Andrew Goddam Wakefield still won’t shut up (you can get around the paywall here):
A measles outbreak infected 1,219 people in southwest Wales between November 2012 and early July, compared with 105 cases in all of Wales in 2011.
One of the infected was Ms. Jenkins, whose grandmother, her guardian, hadn’t vaccinated her as a young child. “I was afraid of the autism,” says the grandmother, Margaret Mugford, 63 years old. “It was in all the papers and on TV.”
[…] Dr. Wakefield says he questioned MMR’s safety but strongly urged parents to continue with a measles-only vaccine. “MMR doesn’t protect against measles,” he says. “Measles vaccine protects against measles.” He says he stands by his work despite contrary conclusions by other scientists. He didn’t respond to subsequent requests for comment on his license revocation.
His handmaiden of idiocy is Jenny McCarthy, who wrote the foreword to Wakefield’s book in 2010, the year he lost his medical license for lying in his anti-vaccine Lancet paper. McCarthy has just been hired to host The View. I hope we can get a centrist, bipartisan consensus that every advertiser on that show should be boycotted until they fire her moronic, lying ass.
Baud
Mistermix, since children can only get measles after they are born, why should we care about them?
Obligatory ETA: I blame Obama.
LittlePig
Hey, they may be dead, but they don’t have autism.
Peak Wingnut won’t cause the end, Peak Stupid will.
Michele C.
And, of course, they continue to give him a platform, interviewing him and publishing what he says. I get it, they add the bit about his license revocation, but people read, “I shouldn’t give MMR.”
4tehlulz
Obama did MMR.
NickT
There ought to be some law mandating sharp punishments for people who issue medical advice without possessing a doctor’s license.
gene108
Djinni’s out of the bag.
Doesn’t matter how much you protest The View, anti-vaccination aligns with people’s fears about “better living through chemistry” and since it is irrationality looking for a rational excuse to do it, there’s no convincing people to vaccinate their kids.
CorbinDallasMultipass
Over at the Chattanooga Times Free Press, they ran an editorial in favor of a Boycott of The View:
They also link to JennyMcCarthyBodyCount.com which puts the danger in clear numbers. (edit to acknowledge Mr. Mix did as well)
Ben Cisco
@gene108: And thus, the herd will be thinned.
The sad part is that someone’s stupidity will affect those who had no part in the decision.
Punchy
To her credit, it is (or was) quite a very nice ass.
Mike E
I’m old enough to have contracted mumps and rubella (but not at the same time, thankfully)…just like innumerate people shouldn’t make economic policy, Jenny should keep her antibiotics-resistant gonorrhea laden yap shut.
dr. bloor
I never followed her crusade that closely–did she actually lie? I just filed her under “moron with a cause.”
Shakezula
McCarthy’s an idiot, but I don’t blame her for the idiocy of the people who listened to her. This isn’t the case of someone following the questionable advice of a medical professional they know or even a friend. These people followed the questionable advice of a complete stranger known for I forget what (MTV hosting?) when making decisions about the care of their children.
@NickT: 1st Am. issues aside, where do you draw a line between me saying “Put a band-aid on that” and Jenny M. saying “Don’t give your kids vaccines argle-blargh!”
Violet
It’s pretty easy for me to boycott The View since I never watch it. I like the idea of putting pressure on sponsors. Especially those selling any kids and baby-related products being advertised on the show–diapers, baby food, etc.
lonesomerobot
The fact that it was revealed that her son probably doesn’t actually even have autism (she has admitted that he has been diagnosed with Landau-Kleffner syndrome) is very rarely mentioned in these reports… I wonder why? NPR’s All Things Considered had a segment on her recently and made no mention of it, even though it would have been very relevant to their report.
Violet
@lonesomerobot: Don’t mess with The Narrative!
Comrade Mary
Toronto Public Health is campaigning to dump her from The View, too.
But it might be too late. Most media are now talking about this as a “controversy” rather than “platform for dangerous bullshit”. Two sides, doncha know.
Comrade Mary
@Ben Cisco: It’s not just the children of idiots who will be affected, but the children of people who WANT to vaccinate their kids, but who can’t because these children have genuine medical reasons to skip it. They need herd immunity and those assholes are taking it from them out of stupidity and fear.
LS
Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name!
Maude
@dr. bloor:
She’s a true believer and a fanatic. She will not ever give up on this.
Shakezula
@lonesomerobot: Oh FFS. And NPR has removed all doubts about its uselessness by failing to follow up on that.
