The decision to vaccinate my children has been vindicated by very solid science in the years since that uncomfortable moment with a nurse and my baby back in 2002. Since then, vaccines have continued to do their amazing work, quietly and without much fanfare. Every day, vaccines prevent the deaths of countless children worldwide. Vaccines may have saved my children's lives as well. Unfortunately, irrational fears about vaccines have not gone away.
Anyone who researches the supposed link between vaccines and autism is likely to be surprised by how one-sided the controversy is. I certainly was. Mainstream medical science has evidence and credible studies to show that vaccines are not linked to autism. Meanwhile, the antivaccine activists fight on, continuing to rely on nothing more than fear and misplaced rage.
It is difficult to criticize parents of autistic children who condemn vaccines when already they are so burdened by challenges. One might feel the urge to give them a break and let them do or say whatever they want. But they need to hear the truth too. And their protests against vaccines, no matter how well intentioned, can lead to the deaths of children. It's also tragic that some parents compound their problems by blaming medical science and then running into the clutches of quacks and con artists who are all too willing to sell them the latest flavor of snake oil. By blaming vaccines—without proof—parents are most likely pursuing a dead-end path and discouraging other parents from vaccinating their children. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe that their hearts are in the right place, but their minds clearly are not. Attacking vaccines is not something to take lightly. Vaccines have probably saved more lives than any other form of medicine in history. One would think it would take a mountain of damning evidence to turn people against something with a track record like that. But apparently it takes only a little misinformation and a lot of fear because increasing numbers of parents are choosing not to vaccinate their children. Today an estimated four out of ten parents in America choose not to give their children one or more recommended vaccines.1
DEADLY CONSEQUENCES
Heated debates that pit science against pseudoscience—evolution versus creationism, for example—rage on and on. But few of them rack up casualties and have the potential for mayhem like the anti-vaccine controversy. This particular clash between reason and irrational belief is literally killing children right now. Vaccination rates have plunged in parts of America and the United Kingdom because of misinformation and unjustified fears. According to the United Kingdom's Health Protection Agency, a drop in vaccination coverage levels has again made measles endemic in the UK after it had already been wiped out by vaccines decades ago.2
Much of the fears were stirred up in 1998 when British doctor Andrew Wakefield published research claiming that the measles vaccine causes autism. He said the vaccine inflamed intestines, causing harmful proteins to leak out that then made their way to the brain, where they caused autism.3 This generated considerable coverage in the mainstream media which, of course, sent waves of fear straight into the hearts of millions of parents. Many of them made the decision not to vaccinate their children as a result. Predictably, this was followed by outbreaks of preventable diseases that killed children. Soon after Wakefield's announcement, MMR vaccine rates dropped from nearly 90 percent to as low as 50 percent in some areas of London.4 Now comes the kicker: It turned out that Wakefield's research is garbage. Other scientists could not confirm his findings. Something was wrong, very wrong. But not only has his work been deemed scientifically flawed, it has ethical problems as well. Investigative journalist Brian Deer reported that Wakefield's study was funded by a lawyer who also was representing five of eight children used in the study for a suit against pharmaceutical companies. In 2010, the Lancet medical journal formally retracted Wakefield's study that they had published, and the General Medical Council removed Wakefield's name from the medical register. He can no longer practice medicine in England.5
In the late 1990s, antivaccination activists set their sights on a preservative used in some vaccines called thimerosal. No studies suggested that thimerosal might cause autism, but pharmaceutical companies removed it as a precaution anyway. Now, years later, autism rates have continued to rise. “After all the research,” writes Michael Specter in his book, Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, “thimerosal may be the only substance we might say with some certainty doesn't cause autism; many public health officials have argued that it would make better sense to spend the energy and money searching for a more likely cause.”6
Multiple studies have failed to find evidence of an autism-vaccine link. In Japan, the feared MMR “vaccine cocktail” was withdrawn and replaced by single vaccines. A study of thirty thousand children there found that autism rates continued to rise even in MMR's absence.7 Other countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, and Sweden removed thimerosal from vaccines only to see autism rates continue to rise. Meanwhile, researchers in Finland looked for an autism-vaccine link by analyzing the medical records of more than two million children. They found nothing.8
It seems to me that vaccines are victims of their own success. People who are fortunate enough to live in countries with strong vaccination programs have been lulled into a false sense of security. Diseases once feared are not so scary anymore. Measles, for example, does not strike fear in the heart of the typical American. But it's not a disease we should take lightly. It causes brain swelling and high fever and is often fatal. In the past, measles killed millions in Europe and America. It still kills more than one million children per year in the developing world today.9 Nevertheless, many parents are being scared away from the measles vaccine by warnings with no credible science behind them. The percentage of unvaccinated children in the United States has doubled since 1991.10 This is as infuriating as it is absurd. We are moving backward.
