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I don't understand the Anti-Vaccine crowd. I see no possible way for what they espouse to be morally responsible. Without vaccines the mortality rate of childre

I don't understand the Anti-Vaccine crowd. I see no possible way for what they espouse to be morally responsible. Without vaccines the mortality rate of children to these diseases would be higher than the total rate of autism. This means that you would have more kids die than get autism even if every case of autism was directly caused by a vaccine. This leaves us with two options for the beliefs of the anti-vaccination crowd. 1. They believe that a dead child is better than one with autism. 2. They are comfortable letting everyone else's children take the "risk" of getting a vaccine while they sit back and rely on herd immunity.

Mz 16y ago
Those aren't the only two options. But I mostly avoid discussions like this on HN because the atmosphere here is pretty openly judgmental and hostile (a la your remark) so I don't see any real good coming out of trying to discuss it. It doesn't help that anyone here who is anti-vax tends to post in these threads in a manner that just promotes the view that we are all extremist nutcases, unfamiliar with basic logic, etc. So posting the type of remark you have just posted (in a forum that is already pretty biased on the topic) is highly unlikely to get you a real explanation of a third option. Thus you get your own "confirmation bias" stuff going on. Peace.
- johngalt 16y ago
  I'm not hostile to opposing viewpoints. Truthfully I don't understand. Now you've mentioned it I'm trying to think of a third option would be something along the lines of "Vaccines could be applied differently than they are today". I haven't seen any evidence that supports that theory, but primarily I'm focused on people the refuse to vaccinate their kids at all. Not the ones that advocate different methods of vaccination.
  - Mz 16y ago
    3. They do enormous amounts of research and are very devoted parents who keep their kids healthy without prescription drugs or vaccines. They use diet, lifestyle changes and herbs/supplements (which are very respected in some "traditional" medicines) in place of what conventional/modern doctors would do to kids. I have a form of cystic fibrosis (as does my 23 year old son). I have gotten off 8 or 9 prescription drugs and gotten me and my kids healthier. A great deal of what I know about getting healthy I learned from an anti-vax/alternative health board that believes that vaccines and other sources of metal poisoning cause autism (and related disorders). (EDIT: I don't think it's quite that simple, but I do think that is certainly a factor.) Both my sons fit the profile for ASD. Getting the three of us healthier has dramatically reduced their ASD symptoms. My son with cystic fibrosis has not been on antibiotics for over 12 years -- more than half his life -- and has taken no medication whatsoever in about 4 years. Most people with CF take hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of "maintenance drugs" every month, more when they are "sick" (having an exacerbation). Most people with my genetic disorder get flu vaccines and pneumonia vaccines and other vaccines religiously. And they get gradually sicker and sicker until they die, usually at tragically young ages. I get a lot of flack off of people in the CF community for advocating non-drug approaches to the problem. I also get treated like I am some kind of irresponsible fruitcake and bad mother because none of us has seen a doctor in several years. We haven't seen a doctor because a) we aren't "sick" like we used to be and b) no doctor can help me improve on my track record of success. Doctors told me flat out to my face "people like you don't get well -- symptom management is the name of the game". I beg to differ. Thank you for your reasonable reply. Peace.
    - hartror 16y ago
      Wow downvotes? I don't agree with most of this position but this viewpoint is while an anecdote and not based solidly in science is valid. Certainly a healthy balanced diet creates a healthier body and something everyone should implement whether they are managing a chronic illness or not. I don't agree with not vaccinating as a general rule, but I am not overly familiar with cystic fibrosis so I am not aware of what risks sufferers have and what medications sufferers are asked to use. Certainly this is still relying on heard immunity for things like measles, mumps, polio and the like. Healthy living does not prevent these diseases. Could you describe why you chose not to vaccinate for anything? Another position I will agree with, though it is only implied in the comment is doctors seem to over prescribe medication. Whether it is a desire to help, or be seen to do something or just laziness to get onto the golf course. Certainly I have seen this anecdotally, I am often offered antibiotics when I don't really need them. Things like presenting with flu symptoms and being given a script to prevent a throat infection.
      - Mz 16y ago
