9 ms·

I used to work for Andy Wakefield, so I have a bit of a different perspective on this issue. The important things that aren't in this are MSG, Mercury, and poss

I used to work for Andy Wakefield, so I have a bit of a different perspective on this issue. The important things that aren't in this are MSG, Mercury, and possibly adjuvants like aluminum, because > Our vaccine candidate is easy to manufacture, extremely stable and elicits a powerful immune response. Those are what most of the intelligent anti-vaxxers worry about, except for a few people who object to fetal tissue being used in development, which is not an issue here. I'm sure some folks will get up in arms about this, but it'll be a huge step forwards in many people's minds, and hopefully will be used as a template in the future. To clarify: I'm not an anti-vaxxer, but I do think the testing process isn't rigorous enough, and I have seen absolutely awful medically confirmed reactions firsthand, which gives me a slightly different perspective. Vaccines are good, but I want the reaction rate in non-immunocompromised people to be zero

hanniabu 7y ago
For those unaware of who Andrew Jeremy is, this is from Wikipedia: > Andrew Jeremy Wakefield is a discredited British ex-physician who became an anti-vaccine activist. As a gastroenterologist at the Royal Free Hospital in London, he published a 1998 paper in The Lancet claiming a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and autism.
garyfirestorm 7y ago
intelligent anti-vaxxer is an oxymoron
- jacobush 7y ago
  Over simplification. Sometimes very intelligent people can convince themselves and others using very intelligent reasoning. You and I are also likely to do it from time to time, but hopefully in much less important matters. (Like which framework is good for what, which in the grand scheme of things often matters little compared to all the other problems we face.)
- sdfsafsafafasf 7y ago
  Intelligent people who disagree with me is an oxymoron. I mean, honestly, do you think that vaccines are harm free panacea for all that ills humanity? One of the reasons that the anti-vaxxer movement is so dangerous is precisely because vaccines are dangerous and some people's bodies are intolerant to them (most obviously imuno compromised individuals).
  - rpmisms 7y ago
    Not to mention some people who have reactions to aluminium and/or MSG in some shots as well. These people do exist, and them being dismissed out of hand does not help anyone.
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      Anti-vaxxer refers to refers to someone who rejects the mountains of data (often having no data analysis skills themselves) based upon their "feelings".
      - vageli 7y ago
        > Anti-vaxxer refers to refers to someone who rejects the mountains of data (often having no data analysis skills themselves) based upon their "feelings". I thought it was someone against vaccination?
        sdfsafsafafasf 7y ago
        Re-defining words that don't have hard, universal, definitions is a powerful, if dishonest, debate tactic. Orwell wrote many essays about this. Orwell wrote very many good essays.
      - sdfsafsafafasf 7y ago
        Have you personally looked at the mountain's of data and come to your conclusions? I mean articles on journals like "Vaccine" Or have you just read pseudo-scientific articles on nytimes and the such meant for mass consumption? Have you re-created the paper's data analysis from the (typically not easily available) data? Turns out some medical communities, like physiology, suck at data analysis. Because if not, then you're just as uninformed as the anti-vaxxers with a healthy mix of arrogance. If you are a researcher in the field, keep up the good work, but this arrogance towards the little ones fuels anti-vaxxer movement. I despise people who are "on my side of the debate" belittling those they disagree with. Such incivility!
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive comments here. And especially please don't perpetuate flamewars. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
lotsofpulp 7y ago
>intelligent anti-vaxxers Oxymoron.
PerryCox 7y ago
> intelligent anti-vaxxers No that's an oxymoron if I have ever seen one.
DangerousPie 7y ago
> I used to work for Andy Wakefield Interesting, what was that like? Did he actually believe all the claims he was making?
- rpmisms 7y ago
  Absolute horndog, no scruples, and a complete narcissist. Basically worse than they make him out to be. Del Bigtree is very similar. The Tommey family (worked with Andy on Vaxxed) are some of the kindest people I've ever met, and I'd like to see them again. Suzanne Humphries is possibly one of the smartest people I know, and is incredibly well-read. She's a nephrologist who started charting patterns around people getting flu shots followed by sudden kidney failure, well before Andy did his "research". She brought this to the attention of a researcher, and was promptly dismissed. She's not anti-vaccine, but is pro-vaccine-safety, which I appreciate as an intellectually honest position. Out of the whole crowd, she's the person I would listen to. She's a bit like Andrew Yang; she doesn't hold opinions, the data is her opinion. I'm not sure why this is getting downvotes. I'm answering the question.
  - emptybits 7y ago
    > She's not anti-vaccine, but is pro-vaccine-safety I've never heard of Humphries before your comment. I searched and found a long video of Humphries where she says, at the outset: >> "never has there been a safe vaccine, never will there be a safe vaccine, and it is not possible to have a safe vaccine." [1] IMO, a reasonable person would call that an anti-vaccine point of view, don't you think? Calling it pro-vaccine-safety seems disingenuous. Anyways, I agree with you that she seems well read and she articulates her position in a level-headed manner and I'm even open to her being correct. But her position seems to be very anti-vaccine because she tells us that vaccine safety is "not possible" and that there will never be a safe vaccine. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efto1LpWkKw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efto1LpWkKw
    - rpmisms 7y ago
      Well, if we want to go deep into her body of research we can. She's pro-immunization, but doesn't believe vaccines as we know them are an effective way to do so. The current structure involves harming the body in order to create immunity, and therefore, if no benefit is derived, violates the Hippocratic oath. I get frustrated with her sometimes, because her ideas are incredibly rational and coherent, but she doesn't understand presentation or how to sell an idea. I would recommend her book if you want to gain an understanding of the rationalist arguments against modern vaccination: https://www.amazon.com/Dissolving-Illusions-Disease-Vaccines-Forgotten/dp/1480216895 https://www.amazon.com/Dissolving-Illusions-Disease-Vaccines... It's controversial thought, but it is enlightening, especially if you want to understand why some "otherwise" smart people believe this nonsense
