| Re: So it's official, encouraging skepticism and doubt is "poor science", according to UK Govt's chief medical ossifer. |
Customer of PlusNet |
| Danny Kodicek (dannynews@well-spring.co.uk) |
2004/02/24 09:55 |
"Mike Dworetsky" <platinum198@pants.btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:c1fnc1$eaq$1@sparta.btinternet.com...
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>
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> "Jerzy Jakubowski" <branchofjesse@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:b9b3de8.0402240253.15fdda7e@posting.google.com...
> >
>
http://society.guardian.co.uk/publichealth/story/0,11098,1154677,00.html?79%
3A+Uk+latest
> There's nothing wrong with (literally) healthy skepticism or doubt, but
the
> study was based on only 12 autistic children brought in to Dr Wakefield by
> parents involved in the lawsuit for which he was a consultant. Conflict
of
> interest? I think so. Where would his funders be if his study claimed no
> basis for the legal action??? So would he have looked extra hard for a
link
> even if one did not exist? That's the implication.
And a fair point it is, however it's hard to find studies that *aren't*
tainted by self-interest. When researching this issue before having my own
children vaccinated, I found that all the pro-MMR information was produced
either by the government or by the drug companies, while all the anti-MMR
information was produced by angry parents. I couldn't track down anything
that seemed like neutral information, and it was all low on science or
statistics and high on rhetoric. It is very hard to find middle-range
medical information on serious topics in general, aimed at the
science-minded but non-technical reader who can't spend weeks (and money)
ploughing through the original journals.
For what it's worth, I concluded that the autism link was almost certainly a
red herring, and besides anything else any danger from autism is definitely
less than the danger of the diseases themselves. But I couldn't find any
good reason to go for the triple jab rather than single vaccines except
cost, and that made me a little nervous about the motives behind the
propaganda.
My concerns about vaccination are more complex and it's hard to find people
that are willing to debate them properly. Everyone's so focused on the
autism issue that the other issues about vaccination in general have been
forgotten - issues like whether wholesale vaccination is potentially
damaging to the immune system, and whether it encourages new and deadlier
strains of the diseases to appear (when did measles become such a serious
killer? Of course there were always deaths, but they were a rarity and most
infected children simply got over the disease. Nowadays it seems that when
there's an outbreak, there are proportionally far more deaths. Anyone seen
any statistics on this issue?)
The hard fact for any parent to accept is that some children will die. My
own children may be among them. It may happen through an accident, or
illness, they could be abducted or suffer a self-inflicted teenage drug
overdose. These terrible things happen. You do your best as a parent to take
the risks that you think are best, but either way tragedies can occur. Is it
better to get an exposure to childhood diseases and take the higher risk of
death along with, perhaps, a healthier immune system later in life? Or to be
immunised and have a possible (but unknown) risk from autism and perhaps a
lowered immune response? Who knows?
What I do know is that there's all kinds of hysteria about this issue which
seems scientifically absurd, such as nursery schools refusing to accept
unvaccinated children because they could be 'a risk' to the other pupils
(how can they be a risk if the vaccination works?). That kind of thing
immediately raises my suspicions that there is more to the politics of this
question than meets the eye.
Danny
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