        Could you describe why you chose not to vaccinate for anything? :-) Wildly inaccurate assumption. :-) My oldest son is fully vaccinated. I was diagnosed with CF in May 2001, just before I turned 36. My oldest son was diagnosed the following month, shortly after turning 14. (He was born the day after my 22nd birthday. My youngest was born on my 5th wedding anniversary. When I was married, I went around telling everyone my husband was too cheap to buy me anything. <wink>) When I was first diagnosed, it was after having been bedridden for 3 1/2 months, after 10 weeks of sinusitis turned to pneumonia. The first few years, I got my flu shot every year. My then teenaged son refused his and was very adamant that he would rather have the flu than the flu shot. I was very slow to join the anti-vax crowd and I don't promote it as a position. But I did eventually stop getting my annual flu shot and my youngest son never got the last of his vaccinations. The reason I stopped getting my vaccinations: Absolutely everyone (including my oldest son) who was helping me get well when most of the wold insisted it couldn't be done were strongly anti-vax. No on tried to talk me out of it. But I eventually decided to skip the shot and see if I did better. I haven't gone back. As for doctors over-prescribing medicine: I think that bias is built in to the way they are compensated. Drugs offer short-term gains with long-term consequences. The doctors can claim credit for the short-term gains while distancing themselves from the long-term negative consequences and not really owning that -- even though it isn't at all secret and everyone in the CF community refers to drug side effects as "a necessary evil". If you are basically healthy, you can do this to yourself occasionally and it isn't necessarily a big deal. But if you have a chronic, deadly condition, it helps to put you in the grave and you cannot prove it. All the experts blame your genes, there aren't really big samples of groups of people successfully doing something else (just a few "anecdotal"/lone nutcases like me), and doing nothing (which is what people seem to think I am doing) does in fact kill you if you have CF. As for diet and lifestyle: Life is chemistry. Everything you eat, drink or touch impacts your body chemistry to some small degree. If you are willing to do enough research and make enough changes, the chemical impact is greater than what drugs do to the body. But it's hard to sell people on that. <shrug> Thanks for your reply.
- burgerbrain 16y ago
  Humour us, what is this third option? It's possible to describe somebody's point of view without agreeing with it yourself so I don't see why you need to dodge like this. For example (I believe in evolution): "some creationists commonly argue that some constructs in biology, such as eyes, are too complex to have evolved from simpler systems. They call this concept irreducibility". See? If you're interested in a clean and logical discussion, which you seem to imply that you are, then you need to at least participate first!
  - Mz 16y ago
    Apparently crossed in the mail, so to speak: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2073691 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2073691
- pharrington 16y ago
  The reason people are so hostile about this is because the anti-vaccination belief is objectively wrong and literally fatal. It is directly analogous to believing AIDS isn't spread by HIV.
  - Mz 16y ago
    I don't think it's quite that simple. Most scientific views boil down to "belief" -- by that I mean that most people are essentially taking the word of some expert or other without themselves genuinely understanding it and, also, the lovely drawings of the solar system, tectonic plates, etc that you find in scientific materials are basically made up fantasies. If you used any kind of meaningful scale for the solar system, it would not fit on the pages of any book. In 8th grade, the entire class was asked to do a model of the solar system. I was sick and missed a bunch of school and turned mine in late. The teacher was trying to ding me hard for not having a scale. Then I explained that I had run the calculations and if I used 1mm = approx 33 million miles, then Mercury would be about 1mm from the sun, Venus would be about 2mm from the sun, Earth would be about 3mm from the sun and Pluto would be about 100 meters plus 8 millimeters and the model wouldn't even fit in the classroom. Tectonic plate drawings are basically a mental model and while you can find geologic evidence of them, they don't look as nice and clean as the drawings suggest and it was a very controversial theory for like the first 50 years, IIRC. So I think most arguments like this boil down to "belief" on both sides and it is usually pointless to try to sway the other side. I didn't stop vaccinating based on "scientific" anything. I stopped because the people who had information that was getting me healthier all were anti-vax. So I stopped based on "social proof", so to speak -- which isn't really any different than most folks who believe their scientists and doctors are correct but they think it is vastly different, so my "social proof" only damns me as it is viewed as further evidence that I am a fruitcake. So I generally make no effort to argue the science involved. Peace.
