I don’t usually read any of the dozens of press releases that flood my inbox each day, but this one from the New York City Coalition for Vaccine Safety and Autism Advocacy Organizations had a long headline in BOLD CAPS, so of course, it caught my attention:
OUTRAGED AUTISM GROUPS AND LEADERS TO ANNOUNCE 50,000-PARENT PROTEST IN NYC AGAINST BILLIONAIRE AND MICROSOFT CHAIRMAN BILL GATES AFTER BEING CALLED “CHILD KILLERS”
Bill Gates called autism advocacy groups “child killers”? Wow. That’s outrageous. Except, in Gates’ defense, A) he didn’t call autism groups who advocate against childhood vaccines “child killers,” he said that they “kill children,” and B) autism groups who advocate against childhood vaccines are child killers.
I mean, setting aside the fact that no credible scientific study has ever proven a causal link between childhood vaccines and autism, and the fact that the original study that sparked all this anti-vaccine hysteria was recently retracted as an “elaborate fraud,” objectively, autism doesn’t kill children, but childhood diseases do. Some of these unvaccinated children will needlessly get sick and die, as will other children too young or immune-compromised to be vaccinated, who subsequently catch illness due to the lack of herd immunity. So yes, I think it fair to say that these anti-vaccine advocates are “killing children,” if indirectly.
And you know what else these vaccine deniers are? Fucking idiots who cannot accept that the “scientific” evidence on which their entire crusade is based simply no longer exists. You know what else doesn’t exist? The Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and God. Believe in any or all of them if you please, but don’t claim your faith is based on science, because it’s not.
Now, I don’t mean to be insensitive to the parents of autistic children. I’m a parent myself, and I can imagine how devastated I would have been had my daughter been diagnosed with autism. But you know what? Just because something awful afflicts your child and your family, doesn’t mean it is somebody else’s fault. Bad things happen, sometimes with no explanation, so if you have a God, and it makes you feel better, blame Him. But don’t blame Bill Gates for trying to save millions of people through childhood vaccination; he’s already got enough blood on his hands for Windows Vista.
And for goodness sake, get your kids vaccinated already!
I kind of love Spindle
the article posted @ 47 is such beautiful example of logical fallacy
As the parent of a child with Aspergers, I can’t figure out why autism has become such a boogie man in this vaccine debate. I mean, it’s a challenge but it’s not THAT bad. Why are people so afraid of it?
To 90: I agree vaccinations are not a direct cause of autism; I disagree that they have nothing to do with autism at all. I’d be foolish to disregard what I’ve seen and experienced. And no, it’s definitely not worth eradicating an autism factor if doing so guarantees widespread baby death.
To 93: I am definitely no biologist and I probably don’t know any more about the immune system than the next guy. I was, however, involved in the pharmaceutical industry. I’m sceptical the studies, particularly the politics involved and sources of funding.
To all: I’m not advocating eradicating all vaccines. That would be beyond awful. I can’t imagine how many kids would suffer from disease and death. I definitely AM advocating that parents and pediatricians scrutinize a child’s familial medical history (particularly for neurological disorders), assess his/her current toxic load, and uncover any issues (including maternal) from conception to present BEFORE following the usual vaccination schedule. Just asking people to think instead of blindly accept is all.
88, that would be a convincing argument if you weren’t factually wrong. Studies have been done comparing rates of autism in populations that get vaccinated versus that do not. Vaccinations have been stopped temporarily in some places to test the hypothesis. Turns out that there is absolutely no change in autism rates for the pool of people who are not vaccinated versus those who are. If vaccines were a contributing factor, even if it required other factors as well, then there would be a decrease in autism rates among the unvaccinated, but there isn’t. The unvaccinated children get autism at the exact same rates as the vaccinated children, they just also are at a much higher risk for measles, which has been a major childhood killer due to its extreme contagiousness, polio if the parents are so unbelievably stupid as to not vaccinate against polio, and so forth. So, if you prefer your child to have a better chance of being alive and not permanently disabled (many childhood diseases often do not kill but run a risk of creating lifelong permanent symptoms such as vision loss, difficulty walking, etc.) then get your child vaccinated – unless your child is actually in one of the few rare cases which are exceptions, such as being immunocompromised, in which case your doctor will discuss that with you. And if your child is, then you absolutely better make sure you stay up to date on your vaccinations and if you have any other children that they do, because your child will be relying on herd immunity, and it’d suck if your child died because you let a sibling spread measles to your kid.
