How an Amish missionary caused 2014's massive measles outbreak
vox.com
vox.com
It makes sense. People are visual creatures, and natural story tellers (and listeners) so sometimes showing the horrors of these issues and weaving it into a story is the best way to convince large amounts of people and bring attention to an issue.
People need to stop believing that it's a personal choice for them alone. That is no more true than if they were to go around blowing cigarette smoke into the faces of other people. It's anti-social behaviour and even worse, the consequences are potentially deadly.
Case in point, tobacco companies sponsoring anti-smoking ads because talk of smoking increases revenues for the smoking industry as a whole. Instead of trying to advertise themselves individually.
Remember that the economic theory isn't a morality code; it doesn't say what the individual should do. It says that, people being what they are - that is, not always the kind and generous beings we wish they were -, how can we set up things so that general welfare is increased.
And in this case, the part of the economic theory that you're referring to that would lead to vaccination is not the profit seeking but property rights: in theory, if you go around infecting people when you could have vaccinated yourself, they should be able to get compensation for it.
Will that solve the problem in this case? Probably not, but then again, which system has a better one? Forced vaccinations don't sound better to me.
In a free market, the manufactures would have to improve the product to the degree that the consumers are convinced it is safe, and if injury is proven in court they would be held liable. Therefore there would be a profit incentive to fix the very issue at the center of the anti-vax argument.
Perception of safety without safety is fraud, in a free market the government does enforce laws against fraud.
How is it that a non free market has more incentive for safety? Who is accountable today? As I stated, currently law protects the producers against injury claims, so what is the mechanism and incentive for enforcement?
The mechanism and incentive for enforcement is with the FDA. If a vaccine is genuinely unsafe then the FDA is supposed to (and as far as I know, actually will) take appropriate action, up to and including fining the company and banning the product if it's warranted.
So yes, this would be the role of the FDA. However, the effectiveness and willingness of the FDA to take such action, not just against vaccines but any drug product, is a subject of much controversy. Just search Vioxx and FDA. That case doesn't present a reassuring view that safety issues are handled in the way you would expect.
Also, the FDA doesn't conduct its own independent testing. They require companies to do the testing and submit the results. It is certainly not the best designed system.
The difference between a perception of safety and a perception of unsafety is usually anecdotes.
> Maybe they are safe as claimed, and if so it is then asked why then is immunity necessary for the producers?
To prevent lawsuits from the .0001% of "[s]evere allergic reaction[s]"[1] from convincing the manufacturers that a low-profit-margin product is not worth the effort to produce.
P.S. When you write, "...in a free market the government does enforce laws against fraud", you need to be careful. "Fraud" is a very fuzzy concept.
[1] http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/patient-ed/conversations/dow...
It wasn't "personal choice" or "religious exception." They had a bad experience and were scared away.
I don't know if those terms are justified, but if they are then that's rather different from "two kids having a bad reaction to an MMR vaccine."
One thing we need to educate people about is that just because you get sick after getting a shot doesn't mean the shot caused you to get sick, and that even if it is, an occasional bad reaction is worth it if the rate is sufficiently low and the consequences sufficiently mild.
There is no shortage of educated doctors, former employees of drug companies, and data from CDC etc that is used for the anti vax argument. To convince someone of a point, one needs to not start from the position the other person has any of these stereotype labels. You need to start from educating yourself of their opposing argument and realize it is supported by real data. Then the discussion becomes more appropriate around the validity of data, its interpretation etc.
1. They cause autism.
2. They contain nasty, toxic chemicals.
3. They are unnecessary.
4. They are unsafe (in some unspecified way) and are just pushed for profit by big pharma.
The only one that comes even close to being supported by data is #1, and that's completely fake data.
I mean, most people just don't take time to post all the evidence they have acquired in short posts.
You post all of these are false, yet you post no data either. I'm not saying you are wrong, I'm just pointing out that if you are reading blogs and message posts they don't often come with evidence.
