[Al_U_Card]

I knew that I was doing it for a reason, I just thought that it was mostly selfish and not totally selfish.

Where are those immunologists when you need them. Even "|dead" cultures contain some living material. Even the dead stuff can cause adverse reactions, to say nothing of the living multiplying doohickies.

[DrTodd13]

Vaccines don't give 100% protection. Measles is around 90-95% protection. So, now-a-days, most who get measles are vaccinated. Serious complications (death or brain damage) occurs in about 0.2% of measles cases. So, if this study is legitimate then you would appear to have a choice between some risk of death versus risk of ADHD or autism. How do you compare apples and oranges?

[DrTodd13]

inquiry, on Jun 27 2007, 02:28 AM, said:

No it doesn't.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlere...cgi?artid=26561

http://jama.highwire...ract/285/9/1183

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi...05.01425.x/abs/

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlere...gi?artid=544455

Vaccines and the changing epidemiology of autism.
Wakefield is a paid hack.

All of these studies deal only with MMR. I believe the news report is saying that the cumulative effect of all vaccines has something to do with it.

[cherdano]

Autism is probably one of the least well defined medical/mental diagnosis. This makes it very difficult to trust any statistical study involving autism.
I also wonder whether an expert in this area would take a phone survey seriously at all. It wouldn't surprise me if many parents don't remember which vaccinations their child got (unless, of course, it got vaccinated in the months before the first symptoms of childhood autism become apparent).

A statistic involving numbers of diagnosed ADHD is probably worthless. While autism is badly defined, at least I would trust that any parent having an autistic child would be aware of ti and at some point go to a doctor about it. There are certainly many children fitting the American ADHD diagnosis but have been taken to a doctor because of that.

Conclusion: As usual for a story from this poster, there is little evidence behind it...

[Al_U_Card]

cherdano, on Jun 27 2007, 07:32 PM, said:

Conclusion: As usual for a story from this poster, there is little evidence behind it...

And would this conclusion relate directly to a troll-based activity?

[pbleighton]

Quote

And would this conclusion relate directly to a troll-based activity?

DrTodd isn't a troll. He is a serious, intelligent wacko.

Peter

[helene_t]

cherdano, on Jun 28 2007, 02:32 AM, said:

I also wonder whether an expert in this area would take a phone survey seriously at all. It wouldn't surprise me if many parents don't remember which vaccinations their child got (unless, of course, it got vaccinated in the months before the first symptoms of childhood autism become apparent).

Exactly. A phone survey is completely ridiculous.

Han said:

Another less friendly but possible explanation is that if someone WANTS to obtain a certain conclusion, it is usually not so hard to find data that supports that conclusion.

The Economics textbook we used as undergraduates started with the chapter "why economists disagree". Very appropriately for an economics book, the answer was: because the market demands disagreement.

Statisticians have a lot of technical terms for the ways to follow to achieve the desired disagreement. "Subset analysis", for example. In this case it sounds more like "garbage in, garbage out" though.

[DrTodd13]

The article stated that the CDC also uses phone surveys and that this study was modeled after CDC phone surveys. The truth? I don't know.

Somebody was saying people don't remember the vaccination status of their children? Come on. I would think that vaccination status is highly bi-modal. Either you get every vaccine or you get none of them. If the parent doesn't believe in vaccination the kid won't get any and if they do believe in vaccination they will get everything that is recommended. In either case, I think a parent would remember which one they were.

[barmar]

A couple of years ago I read a book about the evolution of language abilities. The author's basic theory was that language is a cultural artifact that evolved from nurturing infants. They used studies of children with autism and other communication disorders, to try to understand what's different about their upbringing (they controlled for some of the known genetic influences). They concluded that autism has been on the rise in the west due to the increase in working mothers -- infants in day care don't get the same kind of close nurturing that they would get with a dedicated caregiver.

I don't want to start a tangent on that hypothesis, I just want to relate it back to this discussion. IF autism is significantly influenced by how the parents relate to the child, there may be a strong correlation between this and immunization. For instance, day care centers might require that children be vaccinated, so working couples are more likely to vaccinate them. Vaccinations cost money, another reason why working couples are more likely to vaccinate their children.

This is all part of the "correlation doesn't imply causation" point. Quite often the correlation is due to the fact that both observed data points have a third, common cause. Or the causation could go the opposite way -- maybe infants who are going to become autistic are also often sick, and this prompts their parents to get them vaccinated.

To figure out the true nature of the correlation you have to control for all the other possible influences like these.

[Al_U_Card]

Spot on. The purpose of multi-variate studies is to investigate how cross-product influences can effect an outcome. Often secondary factor effects can combine to produce a greater net reseult than certain primary factors. This was often the case during my years in process optimization research. Even dumb stuff like the effect of time of day and point in the worker's shift would have a statistically significant effect on the final product. (recall that buy a car built on tuesday thingie?)

One thing is certain, as we alter our environment without considering the potential effects, we must be ready to deal with unexpected outcomes.

[skjaeran]

barmar, on Jun 29 2007, 10:26 PM, said:

Vaccinations cost money, another reason why working couples are more likely to vaccinate their children.

Looks to me that when it comes to medical health care it's far better to live in most european countries than in the US, but that's something I knew...

In Norway all vaccinations for children are for free, and are routinely given at various ages after a predetermined schedule. Some don't let their children receive these vaccines due to religious or other beliefs.

