Choice: Vaccinate or Murder

It really is that simple. Vaccinate yourself, and your children, or you could murder someone.

Bad Astronomer and President of the JREF, Dr. Phil Plait, has a post up on his blog about a recent Australian News story. A 4 week old girl died of Whooping cough in a region of Australia where only 1 in 3 children are vaccinated. The girl, who would normally be protected by herd immunity until she could receive the vaccination herself, was 1 of 3 children in a month with such severe whooping cough that she had to be air lifted to another hospital- she was the only one of the three who died.

Whooping Cough isn't Ebola, it doesn't kill every person who gets it; it's not even Marburg. But Whooping Cough can kill, and those deaths are entirely preventable. The anti-vaxxers- those people opposed to all or some vaccinations- are killing children with ignorance, stupidity, and fear mongering. Notice, in the video below, how the anti-vaxxer Meryl Dorey claims that whooping cough and measles don't kill people, and cause Autism. Except the whole thing is about how whooping cough killed that poor baby, and as the Doctor points out there are absolutely no links between vaccination and autism. (Measles can kill)(Autism rates have spiked due to an expanded understanding and definition of Autism; and better, more intensive, efforts to identify people with it.) (And let's not even get started on how horri-bad Polio is!)

Read the original article, by the Bad Astronomer Phil Plait, at his blog Bad Astronomy, and/or watch the video below. Then share this story with anyone you know who thinks vaccinations are optional.



For further, informed, reading about Vaccinations, I recommend the Science Based Medicine Blog. It's written by doctors, and contains this funny little concept I like to call: science. This link takes you to all their posts on Vaccines.


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Great Article on Latest Autism Rulings

Dr Steve Novella, on Neurologica, writes:

The Autism Omnibus hearings were set up to evaluate for thousands of petitions for compensation under the vaccine injury compensation program. This is a program set up in the US to compensate those who suffer adverse effects from vaccines, and it is paid for by a tax on all vaccines. This is a sensible system because it allows manufacturers to produce much needed vaccines without risking bankruptcy over fad pseudoscientific accusations - like those that took down Dow Chemical. It also more quickly and fairly compensated families, which is fair given that vaccines are somewhat compulsory in the US (although in most states it is all too easy to get an exemption).

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Anti-Vax Fakery Discovered

Phil Plait, over at Bad Astronomy is discussing the news from the UK based Sunday Times, that the original study finding a link between vaccinations and negative health effects in children was faked.

If these allegations are true, then it means that Wakefield out-and-out lied in his original work. He has denied this, according to the Sunday Times, but won’t make further comments.

This may cause a firestorm in the antivax community, but there are two things I will guarantee: the first is that in the end antivaxxers will stick to their beliefs that vaccines cause health problems like autism, because this is not and never has been, for them, about the facts and evidence. It’s a belief system, and like most other belief systems, it is impenetrable to evidence. If you have any doubts, I suggest you read the comments to the post I made the other day about measles being on the rise in the UK. One commenter on that post is saying all manners of outrageous things, and ignores the evidence that I (and a pediatrician) have left in the comments to him.

find the whole thing: here.
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Bad Science fights bad "science"!

For those of you who haven't seen this over at Boing Boing, like I did:

Ben Goldacre wrote a critical column about DJ Jeni Barnett, who was recently heard spewing loads of anti-vaxx psuedoscience on her 3 hour live radio show. He included an excerpt- about 44 minutes- of the show, with the critique.

So, what happened, then? The radio station (LBC), and it's parent corp (Global Audio), threatened to sue M. Goldacre.


We have "fair use", over there: fair dealing. It amounts to the same thing. LBC and Global Audio maintain, apparently, that 44 minutes of a 180min broadcast is too much. Plus, as deep pocketed corporations- especially when compared to Mr Goldacre- they have the conception that they can bully and browbeat anyone who doesn't do what they like.

It would be understandable if he hadn't been making a point, letting their own DJ condemn herself, but the case is just that. He excerpted, roughly, a quarter of the overall broadcast in order to make comments. That would be like using ~7min from a 30 min TV show to illustrate some aspect of the show. To me, that doesn't seem unreasonable.

But I'm not a corporation that cares about nothing other than its bottom line.

Of course, in my paranoia infused/narrative driven brain, another possibility presents itself: The corporations know how legal action produces lots of media, and they're trying to drive people to buy the nearly $6 (US) show online.

In reality, I fear they think they're protecting themselves from being exposed as people who don't care how much they hurt other people. A lot of psuedoscience is just stupid: magnetic wrist bands to help your arthritis, for instance. Anti-vaxx has a body count.

Anti-vaxx has a body count.

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Beating (what should be) a Dead Horse

an Italian study shows that thimerosal has essentially no effect on brain function in children who got a whooping cough vaccine.

1400 children who got a thimerosal-based vaccine for pertussis in the early 90s were tested for brain function impariments. The vaccines had different amounts of the mercury-based preservative in them (one had twice the amount of the other), so if thimerosal had any effect on the brain — like causing autism — then the children in the study should have clearly different results depending on what vaccine they got.

They didn’t, above what would be expected from chance variations. Even better, the study was randomized in such a way that outside factors like environment wouldn’t play a role, so antivaxxers cannot say it was something else that may be affecting these results.

Now let’s be clear: thimerosal has been known scientifically not to have any link to brain disorders for years (link goes to a Word doc), and the Measles/Mumps/Rubella (MMR) vaccine never contained thimerosal anyway. Antivaxxers wrongly targeted thimerosal as a health risk, and thimerosal was removed from vaccines in 2001, but no reduction in autism spectrum disorder diagnoses occurred. In other words, thimerosal is not linked with autism

This is all via The Bad Astronomy Blog. If you're woondering why, it's because Dr. Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer himself, is the current President of the James Randi Educational Foundation. Check them both out. (Note: The link to the BABlog is directly to the cited post).

Edit: For a more detailed analysis, by an actual Neurologist, check out Dr Steven Novella's Neurologica.
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i can haz VAXI Nay-shun?

"Geographic pockets of vaccine exemptors pose a risk to the whole community."

By way of The Bad Astronomer himself: Phil Plait
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