Non-profits file 990 forms, which you can download if you register at guidestar.org.

Um....do they even realize that they don’t put mercury in vaccines anymore??

This grandma remembers that autism and Asperger’s did not exist until not so long ago. Well, actually they did, but since they had no name, people just thought the way Michael Savage does: that it was crazy parents who couldn’t discipline their kids, or that Jr. was just kind of odd or a nerd or something like that.
Who would want to bring back the good old days when babies died like flies from childhood diseases they are no protected from, thanks to vaccines? They looked so cute in their little coffins.
I recognize this as a level of hysteria about what is going to happen to our kids that is causing parents to become irrational in their attempts to protect them. We have no viable leadership on matters of child care, health, safety, education, etc. etc. so parents are panicking (naturally enough).

One does not have to be ant-vaccine to be anti-mercury in vaccinations.

Nope, kat, and they don’t realize that the # of autism cases didn’t dramatically decline after the mercury preservative was removed.

And they can’t process that if autism rates weren’t affected by the removal of mercury then they weren’t caused by mercury in the first place.

And they don’t understand that if the vaccines have no mercury that chelation has absolutely no possible way to benefit a child.  There’s no possibility of mercury poisoning so there’s no mercury to remove and all you are doing is exposing children to the possibly severe side affects from the chelation process.

It’s like trying to explain how EC or birth control in general works to anti-choicers.  They don’t understand the process b/c they want to believe what they want to believe and DAMN those evil scientists to HELL for proving them wrong.  Amanda’s dead on about the way these people will be drawn together.

One does not have to be ant-vaccine to be anti-mercury in vaccinations.

Someone needs to tell that to those who write the anti-vaccination literature, then.

Damn. 

That’s “effects” not “affects”.

Once they’ve decided upon a cause, there’s no swaying them with facts.  Just as gays destroyed all marriages even before gays could marry in just a few places, mercury in vaccines or the vaccines themselves or the number of vaccines or the timing thereof caused autism.

As someone with a bit of Asperger’s, I have quite a bit of sympathy for those who have loved ones with autism.  It’s no picnic.  But hearing hopeydopey anti-vaccine people on one side and loons like Michael Savage ("Just snap out of it, babies!” sums up his diagnosis and treatment) on the other leaves little hope that those of us who could speak out on the issue will get heard.  And that means most people will hear some level of nonsense.  Most autistic folks can’t give much advice for action, and most of us with Asperger’s tend to not give much of a crap what others think about much anyhow.  It’s hard to advocate and suggest treatment and accomodations for something I don’t have that much of a problem with.  Sure there are some areas where some accomodation would be helpful, but I’d start to sympathize with Mr. Savage’s opinions before I’d go asking for accomodations in personal relationships and hiring and such.  We generally get along in life well enough for our lowered expectations, and the last thing I want is some sort of pity.

Education is one thing I’d advocate.  Telling loons to shut up is another.  I’m not too sure those on the autistic spectrum genuinely appreciate the attention, but a little bit of informed opinion would be more than most of us would probably hope for.  Then again, I should probably speak only for myself.  That’s always been easy for me, since I’ve never seemed to fit in with a group much anyhow.

Anything that we feel touches the core of our being is dealt with in a deeply irrational way.

Such as nuclear power, for instance. Tiny leaks of mildly radioactive water, quickly contained and corrected, are treated as if they were Hiroshima II, while in the background coal and natural gas generation plants continue to pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

We simply aren’t a very good species at assessing relative levels of risk.

Why this and not put your efforts into something that’s more useful for autistic people?

Because it HAS to be someone’s fault. They did every thing they were supposed to do, and yet they ended up with an autistic child. This isn’t about rational. They’re trying to remove the “root cause” and martyr themselves (and their families) for “the solution” so others need not suffer. It also gives them something tangible to attack, because dealing with their child as s/he now is beyond difficult. This is a very common reaction to random tragedy. It’s why we have so many attempts to pass “[child’s name here] Law.”

The reason that the anti-vaccine stuff is so attractive is that Big Pharma is evil, and has taken unsafe shortcuts, so there’s no reason to think that this one time, they would certainly have stopped putting mercury in vaccines and would have warned everybody if they found out it was harmful.

or try the foundation center’s 990 search.  i don’t think you have to register.

http://foundationcenter.org/findfunders/990finder/

most non-profits readily publish their donors as a public thank you to them, but some feel complelled to protect their donors for a variety of legitimate reasons.  accroding to the IRS, the only things that MUST be made public are: the application for exemption from taxation (Form 1023 and related documents), the IRS determination letter, and annual information returns (Form 990) for the most recent three years.  these items must be available for immediate review in the organization’s principal office and in any other offices where 3 or more employees are housed.  copies must be provided in a timely manner (same day for personal requests and within 30 days for written, faxed, emailed, or couriered inquiries).  copies do not have to be given if the information is made widely available (such as posting documents on the internets).

the documents must be made available no matter who is or isn’t in the office at the time the personal request is made.  non-compliance = IRS penalties and sanctions for the organization and responsible person.

however, the IRS allows cahritable organizations to refuse to comply with request for public information if the requests are determined to be a part of a campagin to harass the organization.  there are rules regarding this as well, but a request from news media does not constitute harassment.

That sure sounds like there’s serious money behind the anti-vaccination group, but WHY?

It’s not like the situation with denying the link between smoking and cancer, where the tobacco companies had a clear economic reason to support front-groups.

Who benefits from stopping/slowing vaccination efforts? Big Pharma doesn’t make much money from vaccines, but they make $0 for every vaccination shot not given.

Perhaps the anti-vaccinators are the vanguard of the Viral Overlords.

There’s also a bit of confusion where recognizing or reporting something is mistaken for causing that thing.  Autism is given a name and is more accurately diagnosed, so the autism rate goes up.  Go figure.  There’s not any more autism, there’s more reported autism. 

There was a thread on Feministing the other day with the same issue regarding a sexual assault awareness campaign.  The campaign started and - surprise! - sexual assault reports went up, so some dipshits concluded that the awareness campaign caused sexual assault.

1.  Doctors and Medical Group Funding:  They use organizations that are professionals at applying for and receiving funding.  These organizations do not care if the cause is just or not.  I work for the government, so I don’t think I can give a detailed example, but there is a reason much government research has a budget separate from everyone else - they are not even close to 100% taxpayer funded.  Oops… Sorry for being to Americanocentric.  I am speaking of the US gov’t.

2.  Anti-immunization started long before the correlation to autism (correlation as opposed to causation!).  For a period in my life I was an extreme fundie to the point of calling the Southern Baptist Convention a bunch of liberals.  I’ve seen the drivel handed out and the unreasoned fear being spewed from the pulpit.  Between the near impossibility of explaining the difference between correlation and causation to the ignorant who don’t want to know and their predisposition to believe in the “evils of vaccinations” there will be no convincing the proponents.  The best we can do is educate.  Those that can think straight will see the truth.  Natural selection may take care of the others!

Many non-profits include a list of their larger donors (e.g. $1k/year and up) in their annual reports, which may or may not be available online.  Of course, a few of said donations may be listed as “anonymous”, but typically it will give you some idea of where the money is coming from.

Of course, if enough people don’t vaccinate, there may be outbreaks of illness, selecting babies too young to be vaccinated out of the pool as well as the children of anti vax people.

Anti-vaccination is really old.  George Bernard Shaw was anti-vaccinationist. Not just lefties - pretty sure Jehovah’s Witnesses are anti-vaccination.

It’s not like the situation with denying the link between smoking and cancer, where the tobacco companies had a clear economic reason to support front-groups.

This is why I have a slight feeling that the Scientologists might be a part of it, or other religious groups who’ve demonstrated an anti-science and/or anti-modern medicine stance.  Scientology is famous for starting suspiciously well-funded front groups that advocate their bizarre positions. 

Scientology is also somewhat famous for being against any treatment for autism, and/or pretending that scientologists’ children are protected from such diseases (or that one can ‘pray away’ - for lack of a better word - psychiatric illnesses and mental disabilities).

this is handed out by our pediatrician and very informative:

http://www.whattoexpect.org/news/immunizations

One thing that they both have in common (along with animal rights extremists) is the fetishization of innocence.  The babies! The beautiful, wonderful children stolen by autism! The puppies!  The real world, with sex-having women, disabled children, sick people who want to be cured, and polio deaths can’t possibly be something they are a part of.