slowmovintarget 7y ago
I don't know how you qualify an intelligent "anti-vaxxer". I've had colleagues, that were otherwise intelligent people, vehemently refuse to listen to the evidence. They let their fear of autism drive their decisions. In doing so, they opened their children, and the communities they live in, to measles, mumps, chicken pox, rubella... all of the things we'd nearly eliminated. Unless the child has allergies to the vaccine, or a compromised immune system, it isn't reasonable to leave the child without vaccination. Intelligent people have more complex ways of rationalizing the decisions they make based on fear. It doesn't make the decision intelligent or wise. Either way, better vaccines will be a boon to all. Hopefully, it will also ameliorate the fears of some "anti-vaxxers". My own fear is that because irrational decisions are already not based on evidence, these people will be unable to consider or accept new evidence, even when their specific rationalizations have been accounted for.
grawprog 7y ago
Meh
- jac241 7y ago
  The flu vaccine is formulated each year to match the predicted strains expected to cause most human suffering that year. Influenza has a segmented RNA genome that makes it more likely to mutate and change its antigen expression. The flu vaccine saves a significant number of lives each year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza#Replication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza#Replication https://www.cdc.gov/flu/news/flu-vaccine-saved-lives.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/news/flu-vaccine-saved-lives.htm The shingles vaccine bolsters immunity towards the chicken pox virus so that even when depressed your immune system has enough T-cells against the virus that it does not reactivate. Shingrex is 97% effective at preventing shingles. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25916341 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25916341
- rpedela 7y ago
  The flu vaccine is important to get. * Every year the vaccine is updated to match the new mutation which is why you need to get one every year. * Some years the vaccine is not fully protective, but it will still reduce the severity and duration. This could mean the difference between life and death for at-risk populations: old, young, immune-comprised. * If enough people get it, it provides herd immunity for people who can't take it such as babies less than 6 months. I know someone with a child who has an immune condition who can't get the flu vaccine. The father didn't think he needed to get it because he didn't think the flu was that big of a deal, and it's not for most healthy people. Well he gets the flu, gives it to his son, and the son ends up in the ICU. Thankfully the son survived. The father now always gets the flu shot.
- rpmisms 7y ago
  Yeah, that's my problem. Vaccines are oversold, so to speak. Everyone has a story about getting the flu immediately after getting the shot. My big thing is safety and accountability. Currently, if a vaccine is harmful, the company that makes it has no liability, /and/ there's no control/test testing. The only way they're tested is by giving people the same shot with and without the viral component. Problem is, saying anything that makes vaccines not sound like unicorn blood makes you one of "them", and you obviously want everyone to die of polio.
w56rjrtyu6ru 7y ago
Did someone say that "intelligent anti-vaxxer" is an oxymoron yet?.
sschueller 7y ago
The primary issue is that vaccines are becoming a very large percentage of pharmas profits as well as there being protections for the industry to prevent people for suing them if a vaccine turns out to be actually unsafe. As far as I know this also applies if there were issues in the manufacturing even if the vaccine itself is safe. Vaccines are very important and most make sense but we are at what appears to be a tipping point where profits may go over the general well-being of the public. We need proper oversight.
- Analemma_ 7y ago
  > The primary issue is that vaccines are becoming a very large percentage of pharmas profits [Citation needed]. Vaccines are practically sold at break-even cost, and in fact in the last few decades many companies have exited the vaccine market entirely because there was so little money to be made. > as well as there being protections for the industry to prevent people for suing them if a vaccine turns out to be actually unsafe These liability protections exist because vaccines are so unprofitable. If you didn't have indemnity for a product that both a) gets distributed to almost everyone, and so even tiny probabilities of side effects result in large absolute numbers of cases b) has a tiny profit margin no one would ever take on that risk, and the only way for vaccines to get made would be from nationalized industries.
  - sschueller 7y ago
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/265102/revenues-in-the-global-vaccine-market/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/265102/revenues-in-the-g... https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/merck-pfizer-sanofi-pasteur-and-glaxosmithkline-make-billions-from-shingrix-and-gardasil-vaccines.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/merck-pfizer-sanofi-pasteur-...
- delfinom 7y ago
  Vaccines do have shitloads of oversight and its world wide. Do you think the US FDA is somehow the only org in the entire world that's checking vaccines and drugs?
magashna 7y ago
To all the others saying intelligent anti-vaxxer is an oxymoron, you can be brilliant in some fields and have doorknob level intelligence in others.
- rpmisms 7y ago
  I personally don't dismiss his work, but Linus Pauling is probably an example you would like.
  - magashna 7y ago
    I usually consider Ben Carson as a modern and well known example.
    - rpmisms 7y ago
      I had no idea Ben Carson was a vaccine skeptic. To be fair, he's only a neurosurgeon, so I'm sure we all know better than him about this. To clarify, he's only a pediatric neurosurgeon who pioneered procedures previously pondered as preposterous. This is actually something he's a recognized expert on, but because he holds a different opinion than you, he must be wrong. He's not even antivax, he just thinks that newborns shouldn't receive a full round of shots immediately after birth, but that they should be spaced out. What an idiotic, uninformed individual.
      - ceejayoz 7y ago
        I don't think Carson's anti-vax. I think he's being used as an example of someone who can be brilliant in one specialty while demonstrating /u/magashna's "doorknob level intelligence" in other fields like Egyptian archeology.
        magashna 7y ago
        Precisely. I remember hearing him in his debates years ago and the jokes about "well it's not like he's a brain surgeon...what!?"

