Do you know exactly where in the video the kid with whooping cough is at? There’s an acquaintance I’d like to send this thing to with a link labeled “go ahead and skip to XX:XX, think about whether you want that to be your kid”.

Towards the end.

Tie child tax credits to vaccination and the problem will be solved in a New York minute.

I got a whooping cough vaccination back in ‘08 along with a tetanus booster. When I saw that frontline video a year or whatever ago, I was definitely glad I got that shot. I wouldn’t want it, and I definitely wouldn’t want to give it to a kid.

If your blood pressure can handle it, stick around that video to watch the public health official talk to anti-vax mothers who believe that the power of their maternal love will protect their children from illness.

Ha!

That “ha” was for Donna. There’s nothing “ha!” about idiot mothers, though there is some dark humor to be had there.

I had to go through that as well this past spring.  Of course, at almost 60, my immunity from the original vaccinations is fading and I am generally more susceptible than you young whippersnappers.

I would be happy to get my booster shots…. If I had access to health care! Let’s not forget the full ThirD of Texans who have no health insurance, due to it not being required for employers to even ofFer it. I have been working chlorine for forty years and have never even had a job that offered benefits of any kind.

So there’s THAT.

Haha the word “chlorine” was supposed to be “full-time”

It’s becoming a serious problem here in CA:

In Fresno Unified, it appeared to be mostly a case of parents ignoring the deadline, and not refusing the vaccine. Fresno sequestered the unvaccinated students in school cafeterias and gymnasiums until they returned with proof of being vaccinated.

But the school system shouldn’t be catering to irresponsible parents.

The Legislature needs to revisit the law to ensure that districts that do not enforce the law suffer financial consequences. Allowing large numbers of students to attend school without being vaccinated puts the community at risk.

This isn’t just about whooping cough. It also is about other serious or potentially fatal diseases—smallpox, diphtheria, tetanus, polio, measles, mumps, rubella and meningitis.

Another issue is that California has a very loose “personal belief exemption,” an opt-out for parents that need not be based on religion or medical necessity. Legislators ought to revisit that law, too.

Overall, the “opt-out” rate is about 2%, not a big problem. When a large enough percentage of the population is vaccinated, that protects everybody—including newborns and people with cancer undergoing chemotherapy, who cannot be vaccinated. When a small number of parents refuse vaccination, their children are protected as “free riders.” But when a large percentage is intentionally unvaccinated, that puts the larger community at risk.

When parents at these schools make a choice for their child not to get vaccines, they’re also making a choice to put others at risk.

The bottom line: Kids need to get their vaccinations to protect us all.

People have grown up without seeing the great toll that such diseases caused when vaccinations weren’t available.

They should do it like the flu shots, one of the local chains offers a 5$ gift card for anyone without insurance coverage who gets a flu shot.

Doing that for the required vaccinations would bring the parents in, IMHO.

Just fuck anti-vaxers.

Don’t let their kids attend school—any school—until properly vaccinated.  There is no zero none evidence that vaccinations cause autism.  Wakefield was a fraud and a crook and should be imprisoned for life for all the evil he’s caused.

Kids with leukemia and cancer and auto-immune diseases are the one who need the herd immunity.  It shouldn’t be stretched because woo.

They piss me off so much, because they’re not just endangering themselves.

And for stupidity!  Because STUPID!  Argh!

Fresno isn’t particularly “yuppie-thick”, part of the problem is probably the children of farm laborers who might not keep track of what shots their children have, or haven’t gotten around with it because of the pressing needs of living on a limited income.

My pediatrician’s office announced a new policy this spring.  Anyone opting out of vaccinations would be asked to leave the practice.  Anyone on a delayed schedule would be put on a catch up schedule. 

No more woo coddling.  It’s a ritzy little practice, and I’ve no doubt plenty of gold coast parents were hypnotized by the woo.  I enjoyed the fact they were declaring themselves opposed to anything not recommended by the CDC or American Pediatrics Association.

I have other issues with them, but this made me happy.

Donna, that’s a fantastic idea and I love it, except that there are kids who can’t or shouldn’t get vaccinated. My nephew, for example, has a messed-up immune system. Multiple serious food allergies, etc. He’s one of those kids who, a generation or two ago, would have simply “not made it” past the age of 2. He’s alive today, with all of his f’ed up allergies. But a couple of years ago, when he got the H1N1 vaccine and *two more* serious food allergies quickly developed, we realized that this kid really shouldn’t get vaccines—he should rely on herd immunity—that’s what it’s there for. I wouldn’t want to create a perverse incentive where parents are tempted to ignore warning signs that their child’s immune system will have an adverse reaction to a vaccine because money’s tight.

@14 Mighty Ponygirl Nobody is upset that a few children can’t handle those kinds of shots.  But your nephew is a very limited case that doesn’t really do anything but prove the rule.  These situations always arise but the vast majority of children need to be vaccinated and those who can’t be need to be watched carefully.  This shouldn’t be a political game of chicken because a handful of charlatans saw money to be made.  I support school districts that refuse admittance to children who aren’t vaccinated and don’t offer a real medical reason why they can’t be.  My local district is doing that because it’s in a major city, we can’t have even 10% un-vaxed when they could infect thousands if not tens of thousands.

The whole fear of autism and retardation do to various improvements in drugs stems from the social stigma and the need to blame somebody else for the bad luck of genetics.

Good for you for getting the vaccine.

There are legitimate allergies—most vaccines are made with egg whites (if I remember correctly) so allergies to eggs are problematic.

I get a regular flu shot (for which I am overdue—this Saturday for me.) and I’ve had a whole series of vaccines for extensive foreign travel/contact with animals.  Only time I’ve had a reaction was to the typhoid vaccine.  It was a day and night of a sharp fever and cramps.  I’d much rather have had that than typhoid fever.

Flu shot at the begining of the month for me.  My employer gives it to anyone who wants it and even advertizes to get as many of us in as possible.  A buntch of us travel and miss the times, but can sometimes get a follow on.  Right now we have issues with layoffs and insecure contracts, but at least they are keeping this up.  The allergy they checked on for it was for eggs.

Xeranar—did you bother to read my comment before you just copied-pasted your anti-anti-vax screed? I’m saying that if we create a system by which parents are given monetary incentive to vaccinate their children, it might create perverse incentives for the handful of children who really shouldn’t be vaccinated, NOT that “oh my nephew got a vaccine and now he’s got allergies so that proves vaccines cause autism.”

If you set up a system by which child tax credits are withheld if a kid isn’t vaccinated, then you have to set up a system by which parents who have a kid like my nephew aren’t punished for having a kid with a bad immune system (which, btw, often means they need the child tax credit money *all the more* because their kid had established health problems). And then you start talking about how doctors can give waivers—apart from creating yet another legal permeation whereby a patient’s medical data is not private—means exactly jack squat because the same obnoxious mommy-woo parents who are refusing to get their kids vaccinated now will just doctor shop to find a physician who is free-and-loose with those waivers.

So the upshot is that Donna’s idea tastes great at first but has a bit of an aftertaste.

Glad you got vaxxed!

It may be worthwhile to note that in addition to the problem of McCarthy et al spreading misinformation that vaccines are dangerous AND the problem of there being very little education about pertussis (how dangerous it is, how one can be a carrier, how the pertussis vaccine is one of the few that you need to get again after five years or so, etc), whooping cough tends to come back in waves every X number of years, and we are currently in the midst of one of those waves, so it’s especially important to get vaxxed now.

LONGEST SENTENCE EVER

Good point, Dark and KMT: another reason to get boosters if you can is some folks have no access. Your immunity helps protect them.

Amanda, I am always so frustrated when I see posts from you about this subject and finally feel compelled to write a response.  Yes, Jenny McCarthy is a total loon.  The people who think vaccinations directly cause autism are also very misguided though I’ll get back to that.  I have lived all over the world and I have seen first hand the incredible public-health benefits of vaccinations.  They are, by and large, one of the most important and beneficial medical breakthroughs of the last 100 years.  I think they are a great idea in concept and should be utilized with care and consideration. 