    - pharrington 16y ago
      Your "social proof" has a name, its called anecdotes. While occasionally reasonable in the small scale, it is absurd to believe local observations have any merit in the grand scale. "Most scientific views boil down to 'belief'" this almost sounds like your saying that nothing can truly be knowable. This is the path of nilism, not reason. Science has a rigorous process, peer review being part of it. One does not have to be an expert in the field to read numerous studies, evaluate their methodology, reason as to whether the conclusion actually matches the data+experiments, and see if the results across the studies were consistent. This isn't an act of faith.
brudgers 16y ago
>"I don't understand the Anti-Vaccine crowd." While I don't agree with the factual basis on which they are making their decision, it is entirely rational given their belief. MMR are [edit] usually temporary and can typically be effectively treated by the medical systems of industrialized nations, whereas autism is permanent and generally untreatable. It is analogous to purchasing a large heavy vehicle (e.g. SUV) based on the superior crash protection it provides passengers and despite the increased risk to other vehicles in a collision and the potential for increased long term environmental degradation.
- brc 16y ago
  For a start, 'MMR' isn't a disease. It's an acronym for the vaccine which is Measles, Mumps and Rubella. Each of which is thought of as a benign disease, but can have bad consequences. Measles has a death rate of healthy adults of 3 in 1000. It is deadly for people with compromised immune systems, such as someone with AIDS. Mumps is less of a threat but can still lead to other complications such as testicular infection and possibile sterility in young men. Rubella is generally benign but if a pregnant woman contracts the disease in the first trimester it has a 1 in 5 chance of miscarriage, and in the remaining surviving cases the infant can be severely handicapped including sight, heart, bone and organ problems. You absolutely do want Rubella immunity amongst all women of childbearing age. So I don't understand the anti-vaccine crowd either. Because the range of possible outcomes can be also very bad, and the chances are much higher of contracting one of the diseases than of developing Autism.
  - brudgers 16y ago
    I have corrected the grammatical error. It now says, "MMR are temporary." I was fully aware of what MMR stands for, and thank you for pointing out my lack of clarity. With a mortality rate of 3 in 1000 and an incidence of ~.2 cases per 1,000,000 per year in the US, one would predict a death from measles about every 5 years or so. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5331a3.htm http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5331a3.htm Given claims in the media that 1 in every 150 people is effected by Autism, a reasonable person might calculate that their child is 33,333 times more likely to be autistic than to die from measles. http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-02-08-autism_x.htm http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-02-08-autism_x.htm Even if one believes there is only 0.1% chance that there is a causal link between MMR vaccines and autism, the probable risk of autism is still orders of magnitude higher than dying from measles. It is only if one believes that the probability of a causal link between the MMR vaccine and autism is approximately zero that the risk of death from measles is greater than that of autism. Once one believes that there is even a slight possibility of a link, then there can be a justified belief that the benefits of no vaccination outweigh the risks. Even if I believe otherwise.
MichaelSalib 16y ago
I see no possible way for what they espouse to be morally responsible. It is very simple: they don't understand much about science. If you are ignorant of science, then it is easy to believe that autism symptoms that develop in your child after they get a vaccine are caused by the vaccine. The obvious flaws in this claim just won't appear to you just like bugs are often invisible to the developers that write them. Unless you've spent a fair bit of time thinking through causation claims and how they've been wrong, you won't have the practice to get this sort of analysis right, especially on such an emotionally fraught topic.
callmeed 16y ago
I have a friend with an autistic son and she is firmly convinced it was caused by his vaccine(s) (according to her, no symptoms prior). Her younger son is perfectly healthy but never vaccinated. I get that you don't agree with anti-vax people but it can't be too hard to see where those directly affected are coming from—can it?
- hartror 16y ago
  Absolutely, there is even a lovely latin term for it post hoc ergo propter hoc. http://www.skepdic.com/posthoc.html http://www.skepdic.com/posthoc.html
- neworbit 16y ago
  Good friend of mine has a older son who wears glasses and a younger son with perfect vision. Must be the buildup of ZOMG VACCINATION EVILZ that ruined his eyes, right? I know, you're not saying that, no one is, but it seems about as silly.
