Rampant scientism
You know, when They say there has never been a cover-up, that’s when you know there has been a cover-up.
The recent upsurge in measles cases in Britain is a sad tribute to the climate of irrationality. Despite all the paranoid conspiracy theories, there has never been a cover-up of the link between MMR and autism. In ten years those promoting this autism link have failed to produce convincing scientific evidence while numerous laboratory studies and epidemiological surveys have upheld the safety of MMR.
‘Convincing scientific evidence’ – ‘laboratory studies’ – ‘epidemiological surveys’ – don’t you understand? They’re all part of the plot! All that scientistic talk of evidence and studies and surveys is just the usual excluding hierarchical orientalist top-down power-knowledge trick that the global MMR conspiracy uses to silence its enemies.
The rise of a combination of extreme scepticism towards established sources of authority in science and medicine and anxiety about environmental threats to our wellbeing has led many to put their faith in self-proclaimed mavericks and alternative healers and charlatans. The recent outbreaks of measles, which resulted last year in the first childhood death for 15 years, shows how dangerous this credulity can be. As doctors, we are grappling in our surgeries with fear and confusion, exacerbated by an apparently endless series of health scares and panics. A campaigner came to me convinced that a local mobile phone mast was causing her breathing difficulties; later she admitted that she smoked 30 cigarettes a day.
No but you see what happens is, if you smoke thirty cigarettes a day then your body learns to adjust, whereas if you live near a mobile phone mast your body can’t adjust because it doesn’t understand phone masts. It can see and taste and smell the cigarettes, so it know what to do, but the phone mast is over there somewhere, and the death rays are invisible, so the body is baffled and confused.
One of the most potent forces of irrationality in healthcare, one with a particularly baleful influence in the MMR controversy, has been promoted by the Government. It has elevated consumer choice – and subjective belief – over medical expertise…But the problem revealed by the MMR scare is that individual choice cannot be reconciled with a mass childhood immunisation programme. The object of immunisation policy is not to provide a “pick and mix” selection to the public, but to provide a coherent programme for the prevention of infectious diseases.
There’s the conspiracy again – ‘medical expertise’ and ‘a coherent programme.’ That’s no good. We have to have medical amateurism and incoherence. It’s our right as consumers.
I live a block or so from the Pacific and we commonly have fog come into our neighborhood. When that happens, for some reason the wires on the phone poles emit a low level crackling sound. A few years ago, my next-door neighbors told me they were moving away. When I expressed my surprise, they explained that they were compelled to move for health reasons, citing EMF and mentioning the sound as evidence of a foul effect.
http://www.badscience.net
Ben Goldacre has long been skewering this issue – and there’s plenty on EMF on the site, too.
The problem is the media’s lack of understanding, and style of reporting, combined with the genuine (mercury-related) problems with the ORIGINAL version of MMR.
Our elder son is now 4, and I ploughed through all the MMR research I could get my hands on before we took the plunge. The only thing about the vaccination I wasn’t entirely happy with was the way the recommended age at vaccination had dropped quite radically since MMRii was introduced, the only decent explanation I was offered (by our excellent GP) being that they asked people in much earlier because it took most parents 6 months after the initial letter to get round to it.Not the finest reasoning…
I know. Ben’s a star. (He’s a B&W fan, too!)
The thing that troubles me about m.m.r is the fact that as a child I had measles,mumps and rubela as did most of the kids I grew up with and it hasnt done any of us any harm. It seems a bit of an unecesary risk to inject a small child with 3 seperate diseases at once as every vacination campain always produces serious problems with some children,it also bothers me the way people are emotionaly blackmailed by N.H.S. staff into having their children inoculated. Someone like Andy is intelligent enough to recearch the facts and make an imformed dicision,but what about the poor uneducated single mother?
Richard:
Like you I was unaffected by measles. However near where I live two unvaccinated children died of measles a few years ago. All because of Wakefield. I think he deserves no mercy.
The question to ask is about relative risks: the risk of a bad reaction to the vaccination versus the risks from the diseases themselves. The latter are much more frequent and worse. So vaccinating is the better choice by the proverbial mile.
“It seems a bit of an unecesary risk to inject a small child with 3 seperate diseases at once”
A classic example, alas, of the ignorance prevailing. No-one is injected with diseases, at least not live ones. Vaccine reactions are normally NOT an outbreak of the ‘disease’ concerned, but some other kind of allergy or response to the packaging of the immunising agent. And the risk of this is FAR lower than that of catching a virulent and potentially-fatal disease if immunisation is not maintained.
Frankly, people ought to be ’emotionally blackmailed’ into it, just like we ’emotionally blackmail’ them into wearing seatbelts – people have been killed by them, too, you know.
The problem is that uninformed theorising like Richard’s is what all the parents and similarly ignorant columnists and campaigners are doing.
I have a good friend who has a tendency to listen to uninformed journalists on important matters and decided against MMR.