One of the key criteria for effective debating is to first attempt to convince yourself of the opponents argument by researching it from their perspective. Actually seek out the evidence to prove their point. What you will often discover if you have never done this is that reality often lies somewhere in between where you started and where they are. But by being able to have dialog from a mutual understanding of concerns you as well as your debater can likely reach a greater understanding of truth wherever it may lie.
Bottom line, if you can appear more knowledgeable of their perspective, they are more likely to listen to what you have to say.
You're right that most people won't post data regardless. The difference is that you won't find it even if you go looking for it. For example, the "chemicals" argument is rooted in magical thinking, not data. It goes something like, vaccines contain chemical X, X is used for nasty purpose Y, therefore X is bad in all circumstances and you'd be mad to put it in your children.
The fundamental problem is that people don't know how to think. They don't know how to differentiate between "this vaccine contains small amounts of aluminum which is harmless for the following reasons" and "this vaccine contains aluminum, which is known to cause dementia and Alzheimer's disease."
Maybe I do need to appear more knowledgeable of their views to be convincing. But I can't "realize it is supported by real data" when it clearly is not.
But this is somewhat my point. When you say "clearly is not", have you really tried to find it? or assume it is not there. You acknowledge you have seen some data such as the toxic ingredients. So in this case you could have a discussion around the interpretation of the data etc.
My point is that we shouldn't assume the other side are always ignorant, uneducated or just following Jenny McCarthy etc. You will find plenty of doctors, neurosurgeons etc that also have issues with vaccines. Dr. Wakefield became famous for the autism issue; however, you should be aware that since then there are many educated doctors that find some issue with vaccines. Of course being a doctor doesn’t make you automatically correct, it is just once again being aware that the person you are debating may have what appears to be credible information.
It would be best to ask where the person is coming from in a non hostile way. Just ask, so what have you discovered and what led you to your decisions for example. That is friendly and opens up conversation. From then you can discern if this person made decisions based on credible sources ( but maybe not accurate ) or they have not actually educated themselves.
When I say credible sources, I mean to say at least they are referencing other doctors, scientists, studies vs some blog. Credible in this instance doesn't necessarily mean correct or wrong, but acknowledging they did their research will allow conversation to continue. Then you can share counter research etc as conversation progresses.
Just be aware, within the scientific community, these topic still are being researched and it is not as if they are completely closed. For example investigations still continue into mercury and autism. Being aware of such is always a plus when having such discussions as you will appear to at least know something about where they are coming from. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24995277
So? There are further investigations into whether climate change is real and man made, when the overwhelming evidence point to - yes and yes.
It's same with this thing. One douchebag claims Vaccines caused autism, twenty three works then disprove his claims.
If you go to sciencedaily you can find plenty of studies that raise many questions about the nature of climate change.
An intellectual debate requires one to not simply dismiss the other side outright. If your goal is to piss people off and to have your base cheer on, then by all means go ahead. If you want someone to listen to you and your goal is to educate, then you will not get very far with your approach.
http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/antiv...
In addition to impugning the credibility of the authors (which maybe we can wave our hands in the air and say isn't fair), that blag says silly things like this:
For example, for the Verstraeten study, the Geiers reference an article that is more of a summary, and complain that it shows no data. In fact, the real Verstraeten study, published in Pediatrics, included all of the data. The Geiers absolutely cherry-picked a short summary of the Verstraeten study rather than examining the fully published article.
It takes time to investigate everything, and one shouldn't just stop when they find the answer they like. You need to always dig deeper for the rebuttals of both sides of an argument.
Its quite easy to recognize, just see who funded the study and you see a trend of results supporting the funder.
Almost nobody takes the time to investigate a study. You are assuming the person knows the study is flawed to begin with.
How do you know the critique of a study is accurate? The critique deserves as much scrutiny as the original until it can be verified. Otherwise it would be cherry picking data to simply stop when we find an answer that fits our beliefs without doing the same investigation of its statements and sources.