@95, if you think any kid started descending into autism “the day they were vaccinated”, you ARE an idiot. THERE IS NO LINK. There’s nothing there. And the only science that suggests otherwise WAS ENTIRELY FAKED.
Call a spade a spade. Idiots. Deluded. Child killers. These terms are accurate.
There are no “answers”. We don’t know what causes autism. We do know it’s not vaccines. And we know that parents who refuse to vaccinate as a result of their mistaken beliefs ARE KILLERS.
They should have their children taken away from them and be put in jail, as far as I’m concerned.
Spindles, it seems like you have a lot of time on your hands since you got disbarred.
@106: Wait, that Lippman schmuck is Spindles?
YOU BASTARD! You still owe me $150 from San Antonio!
Does someone commenting from outside of the SLOG group always get labeled a troll? Or only those with opposing view points? Whether Spindler is right or wrong, his/her comments provide a nice break in the proverbial high fives and clapping one another on the back and giving out awards for “best comment ever on this subject.” Isn’t it nice sometimes to have a conversation that doesn’t get overcome with witty remarks on how our group is so much smarter and better and more hip/open then everyone else. The stupid Christians, the stupid republicans, the stupid fill in the blank. Who cares? Do you really need to brag that much to each other online to know what you are all about? To prove it every day in writing the most funny or intelligent comment? Oh and don’t forget to call me a troll because I’ve never written on here except I have been a reader for as long as I can remember of the Stranger on paper and online.
@108 – We call spindles (and republicans and christianists) stupid because they are. Are you suggesting we lie instead?
Calling a view point stupid is better then calling the person carrying that view point stupid. If you want to show someone the truth, to teach them the right thing you have to go about it a different way. Imagine you are in the dark and a person shines a light in your eyes, does this help you see better or blinds you? Wouldn’t it be better to be led to the light slowly letting your eyes adjust? If this group continues to just enjoy fraternizing with each other and people with like minded views, and anyone that disagrees is harassed until they don’t come back can we still think of this group as open minded or liberal?
You have to look at risk versus benefit. While there is absolutely no link between vaccinations, and autism, they are not without risk. Nothing in the world is. People are much more likely to suffer harm in a car than they are getting in a plane. Yet, many folks who are afraid to fly will jump right into a car without a second thought. Millions of people are killed or injured in automobiles, but we’ve decided that the risk is worth the benefit of getting where we want to go in a timely fashion. Vaccinations save by far, many more lives than they harm. The slight risks are worth the benefit.
@108, 110 Hate to say it, GMaul, but that applies when there’s a knowledge issue. I really don’t think that that’s the case. “Vaccine skeptics”, at least the active ones, have done plenty of research. They just operate from a different prior.
You’ve heard of Bayes’ Theorem? We evaluate new information in light of prior knowledge. Information that contradicts the prior is held up to greater scrutiny (ie, must be more convincing) than information that confirms the prior. This is both totally human and totally logical; in the absence of perfect information, you have to take imperfect information as it comes.
Reasonable human beings assume that the scientific consensus is a pretty strong prior. When new information comes in confirming the safety of vaccines (and there is plenty), this confirms the prior. When new information comes in (in general) disproving the safety of vaccines (and there is very little), they evaluate it critically. The reverse is true for vaccine skeptics; they find the scientific consensus intrinsically untrustworthy, so the reverse is the case.
More to the point, there’s nothing you can really say to convince an active vaccine skeptic. If they were open to new data, and didn’t have a strong prior against the medical consensus, they wouldn’t be a vaccine skeptic. Expert opinion on vaccines is suspect, by definition, because the experts on vaccines are people who actually work on vaccines, and therefore have a conflict of interest. (Try googling Paul Offitt if you think I’m exaggerating.)
