Measles outbreak

[bstach]

Can't believe nobody has posted this yet. There hasn't been a good vaccination thread for a while:

 

http://www.king5.com/localnews/stories/NW_050408HEB_measles_alert_SW.caa3af67.html

 

I think things are going to get worse. Much worse, since Jenny McCarthy was on Oprah promoting her book there is going to be untold millions of spawn out there running around not vaccinated.

 

I think its time to take your tin foil hat off and get vaccinated.

 

Discuss.

[fenderfour]

already vaccinated along with rabies, yellow fever, and anything else you can be vaccinated for these days.

 

I AM INVINCIBLE!

[kevbone]

Is it possible to be vaccinated from Republicans?

[pink]

you must be injected by one, bend over kevbone.

[kevbone]

you must be injected by one, bend over kevbone.

 

Ready and waiting.......

[JayB]

Can't believe nobody has posted this yet. There hasn't been a good vaccination thread for a while:

 

http://www.king5.com/localnews/stories/NW_050408HEB_measles_alert_SW.caa3af67.html

 

I think things are going to get worse. Much worse, since Jenny McCarthy was on Oprah promoting her book there is going to be untold millions of spawn out there running around not vaccinated.

 

I think its time to take your tin foil hat off and get vaccinated.

 

Discuss.

 

Amazing stuff. Quite depressing.

 

Heartland of Darkness...

[Bug]

And they should all buy MLU's.

[G-spotter]

Get vaccinated against the "obesity virus" while you're at it.

[Recycled]

You've got your own virus to worry about:

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080509/wl_canada_nm/canada_train_col

[archenemy]

Before I travel overseas, I always research the recommended vacc's for the country and I get them. I cannot imagine anyone would be willing to risk getting any disease that they could be vaccinated against--no matter where they live.

[mneagle]

I take care of an elderly lady who has suffered her whole life from chronic lung disease following an episode of measles pneumonia as a kid, before the vaccine was available. The last time I saw her I had some extra time and I asked her about what she thought about people worrying about autism from the MMR. She actually started to cry while describing what it was like to live during a time when the vaccine wasn't around and so many kids were sick and some ended up dying or having life-long illnesses like hers. She couldn't believe that anyone would be cruel enough to not vaccinate their children.

[G-spotter]

Before I travel overseas, I always research the recommended vacc's for the country and I get them. I cannot imagine anyone would be willing to risk getting any disease that they could be vaccinated against--no matter where they live.

 

Oh? seems like a lot of parents are willing to take those risks for their kids. Not to mention the HPV vaccine?

[sobo]

http://www.king5.com/localnews/stories/NW_050408HEB_measles_alert_SW.caa3af67.html

 

Discuss.

 

...The latest case is in a female student at Moses Lake Christian Academy... and ...The other eight cases were in members of a family from Grant County who attended a "Generation Church Conference" in Kirkland in late March...

 

I think the inference here is obvious.

 

We haven't had a good religious spray event discussion in a long time either...

[JayB]

The anti-Vaccination fever seems to have caught with the nut-cases on both sides. Plenty of homeopathovegorgano folks on the anti-vaccine train these days as well.

 

There's a fine line out there that I don't want to cross when it comes to the power of the state to enforce compulsory medical treatments of any kind - but I do think its entirely reasonable for school districts, health insurance companies, employers to decline admission to people who have "opted out" of vaccination against diseases. If someone wants to live in a "state of nature," I'm more than happy for them to indulge that fetish on their own so long as they're prepared to deal with the consequences.

 

When it comes to children, I think the question gets tougher - since any parent who knowingly let their child die of diabetes for ideological reasons should be tried for murder just as surely as if they'd beaten or starved them to death - but exposure to potential harm at some point in the future is something more nebulous than direct harm, and I don't think that this warrants state compulsion or prosecution.

 

But back to the matter at hand - if you had told people in the early 20th century that by the end of the century we'd have developed treatments that would make everyone immune to the diseases that had been ravaging humanity for all of eternity, and then told them that parents were denying their children these vaccines, and explained their rationale for doing so - I can only imagine what their response would be...

[Fairweather]

I generally support compulsory vaccinations that protect against easily and passively transmissible serious diseases for the greater good, but do you recall the cash that exchanged hands and Clinton Administration attempts to require Chicken Pox vaccines for public school admission? Chicken Pox!. Or that current goof ball Republican Governor in Texas who signed off on mandatory HPV vaccines for school aged girls...right after he received a "contribution" from the pharmaceutical company that produces it?

[bstach]

Autism is pretty harsh, too. I think the feared MMR/Autism link is freaking alot of people right now. My wife works with children and has noticed a frightening increase in the number of kids with autistic tendancies. I'm not implicating the MMR, but something must be going on to cause this very real increase.

 

How hard is it to get individual Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccines - that could be what it takes to get this group back on the vaccination train.

[rob]

My wife works with children and has noticed a frightening increase in the number of kids with autistic tendancies. I'm not implicating the MMR, but something must be going on to cause this very real increase.

 

Of course, studies indicate that there is no link....

 

I don't see why people are freaked out about the autism link -- thimerisol has basically been removed from current vaccines intended for young children, anyway. Moot.

 

I guess it's understandable, though. People want something to blame.

Edited May 10, 2008 by rob

[JayB]

Autism is pretty harsh, too. I think the feared MMR/Autism link is freaking alot of people right now. My wife works with children and has noticed a frightening increase in the number of kids with autistic tendancies. I'm not implicating the MMR, but something must be going on to cause this very real increase.

 

How hard is it to get individual Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccines - that could be what it takes to get this group back on the vaccination train.

 

I think it's worth noting that increased incidence and increased diagnosis are two very different things. Take a gander at the stats for "ADHD" in the US in the 1960s versus the present, or compare virtually any industrialized nation with demographics similar to the US in this decade.