The campaign started and - surprise! - sexual assault reports went up, so some dipshits concluded that the awareness campaign caused sexual assault.

Libdevil just flashed me back to a conversation I had with an elderly great-aunt when I was barely menstrual.  On the topic of child sexual abuse, her conclusion was “That never happened when I was growing up.”

This may have been my first epiphany into the self-deluding magic adults love to do.

Ranylt, I’ve had that conversation with my grandmother.  Lots of “there were no gay people back then” or “there was no child molestation” or “nobody had abortions” or whatever.  I’ve mostly been able to not lose it and suggest that maybe it was just that people didn’t talk about that sort of thing rather than that sort of thing not actually happening.

Who benefits from stopping/slowing vaccination efforts?

Big Altie Medicine is who benefits. And unlike Big Pharma, Big Altie Medicine doesn’t operate under even the appearance of regulation.

Melissa,

You’re correct about nonprofits, but foundations are required to report on who they give grants *to*. However, I don’t believe there’s a search function for grantee on Foundation Center yet.

My read of the 990, which admittedly isn’t expert, doesn’t look like there’s much money coming in. The total income is like $307,000 - and more than half of that is going out in salary.  That’s a very, very small organization. The only other expenses of any significance are rent ($21k) and publications/printing ($33k) and $21k for undisclosed “Professional Fees.”

None of the names of the board officers/directors mean anything to me, but here’s the list in case anybody wants to play with it:

Kathryn Williams (Vice President, paid $40k)
Carol Hall
Judy Braiman
Paul Mulhauser
Barbara Littles (President, paid $41k)
Cliff Shoemaker
Andy Schaus
Greg Burgess

I put these folks in the same category as anti-fluoridation people. They’re dangerous because their exercise as what they see as their personal rights could have a serious impact on public health.

To join the NVIC’s e-mail list you have to provide first and last name and full mailing address. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of that before.

Of course, if enough people don’t vaccinate, there may be outbreaks of illness, selecting babies too young to be vaccinated out of the pool as well as the children of anti vax people.

It’s already happening, which is what makes it so maddening.  People have literally decided that their children are better off dead or permanently brain-damaged than possibly autistic from a vaccination.

People can talk all they want about how horrible it is to have an autistic child, but at least that child is alive.  Hattie’s right—people have forgotten what it was like to have thousands of children die in epidemics before widespread vaccinations came in.  I really hope people wake up before we have a really nasty pandemic that could have been prevented by vaccinations, but I doubt it.

That sure sounds like there’s serious money behind the anti-vaccination group, but WHY?

if I had to guess, I’d say plaintiffs’ trial lawyers.

I’m really not seeing a link to anti-choice groups at all. The anti-vaccination folk seem to be our own side’s crazy aunt, born of ignorance and a confidence in homeopathic medicine. For the all-natural crowd (for some meanings of the term “natural"), anything that appears to be manipulated by technology is inferior to that which is not--a good argument for food, but a terrible one for medicine. I imagine it has more to do with 1) alienation from the way science and technology work, making them appear just as magical as crystal therapy and 2) building an identity through consumer choices as being “in the know” about products.

My solution? Better education and more opportunities for self-fulfillment through art and music.

Or crazy uncle, for that matter. Though the more I think about it, the less pleased I am at unconsciously channeling Ross Perot.

Big Altie Medicine

prove such a thing exists. 

i’m no more in favor of quackery and snake oil than the next girl, but I don’t believe there are is actually an Alternative Medicine lobby like Big Pharma has, or even any particularly huge corporations with tons of money to buy influence.  Compare, for instance, the size and influence of a company like Pfizer with something like Yogi Teas .  Even if all the various alt med advocacy groups were to get together to “lobby” for the interests of their field, they would have nowhere near the clout you have to have to be called “big pharma”, “big tobacco”, “big oil”, etc.

I know, again, that it’s really really tempting to think that your enemies are big, and you are small, or shit, even that your enemies are on the level of being an enemy rather than just “someone who thinks differently from you”.  But seriously, it’s a little bit immature.

yes, i was speaking purely on the issue of whether non-profits had to release the names of donors, not who private foundations award grants to.  if foundations didn’t have to make public who they granted funds to, my job would be much harder.  i was referring to the foundation’s 990 search capability, not grantee awards.  we use metasoft for that function, and paaaay dearly for it.

Yeah, but...qui bono?

and Auguste, they want that info so they can add you to their snail mailing list to ask for money.  trickses *but not really*

I went up to them and told them they were a danger to the public health.  I also used the twitter feed to say “anti-vax is a danger to public health” and people in the lunch room applauded.  As it was, the booth was very low traffic every time I saw it, and most people at this conference are not in line with this troll booth.

Mmen, I hope it doesn’t come to that. They also don’t realize that they can infect adults with weak immune systems or whose vaccines have worn off.

Oh yes, there’s a strong link between anti-vaccination groups and anti-choice groups.  I discovered this one day while arguing with an anti-choice nutjob on a local newspaper board.  She informed me that vaccinations contain aborted fetuses and Big Pharma profits from “the highly profitable abortion industry”.  Once I stopped laughing at her, I googled “vaccination abortion” and holy shit, all sorts of whacky crap came up.  Anyone with any knowledge of biology can see the holes in their case but there is a teeny, tiny nugget of truth there. 

The original human tissue which created the line of human tissue that is now used to cultivate rubella and chikenpox vaccines was taken from 2 fetuses that were aborted somewhere around 1969 - 1971 (note:  before abortion was legal so there were probably medical conditions that caused or prompted the termination of those pregnancies).  What the nutjobs have done, is taken that fact and turned it into, “The rubella vax your kids get at school contain aborted babies”.  This is impossible, of course, numerous reasons but it feeds their paranoia and insanity so the medical facts are conveniently ignored.

Once you’re done smacking your head on your monitor, google it and marvel at the stupidity.

BadKitty:

wow, just wow.

Yikes!

If I had to come up for a consipiracy theory for this, it would involve the chemical industries.

Why?  Because blaming autism on vaccines distracts from other possible reasons for an increase in autism that outstrips mere changes in diagnosis and reporting.  Those other possible reasons may involve the interaction of latent genetic factors and expression with insecticides, pesticides, herbicides and other neurotoxic and endocrine disruptive chemicals.

[/tinfoil hat]

Such as nuclear power, for instance. Tiny leaks of mildly radioactive water, quickly contained and corrected, are treated as if they were Hiroshima II, while in the background coal and natural gas generation plants continue to pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Sunsin, please google “nuclear fuel cycle” and “subsidy of nuclear power per kilowatt” and please try again.

Oh, and there are some good indications that small leaks of tritium are not so very innocent as you make them seem.  Here, have a nice glass of tritiated adenine while you do - it’s only a tiny dose of radioactivity.

Those other possible reasons may involve the interaction of latent genetic factors and expression with insecticides, pesticides, herbicides and other neurotoxic and endocrine disruptive chemicals.

*cough* Monsanto *cough*

/tinfoil hat—oh, wait, what am I thinking, Monsanto really is evilll (*puts tinfoil hat back on*)

Holy crap, BadKitty. That’s just insane enough to be true…

I get the sense that this is all part of a run-up to a class-action lawsuit. The expensive booth, the uniforms, the HD TVs, the videos, and travel arrangements for the anti-vaccination crew are all chump change compared to the potential ROI for the attorneys who are likely footing the bill. Look at how much money is being spent by on advertising re: mesothelioma (i.e. asbestos exposure) lawsuits, and you’ll get an idea of how these tarted-up ambulance chasers work.

This funding scenario strikes me as being more likely than celebrities or the cult of $cientology (which is more anti-psychiatry than anti-medicine). My guess is that they came to NRN with the intention of spinning an anti-corporate story to what they assumed were a bunch of uncritical “knee-jerk lefties.” Their next stop is probably a Xtian fundie convention, where (per BadKitty) the spin will be tied to an anti-choice story—they’ll probably get a lot more traffic from that bunch of rubes and fantasists.

