didn't get vaccinated. I am thoroughly pro-vaccine, and will be for my LO due in two weeks because I want to do everything I can to keep myself, and her safe from diseases and unvaccinated kids and individuals. |
Anonymous
You are incorrect on two counts -- 1) it is not true that a vaccinated child is not at greater risk being around an unvaccinated child. What is true is that the risk of your child getting ill from an unvaccinated child is less when your child is vaccinated than when he/she is unvaccinated, but the rate is not zero. And, your child is still at a greater risk of getting ill being around an unvaccinated child than a vaccinated child, even though these risks significantly diminish when your child is vaccinated. Even vaccines don't have 100% effectiveness rates, for a variety of reasons (errors in administration, takes time for body to build immunity from shot, some people don't build enough immunity, etc.). I personally know of someone who recently got chickenpox even though he was vaccinated. 2)The reason we still vaccinate against polio is that, although the last known case of US polio occurred in 1979, polio still occurs in significant numbers around the world. see polioeradication.org In today's global climate, polio can easily reoccur if vaccination rates decline. For example, did you know that polio is endemic to Afghanistan? Can you imagine, with all the movement of international personnel in and out of Afghanistan to the US, if vaccination rates among those traveling between Afghanistan and the US declined? If parents stopped getting polio vaccine in large numbers because "polio doesn't happen in the US anymore"? Disaster waiting to happen. |
Anonymous
Because no vaccine is 100% effective, and more importantly because immunity after vaccine can wane over time. This is true with the measles vaccine, which is why overseas travelers (like me) are recommended to get their measles titers (a blood test to check your measles antibody strength) checked before they travel to areas with measles. If your measles immunity is too low, you can get a measles booster shot. As you get older (like college or after) these levels can drop. In the past, it hasn't been regularly recommended to check measles titres if you stay in the US, because herd immunity is high because vaccination rates are high and because the chance of exposure to measles carriers was low, but with today's increasingly easy global movement and increases among those who decide NOT to vaccinate, measles outbreaks happen. |
Anonymous
That's factually incorrect. Maybe you only hear about the individual because it surprises people that vaccinated individuals can catch it, and it is therefore newsworthy. But outbreaks largely affect unvaccinated individuals. According to CDC, 90% of individuals who contract measles in the U.S. are unvaccinated or could not document their vaccination status. Source: http://www.cdc.gov/Features/MeaslesUpdate/ |
Anonymous
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Saying it is a public health issue and shaming parents who don't vaccinate by calling them selfish is absurd. I find it hard to believe that is the motivation for most while vaccinating their own children. There are many things that we all should be doing for public health. Carpooling (reducing poisons in the air that CAUSE cancer---a much more serious disease than polio!) for one example.
Also, if keeping our own children healhty is a PUBLIC responsibility then shame on you for giving your children sugar. Sugar is KNOWN to suppress the immune system and make people more susceptible to sickness. By you feeding your children sugar, you're putting her at risk of disease and therefore putting others with weak immune systems at risk of disease. Ultimately, I cannot be responsible for my neighbor's decisions. Plus, there may be very good reasons some parents are not vaccinating. Many parents with autistic children believe the vax had something to do with it. Many of those parents would prefer their child contract chicken pox instead of autism. Newborn babies have a lot of natural immunity if they are breast fed. I choose to breast feed and expose myself to any germs that she is exposed to so that I can pass on my antibodies to her through nursing. Also, I take extra care and try NOT to expose her to risky situations. I have to take responsibility for my child. Duh. How can I be upset at someone else for not having MY child's best interest in mind? I can't. Also, with a child who's immune system is suppressed through radiation/chemo---they KNOW this and have to avoid things like the common cold because it is very risky. Older people who have compromised immune systems have to be careful even catching a cold---that CAN be deadly and there are no vaccinations for that. My point is that people with compromised immune systems are usually aware and are taking responsibility to protect themselves or their children from sickness ANYWAY not just from people who haven't been vaccinated. Public health---what else are people doing for the good of the pack??? It seems to me people are pretty self focused in most other areas and I find it VERY distasteful to take such a stab at parents who are actually commonly QUITE informed and concerned about health and wellness in their own children as well as others. There are better ways and vaccines NEED to be safer. That is the bottom line. More parents would vaccinate if vaccines were PROVEN safe. At this point they have not been. Find out the facts. |
