Another blow against the anti-vaccination crowd. A post on MedPage today, reviewed by Robert Jasmer MD, Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, quotes:

The vaccine has markedly reduced hospital and emergency room visits, medical costs, and the number of cases of disease caused by rotavirus…

…There’s also evidence that the vaccine, approved by the FDA in 2006, is creating a “herd immunity” that’s protecting even some children who haven’t been vaccinated.

However, all these silly results of these silly studies have been nullified by a poignant post by the good people over at AutismMercuryLink.com:

The Rotavirus vaccine, Hib vaccine, HPV vaccine and the various multi virus vaccines being introduced without any kind of testing is only because the vaccine manufacturers and the doctors administering them want to ensure a good income from them.

Interesting. It sure seems like they’re testing the vaccines.

In August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported measles cases had spiked; 131 cases were reported nationwide for the first seven months of the year, compared with an average of 63 cases per year since 2000.

Of the infected, 91 percent were unvaccinated, most because of “philosophical or religious beliefs,” the CDC report said.

Homeschooled children accounted for 25 out of 30 cases in an outbreak of measles in suburban Chicago in May, according to the CDC. In Grant County, Washington, public health officials tied 11 of 19 measles cases to unvaccinated home-schooled children.

It will be interesting to see how anti-vaccinationists twist this story to prove their point. My bet is they’ll focus on the 9% of vaccinated children that also contracted measles as proof that vaccines are ineffective. 

Lance Rodewald, director of the CDC’s Immunization Division, states: 

“Somebody who has taken an exemption from school laws, like a philosophical or religious exemption, is 35 times more likely to get measles … and 22 times more likely to get whooping cough.”

But, of course, he is part of the vast conspiracy to austism-ize our nations children. And surely he is in the (seemingly infinite) pocket of “big pharma”. 

If it wasn’t for the fact that the innocent will have to suffer along with the guilty, I wouldn’t mind. Let the parents who choose to neglect their children, and fail to get them immunized, contract the disease. Not the children, who’s only crime is being born to gullible, intellectually lazy parents. 

The only bit of solace coming out of the news in recent weeks has been a push by the AAP (American Association of Pediatrics) to have pediatritions ask parents to sign a release when they refuse to vaccinate their children. Autism quackery websites have, as one would expect, been resoundingly critical of the form, amidst fears of it causing them to lose their children for neglect. While I can find no mention anywhere of this having ever happened, I see no issue with it. 

If you, as a parent, are unable to have even the most basic knowledge of safety regarding your children, or if having that knowledge, you choose not to act for them, you are unfit to be a parent.

So in honor of all the recent attention my blog has attracted from NJ anti-vaccinationists, I thought I’d take a moment to point out what NJCVC really is: A coalition of, at best, misinformed parents, and at worst, intellectually dishonest fear mongerers. 

A quick look at their web page finds that if you attended yesterdays rally, you may have been one of the 200 to receive a free Gary Null DVD. I’m so sorry I missed that.

For those of you that don’t know, Gary Null is a pretty well documented quack. Boasting bogus credentials and pseudoscientific research methods, one would wonder why any association would want to align themselves with him in any way. I suppose, however, that when a quack’s findings line up pretty well with your own beliefs, you tend to deny his quackery. 

I especially love the portion of the page dedicated to sign ideas. They include such gems as “Too Many Sick Kids”, “1 in 60 NJ Boys Autistic”, and “Vaccine Choice: Moms Know Best”. And yet, I continue to receive comments and emails telling me that NJCVC is not “claiming that vaccines cause autism”. Interesting, it seems like they are. 

The entire site is much too rife with non-sequiturs and vague allusions to “toxins” to debunk all the claims made. The irony is organizations are taking donations and wasting money on a completely useless endeavor, chasing a causal link that doesn’t exist. I really and truly feel sorry for those parents of autistic children whose bills for their development might be helped by the money wasted by organizations such as this one.

I apologize to those who have had comments deleted, but I am not trying to assist you in spreading your misinformation. So if you post a comment that does not contain any claims different from another, I will not approve its posting.

There is a lovely little gathering just wrapping up in NJ’s state capitol of Trenton this afternoon. Somewhere near 1000 200 protesters are rallying for the passing of a pair of new proposed bills (A260 and S1071) that would allow for conscientious exemption by parents for their children’s routine vaccinations. It is just one more example of unfounded allegations leading to a hysteria of the uninformed.

The organization at the forefront, organizing the rally and pushing hard the agenda, is the innocuously-named New Jersey Coalition for Vaccination Choice. They have a perfectly distilled down list of reasons why vaccination should not be mandatory, distilled down for the simple folk who might not understand all the complicated study results regarding the safety and efficacy of childhood vaccines. And, without fail, coming in at number 8:

Vaccination has been proven to cause Autism.

This is exciting news! They’ve obviously conducted some sort of clinical trial, and found a causal link?! Nope, guess again. They just regurgitate the same tired claims; including the incredibly scientific SurveyUSA study. Conducted by telephone. And I quote:

“of more than 9,000 boys in California and Oregon and found that vaccinated boys had a 155% greater chance of having a neurological disorder like ADHD or autism than unvaccinated boys.”

Well, lets take a look at this claim. What is it really saying, if anything. 

First, the survey is limited to California and Oregon. So we have not eliminated the possibility of a geographic factor. Second, and as I said before it was a telephone-based study. This relies on people responding honestly to a telephone soliciter — this is not how real scientific studies are conducted. Any number of factors could be at play here, conspiring to create this result. Perhaps a certain percentage of the respondents lied. Still more may have self-diagnosed their children.

Furthermore, I find the wording of the statement interesting. Why do they only mention the statistics for boys? Could it be because the statistics for girls do not make their case for them? If you whittle a dataset down enough, cherrypicking your limiters, you can find a correlation between almost anything. If you look at a specific enough sample group, you can probably find a positive correlative link between cigarette smoking and Olympic achievements.

Another telling portion of their statement is that they say a “neurological disorder like ADHD or autism”. Like is a weasal word; your definition of like may not be my definition of like. Who knows how many different self-reported-by-telephone disorders were marked as an autism “hit”?

The organizations entire premise is based on worthless studies and conjecture. The other 9 reasons autism shouldn’t be mandatory range from being patently false, to creating straw-man arguments for vaccination proponents and tearing down positions they don’t hold. 

In conclusion. If you’re for vaccination choice, thats just fine. We live in a democratic society, and what the people want they should get. But, they, along with organizations such as NJCVC have a responsibility to be informed.