Since Andrew Wakefield’s, now thoroughly discredited, Lancet publication regarding so-called links between the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism was released in 1998, the fervor surrounding mandatory vaccinations has swelled to a fevered pitch.
Indeed, mandatory vaccinations have become a key point in the Republican primaries — specifically between Texas Governor Rick Perry and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MI).
Perry has been criticized by the Right for requiring middle school girls to be vaccinated against the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), which has been known to cause cervical cancer.
The Texas legislature overturned this order despite a simple opt-out procedure that allowed parents who disagreed with the vaccination on moral grounds to prevent their daughters from being vaccinated.
Bachmann capitalized on the HPV vaccine issue at the Republican debate last month decrying government injections, despite there being no evidence that the HPV vaccine Gardasil has any harmful side effects.
In the wake of the debate, Bachmann claimed she had heard anecdotal evidence from an anonymous woman who said that her daughter had developed mental retardation after administration of the vaccine. It should be pointed out to Bachmann that the plural of anecdote is not “anec-data”.
Bioethicists Dr. Steven Miles and Dr. Arthur Caplan have offered $11,000 to charity if Bachmann can produce this woman, along with any medical records or other evidence demonstrating a link between the Gardasil vaccine and intellectual disabilities. Thus far, she has remained unsurprisingly silent regarding this challenge, but has justified her earlier statements by clarifying that she is not a physician or scientist. Let us hope that in the future she will remember this before giving irresponsible medical advice.
In Europe, Wakefield’s study on the MMR vaccine is still wreaking havoc on children’s health. So far this year, almost 30,000 cases of measles and 8 deaths have been reported.
Immunization rates have nose-dived since Wakefield’s 1998 study. Many parents are now either unaware or unwilling to accept that the study has been deemed fraudulent and there is no medical evidence for any link between the MMR vaccine and autism. As a result, measles rates have skyrocketed, and children have suffered and died.
Wakefield’s article was deemed fraudulent after multiple researchers attempted to duplicate his results and failed. Following several allegations of misconduct, including accusations of abuse of disabled children, Wakefield has been stricken from the medical register in Britain – the equivalent of having one’s medical license revoked in the US. Despite this, the Centers for Disease Control estimates that nearly 40 percent of Americans have declined or delayed vaccinations due to completely unfounded concerns.
However, the resistance to Gardasil is largely based in the fear that less risky sex will cause teen girls to behave promiscuously. The same concerns were leveled against antibiotics effective against syphilis, hormonal birth control, and educating couples as to what acts will result in conception; yet such fears have been consistently unrealized.
I have no doubt that protection against only two cervical cancer causing strains of HPV out of the over 100 strains that result in warts will not make young people forget all about pregnancy, herpes, or HIV.
It is clear that neither the MMR or Gardasil vaccines pose a risk to the health of children. In fact, it is exactly the opposite that is true: vaccines have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
Skeptic philosopher David Hume once said, “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.”
It seems today that most prefer to do the opposite and proportion evidence (or the absence thereof) to their beliefs.
When parents refuse to vaccinate their children against infectious diseases like measles, their children’s lives are being put at great risk for no reason other than allegiance to a debunked ideology. Is a child’s life truly worth so little?
Emily Brooks is a senior economics major and may be reached at [email protected].
My Childs life is worth everything, who gives these so called medical experts the right to play God and pretend to be all knowing? They dont know anythin but what they are taught, which is nohing buy garbage. The vaccine industry is a 50 billion dollar a year industry! No wonder the medical communtity and government spend 100's od thousands of dollars to supress/debunk/discredit those
who are opposed.
Jesus was discredited, The framers of our great nation were discredited, those abolishinsts who faught for the freedom of slaves were discredited, need I go on?
When we cease to think, because of imposed pseudo-intellectual superiority, we become slaves to those who have, without merit, placed themselves in the position to tell us what is best and not best for our lives and families.
I don't think people are contesting the effectiveness or safety of the vaccine, rather they are contesting the fact that you aren't allowed to decide for yourself.
Are you ok with being FORCED to get the vaccine? That is the argument: whether or not you get to make your own opinion.
But go ahead, let the government decide what is good and what is bad for you. Enjoy not thinking for yourself.
These vaccines are not safe. And until they are people should proceed with EXTREME caution.