That all said, I am also very, very skeptical about many aspects of vaccinations for two main reasons.  1) I don’t think the FDA nor the pharma companies have effective methods to protect the public.  The questions surrounding BPA is a great example of the problems with the system.  As a liberal, I certainly don’t believe that we can trust corporations to protect us, especially from possible problems that are subtle and long-term.  I don’t think there is necessarily a problem with current vaccinations, but I am still very wary about injecting things into my and my child’s system even if they assure me it is safe.  If we had a more effective and trustworthy system of tracking medical problems associated with the use of any forms of medication I would perhaps be less concerned.  It can take many years before problems are detected with medications because our system is not effective.

This is linked to my second concern.  2) Doctors and scientists do not understand the human immune system very well.  Basic assumptions about our immune system are being overturned all the time.  For example, the dramatic, potentially negative impact that the use of antibiotics can have on an individual (not the public) is just now being discovered by doctors as they explore the role that gut-bacteria plays in bodily immune response.  Or look at the hygiene hypothesis.  Or go to the doctor and ask why you have eczema or allergies.  Hell, doctors don’t even know if you should or shouldn’t expose your kids to peanuts to reduce their chances of acquiring a peanut allergy because they simply don’t understand how allergies work.

That our immune system is complex and little understood makes me very, very cautious when doctors say things like “there are NO long-term side effects” to any attempt to manipulate our immune responses.  The dramatic increase in auto-immune disorders of all stripes over the last 20 years suggests that we are overwhelming our immune systems somehow.  To quote “In the past decade, 15 top medical journals have reported rising rates of lupus, multiple sclerosis, scleroderma, Crohn’s disease, Addison’s disease and polymyositis in industrialized countries around the world. Over the past 40 years, rates of Type 1 diabetes have increased fivefold; in children 4 and under, it’s increasing 6 percent a year.”

Do I think vaccines are to blame?  Not in any simple way.  I am willing to believe that it is related to our constant exposure to a huge variety of chemicals combined with our generally unhealthy lifestyles.  That we might be impairing our overall immune systems with vaccinations in ways that we don’t yet understand doesn’t seem totally crazy.  I’m not saying it is true, but I’m also not willing to discount the possibility. 

Finally, the big hot button here is autism.  I don’t think the MMR vaccination causes autism.  Instead, there is good and growing evidence that the rise in autism is a combination of it being waaaaaay over-diagnosed combined with a small increase in its occurrence.  There is also good and growing evidence that autism is caused by some yet unknown combination of genetic and environmental triggers.  If vaccinations, one of the few things we put into our bodies with the sole purpose of altering our immune system, are a possible part of this process, I would not be shocked.

The sad thing is that I agree with you that the vast majority of people can and should be vaccinated.  However, I also think we should be rationally and openly discussing these issues and investigating them further.  Your patent dismissal of ANY concerns about vaccinations seems anti-science to me and it leaves out those middle-of-the-road folks who want to talk about these concerns without getting called crazy.

Amanda, thanks to you, I have an 8:15 AM appt. Thursday to get the whooping cough vaccine and whatever else I need.

I’m one of those people who get rundown the next day or two after a shot, but when I got the flu vaccines last year, that didn’t happen, much to my delighted surprise, so perhaps my immune system has finally gotten used to them.

Anyone else?

I’m in my 40’s and my mother was, sadly, in a previous anti-vax generation, here in Canada. Sooooo…I got mumps, measles, chicken pox and whooping cough…good times. Whooping cough was TERRIFYING. I was eight, I think,  missed three weeks of school and thought I was going to die during any number of coughing fits. Mom was usually quite sane about medical stuff, so I can only guess she had heard some seriously scary “bad batch” vaccine stories.

I have taken my child for EVERY single vaccine offered, including HPV the school is delivering via public health nurses for all girls in grade six, this year.

@Dark Avenger Guardian Chow Mein re farm labourer’s not tracking kids’ shots…and here’s another reason to have a centralized, public health system. Whenever I, my partner, or my child visits the hospital, our doctor, a public health clinic, whatever, they can pull our records up from the database and check this stuff.  If a shot has been missed, each visit with a health provider is an opportunity to get it.  I got a tetanus booster last year when I visited the local sports centre for a flu shots clinic. The nurses figured this was a way to fill in just those kinds of gaps, had a number of “standard” public health delivered vaccines available, checked that yes, I was overdue and just gave me two shots right there…

While I’m sure that increasing rates of vaccine refusal have a lot to do with the resurgence of whooping cough in this country, it’s also just been discovered that the whooping-cough vaccine loses its effectiveness a lot sooner that previously thought (two and a half to three years, as opposed to the five that Rebecca remembers).

So that may be another reason for your doctor to be recommending the booster; with that shorter period of effectiveness, even people who are current on vaccinations might still be able to catch whooping cough.

Which, as you’ve pointed out, is going around now thanks to You Know Who.

Voldemort?

God, what a fucker.

Instead, there is good and growing evidence that the rise in autism is a combination of it being waaaaaay over-diagnosed

This is the part where you go from being an evidence-free woomonger to just being a regular asshole.

Rates of autism diagnosis are rising, and you want to assume that it’s “waaaaaay” over diagnosed? (Did I get the number of As right?) Is it so hard to believe that it was under-diagnosed before, and now the psychiatric and child development fields are finally beginning to understand it better? Does it anger you that hundreds of thousands of autistic children are finally getting a chance at a normal life at the cost of perhaps the occasional false positive?

Several of my mama friends don’t vaccinate, and frankly, it pisses me off. In fact, one of them was *shocked* to learn that we live in an area where there is potential for outbreaks due to low vax compliance. She was blithely planning on relying on herd immunity to keep her son from getting sick. That’s all well and good, but you get enough people in the same area who feel the same way, and whoops, no herd immunity. Also, it’s okay for other people to supposedly put their kid at risk so that your kid doesn’t get sick, but you’re not willing to take that supposed risk to actually keep him well?

Fuckers.

@Mighty - parents whose kids can’t tolerate certain vaccines could get a medical waiver.  And not from some woo homeopathic quack “doctor” either.

Donna—again, you have to figure out *at a legal level* how we’ll be able to reasonably sift out the quack doctors from the good doctors (and not punish legitimately sick kids. There are people who believe my nephew should be vaccinated anyway—who decides?)  If we can’t do that for things like oxycontin and vicodin, which I would posit is abused way more than parents not vaccinating, I don’t see how we could do it for something like vaccinations.

I’m also not sure I want a system whereby the federal government is entitled to my medical information Just Because. Precedent.

On a feminist blog, things like a reasonable legal right to medical privacy shouldn’t be so hard to spell out.

My little sister caught whooping cough in middle school. I am not sure if the vaccination didn’t take, or she was not up to date on the vaccines, or what the problem was, but the error was an accident and not because my parents were anti-vaccers. She was not at risk for dying, but the illness was still so brutal. She would cough until she threw up all the time. She would have coughing fits at night and become so scared that my mom would just have to sit up with her and hold her and try to comfort her. She was sick for months. She missed so much school she almost had to repeat 8th grade. Even when she was well enough to go back to school, she still had coughing fits that resulted in vomiting leading to her being ostracized. She is only 5 6 when the rest of the women in my family are 5 9-5 11. She coughed so hard that her stomach got shifted to the wrong position, causing a portion of her stomach tissue to die. She has to keep to a strict eating schedule for the rest of her life and moniter her GI system for furhter atrophy for the rest of her life. She is very skinny and under constant threat of malnutrition. This is what whooping cough did to a 13 year old. Imagine being 6 or 3 or an infant.

Blah blah, fiz, glad you know more than all the public health researchers of the world EVER, but you’ll understand why your nonsensical ranting isn’t very convincing for the rest of us.

I’m beginning to think some people wish we had more horrible contagious illness, between the people who deny that it’s smart to wash your hands and the people who are opposed to vaccination.

By the way, paranoid and unsubstantiated theories of biology offered by non-experts in internet comments aren’t “science”, and so my casual dismissal of them cannot be construed as “anti-science”. It is, however, anti-unsubstantiated-fear-mongering.

Wait, people are anti-handwashing? Are they worried about losing the layer of dirt that keeps the demons away?

Amanda, that is what you have to love about anti-medical-science types. They know more than every single scientist, researcher and doctor in all of history, combined!

Interestingly enough I got a Tdap and flu shot this morning too! I went to the low-cost farm worker’s clinic here in town to get my depression medication prescribed (no idea how I’m paying for the scrip, but that’s another story) and they offered me both vaccinations, something my regular doctors generally have not done. It’s likely they offer them up front because so many people in the low income bracket don’t have regular access to vaccinations, or may be unaware of many of them. I work in retail so am around tons of people, not to mention the fact my daughter with Down syndrome may have some measure of immune suppression, especially for respiratory diseases. Thank dog for vaccines!

ladeeda—our friends with kids are pretty much of the mind that if your kid can be vaccinated and you choose not to, then there will be no playdates, even though their kids are vaccinated, it’s just such an obnoxious thing to do that it rules you out as someone they want to spend a lot of time in a parenting capacity with. If you’re pro-woo on vaccinations, you’re probably pro-woo on other bullshit, so they figure “fuck it, we don’t want to hang out with you.”

2) Doctors and scientists do not understand the human immune system very well.  Basic assumptions about our immune system are being overturned all the time.  For example, the dramatic, potentially negative impact that the use of antibiotics can have on an individual (not the public) is just now being discovered by doctors as they explore the role that gut-bacteria plays in bodily immune response.  Or look at the hygiene hypothesis.  Or go to the doctor and ask why you have eczema or allergies.  Hell, doctors don’t even know if you should or shouldn’t expose your kids to peanuts to reduce their chances of acquiring a peanut allergy because they simply don’t understand how allergies work.

You’re a moron. Our understanding of the immune system is incomplete; all of your nonsense here is nonetheless a non-sequiter. The fact that antibiotics can cause problems is not news; new research on the human microbiome is doing wonders for our understanding of HOW they alter our health, and that’s great, but that hasn’t changed the long-established best practice for the use of antibiotics, which is that they should not be administered unless needed, but when they are needed, you run a course that is guaranteed to maximize the effect. Because if someone needs antibiotics, chances are that they NEED them, in a serious way. They aren’t something that can be withheld. The fact that they are often improperly administered is an issue, but it’s not a mystery to medical science - researchers have been concerned about overuse of antibiotics for decades now.

The rest of the stuff, the hygiene hypothesis, the weirdness about peanuts (seriously, you think it’s some major failure of medical science that we can’t predict what predisposes people to nut allergies? Again, moron), has nothing to do with the simple, open-and-shut, bare facts here: rates of survival into adulthood in populations is HIGHLY CORRELATED with access to vaccination. There is indeed no evidence of long-term side effects; the scale of vaccination programs and the length of time that they have been going on pretty much guarantee that such side-effects would be noticeable. That they are not means that even if they exist, they aren’t statistically important enough to worry about. But you know what is? Childhood (or adult!) mortality due to preventable diseases.

Your nonsense quibbling about Big Pharma and long-term effects that may or may not but pretty much certainly don’t exist looks pretty fucking stupid in the face the actual outcomes - living to experience imaginary side effects is way more likely when you get your goddamn shots. The reality of public health is that it consists of trade-offs, from which enormous numbers of people mostly benefit. Deal with it.

I’m in my 40’s and my mother was, sadly, in a previous anti-vax generation, here in Canada. Sooooo…I got mumps, measles, chicken pox and whooping cough…good times.

To be fair the varicella vaccine wasn’t widely available until 1995. It also took a long time for them to settle when kids should be getting the vaccines. They now recommend the second MMR shot at 18 months but I distinctly remember as a child in the 90’s that we didn’t get the MMR vaccine until we were well into grade school, 3rd I believe. Obviously plenty of time to catch something.

I’m beginning to think some people wish we had more horrible contagious illness

Well, it *would* make uppity working women quit their jobs and stay at home all day long the way God intended, so they could nurse their frequently sick children.

I’d like that to be satire, I’m not sure it is…

Sorry, I have to add - the squirmy bullshit about how we don’t understand the immune system brings to mind IDiots who argue that, because our understanding of this or that element of biology or evolution, it must false. Same thing applies - what we do know about the immune system, we have been able to apply to medical science, with public health results that seem all but miraculous. And that tells us that the model that we have about how it works is actually pretty fucking good; in the same way that Special Relativity is not complete, but GPS still works really well. We learn new things about the details and specifics all the time, including things that challenge some of what we thought we knew before; but this is about fine-tuning, not about some major gap in our understanding of how it works. If we were that wrong, this shit simply wouldn’t work, and we would still have massive childhood mortality from disease with names from the Gold rush era.

One of the major pediatric clinics near here also just instituted a policy that they will not see children whose parents won’t vaccinate them.

Something we can learn from conservatives: if you attach enough stigma to non-compliance with social norms, it becomes much less likely for people to ignore them.  (The same principle applies to advances in civil rights/non-discrimination.)  Vaccination should be a social norm, period.

The dramatic increase in auto-immune disorders of all stripes over the last 20 years suggests that we are overwhelming our immune systems somehow.

Sorry, I feel the need to take one last shot at the stupid.

It suggests nothing of the sort. It shows that auto-immune disorders are being diagnosed far more frequently. An uptick in autoimmune diseases is quite likely, but you are getting way ahead of yourself, here. And I don’t think you have any concept of how adaptive immunity works; the immune system in these cases is not “overwhelmed,” it is deficient in discriminating between “Self” and “Not Self” antigens. With the way a vaccine works, it would be understating the point to say that it’s extremely unlikely that they are involved in an increase in autoimmune disease - they stimulate production of antigens in the same way that exposure to the disease does. That is, they do not “manipulate immune response,” they STIMULATE a NORMAL immune response. If an individual already has an immune-hypersensitivity issue, that can lead to serious problems, but that’s not an effect of the vaccine.

An increase in immune disorders is indeed cause for concern, but there is no evidence that it is linked to any medical procedure that stimulates immune response per se, and not much reason right now to think that they are the source of that uptick.

As Amanda said, what is really anti-science is the out-of-ignorance nonsense speculation of blowhards like you.

So anyone want to start placing bets on how long until they revive mandatory polio vaccinations?

My favorite lie from Fiz’s rant: “I have lived all over the world and I have seen first hand the incredible public-health benefits of vaccinations.” Bullshit. When I did aid work in a clinic in Ecuador one summer, I didn’t see how PREVENTATIVE VACCINES impacted public health, I just saw kids getting routine vaccines from Ukrainian and American doctors. Its not really something your “see,” its immunity. Unless you observe a population over time, a great deal of time, you won’t “see” these impacts…they are there, I heart vaccines…but since you’ve proven a disingenous know-nothing regarding your personal facts about the immune system, I’m guess this extensive international travel/expatriation for the purposes of personally observing herd immunity is just bullshit to stack your internet ranter resume.

Dan @ #1:

There’s an acquaintance I’d like to send this thing to with a link labeled “go ahead and skip to XX:XX, think about whether you want that to be your kid”.

It’s at 46:00.

Seriously, this footage stands on its own. Could make a TV commercial out of it. No bells and whistles needed. Just the coughing. Jeebus. Heartbreaking.

Wait, people are anti-handwashing? Are they worried about losing the layer of dirt that keeps the demons away?

Over on the naturalistic fallacy thread, some people said they don’t bother with soap after using the bathroom unless they get visible poo on their hands.