You think I haven't asked people where they're coming from in a non-hostile way? I've had tons of non-hostile conversations about this stuff.
If you want to present some data for that side, then I'd be happy to see it. Otherwise, stop insisting that it must somehow be there, because as far as I can tell it's not, and I'm not just assuming this is the case.
I mean I'm not here to try to convince you of their argument. However, the 1 pubmed article I referenced mentioned there are over 165 studies supporting issues with mercury in vaccines. Is this not interesting data? The researches behind the article seem to think so as their objective is to undercover why there are discrepancies with these results vs those that have said there are no issues.
I mean it takes time to follow all this stuff. Certainly more than I have, yet with a little effort it seems easy enough to see the source of information is not all coming from some personal blogs as I just pointed out.
In any case, you might recall that I said I'd never seen any data for these arguments except for the supposed autism link, which is based on fake data. Considering the tone of the paper I think it might be in that category. Maybe not. I'll hold off on spending time investigating until some anti-vaxxer actually mentions one as support for their ideas, because "X argues Y" and "there's data to support Y" does not imply "X argues Y because of data supporting it."
I doubt the manufacturer would place such a warning unless they had data to back it up.
Data? Yes. Usable? No.
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> What you will often discover if you have never done this is that reality often lies somewhere in between where you started and where they are. But by being able to have dialog from a mutual understanding of concerns you as well as your debater can likely reach a greater understanding of truth wherever it may lie.
People tried that, and there was no evidence. I mean autism caused by a vaccine... Suuuure. Only way if that happened if someone REALLY botched up the vaccine, as in forgot to make a vaccine and just put measles inside it. If that happened you'd be reading it on news channel by now.
I mean it causing autism is a perfect way for parents to remove guilt from themselves. It's not my genes - it's the vaccine. If I was a parent I'd be jumping on that particular train as well. Nothing so far corroborates any claims made by anti-vaccination groups.
That said, if you don't vaccinate, you are a threat to the public and I do think you should be banned from public schools, public transportation, public gatherings and should have to explain to anyone you physically interact with that you are a risk to them and their family.
We should be showing anti-vaxers the error of their ways using facts, debate, and the truth. Forcing it on them only increases their distrust and helps sway others to their side.
I'm not saying it would be a net good or a net bad, but it would presumably save a number of lives. This might still be a net bad with the increased distrust and loss of choice and all that, but I don't think it's at all fair to say that "nobody" would benefit. For example, those with weakened immune systems who for some reason cannot be vaccinated would probably benefit greatly. Again, I'm not saying the answer is or isn't to force them, but it's not because nobody would benefit.
Science has to fight an uphill battle, because facts and statistics are cold, whereas a single story of "my kid got sick right after being vaccinated and what if that happened to your kid?" is emotive and provocative.
A documentary telling the other side of the story in a way that most people can relate to it emotionally could have a huge impact. No need to make anything mandatory if people understand the balance of risks properly.
>That said, if you don't vaccinate, you are a threat to the public and I do think you should be banned from public schools, public transportation, public gatherings and should have to explain to anyone you physically interact with that you are a risk to them and their family.
Not following what you're proposing. You don't want people forced to be vaccinated, yet you want to forcibly confine them to their homes? What if they don't comply and get on a bus/subway/train/plane or go shop at a supermarket? Forcibly throw them in some special jail just for them?
I say supervised interactions with society is a very sane compromise for people who pose a danger, but may still have something to offer. As opposed to outright killing them.
So we tried that approach. What now? Maybe address this on a deeper level like better grade school and high school education. For example, we can see a lot of our public schools are unionized, which often means bad teachers and poor performers are impossible to fire. Outcomes get worse and big city high schools like in Chicago and NYC float around a 60% graduation rate. Would the left who is championing the vaccine cause be willing to go against its own unions to make schools better? I doubt it.
