No Sacred Cows

by David G. McAfee

  Another reason the myth of an autism and vaccine connection persists is because of timing: children often begin showing signs of autism in their first few years of life, which is around the same time they might receive MMR inoculations. Because of this coincidence, some parents fall for a classic logical fallacy known as post hoc, ergo propter hoc, Latin for, “After this, therefore because of this,” which represents the flawed logic that serves as the basis for superstition itself. From this perspective of coincidental timing, we can see that saying vaccines cause autism is like saying puberty causes high school or that grey hair leads to death.

  Media has also played its role in the perpetuation of the alleged vaccine-autism link. Nobert Schwarz, provost professor of psychology and marketing at the University of Southern California, Dornsife College of Letters, Arts & Sciences, specializes in human judgment and writes about how misinformation regarding the MMR vaccine has spread online and in news media. He says false information of any kind “is difficult to correct.”

  “Once people have accepted an erroneous belief, they often hold on to it despite abundant evidence that speaks against it,” Schwarz said in response to a measles outbreak that affected at least 110 Californians between December 2014 and February 2015. “The repetition of misinformation makes media reports a conduit for false beliefs even when the report attempts to correct them. The better alternative is to only provide correct information without repeating erroneous claims.”

  So, what’s the harm? These people can believe what they want, right? That’s true, but vaccine denial doesn’t just hurt the deniers. Distrust for vaccines and other helpful technologies causes people to refrain from protecting their children, even if they themselves received childhood inoculations, and that can have even more disastrous effects when others become involved. When clusters of people refuse to get an important vaccination, it often leads to an outbreak of the disease that can cost lives. For example, California’s 2010 outbreak of whooping cough, or pertussis, which resulted in more than 9,000 cases and 10 deaths, was reportedly linked to groups of people refusing immunizations.48 In June 2014, California’s public health department said there had been 800 new pertussis cases in just two weeks, calling the problem an “epidemic.” Between January 1, 2014, and June 10, 2014, there had been more than 3,458 new cases, according to the agency.49

  Fortunately, some people do learn their lesson. A woman named Tara Hills from Ottawa, Canada, for instance, was a part of the anti-vaccination movement until she learned about the 113-case measles outbreak linked to Disney theme parks in California.50 After looking more closely at the evidence and discarding her biases, she decided to put together a catch-up vaccination schedule for her children. But before it could go into effect, all seven of her children began showing symptoms of whooping cough and they were placed in quarantine.51 Hills says her anti-vax tendencies stemmed from a firm distrust in “civic government, the medical community, the pharmaceutical industry, and people in general.”

  “By default, I had excluded all research available from any major, reputable organization,” Hills wrote in a blog entry called “Learning the Hard Way: My Journey from #AntiVaxx to Science.”52 “Could all the in-house, independent, peer-reviewed clinical trials, research papers and studies across the globe ALL be flawed, corrupt and untrustworthy?”

  The attitude of distrust Hills described is common among vaccine deniers and other conspiracy theorists, and is exhibited in a variety of situations. We saw this clearly in 2015 when a woman died from measles in Clallam County, Washington,53 and anti-vaxxers insisted the death was caused (or faked) by the government.54 Dr. Bob Sears, a pediatrician, author of The Vaccine Book and The Autism Book, and promoter of unorthodox vaccine schedules, stressed in a Facebook post that this death couldn’t be traced back to the Disney outbreak. The anti-vax comments on his post included statements such as, “there’s an agenda behind it: MANDATORY VACCINES AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL” and “Getting the fear nice and deep to then roll out adult mandatory vaccines!”55 This death was memorable, but, unfortunately, the reaction from the public is not all that unique. Cries of “conspiracy!” were even heard when the children’s TV show Sesame Street introduced an autistic character named Julia.56 Mike Adams, the so-called health ranger who founded alternative medicine and conspiracy theory site Natural News, actually wrote that Julia’s appearance was “an attempt to ‘normalize’ vaccine injuries and depict those victimized by vaccines as happy, ‘amazing’ children.”57

  Small groups of non-vaccinators can cause outbreaks like those in California because some people—primarily children and those with certain ailments—have little to no immune system, are allergic to the ingredients, or are otherwise unable to have many vaccines. This makes them reliant on others to be protected, a helpful process known as herd immunity.58 Steven Fox, assistant professor of clinical medicine at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, explains that a number of people, including infants, cannot be vaccinated against certain conditions for medical reasons.