Dr. Paul Offit, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, is one of the world's leading experts on vaccines. He is also currently waging a professional war against the antivaccine movement. But it is also clearly personal for him. His frustration and concern for children are often readily apparent when he describes the irresponsible decision to deny vaccines. “The problem with waning immunization rates in the United States isn't theoretical anymore,” he told me. “Recent outbreaks of measles, whooping cough, mumps, and bacterial meningitis show a clear breakdown in population immunity. Children are now suffering the diseases of their grandparents. It's unconscionable.”11
MISPLACED FEARS
“Caught in the middle are children,” Offit writes in his book, Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All. “Recent outbreaks of measles, mumps, whooping cough, and bacterial meningitis have caused hundreds to suffer and some to die—die because their parents feared vaccines more than the disease they prevent.”12
Maybe this would not have happened if more of us were aware of the constant assault we are under from dangerous viruses and bacteria. Microscopic monsters have killed far more people than all of history's wars combined. Some of the most important events in history involved disease. European contact with the New World, for example, is a story of germs and disease as much as or more than anything else. One thing is certain: too many people in the United States are unaware of their own recent history. Offit writes:
In the early 1900s, children routinely suffered and died from diseases now easily prevented by vaccines…. Americans could expect that every year diphtheria would kill twelve thousand people, mostly children; rubella (German measles) would cause as many as twenty thousand babies to be born blind, deaf, or mentally disabled; polio would permanently paralyze fifteen thousand children and kill a thousand; and mumps would be a common cause of deafness. Because of vaccines, all these diseases have been completely or virtually eliminated. But now, because more and more parents are choosing not to vaccinate their children, s
ome of these diseases are coming back.13
One likely reason for belief in an autism-vaccine connection is unfortunate timing. The first signs of autism often appear just around the time when children are getting routine vaccines. Parents, understandably, search for a cause for their child's disturbing symptoms, and vaccines seem a likely culprit. As often happens, however, correlation is easily confused with causation. Offit relates a story about a man who took his baby to get the DTP vaccine but after waiting in line for a time became tired and went home without ever getting the child vaccinated. Several hours later, the father discovered the baby had died in its crib, apparently of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. “One can only imagine what the father would have felt if [the baby] had received DTP several hours earlier. Presumably, no study would have convinced him of anything other than that the vaccine had killed his son.14
As a parent who once worried about vaccinating my own children, I sympathize with mothers and fathers who are not 100 percent sure what to do. I would advise parents who are worried about vaccines causing autism to play it safe and go with common sense and reason. Of course playing it safe means getting your children vaccinated. And it's only common sense and reasonable to protect your child from as many of the numerous diseases lurking out there as you can.
“THEY'RE NOT STUPID, JUST IGNORANT”
Nurse Shawn R. Browning is in the trenches on the frontlines of this issue. She has nearly two decades of experience in the medical field, most of it working with the US Navy. She regularly administers vaccines to military personnel and their families. She also has been involved with immunization education for many years. Irrational fears about vaccines are nothing new to her.
“I have had plenty of parents and patients that are misinformed about vaccines,” she said. “When they tell me they don't want to get a particular vaccine, the first thing I ask them is, ‘why’? I have heard everything from the thimerosal content is bad for you, vaccines cause autism—particularly the MMR vaccine—and everything in between. By law I give them the VIS [vaccine information statements], but in addition I also educate them on the pros of receiving the vaccine versus not. What I have learned is that more times than not, people are willing to get the vaccine once it is explained to them in words they can understand and relate to. They're not stupid, just ignorant. They have listened to their neighbors, the media, and everyone else and have formed an unjustified opinion. Drives me crazy! Many parents and patients have expressed their gratitude that someone has taken the time to explain things instead of just sticking a needle in them without any explanation. I think our particular patient population is more vaccine hesitant than antivaccine.”
Like most healthcare professionals, Browning is concerned that this reluctance to vaccinate might lead to major outbreaks of preventable diseases:
The biggest fear is that preventable diseases will rise to epidemic proportions again. Infants and children are going to die or be disabled because adults are ignorant and won't vaccinate themselves or their children. The outbreak of pertussis [whooping cough] is the latest. People think that since they are adults, they don't need a vaccine. Yet how many die from complications from the flu every year? [Influenza virus, the flu, kills as many as five hundred thousand people each year worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.15] It's very scary. We also have an obligation to get vaccinated to protect those [who] can't be vaccinated due to various reasons [such as immune system problems].
