Another point: Humans like personal anecdotes better than cold, impersonal science when deciding what to believe, but anecdotes are not very good evidence because humans have a number of cognitive quirks that lead them to be too quick to conclude causation from temporal correlation. At best, anecdotes can be the basis for forming a hypothesis to test with more rigorous study, but only if the anecdotes themselves are rigorously documented; that’s because of those aforementioned cognitive quirks and the fallibility of human memory that we all suffer from and that can lead even really intelligent people who are unaware of them astray.

Finally, I have to ask: Which specific “toxins” in vaccines would have to be removed to make them sufficiently “green”? After all, children are now exposed to less thimerosal than any time since the 1980s, but autism prevalence hasn’t dropped. Despite more vaccines, children are actually exposed to many fewer antigens in vaccines than they were 20 years ago, thanks to better design of vaccines, but autism prevalence hasn’t budged. So now “toxins” become the issue, but it’s a canard. The dose makes the poison. Botox, for instance, is one of the deadliest chemicals on earth, but at low doses it can smooth wrinkles, stop excessive sweating, relieve esophogeal spasms, and a number of other potential therapeutic effects being explored. I once observed:

I’d love to get an antivaccinationist like Jenny McCarthy who makes the claim that she is not “antivaccine” but “antitoxin” or “pro-vaccine safety” into a discussion and ask her this hypothetical question: If formaldehyde, “antifreeze,” aluminum, thimerosal, and every chemical in vaccines circulating in all those lists on antivaccination websites that so scare you were somehow absolutely removed from the standard childhood vaccines so that not a single molecule remained (just like homeopathy), would you then vaccinate your child? The only thing that would remain is buffered salt water and the necessary antigens, be they killed virus or bacterial proteins, or whatever.

My guess is that she’d say no.

And that’s that–because it’s the “toxin” that makes vaccines work that really scares her.

Today, I’m more convinced than ever that I was correct in my assessment, bolstered by having lurked on the discussion boards at Mothering.com and other sites hostile to vaccines. It’s not any “toxins” in the vaccine that antivaccinationists don’t want. it’s the “toxin” that make the vaccines work, the very process of vaccination itself, that antivaccinationists don’t like.

How would that be?

Except to the extent that “green vaccines” (which currently equate to “no vaccines”, since they would apparently have to be completely free of “bacteria and viruses”) will contribute to the decline of “herd immunity” and thus increase the risk that members of the “medical community” (and their families) will catch a vaccine-preventable disease, I don’t see how this is a “threat” to the “medical community”.

On the financial side, fewer vaccinations will lead to a rise in vaccine-preventable diseases – that’s been shown already in the US, UK and other countries. More vaccine-preventable diseases mean more visits to the doctor’s office, more hospital admissions, more specialist consultations, more diagnostic tests, and perhaps even more surgical interventions. All of that adds up to a rise in physician income.

Administering vaccines in the office (or Emergency Department) is not a money-making proposition. In most cases, the reimbursment barely covers the cost.

So, fewer vaccinations means fewer low-profit office visits (well child, vaccination, etc.) and more high-profit office visits, not to mention rounding on hospitalized patients (which often pays more than an office visit), more tests, more procedures, etc. The whole “medical community” profits as a result.

About the only “downside” I see for the “medical community” is that most of them – in fact, nearly all of them – truly hate to see people ill and suffering. That’s why most of them went into the “healthcare business” in the first place. And fewer vaccinations will lead to more illness, more suffering, more death and more disability. We don’t have to guess about this, all we have to do is look at fairly recent history.

The connection between vaccines and autism is based on extremely poor data. While it is impossible to say that vaccines don’t cause any autism, it is possible to say that the number of cases of autism that could possibly be attributed to vaccines is very small – less than the number of cases of severe brain injury that used to be caused by measles alone.

Even the lawyers in the Autism Omnibus hearings are coming around to this line of reasoning, slowly whittling down the maximum prevalence of vaccine-caused autism. Craig reflects this shift in rhetoric in his last comment.

So, what are we supposed to do? We already know what the vaccine-preventable illnesses can do. That’s a matter of historical record. We don’t know that vaccines can’t cause autism, but we also don’t have any good data that they do.

On the one hand we have a well-known and well-documented risk (vaccine-preventable illnesses) and on the other hand we have a vague and poorly supported possibility that something in vaccines might be causing autism in some children.

To me, the choice seems obvious.

Prometheus