Donut
@LittlePig:
Apparently McCarthy’s son may have never had autism, either.
quannlace
Moi aussi. I also had the measles when I was about nine. (I was a year or two too early for the vaccine.) It was NO picnic. Though at the time I remember being more upset that I wasn’t allowed to read or watch TV.
Comrade Dread
We really are trying very hard to make ourselves extinct.
mistermix
@dr. bloor: Can someone be so stupid that they can’t lie? I guess that’s the question in all seriousness. If, for example, her son has been diagnosed with Landau-Kleffner syndrome (sounds like a seizure disorder rather than autism) but she rejects the diagnosis and continues to claim that her son has autism, is that a lie? Or is she just too fucking stupid to be able to lie?
Gex
Jenny McCarthy is one thing. Stupid idiots will be stupid idiots. The problem is the news media will not do anything to educate the population, and in fact will muddy the waters and make sure things with almost no evidence seem to have equal amounts of evidence for them as the other side. (climate change, vaccines, whatever).
“It was in all the papers and on TV.” Indeed. Hey it brought page clicks and sold rags, what else matters?
Violet
@Comrade Mary: The media will talk about “the controversy” about anything because it keeps people watching or clicking. A boycott is a longer term thing. For instance, the one against Rush LImbaugh is working, but it’s slow. He’s still on the air, but his advertisers are low-cost types that don’t bring much money. His negative image and poor ratings affects other shows and stations are complaining. He’s got a contract, but I expect things will change dramatically once that’s up.
If people want to boycott The View and the giving of a platform to Jenny McCarthy, they will be in for a long term fight. Advertisers must be named and shamed. And there has to be plenty of pressure over a period of time. Maybe ABC will wise up sooner, but at the moment they’re seeing “controversy” and thinking $$$$.
CONGRATULATIONS!
This was in the WSJ?
Oh good.
I enjoy it when stupid rich people acquire preventable diseases. Please proceed, Doc…errr, guy who used to be a doc.
Violet
@Gex: To be fair, you’ll see actual doctors on the news shows saying this anti-vaccine stuff is dangerous and based on bad or no science. But non-news shows, like The View and its ilk don’t do that kind of thing. They just bring people like her on, plus maybe add in a celeb doctor and claim “People have different opinions! The parent needs to decide what’s best for their child!”
SatanicPanic
@Shakezula: Playboy model. I’m generally not one of those “we’re doomed and America is full of idiots” people, but the fact that some people took medical advice from her and her dumbass former boyfriend (Jim Carey) is pretty hard to ignore.
Fred
It must be pointed out that a majority of people believe that stuff said on the TV must be true because, “They wouldn’t let ’em lie on TV like that.” How such great thinkers square that reasoning with all of the contradicory statements made on the TV Machine I don’t know but… And of course the big question is: Who are “THEY”?
RSA
Oh, sure, like getting a disease injected into your body will help avoid getting the disease in the future. What you really need to do is dilute the stuff until there’s not even the slightest trace detectable, and then take that. Thousands of old wives can’t be wrong.
kindness
Does anyone consider The View to be a significant reference point for our society? Does it really matter what any of the co-hosts say or think?
I don’t think so. Other than mocking Hassleback I had no cares over them of what they think.
Gin & Tonic
@RSA: Oh, great. Had a vegan purity troll last night, now you’ll conjure up the homeopathic purity trolls.
Gin & Tonic
@kindness: A significant reference point? Unfortunately, yes. Too many people will take their medical device from Oprah or The View or former Playboy models.
red dog
I am old enough to recall my mother making sure I was exposed to measles, mumps and chicken pox at an early age so I would not get them as an adult when they could have dire consequences. It was part of life and every winter one of those three would sweep through the school and we all survived staying home without TV. The only shots I got as a kid were for tetanus and later polio.
Gex
@Violet: That’s only being fair given the fact that the media fucked up in the first place. The fairest thing would have been for a claim with no real support to not have been raised to a level where we are simply glad when a doctor is allowed to tell people the truth about the issue.
PeakVT
@kindness: It matters to a lot of people, otherwise they wouldn’t watch and the show would be off the air.
opiejeanne
@red dog: and the smallpox vaccination, if you’re that old.
Flying Squirrel Girl
@RSA: Right! Because you can contract the same virus over and over again!
Gex
OT: I am greatly amused by the various financial institutions that are desperately trying to collect on Kate’s debts. They can call me all they want, but we weren’t married and I don’t own them shit. They got their money from me via tax cuts that came with the marriage amendment party.
A horrible way to get the last laugh on the banks. But if it’s unavoidable, I’m going to at least enjoy the laughs.
