I think what we have is actually a case of two alarmists camps. I didn’t realize it before, but now I do. You have people who are really worried about there being a link between autism and vaccines on one side. Then, on the other, you have people who think that everyone will contract every disease in the book if they aren’t vaccinated appropriately.

I’ve never heard anyone say “everyone will contract every disease in the book.” I’m not sure that would be medically possible, and as some diseases will kill you before the other diseases even have a chance. If there were two camps, the clearest dividing line would be one resorts to magical thinking and alarmist rhetoric, and the other side depends on real evidence.

There is, quite simply, no credible evidence linking vaccines to autism. But since you haven’t done any research, I won’t belabor the point.

I was in Washington DC on June 4, and saw people walking down Constitution Ave. screaming “Don’t vaccinate!”

Does that count?

Some selected reading, I have to mung the URLs to get past the spam filters… if you desire some actual science this is it:

“Impact of Specific Medical Interventions on Reducing the Prevalence of Mental Retardation “…. archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/160/3/302

“Economic Evaluation of the 7-Vaccine Routine Childhood Immunization Schedule in the United States, 2001 “… archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/159/12/1136

“Health Consequences of Religious and Philosophical Exemptions From Immunization Laws “… jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/282/1/47

“Nonmedical Exemptions to School Immunization Requirements “… jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/296/14/1757?

“Acute measles mortality in the United States, 1987-2002.” … w w w. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15106092?

“Pediatric hospital admissions for measles. Lessons from the 1990 epidemic.” … w w w. pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=8855680

Some suggested books:
Unstrange Minds by RR Grinker
Not Even Wrong by Paul Collins
Vaccine by Arthur Allen
Vaccinated by Paul Offit

There is also a more complete list (several pages worth, there is a link on the bottom of each page for papers between 1999 and 2003) here:
w w w. immunize.org/journalarticles/conc_aut.asp
w w w. immunize.org/journalarticles/conc_aut.asp
w w w. immunize.org/journalarticles/conc_thim.asp

These have been the basis of my arguments over the past ten years (started to deal with it almost 20 years after having a newborn with seizures). I confess to attacking the character of one person, but he deserved it (he claimed that satanic black lines burned his bum!), see:
scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/06/the_nuttiness_that_is_whaleto.php

I am not sure about everyone else, but I do understand yours.

What I was looking for was, “… Personally I think that if you are going to avoid the vaccines, it is your duty to public health to make sure that you stay quarantined away from everyone else.”

Look, I am not following or hanging on every word Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy are saying. I believe that I am intelligent enough to take them for what they are. Poster children for a possible link between autism and vaccines.

What I am focusing on is their message and the intent of that message. To me, they are trying to get a message out about vaccines. And a lot of what they have said, I have not found to be false based on other reputable sources. One such source is “The Vaccine Book” by Dr. Robert Sears. It provides a lot of information about vaccines.

At least now I can understand where you are coming from. You are understandably worried about the spread of disease. It had honestly not hit me until you said it.

The point still remains that I don’t think the argument is “Don’t Vaccinate”. I think the argument is “Make sure your child is healthy before you do and don’t do multiple vaccinations at once.”

Is there a chance that in the time you delayed vaccination your child could contract a disease? Yes. Was there not just as much a chance though (or at least only a slightly lower one) that that disease could have been contracted earlier prior to the normally scheduled vaccination? Yes.

I am going to be pretty blunt in the next few sentences so my apologies to those who have sensitivities to my presentation.

I think that autism is a scarier disease to a lot of people for some pretty simple reasons.

1) Due to the fact that for the most part vaccinations work, people aren’t dieing from the diseases they are getting vaccinated against. These diseases don’t put much fear into people when they don’t kill anyone.

2) Since most people are getting vaccinated against these diseases the thought is that the chances of contracting the disease are lower.

3) In the case of autism, you child will be effected for the rest of their life. There is no known cure and, deep down, a lot of people are so scared of their child growing up and never being able to fully communicate or interact with them, they they would much rather take what they consider to be a relatively small risk with delaying vaccinations if there is even a small chance there might be a link.

I think what we have is actually a case of two alarmists camps. I didn’t realize it before, but now I do. You have people who are really worried about there being a link between autism and vaccines on one side. Then, on the other, you have people who think that everyone will contract every disease in the book if they aren’t vaccinated appropriately.

I think I am a moderate. I don’t know if there is a link between autism and vaccines. But I also don’t know if taking the alarmist position on how quickly your child would contract a given disease is appropriate either.

Naturally, HCN, you have been personally affected by pertussis and I can understand you viewpoint being that it is hitting much closer to home for you. I do sympathize with you.

I am only trying to look at everything objectively and from the start of reading this blog and others, I was very surprised to not see fact-based arguments being made, but attacks on the proponents of the opposing argument.

For “vaccine safety” it is 6846 …

and for “vaccine efficacy” it is 12333 …

and for “Carrey J” it is 3.. and they are all in a Physics journal, and all on research done in either France or Spain, not Canada. So it is not the Jim Carrey of this blog posting. sorry

… Personally I think that if you are going to avoid the vaccines, it is your duty to public health to make sure that you stay quarantined away from everyone else. This is especially true if you decide to avoid the MMR (measles is very contagious, and one is infectious at least a week before symptoms!).

So, go ahead… skip vaccines. Just make sure that you do not go out. Just homeschool the kids, get your groceries delivered and telecommute. That could work!

That is the “T” part of DTaP (oh, and there is no such thing as herd immunity to tetanus, it lives in soil, and has been known to be passed through bug bites… an infection uses two neurotoxins, tetanospasmin and tetanolysin; and the death rate is 1 in 10 infections).

Do you think that is a smart thing to say?

Or do you think I am just silly thinking that my child only getting the DT vaccine would be perfectly safe going out and about town in a county where pertussis was at epidemic levels? Do you think we should decide on vaccine schedule based on “experts” like Jim Carrey?

Come on! Show us what research has been missed by those who actually research disease and vaccines! Show us what is missing from the 163481 papers found on PubMed with the search term “vaccine”!

I am fully aware of what “epidemic” means.

Look up the word “epidemic”.

So I had a baby vulnerable to a disease that is a known killer of babies (still kills over a dozen babies per year in the USA:
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/pertussis/dis-faqs.htm ). So I had to be very careful who he came into contact with.

Now explain exactly where it is documented that the DTaP is more dangerous than pertussis, tetanus and diphtheria. Try looking it up on PubMed, there is plenty of efficacy and safety research on there. Tell us which one of the pages and pages of studies on vaccines shows us that the DTaP is more dangerous than pertussis, tetanus and diphtheria.