15 replies to this topic

[stocks]

My dislike for The Huffington Post goes way, way back--all the way back to its very beginnings. Indeed, a mere three weeks after Arianna Huffington's little vanity project hit the blogosphere, I noted a very disturbing trend in its content. That trend was a strong undercurrent of antivaccination blogging, something I wrote about nearly three years ago. At the time, I pointed out how Santa Monica pediatrician to the stars and "vaccine skeptic" Dr. Jay Gordon had found a home there, long with David Kirby, author of the mercury militia Bible Evidence of Harm, and Janet Grilo.

This was right from the beginning.

These antivaccination luminaries were soon joined by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr and more recently by Deirdre Imus, the driving force ramping up the antivaccinationist mercury militia proclivities of aging shock jock Don Imus and whose ignorance and stupidity when it comes to vaccines threaten to rend the fabric of the space-time continuum. (Indeed, if Jenny McCarthy didn't exist, Deirdre Imus would get my vote for the antivaccinationist who routinely says the most astoundingly ignorant things about science.) Although we don't hear much from Grilo or Gordon anymore, unfortunately we do hear from Kirby, Imus, and Kennedy on a fairly regular basis, all on The Huffington Post, with the only voice of reason when it comes to vaccines being Arthur Allen, author of Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver, who, unfortunately, has not posted to HuffPo in a long time. It's not for naught that I've dubbed the Huffington Post "Arianna's Home for Happy Antivaccinationists" and seriously questioned whether it could do a science section.

I'm revisiting this topic because I think I'm starting to understand a bit why this may be the case. Oddly enough, the impetus was Jenny McCarthy's appearance on Larry King Live last week for Autism Awareness Day, following her breathtakingly self-absorbed and inane article published on CNN.com. Several readers sent me both her article and later the transcript of her appearance on Larry King's love-fest. Perhaps some of my readers were wondering why I didn't blog about it, and, before I get to the antivaccinationist blather at HuffPo, you deserve an explanation why. It's simple.

Jenny McCarthy bores me now.

http://scienceblogs....nd_vaccines.php

Edited by stocks, 10 April 2008 - 09:35 AM.

[stocks]

Measles is making a comeback:

[In 2008] There were 64 cases from January through April 25, more than in all of 2006 and the highest number during that four-month period since 2001. None have yet proved fatal, but officials said they expected the total to keep rising.
“We haven’t seen the end of this,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Fourteen patients, or 22 percent, have been hospitalized, mostly for pneumonia.

If more parents stop vaccinating their children, here's a preview (postview) of what things might look like:

Before 1963, when the vaccine became available in this country, there were three million to four million cases of measles annually. The disease killed 400 to 500 children a year and put 48,000 in the hospital.
The vaccine wiped out transmission here by 2000, but the disease can easily be imported because there are so many cases overseas. Worldwide, measles still kills 242,000 children a year.

Pertussis is now killing, as best we can determine, something like a dozen infants a year. Polio is still not gone from the world, and seems to be making something of a comeback this year. The list goes on--American parents who have never seen an epidemic, because their parents vaccinated them, are putting everyone's children, and not a few adults, at risk.

I assume this is self limiting--if anti-vaccination goes far enough, a bunch of unvaccinated kids will die, and then their parents will be more scared of the disease than the vaccine. But it would be really nice if we could convince them in some other way than leaving them with a bunch of dead kids.


http://meganmcardle....dren_from_t.php

[stocks]

The Contra Costa County Health Department is closing East Bay Waldorf School in El Sobrante until Monday because of a whooping cough outbreak. More than a dozen cases have been reported.

In the East Bay, a contagious disease has shut down an entire school.
Whooping cough has made more than a dozen kids sick. It's easy to avoid with a simple vaccine.


Students attending California schools are required to get immunizations for whooping cough but parents can opt out.
The state averages a 99 percent immunization rate. But at East Bay Waldorf School, health officials say less than 50 percent are protected from the disease and say that's why it was able to spread so easily.

The Waldorf School System was founded by Rudolph Steiner in 1919. He believed children were made stronger through illness and believed in a holistic approach to medicine.


http://abclocal.go.c...n...&id=6131662

[Rogerdodger]

I got the Polio vaccine, my cousin got an iron lung.

