Behind the vaccine panic

[SpartanDem]

The anti-vaccine crusade remains one of the enduring, heart-rending mysteries of our young century. Despite all reasonable evidence showing that failing to vaccinate children puts them at enormous risk, an astonishing number of parents hold off anyway because of scientifically unproven fears that it could lead to the onset of autism or other conditions. More mystifying still: The parents susceptible to vaccine conspiracy theories often are well-educated, liberal-minded denizens -- people just like Salon readers -- in upscale areas like Marin County, Calif., which has the fifth-highest average-per-capita income in the U.S., but whose parents bypass vaccines at three times the rate of the rest of the state; or in Ashland, Ore., where the exemption rate is an astounding 30 percent.

In "The Panic Virus," journalist Seth Mnookin gives a gripping, authoritative account of how the anti-vaccine crusades caught on, shining a bright light on Andrew Wakefield, the now disgraced British researcher whose early work claiming a link between vaccines and autism created a global stir, and authors like David Kirby ("Evidence of Harm") and celebrities like Jenny McCarthy, who hyped the shocking connection long after it had been debunked and Wakefield denounced. (The denouncements continue; this month, the British Medical Journal accused Wakefield of an elaborate fraud.).

You document how the anti-vaccine movement in this country has taken on particular energy with affluent people, in intelligent, liberal communities. Why do they seem the most susceptible to believing the myths about vaccines?

I think it sort of hits a lot of issues that make instinctive sense to more liberal, well-educated people. It's not difficult for me to imagine that pharmaceutical companies do not always have my best interests at heart. Similarly, that big businesses are able to manipulate the governmental profits, manipulate lawmakers in order to effect policies that may not be in my best interest. So I think those are two things that come into play here a lot. And the narrative of parents and children being taken advantage of and being harmed by big business, by big corporations, is a very compelling one. You don't see a lot of movies about the sympathetic drug company.

http://www.salon.com/news/autism/index.html?story=/mwt/feature/2011/01/16/seth_mnookin_panic_virus_autism



The panic was in away in a perfecrt storm it'd played on the not unfounded fear that company would put profit for people. But also peoples lack of experience with widespread childhood diease

[pnwmom]

1. In the U.S. there's never been a "vaccine panic."

Look at the statistics -- we've been at over a 90% vaccination rate for years, compared to in the 60's during the 1980's. So our vaccine rate actually went UP after the uproar about the now-discredited Wakefield research. The CDC is very happy with our vaccine rate and considers it a success.

[Hannah Bell]

2. +100. The only "panic" is the panic-mongering of pharmacorps.

[pnwmom]

3. It does seem that way. n/t

[Hannah Bell]

4. i posted the cdc's vaccination rates for measles once, by year, to counter that panic-mongering &

it got promptly moved to the "woo" forum.

the cdc's own numbers.

[pnwmom]

5. Someone else recently posted the stats for all the vaccines,

over a period of 20 or 30 years, and they all went up by about 50% over the period from the 1980's till now. You're right, we've had anything but a panic.

[GoneOffShore]

9. What's been your experience with MMR?

Have you seen what happens when children aren't vaccinated?

Do you remember the time before polio vaccine? People dying or crippled. Children in "iron lungs".

Do you remember the time before smallpox vaccine?

Tell us about the golden age before vaccines.

[pnwmom]

14. Polio and smallpox were devastating, to be sure.

But people my age had measles, mumps, and rubella when they were considered normal childhood diseases with rare serious effects (except, in the case of rubella, if acquired by a pregnant woman) -- probably because there was no vaccine available. Once the vaccine was approved we were suddenly taught to view all those diseases as very serious. I don't remember being very sick with any of those illnesses; but I do remember being itchy with chicken pox.

Still, I got the MMR vaccine for my children -- but not because I considered those diseases to be on a par with polio, smallpox, tetanus, or pertussis.

[Hannah Bell]

16. what does any of that have to do with what i posted?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=218145&mesg_id=218597

[Warren DeMontague]

15. That's ridiculous. What value for "pharmacorps" is there in "panic mongering" re: Kids vaccines?

Your statement is logically empty.

If there are people who are NOT going to get their kids vaccinated because of the anti-vax bullshit, then there IS a panic.

If there ISN'T a panic, then folks aren't listening to the anti-vax bullshit, so they're getting their kids vaccinated anyway, so what would the point be of the "pharmacorps" mongering a panic? Would parents get their kids vaccinated twice?