Comrade Mary
@red dog: I got measles (and chicken pox) early, too, and still have a couple of pock marks and memories of days of itchy misery. I would much rather have been vaccinated. I envy those of you young enough to get your shots.
Violet
@Gex: Oh yeah. I’m not for letting our loathsome media off the hook. They should never give these charlatans a platform.
MakeMeAnOffer
@Gex:
This.
The lazy-ass media refuses to do their job and is so invested in this “both sides” s**t, that they basically allowed McCarthy to spew her misinformation without correcting her or calling her on her lies.
Even when Wakefield was utterly discredited, she stood by her misinformation.
Thankfully I don’t need to boycott The View since I never watch it.
Shakezula
@SatanicPanic: Yes well, Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker built a multi-million dollar empire on rooking the rubes, who came back for more when the divine dollars for deluxe dog houses scam was exposed.
(See also the continued existence GOP.)
A certain portion of the population is stupid, it has always been stupid, it will always be stupid and we’re still here. My problem with this particular stupid is it is being inflicted on people who don’t have a say (the children of these credulous dipshits).
If the credulous dipshits forgo medical treatment for themselves on a celeb’s say so, I don’t think I’d be the only one who didn’t care. (Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed Shield’s handing Cruise his ass when he mouthed off about anti-depressants for PPD, but I would just roll my eyes if someone cited Cruise as a reason they weren’t taking anti-depressants.)
RSA
I think what depresses me most about medical pseudoscience, aside from people dying before their time, is that it’s not all that hard. I think that eight years of primary school science education should be enough to understand the basic issues, and yet huge numbers of adults just go with their gut (and their fear, in the case of vaccinations).
IowaOldLady
@Gex: You go! Live by homophobia, lose money by homophobia.
Violet
@Gex: Small victories. Sorry has to be under such sad circumstances.
opiejeanne
@red dog: forgot the DPT. I’ll bet you got that one too.
schrodinger's cat
Doesn’t the View also have a flat earther on it? Or so I have heard. I remember watching it sometimes in the early days when it had Meredith Viera and Lisa Ling (sp?) have not seen it in quite a while
Anoniminous
All ABC gives a damn about is the number of eyeballs they can tout to advertisers. If that means killing off some people to boost the number of eyeballs, so be it.
In a predatory economic system we, the little people, are nothing but prey.
keestadoll
I don’t question vaccinations per-se, but up until 1985 there were three shots before kids entered school, now there are 16. I don’t think I’m a dipshit for questioning the necessity for every pharma-flavah-of-the-month before having my kids vaccinated. I think there needs to be a clear division in these discussions between those of us who are cautious and those like JM who throw the whole vaccination concept out the window.
fidelio
I’m betting most of you all hear know who Helen Keller was, right? If not for measles, It’s likely you’d have never had heard of her at all.
Measles can be nasty. The disease doesn’t have to kill you to mess you up.
Oh, and unless you’ve had boosters yourself, when your unvaccinated kid comes down with whopping cough, you can catch it from them! Good times, good times.
NickT
@Shakezula:
Reckless endangerment of the public. Actions should have consequences.
Comrade Mary
@keestadoll: It seems intuitive, doesn’t it, that it’s unfair to overload infant immune systems? But what seems intuitively obvious isn’t always correct. This comment from a few years ago gave me a whole new perspective on the frequency of vaccination and the way the human immune system works:
Credentials.
Francis
@keestadoll: keestadoll: so you’ve personally researched the cost-benefit of each vaccine on the recommended schedule? You’re an epidemiologist / statistician / pediatrician? If not, you may actually be a dipshit.
What, precisely, are you being cautious about?
rb
Gex, that is grim, and I’m sorry. But I do hope you get to revel in this bit of a it a little.
Roger Moore
@Gex:
The problem, though, is that Wakefield managed to get his fraudulent work published in a respectable scientific journal, so for quite a while there was something that looked like a genuine scientific controversy. If there’s a problem, it’s that our science journalism standards are so low that our journalists can’t tell the difference between a case like Wakefield’s and one like Michael E. Mann’s.
Mnemosyne
@Gex:
We had to instruct my mother-in-law to do the same thing (they were living together but had not remarried, in large part because of his debts). You have no legal obligation to pay those debts, so they have to try and get them paid from Kate’s estate. Oh, wait, she didn’t have one. Too bad, so sad, go fuck off, Bank of America.
I know it doesn’t make up for having to deal with the rest of the bullshit, but take your small victories where you can.
Emma
@red dog: moi, aussi. Every kid in my town attended a “measles play date” or two.
