God Awful Things

Truthers, Birthers, Vacinothers, er.. not sure what to call this new rise in skepticism.  But it seems to be coming up in conversations more and more, and to the point where just this week a got a mass email at work from a co-worker about the cheerleader who got a flu shot and now suffers from dystonia. But they unfortunately didn’t include a link where more doctors are starting to believe that is actually a psychogenic dystonia..

From the San Francisco Examiner:

Psychogenic disorders do not mean that a person is faking their symptoms. Rather, it means that the person truly believes that the symptoms are real. However, there is no physiological reason for the symptoms. It truly is all in their head. Examples include phantom limb syndrome, where a hand that has been amputated along with a limb is felt by the person as being clinched or still being there. Psychotherapy or some medications to treat the mental issues can help deal with psychogenic disorders.

Also

Another important detail in Ms. Jennings’ story is that she acquired flu from the flu vaccine. This is a scientific impossiblity. The flu virus in the injected vaccine is dead, inactive. In the solution being injected, the virus has no cells in which to live and reproduce. Viruses are, by definition, obligate intracellular parasites. They need cells to live, grow, and reproduce. There has been no recorded case of acquired flu from the flu shot vaccine. Likewise, if true, Ms. Jennings would be the first case of dystonia as a result of the flu vaccine. Furthermore, the Food and Drug Administration did not find anything wrong or different about the lot of vaccine used.

I read somewhere that those anti vaccine experts / medical scientists Jenny McCarthy

and Jim Carrey

have reached out to the cheerleader..

From Age of Autism:

An organization founded by actors (Generation Rescue*) Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey is so touched by Desiree’s story that they have reached out to offer not only words of encouragement, but the organization’s support.

Though, the general phobia of vaccines that is pervasive today and the belief that they cause autism is only somewhat related. Considering  I’m not an expert, I’ll let the experts speak for themselves.

Over at Wired, they have an well written article “An Epidemic of Fear” about this very subject and it’s definitely a good read.

Highlights!

So what has this award-winning 58-year-old scientist done to elicit such venom? He boldly states — in speeches, in journal articles, and in his 2008 book Autism’s False Prophets— that vaccines do not cause autism or autoimmune disease or any of the other chronic conditions that have been blamed on them. He supports this assertion with meticulous evidence. And he calls to account those who promote bogus treatments for autism — treatments that he says not only don’t work but often cause harm.

On the internet, everyone is an expert on every subject…

This isn’t a religious dispute, like the debate over creationism and intelligent design. It’s a challenge to traditional science that crosses party, class, and religious lines. It is partly a reaction to Big Pharma’s blunders and PR missteps, from Vioxx to illegal marketing ploys, which have encouraged a distrust of experts. It is also, ironically, a product of the era of instant communication and easy access to information. The doubters and deniers are empowered by the Internet (online, nobody knows you’re not a doctor) and helped by the mainstream media, which has an interest in pumping up bad science to create a “debate” where there should be none.

this part was really surprising..

…In some communities, like California’s affluent Marin County, just north of San Francisco, non-vaccination rates are approaching 6 percent (counterintuitively, higher rates of non-vaccination often correspond with higher levels of education and wealth).

and

That may not sound like much, but a recent study by the Los Angeles Times indicates that the impact can be devastating. The Times found that even though only about 2 percent of California’s kindergartners are unvaccinated (10,000 kids, or about twice the number as in 1997), they tend to be clustered, disproportionately increasing the risk of an outbreak of such largely eradicated diseases as measles, mumps, and pertussis (whooping cough). The clustering means almost 10 percent of elementary schools statewide may already be at risk.

That doesn’t even take into account those who don’t vaccinate their children and their effects on children with weak immune systems around them, which and article over on Slate discusses.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t question others’ parenting choices. But the problem is literally one of live or don’t live. While that parent chose not to vaccinate her child for what she likely considers well-founded reasons, she is putting other children at risk. In this instance, the child at risk was my son. He has leukemia.

I think what’s important here is to remember, there is ZERO scientific evidence that vaccines cause ANY of these problems… ZERO! But here are two examples of what has happened over this fear, fear without evidence.

In 2008 in San Diego, a 7-year-old boy whose parents refused vaccines contracted measles while on a family trip to Switzerland. Before realizing how sick he was, the boy went to school and infected four other kids at school, after having already infected his two siblings. He then infected four other children who happened to be in the waiting room at his pediatrician’s office. Three of those children were too young to have received their MMR vaccines. One of those infants was hospitalized; another traveled on an airplane while infectious. This case is a sobering example of how one family’s decision not to vaccinate their children has serious consequences for other children.

But it isn’t as sobering as the case in January in Minnesota in which an Hib meningitis outbreak severely sickened four children and killed one infant. Of those five children, one was too young to be vaccinated, one had an immune deficiency, and the other three had parents who refused the vaccine. The child who died was among those three children whose parents, out of fear or personal belief, opted out of the vaccine.

Anyway, as the good doctor says, maybe when enough children die people will realize the error in their ways, and I leave with this example of a wealthy well to do guy, whom I normally agree with on many issues, arguing with a trained medical doctor whom I normally disagree over everything with.