Anonymous
Gee, if I had just known that sugar is the cause of disease.... Thank you for sharing your "expertise" with us. There will be no more vaccinations or sugar - ever! - for my children from now on. |
Anonymous
No, you're selfish, not to mention just plain wrong, and your children and mine are worse off because of people like you. |
Anonymous
The sugar thing is really pretty funny, since you are giving your child 4 grams of sugar with each 3 oz of breast milk. While your comments about breastfeeding and immunity are valid, we know that breastfeeding provides only modest (real, but still modest) protection against illness. It comes nowhere close to the 90% effectiveness of a vaccination. So while your decision is a good one, you vastly overestimate it if you consider this a substitute for vaccination. As for your statement about being QUITE informed, the idea that vaccines cause autism does not stand up to scientific scrutiny. And as for the safety record of vaccines, I would like to know what level of safety is acceptable to you. Our nation has received between one and two billion influenza vaccinations alone, and the number of claims against it are very small in comparison. |
Anonymous
| Once and for all: VACCINES DO NOT CAUSE AUTISM. |
Anonymous
Tell that to my autistic child who REGRESSED DIRECTLY AFTER AND BECAUSE OF THE MMR...ASSHAT!! |
Anonymous
Look somewhere else - it wasn't the MMR: http://blogs.forbes.com/sciencebiz/2010/03/15/vaccine-court-ruling-thimerosal-does-not-cause-autism/ |
Anonymous
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Vaccine Court Ruling: Thimerosal Does Not Cause Autism
Posted by Steven Salzberg Does the vaccine preservative thimerosal cause autism? Thimerosal is a mercury-containing compound that has been used since the 1930s as a preservative in vaccines. Why was thimerosal introduced into vaccines? Well, early vaccines were administered from multi-dose bottles, in which bacteria could grow. In one particularly disastrous incident in 1928, 12 children in Australia died from staph infections after getting the diptheria vaccine from the same multi-dose bottle. After the introduction of thimerosal, bacterial infections caused by vaccination virtually disappeared. Fast-forward 70 years to the modern anti-vaccination movement. In the late 1990s, a small number of activists, led by J.B. Handley (who founded Generation Rescue) and a few others, decided that the mercury in vaccines causes autism. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote articles promoting his notion of a large government conspiracy to cover up the harm being caused by thimerosal. The movement took off, especially after former Playboy model Jenny McCarthy became the “face” of Generation Rescue. Was there every any scientific support for the link between thimerosal and autism? From the late 1990s to the present, scientists have looked closely at the evidence, and every well-done study has pointed to the same conclusion: thimerosal in vaccines has no link to autism. In one very large Danish study, autism rates rose after thimerosal was removed from vaccines. Another study looking at California, Sweden, and Denmark found the same thing. These results directly contradict the claim that thimerosal causes autism. Despite the lack of evidence, the anti-vaxers have continued to wage their war against vaccines on two fronts. Last month, they lost the final battle in one effort, which claimed that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism. That battle started with the now-discredited 1998 study published in The Lancet by Andrew Wakefield. After the British General Medical Council ruled that Wakefield acted “dishonestly and irresponsibly”, the Lancet formally retracted the original paper, and a few days later Wakefield was forced to resign from the institute he founded in the U.S. to promote his claims. Thimerosal was the “second front” in the anti-vax war, and now they’ve lost this one too. Last Friday, a special vaccine court ruled on three cases in which parents were suing on behalf of their autistic children. In each case, the parents claimed that thimerosal had caused their child’s autism. In each case, the Special Master (a judge) ruled definitively against the parents. The result was a slam-dunk win for science. The three rulings take up over 600 pages, far too much to summarize, so I’ll just excerpt