Roger Moore
@keestadoll:
Your figures are wrong. I happened to have my childhood vaccination record (from the early 1970s) handy, and I count 12 vaccinations (for 6 illnesses) before Kindergarten. And, quite frankly, I would have been better off to have been vaccinated for mumps and chicken pox rather than getting the diseases.
Emma
@Gex: Nice. Any small victory against the homophobes is a good one. But the price is too high, dammit.
mclaren
Fire her? Indict her for murder.
RedKitten
@Comrade Mary: Not to mention every parent with a newborn too young to be vaxxed. If either of my babies had contracted whooping cough, I would have personally ripped every blonde hair out of that bitch’s head.
Jebediah
@Gex:
To echo some other comments – too bad, so sad, if they had worked harder to get marriage equality passed, maybe they could collect.
Oh wait – their corporate contributions were to the GOP? Oh well. Can’t have it both ways.
The circumstances suck horribly, but if you can get the slightest joy out of telling them to fuck the fuck off, take it and don’t feel guilty!
keestadoll
@Roger Moore: Oops! You’re right. Correction: seven vaccinations given by mid-80’s. Now it’s as many as 20 shots by age two.
@Francis: tone unnecessary and exactly what I cautioned against.
Gin & Tonic
@keestadoll: No, that isn’t what you cautioned against. You said I think there needs to be a clear division in these discussions between those of us who are cautious and those like JM who throw the whole vaccination concept out the window. You may think there needs to be a clear division, but that doesn’t mean others have to agree. I, for one, do not see any division at all. Unless you are a trained epidemiologist, biostatistician or MD, your “caution” is based on nothing but woo.
le sigh
So I know no one wants to hear this because the media narrative has been set: Andrew Wakefield is history’s greatest monster who doesn’t want any child to be vaccinated.
Of course, that’s nonsense, as I learned the last time one of these measels epidemic stories was posted and I chose to look into it. Wakefield is not against vaccination or even the MMR. His position is clearly stated: parents should choose MMR over nothing, but individual vaccines over the MMR. For that, he is labeled “anti-vaccination” and considered to be worse than Hitler.
But why should facts disrupt a media narrative that people clearly love.
Roger Moore
@keestadoll:
You’re still conflating different things- the number of vaccinations vs. the number of shots- in a way that makes the numbers look bigger and scarier. Many vaccinations require multiple shots to be effective, so the number of shots has always been bigger than the number of diseases being vaccinated against. Yes, the number of both has been going up, but not nearly to the extent you’re implying. At the same time, kids today are getting protection against some quite nasty diseases that they were not protected from before.
To put it another way, what is your alternative proposal? It’s one thing to say that kids are getting too many shots, but the logical continuation of that thought is that we need to do away with some of the ones they’re getting now. So, which of the additional shots kids are getting today should we do away with?
Nicole
@keestadoll: Well, for one thing, some of these vaccinations didn’t exist prior to 1985. I wish they had. I got chicken pox in 1987, when I was 15, and lemme tell ya, it’s no fun getting it as a teenager. My brother got it right before me (he was 13) and his face looked like a surface relief map of the moon for the better part of a year afterward. And now, having had it, I, my brother, and millions of others get to look forward to a possible bout of shingles at some point in later life. Oh, herpes. You are truly the gift that keeps on giving.
You better believe I made sure my toddler got the chicken pox vaccine. New vaccines are not “of the month” fads; they are preventative treatments for diseases for which we previously didn’t have any preventative treatments. Our kids are luckier than we were.
le sigh
Again, no one wants to hear this, but here’s Jenny McCarthy on Larry King Live stating that parents should absolutely vaccinate for the measles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX-SCdjDOrA
Villago Delenda Est
@Fred:
When I was in the Army, I was one of THEY.
Villago Delenda Est
@Anoniminous:
DING DING DING DING DING
It’s all about the money, all the time. C.R.E.A.M.
MathInPA
@Shakezula:
Quite aside from my personal desire to avoid having anyone suffer, especially the children of these people, there are two words that should make everyone care– and, honestly, why the government very much should and might very well have the power to intervene, though I doubt the political will is there.
Herd Immunity
If I could, I would write those words in twenty-five foot tall letters of fire posted across the sky at sufficient intervals that everyone could see them, and make it mandatory to write an accurate, factually valid report on the subject before being allowed to comment on vaccinations online. People who don’t have their kids vaccinated increase the danger for those that do, and that makes it a public health concern.
Of course, there are idiots who sneer, “If my kid having the disease means your kid will, what use is it?” Well, asshole, it’s not a certainty that your stupidity will hurt other children. You just increase their risk significantly, and you don’t have the right to do so. This is pretty simple: if there are more people infected with the disease, the chances that a mutation which is significant enough to invalidate or at least have a higher chance of bypassing prior immunization is also greater. Once that happens, you’ve unleashed childhood hells for everyone else.