As a mother, I spent nearly my entire first pregnancy pouring over all kinds of information on what is best for baby's health. There is a lot of information out there are all sides of the vaccination spectrum, but what I did determine is that the lack of being able to choose when and how to vaccinate my child due to an arbitrary schedule is NOT in his best interest. Within the first 24 hours of birth, hospitals are on cue to give your child a Hepatitis B vaccination. Why? Because it is a catch all decision for any mother who might be an IV drug user or prostitute. So unless your newborn is having sex, the likelyhood that they will contract Hep B is pretty slim.
Pity you didn't spend 5 minutes with a dictionary. The word is "PORING", not "pouring."
Then again, what do we expect from ditzy brainless followers of morons like Jenny McCarthy?
Robert, you're apparently the brainless one. Karma is making a lot of sense. My autistic son received a hepatitis B vaccine on the day he was born, which contained mercury in the preservative thimerosal. I was completely trusting at the time, and figured if that's what the CDC reccommended it must be for the best. I later realized that this vaccine had absolutely no benefit for him. It only possibly benefits babies whose mothers are infected with hep B. The decision to give all babies this vaccine on the day of birth, before anything is even known about that baby's health status, is crazy.
My humblest apologies, Robert. It seems that in my passion to discuss an obviously slanted piece of journalism that I offended your English degree with ONE misspelling. Pity that you are too busy finding ways to attempt to embarrass people with a differing viewpoint than yours than to research what I said. My hope is that if and when you ever have children that they never suffer from any ailment or malady caused from human error and that you find the gold at the end of the rainbow.
Do a bit of research and notice that no one disputes that children carry immunity from their mothers until they are able to have their own system fully kick in. BUT if you start screwing with their delicate system with all this chemical toxicity, it does have an effect. Maybe it isn't autism, but look at the majority of health problems faced by the youth today and ask yourself, if my child's natural immune system was allowed to develop on its own would there be so many issues? There are more voices out there these days telling women to do the very opposite of the things that have been natural to having children – from natural birth to breastfeeding to child wearing. Ms. Brooks, I hope that you will not be one of those women who schedules a C-Section because it fits into your busy schedule. Being informed means going against the current when it comes to your child's health! Good luck!!!
I understand this is a university paper – the standard of journalism needs to be higher. Why would I believe someone who types this sentence, then publishes it?
"Resistance to vaccinations are baseless".
Further, my resistance IS not baseless. I have the foundation of post vaccinal encephalitis – a particularly good foundation on which to base the decision (at my doctor's behest) never to vaccinate again.
I understand this is a university paper – the standard of journalism needs to be higher. Why would I believe someone who types this sentence, then publishes it?
"Resistance to vaccinations are baseless".
Further, my resistance IS not baseless. I have the foundation of post vaccinal encephalitis – a particularly good foundation on which to base the decision (at my doctor's behest) never to vaccinate again.
Emily, no doubt you are very young, so I forgive you for knowing so little about your subject matter. It is very difficult, I'm sure, to see beyond the spin offered every day by mainstream media and govt agencies such as the CDC. Unfortunately, the CDC is responsible for both promoting vaccines and monitoring their safety, a conflict of interest which makes it very difficult for them to acknowledge any problems with vaccines.
Let's start with Dr. Wakefield. Here is the true story in brief. Dr. Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues at the Royal Free Hospital, including the world renowned pediatric gastroenterologist John Walker-Smith, began seeing a number of children who had severe inflammatory bowel disease and autism. Many of the parents of these children reported that their children's conditions either began or considerably worsened after receiving the MMR. You can hear some of the parents tell there stories in the video linked to below. In addition, in this video you will see reporter Brian Deer, who is the person who instigated the charges against Dr. Wakefield. He is in this video telling a mother, who is holding a picture of her son's abdomen with a colostomy bag hanging out, "That's not bowel disease! That's diarrhea!" http://www.naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=21C9E60E7A00D3D…
But as you will hear from the parents in the above video, their children's bowel disease was very real. The parents were so happy to find treatment at the Royal Free Hospital. None of these parents complained about the treatment their children received. They wanted them to receive diagnostic tests such as colonoscopy, because these children were suffering and needed help. Wakefield and his colleagues wrote a simple case series paper reporting on twelve of these children. The paper called for further study. The result should have been further study. Instead it was castigation.
For more information on the MMR and autism, read David Kirby's book evidence of harm. For more information on Dr. Wakefield read his book Callous Disregard, and the articles at this site: http://www.wesupportandywakefield.com/ (page down to "articles of interest")
and here: http://www.cryshame.org/ http://www.ageofautism.com/dr-andrew-wakefield/
I know that the video is rather long, and that is a lot of reading to do, but I want you to know there is another side to the story.