  - callmeed 16y ago
    Not quite as silly. My point is that when you combine (a) a known increase in autism cases that isn't fully explained, (b) lying researchers, (c) media hysteria, and (d) personally having to deal with the condition, it's understandable why some might take that side—even if it's based on a fallacious argument.
    - sh4na 16y ago
      I'd love to know what their explanation is then when the healthy child catches polio and is crippled for life, or catches measles and dies from the complications, which are both things that have a much higher likelihood of happening to an unvaccinated child then autism, especially when everyone is going on the anti-vaccine craze. Maybe their child will thank them when he becomes sterile in adulthood by having measles, or she will miscarriage and become sterile by having rubella. Well, love is definitely the wrong word here, of course. Not quite sure what the right word is. I might sound a bit harsh, but I was vaccinated against polio and that was the only thing that saved me from becoming a cripple for life when the stupid bug insisted on infecting me when I was 5 years old - the vaccine didn't quite take, but it took enough to dampen the bug's spirit, but I still had to spend 8 years on physiotherapy and I still suffer the effects from it to this day - all because someone shared a spoon between me and another child one afternoon. These people are the new Darwin Award winners, only they're doing it to their children. It's a shame.
jseliger 16y ago
I don't understand the Anti-Vaccine crowd. Although I certainly don't condone the anti-vaccine crowd, I do at least understand them: most of the "crowd" has only vaguely heard the idea that vaccines may be linked to autism. A distant relative (who had a seven year old and was pregnant with baby #2) repeated her worries about vaccines to me over Thanksgiving, and when I told her there was no real link to autism she reacted somewhat skeptically, so I told her to read _Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure_, which discusses why people want to associate vaccines and autism. The shortest, most obvious version is that most people have trouble disentangling correlation and causation: kids tend to develop obvious signs of autism around the same time they get vaccines. So people think one causes the other when they don't. Furthermore, most people don't have the training or inclination to really study the data. Journalism, in the meantime, promotes the "two sides of the controversy" school of writing, which often works well for politics and other areas without clear right answers. This works appallingly poorly in matters of science, where right answers are often demonstrably right but non-scientists have trouble distinguishing between competing claims, especially when multiple credentialed sources make compelling-seeming arguments. For more on this, see James Fallows' recent discussion in another context: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/year-end-bonus-more-scientist-on-scientist-smackdown/68647 http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/year-e... . You can see the same kind of thinking in reporting on global climate change, which is almost certainly happening and being caused or accelerated by things we're doing. Yet you often see a climate scientist discussing this, on which there's widespread consensus (and consensus that more study is still needed) followed by a bogus climate skeptic. Same thing for vaccines. People hear this stuff in the air and repeat vague claims at family gatherings, but most of them (and us) don't really understand them.
- demallien 16y ago
  Another sad fact - in my experience, I have had more luck in convincing people to get their kids vaccinated by pointing out that the guy that did the study linking vaccinations and autism has been prevented from practicing medicine in the UK, than by explaining the studies that show that vaccines categorically do not cause autism. The science just doesn't interest them, they want an authority figure to do the thinking for them.
ylem 16y ago
I think there are a few factors at work: 1) In the developed world for people with good incomes and health insurance, people live in relative safety and misjudge risk. Many diseases are rare or nonexistent, so are not viewed as risks as compared to autism (which may receive more media attention, than say the last measles outbreak). 2) Difficulties with distinguishing correlation/causation 3) Interested parties intentionally muddying the waters. The tobacco industry is a prime example of this and Merchants of Doubt makes for excellent, albeit chilling, reading. 4) A desire for control--it's easier to blame someone else if your kid gets autism then to ascribe it to unknown causes. For a parent (who believes that the risk of not vaccinating is small), it may be more satisfying to believe that they can protect their kids against autism, rather than face the fact that either due to unknown environmental or genetic (or an interplay between the two) factors, their child may become (or was diagnosed with) autism and there is nothing that they can currently do (have done) to prevent it....