I don’t see this as a First Amendment issue. It’s been clear since very early on that the right to speak does not include the right to endanger others by that speech– the classic “shouting FIRE! in a crowded theater” argument. I don’t think it should be as vague as “any medical advice without a license,” but there should be a law (with significant but commensurate) punishment against disseminating false medical statements, regardless of your belief or intent in those statements, that cause a significant danger to others, and significant would have to be clearly defined.
This isn’t a case of “caution” or “controversy.” Regardless of the involvement of pharmaceutical companies, the science has been pretty clear on both the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines. As near as I can tell, the opposition either comes from vague/misleading statements, or from outright falsified data. Or irrelevant data. As has been said above, even if the numerical increase in vaccinations was accurate, that doesn’t make it significant. Refinements in the course of treatment could be one in addition to the point that others have already made about vaccinating against larger groups of ailments.
At this point, I’ve become grimly certain that we’re probably going to have to see, absent government intervention, more vaccinations. We are almost certainly going to see significant mutations and new diseases as a result, and I am terrified that there’s going to be a broader array of nasty, lingering effects. Sometimes, I wonder whether or not the pharmaceutical companies are funding McCarthy and her crowd; she’s certainly creating a situation in which more medication becomes necessary.
I used to be skeptical about the die-off/panic diseases that kept popping up in the cyberpunk stuff I read, like Tolliver’s Disease in GURPS: Cyberworld. It never seemed likely to me as a kid in the 80s and a teen in the 90s, that things would get that bad, that fast and that uncontrollably; a conceit too far in the creation of a dystopic future. I find it a significantly more believable aspect of grim future fiction now.
Violet
@MathInPA: A known big problem is the growing resistance to antibiotics and the lack of antibiotic development in the pipeline. There isn’t a lot of money in developing new antibiotics, so pharmaceutical companies aren’t investing in it. The ones we have are rapidly becoming ineffective. If you’re looking for dread diseases killing people, you might be on target except it could be mutated bacteria.
MathInPA
@Violet: Oh, sure, there’s that too, but that doesn’t make the solution “give credence to antivax maniacs” but “increase the amount of public funding for all forms of scientific research, including medical.” The antibiotic resistance problem isn’t an except, it’s an also in a different direction.
BruceJ
@MathInPA:
“I used to be skeptical about the die-off/panic diseases that kept popping up in the cyberpunk stuff I read, like Tolliver’s Disease in GURPS: Cyberworld. It never seemed likely to me as a kid in the 80s and a teen in the 90s, that things would get that bad, that fast and that uncontrollably; a conceit too far in the creation of a dystopic future. I find it a significantly more believable aspect of grim future fiction now.”
You were a kid at the very peak of the AIDS crisis. Things WERE getting bad, and uncontrollably so, how did you miss that?
MathInPA
@BruceJ: Partially insulation, and partially this constant buzz in what I was reading that there would be a cure, a cure, just around the corner, that now, totally, things were going to change, and little futurist me believed it.
FlyingToaster
@keestadoll:
And there’s sane caution — “Hi, I had this (expected) reaction to this vaccination in 19(mumble), and can we please make sure that it isn’t something my daughter has inherited?” versus “I’m not giving my kid the HIB vaccine because I never got it, and I’m fine.”
WarriorGirl has had one (count ’em, ONE) ear infection in her entire life. I had my tonsils out at six and a half and my brother had his out at 4 and a half because we were having 5 and 6 ear infections a YEAR. The difference is the HIB and pneumococcal vaccines. The additional vaccines have made a huge difference (when given) in the rates of various opportunistic infections, like ear and strep.
Do yourself a favor and qualify your concerns with some hard data — “this reaction to this vaccine”, or go educate yourself first. Otherwise, you sound like you’ve been listening to Jenny McCarthy.
The vaccination schedule is there for a reason. If you need a modification, you can sit down with your pediatrican (as I did), and walk through the family history of bad reactions to specific vaccines, and come up with a plan (in our case, giving the possible problem vaccine by itself two months after the others scheduled at the same time, no reaction meant that the next booster went on schedule). Pediatricians don’t want to hurt your child; they will work with any parent asking questions, who doesn’t reject the answers.
Vaccines have also changed significantly; both DTP and polio vaccines are less-reaction-inducing and more effective than they were back in 19(mumble). The MMR vaccine (and rubella immunity) fade after 12-15 years, so expect additional boosters to be specified for adults, much like the TdaP.