Linking autism to vaccination is despicable & irresponsible
Found this at www.nydailynews.com, with two autistic sons I feel I've a dog in this fight. This op-ed piece pretty well says it all, especially the part about folk passing up vaccinations for reasons such as this:
There isn't enough science in the world to debunk anti-vaccine quackery for some people
No matter how conclusively science proves them wrong, there are those who persist in propagating the dangerous quackery of a link between childhood vaccinations and autism.
Celebrity mom Jenny McCarthy is among the die-hards. She has a young autistic son, has long believed vaccinations triggered his condition and last week dismissed the latest scientific debunking as merely "one journalist's accusations."
All sympathy to her, McCarthy is wrong. Worse, she and like-minded advocates are harmful. They compound damage that was done to public health by the fraudulent, half-baked study that fomented vaccination hysteria.
In 1998, the British medical journal Lancet published a study by Dr. Andrew Wakefield that purported to find a connection between the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine and autism.
The study was based on 12 children, and, in time, the vast majority of Wakefield's co-authors disavowed the findings. A British medical group did an in-depth investigation and concluded Wakefield was guilty of dishonesty and misconduct. The Lancet retracted his article. And now, the British Medical Journal has concluded that Wakefield had committed an "elaborate fraud."
The fallout from Wakefield's assertions has been severe. Many parents grew skittish about vaccinations, leading to a resurgence of measles in England and Wales.
And reports about Wakefield's findings contributed to unfounded suspicions about vaccinations in general.
As Dr. Art Kellermann and Katherine Harris of the RAND Corp. noted in a Daily News Op-Ed last week, only a quarter of New Yorkers were vaccinated against the flu last fall, compared with a third of the people nationwide.
"The low participation rate could cost lives," Kellermann and Harris wrote. "People - often motivated by fears and myths - may need some facts to help persuade them to get some shots."
Here is one: The claim that vaccinations cause autism has been completely, totally debunked.
Bravo. IMHO anyone passing off junk like this is deserving of eternal damnation. I've seen too many folks in too many waiting rooms just trying to make sense of why their child turned out autistic. It's heartbreaking to say the least.
10 comments:
sigh.
Oh, I'm sure the big guy upstairs has a special place set aside for that POS and his ilk. As you know, I have a grandson with Aspergers and my daughter stopped almost of his immunization shots after that diagnosis, as did some of our neighbors down the street. Through his irresponsible actions he has put many children at unnecessary risk.
“IMHO anyone passing off junk like this is deserving of eternal damnation.”
Eternal damnation? Really? People deserve eternal damnation for not accepting the drug manufacturer’s steadily increasing number of recommended vaccinations? I must have missed the eleventh commandment, “Thou shalt vaccinate.” Or are vaccinations the eighth sacrament? I daydreamed through most of my Catechism classes. Your hyperbole is more than a little over the top on this one. There are more reasons than just a fear of autism for parents in a free country to make an informed decision not to vaccinate. There are very good reasons for parents in a free country not to trust the for-profit drug manufacturer’s recommendations. And parents in a free country do have the freedom of speech to express their views concerning autism and vaccinations. I understand and respect your pain and your frustration in regards to autism and vaccines and your children. This is a very personal battle for you. But eternal damnation?
Cookie, amen to all of that.
Arby, check Mk 9:42.
As for blithely accepting without question ANY recommendation from ANY medical professional, maybe you could point out where I wrote that.
This post was specifically about junk science being passed off as fact to the detriment of children's health.
Nowhere did I state that we should unquestionably accept what we're told.
It pays for parents to be informed and not yield to "feelings" or go along blindly because some fool with a diploma said so. I've switched pediatricians with my boys due to a dissatisfaction with the recommendations made to me. Taking my kids for chelation treatment as one fool suggested didn't sit right. That treatment isn't proven to be more than a type of snake oil. So after discussing it, my wife and I moved on.
But at the same time it pays to remember that doctors DO have a heck of a lot more knowledge about medicine than you or I.
So just as I'd find a competent & honest mechanic I'd trust with my car and be likely to follow his recommendations, I'm much more likely to find a good pediatrician for my kids and follow her diagnosis.
And when some new "study" comes out finding a heretofore unknown link between a common preventive medical practice and a problem such as autism, I always take a "wait and see" attitude. So far thats always been justified.
I see now where I was wrong regarding your post. Thank you for correcting me. Both your original post and Mark 9:2 support wishing eternal damnation upon anybody who makes medical decisions not in keeping with established science. The priests and nuns who taught me that I should never wish eternal damnation upon anyone must have been incorrect in their Catholicism. I stand corrected.
Arby, no problem. Always willing to help.
I just had to get my MMR vaccination as an adult because of the new job I took. Record keeping was poor "way back then" and I couldn't prove that I already had them.
I'll let you know if there's any odd developments.
I do have many friends who refuse to immunize. I don't happen to be one of them and I don't agree - my children have been immunized.
HOWEVER - I do agree that they have the right to make decisions for their children. As for the science - or whatever - of proving or disproving if immunizing caused harm to a child: If my child was fine one day, was immunized and then started having problems - I would probably blame the shots too.
Brownie, I've no problem with parents making choices for the sake of their kids. My beef is with "scientists" and "doctors" who push lies and BS upon an unsuspecting public. That is exactly what the idiot behind the study mentioned in the post did.
As for a bad reaction AFTER children have been immunized and the parents blaming it on the shots, that isn't how autism works.
My kids were showing abnormalities before they were even born. It could not have been due to shots they'd not even had yet! I'd bet my next retirement check that a fair number of parents with autistic kids didn't have the extensive ultrasounds and prenatal screening my wife received. She got it for two reasons: 1) As an RN she knew about the desirability of it and had found an OBGYN who shared her views on monitoring every last detail possible 2) both pregnancies were "problem" pregnancies which necessitated a lot more extensive monitoring.
So is it easy to put out the lie that vaccines given in the first couple of years to a child are responsible for autism? If there wasn't a lot of micromanagement of the pregnancy I'd bet it would be real easy.
Even with all of that extra attention we would have been slow off the mark had I not started questioning the late development of our oldest son. Sometimes being a parental retread has it's plus side.
But I'll say it again, my gripe is with "authorities" who lead the unsuspecting public down a garden path only for their own gain.
Have you read the book Autism's False Prophets? The anti-vaccine crowd would have you believe that there is a vast corporate conspiracy to set aside science and safety in the name of profits. Actually, if you follow the money, there has been a series of conspiracies to set aside science and safety for profit, but the original was hatched by Andrew Wakefield. He has a long history of not reporting conflicts of interest, starting with the fact that he owned part interest in an alternative measles vaccine when he published his paper designed to discredit MMR.
I haven't forgotten your question about socialization. About that time, GL's meds stopped working, and we went into survival mode. Every time things start to smooth out enough that we come up for air, he has another crisis.
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