And while Big Pharma should definitely be eliminating mercury in vaccines, the anti-vaccination cranks are nothing less than a public health danger.

Except of course when the trial lawyers want to start up a class action lawsuit, they come right out and tell you they’re staring a class-action lawsuit—I’ve been canvassed by those sorts of folks before. 

Even in their other kinds of marketing, it’s always pretty clear that the advertising has been paid for by a law firm.  There are ads all over the NYC subways for similar suits, and there’s never any attempt to hide what the advertisements are for, who sponsored them , and what they want you to do.  They’re pretty disingenuous about how they lure people into involvement with the suit, but they don’t seem to be in the habit of starting up fake nonprofits.

I think a certain sort of lunatic christian fundamentalist animal rights activist (and/or health-focussed vegetarians) can act as a bridge between the vaccination “skeptics” and the anti-choicers. There is an anti-vivisection movement in America (animal rights) which is linked in with the anti-vaccination crowd, and it is quite well-funded (for a fringe animal rights group). It also has links with some of those weird libertarian alternative medicine doctors (I got some pamphlets from one in Australia). In Australia we have a few christian animal rights/vegetarian groups - a commune near Sydney, a group which campaign for elections in hippy areas (earthforce, I think they’re called), and also the Krishnas could be into this stuff. The Krishnas are far from innocuous, and they aren’t as poor as they let on. It’s a shame because earthforce had some excellent animal rights propaganda, but when you start reading their politics you want to puke.

I recall reading a christian animal rights pamphlet once about “sewers awash with the blood of aborted fetuses”. That’s pretty crazy. I think it benefits all religions to be anti-science, and the more loony-tunes cults are recruiting from the fringe, so they can form bridges between different ideologies. The christian animal rights position is always based on a very fundamentalist interpretation of the bible, so it’s no surprise they’re anti-choice.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the scientologists weren’t trying to hoover up all these fringe movements. They could get their resources, their networks, and a whole bunch of crazies who are amenable to the kind of kooky mind-healing stuff that scientologists peddle.

Having quickly scanned most of the comment I wonder does anybody in the thread understand the process involved in in the manufacture of vaccines? It’s pretty disgusting.

Having said that I’m not against vaccines per - se, I just wonder if the healthcare industry’s enthusiasm for them is more to do with profit that with concern for people’s health. Take MMR for example: forget autism for a minute, what’s the point of MMR?
Measles? Yeah, very nasty illness though not the global killer advocates of the vaccine make it out to be.

Mumps: Serious consequences in a small number of post pubescent males but in younger children complications are extremely rare.

Rubella: a minor illness in children but can have serious consequences if contracted by pregnant women. No need to vaccinate males, females only need vaccination close to puberty.

There was a proposal in the UK a couple of years ago Amanda to put anti depressants in the water supply because “clinical depression” had reached epidemic levels. This was despite concerns about giving anti-depressants to people who were not actually clinically depressed.

Perhaps it is this enthusiasm for compulsory mass medication sheared by governments and the healthcare industry that makes people sceptical of vaccines.

Even leaving the autism issue aside (again) it is documented in the UK that more children per year die from complications following administration of the MMR vaccine than died from measles in a decade before the vaccine was introduced Food for thought I think.

(and/or health-focussed vegetarians)

Ummm, sorry?

I’m a “health-focused” (whatever that means) vegetarian, and I am not only pro-vaccination, I’m also pro -choice. 

Not all vegetarians are naive PETA members.  Please try to remember that

And while I won’t particularly defend the Krishnas, and they’ve had a lot of well-deserved controversy heaped on them, I know a lot about them and have never heard them to be across the board anti-vac.  It certainly isn’t in keeping with their principles.

Or really, I could sum up my rebuttal to your post, Flashheart and warn people to be careful not to tar all members of a particular group which might have a degree of correlation with anti-vac as personally anti-vaccine, or to tar all such groups as anti-vac when they are otherwise not known as such.

and according to Sourcewatch, the president Barbara Loe Fisher has written for the Chiropractic Journal.

Chiropracty is always trying to steal legitimacy from mainstream medicine and physiotherapy. But there are large elements within the chiropractic world who, for example, deny that virusses cause disease, and believe that disease represents disfunction in the body. A few years ago I followed a trail of chiropractic destruction from the brain gym, which a friend of my partner was using. It led into a murky world of chiropractic craziness, with people claiming autism could be fixed by silly hand-clapping exercises. My partner’s friend had been diagnosed with some kind of motivational disorder which required she pay huge amounts of money for regular visits to this chiropractor, and pay lots for this stupid brain gym, which made her do these dumb clapping exercises to activate some mystical part of her brain. Her personality completely changed, from indecisive loser to crazy.

These chiropractors are paying various peak industry bodies to look after their shared interests, and their shared interest is mainly in getting onto the payment schedules of major private health insurers, and from there into the government subsidies of major health care systems (like in the UK and Oz). Their main way of doing this is to steal legitimacy from doctors (on the one hand), and on the other to recruit a crazed band of activists who will represent their interests strongly to vulnerable politicians. I think the tactic is working, and it’s remarkable how far Chiropracty has moved into the mainstream in 10 years. But it remains quackery.

Having quickly scanned most of the comment I wonder does anybody in the thread understand the process involved in in the manufacture of vaccines? It’s pretty disgusting.

You know what else is disgusting?  Deadly epidemics, especially those which ware completely avoidable via vaccination.

Also, re the entire rest of your post—please google the term “herd immunity”.

opoponax, I said “a sort of”. I didn’t say “all”. I know about these groups because of my involvement in animal rights activism, and 15 years of vegetarianism, and I certainly am not tarring myself with their brush. I was just saying that a certain sort of vegetarian/animal rights activist/health kook (they are 3 potentially mutually exclusive categories) can form the bridge between kooky anti-vac kooks and kooky anti-abortion kooks.

As for the krishnas, I said “suspect”. I don’t see them as being politically active but they are a nasty bunch, and they prey on the weak and vulnerable. They are certainly misogynist, and I very much doubt they are pro-choice. Religious movements like that are ripe as vehicles for this sort of campaigning, and all their kooky friends hang around them. I cannot tell you the number of vegan punks I have met who hate the christian church with a passion but will happily sup on free krishna food and don’t think they’re so bad - the same vegan punks who don’t trust the government and are ripe for anti-vac propaganda, whether or not they are vegatarian. In this way I think these fringe misogynist religious/vegetarian groups form a bridge between leftist vegetarians who happen to be anti-vac, and rightist non-vegetarians who happen to be anti-choice.

Chiropracty is always trying to steal legitimacy from mainstream medicine and physiotherapy. But there are large elements within the chiropractic world who, for example, deny that virusses cause disease, and believe that disease represents disfunction in the body. A few years ago I followed a trail of chiropractic destruction from the brain gym, which a friend of my partner was using. It led into a murky world of chiropractic craziness

Again, flashheart.

Please try to be careful about tarring all members of a group you happen to dislike or be suspicious of with a brush you have no direct evidence they deserve tarring with.  Just because some chiropractors believe stupid woo doesn’t mean that all chiropractors are anti-vaccine, or that the chiropractry movement is behind this particular group. 

You’re starting to sound like my father, who is so virulently against anything that isn’t Western Medicine (tm) that I sometimes wonder if it really doesn’t have something to do with his own personal profit margin (he’s a primary care physician).

Shorter Ms. Kate and The Opoponax:  These guys with their conspiracy theory based on no evidence are crazy, but our conspiracy theory based on no evidence is interesting.

Ian Thorpe, I have never seen anyone casually dismiss fatal and debilitating diseases with such flair.  Bravo, sir.

I clicked on Ian Thorpe’s link hoping he was the Ian Thorpe, and what did I find but a News of the World reading crop circle-believer who thinks jokes about bats flying into women’s panties looking for a cave are funny.

Sadly no big-footed super-swimmer there.

Opoponax, again, I said “large elements”. And the elements are large. Chiropracty as an industry is dodgy, and it has got away with its shift into the mainstream through its not-so-pointy end, the neck-cracking physio-like care workers. Go read some of their journal if you aren’t sure. They’re more sinister than you might think.

“Except of course when the trial lawyers want to start up a class action lawsuit, they come right out and tell you they’re staring a class-action lawsuit—I’ve been canvassed by those sorts of folks before.”

