RE: Vaccines didn't cause GWS (or autism, or ___, or ...)

But isn’t that exactly what this posting is? Propagating “junk” to just fuel suspicion? Sure you may claim that you are merely seeking to bring awareness to an issue that is unclear, but the whole posting of this article is to say… vaccines “could” cause GWS. Well so could space poo, or gamma radiation, or whatever else you want to throw out there that hasn’t been studied. I love how people site such reports as reasons why something “could” be true. It shows a complete lack of respect and understanding of how research, and medical research is preformed and interrupted. When you are dealing with any medical research it is virtually impossible to access all the variables that are in play. The fact of the matter is that you simply can’t form very good control groups, and more often than not such studies simply review records and try to place results into groups after the fact. The results of such studies are useful for giving us an idea as to what may or may not be contributing, but rarely if ever do they completely rule out a cause. Couple this with the fact that the public ingestion of such studies comes from a second hand write up of the original study by some press agency like reuters or the AP, which seeks to make things into simple it does or it doesn’t stories.

The public has the right to be skeptical of such matters, but to blame science for not being able to rule things out, or in this case, complain that some study hasn’t been done that could clear things up, when such a study is unlikely to produce the results you think it could is absurd.

One last point that I would love to throw out there… vaccines and autism, while maybe correlated, is a good example of mass hysteria with little research that could ever support. The study that so many people claimed “proved causality” was later denounced as a fraud.

I’m all for probing understanding, but it seems obvious that in this case, as in many, the one doing the probing doesn’t fully grasp the concept of what scientific research entails and how one can interpret it. While the internet gives access to a vast sea of information, it doesn’t mean that the vast populous can understand that information. Not my intention to sound elitist, but more often than not, those posting don’t comprehend the limitations/conclusions of the studies they cite.

I read this exchange on Omninerd and I don’t think you proved this point. I think you feel they are misleading because flu isn’t the primary cause of death, but since the primary cause of death is often due to the patient having the flu, I think it is fair to count those statistics. So anyway, don’t buy that point. Moving on.

Where could we get said evidence. In my mind, I just think that if the “unbiased” evidence went against the anti-vaccine crowd, they would just say it was biased and ignore it. I am not sure where you fall, so I don’t know how you would take it. But do you see the problem here? The AMA says that the anti-vaccine crowd is bonkers. That is pretty much enough for me. Moving on.

I don’t think that people who think vaccines are dangerous are idiots. The HPV vaccine has had a fairly bad track record and in my mind only helps the anti-vaccine crowd with a real vaccine that may not be all it was cracked up to be. Vaccines can be dangerous, but the other half of that sentence is that they are mostly less dangerous than not getting them. I guess it is a gamble and if I have a 1 in 200 chance of a bad reaction and a 1 in 1000 chance of a fatal reaction but a 1 in 100 chance of having a bad or fatal case of the disease… well, I am not a betting man, but I would go with the better chances.

Furthermore, I don’t care what views people have, but when people like Jenny McCarthy use was little fame or standing they have to spread propoganda about vaccines that is not medically sound, I feel that those people are morally reprehensible. Maybe not idiots, but don’t know which is worse.

I said something like this earlier in this thread, but the key caveat that I added (or what I meant, anyway) is that what makes the average anti-vaccine wacko an idiot is not that they think there may be some risks in vaccines, it’s that they think, and preach—in spite of all the evidence to the contrary—that the vaccine risk is greater than the risk of not being vaccinated. If there are significant risks inherent in vaccines—and I have yet to see any convincing evidence that the risks are anything but remote—they are certainly so much less than the risks of the targeted diseases as to not even be in the same ballpark. To me, the risk decision seems to be a no-brainer.

I remember one thread, quite some time ago, where you argued that you abstain from caffeine and alcohol because the risks of consuming them (while minute) were still greater than the benefits gained from them (which you posited were zero). Wouldn’t the risk vs. benefit calculation in this case be even more clear-cut?

Hm. Well, I’m going to tell you pretty close to exactly that…

The measles vaccine was licensed for use in 1963. Prior to that, there were about half a million reported cases of measles each year. By 1968, it had dropped to fewer than 50,000 per year — a 90% reduction. No way you can reasonably attribute that to changes in diet, environment, or behavior.

As vaccination rates climbed, largely due to school programs requiring evidence of vaccination before allowing children to attend, measles rates dropped even further. In the 90s, there were fewer than 100 cases reported most years.

A 10% drop you could attribute to an environmental or behavioral change, but the drastic changes that came about after the introduction of vaccines for many diseases is simply not assignable to any other reasonable cause. Here are some graphs that nicely show the data.