Mz 16y ago

Those aren't the only two options. But I mostly avoid discussions like this on HN because the atmosphere here is pretty openly judgmental and hostile (a la your remark) so I don't see any real good coming out of trying to discuss it. It doesn't help that anyone here who is anti-vax tends to post in these threads in a manner that just promotes the view that we are all extremist nutcases, unfamiliar with basic logic, etc. So posting the type of remark you have just posted (in a forum that is already pretty biased on the topic) is highly unlikely to get you a real explanation of a third option. Thus you get your own "confirmation bias" stuff going on. Peace.

johngalt 16y ago
I'm not hostile to opposing viewpoints. Truthfully I don't understand. Now you've mentioned it I'm trying to think of a third option would be something along the lines of "Vaccines could be applied differently than they are today". I haven't seen any evidence that supports that theory, but primarily I'm focused on people the refuse to vaccinate their kids at all. Not the ones that advocate different methods of vaccination.
- Mz 16y ago
  3. They do enormous amounts of research and are very devoted parents who keep their kids healthy without prescription drugs or vaccines. They use diet, lifestyle changes and herbs/supplements (which are very respected in some "traditional" medicines) in place of what conventional/modern doctors would do to kids. I have a form of cystic fibrosis (as does my 23 year old son). I have gotten off 8 or 9 prescription drugs and gotten me and my kids healthier. A great deal of what I know about getting healthy I learned from an anti-vax/alternative health board that believes that vaccines and other sources of metal poisoning cause autism (and related disorders). (EDIT: I don't think it's quite that simple, but I do think that is certainly a factor.) Both my sons fit the profile for ASD. Getting the three of us healthier has dramatically reduced their ASD symptoms. My son with cystic fibrosis has not been on antibiotics for over 12 years -- more than half his life -- and has taken no medication whatsoever in about 4 years. Most people with CF take hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of "maintenance drugs" every month, more when they are "sick" (having an exacerbation). Most people with my genetic disorder get flu vaccines and pneumonia vaccines and other vaccines religiously. And they get gradually sicker and sicker until they die, usually at tragically young ages. I get a lot of flack off of people in the CF community for advocating non-drug approaches to the problem. I also get treated like I am some kind of irresponsible fruitcake and bad mother because none of us has seen a doctor in several years. We haven't seen a doctor because a) we aren't "sick" like we used to be and b) no doctor can help me improve on my track record of success. Doctors told me flat out to my face "people like you don't get well -- symptom management is the name of the game". I beg to differ. Thank you for your reasonable reply. Peace.
  - hartror 16y ago
    Wow downvotes? I don't agree with most of this position but this viewpoint is while an anecdote and not based solidly in science is valid. Certainly a healthy balanced diet creates a healthier body and something everyone should implement whether they are managing a chronic illness or not. I don't agree with not vaccinating as a general rule, but I am not overly familiar with cystic fibrosis so I am not aware of what risks sufferers have and what medications sufferers are asked to use. Certainly this is still relying on heard immunity for things like measles, mumps, polio and the like. Healthy living does not prevent these diseases. Could you describe why you chose not to vaccinate for anything? Another position I will agree with, though it is only implied in the comment is doctors seem to over prescribe medication. Whether it is a desire to help, or be seen to do something or just laziness to get onto the golf course. Certainly I have seen this anecdotally, I am often offered antibiotics when I don't really need them. Things like presenting with flu symptoms and being given a script to prevent a throat infection.
    - Mz 16y ago
      Could you describe why you chose not to vaccinate for anything? :-) Wildly inaccurate assumption. :-) My oldest son is fully vaccinated. I was diagnosed with CF in May 2001, just before I turned 36. My oldest son was diagnosed the following month, shortly after turning 14. (He was born the day after my 22nd birthday. My youngest was born on my 5th wedding anniversary. When I was married, I went around telling everyone my husband was too cheap to buy me anything. <wink>) When I was first diagnosed, it was after having been bedridden for 3 1/2 months, after 10 weeks of sinusitis turned to pneumonia. The first few years, I got my flu shot every year. My then teenaged son refused his and was very adamant that he would rather have the flu than the flu shot. I was very slow to join the anti-vax crowd and I don't promote it as a position. But I did eventually stop getting my annual