As I said, I see the booth and the general PR effort as more of a run-up to the lawsuits: establish awareness of the complaint, propagate the concept in as many special-interest communities as possible, collect contact info from interested/worried parties, then build the class action. It’s the most likely explanation for the funding of this booth.

Regarding non-profits, the mesothelioma lawyers started up several of them to raise awareness of the situation, which is an acceptable PR move (especially given that asbestos is well-established as a carcinogen). It’s easy to see how other plaintiffs’ attorneys with more nebulous claims would emulate those methods—especially if they don’t have science on their side. And as we’ve seen from the anti-science/anti-reason crowd on the right, fake non-profits with ulterior motives have been used since the Tobacco Institute’s predecessor organisation.

For example, note Auguste’s comment about NVIC requiring a full mailing address. How long do you think it will be before a local attorney contacts a mailing-list member with an official looking snail-mail letter leading with “Do you have a child or grandchild with autism? Are you expecting a child? ...”

Oh, just to be clear, the mesothelioma class-action lawsuits have lots of real science behind them—totally different basis for a complaint, and I make no equation between the negative effects of asbestos and the supposed negative effects of vaccinations.

My point is that the methodology of the attorneys is the same, right down to the slick advertising and the non-profit orgs. And whether a given class-action claim is supported by overwhelming peer-reviewed scientific research (as in asbestos) or not (as in the anti-vaccination business), the basic motives of the law firms remain the same.

Ian Thorpe, what the hell are you on about? Measles does kill people, and the only reason it doesn’t kill more is because of vaccination.

Just vaccinating women against Rubella won’t work, becase people can lose their immunity. some women can’t take the vaccine-so you vaccinate everybody so that there is no one to pass the virus on to the women who’ve lost immunity.

And just because there was a proposal to put anti-depressants in the water supply doesn’t mean anyone reasonable took it seriously. I could propose putting Viagra in the water supply. A quacked out proposal to do something silly doesn’t mean anything.

I’d like to see sources for your stats for measles v. MRR deaths, and a description of the disgusting ways they make vaccines, please.

I was just saying that a certain sort of vegetarian/animal rights activist/health kook (they are 3 potentially mutually exclusive categories) can form the bridge between kooky anti-vac kooks and kooky anti-abortion kooks.

As for the krishnas, I said “suspect”. I don’t see them as being politically active but they are a nasty bunch, and they prey on the weak and vulnerable. They are certainly misogynist, and I very much doubt they are pro-choice. Religious movements like that are...

Seriously.  There are plenty of people who are already out front and open about their position against vaccination.  There is no reason for you to bring in “every group I disagree with or think is weird or find to be generally suspicious”. 

The only connection between all the groups you’ve mentioned is that people who become interested in them sometimes also fall for other kinds of woo.  Just because someone is susceptible to one kind of woo doesn’t mean they’re susceptible to all forms.  Just because a group is “misogynist” (I’ve known female Krishnas, and while I’m sure you’d say they were brainwashed or something, nothing they ever said led me to believe that particular religious movement is any more misogynist than any other religion out there) doesn’t mean they’re anti-choice or anti-vaccination.  Shit, just because someone is anti-choice doesn’t mean they’re anti-vaccination.

You have to provide actual correlations between these groups, aside from “they all believe in things I think are woo”.  The accusations you are flinging around are about the equivalent to “Atheists are murderers, because, duh, Stalin!”

i’m no more in favor of quackery and snake oil than the next girl, but I don’t believe there are is actually an Alternative Medicine lobby like Big Pharma has, or even any particularly huge corporations with tons of money to buy influence.

No, there’s a huge amount of money behind alternative medicine.  Why do you think vitamins and other supplements are pretty much exempt from regulation?  Unless people actually die—like they did with ephedra—the supplement companies can do whatever they want.

I think you’re underestimating how much money supplement companies make if you think they don’t have the money to successfully lobby for what they want.

These guys with their conspiracy theory based on no evidence are crazy, but our conspiracy theory based on no evidence is interesting.

Except of course that Ms. Kate and I do have evidence.  Not that X agricultural/industrial byproduct causes autism, (though I never even implied anything of the sort) but that there are a lot of very new things we’re pumping into the air, soild, water, and food, and even the companies developing them don’t know very well what exactly the longterm consequences are.  Some of which chemicals, btw, are designed specifically to do some very scary stuff to other plants and animals.  Many of which, also btw, the big chem corporations cannot in any way control or anticipate the unwanted side effects of.

I could give you info about some of these things that would curl your hair.  Again, I’d not go so far as to say X company’s Y product causes autism via Z.  But there’s a lot out there that most people don’t know about, and it’s potentially extremely dangerous, and there’s already a lot of evidence that the corporations involved are more interested in covering their own asses than in preventing disaster far beyond a few kids with learning disabilities.

I think you’re underestimating how much money supplement companies make if you think they don’t have the money to successfully lobby for what they want.

Oh, I think they can lobby for what they want.  I just don’t think they have the power to really affect policy on vaccinations (though obviously I would change my mind with evidence).  And they’re certainly not “big” enough or powerful enough to warrant a label like “Big Altie Pharma”.  Nowhere even close to the major pharmaceutical companies, at least.

For a start, just read “The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World,” by Michael Pollan.  No more potatoes for us!

Hey Ian, could you give us some links? 

As is often the case with these deeply ambiguous connections between government, industry, and scientific uncertainty, we’re being presented with two wholly unsatisfactory options: anti-science loonery or fealty to ‘science’ as if what we now get spoonfed isn’t deeply corrupted by corporations and scientists with no sense of ethics.

My professional work is in bioethics, along with medical sociology and history of science, and I just have to let out a big *sigh* when the only options are to be for ‘science’ or ‘anti-science’ as if science were only one thing.  Yup, the anti-vax people are nutso and yup, there’s a lot of good reasons to be damn skeptical of corporate conventional medicine.  So lets get over that and ask what the hell are right-thinking folks going to do about it?  Can we figure out how to ask questions about the wisdom of our over–medicalized lives--including our vaccination practices--without also being loons?  Aren’t there any adults in charge?

Opoponax, thanks for the clarification.  I don’t think the limiting of your claims was as clear as you originally thought it was.

Most of my profesional life was spent working with the Varicella vaccine.  Most of the people I worked with who helped design the chicken pox vaccine would not take it themselves and they did not seem to have their children vaccinated either.

I don’t know if their are problems with all vaccines but a lot of people who work with them seem to avoid them when they can.

Dude, all I said was “monsanto” and “wait, they’re really evil”.

“Having said that I’m not against vaccines per - se, I just wonder if the healthcare industry’s enthusiasm for them is more to do with profit that with concern for people’s health.”

Ian,

Of course it does—they’re for-profit corporations. That’s not to say Big Pharma is eeeeevil, or that they’re selling snake-oil, but their executives’ primary concern is looking good to the shareholders on the next quarterly report. If a goverment looking for a way to make its population more docile provides them with a profit opportunity, they’re going to take it—my problem in that case is less with the supplier of the tool (i.e. the medication) than with those making the policy that abuses the tool.

All that doesn’t make the prospects of epidemics run wild (pre-20th-century style) look any better, though. You may be willing to live with regular outbreaks of mumps, rubella, and measles (assuming your immune system allows you to live), but I’m not.

“I think a certain sort of lunatic christian fundamentalist animal rights activist (and/or health-focussed vegetarians) can act as a bridge between the vaccination “skeptics” and the anti-choicers. There is an anti-vivisection movement in America (animal rights) which is linked in with the anti-vaccination crowd, and it is quite well-funded (for a fringe animal rights group).”

flashheart,

Yep, every interest group has its fringe elements, and my bet is that the people who run this booth rotate through a seemingly disparate set of convention floors on an annual basis with a message tailored to spin to each particular group’s fringe. They may get more takers at the Xtian fantasist conclaves than at NRN, but I’m sure they gulled at least a couple of “all corporations are eeeevil” left-wing bloggers into giving them a post and a link.

(nodding vigorously to The Opoponax)

I think it’s absolutely within the realm of possibility that toxins introduced to a developing body could lead to developmental disorders like autism.