hanniabu 7y ago

For those unaware of who Andrew Jeremy is, this is from Wikipedia: > Andrew Jeremy Wakefield is a discredited British ex-physician who became an anti-vaccine activist. As a gastroenterologist at the Royal Free Hospital in London, he published a 1998 paper in The Lancet claiming a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and autism.

garyfirestorm 7y ago

intelligent anti-vaxxer is an oxymoron

jacobush 7y ago
Over simplification. Sometimes very intelligent people can convince themselves and others using very intelligent reasoning. You and I are also likely to do it from time to time, but hopefully in much less important matters. (Like which framework is good for what, which in the grand scheme of things often matters little compared to all the other problems we face.)
sdfsafsafafasf 7y ago
Intelligent people who disagree with me is an oxymoron. I mean, honestly, do you think that vaccines are harm free panacea for all that ills humanity? One of the reasons that the anti-vaxxer movement is so dangerous is precisely because vaccines are dangerous and some people's bodies are intolerant to them (most obviously imuno compromised individuals).
- rpmisms 7y ago
  Not to mention some people who have reactions to aluminium and/or MSG in some shots as well. These people do exist, and them being dismissed out of hand does not help anyone.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    Anti-vaxxer refers to refers to someone who rejects the mountains of data (often having no data analysis skills themselves) based upon their "feelings".
    - vageli 7y ago
      > Anti-vaxxer refers to refers to someone who rejects the mountains of data (often having no data analysis skills themselves) based upon their "feelings". I thought it was someone against vaccination?
      - sdfsafsafafasf 7y ago
        Re-defining words that don't have hard, universal, definitions is a powerful, if dishonest, debate tactic. Orwell wrote many essays about this. Orwell wrote very many good essays.
    - sdfsafsafafasf 7y ago
      Have you personally looked at the mountain's of data and come to your conclusions? I mean articles on journals like "Vaccine" Or have you just read pseudo-scientific articles on nytimes and the such meant for mass consumption? Have you re-created the paper's data analysis from the (typically not easily available) data? Turns out some medical communities, like physiology, suck at data analysis. Because if not, then you're just as uninformed as the anti-vaxxers with a healthy mix of arrogance. If you are a researcher in the field, keep up the good work, but this arrogance towards the little ones fuels anti-vaxxer movement. I despise people who are "on my side of the debate" belittling those they disagree with. Such incivility!
dang 7y ago
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here. And especially please don't perpetuate flamewars. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

