Unraveling the history of the vaccine-autism scare | Hacker News Reader

Unraveling the history of the vaccine-autism scare

arstechnica.com

27 pointssoundsop7 comments

Anti-vaccination groups, such as those led by Jenny McCarthy, are gaining a significant amount of publicity these days. One of the most unfortunate bits of news is that McCarthy herself will be getting her own talk show thanks to Oprah. The medical community as a whole needs to start standing up to these erroneous claims and educating the masses before these previously defeated diseases start popping up again.

Dr. Steven Novella has a pretty good write-up about the whole situation here if you are interested http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=444

We have a 3 1/2 year-old son who was just diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. I'm angered by the caused-by-vaccines people because they're obfuscating the issue and causing funding to be mis-directed.

Interestingly, his school (he attends an early-intervention pre-school run by our public school system) used an auto-dialer to leave a message from the principal. The message: A second grader was diagnosed with whooping cough -- a real risk of vaccine avoidance!

I'm glad this subject came up here on hacker news. I have a 4 month old daughter and am thinking through this vaccination thing. I went to a homeopathy "information" session the other night...lets just say their argument wasn't entirely convincing.

However, I do think there is something to this issue.

Two things that make me cautious are: 1) There is no doubt that pharmaceutical companies have a vested interest in getting new vaccines approved / recommended for widespread default usage (whether or not there is an actual need for it). 2) Most importantly, it seems to me....it would be quite simple for an individual country to record stats on a per person basis on exactly what vaccinations they have received, and cross reference this with a) incidences of disease, and b) incidences of negative (potential) side effects.

As for #2, to me, the idea that this isn't done makes me extremely suspicious. It is by no means proof of anything, but I can't imagine how a medical system that truly cares about the health of its customers wouldn't be extremely interested in tracking this at a very detailed level.

We have a one year old and my wife interviewed several doctors before finding one that would give the vaccines on an irregular schedules. One of the fears people have isn't that one particular vaccine is the problem; it's that bundling multiple vaccines together and giving them to 12mo or 15mo kids is causing problems. So we found a doctor who gives one shot at visit A and then gives the other shot(s) at visit B a few weeks later. Maybe it's nothing but I feel better.

Personally I think the extra scrutiny toward vaccinations is a really good thing. Babies are given a large number of very powerful shots in a short time frame, often causing sickness for a week or more. Statistically the benefits of immunization outweigh the risks, but there has to be better way to accomplish it. Until recently, very little research was done to analyze the effects of all shots in concert.

The "too many too soon" myth is just another strategy by these groups to target vaccinations. I'm all for extra scrutiny, but that scrutiny needs to be based in reality and facts, not soccer moms who talk about the evil big pharma people out to get their kids. Again, here is a very thorough article on the topic of vaccination schedules should you be inclined to get more information http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=289

I am totally open minded about this topic, but I didn't find that article particularly convincing. The general point is that you are exposed to millions of harmful pathogens per year; a vaccination is just a few more, so .00000000000x% increase.

But, this is assuming that a vaccination is in no way different than normal pathogens, which I have no way of knowing.

I have heard both anecdotal, as well as confirmed (I am quite sure) cases of children dying within very close proximity to receiving certain vaccinations. I think I have heard of 3 Canadian (or was it US) girls getting sick and dying within days after receiving the new cervical cancer vaccination.

Now, maybe I can't prove that it was the vaccination that caused my daughter to die 3 days later, but sometimes recurring coincidences sometimes indicate something is happening outside our sphere of knowledge.

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