We should not be dismissive of the role that pesticides, heavy metals, and other chem compounds can play in derailing normal, healthy child development. It is truly scary shit how heavy metals get into our food and water.

I think the problem is that there’s an idea that you can at least control whether or not your kid gets a vaccination. Maybe the mercury used in the old vaccinations a decade and a half ago increased a child’s chances of getting autism. But there’s also the mercury in the pollution in the air, and in the fish, and in the vegetables. But how can you tell parents not to let their child breathe the air, or eat their vegetables? We know how complacent people in this country are, no one wants to demand that chemical companies show a little responsibility for their waste, or that the government actually stand up and demand that its citizens be afforded clean air and water and food. But it’s easy to point to one thing and say “This is what’s causing problems, this is what’s making kids sick, and if we can just eliminate this, then our children will be healthy and happy and we don’t need to worry about anything else.”

Aren’t there any adults in charge?

You seriously still need to ask this question? Of course not. I’m beginning to believe the entire concept of “adult” is a myth designed to spur humanity toward the precisely one ounce of rational behavior we’re capable of, as a species.

One does not have to be ant-vaccine to be anti-mercury in vaccinations.

That’s like saying one doesn’t have to be a fundamentalist Christian to be against evolutionary theory.  Technically true, but irrelevant in practice.

Most of the people I worked with who helped design the chicken pox vaccine would not take it themselves

Wouldn’t most of the people you worked with on the Chicken Pox vaccine already have had chicken pox, and thus not good candidates to vaccinate?

Hey opoponax

You would think, but I worked with two PHDs who refused to handle any samples because they had never had chicken pox, they might have just been lazy, but they seemed pretty sincere.  it was suggested to both of them that they get vaccinated but as far as I know they never did.

One women that I worked with went to great lengths to keep her child from getting a chicken pox vaccine, she claimed her daughter had already been exposed.  The reason I think, is that their is some evidence that getting vaccinated for chicken pox can make you more succeptable to shingles as an adult.

I worked as a tech so I was not privvy to all the science but what I saw was a lot of people who were not anxious to expose themselves to the vaccine.

That’s like saying one doesn’t have to be a fundamentalist Christian to be against evolutionary theory.  Technically true, but irrelevant in practice.

No more irrelevant than saying there are animal-rights folks who don’t bomb research labs or physically attack people in fur coats....You can hold a position without being an extremist on that position. And wanting the bare minimum of harmful heavy metals injected into your veins is nowhere NEAR as irrational a position as not believing the overwhelmingly huge sum of science behind evolutionary theory.

There’s nothing batshit about wanting responsible practices from the medical industries. Being “anti-mercury-in-vaccines” makes perfect sense, given that we know mercury is Bad For Us, regardless of whether it causes autism.

a couple or three people is hardly “most”.  Or if it is “most” of the people you worked with on that, then your sample is far too small to draw any meaningful conclusions about the typical behavior of a scientist working on/with the varicella vaccine . 

There’s also a gigantic difference between wanting to wait to vaccinate your kid against chicken pox due to well-documented possible complications further down the line and being across-the-board “anti-vaccination”.

except chicken pox and shingles are both herpes viruses and to guard against shingles, one gets a chicken pox vaccination later in life…

Shingles are recurrences of the chicken pox that you get in old age, as your immune system starts to weaken. It’s akin to a herpes outbreak.

The danger, as always, is that if you don’t contract the chicken pox when you’re young, the result of contracting it when you’re older is much more severe. Getting chicken pox even as an 18 year old is a lot more traumatic than getting it as an 11 year old. Given that, I’m not sure why someone who never had the chicken pox wouldn’t take the vaccine.

People in the medical profession who don’t take certain (non-required) vaccines do so because they’re aware of how unlikely it is to contract the disease. Unless you’re sharing needles, regularly working with blood, or having sex with someone who is, it’s pretty unlikely that you’ll get exposed to Hepatitus B. Thus, a lot of people don’t avail themselves of the vaccine even though it’s widely available. Unless you’re a regular traveler to 3rd world countries, the same is true for Hepatitus A. So many people in the health professions, being aware of what the odds of contracting the disease are in the first place, consider some of the vaccines outside of the standard battery of childhood vaccines to be superfluous unless you’re specifically at risk.

yikes, opoponax posted while i was typing.

opoponax:

You are right in that it is a small sample size and does not apply to all vaccines.  What my experience shows is that people who work with vaccines every day understand that their are tradeoffs and people who understand vaccines are able to make a risk benefit analysis, and some very smart people saw the risk of getting the varicella vaccine as greater than the risk of getting chicken pox.

The person who says all vaccines are bad is just as wrong as the person who says all vaccines are good.

“I worked with two PHDs who refused to handle any samples because they had never had chicken pox, they might have just been lazy, but they seemed pretty sincere.”

They were sincere because if they reached adulthood without getting chicken pox, they were very likely immune to the childhood version to begin with. Which isn’t to say that they were immune to the vaccine (vaccines are, after all, often a weak and man-made variation of the infection that “supplants” the stronger, natural version), or might have had potentially severe responses to it *because* of their immunity to childhood chicken pox.

The mother you mention may be making the same calculation, if she was confident that her daughter was exposed multiple times (e.g. to schoolmates) and turned out to be immune.

I suggest that attacking the anti-vaccination people as one monolithically crazy, self-indulgent, destructive group sounds like something I’d hear from right-wingers.  Be very careful that your criticisms don’t go off the Richter scale.  Like this:

pretty sure Jehovah’s Witnesses are anti-vaccination.

Gee, sounds good, right?  JWs are separatist religious fundies, so they must be ‘anti-science’, right?  FYI: I grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness; blood transfusions are a no-no, but Pepsi and vaccinations are OK.

Both are fundamentally hostile to science and rationality, and have these beliefs that the world is going to hell in a handbasket because all these crazy science-y people can’t leave well enough alone.

I’ve heard similar rationales about why we negroes don’t trust doctors.  Underneath them all is the implication that niggers just don’t fit into civilization like full human beings do.  Hey, maybe they’re right; it’s not like there’s any historical reason for people of color to hold our nation’s medical institutions in doubt.

Of course, there’s no reason to suspect that any government agency-- even in Bush’s America-- might be beholden more to a major source of campaign contributions (like, say, Big Pharma) than to the safety and well-being of the nation’s children.  I’m not suggesting that we should all refuse vaccinations (I made sure my own daughter was vaccinated, in spite of my slight misgivings about the security of the process).  I’m saying that we should understand why some people often have some very understandable reasons for doing some things that we might consider wacky.  Its easy (and sometimes fun) to take shots at them, but it’s harder work to tackle the systemic problems that lead them (allegedly) astray.

I watched Lawrence Lessig’s speech, and I think Amanda takes it a bit out of context:

Lawrence Lessig called out the anti-vaccination cranks during his speech, and castigated them for exploiting the vulnerability of the parents of autistic children, so I’m glad they were confronted in some way.

Lessig wasn’t focusing on the anti-vax cranks; he was talking about how our government has pissed away the trust of regular folks in favor of collecting cash from the interests of concentrated wealth (or some such).  That’s been a bipartisan process, to boot.  So maybe instead of pounding on the easy targets (the anti-vaccination ‘cranks,’ many of whom are parents of autistic children), we should give them good reason to focus their energies on real help for their children.  Maybe we could start by making sure we vote for representatives who aren’t already wholly owned subsidiaries of corporate interests.  All due respect to any Obama supporters out there.

What my experience shows is that people who work with vaccines every day understand that their are tradeoffs and people who understand vaccines are able to make a risk benefit analysis, and some very smart people saw the risk of getting the varicella vaccine as greater than the risk of getting chicken pox.

No, what your experience shows is that some people don’t always decide to take every new vaccine as it becomes available.  You mentioned two, maybe 3, people who did so, and unless all three are close personal friends its unlikely that you know exactly what was behind their reasoning.  I chose not to take anti-malarial drugs on a recent trip to India not because I think such drugs are bad or wrong, but because I weighed all the variables and decided that my risk of contracting malaria was minimal. 

And of course it’s also possible that these three people you mention are just flat-out wrong. Just because a doctor or a scientists does something doesn’t mean that it’s the best choice or the most correct option.  Scientists and doctors are just as susceptible to faulty reasoning as everyone else.