I really don't believe the TV tells people what to do. It often reflects whats already out there. Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey and others didn't start the anti-vax movement - it was in full swing by the time they latched onto it. Unless you're willing to do proper grassroots work, its just not going to happen. That means solutions that upset the status quo like attacking teacher unions. Or discriminating against un-vaxxed kids and not letting them go to school. I can't see the activist left doing that either. Would you be able to accept a better vaccination rate if you worked hard at it every single day, but only are planning on seeing results in 10 or 15 years? How motivated would activists, especially internet slactivists, be with a long range plan like this?
Personally, I see this as largely unstoppable. Social fads and mores follow a pendulum shift. Right now we're deep into homeopathic, anti-vaxx, etc territory. People are starting to feel the burn of it (dying kids, chronic illness, etc) and will naturally swing the pendulum back the other way once they're properly disincentized by their medical issues. Documentaries, celebrity endorsements, etc won't change a thing. This is largely a chaotic process that needs to play itself out. Its a conversation happening in every office, every daycare, every mothers group, etc and we really can't penetrate it, the same way the skeptic movement never penetrated religion or those who believe in the paranormal. If anything, belief in the paranormal has skyrocketed since Sagan's and CSICOP's loudmouth skeptic movement. Laying down the facts is only one part of trying to implement social change. I wish more people understood that.
I am, sadly, not optimistic that this would help.
The anti vaccine crowd, much like other groups and belief systems (even ones you and I might be part of) are as much a statement of politics and self actualization as they are of any rational belief system.
The "facts" are simply after the fact justifications, conveniently chosen, to bolster their existing viewpoints.
So, no, unfortunately, I don't think a better presentation of the facts is going to change a lot of these minds.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/i-dont-vaccinate-my-child-b...
There are groups of people who will go so far as to claim religious exceptions to vaccines for their children.
It's worth a shot, though. I'd watch it.
I don't get the impression that the documentary watching crowd overlaps with anti-vaxers too much.
So we're probably fucked.
I grew up, fortunately with out any problems, seeing so many kids suffering from polio, handicapped for life, limping, wondering why they got this disease thats so easily controlled; saw many kids die from cholera, typhiod, TB, bed ridden for months with measles, viral fevers .... and here we are in the most advanced country in the world with access (ok ... I know healthcare in the US is not easy access to everyone) to vaccinations and parents CHOOSE to not vaccinate their kids .... and risk so many lives.
sad does not begin to explain what I feel.
Of course, that assumes people are or become informed about the nature of and reason for vaccination. Which should (and, at least as of my education, was) be a trivial part of US education.
Granted: The fact that many people apparently considered Jenny McCarthy a reliable source of scientific information points to a far more basic stupidity than a failure to understand high school microbiology. It's hard to educate people in general; it's way harder to educate people who have left the compulsory school system and decided that Twitter and celebrity are reliable sources of valid health advice.
This is the worst part in my opinion. By making this choice they are putting others (those who can't afford or haven't had the chance to get the vaccine yet) at risk.
Abuse, in this context, should be real abuse, which means physical or psychological violence. Abuse does not mean disagreeing with the ways a secular capitalist democracy is heading. As much as some people want to enlist "religious indoctrination", lack of vaccination, circumcision and other forms of non-western-conforming customs as "abuse", it is of my opinion that we should refrain from that and respect the inalienable right to have different customs from the globalized state.
Governments are not supposed to be our parents and pass diktakts telling people what's the "correct way" to raise children.
Its like ... you have the right to raise the child as you see fit and if you feel its within your rights to teach the child to defecate and urinate wherever he/she feels like it, dont be mad when someone else objects to it.
This is the biggest problem with vaccinations. By the time you realize what you have done, its already late. Compare that with the horror people see immediately when someone insists on teaching their child something like bad hygiene and say its their right.
