also, from what I can read in this, while vaccines are excluded as possible environmental causes for autism, there are indications that other things like pesticides might be INcluded. Just so you don’t get caught by some crackpot if you state it’s only genetic.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=autism-rise-driven-by-environment
To add to what malphigian said, in addition to not being able to vaccinate against everything all at once, vaccines aren’t 100% effective. They’re good, but nothing’s perfect. You still don’t want to tempt fate by rolling around in a vat of measles.
The vaccination scare actually started in England, so blame them.
Actually, we’ve had machine gunes for over a hundred years, which is an effective deterrent. Unfortunately, we can’t use them because of these same extreme leftist yuppies.
What if the rise of television is the source of autism? The slate article below (which I’m about to summarize) was a summary of a scientific article (though one conducted by economist, if my memory serves). The theory is that early exposure to television, along side a genetic predisposition, is the trigger for autism. The report compared autism rates in communities based on when it acquired cable television (thus, implying the TV would be on more often) and the weather (assumming rain meant more days inside). In both cases, the more TV assumptions meant higher rates of autism.
Of course the study is not perfect, as watching TV does meaning being indoors more often and possibly being exposed to some indoor chemical or pathogen or allergan that might also trigger autism.
If nothing else, I’m 98% certain the rising rates of autism is only minorly effected by rising awareness and diagnosis.
Health officials reported Friday that bacterial meningitis struck five kids in Minnesota last year and it is issuing a warning for parents to get their kids vaccinated. Three of those five kids were not vaccinated with a commonly used vaccine, and one of those three kids died. In another story, the reason listed for that kid not getting vaccinated was because of “parental beliefs.”
But if TV is the cause, how will Jenny McCarthy’s fans watch reruns of Singled Out?
In all seriousness, that study seems pretty tenuous. “We looked at these two factors which we’re assuming with no evidence lead to more TV-watching, and man, they do correlate with autism!” It’s almost as bad as the vaccine theory, really.
Well, vaccines only correlated with autism before statistical adjustment for something or other. Part of the theory is that those statistical adjustments were part of a conspiracy to protect vaccination.
“Blame Canada!
Blame Canada!
We must blame them and cause a fuss
Before somebody thinks of blaming us!”
If parents are stupid enough to trust Jenny McCarthy over the entire medical profession then their unvaccined kids probably don’t have the brainiest genes either. Darwin would be proud.
Respectfully
krise madsen
In NZ the meningitis vaccine, in particular, is pushed hard, because there are communities here who have never been big on it, and that can cause some big problems. The lack of vaccination among those communities is more out of habit than belief though, which is good… I guess.
But we also have the nutjobs :(
My bro-in-law’s brother’s wife doesn’t “believe” in vaccines. She traveled through India taking homeopathic remedies rather than any injections for the bugs (or pills for the bugs). She didn’t get sick, so now I fear she’ll think that A caused B… dumb cow.
Anyway, we need as many people vaccinated as possible. There are kids who respond extremely badly to injection and as long as everyone else is ok and covered those unvaccinated kids will be ok.
But when the population of unvaccinated goes above 30% it’s epidemic time and kids like a friend of mine, (who they would like to vaccinate, but have given up after a couple of jabs), will get pwnd. :/
I have a family member who is plagued by some of these beliefs. I’m not sure about vaccines in particular but they definitely go in for questionable medicine and buy into medical conspiracy theories.
In my opinion, it’s a control issue. Medicine is a large black hole, it’s not perfect, it’s frequently impersonal and it’s hard for a lot of people to understand completely. So people latch on to some silly ideas that give them a feeling of control over it. In many cases I think that’s fine (placebos can actually work after all) and I try not to scoff when I hear what new magical treatment is helping my family member. Cases like this are just sad, however.
WTF? The original “study” was based on 12, non-randomly sampled kids!?
My wife was in the same university hostel as a girl who died from Meningitis (this was at Massey in 1993) - having had that scare (Nic was quarantined with the rest of the hostel for I think 72 hours), there’s no fucking away we weren’t vaccinating our kids.
Ars is also reporting on the Bad Science blog being sued by some British radio station for posting audio of a radio show where the anti-vaccine movement was the theme.
The MMR vaccine is down to 50% in London? That’s just crazy, I thought things were bad here.
I really hope the revelations about Wakefield put an end to this garbage, but I think it’s very hard to pry off the tin foil hat once it has been put on. Most of these people are just going to say it’s the “vaccine industry” trying to silence the truth or some such nonsense.
It’d be funny if they weren’t killing people.
It’d be nice if people with a respect for science could form their own town. They would vaccinate their children, and teach them about genetics and all the other things children love. And then, at the end of the day, when all the children are ready to settle into bed, they would tell them stories about Charles Darwin, and Alexander Graham Bell and all of the great things they did, even when nobody believed in them. Then they would quietly creep down the stairs, and set the coffeemaker for 6:45, which is, in LearningTown, the special code to open the passage to the secret laboratory that only grown-ups know about, full of sparkling beakers and tinkling vials, where machines bustle and beep, and the grumpy old gas chromatograph huffs as they walk past, and then they would create a doomsday virus to ensure that their way was the only way, and that their quiet little sunshine town ruled the world for ever and ever and ever.
Did someone just read Rainbow 6?
Is that the one with LaVarr Burton when he could still see?
Update, I now know what the book is about, and I still don’t like Tom Clancy.
Oops. lol.