Hey Mellisa:

The problem with the chicken pox vaccine is that it does not seem to stop shingles and for some reason people seem more likely to devolope shingles at a younger age when they have been vaccinated against chicken pox.

Your own immune system shaking off chicken pox seems to give better immunity to varicella than getting the vaccine was the theory I heard mentioned.

opoponax, I was addressing the bridge between the kooky and the kooky, not suggesting that these people are the driving force behind this whole movement.

In trying to gather evidence in support of my theory I managed to remember the name of the main organisation of vegetarian-friendly doctors which I suspected was anti-vac. It’s the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, but it shows no evidence of any kind of anti-vaccination attitude, except for the live polio vaccine (due to its relationship to animal experiments and allegations of SIV contamination). So I think my memory misled me there, and that means that the only animal rights bridge between the anti-vac and anti-choice mobs would be the loony christian animal rights groups. The one which got into trouble in Australia was EarthSave Australia (I don’t know if it’s related to the International group), not Earthforce. In the 1999 election they ran an anti-choice and anti-gay platform as an animal rights party, and I’m pretty confident their representatives were christian (but I have to go on memory here, because they don’t even have a website - even the damn Luddite society have a website, but all I can find from Earthsave Australia is their electoral roll address). In fact, further research online found me the words I was looking for, which I had forgotten for the last 5 years at least:

Vegan straight-edge

They are the kooky religious/vegetarian/anti-choice crossover group. Consider for example the band Vegan Reich. The christian vegan commune I mentioned before had representatives who worked in a food co-op with me, and they were both vegan straight edgers. At that time the hard core scene in Sydney was fragmenting into a suburban racist hard core movement and a rural vegan/anti-choice hard-core movement, which got off its arse in 1999 enough to actually get involved in the NSW election but fell apart really fast. As we all know, vegan straight-edge hails from America, so I imagine there are similar elements of it there too. But this mob are so backward they don’t even have an internet presence, so they might act as a kook-link with the christian right, but they aren’t driving anything.

As for the chiropractic angle - the Chiropractic Journal is published by the World Chiropractic Alliance, whose web-page looks pretty slick and well-funded to me. Unsurprisingly, the World Chiropractic Alliance has a position paper on “Vaccination and freedom of choice in health care”. It quotes research by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, who oppose vaccine mandates and also accept membership from chiropractors. This organisation is strongly opposed to socialised medicine and maintains a section of its webpage devoted to scare stories about “socialised medicine abroad”. Surprise surprise, their recommended books section contains links to a bunch of libertarian publishers.

The World Chiropractic Alliance webpage has a link to the NVIC. I suspect that the World Chiropractic Alliance is in competition with the Chiropractic Association of America, who are much more mainstream and focus only on skeletal health. As I said, large parts of chiropracty are dodgy, and they are well represented by the WCA.

I find the libertarian angle particularly interesting…

apoponamax:

You seem to agree that rational people can decide not to get a vaccine(for example your lack of a malaria vaccine)

And that is my point you don’t have to be an anti-vaccine crank to be skeptical of vaccines, or at least be a little bit choosy as to which ones you take.

The problem as I see it is that most parents are guilted or in some cases compelled by law, into getting vaccines for every possible disease some of which may not need to ba vaccinated against.  Much like you had the choice not to take the malaria vaccine maybe parents should be given some choice as well.

Also, for some reason the downside to vaccinations are ignored or even met with hostility when their are some side effects with all meds and vaccines are no different.

For example, dlrm (Doctors and Lawyers for Responsible MEdicine) are anti-vivisection, anti-vaccination and anti-National Health Service (pretty much guarantees them zero traction in the UK!). Again, there appears to be something in this libertarian-anti-vaccination nexus…

JHR, there’s a difference between realizing that not every vaccine is necessary, from a cost-beenfit POV (Hep B is pricey) and claiming that vaccines can be harmful and/or cause autism. The latter group are a group of cranks who come from an ideological movement that has been against vaccines since they were invented. The former group is, at best, simply people who don’t want to bother with things that are unnecessary and, at worse, a group of people who are poor at making risk-management decisions.

I’m trying to figure out where the profit for Big Pharma is in the MMR vaccine since it’s been out of patent for years.  It’s probably a steady moneymaker, but no one company is making a killing on it.

I can understand people being skeptical of things like the cervical cancer vaccine since that’s still under patent and only made by one company, but where’s the percentage in the MMR when any pharmaceutical company can make it?

I was addressing the bridge between the kooky and the kooky,

Which point is...?

Yes, some kooks are hoodwinked by multiple forms of woo.  Other kooks favor only one kind of woo, or maybe certain kinds of woo that are closely connected (but not unrelated forms).  Some people associated with the groups and movements you mention are simply not kooks at all, and no more liable to swallow quackery than an atheist or communist is liable to become a mass murderer because Stalin and Mao were also atheists and communists.

I fail to see how “some people are kooky , and some of those kooky people believe in multiple kooky things at the same time” = the chriopractors/hari krishnas/brain gym/vegetarians/animal rights advocates/health food eaters/jehovah’s witnesses/whoever else I don’t like are secretly behind the anti-vaccination movement, even though none of those groups have any overt connection to anti-vaccination.  In fact, I fail to see how any of those groups are a priori nefarious simply because you happen to think they believe in woo.  (not that some of them don’t have strong connections to extreme sketch—just because a group is sketchy doesn’t mean they are responsible for your pet sketchitude).

John Hussein Rove, if opoponax doesn’t get the malaria vaccine it makes no difference to anyone else - he or she only needs it for travel, so the herd immunity issue is not relevant. But if opoponax refuses to have a child vaccinated, that means that my child, or your child, could get a potentially fatal disease from opoponax’s child. and the more people who follow in opoponax’s footsteps, the greater the risk my kiddy dies, and the larger the pool of available people for the disease to breed in.

Deciding not to vaccinate your child against childhood diseases is NOT a personal decision, it’s a social decision. If you have any doubt about that, and about the efficacy of these vaccines, look at the recent Japanese experience. They stopped promoting vaccination 10 years ago, and now they have regular, serious measles outbreaks in schools. Children die of measles… and not just the children of parents who are anti-vaccination.

Choosing not to vaccinate your child is NOT the same as choosing not to make them wear a helmet on their bicycle.

Look at the difference between diseases like measles and diseases like Hep B and the risk/reward of vaccination: measles is an airborne virus that spreads quickly and results (resulted) in outbreaks whose consequences could be severe for many people. Hep B is not that common in the united states and is transmitted exclusively through bodily fluids. If you don’t get vaccinated for the measles, you likely WILL get it and WILL pass it on to someone else, sooner or later. Hep B, on the other hand, doesn’t spread as quickly and is unlikely to spread outside of high-risk groups.

I’ve got quite a bit more trust in agencies who determine that some vaccines are not universally necessary than I am in allowing parents to decide, “oh, measles isn’t that big of a deal, and I don’t want to expose my child to the vaccine.”

I can’t really think of, off the top of my head, any childhood vaccines I was given that I don’t think were necessary. But even then, I’m not an epidemiologist, so I’m in no position to make that decision and don’t really know much about rubella.

opoponax, I wasn’t saying they were behind it. Just addressing the original part of Amanda’s post about the links between one type of woo and another. I think that chiropractors or libertarian pressure groups are more likely to be behind this. And once again, for the record - 15 years of vegetarianism here, animal rights activism, I am not suggesting it has anything to do with the majority of the animal rights movement (be it PETA, Animal Liberation or even the “terrorists”, who as far as I can tell steer pretty clear of the christian bigots).

There are two ways to join disparate ideologies (anti-vaccination and religious fundamentalism) together that I can see. One is woo. The other is libertarianism. woo can make weak, petty links (like those vegan straight-edgers, who are such fun at parties). But I suspect that libertarian pressure groups can use chiropractic woo very forcefully to drive an anti-vaccination agenda. And I suspect that they could be doing it for the same reason they previously shilled for tobacco companies - to discredit the public health movement, and make people distrust big government. Hence the WCA’s attacks on socialised medicine.