briefly from two of the conclusions. Special Master Denise Vowell, in the Dwyer case, issued a particularly devastating decision, ruling that claims about mercury were completely implausible and that the parents’ notion of “regressive autism” had no basis in science: Petitioners propose effects from mercury … that do not resemble mercury’s known effects on the brain, either behaviorally or at the cellular level. To prevail, they must show that the exquisitely small amounts of mercury in TCVs [thimerosal-containing vaccines] that reach the brain can produce devastating effects that far larger amounts experienced prenatally or postnatally from other sources do not. … In an effort to render irrelevant the numerous epidemiological studies of ASD [autism spectrum disorder] and TCVs that show no connection between the two, they contend that their children have a form of ASD involving regression that differs from all other forms biologically and behaviorally. World-class experts in the field testified that the distinctions they drew between forms of ASD were artificial, and that they had never heard of the “clearly regressive” form of autism about which petitioners’ epidemiologist testified. Finally, the causal mechanism petitioners proposed would produce, not ASD, but neuronal death, and eventually patient death as well. The witnesses setting forth this improbable sequence of cause and effect were outclassed in every respect by the impressive assembly of true experts in their respective fields who testified on behalf of respondent. It’s interesting that Vowell found that even if the “exquisitely small” amounts of mercury in vaccines had an effect, they wouldn’t cause autism. It was also somewhat sad to see how a well-known statistician, UCLA professor Sander Greenland, appearing in support of the thimerosal-autism link, embarrassed himself by presenting testimony that “largely represented an opinion based on a set of assumptions,” according to the ruling. Greenland’s arguments relied entirely on the existence of “clearly regressive autism,” but the Special Master pointed out that Greenland “was not qualified to opine on its existence.” Ouch. And here is an excerpt from the 122-page decision of Special Master George Hastings in the King case: …the evidence is overwhelmingly contrary to the petitioners’ contentions. The expert witnesses presented by the respondent were far better qualified, far more experienced, and far more persuasive than the petitioners’ experts, concerning the key points. The numerous medical studies concerning the issue of whether thimerosal causes autism, performed by medical scientists worldwide, have come down strongly against the petitioners’ contentions. Considering all of the evidence, I find that the petitioners have failed to demonstrate that thimerosal-containing vaccines can contribute to the causation of autism. I’m not optimistic that these clear, decision rulings will have any effect on the conspiracy theorists in the anti-vax movement. Indeed, over at Age of Autism, they’ve already posted an article titled “Special Masters Protect Vaccine Program and Deny Justice to Vaccine-Injured Children.” The article, which is a combination of denialism and conspiracy mongering, claims that the trials ignored the science in order to defend the government’s vaccine program. On the contrary, scientists studying autism want nothing more than to understand its cause and eventually to produce effective treatments. A growing body of evidence points to genetic factors behind ASD, but it will take much more work to pin down the complex combinations of genes that cause the various behaviors now called autism spectrum disorder. For example, a recent (2007) study by Sebat et al. found a clear link between ASD and de novo copy number variation (de novo mutations are those that arise for the first time in the children). We need more studies like this one if we’re to figure out this disease. After the ruling, Alison Singer of the Autism Science Foundation said “It’s time to move forward and look for the real causes of autism.” Well said. I hope that some in the anti-vax movement will recognize that if they truly want to find a cure for autism, they will support the science instead of insisting, as they do now, that more effort be poured into research on discredited hypotheses. The thimerosal-autism hypothesis is dead. |
Anonymous
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Genetic MY ASS.
Since it is more than likely that an autistic person will NOT marry, due to his/her social difficulties, there is less likely to be children born from these individuals. Thus, the supposed gene should not be spreading, but diminishing. Autistic parents are not having autistic children. |
Anonymous
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Vaccines do cause autism. Here's more than enough proof with aluminum alone.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8119523476709184666# |