When our daughter was six months old, I signed her up for my university’s really good (and pretty cheap) daycare. They interviewed my wife and me extensively, and circled back around to our views on vaccination multiple times, to the point where my wife finally said, “Look, we’re not anti-vax wackos, okay? Move on.” We got lucky and a place opened up almost right away—there is a huge waiting list but faculty get priority.

Fast-forward to now. Our kid just turned three, so off she went to the paediatrician for her shots. She didn’t like it but accepted Five Guys as a bribe. Yesterday, in a meeting, I see a colleague—a professor of women’s studies, no less—who has a daughter a few months younger than ours. This woman has often complained of the daycare center’s never being able to find a place for her kid, which I figured was just bad timing. But then after the meeting, I was laughing with another colleague about the things we bribe our kids with, and this woman overheard us. Once she ascertained what we were talking about, she went on this atrocious and interminable rant about the conspiracy that is vaccination, blah blah blah. Now I know why they can’t seem to find a place for her kid on the waiting list.

@hypatia I think I’m being quite fair to Mom. If the vaccine had been available with an opt-out, she would have opted me out, I’m sure. I was vaccinated for smallpox and I remember a TB test in school. I think she (and my pediatrician) just didn’t do any of the vaccinations that were generally administered by a family doctor as opposed to through the school system/public health. It was deliberate. She was a great parent, otherwise…this was a blind spot of hers, one shared by my pediatrician, to some extent, I guess. I’m sure she thought it was for the best, but the consequence was that I experienced many childhood ailments that I might have avoided. This did not have serious consequences for me, but it could have, of course

I had Whooping Cough a couple year’s ago, and wrote the essay about it that the Skepchick’s used for their last vaccination drive (monster eyes picture and all). 

I had never had a doctor recommend to me as an adult to get booster shots of any immunizations.  Even now, after having had Whooping Cough I’m fighting my regular doc to get the MMR updated.  They want to test my titres first.  I can’t remember when I last had any vaccination apart from Tetanus.  What?  Am I going to be over-immune?  The fuck. 

Whooping cough was one of the most miserable experiences of my life.  I wanted to die.  I hurt so much, constantly, had yeast infections in my throat from all the drugs they had me on, every blood vessel in my eyes burst, I would cough until I threw up or passed out on a regular basis, I couldn’t eat anything solid because it hurt too damn much.  They put me on steroids for what was supposed to be a week, after not sleeping AT ALL for three straight days I threw out the rest. 

So annoyed at the anti-vaxxers for this bullshit.

I can’t even imagine going through this is a child, or what it would be like for an infant.

The increase in pertussis (except specifically among elementary school age children) is probably the only increase in vaccine-preventable disease that *can’t* be blamed on anti-vaccine hysteria.  The causes aren’t clear, but pertussis seems to be on the rise in adults, who pass it on to babies and kids.  That’s why they are now recommending the boosters, which were once thought unnecessary.  But we don’t know why adults seem to have more whooping cough than they used to.  They are the main reservoir.

Those boosters are important even if you’re not concerned about making other people sick.  Adults can get really bad cases of pertussis, too.  When I was 13, I had a terrible case of whooping cough.  I’d been vaccinated, but this was before they realized the vaccine doesn’t last.  I was vaccinated as a child, and the person I caught it from had been, too.  Try to imagine coughing until you vomit, tearing the cartilage between your ribs, bursting blood vessels, blacking out, never being able to sleep, being put on prednisone and oxygen, being kept in isolation, and worrying that you’ll cough yourself into a stroke—for months on end.  I missed most of 8th grade.  My mom missed months of work staying with me to make sure I didn’t choke to death.

It took a long time to get diagnosed, because this was the early 90’s, and most doctors had never seen a case of pertussis.  They had to get the oldest pediatrician in town out of retirement to listen to me cough.  It was so rare that even the doctors at the ER, where I ended up several times, didn’t know that I wasn’t contagious after the antibiotics.  They freaked out every time and went all “Outbreak” when my parents told them I had whooping cough.  Sadly, it’s not so rare now.  So, yes, everyone should get the vaccine and the boosters, but Jenny McCarthy isn’t to blame for most of this.  She’s still got a lot of kids dead or brain-damaged from measles to answer for, though.

Grolby, no apologies. I am personally enjoying the hell out of you utterly wasting that argument.

@ Triplanetary, call me whatever names you want and I’m sorry if I offended you but there is general agreement that the autistic spectrum has become too much of a catch all diagnosis causing.  That is why the actual diagnostic criteria is being changed.  The new DSM (5) will be changed May of next year (from the existing DSM-IV) to alter the criteria for an autism diagnosis because the people American Psychiatric Association believes the over-diagnosis of autism is hurting kids.  The main change is that language and communication delays are being pulled out of the criteria because too many kids with language disorders are actually being diagnosed as autistic.

This hurts everyone because those kids who are genuinely autistic are losing out on the services they need and the misdiagnosed kids are also not getting help for their actual issues.  I have no idea where your mean-spirited response came from but over-diagnosis is a real issue, not just something I made up. 

@ Amanda, I don’t claim to understand more than public health researchers.  I do, however feel comfortable questioning them.  Did anyone notice that I am not in fact anti-vax?  My child is vaccinated.  I just think it is reasonable to question doctors and health researchers when there is really a poor system in place for monitoring long-term outcomes.  By dismissing any concerns we send those who are actually anti-science running to the extreme anti-vax folks. 

@ Thealogian, I have in fact lived all over the world and I meant that I have lived in places where vaccines are not accessible and I see the negative public health consequences.  Is that more clear? 

fizgigs, yes, we noticed that you are not anti-vax, but you appear not to be anti-stupid. You wrote this big long screed about questioning doctors and health researchers for reasons X, Y and Z that were either non-sequiters, just plain wrong or both. You have no working knowledge of human health or immune function that I can tell that would lead to you asking useful questions. Questioning public health research is worse than useless if you are using your ignorance of the science or medicine involved to sow doubt and confusion; the term for this is “JAQing off,” and you’ve executed a pitch-perfect example. Let me make this perfectly clear: you have no fucking idea what you’re talking about, which means that you are consistently going to ask the WRONG questions. Questioning results when you don’t actually know anything about what you’re questioning isn’t a virtue, it’s a big waste of everyone’s time.

Amanda:  I got the booster myself, last month.  The feverishness goes away after about a day, the muscle soreness in the arm you got the injection, about two.

Look, here’s some Bertrand Russell for you to chew on, you big, brave, questioning, probing nitwit:

<blockquote Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. Einstein’s view as to the magnitude of the deflection of light by gravitation would have been rejected by all experts not many years ago, yet it proved to be right. Nevertheless the opinion of experts, when it is unanimous, must be accepted by non-experts as more likely to be right than the opposite opinion. The scepticism that I advocate amounts only to this: (1) that when the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain; (2) that when they are not agreed, no opinion can be regarded as certain by a non-expert; and (3) that when they all hold that no sufficient grounds for a positive opinion exist, the ordinary man would do well to suspend his judgment.</blockquote>
Emphasis added.

You would do well to heed this advice for apportioning your doubt: if you lack expertise, you lack the necessary background to promote alternatives. And if you don’t have an alternative in mind, expressing doubt is a vacuous exercise. All I know about medicine and public health is that I know more than you do; the experts say that vaccines are safe, no doubt about it. Gee, who should I take more seriously?

Oh no, block quote fail!

I love you grolby.  That is all.

Wow, I am actually kind of shocked at the times I have been called variations of stupid and have had mean spirited comments directed at me for what I thought was me expressing my own reasons for not dismissing anyone who questions the medical establishment and medical experts. 

Personally I have had some very bad experiences with doctors and so I question based on experience.  I think I’ve come to a reasonable place considering how much truly bad advice I’ve gotten from “the experts” in the past.  This ranges from my own medical treatment to that of my son as well as my best friend.  I’m glad you all have endless faith in doctors and research scientists.  I just don’t.