[stocks]

Measles is making a comeback:

If more parents stop vaccinating their children, here's a preview (postview) of what things might look like:

Before 1963, when the vaccine became available in this country, there were three million to four million cases of measles annually. The disease killed 400 to 500 children a year and put 48,000 in the hospital.
The vaccine wiped out transmission here by 2000, but the disease can easily be imported because there are so many cases overseas. Worldwide, measles still kills 242,000 children a year.

I assume this is self limiting--if anti-vaccination goes far enough, a bunch of unvaccinated kids will die, and then their parents will be more scared of the disease than the vaccine. But it would be really nice if we could convince them in some other way than leaving them with a bunch of dead kids.

http://meganmcardle....dren_from_t.php

At least 127 people in 15 states have come down with the measles, the biggest outbreak in the United States in more than 10 years, Reuters reported.

Cases started springing up in May, when more than 70 people in a dozen states became ill. According to federal health officials, most of the victims were not vaccinated against the highly contagious virus.

In a statement, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the outbreak has been traced to travelers who became sick overseas, returned to the United States and infected others.

The news comes on the heels of public health officials' stressing the importance of immunizing children.

"What concerns me is the trend of more and more people not vaccinating their children because of fears that vaccines cause autism — although no studies have proven this to be true," Dr. Joseph Rahimian, an infectious disease specialist at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan, told FOXNews.com in May.

Last month British health officials said measles had become an epidemic in that country for the first time since the mid-1990s due to parents not getting their children vaccinated.

"With the whole debate about vaccines — and now parents due to their personal beliefs not vaccinating their children — what we are seeing now is that we are going to have these epidemic outbreaks throughout the country," said Dr. Manny Alvarez, managing editor of health at FOXNews.com.

"If this continues, we will see outbreaks throughout the entire developed world — something we have never seen before," he added.

http://www.foxnews.c...,379388,00.html

BAD INFORMATION FROM TALK TV AND MOVIE STARS!!

Edited by stocks, 10 July 2008 - 04:22 PM.

[stocks]

Fears of measles epidemic as cases soar to 13-year high in wake of MMR scare


Around three million children are at risk of a measles epidemic because they haven't been vaccinated

There have been more than 1,000 measles cases so far this year – putting Britain at risk of a deadly epidemic, health officials say.

The Health Protection Agency blamed unfounded fears about the combined MMR jab for the increase and urged parents to vaccinate their children.

In the first ten months of 2008, there were 1,049 confirmed cases in England and Wales – the highest level since the early 1990s.

A recent outbreak of more than 60 cases in Cheshire has prompted the launch of a programme to vaccinate 10,000 pupils.

The agency blamed the rise on a low uptake of the MMR jab over the past decade.

A panic among parents was triggered by researchers who claimed there was a link between the combined measles, mumps and rubella jab and autism. Most experts believe the jab is safe and effective.


http://www.dailymail...-MMR-scare.html

[stocks]

Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, author of Defeating Autism, talks to Helene Guldberg about how raising a child with autism can be made infinitely harder – emotionally, financially and practically – by the charlatanic ‘war on autism’.


Not only are many of the so-called ‘cures’ for autism that they promote worse than useless – causing discomfort and distress to the children, and even, in very rare cases, death – but the continual drive to ‘defeat autism’ prevents parents from coming to terms with their children’s condition, and can cause them to have a rather negative view of their own children.

Parents of children with autism who are bombarded with all kinds of promises of wonder treatments are prevented from working through their grief and reaching the stage of acceptance. All of the emphasis on ‘windows of opportunity’ and the importance of ‘early intervention’ puts an immense amount of pressure on parents of children with autism and other learning difficulties, who often end up running around desperately seeking a ‘cure’, and trying one after another; they can become obsessed with ‘fixing’ their child.

In his book, he painstakingly analyses the available evidence for everything from the ‘wonder cure’ of secretin and detox and immune system treatments to special diets and supplements – and exposes the distinct lack of scientific evidence for their efficacy. There is no evidence that these treatments work, and worse, some of them are potentially harmful.