  “They’re much more susceptible to measles complications if they do become infected,” Fox said. “In order to protect them, at least 95% of the people in their local community, school, or daycare need to be immunized.”

  Because of this need for herd immunity, some governments impose what many anti-vax activists would call “forced vaccinations.” I have yet to see a city or state with mandatory vaccination laws, but some do make immunizations a requirement for entry into public schools (with or without religious exemptions). This is because, at that point, you are putting other people at risk and forcing them to face a potentially life-threatening situation. These laws do allow for parents to make the vaccination decision on their own and provide them with the option of home school to keep others safe.

  I wanted to find out more about this vaccination issue, so I talked to Dr. Mike G., a board-certified pediatrician in Northern California. Dr. Mike G. has an M.D. from the University of Michigan and a B.S. and M.S. in biological sciences (with a focus on molecular biology) from Stanford University. He says he’s never witnessed a serious negative reaction that he thought was related to a vaccine.

  “I just had a child come down with RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) bronchiolitis after vaccination, but given that there’s a lot of RSV going around town right now, and given that vaccines can’t cause RSV, I’m reasonably certain that this wasn’t a vaccine reaction, even though it would count as an ‘adverse event,’” Dr. Mike G. told me in an interview.

  McAfee: What are your thoughts on the U.S. government’s National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP)? Should its existence make people think twice about administering vaccines to their children?

  Dr. Mike G.: I think that it’s one solution to the problem. The problem with trying to compensate people who have had adverse events after vaccines is that just about anyone can make this claim and the burden of proof is quite low. So the first option is to litigate every claim. If that were done, my suspicion is that few claims would be successful, but the vaccine manufacturers would have to pour enormous amounts of money into their legal defense for literally tens of thousands of claims each year, no matter how frivolous. So the other option is to simply settle these claims. That’s what the NVICP is. It’s an organized method to settle these claims without having to spend billions of dollars on legal fees each year. In this case, plaintiffs don’t have to prove that the vaccine caused the adverse event.

  McAfee: In the last few years, there have been several outbreaks of diseases that were once thought to be extinct in the developed world. Do you expect that trend to continue?

  Dr. Mike G.: I do expect it to continue unless vaccination becomes compulsory. When parents born in 1990 have never seen a case of polio or measles these diseases do not scare them the way they did parents born in the 1950s or 1960s. Vaccines have become a victim of their own success and they have been so successful in eradicating these diseases that modern parents ofte
n do not understand how awful these diseases were.

  McAfee: Do you consider the anti-vaccination movement a “first-world” problem? Do you see this type of opposition to immunizations in less-developed nations?

  Dr. Mike G.: We do see it in less-developed nations, but much less so. My practice consists of lots of patients whose parents are first-generation immigrants from places like Vietnam, Mexico, and India. None of those parents ever refuse vaccines. Particularly my Indian parents, who have actually seen polio, cannot fathom why anyone would refuse these vaccines.

  McAfee: What do you consider the most harmful aspects of the anti-vaccine movement? What problems does it cause?

  Dr. Mike G.: I think that it falls into a larger group of phenomena having to do with a culture of ignorance, in which anyone with a scientific education is to be distrusted. It means that people will do things to harm themselves, harm their children, and harm the environment because they aren’t going to listen to those pointy-headed scientists. We see it with every form of scientific denialism, be it GE (genetically engineered) crops, be it global warming, or be it vaccines. To quote Carl Sagan: “We live in a society that is highly dependent on science and technology in which few people understand science and technology.”

  McAfee: As a doctor, do you get paid extra for people receiving vaccines? Do you get all your immunizations for free?