flu shot and my youngest son never got the last of his vaccinations. The reason I stopped getting my vaccinations: Absolutely everyone (including my oldest son) who was helping me get well when most of the wold insisted it couldn't be done were strongly anti-vax. No on tried to talk me out of it. But I eventually decided to skip the shot and see if I did better. I haven't gone back. As for doctors over-prescribing medicine: I think that bias is built in to the way they are compensated. Drugs offer short-term gains with long-term consequences. The doctors can claim credit for the short-term gains while distancing themselves from the long-term negative consequences and not really owning that -- even though it isn't at all secret and everyone in the CF community refers to drug side effects as "a necessary evil". If you are basically healthy, you can do this to yourself occasionally and it isn't necessarily a big deal. But if you have a chronic, deadly condition, it helps to put you in the grave and you cannot prove it. All the experts blame your genes, there aren't really big samples of groups of people successfully doing something else (just a few "anecdotal"/lone nutcases like me), and doing nothing (which is what people seem to think I am doing) does in fact kill you if you have CF. As for diet and lifestyle: Life is chemistry. Everything you eat, drink or touch impacts your body chemistry to some small degree. If you are willing to do enough research and make enough changes, the chemical impact is greater than what drugs do to the body. But it's hard to sell people on that. <shrug> Thanks for your reply.
burgerbrain 16y ago
Humour us, what is this third option? It's possible to describe somebody's point of view without agreeing with it yourself so I don't see why you need to dodge like this. For example (I believe in evolution): "some creationists commonly argue that some constructs in biology, such as eyes, are too complex to have evolved from simpler systems. They call this concept irreducibility". See? If you're interested in a clean and logical discussion, which you seem to imply that you are, then you need to at least participate first!
- Mz 16y ago
  Apparently crossed in the mail, so to speak: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2073691 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2073691
pharrington 16y ago
The reason people are so hostile about this is because the anti-vaccination belief is objectively wrong and literally fatal. It is directly analogous to believing AIDS isn't spread by HIV.
- Mz 16y ago
  I don't think it's quite that simple. Most scientific views boil down to "belief" -- by that I mean that most people are essentially taking the word of some expert or other without themselves genuinely understanding it and, also, the lovely drawings of the solar system, tectonic plates, etc that you find in scientific materials are basically made up fantasies. If you used any kind of meaningful scale for the solar system, it would not fit on the pages of any book. In 8th grade, the entire class was asked to do a model of the solar system. I was sick and missed a bunch of school and turned mine in late. The teacher was trying to ding me hard for not having a scale. Then I explained that I had run the calculations and if I used 1mm = approx 33 million miles, then Mercury would be about 1mm from the sun, Venus would be about 2mm from the sun, Earth would be about 3mm from the sun and Pluto would be about 100 meters plus 8 millimeters and the model wouldn't even fit in the classroom. Tectonic plate drawings are basically a mental model and while you can find geologic evidence of them, they don't look as nice and clean as the drawings suggest and it was a very controversial theory for like the first 50 years, IIRC. So I think most arguments like this boil down to "belief" on both sides and it is usually pointless to try to sway the other side. I didn't stop vaccinating based on "scientific" anything. I stopped because the people who had information that was getting me healthier all were anti-vax. So I stopped based on "social proof", so to speak -- which isn't really any different than most folks who believe their scientists and doctors are correct but they think it is vastly different, so my "social proof" only damns me as it is viewed as further evidence that I am a fruitcake. So I generally make no effort to argue the science involved. Peace.
  - pharrington 16y ago
    Your "social proof" has a name, its called anecdotes. While occasionally reasonable in the small scale, it is absurd to believe local observations have any merit in the grand scale. "Most scientific views boil down to 'belief'" this almost sounds like your saying that nothing can truly be knowable. This is the path of nilism, not reason. Science has a rigorous process, peer review being part of it. One does not have to be an expert in the field to read numerous studies, evaluate their methodology, reason as to whether the conclusion actually matches the data+experiments, and see if the results across the studies were consistent. This isn't an act of faith.