lotsofpulp 7y ago

>intelligent anti-vaxxers Oxymoron.

PerryCox 7y ago

> intelligent anti-vaxxers No that's an oxymoron if I have ever seen one.

DangerousPie 7y ago

> I used to work for Andy Wakefield Interesting, what was that like? Did he actually believe all the claims he was making?

rpmisms 7y ago
Absolute horndog, no scruples, and a complete narcissist. Basically worse than they make him out to be. Del Bigtree is very similar. The Tommey family (worked with Andy on Vaxxed) are some of the kindest people I've ever met, and I'd like to see them again. Suzanne Humphries is possibly one of the smartest people I know, and is incredibly well-read. She's a nephrologist who started charting patterns around people getting flu shots followed by sudden kidney failure, well before Andy did his "research". She brought this to the attention of a researcher, and was promptly dismissed. She's not anti-vaccine, but is pro-vaccine-safety, which I appreciate as an intellectually honest position. Out of the whole crowd, she's the person I would listen to. She's a bit like Andrew Yang; she doesn't hold opinions, the data is her opinion. I'm not sure why this is getting downvotes. I'm answering the question.
- emptybits 7y ago
  > She's not anti-vaccine, but is pro-vaccine-safety I've never heard of Humphries before your comment. I searched and found a long video of Humphries where she says, at the outset: >> "never has there been a safe vaccine, never will there be a safe vaccine, and it is not possible to have a safe vaccine." [1] IMO, a reasonable person would call that an anti-vaccine point of view, don't you think? Calling it pro-vaccine-safety seems disingenuous. Anyways, I agree with you that she seems well read and she articulates her position in a level-headed manner and I'm even open to her being correct. But her position seems to be very anti-vaccine because she tells us that vaccine safety is "not possible" and that there will never be a safe vaccine. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efto1LpWkKw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efto1LpWkKw
  - rpmisms 7y ago
    Well, if we want to go deep into her body of research we can. She's pro-immunization, but doesn't believe vaccines as we know them are an effective way to do so. The current structure involves harming the body in order to create immunity, and therefore, if no benefit is derived, violates the Hippocratic oath. I get frustrated with her sometimes, because her ideas are incredibly rational and coherent, but she doesn't understand presentation or how to sell an idea. I would recommend her book if you want to gain an understanding of the rationalist arguments against modern vaccination: https://www.amazon.com/Dissolving-Illusions-Disease-Vaccines-Forgotten/dp/1480216895 https://www.amazon.com/Dissolving-Illusions-Disease-Vaccines... It's controversial thought, but it is enlightening, especially if you want to understand why some "otherwise" smart people believe this nonsense

slowmovintarget 7y ago

I don't know how you qualify an intelligent "anti-vaxxer". I've had colleagues, that were otherwise intelligent people, vehemently refuse to listen to the evidence. They let their fear of autism drive their decisions. In doing so, they opened their children, and the communities they live in, to measles, mumps, chicken pox, rubella... all of the things we'd nearly eliminated. Unless the child has allergies to the vaccine, or a compromised immune system, it isn't reasonable to leave the child without vaccination. Intelligent people have more complex ways of rationalizing the decisions they make based on fear. It doesn't make the decision intelligent or wise. Either way, better vaccines will be a boon to all. Hopefully, it will also ameliorate the fears of some "anti-vaxxers". My own fear is that because irrational decisions are already not based on evidence, these people will be unable to consider or accept new evidence, even when their specific rationalizations have been accounted for.