  Dr. Mike G.: My employer pays me a small “quality of care” bonus if a certain percentage of patients are vaccinated. It’s worth about 1% of my annual income. The insurance companies (not the drug companies) pay my employer a quality bonus if our overall vaccination level is above a certain threshold. Remember, drug companies don’t pay us; we pay them by purchasing their products. I think a lot of people don’t understand how the money flows. Here’s how it flows:

  The patient pays their insurer, who pays us. We then pay the distributor who pays the manufacturer. So at no point does money ever flow from the manufacturer to the physician. And if the insurance company wants everyone to get their vaccines, then that right there is proof to me that the insurance companies know that the vaccines are not harmful. If they were as dangerous as anti-vaxxers claim, no insurance company would want to pay for a product that makes their customers sicker. It would just cost the insurer more money.

  McAfee: Anti-vaxxers often argue that doctors and those who work for pharmaceutical companies know vaccines are dangerous and/or ineffective, but promote them anyway because they receive compensation. Do you think those in the medical field are more or less likely to have their children vaccinated?

  Dr. Mike G.: I do know a few physicians who have delayed vaccines on their own children. I don’t know any pediatricians who have, though. And I’ll add that of the doctors who delayed vaccines on their own kids, I’ve thought that most of them weren’t very good doctors for other reasons before I even knew about their own practices. I try to stay out of my colleagues’ personal health decisions as much as possible unless I’m caring for their kids.

  McAfee: Why do you think some people are more likely to trust a celebrity’s opinion than that of a licensed physician?

  Dr. Mike G.: I think that people who trust celebrities have already made up their minds first. So it’s an echo chamber.

  McAfee: What do you say to those who insist vaccines aren’t what eliminated polio and other major ailments that once plagued the country? I think the most common argument is that “indoor plumbing, sanitation, and healthy foods” were the real catalysts for their demise.

  Dr. Mike G.: India just eliminated polio last year. Not exactly a model of modern plumbing and organic food. They did it through mass vaccination. If plumbing, healthy food, and sanitation were responsible for polio eradication, places like India and Botswana would never have eliminated polio.

  McAfee: What are your thoughts on faith healing? Do you think it can lead people to reject real medicine and suffer or die as a result?

  Dr. Mike G.: Well, what I think is less important than what has happened. Certainly many children have died of preventable and/or curable conditions because their parents had faith in either the supernatural or the magical healing powers of common kitchen ingredients.

  McAfee: Is there anything you’d like to add about vaccinations or the harms of the anti-vaccination movement?

  Dr. Mike G.: I think that the anti-vaccine movement turned their hand when they started opposing vitamin K injections for newborns. When people who think vitamins can cure anything start opposing a vitamin, I think it became obvious that the fear was about the needle. A lot of anti-vaccine literature shows a MASSIVE syringe with a large-gauge needle being used to inject some evil-colored (red, yellow) liquid into the wrong body part of a child (you’d never inject an infant in the deltoid).

  I think that one of the biggest things that the pharmaceutical industry could do to combat this movement is to eliminate the needle. There are promising technological solutions to this. Vaccines can be put on patches that are stuck to the child’s skin or supersonic jet injectors could be used. Nobody likes watching their kid cry as they get stuck with needles. Anti-vaxxers have been around since the dawn of vaccines and they’re not ever going to go away, but I think that getting rid of the needle would help a lot.

  * * *

  It’s not just psychics, witch hunters, and anti-vax spokespeople who cause all the harm. Nearly every single proponent of supernatural beliefs inherently provides a form of bad information, many at great expense—monetarily and otherwise—to the believers. Harm is commonplace with businesses and practices that rely on unproven and unseen mysteries because these positions attract people who want and are able to take advantage of those who don’t know any better. Even if they don’t physically, emotionally, or financially hurt people, however, all religious and supernatural beliefs, as well as fraudulent medical studies and false claims about massive cover-ups, detract from real scientific endeavors. As a result, these flawed ideas and those who continue to promote them (sometimes inadvertently) encourage people to distrust science and peer review—and make them more likely to accept pseudosciences and baseless allegations as realities.