 

With regards to autism, I'm not entirely convinced that what we're seeing isn't a consequence of an increased awareness of all of the manifestations of autism here, rather than any actual increase in the incidence of the disorder. Virtually every child in the world who isn't an inhabitant of a festering, god-forsaken shithole that's relapsed into a state of barbarism and madness - or never emerged out of it - gets vaccinated as a child, and I suspect a substantial portion of these get the same vaccines. The only place where this autism-vaccination hysteria has manifested itself are those places where people no longer have a living memory of watching their children die before their eyes after succumbing to entirely preventable diseases.

 

Dealing with an autistic child looks like a protracted, life-long nightmare to me - and I have an enormous amount of sympathy for anyone who is unfortunate enough to have to shoulder that burden. However, ignoring the indisputable facts concerning the safety and efficacy of the single most beneficial medical intervention in the history of mankind and flattering the anti-scientific delusions brought forth in response to this bizarre, destructive, and profoundly irrational manifestation of their grief is something that any sane society should denounce and resist.

[ericb]

Autism is pretty harsh, too. I think the feared MMR/Autism link is freaking alot of people right now. My wife works with children and has noticed a frightening increase in the number of kids with autistic tendancies. I'm not implicating the MMR, but something must be going on to cause this very real increase.

 

How hard is it to get individual Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccines - that could be what it takes to get this group back on the vaccination train.

 

The MMR autism link is certainly causing pause. Our 11-month old is coming up on his MMR vaccination soon. I think the reason people are looking at MMR is more about the timing of when the MMR is given, and when symptoms of Autism begin to appear.

 

The thing is, if you start asking yourself what 1st world children are exposed to today vs. 20 years ago....well shit. Think about our diet, chemicals, radiation.....

 

 

[STP]

When it comes to children, I think the question gets tougher - since any parent who knowingly let their child die of diabetes for ideological reasons should be tried for murder just as surely as if they'd beaten or starved them to death - but exposure to potential harm at some point in the future is something more nebulous than direct harm, and I don't think that this warrants state compulsion or prosecution.

 

Not murder but second-degree reckless homicide, a charge that carries a punishment of up to 25 years in prison.

 

The Neumanns’ daughter, Madeline Kara Neumann, died March 23 from complications of diabetes that were treatable, according to a medical examiner. Kara, 11, had not been to a doctor since age 3, and her parents told investigators that they did not know she had diabetes, police said.

--http://www.religionnewsblog.com/21296/madeline-neuman

 

Because there was a death involved, Falstad said she had to consider homicide charges rather than neglect charges.

 

Not neglect?

 

As far as autism, I read recently that there is a more likely causal link between the child's autism and the parent's mental health, eg, one parent suffers from undiagnosed (and perhaps mild?) schizophrenia. So, per that line of reasoning, is genetic screening in order if the link is congenital?

[JayB]

I think that you are largely correct about the fact that no small part of the confusion here is a consequence of the fact that this vaccine is given right around the time that it becomes possible to differentiate between a normal baby and an autistic one.

 

Autism aside - I think that you can make a reasonably good case that the roster of objective threats that imperil the health and well being of first world children is both smaller, and more abundantly characterized at this point than at any time in human history. I think on the whole, we're much more aware of and better able to detect and control acutely toxic substances in the environment than we were in - say - the early 70's. The air and water are cleaner, the food is safer, the etc. Ditto for our ability to protect children from head injuries, drowning, electric shock - you name it.

 

When it comes to the subjective hazards that children have to contend with on account of parents that are simultaneously overindulgent and overprotective - there are an awful lot of kids today that face a gauntlet quite a bit more formidable than anything that most of us had to face while cruising down to the 7-11 sans helmets, walking past the creepy dude who'd spent the past 9 months of his life trying to log the high-score on Galaga, and buying some Cokes with the pull-top lids before setting off to play in the vacant lot next to the junkyard.

 

 

[Hugh Conway]

But back to the matter at hand - if you had told people in the early 20th century that by the end of the century we'd have developed treatments that would make everyone immune to the diseases that had been ravaging humanity for all of eternity, and then told them that parents were denying their children these vaccines, and explained their rationale for doing so - I can only imagine what their response would be...

 

Hell, go to India where people still die of some of those dieseases and tell them the same retarded anti vaccination tripe.

[mneagle]

As stated above, well done population based studies have shown no link between autism and the MMR...ever...with or without thimerisol.

 

So why are people still blaming the vaccine? I think it has to do with the history of how western medicine used to explain (and some still believe explains) autism. They blamed the mother. The classic description of autism included a "refrigerator mother" as the cause for the child's affliction. The mechanism was emotional damage to the child caused by the mother not giving the child adequate love and affection to develop properly.

 

It only makes sense to me that we are now experiencing a backlash from mothers who are turning the tables and blaming western medicine (vaccines). Unfortunately, I believe neither is a correct explanation and both have diverted attention away from the core issue of understanding, preventing and treating autism.

[murraysovereign]

My wife works with children and has noticed a frightening increase in the number of kids with autistic tendancies. I'm not implicating the MMR, but something must be going on to cause this very real increase.

 

I think one possible explanation is the western trend toward deferred childbearing in recent decades. Motherhood beyond your mid-thirties used to be relatively uncommon. Now we've got women having children well into their forties, and I understand there's a pretty clear statistical correlation between birth defects of various kinds and the age of the mother.

 

How much of this increase in autism is occurring among children whose mothers were in their twenties vs those in their later thirties and on?

[bstach]

As stated above, well done population based studies have shown no link between autism and the MMR...ever...with or without thimerisol.

 

Can you point me to these studies? I'm interested in seeing how in depth this has been studied.