Is my point that we should all stop vaccinating? No. My point is that part of a good vaccine program should be to deal effectively with the down side, the adverse reactions. We need to understand these reactions better for the sake of both prevention and treatment. There seems to be a belief that the only way to protect the vaccine program is to deny that problems exist. That is not good science and not good medicine.
BTW, why have we not heard more about the story of Dr. Poul Thorsen, CDC researcher who was indicted for embezzlement? Amazing how the inaccurate stories about Dr. Wakefield flood the media, but we're not hearing anything about Poul Thorsen: http://www.justice.gov/usao/gan/press/2011/04-13-… http://www.rescuepost.com/files/thorsen-aarhus.pd… http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/03/frantic-cdcs-d…
And now, on to Gardasil. You wrote that there is "no evidence that the HPV vaccine Gardasil has any harmful side effects". There have been numerous reports of extremely harmful side effects. See: http://truthaboutgardasil.org/injuries/ http://truthaboutgardasil.org/injuries-continued/ http://truthaboutgardasil.org/memorial/ http://www.judicialwatch.org/gardasil
A lead researcher for Gardasil, Diane Harper, has expressed doubt about whether the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/19/cbsnews…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marcia-g-yerman/an-…
“Recent reports state that Gardasil may have triggered MS (Multiple Sclerosis) in some girls receiving the vaccine. What are your thoughts on this?
“‘Neurologists at the American Neurological Association have indeed concluded that Gardasil is temporally associated with autoimmune attacks on the neurologic system. The range of neurologic disorders is unknown.’”
http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/503/27/ http://offtheradar.co.nz/vaccines/53-researcher-d… http://sanevax.org/dr-diane-harper-tells-the-trut…
See this is why elderly people are never anti-vaccine. They remember measles. They remember polio. They remember small pox. Not to mention the other diseases we got rid of in this country in other "unnatural ways" like malaria and scarlet fever.
Oh, and if you don't get your kid vaccinated and they get measles, they can get an immune compromised kid sick and kill him. Good job. Vaccines are not for fun. They aren't so the government can put a chip in your arm to make 911 an inside job or whatever else you people swallow wholesale.
Vaccines are to prevent diseases that killed millions of people you twits. Just because you haven't seen a child turn purple choking from pertussis or a child in wheelchair from polio. OH NOES! The vaccines you got when you were a kid that are the reason that you are ALIVE right now that never made you or your generation autistic must be evil cause Jenny McCarthy says so. Really? We're all going to jump in line behind the Candies bimbo who now claims her kid GOT BETTER from autism. Anyone who has ever worked with autistic children know just how ridiculous that is. That idiot is an insult to every family with an autistic child.
Grow up. I spent 6 years in Africa working with kids that are dying of these diseases you spoiled American idiots don't even know exist. People Are DYING while you're stroking your ego on the internet. Immune systems don't develop on their own to fight polio! Why do you think Franklin Roosevelt was in a goddamn wheelchair? His feet were tired?
Oh and as far as trusting yourself over a physician…. Well you just let me know how that at-home appendectomy goes for you. In fact -everyone more educated than you is just lying! Who needs air traffic controllers? You guys can see other planes out the window! Who needs professors? Lets just spout bullshit with no backing evidence other than the truthiness of your gut feelings. Lets see how long it takes for society to devolve. That seems to be you peoples goal.
I'm glad Ms. Brooks put herself out there on this. More people need to speak up against willful ignorance and baseless paranoia. Clearly no one is listening.
Mumps was gone for christ's sakes now people are getting it again, jesus we are going to have polio back if it is up to people like you, and there is nothing wrong with a mandate with a free opt-out. pseudo-intellectuals? oh lord..
"Since Andrew Wakefield’s, now thoroughly discredited"
The American Association of Physicians and Surgeons would not agree with you. In fact, Dr. Wakefield has very recently done a presentation for them; exposing the fraud against him, and discussing some of the safety concerns surrounding certain vaccines.
"Since Andrew Wakefield’s, now thoroughly discredited"
The American Association of Physicians and Surgeons would not agree with you. In fact, Dr. Wakefield has very recently done a presentation for them; exposing the fraud against him, and discussing some of the safety concerns surrounding certain vaccines.
I’m not anti-vaccines per se, but I also am not going to trust someone about what to do with MY child, just because they have an MD at the end of their name. I’ll research the different vaccines and will decide when and how they’ll receive the vaccines. For example, I’m refusing the Hep B shot for my baby at birth. He’ll get it later when his immune system can handle things better. As a parent that’s my right.