One of the things we discuss in my ESP and Aliens class is why people believe strange things even in the face of all evidence to the contrary. I emphasize that there's really very little we can do to change a "true believer's" mind, but we can try to understand the benefits s/he derives from clinging to a false belief.
Given the amount of disinformation out there about the "dangers" of vaccination, and the zealot-like behavior of anti-vaccination advocates, and given the very clear and present dangers of lowering herd immunity, I was so pleased to see this story on Headline news this morning. Some people will not give up the irrational belief that vaccines are dangerous: those people need to be forced to do the right thing.
The Angry Kid is completely vaccinated, even against varicella. Taking her in for her very first jabs, given at some ridiculously tender age, like 4 weeks, was the hardest thing I've ever done. But to do anything else would have been immoral.
Monday, November 19, 2007
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Having cared for children in hospital with pertussis (whooping cough), and having two fully vaccinated children of my own, I was very happy to see that story. I wish they would do that here as well.
THANK YOU!
I have an autistic child (well, he's almost an adult now), and I am *so bloody* annoyed with people telling me it's "probably" because he was vaccinated. First off, that link has been rumoured for years and not proven. Then, what about my 3 other kids, my sisters, their kids, on and on. The rest of the world can only dream of being as protected from disease as our children can be, and who wants to go back to those awful days of high child mortality due to preventable illnesses?!?!
Thanks for letting me vent!
California will not permit unvaccinated children in public schools, without evidence of the religious beliefs thing. I dont know what that evidence is.
I would like to see parents routinely given the choice between oral and injected polio vaccine, and routinely consulted on vaccination schedule. For example, parents should know that an MMR is one option and having the vaccines separately within the same time window is another.
While I cant entirely dismiss the possible connection between vaccines and autism, primarily because we know so little about the genesis of autism, i would guess that this unsupported concern is due to confusing correlation and causation, a problem as common as ragweed.
I find this comment fascinating. I am a pediatrician, and am interested that taking the Angry Kid in for her first shots was one of the most difficult thing you have ever done.
Within the realm of science, is there anything your pediatrician could have done to make it easier? (I can't give you a choice of oral or injection. Oral polio vaccine has risks that aren't justified by the western hemisphere's low incidence of wild disease.)
I ask this question genuinely. I find it interesting that with your understanding of stastics, and presumably some epidemiology, you found it difficult. Could we as a profession make it easier?
Pediatrician, I don't think anyone could have made it easier. It was irrational fear, and I knew it was irrational. I was not afraid of autism, but I was afraid of an adverse reaction. And it's very hard to see your tiny baby held down and assaulted.
Even a tiny probability looms large when it's your baby on the table.
A traveling exhibit (called "Risk") came through our town a year or so ago. They had one exhibit that might have put my mind at ease had it been in my pediatrician's office. It was entitled something like "What is One in a Million?" It was a smallish plexiglass pipe about 18" long (maybe 4" in diameter) filled with a million small pellets of different colors. One of the pellets was black. The exhibit asked viewers to find the black pellet. (There were other colors too, to represent 1/1000, 1/100, etc.)
It was an impossible task. And, when working out the math of these sorts of things, 1 in a million isn't even a very small number. But for real life events it might as well be zero, and that exhibit drove it home for me.
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