  I wrote this brief poem to demonstrate my desire to fight all false claims, regardless of their source or nature, and help those who might otherwise become victims:

  FENDING OFF WHAT’S FAKE

  MY GOAL IS TO KEEP PEOPLE FROM BEING FLEECED BY THEIR PRIESTS, OR SCAMMED BY PEDDLERS OF FLIM-FLAM.

  I HOPE TO REPLACE WOO WITH WHAT’S TRUE, AND ENCOURAGE ACTIONS AND RESEARCH OVER PRAYER AND CHURCH.

  I WANT TO PROMOTE CRITICAL THINKING AND FACTS, WHILE DISCREDITING LONG-DEBUNKED HEARSAY ABOUT VACCINES, CHEM-TRAILS, AND THE 9/11 ATTACKS.

  I DON’T SEE THE VALUE IN HAVING BELIEFS THAT AREN’T TRUE, SO I AM A SCIENTIFIC SKEPTIC, AND AN ATHEIST, TOO.

  “I am all for curses and superstition, but there’s a point at which they start getting in the way. That point had arrived.”

  —Tahir Shah

  NOTES

  1. “It is easy to find disaster stories of paranormal beliefs gone wild. Fanatical bombers kill thousands for bizarre supernatural beliefs and flying saucer cultists cheerfully commit suicide to prepare for promised alien rescue.”—Jonathan C. Smith

  2. Mike Isaac, “Facebook, in Cross Hairs after Election, Is Said to Question Its Influence,” New York Times, November 12, 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/11/14/technology/facebook-is-said-to-question-its-influence-in-election.html?_r=0.

  3. I just wish that bit of knowledge didn’t cost us so much.

  4. The full quote is: “Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election. Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting.” Donald Trump, tweet, February 6, 2017, twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/828574430800539648?lang=en.

  5. In court dockets for a custody hearing, Jones admitted to being a “performance artist” who is “playing a character” during his broadcasts.

  6. Alex Jones, tweet, December 12, 2016,
twitter.com/RealAlexJones/status/808509500386934785.

  7. Jessica Roy, “Want to Keep Fake News Out of Your Newsfeed? College Professor Creates List of Sites to Avoid,” Los Angeles Times, November 15, 2016, www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-updates-want-to-keep-fake-news-out-of-your-1479260297-htmlstory.html.

  8. This is part of why I founded The Party of Reason and Progress (PORP), an organization dedicated to promoting reason and empirically sound decision-making in modern politics. See partyofreasonandprogress.org.

  9. What’s The Harm? www.whatstheharm.net.

  10. Arianna MacNeill, “Proctor’s Ledge in Salem Confirmed as Witch Execution Site,” Salem News, January 11, 2016, www.salemnews.com/news/local_news/proctor-s-ledge-in-salem-confirmed-as-witch-execution-site/article_d9e2a242-fdf7-56ac-94eb-5e3f943d0cc3.html.

  11. Ellis, Lacey. “Salem Witch Trials.”

  12. “George Jacobs, Sr.,” Salem Witch Museum, www.salemwitchmuseum.com/blog/george-jacobs-sr.

  13. K. David Goss, The Salem Witch Trials: A Reference Guide (New York: ABC-CLIO, 2008).

  14. In 2015, a woman from Salem who identifies as a witch priestess sued Christian Day, who calls himself the “world’s best-known warlock,” for harassment. The court sided with the plaintiff and issued a protective order, according to media reports.

  15. Ryan Jacobs, “Saudi Arabia’s War on Witchcraft,” Atlantic, August 19, 2013, www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/saudi-arabias-waron-witchcraft/278701/.

  16. Gary Foxcroft, “Supporting Victims of Witchcraft Abuse and Street Children in Nigeria,” Stepping Stones Nigeria, 2007, www.streetchildrenresources.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/supporting-victims-of-witchcraft-abuse-street-children-nigeria.pdf.

  17. Hannah Osborne, “DR Congo’s Witchcraft Epidemic: 50,000 Children Accused of Sorcery,” International Business Times, May 20, 2013, www.ibtimes.co.uk/branded-witch-bbc-democratic-republic-congo-kindoki-469216.