Also grolby I think that is a great quote.  One of my favorite philosophers.  I’ll add that he also said “much of what passes for knowledge at any given time is likely to be more or less mistaken” and “A religious creed differs from a scientific theory in claiming to embody eternal and absolutely certain truth, whereas science is always tentative.”  Certainty almost always makes me nervous because it verges on religious “faith” to me. 

Wow, I am actually kind of shocked at the times I have been called variations of stupid and have had mean spirited comments directed at me for what I thought was me expressing my own reasons for not dismissing anyone who questions the medical establishment and medical experts.

That’s because what you’re actually expressing is your own reasons why it’s okay to kill children.

Weirdly, people take unkindly to that sort of thing.

@fizgigs

Precisely when and where did you live abroad? Please give specific examples as to how this experience aboard gives you expertise in international public health policy.

I think we already sift quack doctors from non-quack doctors.  Else everyone would be getting heroin prescriptions…

But that would be a last-step effort, really.

Anecdotal experience which isn’t even directly about the subject at hand, and a deliberate mischaracterization of the opposition’s quotation summed up with a vague truism. It’s like fizgigs is going out for some sort award in rhetorical failure.

Ah I see, the your position is dangerous idea.  Because if you are really concerned with helping anti-vax folk understand better why they should vax, calling people stupid and accusing them of killing babies is just the right way to convince them to get vaccinations for their kids. 

Sorry Thealogian, I don’t really care if you believe me, I don’t really like anything that could be used to identify me on public forums.  Based on my login info Amanda can probably figure out who I am and look me up if she wants as long as my privacy is maintained in the public arena. 

You know what I like to point out to people who say auto-immune diseases have seen an uptick?  So has the incidence of not dying as a child.

I can’t think of a way to say this that doesn’t sound sarcastic, but Amanda, I’d be interested in your hypothesis as to why rich yuppie parents buy into the woo a lot.

fiz, 59:

what I thought was me expressing my own reasons for not dismissing anyone who questions the medical establishment and medical experts.

Well, there’s my hypothesis: yuppies who like to think of themselves as especially not gullible (a word not found in any dictionary) are suckers for JAQing off.

  2) Doctors and scientists do not understand the human immune system very well.  Basic assumptions about our immune system are being overturned all the time.

And you wonder why people call you names?

Really?

Background

Oral immunotherapy (OIT) has been thought to induce clinical desensitization to allergenic foods, but trials coupling the clinical response and immunologic effects of peanut OIT have not been reported.
Objective

The study objective was to investigate the clinical efficacy and immunologic changes associated with OIT.
Methods

Children with peanut allergy underwent an OIT protocol including initial day escalation, buildup, and maintenance phases, and then oral food challenge. Clinical response and immunologic changes were evaluated.
Results

Of 29 subjects who completed the protocol, 27 ingested 3.9 g peanut protein during food challenge. Most symptoms noted during OIT resolved spontaneously or with antihistamines. By 6 months, titrated skin prick tests and activation of basophils significantly declined. Peanut-specific IgE decreased by 12 to 18 months, whereas IgG4 increased significantly. Serum factors inhibited IgE–peanut complex formation in an IgE-facilitated allergen binding assay. Secretion of IL-10, IL-5, IFN-γ, and TNF-α from PBMCs increased over a period of 6 to 12 months. Peanut-specific forkhead box protein 3 T cells increased until 12 months and decreased thereafter. In addition, T-cell microarrays showed downregulation of genes in apoptotic pathways.
Conclusion

Oral immunotherapy induces clinical desensitization to peanut, with significant longer-term humoral and cellular changes. Microarray data suggest a novel role for apoptosis in OIT.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091674909008136

Can you tell us why IgE is important in allergies?

Can you tell us the difference between a eosinphil and a neutrophil cell?

Abstract

TH2 cell–mediated immune responses against “innocuous” antigens play a triggering role in atopic allergy. Several epidemiologic studies have clearly shown that the reduced microbial exposure of children caused by the westernized lifestyle is responsible for the increased prevalence of allergy that has occurred in the last decades in developed countries (“hygiene hypothesis”). The immunologic changes caused by the reduced exposure to pathogenic and nonpathogenic microbes during childhood are still controversial. The initial interpretation has been a lack of shift of allergen-specific responses from the TH2 to the TH1 phenotype. This is because of reduced production of IL-12 and IFNs by cells of the natural immunity stimulated by bacterial products through their Toll-like receptors (missing immune deviation). Another interpretation emphasizes the importance of reduced activity of T-regulatory cells (reduced immune suppression). However, although there are impressive amounts of data in favor of the missing immune deviation, experimental evidence supporting the role of reduced immune suppression in explaining the increased prevalence of allergy is currently weak or even contradictory. The solution to this question is very important not only from a theoretic point of view but also because of its therapeutic implications.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/3dndlew

Crissa—

We actually do have that. We have a massive problem in this country with people who abuse prescription painkillers, and they get those painkillers from shady doctors who are quick to write a ‘scrip and look the other way. In fact, I would wager that the # of people doctor shopping for oxycontin and vicodin far exceed the # of parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids. 

So here’s the thing: The parents who believe this woo will not see any problem with finding a shady doctor who will write them the medical exemption to get around the vaccination requirement. It probably wouldn’t even be that hard. They’ll just doctor-shop until they locate someone who’s got a few exemptions to burn and doesn’t want to argue with a soccer mom about how special her little Madison is and how she’s just not willing to risk the autism and the power her invisible umbilical will protect her child from disease. So it’s not going to enforce vaccinations in the parents who are just being fucking douchebags, because they are already bought into the bullshit and they will go to any lengths to circumvent the requirement.

Meanwhile, kids like my nephew will now have to prove that their immune system issues are just that fucked-up to warrant the exemption, and under an increasingly skeptical eye. My nephew’s parents can’t afford to doctor-shop. If their pediatrician feels that he was ok to skip the vaccinations before… but now, with all of the increased scrutiny on doctors who write exemptions he wants to keep his number low (I mean hell, they’re just food allergies. Those could be caused by anything.), a kid like my nephew might be told to just suck it up and not get the exemption.

An FYI on lockjaw- I got it from Compazine. It is indeed awful, but it of course wore off as the drug worked through my system. No danger of dying from it obviously, but my god- it is excruciating. It’s not just that your jaw is stuck, it’s that your top and bottom teeth are pushing together so hard that you think your molars are going to shatter. It’s probably the worse pain I’ve ever felt, and this includes both chemotherapy and radiation to my head and neck. (I was taking the compazine because I had lymphoma.) My personal immune system is now legitimately unpredictable, but I still get vaccinations, despite the fact that I seem to be almost guaranteed to have some weird side effects that can sometimes last for up to a couple weeks after the shot. Any previous pre-cancer immunity may be gone due to the fact that CHOP chemo can knock out the “memory cells” that fight illnesses you’ve already had or for which you have been previously vaccinated. I can’t risk getting the actual potentially fatal disease.

Personally I have had some very bad experiences with doctors and so I question based on experience.

The fact that you are conflating individual incompetence with the field of medical science raises some red flags for me. UR DOIN IT WRONG.

I’m not discrediting your or anyone else’s personal experience, but said experiences are no excuse not to THINK!

Also, #66:

Well, there’s my hypothesis: yuppies who like to think of themselves as especially not gullible (a word not found in any dictionary) are suckers for JAQing off.

SO MUCH WIN.

I want to add my +1 to #66 as well.

Yuppies who think of themselves as especially not gullible are notably more likely to also be Libertarians, in my experience. Which is ironic as heck.

That’s why I said it would be a last resort, didn’t I, PG?