Libertarians are fond of whining about how the doctors keep a closed shop, so they surely see some long-term benefit in prizing that open through alternative medicine. It would be interesting to see what they are up to behind the scenes in this topic.

A measles epidemic in Tokyo last year caused schools and universities to close and send 600,000 students home.  But, hey, I’m sure it was all staged by Big Pharma, right?

fleshheart:

I was talking about Varicella which is not going to kill anyone.  Somehow vaccinations have become sacred among people to the point that it is seen as a “duty” to get children vaccinated and in most cases it is probably a good idea.  But it is not without costs and risks and forcing people to get needless vaccinations just increases the risks without adding to the benefits.  And probably strengthens the arguments of the all vaccines are bad crowd.

Tyro, I think in Australia the hep B vaccination is now recommended (optionally) for all teenagers, and I think rubella is routine before puberty for girls. All health workers are offered Hep B vaccinations free, and it is free to the rest of the population but doctors are only recommended to advise it for people who are at risk - in Australia I think this means injecting drug users, gay men and people who play contact sports. I think also the government has decided to fund the HPV vaccine for all pre-teenage girls. These decisions are all based on a very rigorous epidemiological and cost-benefit analysis, which is world-renowned and well respected (and hated by drug companies). So I would suggest that means that HBV and rubella vaccines are cost-effective, and the benefits far outweigh the minor risk of side effects.

JHR, varicella killed 2262 children between 1970 and 1994. That is not a harmless disease. I recommend you read the cdc website on varicella, or do a google search on “varicella mortality”. These diseases aren’t pretty, and the fact that you got a mild attack and think it’s a trivial disease is most likely a testimony to the efficacy of the vaccine in your age cohort.

Popular Mechanics has a pretty good layman’s overview of what the consequences of leaving your children unvaccinated are.  Watch out for the stupid talking web ad, though.

And that is my point you don’t have to be an anti-vaccine crank to be skeptical of vaccines, or at least be a little bit choosy as to which ones you take.

But there’s a huge rational divide between an across-the-board “skeptical of vaccines” and “choosy as to which you take”.  Nobody should take every vaccine.  Everyone should figure out which vaccines are right for themselves and their children.  This is true for other medications, as well (per my antimalarial example; there is currently no vaccination for malaria). 

However, just because I might decide that I don’t need to shell out for another Hepatitis A booster in a year or so to guarantee permanent immunity doesn’t mean I’m skeptical of vaccines—it just means I’ve analyzed the pros and cons of this particular vaccine and decided not to take it.  My father, who I’ve mentioned upthread is a huge champion of Teh Party Line of Western Medicine, declined to have my brothers and I vaccinated for chicken pox when it became widely available back in the 90’s.  And yet he’s about as far as you can get from anti-vaccine.

it is not without costs and risks and forcing people to get needless vaccinations just increases the risks without adding to the benefits.

The risks of vaccines are almost always, always, always smaller than the risks of the disease especially if, like measles (or even chicken pox), it’s the sort of disease you WILL get if you aren’t vaccinated.

the links between one type of woo and another

Except that not all types of woo are linked to one another.  It would be mightily convenient if one could isolate out a formal connection between all known kinds of woo.  Except that it just isn’t true.  Not all anti-choicers are also anti-vivisection advocates.  Not all Hari Krishnas are also members of PETA.  Not all chiropractors run side businesses in homeopathy.  It would be awesome if, once you determined that someone believed in one things you considered woo, they could automatically be assumed to advocate all other forms of woo (or just lies, or maybe exotic theological conceits, or perhaps particularly awful political views) But unfortunately the world doesn’t work that way.

It’s funded with a “money bomb” from the self-named Patriot movement.  Ron Paul folks.  Alex Jone types.  You hear him continue to deny it on his radio show in the face of direct evidence to the contrary.

Still, I wouldn’t put mercury in my body or my kid’s body in any amount or for any reason.

Fleshheart:

A littlte less that 100 children died per year from Varicella?  When you consider the increased risk for shingles and the billions of dollars spent devoloping the vaccine maybe it is better not vaccinate against chicken pox.  Plus, the children who died probably had compromised immune systems so it might make more sense to only vaccinate children that are likely to have a problem with varicella.

The main reason that it is required of every child is probably to help cover the expense of devoloping the vaccine.  This seems to show the problem with the all “vaccines are great attitude” they might be good in some very limited situations but making everyone take them just leads to many unwanted side effects and helps pay for research and devolopement costs.

opoponax, I have met these people. In Australia I had to deal with them in a variety of environments - running stalls with them, working in food co-ops, going to demonstrations, working in collectives with them. It is not a mythical connection in my mind - Earthsave Australia, the straight-edge movement, the vegetarian christian folks (fortunately not a movement outside their dodgy commune), and some of the kookier health conscious doctors circulating the fringes of that movement were all into anti-vaccination and anti-choice ideas. They were of a particular suspicious libertarian or anarchist bent that was often religious and also homophobic and sexist. They were not representative of the animal rights movement (which I was in), but they were a definite possible bridge between the anti-vaccination movement and the religious fundamentalists.

As for the chiropractic thing, it’s written on the internet - you can go look. Loe Fisher writes articles for the Chiropractic Journal, which is a super-dodgy propaganda front for the WCA, who link approvingly to the NVIC which Loe Fisher heads. The WCA also have a libertarian anti-socialized medicine framework. If you go to the brain gym and follow the trail through “educational kinesiology” you’ll end up at another chiropractic dead end, where the chiropractors in question deny the disease model. This stuff isn’t imagined, it’s real and it’s written down. None of these pathways will take you to the chiropractic association of america, who are a different mob with different (but sometimes overlapping) goals and a lot lower dose of dodginess. Not all chiropractors are anti-vaccination, but the anti-vaccination movement appears to be pretty well supported by a large group of chiropractors - or by a shell group which is very well funded. I am happy to say “ a large group of chiropractors” until I can find evidence that the whole thing is a libertarian front. Which I am even now looking into…

making everyone take them just leads to many unwanted side effects

People getting a disease leads to even more unwanted side effects.

I’m not sure whether your problem is with the chicken pox vaccine specifically or vaccines in general, but there’s a reason vaccines are universal and are administered early: diseases cut a swath through populations in pre-vaccine days, and you couldn’t control when and where you got the disease. Sure, maybe a healthy 7 year old could recover from the measles with no bad effects, but a newborn baby or a pregnant woman would have far more problems. Trying to chalk universal vaccination up to the vaccine-industrial-complex is a bit ridiculous, especially since the introduction of new vaccines as universal ones is very, very rare. Seriously, what are they talking about making a universal vaccine, now? Possibly chicken pox and gadrisil? And before that? The standard battery of vaccines had been pretty much set for a long while before that.

JHR-
I am wondering where you get the information that the vaccine causes increase in shingles later in life? Firstly, the vaccine has only been commercial since 1995 not long enough to really gather long term data on people vaccinated. There was one interesting study I found that showed that increased immunization might lead to higher shingles rates among unvaccinated elders. But that is not really the same argument as vaccines cause high shingles rates in the vaccinated.

News Nag, the vaccine manufacturers stopped using mercury-based preservatives in vaccines several years ago. That’s a moot point here.

Quick point here:  saying “mercury” when you mean “thimerosal” is like saying “chlorine” when you mean “table salt”.

Don’t you know that vaccines have been in correlation of many baby deaths? Vaccine-related baby clubbings are on the rise.

RES:

The idea that vaccinating for Varicella can lead to shingles later in life came from someone I worked with, and I am pretty sure I saw a poster about it at some point.  If I get really bored I will see if I can find it in pub med assuming my password still works.

The point I am trying to make is that you don’t have to be a crank or have ulterior motives to challenge vaccines, just like any medical procedure their are risks and I think people tend to ignore those risks sometimes when looking at medicine.

Cain, you are wrong about that.  So very wrong, I won’t dignify it with an explanation.

JHR-
And my point is that a lot of those anti-vaccine concerns are wrong. Now maybe there is good science out there that shows the Varicella vaccine causes shingles later in life (I am not going to hold my breath on that one). A quick google search on my end turned up nothing hence why I asked. 