I firmly believe involuntary genital mutilation (male/female circumcision) should be outlawed. I find it barbaric that we allow male children in this country (US) to have that done and it's considered normal. If an adult wishes to have it done, then by all means go for it, but leave children the choice. This comes from someone who had it done to them and wishes it had not been done.
It's like saying, "oh, we cut off the left hand for religious reasons right after birth."
This is common sense, really - your liberty stops where it infinges on others liberty. People not vaccinating their kids threaten others lives. Government is there to protect them.
Remaining unvaccinated is the medical equivalent. Maybe we should let parents medically endanger their own children (although I really don't think we should) but we definitely should not let parents endanger my child, or me.
There is no simple answer here. It's not just a matter of declaring that free people should be left alone. Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose, and your right to remain unvaccinated ends when you make me sick.
These vaccines that all kids (at least in the US) are required to receive prevent some horrifying diseases. Horrifying. Like, tens of thousands of people a year would die from them (such as the Measles virus). When a viable vaccine became available for Measles, for example, people lined up around the block so they could receive it. They recognized that being vaccinated was the best thing to do, so they did it.
I absolutely hate the argument that people make about "not allowing the government to dictate how they raise their children". They're not. They're not telling you how to structure your day with your child, what books they need to read, what toys they're allowed to play with, etc. They're saying, "We don't want your child to die from these diseases, so we're going to have them vaccinated. You're welcome." Again, the government's job is to look after the well-being of ALL citizens, and preventing their widespread death falls under that jurisdiction.
As an aside, I'm not attacking you specifically. I'm attacking that argument, because it's absolutely stupid.
Someone choosing to not allow their child to receive low risk preventative treatment stops being a right when it increases another child likelihood of dying.
Why, declining a low risk treatment society has agreed in essential is less of a core right then the other child's right to live.
I'm not an "anti-vaxer" and am not well read on the subject of vaccination, but online discussions of this topic seem essentially religious. People who clearly have no particular expertise go on about how we will be damned if all are not vaccinated. Note in the article that nobody died from the measles outbreak. Some kids just got sick, like they still do from chicken pox. Please also note that people do in fact die every year from vaccines. They are not risk free. Might some calm discussions about statistics and risk assessment be in order? Maybe, maybe not, but the quality of discussion online I've seen essentially precludes it.
Also consider that the essential problem here, as seems to happen over and over again with infectious disease outbreaks, is travel to and from the third world. People are ready to crusade for vaccines but apparently the highly effective 19th century technology of mandatory quarantine is totally out of the question.
So developing countries are pretty serious about vaccinations.
However, things are changing with the new generation. The new generation (born in 70s/80s) have been exposed to far less horrors and especially among the upper-middle class folks, there are strains of anti-vax there too. Let's not forget, in countries like India (in my experience), homeopathy and other pseudoscientific 'cures' are more popular than in the developed world (probably due to the fact that the average person in the developed world has better access to good modern-medicine care).
The health problems in the developing world are in areas like maternal and neonatal health, where the consequences of poor care aren't as obvious or direct. Atul Gawande points out that this is a bit like how we aren't as afraid of the risk of auto accidents as we are of serial killers, even though the former is astronomically more likely to kill a person than the latter [1].
[1] Atul Gawande, "Slow Ideas," The New Yorker, July 2013: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/07/29/slow-ideas
Speaking from personal experience, my brother developed a bad reaction to a polio vaccine and developed a mild form of polio that eventually went after a year of struggle. That didn't stop my parents from further vaccinations. It was understood that vaccines have side effects but getting the disease would have been far worse.
I worry we need to see an actual measles death here in the US before people start seeing the actual benefit of vaccines in the cost/benefit calculation.
It's pretty straight-forward game theory, which must be met with equally straight-forward strategies: defectors must be punished.
Herd immunity doesn't apply because the defectors have a closely related sub-herd through which the disease spreads quickly. (On the other hand, it does apply when the disease tries to pass out of the community and cannot. Hm.)