There was this mom [who] came into our clinic a little more than a year ago to get her one-year-old daughter her immunizations. The corpsman that brought them back to the room started to explain the vaccines the child would be getting and their potential side effects to the mom. The mom politely interrupted the corpsman and proceeded to explain that this child was not her first baby. She had once been “one of those moms” who didn't believe in vaccines, and her first little girl had died when she got the measles. Just how do you respond to that? Your heart breaks.16
Offit adds, “The science is largely complete. Ten epidemiological studies have shown MMR vaccine doesn't cause autism; six have shown thimerosal [preservative once used in vaccines] doesn't cause autism; three have shown thimerosal doesn't cause subtle neurological problems; a growing body of evidence now points to the genes that link to autism; and despite the removal of thimerosal from vaccines in 2001, the number of children with autism continues to rise.”17
In 1997, 4,138 children entered California kindergartens without being vaccinated because they had exemptions. By 2008, that number had more than doubled. Parents citing religious or philosophical objections to having their children vaccinated are putting not only their own children at risk but the lives of many others as well.18 Babies who are too young to be vaccinated can be infected and die. Children who have immune system problems and cannot be vaccinated have to rely on others around them to be vaccinated in order to keep the diseases at bay. When vaccination rates drop, danger to these vulnerable groups increases. According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) expert, a parent's decision to refuse vaccination means his or her child is thirty-five times more likely to get measles and twenty-two times more likely to come down with pertussis (whooping cough). Please don't think for a second that this is exaggeration or fearmongering. Children are paying a price for this madness in small pockets across America now, and the potential for much greater suffering is real. In April 2011, for example, a private school in Virginia had to close because half its students were infected with pertussis. None of the children had been vaccinated. Many of the parents had obtained religious exemptions that officially sanctioned their negligence.19 News of several recent infant deaths in California due to pertussis either had not reached those parents or failed to impress them.
Why subject children to this unnecessary danger? To protect them from autism? Very large, thorough, and expensive scientific studies did not find any reason to conclude that vaccines cause autism. Therefore it simply makes no sense to withhold such important protection from a child.
GO DEEPER…
Books
Mnookin, Seth. The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011.
Offit, Paul A. Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.
Offit, Paul A. Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All. New York: Basic Books, 2010.
Offit, Paul A., and Charlotte A. Moser. Vaccines and Your Child: Separating Fact from Fiction. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.
Other Sources
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintains an informative collection of articles and fact sheets about vaccines at www.cdc.gov/vaccines.
If God has spoken, why is the world not convinced?
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Some books that promote science and skepticism dodge claims about gods being real. Not this one. While I understand that challenging belief in gods can be seen as rude or out of bounds, I feel that it makes no sense to take on UFOs and psychics when belief in gods makes a far greater impact on the world than those things. Unlike religion, for example, hatred, wars, and terrorism are not often inspired by belief in Bigfoot and the Bermuda Triangle. Yes, belief in gods is deeply important to billions of people. Yes, one ought to be aware of and respect, to a point, the emotional attachment many people have to their belief in the existence of a god or gods. But it only makes sense to try and ensure that something taken so seriously by so many people is actually valid in the first place. This is not, or should not be, a question for skeptics alone. Don't believers also want to know if their gods actually exist or not?
I hope readers who believe in a god or gods will not be offended by ideas raised in this chapter. Nothing here is meant to insult, only to provoke thought. Believers who respect truth and place a high value on reality should find nothing upsetting here. A common misconception is tha
t nonbelievers claim to have disproved the existence of all gods. This is not accurate. I can't even imagine how one could do such a thing. For example, short of exploring the entire universe and all possible dimensions, how can anyone ever really know if the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl exists or not? The best a skeptic can do is point to the absence of proof and go from there.
It might help if believers recognized the common ground they share with nonbelievers. When it comes to gods, everyone is skeptical and everyone is a nonbeliever. It's just a matter of degree. I have met Muslims in the Middle East who were hardcore skeptics—about the claims of Hinduism and Buddhism. They were quick to point out many sound reasons to doubt the more extraordinary claims of those belief systems. I know a Jewish person who dismisses Mormonism as a collection of totally unsubstantiated claims put forth by a questionable source. South American Christians tell me that Islam fails the test of analysis and reason. Catholics have explained to me that Protestants are way off course and have failed to prove their claims. Some Protestants say the same about Catholics. Yes, when it comes to religion, every believer is a skeptic—almost. The only difference is that they stop analyzing, doubting, and asking questions when their thoughts arrive at the doorstep of their own religion. That's where critical thinking ends and faith begins.
THE GODS MUST BE LAZY
If only the gods had made the effort to clearly establish their existence and communicated their desires to everyone on Earth. How hard could that be for a god? But either the gods are not real or they have chosen to be elusive and utterly confusing, leaving us to spend thousands of years doubting, bickering, and slaughtering one another over religious differences. This conflict is impossible to escape given the state of religion: Millions of gods have been said to be real and none of them proven to exist. And there can be no compromise. At the very least, everyone must reject most gods. There is no person on Earth—alive today or at any time in the past—who would or could believe in every god. It is impossible to believe in all gods because nobody even knows all the gods. There are simply too many of them to keep up. People have declared so many gods to exist over the last several thousand years that nobody has been able to keep an accurate count, much less list names and attributes. These gods, and the hundreds of thousands of religions that proclaimed them to be real, are far too contradictory to be reconciled under one roof. Jesus either is the only way to heaven, or he is not. Allah is the one true god with no son, or he is not. There are millions of Hindu gods, or there are not. Ramses II either was a god, or he was not. Zeus was top god and really did hurl lightning bolts down from Mount Olympus, or he did not. (This could go on for thousands of pages, but I'm sure you get the point.) One or some of these gods may be real. Maybe none are real. What we can be sure of is that they cannot all be real. No wonder belief in gods has been a source of constant conflict throughout history.
50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True Page 24