Now, when it come to other people’s children there is a limit to what one can say but I expressed dismay.
Her reasoning was that while she knew that MMR was of great benefit to the population as a whole, arranging for an MMR was an active decision and, even if the odds were astronomical that it caused autism, she would have to live with that decision for the rest of her life, should it turn out to be the case.
She went private and had separate jabs at around £100 a shot. When she went back for the second shot the price had gone up to £300.
Thing is, parents with children in that age group are mostly too young to remember that measles and mumps were devastating and frequently fatal ailments that could sweep through whole areas. Autism, on the other hand, is one of the current terrors parents watch anxiously for. They tend to think of it as a remote chance of spots and a fever, against a possible lifetime of isolation, guilt and loss.
This is one of those rare occassions when I don’t ‘blame the parents’. I blame irresponsible and egotistical journalists who pontificate on matters they know nothing about. And cynical medicos making a quick buck.
Oh, Richard – honestly. It doesn’t matter that measles didn’t do you any harm; the fact that it didn’t do you any harm does not mean that it doesn’t do anyone any harm. Measles is a dangerous disease; it can be fatal. Did you even read the article I linked to?
@Richard – Most children who get MMR have no reactions beyond the way children usually react to being pricked with a sharp object. By your own specious “reasoning,” then, MMR is harmless.
I suspect practical epidemiology is beyond you, Richard, but just in case, do take the opportunity to educate yourself on why vaccination is mandatory:
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec1181/index.htm
A half-assed vaccination campaign can be, in many cases, worse than none at all.
“Patients who consume vitamins, antioxidants and herbs by the bucketful commonly refuse to take medication recommended for high blood pressure or some other condition because they “don’t want to get hooked on tablets”.
I individually know a person who swears by homeopathic medicinal remedies notwithstanding the fact that she/he has recurrent high blood pressure/cholesterol levels. The person in question will not endure taking prescribed medication from the local doctor/chemist. I persistently supplicate with her/him to take – lecithin, which is a natural product. However, it is merely a waste of time. It just goes on deaf ears. It is painful for me to have to stand by knowing there is conventional help out there that will alleviate the persons ailments, but that she/he refuses to avail of it because of her/his alternative homeopathic beliefs.
I am sorry I just dont have the trust that some of you have in safe vacines, every vacination campain in history has left a small trail of devestation behind it what makes m.m.r. any differant? yes it is a gut reaction but sometimes gut reactions make sence,my mother had a gut reaction to being pescribed thalidomide when she was carying me (she didnt take it)
Dave are you serious people should be emotionaly blackmailed into vacination? I take it you aprove of that revolting advert with the baby on top of a mountain that the goverment sponsored with my tax money?
Abso-bloody-lutely. Ignorant cretins need all the help they can get to make the right decision. In case you hadn’t noticed, most family relations are conducted on the basis of implicit and frequently explicit emotional blackmail, it’s the common currency of everyday social intercourse, why not put it to good use for a change?
To G.Tingey:
There has been work done on the number of simultaneous attacks on the immune system of children, and it comes out orders of magnitude higher than the 3 in MMR.
The idea that increasing cleanliness causes problems with the immune system, most commonly in the case of asthma, is the opposite of what you wrote: the idea is that modern children are not exposed to enough attacks on their immune systems and so the immune system, for lack of something to do, attacks the body itself.
“It is a massive overload of the child’s immune system – and very likely to produce an outbreak of allergies and sensitivities to substances a few years’ down the line.
Hence the massive increase in allregies, even though our lives are getting “cleaner” if you see what I mean.”
Funny, because that isn’t what studies like Roost et al 2004, or Bremner et al 2007 suggest. You got any evidence for your claim?
Also, the hygeine hypothesis you allude to is that avoidance of infections in childhood biases TH1/TH2 balance to allergic responses, rather than that immunisations per se cause allergies.
May I recommend Koppen et al 2004 (Vaccine):
“In summary, the available data indicate that measles vaccination is not associated with an increased risk of atopic disease.”
Mumps can cause hearing loss, in my case total unilateral hearing loss. This is not an insignificant disability; it can lead to headache, depression, and social isolation. Many types of employment are difficult for me because of my hearing impairment. I was grateful that MMR was available for my own three children.
Richard, I’m having a hard time understanding how massive reductions in rates of infection and death equate to ‘a wave of destruction’… Care to offer any pointers? Thatidomide (which you seem to be citing as an example) was an antiemetic, not a vaccine, and as such is irrelevant to the debate. (Not to mention that the coincidental rightness of your mother’s ‘gut reaction’ to thalidomide has no kind of bearing on things either…)
my misquote, should have been ‘trail of destruction’…
Dave ignorant cretins can make all the decisions they want for themselves,my problem is that these same cretins make these decisions on behalf of their children!