Wow, fizgigs, you must be super a important public health expert, scared to share the “truth” with the public directly! Dude, for reals, listing where you allegedly lived abroad will reveal your identity? Were you the one white guy let into N. Korea in 2003 (actually, I know two obnoxious white guys who have been to N. Korea, it can be done, complete with minders.)? You are just a liar and a fraud and you’ve been called out on the concern trolling/just asking questions. Pointing out that anti-vax fanatics ARE RESPONSIBLE for the needless deaths of children/infants is precisely how to convince those taken in by woo of the fallacy of the anti-vax agenda, but you’re concerned that these pesky facts are tantamount to name calling? Next…

I’m sorry, I have less and less tolerance for anti-vaxers of any stripe. The whole issue should be over and done with, especially following the evidence of Wakefileld’s cooked research. The more stringent the anti-vaxer, the more I place them in the ID/creationist category. The discussion is beginning to be over before it begins for me.  I recently found out an acquaintance is a hard core anti-vaxer.  The look I gave was the same I gave a young earth creationist when they retorted “how else [but the flood] did the fossils get on mountain tops?”

Seriously, if anti-vaxers want to really become proponents of being selfish, then lets go libertarian on their asses.  If your kid gets sick with a disease that they lack vaccinations for (excluding real medical reasons which are valid exceptions), then we take your kid away.  Child abuse, you asshole.

If another kid also gets sick or dies, we charge your ass.  Or make it civil for all I care.  You can be sued for being a selfish prick.

Personally, I’m starting to see the use of the anti-vax crowd for a little triage.  Let them opt out, and then spread the various illnesses around the schools.  This will reduce the population and expenses for schooling and the like, stimulate economic demand for coffins and funerals - and (mostly) only hurt those who asked for it (or whose parents asked for it).  A win-win situation, really.

Next up, legalising the use of RPGs on anyone driving a Hummer…

Piator:  That would kill off innocents, tho.

Collateral damage.  The country would wind up stronger as a result.

My next modest proposal will involve the option of trial by gladiatorial combat in all civil law suits, with the CEOs of corporations required to participate perosnally without nominating representatives.

Piator: Role playing games?  Not sure how that will hurt the Hummer-drivers…

Rocket propelled grenades.

Amanda, thanks; I’m calling the doctor’s office when it opens this morning.

Crissa—I’m not sure how it would be a last resort in a mental exercise, but I get what you’re saying.

The main change is that language and communication delays are being pulled out of the criteria because too many kids with language disorders are actually being diagnosed as autistic.[/qutoe]
Nice try, but part of the change is that they are dumping the different variations of ASDs, notably Asperger’s Syndrome, which does NOT include language delays. There are plenty of people with autism who don’t get diagnosed because they don’t have problems in this area.

On topic, I can’t see how anyone with half a brain can weigh the possible side effects of vaccination against the possible side effects of the diseases themselves (without even considering the damage to herd immunity) and have the latter side wind up on top. Add in the increased transmission rate and autism woo (I saw someone a couple weeks ago claim autism was an auto-immune disorder.  No dear, it isn’t) and anti-vaxxers just plain piss me off.

Comment #81: Jayn Newell  on  10/12  at  09:07 AM

Ugh, I have two anti-vaxers in this office.  Well, they’re tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists so they pretty much believe any random theory that suggests “the government” and “scientists” are bad.  The USGS lies about earthquake stats.  AIDS came from vaccines.  Occupy Wall Street is run by psi-ops.

No, I’m not kidding.

GeekGirls, I had whooping cough as an adult as well, and that’s what tipped me into being pretty ranty on the topic of vaccines.  Living in N.Cali I actually know quite a few parents who are reluctant to “introduce toxins” into their flawless children (Marin County I believe has the highest rate of vax opt-out in the state).  I was sick for weeks and weeks… months, really, and I frequently coughed until I vomited.  But I had no idea that it was whooping cough until my husband sent me a news story about the resurgence and pointed out that the symptoms were what I was experiencing.  Who knows how many small children I exposed in those weeks?  So whenever one of my friends goes on an anti-vax kick I tell them that I personally could have killed their child without knowing it.

Dano, 74:

If your kid gets sick with a disease that they lack vaccinations for (excluding real medical reasons which are valid exceptions), then we take your kid away.

Doesn’t sound like a super great idea when I think about it; that sounds like it would have some judgement calls made by non-experts, who may tend to (not generally consciously) think the Wrong Type of Parent is buying into woo while the Right Type of Parent has a valid reason.

Blitzgal, well if they had said AIDS can transmitted by vaccines, that would not be wholy insane as it can be (also any other drug or tattooing needles not properly handled) and may have been inadvertantly due to bad/inproperly applied needle practicies.  Caused by though?  Wow.

They’re passing around a video of Maurice Hilleman talking about the monkeys they used for research.  When it first went around in 2007 it was presented as “proof” that Merck brought AIDS to the United States through infected research monkeys.  Four years later, now it’s “proof” that AIDS was caused by vaccines.

I just pointed out that Hilleman is responsible for 8 of the 14 vaccinations that kids routinely get today and has saved more lives in the past century than any other person.

These people have children.  It frightens me to see them slip deeper into anti-vaxer mythology, because it has real world consequences, and not just for their own kids.

Blitzgal, #82 -

That’s funny. I didn’t know my dad worked in your office!

Seriously, though, I do think there’s a certain frame of mind that leads people like my dad and Blitzgal’s coworkers being omni-conspiracists and evangelical about it. I’m trying to remember if anti-vax woo was covered in the book Voodoo Histories, but if not, it could have been.

Having had whooping cough, I can say that even a “mild” case means weeks of awfulness and months of slightly less awfulness.  I have no tolerance at all for anti-vaxers—you get vaccines because it is part of living in a society.  Your kids get shots not only so that they don’t get sick, but so that the kids who can’t get shots (because they are too young or have immune system problems) don’t get sick.  That’s it.  You don’t believe in vaccines?  Go live in a cave or a commune and stay the hell away from the rest of us.  Stop free riding on the herd immunity of others.

Occupy Wall Street is run by psi-ops.

Can anyone contact me about my check? The Inner Council’s Treasury apparently forgot to send mine out.

  It’s funny how the yuppies often mirror the poorest folks,  in result rather than motivation.  Poor folks sometimes cannot afford to vaccinate their kids; can, but don’t, because OMG unnatural! Take a poor persons’ life under a junta, where everybody really is evil, and give it to a yuppie who really has nothing of the sort in their life and it becomes a conspiracy about 9/11. 

They have the power to reject stuff that others regard as life-saving boons or luxuries.  They’re special all right.

I put ‘em right up there with the raw milk idiots. but I’m still not sold on Gardasil.

Hummer drivers should be encouraged to play more role-playing games, and find other ways to displace their fears of sexual inadequacy.  Maybe we should subsidize the price of cowboy boots and biceps tattoos.

Rocket propelled grenades.

Indeed.  If egotistical civilians are going to drive gas-guzzling military style vehicles because such things as the opening sequence to Iron Man made them look cool, then we should follow through on that…

My next modest proposal will involve the option of trial by gladiatorial combat in all civil law suits, with the CEOs of corporations required to participate perosnally without nominating representatives.

I find your ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

It can take many years before problems are detected with medications because our system is not effective.

Can you give an example of a tested and approved vaccine which, 20 years down theroad, was shown to have acceptable consequences that weren’t known before and would have made everyone better off not to have required the vaccine in the first place? Give me an example of where your reasoning would have paid off.

Thanks, Amanda, for your refreshing clarity on this issue.  Recently one of my coworkers told me her kids weren’t vaccinated, and I asked, “For anything?”  She said,“No, not for anything”.  I couldn’t help myself, but the words, “That would scare me - I mean, what about polio?”  just fell out of my mouth. 
She very quickly changed the subject, and clearly didn’t want to discuss it. 

It is anti-science and pro-bullshit - vaccines have been around for fifty plus years.  If there were some kind of major issue with them, there would have been evidence - and from all over the world. 

And, no, just because I trust the scientific and research community on this does not make me some kind of idiot who believes everything they’re told - which seems to be the default position of the anti-vax crowd….If you don’t Question Authority, you’re just a chump.