brudgers 16y ago

>"I don't understand the Anti-Vaccine crowd." While I don't agree with the factual basis on which they are making their decision, it is entirely rational given their belief. MMR are [edit] usually temporary and can typically be effectively treated by the medical systems of industrialized nations, whereas autism is permanent and generally untreatable. It is analogous to purchasing a large heavy vehicle (e.g. SUV) based on the superior crash protection it provides passengers and despite the increased risk to other vehicles in a collision and the potential for increased long term environmental degradation.

brc 16y ago
For a start, 'MMR' isn't a disease. It's an acronym for the vaccine which is Measles, Mumps and Rubella. Each of which is thought of as a benign disease, but can have bad consequences. Measles has a death rate of healthy adults of 3 in 1000. It is deadly for people with compromised immune systems, such as someone with AIDS. Mumps is less of a threat but can still lead to other complications such as testicular infection and possibile sterility in young men. Rubella is generally benign but if a pregnant woman contracts the disease in the first trimester it has a 1 in 5 chance of miscarriage, and in the remaining surviving cases the infant can be severely handicapped including sight, heart, bone and organ problems. You absolutely do want Rubella immunity amongst all women of childbearing age. So I don't understand the anti-vaccine crowd either. Because the range of possible outcomes can be also very bad, and the chances are much higher of contracting one of the diseases than of developing Autism.
- brudgers 16y ago
  I have corrected the grammatical error. It now says, "MMR are temporary." I was fully aware of what MMR stands for, and thank you for pointing out my lack of clarity. With a mortality rate of 3 in 1000 and an incidence of ~.2 cases per 1,000,000 per year in the US, one would predict a death from measles about every 5 years or so. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5331a3.htm http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5331a3.htm Given claims in the media that 1 in every 150 people is effected by Autism, a reasonable person might calculate that their child is 33,333 times more likely to be autistic than to die from measles. http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-02-08-autism_x.htm http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-02-08-autism_x.htm Even if one believes there is only 0.1% chance that there is a causal link between MMR vaccines and autism, the probable risk of autism is still orders of magnitude higher than dying from measles. It is only if one believes that the probability of a causal link between the MMR vaccine and autism is approximately zero that the risk of death from measles is greater than that of autism. Once one believes that there is even a slight possibility of a link, then there can be a justified belief that the benefits of no vaccination outweigh the risks. Even if I believe otherwise.

MichaelSalib 16y ago

I see no possible way for what they espouse to be morally responsible. It is very simple: they don't understand much about science. If you are ignorant of science, then it is easy to believe that autism symptoms that develop in your child after they get a vaccine are caused by the vaccine. The obvious flaws in this claim just won't appear to you just like bugs are often invisible to the developers that write them. Unless you've spent a fair bit of time thinking through causation claims and how they've been wrong, you won't have the practice to get this sort of analysis right, especially on such an emotionally fraught topic.

callmeed 16y ago

I have a friend with an autistic son and she is firmly convinced it was caused by his vaccine(s) (according to her, no symptoms prior). Her younger son is perfectly healthy but never vaccinated. I get that you don't agree with anti-vax people but it can't be too hard to see where those directly affected are coming from—can it?

