Contributors

Wednesday, February 04, 2015

What's the Harm from a Measly Vaccination?

I had measles when I was kid. It was no big deal. I had chicken pox too. I even had pneumonia once. I lived.

I also had vaccinations for polio, tetanus,  diphtheria, some kind of hepatitis, and the flu. I lived through all those, too. And I haven't gotten the flu since I started getting the vaccine, for 10 or 15 years now.

Jenny McCarthy juggling breast implants
So what's the big deal about getting vaccinated? Why are Republicans like Chris Christie and Rand Paul joining Playboy model Jenny McCarthy saying that parents should be able to opt out of getting their kids vaccinated? Why do think they that parents should have the freedom to let their kids become Typhoid Mary?

It's interesting, considering how much conservatives blather about freedom, that the two states that have no exemptions for vaccinating school kids are Mississippi and North Carolina.

So why is it a problem when kids don't get vaccinated? Measles isn't all that deadly, and neither is chicken pox. And anyway, if my kids get shots, and the neighbor kids don't, my kids will be immune. Won't just the kids with idiots for parents be the ones that get sick and die? Isn't this just another case of evolution in action?

Nope. Not that simple.

Are parents who don't get their kids vaccinated baby killers?
First, not everyone can be vaccinated. Some people have compromised immune systems or allergies to vaccine components. There are minimum ages for most vaccines, typically two months for polio, pertussis, tetanus and the like, six months for the flu, and 12-15 months for diseases like mumps, chicken pox, measles, and so on. Wouldn't that make parents who don't get their kids vaccinated baby killers?

Second, the more people who get a disease, the more likely it is to mutate, and the more likely it is to develop strains that vaccines don't protect against. This is one reason why the flu vaccine is so hit and miss.

More to the point, for the selfish, parents who don't vaccinate their older kids are gambling with the lives of younger siblings. They're betting that enough other kids at school are getting vaccinated so that their kids won't get sick and bring the disease home to their baby sister or brother who is much more likely to die from it.

Sure, there are risks with vaccines. But those risks are far lower than the risks parents take every day as they ferry their kids around in cars to and from day care and school and play dates and birthday parties and soccer practice.

The reason everyone who can be vaccinated should be vaccinated is herd immunity. This means that if enough of the population is vaccinated, even people who aren't immunized are extremely unlikely to get a disease because it will be so rare. But when lots of people aren't vaccinated, there is no herd immunity and a disease like measles will spread like wildfire.

Jenny McCarthy blames vaccines for her son's autism. Isn't all that crap she's been sticking in her body for decades just as likely a cause?
This another example of the tragedy of the commons, where the selfish actions of a few harm the many.

But what about kids getting autism from vaccines? This was all a lie, based on falsified research by a British doctor. There's more evidence that having an older father is linked to autism and even stronger evidence that exposure to pesticides, which are usually neurotoxins, cause autism.

But the debate has been muddied by the untrustworthiness of pharmaceutical companies. They've demonstrated time and again that they're interested in profit, not public health. For decades vaccines were commonly preserved with thimerosal, which is organic mercury, a known neurotoxin. The toxic effects of organic mercury have been known since the 1950s, yet pharmaceutical companies are still putting thimerosal in vaccines for adults and in products like contact lens solutions. This is just stupid laziness and greed, and it undercuts the entire argument for vaccines.

Mercury is known to cause many types of neurological deficits, from cerebral palsy, to Mad Hatter syndrome, to birth defects. It's why thimerosal is banned from childhood vaccines, most American dentists don't use mercury amalgam fillings, and the EPA requires mercury scrubbers on coal plants and municipal incinerators.

What this last example shows is how unreliable "market based" solutions are in the real world. The harm caused by mercury pollution from burning coal doesn't show up when you turn on your light switch. It shows up in fish and seafood. A housewife has no way to know that turning on her dishwasher exposes her to organic mercury in the fish her husband catches in a nearby lake. Even if she does make the connection, she has no alternative: power companies are monopolies. All she can do is stop eating fish and seafood, making fishermen the innocent victims of power utilities that burn coal.

And when you have a state like Mississippi that requires children be vaccinated, the pharmaceutical companies that have the monopoly on vaccines are not constrained by any kind of market pressures. In fact, Congress passed a law in 1988 that shields vaccine makers from lawsuits, upheld by the Supreme Court in 2011.

But the fact is, for the vast majority of diseases, there is no simple cause and effect. In the case of autism, there are hundreds of genetic and environmental contributing factors. When celebrities like Jenny McCarthy stand up and blame vaccines for her son's autism, people looking for an easy answer join her chorus and boycott vaccines, to the detriment of us all.

But seriously, how can you trust the medical judgment of someone like Jenny McCarthy? This woman was a habitual drug abuser, has had numerous breast implant and other cosmetic surgeries and repeated botox treatments.

Isn't it just as likely that all the crap she's been sticking in her body for decades caused her son's autism?

1 comment:

juris imprudent said...

That's rich - ignoring the biggest anti-vaxxer politician of them all: RFK Jr.!

No, not a partisan hack at all, are ya?