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There's as many shades of "anti-vaccine" as there are people. I for one believe the changes in composition of vaccines in the 90s (different adjuvants, more com

There's as many shades of "anti-vaccine" as there are people. I for one believe the changes in composition of vaccines in the 90s (different adjuvants, more combo vaccines as opposed to single ones) and the wildly increased CDC vaccine schedule requiring many many more times the number of shots as we had when kids is a big concern. Big Pharma doesn't exactly have a track record of always using good judgment, but it does have a track record of using bad science and plain illegal activities like failing to report adverse reactions on plenty of things it sells. Ultimately vaccines are a huge money-making machine for Big Pharma, and while the basic science of vaccines is sound and works, that's not the part that most anti-vaxxers are complaining about, but the fact that it's an ever increasing schedule of more and more vaccines, larger doses more bundled together with adjuvants that are at best "not gonna harm you" to at worst "may cause life-long issues". When you're a parent and you're literally making choices that could affect the life of a child one way or the other for life (or worse cause his death), you take pause and weigh the pros and cons. So instead of painting anti vaxxers as this "lunatic crowd of backwater parents who don't believe in science", let's stop to take a hard look at the very real forces in play and the Big Pharma interests that would love nothing more than to silence a movement that is eating at its bottom line. The basic science on vaccines is sound. That's not what anti-vaxxers (the ones that actually did some research) are complaining about.

mirimir 8y ago
> Big Pharma doesn't exactly have a track record of always using good judgment, but it does have a track record of using bad science and plain illegal activities like failing to report adverse reactions on plenty of things it sells. This is a key driver. And if you look further back, you find that there were some real vaccine safety issues, some decades ago. Enough that the pharmaceutical industry pushed through a law providing immunity for civil damages from side effects.[0] And setting up the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program,[1] which basically amounts to forced arbitration. So yes, the anti-vaccine activists may come off as paranoid. But there are arguably some valid reasons for that attitude. 0) https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/300aa-22 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/300aa-22 1) https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/ https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/
albertgoeswoof 8y ago
From Wikipedia: "Vaccine overload", a non-medical term, is the notion that giving many vaccines at once may overwhelm or weaken a child's immature immune system and lead to adverse effects.[134] Despite scientific evidence that strongly contradicts this idea,[113] some parents of autistic children believe that vaccine overload causes autism.[135] The resulting controversy has caused many parents to delay or avoid immunizing their children.[134] Such parental misperceptions are major obstacles towards immunization of children.[136] The concept of vaccine overload is flawed on several levels.[113] Despite the increase in the number of vaccines over recent decades, improvements in vaccine design have reduced the immunologic load from vaccines; the total number of immunological components in the 14 vaccines administered to US children in 2009 is less than 10% of what it was in the 7 vaccines given in 1980.[113] A study published in 2013 found no correlation between autism and the antigen number in the vaccines the children were administered up to the age of two. Of the 1,008 children in the study, one quarter of those diagnosed with autism were born between 1994 and 1999, when the routine vaccine schedule could contain more than 3,000 antigens (in a single shot of DTP vaccine). The vaccine schedule in 2012 contains several more vaccines, but the number of antigens the child is exposed to by the age of two is 315.[137][138] Vaccines pose a very small immunologic load compared to the pathogens naturally encountered by a child in a typical year;[113] common childhood conditions such as fevers and middle-ear infections pose a much greater challenge to the immune system than vaccines,[139] and studies have shown that vaccinations, even multiple concurrent vaccinations, do not weaken the immune system[113] or compromise overall immunity.[140] The lack of evidence supporting the vaccine overload hypothesis, combined with these findings directly contradicting it, has led to the conclusion that currently recommended vaccine programs do not "overload" or weaken the immune system.[103][141][142] Any experiment based on withholding vaccines from children has been considered unethical,[143] and observational studies would likely be confounded by differences in the health care-seeking behaviours of under-vaccinated children. Thus, no study directly comparing rates of autism in vaccinated and unvaccinated children has been done. However, the concept of vaccine overload is biologically implausible, vaccinated and unvaccinated children have the same immune response to non-vaccine-related infections, and autism is not an immune-mediated disease, so claims that vaccines could cause it by overloading the immune system go against current knowledge of the pathogenesis of autism. As such, the idea that vaccines cause autism has been effectively dismissed by the weight of current evidence.[113]

mirimir 8y ago

> Big Pharma doesn't exactly have a track record of always using good judgment, but it does have a track record of using bad science and plain illegal activities like failing to report adverse reactions on plenty of things it sells. This is a key driver. And if you look further back, you find that there were some real vaccine safety issues, some decades ago. Enough that the pharmaceutical industry pushed through a law providing immunity for civil damages from side effects.[0] And setting up the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program,[1] which basically amounts to forced arbitration. So yes, the anti-vaccine activists may come off as paranoid. But there are arguably some valid reasons for that attitude. 0) https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/300aa-22 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/300aa-22 1) https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/ https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/

albertgoeswoof 8y ago

From Wikipedia: "Vaccine overload", a non-medical term, is the notion that giving many vaccines at once may overwhelm or weaken a child's immature immune system and lead to adverse effects.[134] Despite scientific evidence that strongly contradicts this idea,[113] some parents of autistic children believe that vaccine overload causes autism.[135] The resulting controversy has caused many parents to delay or avoid immunizing their children.[134] Such parental misperceptions are major obstacles towards immunization of children.[136] The concept of vaccine overload is flawed on several levels.[113] Despite the increase in the number of vaccines over recent decades, improvements in vaccine design have reduced the immunologic load from vaccines; the total number of immunological components in the 14 vaccines administered to US children in 2009 is less than 10% of what it was in the 7 vaccines given in 1980.[113] A study published in 2013 found no correlation between autism and the antigen number in the vaccines the children were administered up to the age of two. Of the 1,008 children in the study, one quarter of those diagnosed with autism were born between 1994 and 1999, when the routine vaccine schedule could contain more than 3,000 antigens (in a single shot of DTP vaccine). The vaccine schedule in 2012 contains several more vaccines, but the number of antigens the child is exposed to by the age of two is 315.[137][138] Vaccines pose a very small immunologic load compared to the pathogens naturally encountered by a child in a typical year;[113] common childhood conditions such as fevers and middle-ear infections pose a much greater challenge to the immune system than vaccines,[139] and studies have shown that vaccinations, even multiple concurrent vaccinations, do not weaken the immune system[113] or compromise overall immunity.[140] The lack of evidence supporting the vaccine overload hypothesis, combined with these findings directly contradicting it, has led to the conclusion that currently recommended vaccine programs do not "overload" or weaken the immune system.[103][141][142] Any experiment based on withholding vaccines from children has been considered unethical,[143] and observational studies would likely be confounded by differences in the health care-seeking behaviours of under-vaccinated children. Thus, no study directly comparing rates of autism in vaccinated and unvaccinated children has been done. However, the concept of vaccine overload is biologically implausible, vaccinated and unvaccinated children have the same immune response to non-vaccine-related infections, and autism is not an immune-mediated disease, so claims that vaccines could cause it by overloading the immune system go against current knowledge of the pathogenesis of autism. As such, the idea that vaccines cause autism has been effectively dismissed by the weight of current evidence.[113]