hartror 16y ago
Absolutely, there is even a lovely latin term for it post hoc ergo propter hoc. http://www.skepdic.com/posthoc.html http://www.skepdic.com/posthoc.html
neworbit 16y ago
Good friend of mine has a older son who wears glasses and a younger son with perfect vision. Must be the buildup of ZOMG VACCINATION EVILZ that ruined his eyes, right? I know, you're not saying that, no one is, but it seems about as silly.
- callmeed 16y ago
  Not quite as silly. My point is that when you combine (a) a known increase in autism cases that isn't fully explained, (b) lying researchers, (c) media hysteria, and (d) personally having to deal with the condition, it's understandable why some might take that side—even if it's based on a fallacious argument.
  - sh4na 16y ago
    I'd love to know what their explanation is then when the healthy child catches polio and is crippled for life, or catches measles and dies from the complications, which are both things that have a much higher likelihood of happening to an unvaccinated child then autism, especially when everyone is going on the anti-vaccine craze. Maybe their child will thank them when he becomes sterile in adulthood by having measles, or she will miscarriage and become sterile by having rubella. Well, love is definitely the wrong word here, of course. Not quite sure what the right word is. I might sound a bit harsh, but I was vaccinated against polio and that was the only thing that saved me from becoming a cripple for life when the stupid bug insisted on infecting me when I was 5 years old - the vaccine didn't quite take, but it took enough to dampen the bug's spirit, but I still had to spend 8 years on physiotherapy and I still suffer the effects from it to this day - all because someone shared a spoon between me and another child one afternoon. These people are the new Darwin Award winners, only they're doing it to their children. It's a shame.

jseliger 16y ago

I don't understand the Anti-Vaccine crowd. Although I certainly don't condone the anti-vaccine crowd, I do at least understand them: most of the "crowd" has only vaguely heard the idea that vaccines may be linked to autism. A distant relative (who had a seven year old and was pregnant with baby #2) repeated her worries about vaccines to me over Thanksgiving, and when I told her there was no real link to autism she reacted somewhat skeptically, so I told her to read _Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure_, which discusses why people want to associate vaccines and autism. The shortest, most obvious version is that most people have trouble disentangling correlation and causation: kids tend to develop obvious signs of autism around the same time they get vaccines. So people think one causes the other when they don't. Furthermore, most people don't have the training or inclination to really study the data. Journalism, in the meantime, promotes the "two sides of the controversy" school of writing, which often works well for politics and other areas without clear right answers. This works appallingly poorly in matters of science, where right answers are often demonstrably right but non-scientists have trouble distinguishing between competing claims, especially when multiple credentialed sources make compelling-seeming arguments. For more on this, see James Fallows' recent discussion in another context: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/year-end-bonus-more-scientist-on-scientist-smackdown/68647 http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/year-e... . You can see the same kind of thinking in reporting on global climate change, which is almost certainly happening and being caused or accelerated by things we're doing. Yet you often see a climate scientist discussing this, on which there's widespread consensus (and consensus that more study is still needed) followed by a bogus climate skeptic. Same thing for vaccines. People hear this stuff in the air and repeat vague claims at family gatherings, but most of them (and us) don't really understand them.

demallien 16y ago
Another sad fact - in my experience, I have had more luck in convincing people to get their kids vaccinated by pointing out that the guy that did the study linking vaccinations and autism has been prevented from practicing medicine in the UK, than by explaining the studies that show that vaccines categorically do not cause autism. The science just doesn't interest them, they want an authority figure to do the thinking for them.

ylem 16y ago

I think there are a few factors at work: 1) In the developed world for people with good incomes and health insurance, people live in relative safety and misjudge risk. Many diseases are rare or nonexistent, so are not viewed as risks as compared to autism (which may receive more media attention, than say the last measles outbreak). 2) Difficulties with distinguishing correlation/causation 3) Interested parties intentionally muddying the waters. The tobacco industry is a prime example of this and Merchants of Doubt makes for excellent, albeit chilling, reading. 4) A desire for control--it's easier to blame someone else if your kid gets autism then to ascribe it to unknown causes. For a parent (who believes that the risk of not vaccinating is small), it may be more satisfying to believe that they can protect their kids against autism, rather than face the fact that either due to unknown environmental or genetic (or an interplay between the two) factors, their child may become (or was diagnosed with) autism and there is nothing that they can currently do (have done) to prevent it....