I saw a documentary on an anti vax group (maybe it was that Frontline?)....what a bunch of smug mothers, so sure they’ve “made the right decisions for their families” and “know what’s best.”  “THere hasn’t been any live polio cases in America in 30 years.”  FFS, do the words “International Airport” mean anything to you?

I hope one of your precious little darlings doesn’t infect a baby who later dies, because I can just imagine the fallout on that….

Don’t let their kids attend school—any school—until properly vaccinated.

I don’t think that’s good enough, because you still have home-schoolers.

Kids who can be vaccinated, but haven’t been, need to be banned from public schools, private schools, day cares, summer camps, and children’s hospitals for non-emergent treatment.  If the lack of vaccination persists into adulthood, they should be banned from universities, the military, and any occupation that works with children.

Refusing to educate the children of the ignorant seems like the definition of “slippery slope” to me. I know it’s indignant hyperbole, but the idea that children are extensions of the parents and have no inherent rights is part of the problem here. It’s the violation of every child’s right not to have polio regardless of their parents’ idiocy level I’m worried about, not the idea that the spawn of the stupid might give the spawn of the righteous their diseases.

For kids whose parents can’t afford vaccinations: Do what my township did when I was a kid: Send a bus full of nurses to each school, and vaccinate them. They had had a health program since the 30s, when they found that many people on General Assistance were simply too sick to work. Along with universal vaccination, they also did vision and hearing screening.

Now, there is such a thing as over-vaccination. We’ve owned dogs forever, and if there’s one creature that gets vaccinated, it’s a dog. To avoid auto-immune disorders, vets are moving away from 5 in 1 and 7 in 1 vaccines, spacing the individual vaccines by a couple of weeks each (without triggering a new office visit charge), and vaccinating only for diseases present in the region.

The other approach is running titers instead of routine boosters. If you have enough antibodies you don’t need another shot.

Fizgigs, if you’re still around: Tone-trolling about “mean-spirited comments,” digging up the old chestnut about how trust in science = “religious faith,” and flagrant paranoia don’t help your argument any. You’re hitting all the red flags for people familiar with woomongers.

MPG, the problem of chronic pain patients who can’t get sufficient pain relief in this puritanical country is a lot bigger than the problem of people abusing pain meds.

Nobody in Particular, the thing that differentiates religious faith from faith in science is the ability to follow scientific arguments. The hamstringing of science education in this country leads to situations like this. Reasonably-educated adults should have a fighting chance at following what Dark Avenger Guardian Chow Mein at #67 is saying, or have a good idea of how to find the information they need to start to follow it. I at least know where I can find a biology major to help me in a pinch. The thing that amazes me about the anti-vaxxers is that a lot of them have a lot of time to read conspiracy theories on the internet, but seem to have very little access to (or interest in) sound information about cell biology or the immune system. I’m not going to shed many tears for willful intellectual laziness, but I do think prioritizing lifelong science education would make the difference between “scientific consensus” and “something someone said on a talk show” easier to parse.

Thanks for this. I have been lurking only for the past month but I’ve got to thank you for staying on people about this. I gave birth a month ago and day three into my hospital stay I asked when I was going to get this shot. They gave it to me the day before I left as is the custom. And my mother in law voluntarily went and got this shot before coming to help with the baby. Only wish everyone thought as much of herd immunity as you do.

I got whooping cough in 2009 while living on the upper west side of manhattan and spending NO time around children. None of my doctors at the time had heard yet that boosters might be in order for adults, and it took about a month to diagnose it. It sucked, and it lasted for six months. I sprained (pulled? strained?) a muscle in my torso, frequently coughed way past out-of-breath, and one time coughed until I puked. For weeks I was coughing too much to sleep more than a few hours a night, despite taking both cough suppressants and sleeping pills. I am sorry about your fever, but it definitely beats pertussis. Good for you for doing it, both for self-preservation and altruistic reasons.

he squirmy bullshit about how we don’t understand the immune system brings to mind IDiots who argue that, because our understanding of this or that element of biology or evolution, it must false. - grolby

It’s basically the same argument used to support the idea of god or heaven or spirits other types of woo.
“We’ll never really know! How can we be so SURE???” *hand wringing*

I got my 1st boosters since probably junior high last year. Tdap and tetanus. The tetanus one is a pain in the arm for a few days but a good reminder that your immune system is working. Good on ya Amanda!

keshmeshi @ 97 - the military brings your vacinations up to date automatically when you enlist.  If you didn’t have something on record that you had taken, you would get it again.  It is not generally optional, except in pretty extreme cases.

purpleshoes - I think the point was more that if a kid isn’t vacinated for non-reasons, they should not be allowed into any of those places where they would then be a danger to other kids who can’t be vacinated.  Those kids should not be allowed into public places if they are going to endanger others not to punish their parents via them as extensions.

Even if there WAS a causal link between vaccination and autism*, refusing to vaccinate your child would STILL be unacceptable. I have a friend who’s autistic. Know what he doesn’t have thanks to vaccines? Polio. Whooping Cough. Tetanus. Putting a kid at risk of diseases like that just so that you won’t have to deal with the hassle of raising someone whose social skills are less than perfect is, to me, not that different from starving your kid so that nobody will call them fat. And if you want ritualistic child abuse, forget about “satanic daycares”** and look at “Christian Scientists.” Denying your child potentially lifesaving medical care because an invisible man only you can see said to does not a fit parent make.

*SPOILER: there isn’t, you moron
**no, they don’t exist either

Putting a kid at risk of diseases like that just so that you won’t have to deal with the hassle of raising someone whose social skills are less than perfect

To be entirely fair, when people thinks of autism, they’re not thinking less than perfect social skills. They’re thinking of the extreme cases—non verbal, absent social skills, extreme (possibly harmful) repetitive behaviour, etc. Kind of like how when people think of nuclear power, they think of Chernobyl, not the plants that don’t have problems.

Which STILL doesn’t excuse it. Lemme see—potentially disabling brain disorder, or potentially disabling/fatal disease?  Hmmm….

(One of the Frontline extended interviews made a good point, where they likened not vaccinating to voting. At the individual level, no it doesn’t matter much. But if enough individuals take that stance, then the whole takes is affected.)

helen w. h: but those children are citizens. I understand what you’re saying, but in that case let’s extend it to “anyone whose boosters are not up to date” to make clear that people now have to present their vaccination records to move about certain locations in society. (As Amanda has detailed above, this could be tremendously useful, and doesn’t make troublesome distinctions about whose immune system is whose moral responsibility.)

My youngest had a bad allergic reaction to her first pertussis vaccine, so she never got the followup ones, since her doctor thought it would be a bad idea. When she was two, almost three she got whooping cough, it was terrible she was sick for that whole winter and listening to he cough sitting with her at the hospital and seeing her so miserable were some of the worst experiences I had, I can’t imagine any parent willingly chancing something like that. My son is fully vaccinated, and my daughter to the extent that it’s safe for her. Both are on the autistic spectrum her having Aspergers and him being autistic. I would rather have two live autistic kids then them dying from a preventable illness(not that I think autism has any relation to vaccination). Anti vax parents really make me angry, i just don’t understand that kind of stupid.

That is, they do not “manipulate imune response,” they STIMULATE a NORMAL immune response. If an individual already has an immune-hypersensitivity issue, that can lead to serious problems, but that’s not an effect of the vaccine.

Yayup, Grolby.  Our veterinarian explained the reason for the fall vaccination cycle he recommends for my geriatric equines.  Not really to protect (they are pretty isolated animals who never leave the farm or come in contact with other equines) but rather to boost their own immune systems through winter.

Oh, and if you want some real coughing fun, try pleurisy.  I had it with a regular cough - can’t imagine what that would be like with whooping cough.