So what do you do? You stand firm and don’t let nonsense propagate itself, because there are people who aren’t educated on the topic, and who aren’t actively skeptical, but who might passively buy garbage science because it’s an easy thing to do – you don’t have to do anything, or buy anything, or believe anything in particular. Kids hate getting needles. Adults hate getting needles. So a sensitive, loving parent doesn’t need a lot of convincing. Even when the benefit is so clear, the payment so minor, and the risk so small as it is with vaccination.
Yeah, that’s intolerant. Call me intolerant.
@103 “Toxic load”? I’d think that a child should be healthy in general when he/she receives a vaccination – but not because of some hypothetical toxic load, just because the vaccine often won’t take if the child isn’t healthy.
@3 for the win.
Look, it’s understandable that parents of autistic kids would glom onto anything they can think of to “explain” why their kid is autistic, but that doesn’t make it correct, just like pretending Climate Change isn’t happening won’t change the fact that it is and that it’s gonna be hella hot in 2040.
@37, I’m in love. Please have my child. We’ll raise it up on Peeps and vaccinate it against spindles together.
I had the mumps and the chicken pox and several other childhood diseases, my family was not germ-a-phobic and I was raised in the middle of corn fields on a mid-west farm. I very rarely get sick, had the usual 70’s something school vaccines and am no worse for wear. Twenty year olds get sicker than I do.
Some vaccines I agree with. But not all of them. Not for their reasons either, for my own. Children should get some illnesses that you only get once. Chicken pox and mumps for sure. Some of them I will never agree with.
Ending with, it is my own opinion and I will either be happy or regret the no vaccines. My choice and I wish the bleeding hearts and the sheeple who insist we all conform or we are doomsayers to our children or whatever their cause is. Stop muddling around in my freedom to make my own choices for myself and my family. I do not tell you how to live, I will not be told by anyone how to live. If people do not want this for their kids, well then it is their dilema, not Susies and Billys dilema over in the next state that does not know me.
If people do wnat this for their kids then please go ahead. Again, it is not everyone elses business in this country who does what. And stop telling the government I need to have a big daddy around to tell me what to do in my own private life. I can go to the wet spot if I really needed a daddy.
Oh yea, for the record, I have no kids. Just tired of everyone having nothing better to do than to get into other peoples business that does not concern them.
I have often wondered if the whole “vaccines are bad for you” idea wasn’t started by Big Pharma in the first place. After all, the drug companies don’t make a lot of money on vaccines, but they stand to make a fortune when people start getting sick with the diseases they vaccinate against and will pay anything for a ‘cure’.
@88 Do you have kids? Do you have an autistic kid? Because I do. I can say one thing for sure, I would rather take the “risk” of vaccinating my second kid and having her also be autistic than having her catch some awful PREVENTABLE disease and die.
That’s right. I have one Autistic kid and I still vaccinate. It’s stupid not to.
Is it hard to have an Autistic kid? Yes. But it’s also hard to have kids, Autistic or not.
@115 While it would be nice to live in a world where you could exactly what you wanted all the time, that isn’t this world. The reason vaccines are strongly encouraged is because herd immunity protects those that cannot take the vaccines at all. Chicken Pox and Mumps kill and sterilize children. You may not have had any problems as a child, but you were lucky. My brother got chicken pox when he was fifteen and ended up in the hospital he was so sick. These diseases are vaccinated against for a reason, they harm, they kill and it’s a proven fact, which is why the vaccines were created in the first place.
Calling people idiots is wrong headed. Calling their decisions or the poor information they rely on stupid or misinformed is not.
When I had my daughter in 2002 that paper by Wakefield was first coming out. But because vaccines had been around for so much longer and the research I did said that the vaccines that had harmful elements had been re-created, I saw no reason not to get my child vaccinated. I hated watching my daughter get injected with four needles. She would scream and cry and fuss and usually end up with a fever and swollen areas where the needles went in. But she’s never gotten sick or been miserable or had to go to the hospital, so I’m thankful for that even while I cringe for every time she cried when she got her shots.
Oh my goodness, I love these trolls xD
Clearly, vaccines are beneficial. I would not be here if not for them, so thank you science! I’m a biologist, and I can’t wait to help out the world someday as well. Pity that there will always be “anti” people that think actual cures and preventions aren’t really necessary…
@115
Let me put it this way. If your unvaccinated self, or your unvaccinated kids got sick and passed whooping cough or swine flu to my daughter and she died of it, I would kill you. No, I mean it. I would find you and kill you. I would willingly go to jail if I could be sure you were dead for killing my daughter. I might even kill you if you permanently hurt her.