[han]

I'd be interested in what people think about this question:

Suppose that it is determined that it is a risk for the population if some children are not vaccinated against some disease (if you don't believe that this can ever be the case, let's just suppose that it is for the sake of this discussion). Should parents be given the choice not to vaccinate their children or may the government decide that all children have to be vaccinated?

[pbleighton]

Quote

I'd be interested in what people think about this question:

Suppose that it is determined that it is a risk for the population if some children are not vaccinated against some disease (if you don't believe that this can ever be the case, let's just suppose that it is for the sake of this discussion). Should parents be given the choice not to vaccinate their children or may the government decide that all children have to be vaccinated? '

This depends on the degree of the risk, IMO. If it's bad enough I could support mandatory vaccination, but in general I think it should be voluntary.

Public safety can't always trump individual liberties.

Peter

[han]

So you would argue that the government may decide to force everybody to vaccinate their children if they deem the risk high enough?

Of course you can't expect every single person to agree on this risk.

[pbleighton]

Quote

So you would argue that the government may decide to force everybody to vaccinate their children if they deem the risk high enough?

Of course you can't expect every single person to agree on this risk.

It wouldn't be *they*, I think. This would require a law, and the debate would be fierce. I think it wouldn't (and shouldn't) pass unless there was clear evidence that some large percentage of children would die unless the epidemic was contained. I don't expect that this will actually happen

Not everyone would agree, of course. Democracy can turn into the tyranny of the majority - see our idiotic drug laws.

Peter

[mike777]

pbleighton, on Jun 30 2007, 04:41 PM, said:

Quote

I'd be interested in what people think about this question:

Suppose that it is determined that it is a risk for the population if some children are not vaccinated against some disease


Public safety can't always trump individual liberties.

Peter

My bet is that public safety always trumps individual liberty. Could this lead to tyranny, sure, but I cannot think of an example when the public safety has been at risk, real risk, and when individual liberty won out.

My bet is that public safety does always trump individual liberty. Could this lead to tyranny, sure, but I cannot think of an example when the public safety has been at risk, real risk, and when individual liberty won out.

Forced quarantine comes to mind.
Required vaccines for public school children is another.
I do not think it would take a large percentage to die to pass such sweeping laws assuming they are not already on the books. I think it would take a small percentage, even something close to zero % killed. This is far far from a large percentage.
This power does seem overwhelming at the very least.

For example is there any I repeat any public school district in america where you can get your child in with zero vaccines based on liberty?
Head lice hardly ever kills anyone if ever, but do they not just ban the kid until treatment and forget about liberty, yet no one is killed?

[DrTodd13]

Many countries have mandatory vaccinations. There's no reason to believe we're special. You can get people to have a knee jerk reaction and agree to almost anything if you convince them it is "for the children."

[inquiry]

You might want to take a look at this study from 2001 where blood collected at time of birth was examined -- this is before even the Hepatitis B vaccine that is routinely given to all children in US in the delivery room. This study found markers that were elevated in children at birth that went on to develop autism compared to children who did not.
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/news_and_events/p...tism_042501.htm

[helene_t]

Hannie, on Jun 30 2007, 11:25 PM, said:

I'd be interested in what people think about this question:

Suppose that it is determined that it is a risk for the population if some children are not vaccinated against some disease (if you don't believe that this can ever be the case, let's just suppose that it is for the sake of this discussion). Should parents be given the choice not to vaccinate their children or may the government decide that all children have to be vaccinated?

If it's beyond reasonable doubt that failure to vaccinate all children would expose the community to a high risk of a disaster, and that there are no children with serious known contraindications, my answer would be yes.

It's a matter of degree. Every time a new animal disease threatens to reach the Netherlands, we get heated discussions about whether people should still have the freedom to hold animals that could work as stepping-stones for the epidemic. The line has to be drawn somewhere. Personally I'm in favor of some liberty-oriented bias relative to what experts may think is best for society. This is partly because experts who work for the government may have a bias towards more government control because they (unconsciously) want to secure their own employment.

Also I think our political system has a bias towards maximizing utility for the "average" citizen, rather than maximizing average utility across a population with heterogeneous preferences. If the average shoe size is 39, surely the average citizen would benefit from the economy of scales if only shoes of size 39 were produced.

Now child vaccination is not shoe size. First, it is more a question of belief than of taste. Second, young children should to some extent be protected against abuse by their own parents. We don't allow female genital mutilation either. And third, society may have a stake also.

Mike777 said:

My bet is  that public safety always trumps individual liberty. Could this lead to tyranny, sure, but I cannot think of an example when the public safety has been at risk, real risk, and when individual liberty won out.

Funny, I can think of many examples. Think of sexually transmitted diseases. Certain individuals have been known to infect dozens of other people. Even if the source knew he/she was infected. Few are arguing that such persons should be kept responsible, let alone subject to pro-active measures.

[Al_U_Card]

Altruism is an ideal and as such, is not often at the top of most "agendas".

Look to $ and you will find the motivator behind most if not all actions "for the good of the people". Big pharma, big industry hell, even big science...

Lobbyists, lawyers, legislators all "working" for your "benefit".

If tomorrow, something changes and we all became able to understand what others were doing and why...what a difference that might make. I say might because apathy is in large part the cause of much of this miasma of mayhem occuring on a regular basis.