My aunt's daughter wasn't vaccinated for small pox due to oversight, so when she contracted small pox there was a cyst on her brain that was inoperable due to her conditions. The cyst expanded and she lost some of her cognitive functions.
"We all took the vaccine after that. I had one shot, and I still took the other one and we had all our kids vaccinated, too. After people saw how sick people got, they changed their minds."
People are insulated from those times. When those diseases don't seem so scary anymore, people start to worry about what they're getting injected with. Teaching people about how vaccines work seems to be one solution, but another one is a horrifying outbreak that shocks people.
The growing anti-vax movement is a danger to everyone, and they're a powder keg ready to explode.
If someone wants to get a good grasp for the entire "story" of vaccination they have to have a basic understanding of evolution by natural selection. Fully 42% of the US population does not "believe" in evolution, which is further proof of the level of ignorance we are dealing with. I put "believe" in quotes because evolution by natural selection is not something one believes, that's nonsense. It is something one accepts or rejects based on over 150 years of evidence across a range of scientific disciplines.
Perhaps this might help:
While there are extreme cases when parents think like this, for the vast majority, that is not a true picture. Most parents I know who skip vaccinations do so in a much different manner. I know of almost nobody who skips the polio vaccine. I do know people who delay it, though, not wanting to put it into an infant. MMR is taken by many. Chicken pox... not so much. HPV... not so much. But many parent simply want to let the kids grow up a couple years before doing the vaccines.
It is a risk calculation. Polio is devastating, and clearly worth the small risk presented from a vaccine. As the diseases get less and less damaging, more parents decide that the risk is greater than the potential reward, and do not choose to get that specific vaccination at that specific time.
And while the percentages of children who have adverse reactions to vaccines is small, they do exist. As a purely anecdotal story, my neighbor's child developed shingles after getting the chicken pox vaccine. They were told he may have lifelong problems because of it. Now, the doctors were astounded, and said it is an extremely rare case, practically never heard of before. But it did happen, as do other rare cases, so flat out denials that problems never happen come off as ignorant, and destroy trust between the two sides of these arguments.
So the problem with most of the comments I am seeing here is that they are bypassing the actual thought process of people who skip vaccinations, and killing avenues for potential discussion. If you want people to engage in honest discussion, you need to engage them on the risk/reward basis, providing education on the actual risks of vaccines vs. not.
The whole attitude of "If you don't vaccinate, you are an ignorant idiot." is not a good mechanism to improve communication, and does not produce positive results for anybody.
Got it guys, the answer is no. They use technology when it suits them.
That doesn't seem like it is a contrived choice designed to enhance convenience.
(My understanding is that the choices tend to hinge on whether something creates an ongoing reliance on the greater world)
In short -- does a technology pull them away from their faith, or is it needed for a greater good? Not to mention, that each Amish community is independent and sets their own rules (there is no central Amish version of the Pope, for example).
This decision matrix isn't unique to the Amish -- people do it every day. For example, I want to save money. But I also want to work at a job. To get to the job I have to travel. I choose to drive to the job (incurring vehicle expenses), whereas I have the alternative of walking (would take several hours) or cycling (too lazy, too cold). Therefore I choose to spend money on gas instead of either not working or walking to work.
It's not so much the experience change I'm pointing out, rather that that will bring foreign influence from outside (and obviously foreign influence has occurred because they are using tractors and diesel from the other comments.)
And if we're considering a decision matrix that tries to minimize outside influence, that still doesn't explain why the Philippines vs any where in North America, really.
Yes, that does lead to some oddities.
Maybe they considered, quite correctly, that poorer people in disaster stricken areas are easier to influence.
Likewise, flying on airplanes or taking the occasional train on a one-off trip isn't really that big of a problem, either: you aren't tying yourself to the rest of the world. If you go on a mission this year via airplane, it doesn't compel to do the same thing next year. On the other hand, buying into automobile culture to commute to work ties you pretty hard to everything.