If you had vaccinated your kid, there would have been two less murders.
Vaccinate your damn kids, lets get rid of these ridiculous diseases once and for all.
@spindlestroll
“The undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind.”
Margaret Sanger, quoted in Charles Valenza. “Was Margaret Sanger a Racist?” Family Planning Perspectives, January-February 1985, page 44.
How come she missed you?
@spindle Moffmars? is that you?? Or Bensmyson? C’mon.. which is it?
As the parent of a child with an autism-spectrum disorder, I just want to say that you can not villianize these anti-vaccinationists enough. They want to allow children to die in the name of supposed helping people like my beautiful Son#1, which is the grossest insult to him I can imagine.
Thank you for pitching in on the cause.
One Brow
For those who think Chicken Pox is a harmless child’s disease . . .
I was exposed several times as a child, but never caught it. Mum even thought I might be naturally immune. The worst I ever had as a kid was one nasty flu, and tonsillitis (US name might be strep throat? Not sure)
As a 20 year old, I caught it off my niece.
I was in bed sick for 2 weeks. I was delirious, seeing people (who weren’t there) walking around my room. My flatmate debated taking me to hospital at one point my fever was so high, but decided that I would infect other, sicker people, so actually took sick leave herself to watch me for a day and keep an eye on my temperature, at the suggestion of my doctor. Eventually, I got better. A week later, I started coughing a lot. Turns out the pox lead to a secondary infection, and I had a very nasty case of pneumonia that took 3 weeks to shake, and I nearly failed a couple of courses at uni as a result. 6 weeks of my life I’d like back.
Two years later, the vaccine came out.
How I avoided it at school, when best friends and playmates had it, I don’t know. It went through my school at least 4 times. So you can’t rely on that to protect you.
@_db_: You made my day. You win, now and forever.
@spindles: You do realize that a) you basically just proved that researchers are concerned about the safety of vaccines and are contributing towards that end and b) the most recent paper you cited was published in 1998 and it’s now 2011? Yes. 13-year-old research is useless to us, hon. Because people keep researching and the world keeps a-changin’! For one thing, the US bowed to the demands of the crazies and removed thimerosal in 2001 from all vaccines. That was a big deal for some people.
Also, I concur that you should go ahead and admit that the Jews(my homeboys!) are behind all this to kill people and make money. It’s not so hard.
here’s some ingredients in vaccines: aluminum, formalin, mercury, phenol, antibiotics, dye, gmo’s, animal and human bits, etc. you inject a baby with this crap (over and over), what do you think is going to happen? use some common sense.
and most infectious diseases decreased more than 90% at the turn of the last century, 40 years before the first vaccine was created.
it’s ok to think for yourself, and not rely on what your dopey parents told you as a kid.
Is anyone at all concerned with foreign animal viruses in vaccines? That in the process of developing vaccines, researchers have repeatedly mixed human and animal cell lines? Now we are seeing animal viruses showing up in cancerous tumors, such as SV40 (monkeys, polio vaccine) and murine leukemia viruses in prostate cancers and CFS patient. I know XMRV research is still really in it’s infancy, with lots of controversy over contamination issues and even what strain is being identified, but there is enough to warrant further research. Once you consider how only CFS or prostate cancer samples were contaminated at a high rate while the control group was not, considering these studies were ran all samples through the same lab, it seems clear to me that the contamination issue is still insufficient to explain the data. I find it fascinating that the majority of people attacking the anti-vaccine camp focus solely on autism. There is a lot more to the general public questioning vaccines than just this. Being that we live in a market economy, the consumers dropping demand for one item (vaccines as they are) and increasing demand for another (safer alternatives) is exactly what motivates profit seeking businesses (pharmaceutical companies) to produce the product that is in demand. If we step in and mandate vaccines as they are now, we interfere with the natural economic process that will motivate production of safer alternatives and better screening for contaminate viruses. We should be using this public backlash as a motivation to address these concerns with more research and safer vaccines rather than trying to mandate a product as it is when it truly may have side effects that are also debilitating and deadly.