Over on the naturalistic fallacy thread, some people said they don’t bother with soap after using the bathroom unless they get visible poo on their hands.
Comment #47: bananacat on 10/11 at 07:34 PM

OK then,  that is ecoli gross. But there are individuals, I have both friend and family, who can’t/don’t use the antibacterial soaps - horrid, allerigc (?) reaction.  Cracked, bleeding hands.  Seems to be a form of eczema, or at least it reacts well to eczema creams to heal.  But they generally carry their own bottles of soap.  ANd haven’t I heard that the real “germ getting rid of” part of hand washing is the rubbing under water fro x amount of time?

Yes fizigigs @59 , and Russell also explained induction, the methodology of research - It can never produce certainty, just probability.  And we have seen some fail in this area, as science was often testing at a macro level, not a micro for quite a while (think baby formula, HFCS, fats, etc.)  So Grolby, that line of yours about not asking or testing the right/in depth questions, is something science, especially science in the service of Big Pharma and Big Ag has been quite guilty of too.

ANd haven’t I heard that the real “germ getting rid of” part of hand washing is the rubbing under water fro x amount of time?

With a good soap, any soap in and of itself is anti-bacterial if used with proper techniques, so it’s both.

I know that Dark Avenger Guardian Chow Mein.  I’m differentiating between those with triclosan and those without.  Even the ones with Triclosan aren’t effective if not left on the skin for two minutes - and they do nada for viruses. 

But “proper” handwashing also takes twenty seconds, and the friction part of rubbing is just as important as using soap - it’s the water softening and repelling effects of soap that “carry away” the dirt/bugs - so the CDC says anyway.

Well, Dark Avenger Guardian Chow Mein re: your peanut experiment, I’m not so sure it’s more important to know what iGe is than it is to know that at least some of the impetus for the study came from mothers who had been to Israel(?) and watched mothers there feed their kids some peanut based food from a very early age, with few ill affects- yet more and more US kids were having peanut allergies even though we kept peanuts away from kids for the first 12 months. 

How about some mutual respect?  IOW, science should respect folk wisdom as a possibility until honestly tested and folks wisdom proponents should welcome the testing AND the results.

Uh, ginmar - poor folks can’t afford to vaccinate their kids?  AFAIK, most county health departments will do so for free, and until recently, with no proof of income.  Our has recently limited it to only the uninsured and/or a certain multiplier of the poverty level. 

And schools require it - even online public schools.  But the religious exception makes a real mockery of that regulation.  We were a bit behind on a kid’s vax.  Couldn’t get doc appt until after deadline - filled out “religious exemption form”  ( my religion is a pastafarian sect with dispensations for being calendar challenged) no reasons needed, no religion name, nada.  And yes, the kid was vaxxed up to date ten days later.

#91 - proud raw milk idiot here - go drink a glass of rBst or rBgh - enjoy.

Can you give an example of a tested and approved vaccine which, 20 years down theroad, was shown to have acceptable consequences that weren’t known before and would have made everyone better off not to have required the vaccine in the first place? Give me an example of where your reasoning would have paid off.
Comment #95: Tyro

Not vaccines, but other medical practices, even surgeries and medications:
tonsillectomies
c-sections
routine anesthesia for childbirth
circumcision
cough medicine for kids
aspirin for kids (Reyes syndrome)
vitamins (you lose most in urine anyway)
ear tubes

and weren’t there some recent vaccine failures with H1N1 Tamiflu resistant strains?

so that you won’t have to deal with the hassle of raising someone whose social skills are less than perfect is, to me, not that different from starving your kid so that nobody will call them fat. And if you want ritualistic child abuse, forget about “satanic daycares”** and look at “Christian Scientists.” Denying your child potentially lifesaving medical care because an invisible man only you can see said to does not a fit parent make.

*SPOILER: there isn’t, you moron
**no, they don’t exist either
Comment #107: DataSnake

Data Snake - GO FUCK YOURSELF, preferably with a large sharp and branding hot object. If you think autism is “less than perfect social skills” - you are a moron.  Raising an autistic child is a 24/7 nightmare.  From really late - 8+ toilet training in some cases, to self-abuse, etc, and it never ends - they don’t grow out of it.  While interventions help, they don’t cure - and even the interventions are consuming.  I’ve watched a friend and a relative with autistic kids basically lose themselves in really awful ways.  One’s son died in his twenties - by then she had sort of forgotten how to live a normal life - it’s taken her years to get back to something approaching “a life.”  Another is in the midst of it - she’s been hospitalized twice because she forgets to eat in her devotion to the kid - and their is little respite care besides school.  Her other kids are benignly neglected because of what the autistic one takes out of mom.

How about some mutual respect?

If one is going to write shit like:

Doctors and scientists do not understand the human immune system very well.

Then I’m going to ask what the writer, does know, if anything, about our scientific understanding of the immune system in the first place.

As for the peanut thing, I’m well-aware that many useful scientific knowledge has come out of laymans’ observations, like the use of foxglove tea to treat what used to be known as dropsy, or Jenner’s observation that milkmaids never caught smallpox because the close contacts with cows gave them cowpox.

The ultimate test is falsifiability, that’s the gold standard whether you’re a scientist or layman.

go drink a glass of rBst or rBgh - enjoy.

That would be hard to do in many parts of the country where the milk is lacking such ingredients.

I’d like to know how the compounds that are destroyed in pasteurizing survive the digestive enzymes in the human gut and into the human organism to exert their beneficial effect.

http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/consumers/ucm079516.htm

http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/news/minnesota/raw-milk-ecoli-hartmann-dairy-farm-mn-may-26-2010

The Minnesota Department of Health and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture are continuing to investigate a four E. coli illnesses that all have the same DNA. Three of the four cases report a link to milk from Hartmann Farm and the fourth case is under investigation. Three of the four people were hospitalized as a result of their illness and one developed a serious complication called hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), which can cause kidney failure.

Wisconsin nearly passed a bill that would have loosened the restrictions on the sale of raw milk, but Gov. Jim Doyle vetoed the bill. The revised law would have allowed for the legal sales of unpasteurized milk directly to consumers from the farm.

“I recognize that there are strong feelings on both sides of this matter, but on balance, I must side with the interests of public health and the safety of the dairy industry,” Doyle said in a veto statement.

Direct raw milk sales are legal in 19 states and retail sales are legal in an additional nine, including California and Maine.

>b>Between 1973 and 1992, 46 outbreaks associated with raw milk consumption were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Another 45 outbreaks were reported to the CDC between 1998 and May 2005, accounting for 1,007 illnesses, 104 hospitalizations and two deaths.</b>

Dark Avenger Guardian Chow Mein, since this seems to be your gig, what’s your feeling about home pasteurization? I live in a place where you can get pasteurized local milk now, but I have lived and probably will live again in places where the only local milk is sold under the table, and I used to pasteurize it using a candy thermometer and these instructions.

Phylosopher, the plight of families that are abandoned by underfunded mental health programs is very real. However, the statements you’re making are not true of all autistic people all the time. Autism is a spectrum. With appropriate interventions - and I’m afraid here I mean at least a professional caretaker coming to the family home daily, which should be the community care standard but isn’t - autistic people, like everyone else, can learn, mature, and make progress.

(Well, I mean, those are not the only standards by which autistic people can learn, mature, and progress, but it’s what I consider “appropriate interventions” for a family with young children where there’s a serious handicap. My mother used to do trained respite care; I believe in it as a system pretty absolutely and think it’s ghastly that it’s not absolutely available for everyone.)

purpleshoes0, I’ve had fresh milk that was pasteurized at home, so as long as the pasteurizer knows what she/he is doing, I think it’s a good idea.

Not vaccines,

Well that’s the point, isn’t it? Lots of medical practices, not having been forces to run the full gauntlet of evidence based medicine, continued their use when they weren’t efficacious. But vaccines are heavily tested and their safety and efficacy is evaluated before they’re put on the market, which is why it doesn’t make sense to claim, “oh, I won’t give my kids the Gadrasil vaccine until it has a 20 year track record,” because when was that reasoning ever helpful?