In the Ohio case, "patient zero" had traveled to the Philippines on a missionary trip. (In case you were wondering, he took a plane. Miller explained, "Some Amish fly. Some don't.")
So, while I am not against or for their way of life, one can plainly see them adapting to new way of life but still denying something as basic as vaccinations when they feel like it.
"We don't have any internet or computer. We don't have a car," Ivan Miller, an Amish furniture store owner in the community struck by measles, explained. "It's not that we feel a car is wrong. It's our choice because we feel if we had a car, it would bring us to a lot more temptations in the world. [emphasis mine]"
[0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-31034379
NB: Just a reminder. The down vote button is not an 'I disagree with this person' button.
> The difference is the Amish are willing to change their stance on a technology if it proves to be beneficial to their lifestyle. So are most people, they just have a belief that vaccinations somehow cause more harm them they prevent. Almost like another communities clearly less educated decisions on various topics based on their belief.
>The difference is the Amish are willing to change their stance on a technology if it proves to be beneficial to their lifestyle.
People are not making choices because they know its the wrong choice to make. Anti-vaxers are dead wrong, but they dont make said choice to spite you, they think its beneficial.
I would say that ignorance because of belief or personal choice are basically the same excuse for choosing something that is harming people, and can be easily remedied.
I really wish people would read the article before making these assumptions. Half the people in here seem to have just seen "Amish" and leapt to the conclusion that Amish people reject vaccinations in the same way that they reject cars and computers.
> Fletcher describes it as a "perfect storm:" an unimmunized traveler going to a place with an outbreak and bringing an infectious disease back to an unprotected community.
Going forward, here's an article that points to some ways that states could change their laws, rules, and procedures to get to higher immunization rates:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/01/29...
This is by conscious choice, not by any necessity. They have access to all of the health information anyone else has, and they consciously choose to ignore it. I'm not making a judgment call on their society, I live in a heavily Amish area and they're mostly great people, but saying we can't blame them because they choose not to follow modern health standards until it's too late is just passing the buck.
Its well established that no vaccine has an effect that lasts longer than seven years. This is the reason for booster shots. Every vaccine researcher and pharma company will tell you this.
The reason we immunize children is because their hygiene practices are poorer than most adults and they are a marginalized class. They get more diseases due to poor hygiene which encourages adults to look for easy solutions. And adults are in a position to force those solutions on the powerless.
Adults do not immunize themselves every seven years because the risk/reward profile simply isn't worth it. Every shot, vaccine or not, is a risk. On the other hand, adult-quality hygiene and typical first world nutrition cause people to avoid dying from diseases already. For a recent example look at Ebola. Many people simply can't get it because they are too healthy. This is why ebola never went anywhere in the USA and many other countries.
Adults with poor hygiene that get more diseases are ignored because they are a smaller group and in a position to resist so they are not worth targeting.
Most people aren't aware that the USA stayed polio-free for many years while a live attenuated virus was given to children. It was known by pharma companies that the live attenuated virus would become a full strength virus in the child's stool. Look it up, I remember at least one American woman catching it from changing a diaper and it was in the news. Now we use dead virus because of people like her. But the larger point is that for many many hundreds of thousands of diaper changes, there just wasn't a problem. Other countries with the live vaccine had lots of problems. What was the difference? Hygiene and nutrition.
Vaccines are a great tool. Like any tool they should be voluntary. People who choose not to use them are not a problem because if they were then every adult who hasn't had a vaccine in seven years is also a problem so the blame should be pretty thin.
And finally, please note that no one died and many were hospitalized for precaution, not an actual need. Healthy, first world people die from measles at an extremely small rate. I know it doesn't sell newspapers or get people to read your blog but this was not a deadly epidemic. All of the angry rhetoric around this event could have been avoided if people were informed ahead of time that there would be no deaths in otherwise health people. Meanwhile, heart disease is a deadly epidemic and there is no vaccine for that.