Experts said thalidomide was safe!every time I see a goverment minister telling me how safe m.m.r.is I cant help but think of the image of Selwin Gummer with the big mac telling the public that beef was safe and all the experts agree with him.
To G.Tingey:
I do not think combined vaccines “overload” the immune system. To justify such a claim you would have to show the “load” from MMR is greater than some baseline and the only work I’ve seen shows it to be about 1000 times less that what the immune system deals with normally.
To Richard: why have you not addressed the posts pointing to the dangers of measles and mumps ?
Richard: If so, it is better, then, that such decisions be taken by an ignorant cretin who has been emotionally blackmailed by someone who knows what they’ve been talking about, as opposed to some woo-woo merchant or New Age spiv…. Think of the children!
@Richard — either you vaccinate, and some small number of people are injured by the vaccine; or you don’t, and diseases run unchecked, and some rather larger number of people suffer lasting damage. Or die.
It’s a simple matter of the lesser of two evils. No one is saying that the risk of vaccination is zero. We stopped vaccinating for smallpox for a reason — the risk of the disease is now zero, barring a very ballsy terrorist, and hence less than the risk of vaccination.
Hmm…the risk of smallpox isn’t zero any more, is it? Because there’s a large stockpile of it in a lab in Russia somewhere?
Ray yes I agree but dont b.s people and tell them it is safe!
Dave so your position is that the ends justify the means?
To G. Tingey:
Is that “overload” or just plain overload? The latter implies you have measured how much load the system in question can take so please provide the technical references.
The reasons for preferring combined vaccines over single shot are
firstly because it is easier for parents who have fewer clinic visits to arrange and to remember; and secondly because betweenthe multiple visits there is still the risk of infection- it’s better to get protection as quickly as possible.
To Richard: please explain why you ignore the risks of infection by measles, mumps etc. It’s not enough only to concentrate on the (much smaller) risk of adverse reaction to vaccination.
Richard: when the ends and means are as stated here, yes. Were we discussing mass murder for the sake of producing racial purity, on the other hand, I’d go with ‘neither’. Everything, as they say, is a situation.
But, if you give a small child a much bigger dose, of several vaccines at once ( which is what effectively MMR is) you stand a much greater chance of triggering off an unwanted response. Evidence?
As Paul Power says, there is no evidence (that I know of; would be very interested if you can cite any) for the claim that the MMR is any sort of “overload”. Our immune system evolved in conditions when infants were being bombarded with antigens all the time, so there is no a priori reason to hypythesis an “overload”.
G. Tingey, might I suggest that you don’t actually know what you’re talking about.
A true allergy (e.g. anaphylaxis) will happen whether or not the allergen is included along with another vaccine.
I’m not sure what an ‘overload’ immune reaction is, and I’m rather inclined to believe that you don’t either. You often hear references to this sort of thing, but invariably they are based on uninformed lay theorising about how immune systems work.
As for combined vaccines – there is evidence that if you don’t give them together that you have to wait several weeks to months to get maximal efficacy from the next vaccine.
I reiterate my question above – what evidence does G. Tingey base his claims on?
G.T.
since you seem to have been thinking about this issue for a while (at least since 2002 from the looks of it) I expect you have had the chance to find some evidence to support your claims, and to have familiarised yourself with the evidence (e.g. above) against it.
Very slipery slope Dave?
P.M. if you need more evidence than G.T. and my gut provide my wife has a bad feeling about m.m.r. and my neibour says he thinks its very ify and if that does not sway you the bloke on the corner says it is an abomination before god.
Yes, Richard, that *is* the name of a logical fallacy…
But to take you seriously for a moment, by that standard of argument, requiring a passport for overseas travel is only a step away from Auschwitz, while the gulag lurks behind every requirement of the Highway Code. See where slippery slopes get you?
G Tingey,
What on earth are you on about? Resting the metabolism of a child between vaccinations? Bunkum. Like Sokal, but not a joke.
This just goes to show the harm of knowing a few medical/scientific terms without having the understanding of the science itself.
Evidence suggests that multiple vaccines do not overwhelm young infants’ immune systems. In fact, infants have the ability to deal with up to 10,000 antigens at a time and modern vaccination schedules actually expose children to fewer antigens now than they did in the 1960s.
Offit PA, Quareis J, Gerber MA, Hackett CJ, Edgar EK, Kollman TR, et al. Addressing parents concerns: Do multiple vaccines overwhelm or weaken the infant’s immune system? Pediatrics 2002;109:124–9.
Lying to people for the greater good is a little differant than the highway code Dave?
Richard:
Since you still won’t address the risk from measles in particular, I have to say you are being irrational.
As for G. Tingey’s comments being “evidence” , evidence is the most prominent thing absent from his posts.
Thank Anthony for the reference to the paper with the “10,000 antigens at a time”.
So do I take it that GT hasn’t got anything to back up his claims?
Looks that way, doesn’t it.
GT is on very thin ice around here. GT needs to do better.