Fitzpatrick writes: ‘Here is another paradox thrown up by the biomedical movement. Its supporters are strident in their demands for trials of the safety of vaccines [but] when it comes to biomedical treatments they reject any suggestion that these should be subjected to proper evaluation. They are outraged by the presence of infinitesimal quantities of mercury in vaccines (which prevent bacterial contamination without ever being associated with any adverse effect), yet they seem quite happy to inject children with a product like secretin, a crude extract of pig pancreas that was developed for the purpose of testing pancreatic function but has never been tested in any way for therapeutic use.’



When I met with Fitzpatrick back in 2004 to discuss his previous book, MMR and Autism, he stressed that any risks associated with the MMR vaccine were virtually non-existent: ‘When 500million doses of a vaccine have been given in 80 countries over more than 30 years, and serious adverse reactions are found to be extremely rare, then it is fair to describe it as “safe”’, he said. And he argued that the case for immunisation is indisputable: ‘Diseases that had caused devastating epidemics in living memory, and had produced a significant toll of death and disability into the postwar period, have virtually disappeared.’

Campaigners argue that there has been a growth in autism cases of ‘epidemic’ proportions in the Western world over the past two decades – due to everything from vaccines and antibiotics to pesticides and diet. But the increased prevalence of autism is better explained by increased awareness and improved diagnosis, along with the broadening of the concept of autism, Fitzpatrick shows.


http://www.spiked-on...s_article/6045/

[stocks]

MMR doctor fixed data on autism


THE doctor who sparked the scare over the safety of the MMR vaccine for children changed and misreported results in his research, creating the appearance of a possible link with autism, a Sunday Times investigation has found.

Confidential medical documents and interviews with witnesses have established that Andrew Wakefield manipulated patients’ data, which triggered fears that the MMR triple vaccine to protect against measles, mumps and rubella was linked to the condition.

The research was published in February 1998 in an article in The Lancet medical journal. It claimed that the families of eight out of 12 children attending a routine clinic at the hospital had blamed MMR for their autism, and said that problems came on within days of the jab. The team also claimed to have discovered a new inflammatory bowel disease underlying the children’s conditions.



Despite involving just a dozen children, the 1998 paper’s impact was extraordinary. After its publication, rates of inoculation fell from 92% to below 80%. Populations acquire “herd immunity” from measles when more than 95% of people have been vaccinated.

Last week official figures showed that 1,348 confirmed cases of measles in England and Wales were reported last year, compared with 56 in 1998. Two children have died of the disease.


http://www.timesonli...icle5683671.ece

[OEXCHAOS]

See Shattuck, Paul T., The Contribution of Diagnostic Substitution to the Growing Administrative Prevalence of Autism in US Special Education, PEDIATRICS Vol. 117 No. 4 April 2006, pp. 1028-1037 (doi:10.1542/peds.2005-1516).

Dr. Shattuck concluded that:

RESULTS. The average administrative prevalence of autism among children increased from 0.6 to 3.1 per 1000 from 1994 to 2003. By 2003, only 17 states had a special education prevalence of autism that was within the range of recent epidemiological estimates. During the same period, the prevalence of mental retardation and learning disabilities declined by 2.8 and 8.3 per 1000, respectively. Higher autism prevalence was significantly associated with corresponding declines in the prevalence of mental retardation and learning disabilities. The declining prevalence of mental retardation and learning disabilities from 1994 to 2003 represented a significant downward deflection in their preexisting trajectories of prevalence from 1984 to 1993. California was one of a handful of states that did not clearly follow this pattern.

Follow the money. You're going to get more diagnosis of autism if it's rewarded. Also, it's a lot nicer to tell parents that their child has autism rather than "your kid is retarded".

Mark

[Rogerdodger]

Maybe it's generational, but for some of us who remember the '50s and saw very young friends and relatives stricken by polio, living their last days in an iron lung, the rewards seem to outweigh any risk, real or imagined.
IMHO

But I'm sure that OPRAH will have the final word on this.

Edited by Rogerdodger, 09 February 2009 - 06:16 PM.