Also, how does one get the power to down vote.
just vote everyone else up. same effect.
The existence of booster shots certainly doesn't prove that no vaccine lasts more than seven years. At best it proves that those specific vaccines don't last forever. There are plenty of vaccines where you don't get booster shots though.
You comment about hygiene is entirely misinformed. Hygiene is important for Ebola and Herpes, but not for any of the diseases we get immunizations for.
You write "People who choose not to use them are not a problem because if they were then every adult who hasn't had a vaccine in seven years is also a problem so the blame should be pretty thin." Again, that's entirely wrong. Adults, as I mentioned above, are not the carriers. Secondly, please go to Wikipedia and understand "herd immunity". It is the reason measles was eradicated in the US even though some religious minorities opted out, and also the reason measles is back not that anti-vacc nonsense has become popular.
I can't start to grasp how wrong is this claim
You might start here http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67...
If humans or any living thing didn't have the ability to fight off disease life wouldn't exist. The degree to which anything can fight off an illness is a combination of genetics and environment which includes its overall health status.
> This replication causes the body to develop an immunity that, in 95% of children, lasts for a lifetime.
The seven years claim is clearly false. Vaccines don't work 100%, but they can grant lifelong protection.
According to this web page, lots of vaccines last more than 7 years, with some lasting for life:
http://www.traveldoctor.co.nz/vaccinations.aspx
Of those that don't last for life, adults do get booster shots. I don't know why you think they don't. I get a flu shot every year and I get boosters for other diseases every so often when I have a physical.
I don't immunize my child because she's marginalized and powerless to resist. I do it because it's a cheap, easy, and safe way to reduce her chances of discomfort, disability, and death. Her mother and I often try to get our vaccinations at the same time she does so we can show her that she's not alone.
At the moment newspaper articles, tv news reports, etc can all get away with discussing science (and science-related topics) with citing ANYTHING.
I'm not saying it'll solve the vaccine crisis, but in the long run, I think the key is getting citations for statements of facts into public discourse. (then you have to worry about the quality of the stuff cited, but that can be the next step).
Wrong. Every vaccine has a different level of immunigenicity that effects how long it is protective for but some certainly last longer that seven years. Factors such as whether the vaccine is protein conjugated or has other adjuvants can determine this. This article is about measles and one study (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2393239/) found that immunity lasts at least 15 years
"The reason we immunize children is because their hygiene practices are poorer than most adults and they are a marginalized class" No, we immunize children because they are often more vulnerable to disease. It is an adult parent's duty to protect them and vaccines are part of that
"For a recent example look at Ebola. Many people simply can't get it because they are too healthy. This is why ebola never went anywhere in the USA and many other countries." I don't even know where to begin. Two nurses who went to incredible lengths to wear protective gowns still contracted the virus in Texas. It was only due to a massive public health effort in keeping track of every contact that the virus was contained.
"It was known by pharma companies that the live attenuated virus would become a full strength virus in the child's stool. Look it up, I remember at least one American woman catching it from changing a diaper and it was in the news. Now we use dead virus because of people like her" There is distorting the use of the Salk live vaccine and the Sabin killed vaccine. In very high incidence areas a live vaccine is used since it is transmissible so that even without perfect vaccine coverage, the vaccine strain will spread further in the population. This does very rarely cause clinical disease but the feeling is that this is much safer than letting the wild-type strain circulate. Once a population is polio free and the wild-type strain is no longer circulating, the killed vaccine is then used to stop spread of the attenuated live vaccine. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine#Oral_vaccine)
"Vaccines are a great tool. Like any tool they should be voluntary." Would you argue that parents should also have a voluntary choice whether to place their children in car seats?
"please note that no one died" The ones at risk of dying are infants and thanks to a robust public health effort they were able to be quarantined. It would have saved a ton of time and effort if people had simply been immunized. Prior to the measles vaccine there were dozens of deaths each year to measles. No one has ever died from measles vaccine.