grawprog 7y ago

Meh

jac241 7y ago
The flu vaccine is formulated each year to match the predicted strains expected to cause most human suffering that year. Influenza has a segmented RNA genome that makes it more likely to mutate and change its antigen expression. The flu vaccine saves a significant number of lives each year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza#Replication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza#Replication https://www.cdc.gov/flu/news/flu-vaccine-saved-lives.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/news/flu-vaccine-saved-lives.htm The shingles vaccine bolsters immunity towards the chicken pox virus so that even when depressed your immune system has enough T-cells against the virus that it does not reactivate. Shingrex is 97% effective at preventing shingles. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25916341 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25916341
rpedela 7y ago
The flu vaccine is important to get. * Every year the vaccine is updated to match the new mutation which is why you need to get one every year. * Some years the vaccine is not fully protective, but it will still reduce the severity and duration. This could mean the difference between life and death for at-risk populations: old, young, immune-comprised. * If enough people get it, it provides herd immunity for people who can't take it such as babies less than 6 months. I know someone with a child who has an immune condition who can't get the flu vaccine. The father didn't think he needed to get it because he didn't think the flu was that big of a deal, and it's not for most healthy people. Well he gets the flu, gives it to his son, and the son ends up in the ICU. Thankfully the son survived. The father now always gets the flu shot.
rpmisms 7y ago
Yeah, that's my problem. Vaccines are oversold, so to speak. Everyone has a story about getting the flu immediately after getting the shot. My big thing is safety and accountability. Currently, if a vaccine is harmful, the company that makes it has no liability, /and/ there's no control/test testing. The only way they're tested is by giving people the same shot with and without the viral component. Problem is, saying anything that makes vaccines not sound like unicorn blood makes you one of "them", and you obviously want everyone to die of polio.

w56rjrtyu6ru 7y ago

Did someone say that "intelligent anti-vaxxer" is an oxymoron yet?.

sschueller 7y ago

The primary issue is that vaccines are becoming a very large percentage of pharmas profits as well as there being protections for the industry to prevent people for suing them if a vaccine turns out to be actually unsafe. As far as I know this also applies if there were issues in the manufacturing even if the vaccine itself is safe. Vaccines are very important and most make sense but we are at what appears to be a tipping point where profits may go over the general well-being of the public. We need proper oversight.

Analemma_ 7y ago
> The primary issue is that vaccines are becoming a very large percentage of pharmas profits [Citation needed]. Vaccines are practically sold at break-even cost, and in fact in the last few decades many companies have exited the vaccine market entirely because there was so little money to be made. > as well as there being protections for the industry to prevent people for suing them if a vaccine turns out to be actually unsafe These liability protections exist because vaccines are so unprofitable. If you didn't have indemnity for a product that both a) gets distributed to almost everyone, and so even tiny probabilities of side effects result in large absolute numbers of cases b) has a tiny profit margin no one would ever take on that risk, and the only way for vaccines to get made would be from nationalized industries.
- sschueller 7y ago
  https://www.statista.com/statistics/265102/revenues-in-the-global-vaccine-market/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/265102/revenues-in-the-g... https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/merck-pfizer-sanofi-pasteur-and-glaxosmithkline-make-billions-from-shingrix-and-gardasil-vaccines.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/merck-pfizer-sanofi-pasteur-...
delfinom 7y ago
Vaccines do have shitloads of oversight and its world wide. Do you think the US FDA is somehow the only org in the entire world that's checking vaccines and drugs?

magashna 7y ago

To all the others saying intelligent anti-vaxxer is an oxymoron, you can be brilliant in some fields and have doorknob level intelligence in others.

rpmisms 7y ago
I personally don't dismiss his work, but Linus Pauling is probably an example you would like.
- magashna 7y ago
  I usually consider Ben Carson as a modern and well known example.
  - rpmisms 7y ago
    I had no idea Ben Carson was a vaccine skeptic. To be fair, he's only a neurosurgeon, so I'm sure we all know better than him about this. To clarify, he's only a pediatric neurosurgeon who pioneered procedures previously pondered as preposterous. This is actually something he's a recognized expert on, but because he holds a different opinion than you, he must be wrong. He's not even antivax, he just thinks that newborns shouldn't receive a full round of shots immediately after birth, but that they should be spaced out. What an idiotic, uninformed individual.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      I don't think Carson's anti-vax. I think he's being used as an example of someone who can be brilliant in one specialty while demonstrating /u/magashna's "doorknob level intelligence" in other fields like Egyptian archeology.
      - magashna 7y ago
        Precisely. I remember hearing him in his debates years ago and the jokes about "well it's not like he's a brain surgeon...what!?"