It doesn't make any sense. But, then, you have kids getting whooping cough because, "panic" or no, some idiots listened to Jenny McCarthy and didn't get their kids vaccinated against easily preventable diseases.

I'd like some of the anti-vax woo peddlers to talk to my aunt with Post-Polio Syndrome. Enough, already.

[Hannah Bell]

17. the fact is that a larger percent of the school-age population is vaccinated than ever before,

by cdc's own figures.

so the handwringing about how hordes of kids aren't getting vaccinated is crapola.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=222&topic_id=42427&mesg_id=42427

[Warren DeMontague]

18. Great, then everyone is in agreement.

Still, what possible profit motive would the "pharmacorps" have in trying to convince people to vaccinate who were all going to do it anyway? Seems like sort of a waste of all that dark sith corporo-energy.

[Hannah Bell]

20. what's your explanation for the media articles leaving the impression that decreasing

rates of vaccination = widespread?

when the opposite is the case?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=222&topic_id=42427&mesg_id=42427

[Warren DeMontague]

21. It's a regional phenomena, and it's real. Your statistics are national, and I think several good

points are raised in response in the thread. I don't need to delineate them, or post the links, again.

Like I said, if everyone is on the same page, great. People realize that it's fucking lunacy to not vaccinate against potentially dangerous diseases.

But I'm still not clear as to what possible motive (again, presumably profit) the dreaded "pharmacorps" would have in scaring people into vaccinating when they're all doing it anyway. :shrug:

[Hannah Bell]

23. it isn't painted as a regional phenomenon.

[SpartanDem]

6. It might not have been widespread

but it did cause a panic in some corners when 30% of parents in Marin Country aren't getting their kids vacinated I'd say that is a panic.

[pnwmom]

8. Whatever that panic was it never made a dent in CA's annual figures.

[TheMadMonk]

11. No because it's one of the few places where the "welfare state" is permitted...

...to function unhindered in the USA. To be a welfare recipeint, your kid has to have all the scheduled vaccinations or the "free government money" stops arriving. For the poor, even compulsory schooling can be made dependent on "voluntary" vaccination.

With 100% (or near as damned) vaccination there, there is a LOT of room for others independent of the welfare system to "conscientiously object" without skewing the national numbers whilst still driving local numbers well below the herd immunity threshold.

Exactly what "annual figures" are you refering to? Infection (and death) rates for most of the nasty diseases we routinely vaccinate against are on the rise in many locales because vaccination percentages are falling below the levels needed for herd immunity.

[pnwmom]

12. No they're not. Last summer the CDC held a press conference

congratulating themselves on maintaining very high coverage on all children's vaccines -- over 90%. And the numbers have increased by 50% since the 1980's.

HOWEVER, they did acknowledge the rising numbers of pertussis cases in California. But they said that wasn't caused by lower levels of infant/toddler vaccinations -- it was caused by the fact that immunity from the young children's vaccines wears off by the teens, and so previously vaccinated teens and adults were losing their immunity and spreading infection to babies too young to get vaccines. So what they are trying to encourage now is for more teens and adults to get the new pertussis booster vaccine that has been developed for them.

[Hannah Bell]

19. cdc's data on vaccination rates.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=222&topic_id=42427&mesg_id=42427

[sam kane]

10. +101. Phony "panic."

Who wants thiomersal in their veins, anyway? It is a known toxin and completely unnecessary.

[defendandprotect]

7. "Myths about vaccines" can't be separated from the companies who produce them....

and their salesmanship -- and their reputations which aren't good -

In other words, drug companies' own behavior works to defeat their alleged merit.

[Warren DeMontague]

13. "alleged merit"... that's rich.

Sort of like the "alleged moon landings", right?

[BzaDem]

22. Is the Earth "allegedly round" as well? n/t

[defendandprotect]

24. Well, you might ask Galileo -- or the Vatican ... ? Two sides to every myth -- ?

[AngryAmish]

25. My nephew got whooping cough two months ago

Strong lil guy was in bed for two weeks. Better now.

Funny, he survived two years in a third world country while his dad was posted overseas. No harm.

Then he moves to Boulder, Colorado. In a few months he gets an easily preventable disease, just because a lot of his classmates were not given their whooping cough vaccine because of their stupid parents. He did get vaccinated, just failed to provide immunity. It happens.