Yes there are risks to vaccines, however the anti-vaccine crowd overstates the risks and understates the benefits. The problem is it is a lot easier for the anti-vaccine crowd to lie and make shit up than it is for scientists to disprove their claims. And then often times the lie still gets repeated because it makes a nice sound bite unlike the rebuttal.  The thing that really gets my goat is that if there are these huge medical risks to vaccines why is it that the only reasons to not vaccinated that get spewed are clearly bullshit if you know anything about the literature.

Opoponax, further to the argument about chirorpractors, this article from chironet about chiropractic attitudes towards vaccination suggests 27% of chiropractors in one Canadian survey were anti-vaccination. It cites (suprise!) libertarian principles…

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3987/is_200502/ai_n9520869

Then we have “Dr. Harte” who wrote in ... you guessed it ... The Chiropractic Journal, is an opponent of childhood vaccination, and stood for ... you guessed it ... the Libertarian Party in the California State Senate. As mentioned above, Ron Paul thinks “mandated smallpox vaccines are bad medicine”. According to some loser in the Huffington Post, McCain also supports the vaccine-autism link. And there is an awful lot of use of phrases like “Vaccine liberation”.

I am seeing a trend here....

It is not a mythical connection in my mind - Earthsave Australia, the straight-edge movement, the vegetarian christian folks (fortunately not a movement outside their dodgy commune), and some of the kookier health conscious doctors

Could it be possible that you noticed a connection that happened to work within one particular community in your particular area and part of the world?  Because I know plenty of people in virtually every group you’ve cited.  And in my experience, they don’t even tend to overlap.  I’ve never met a straight-edge hari krishna or a libertarian food coop junky or an anti-choice anarchist.  Which implies that those various different groups don’t necessarily go together, or at least that you cannot in any way generalize about this sort of thing. 

There’s this kind of dangerous tendency I notice a little bit rising out of Amanda’s posts, where there’s a strong temptation to categorize everything you don’t personally believe in as either mendacious, evil, or criminally stupid.  Usually under the subheading of “woo”, which is a magical term to describe anything from political ideas you oppose to religious beliefs you’re not familiar with.  Guess what?  The world doesn’t actually work that way.  You can’t just lump everything you don’t like (whether it’s merited or not) into a pile and assume that it all must fit together somehow.

Want to know who these people are?

Carol Hall: may be the parent of a special needs child in central Illinois.

Judy Braiman:  Rochester, NY children’s activist; has appeared on 60 minutes.

Paul Mulhauser, parent of autistic child.

Barbara Littles (President, paid $41k):  There is a Barbara Littles in Vienna, Va, which is where this foundation is located, who “represented Staats Development, Inc” so she may be a lawyer.  There’s a Barbara Littles who is a Saginaw attorney as well; may be the same person.

Cliff Shoemaker:  JACKPOT!  Drug and product liability lawyer, head of Shoemaker & Associates law firm, http://www.shoemakerassociates.com/index.php.  “He has represented hundreds of petitioners under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Act.”

Andy Schaus: may be an Arkansas realtor.

Greg Burgess: couldn’t find any solid information.

There’s a staff and medical advisory board listing in this document:  http://www.909shot.com/Conferences/PROGRAM-Layout.pdf

There’s this kind of dangerous tendency I notice a little bit rising out of Amanda’s posts, where there’s a strong temptation to categorize everything you don’t personally believe in as either mendacious, evil, or criminally stupid.  Usually under the subheading of “woo”, which is a magical term to describe anything from political ideas you oppose to religious beliefs you’re not familiar with.  Guess what?  The world doesn’t actually work that way.

Guess what? Atheists really do think that theistic beliefs are equivalent to magical beliefs. Many atheists believe that such theistic beliefs, like belief in magic, is stupid, and that arguments for the same are, if not stupid, mendacious. The reasons for this have been discussed ad nauseum here and elsewhere, both as substantive discussions of atheism and as discussions of religious privilege. This position is no more a dangerous tendency than atheism itself is a dangerous tendency. I appreciate that you disagree with this evaluation of theism and this way of doing atheism, but you have no grounds for characterizing it as dangerous.

Furthermore, the claims of unfamiliarity with religious beliefs as a defense against dismissal is best described as a Courtier’s Reply. Less artfully, while some quantum of knowledge is required to dismiss a theistic claim, that quantum of knowledge is vanishingly small.

You can’t just lump everything you don’t like (whether it’s merited or not) into a pile and assume that it all must fit together somehow.

I agree with you here, though. Just because the anti-vaccination movement is ridiculous and the anti-abortion movement is ridiculous doesn’t mean they’re cut from the same cloth.

FTR, according to the CDC, the chicken pox vaccine eliminates the risk of shingles.  And if you choose not to believe the CDC—according to the statistics on the anti-vax sites (at least as of a year or two back when I looked this up), your risk of shingles goes down by half when you compare the vaccine to going through a case of wild chicken pox.

The only way that the vaccine raises the risk of shingles is if you compare the risks of the vaccine to the risks of never having chicken pox at all. 

Gambling that your kid will never get polio is, at this point, a fairly safe bet so long as they stay in the U.S.  Chicken pox?  Not so much.

opoponax, every hari krishna you have ever met is straight edge - they are opposed to drugs and alcohol. They also happen to be anti-abortion, a fact easily checked against their public pronouncements. You may not have met any libertarian coop junkies but there are plenty of anarchists out there who manage to follow some of the same conspiracy theories. The only reason you have never met an anti-choice anarchist is that anarchists cannot, by definition, be anti-choice. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have dodgy views about abortion, and promote silly conspiracy theories. I also doubt that the phenomenon is unique to my particular part of the world, since Australia doesn’t exactly produce much of its own anarchist literature, but imports most of its anarchist, libertarian and syndicalist ideas whole from the UK and the US. Vegan straight-edge, for example, is a direct import from the US. I have yet to meet a vegan straight-edger who wasn’t a dour, mean-spirited anti-sex homophobic bigot.

I don’t know how many times I have to say this, but I am not lumping “everything I don’t like” into a pile. I started these comments by describing “a sort of” activist who could form a bridge between two opposing political ideas, in response to Amanda’s musings. This is not lumping everything into a pile. It just plainly doesn’t have that meaning. I clearly didn’t lump these fringe kooks in with the animal rights movement as a whole (or the anarchist movement for that matter) and I tried to clarify that.

Thom, these movements may not be cut from the same cloth but I think there is evidence that there are people who straddle both movements. BadKitty’s reference to aborted foetal tissue and vaccination gives you a nice jumping off point to see just how fucked up their shared ideas are - go look it up.

I’m thinking: this is a well-funded movement (as witnessed by Amanda at netroots, and as seen in for example the WCA website). It is connected to a professional body (the WCA) which has its own interests to push in undermining medical science. It works through libertarian principles (as you can see by looking at the links in the WCA, or any of the other sites’ recommended books), and it has branches appealing to the anti-abortion christian fundamentalist worldview (as shown by BadKitty).

This makes the anti-vaccination movement seem to have a lot in common with the pro-smoking movement and greenhouse denialism. Both of these movements operate on similar models, and both have been funded by Big Tobacco. Obviously the Tobacco industry has a big interest in securing victories against medical science - if vaccination were accepted as bad, they could point to “the untold damage done by well-meaning but misguided vaccination programs” as evidence of the dangers of the state interfering in personal health choices… and simultaneously reduce confidence in medical research.

I’m wondering if some of these groups weren’t maybe funded by Big Tobacco, if not now then in the 80s. I think a dive into the oily, slimy waters of the Tobacco Papers could be worth a try…

waaaaaayyyy late, but thanks Caren.  You’re right, of course....

“ “One does not have to be ant-vaccine to be anti-mercury in vaccinations.’

That’s like saying one doesn’t have to be a fundamentalist Christian to be against evolutionary theory.  Technically true, but irrelevant in practice.”

That would be true if the we lived in a world in which one was forced to choose between vaccines containing mercury and no vaccines at all, but, fortunately, that is not this world.

Mercury has been eliminated from most childhood vaccines. Parents do not have to choose between the potential harm of mercury exposure and the potential benefits of vaccination.

When I wanted a flu vaccination last winter, I was able to locate one w/o mercury (it was not easy but it was possible). In practice, I was able to benefit from a flu vaccine but not increase my mercury exposure.

In what way is that irrelevant?

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