Sum ergo cogito, cogito ergo dubito: autism

Showing posts with label autism. Show all posts

Tuesday, 21 October 2008

May the madness please stop now?

(Update: links fixed)

It is not uncommon in this life for people with no basic knowledge of science/medicine/biology/you name it to grab hold of an idea with all the fixity of a tumour-free Tasmanian Devil grabbing hold of a large steak and, refusing to let go, get lifted off the ground by the Park Ranger of actual fact and be left without a leg to stand on.

There are creationists who can't seem to grab the simplest principles of evolution. Flat-earthers who can't grab the simplest principles of gravity. Moon-landing denialists who refuse to listen when people patiently explain away all the things that their earth-bound experience has trouble with.

But although these things may reduce the average level of knowledge or even intelligence of the general population, and may even faintly reduce the pace of progress or even stall it altogether through limiting community or political (and therefore financial) support, few wacko, woo-woo, denialist beliefs are quite so dangerous as the "Vaccines cause autism" crowd, who are slowly dragging us back from the brink of all-but-eradicating measles, whooping couch and others to the point where, once again, hospital beds and graves are being filled by preventable diseases and complications such as encephalitis or meningitis are causing very real long-term disabilities and, just for added irony value, potentially causing autism through pregnant mothers catching rubella.

I was looking, a while back, for a good website which collected their scatter-brained arguments and summarised the (really quite simple to understand, for the most part) rebuttals from actual science. There wasn't one, so I started compiling my own list of web resources here.

Well, now there is a website I can reference.

First, a bit of background: The whole stupid scare really got off the ground in the UK with a "professional witness" for vaccination injury lawyers called Andrew Wakefield. But the face of vaccination denialism in the USA, where most of the debate is happening, is a former Playboy Playmate and current actress called Jenny McCarthy. To add some proper celebrity endorsement to the united ineptitude of her cause, she's boffing Jim Carey and now he's putting his foot in his mouth on a regular basis to back her up.

And so the website to go to for a nice concise overview of the vaccination denialism nonsense is called, unfortunately for its international relevance, Stop Jenny McCarthy.

Go there. Read it. And stop trying to abuse the concept of intelligence by saying things like "But vaccines have formaldehyde in them!" or "I hear what you're saying, but I just wonder why there are so many children being diagnosed with autism". Stop fucking wondering, and start listening to the answers.

Tuesday, 30 September 2008

One misplaced fear, and we have very real unpleasantness

It's finally happened.

In the UK, rates of vaccination have dropped to the point where measles has reached epidemic proportions and entire schools have closed.

In the USA, measles has slipped from "nearly eradicated", where the only identified cases were from immigrants and visitors, to several hospitalisations this year.

Now, in Australia, vaccination rates have dropped to the point where the extraordinarily painfully unpleasant childhood disease whooping cough has spiked (ABC news Online).

Here's the thing: Vaccination works. Vaccination is no more 100% safe than any other medical procedure is (people with blood clotting disorder can bleed to death after taking one aspirin tablet, for example), but it has no confirmable connection with autism, which is the fear that has lead us to this mess.

Not only are individuals at risk, but we're losing herd immunity.

What do I mean by herd immunity? Vaccination is not 100% effective any more than it's 100% safe. But if most people are vaccinated, then there are so few people who are at risk of catching any particular disease - from no protection or from protection that hasn't quite taken or isn't quite good enough - that the chance of any one of them catching it reduces to the point where it probably won't happen: herd immunity. But when the number of vulnerable people increases to the point where they're in contact with each other regularly, we have an opportunity for an infection to gain a foothold. We lose the herd immunity, and this is what is happening if parents are either afraid of vaccines or can't see the point any more.

I'm just glad that my parents were medically knowledgeable and I got all mine.

Link to ABC News Online story "'Unvaccinated kids' linked to whooping cough spike".

Saturday, 23 August 2008

A nascent guide to talking to a vaccination denier.

(last updated 18 September)

Okay, it seems as though my next exercise in science education (while I should be educating myself in Defamation law as it relates to the media), is going to have to be the spurious "link" between vaccines and autism.

I got into a "discussion" at work with a support worker who made just about every error possible, from thinking that caring for a group of people gave him an insight into how they got that way, to thinking that a chronological coincidence between vaccination and onset of autism is evidence. From taking doctorsaredangerous.com seriously to thinking that maintaining an open mind means something.

I felt my brain melting from the committed stupidity.

Unfortunately, although many, many bloggers with, you know, qualifications, have been talking about the issue, there does not seem to be any real definite collation of evidence, and of refutations to arguments, in the theme of How to talk to a climate change skeptic. Although the Autism Wiki looks promising. So, for my own use, I'm going to have to do it. Not spell out the science myself, I don't claim to have that thorough an understanding (at least not yet...) but just a list of resources.

It's going to have to grow quite a bit over the weeks in order to be useful, and short of time to do some deep digging, it'll grow as things appear or are suggested to me.

But, here it is, in roughly alphabetical order:

(P.S.: If the formatting of this is a little off, it's Blogger's fault for being different every time I come back to edit it).

Overviews: