autism-vaccine link?

[Skeptic Ginger]

I am actually suspecting that Monica was lying when she said "My child suffered an adverse reaction to either the MMR, or Varicella vaccines. She had encephalitis, seizures, fever, bulls eye rash."

Also she claimed that the polio vaccine is not given to infants.

Then she continues with "I find it sad that the ARNP and 2 pediatricians that have been treating my daughter did not know of VAERS, or how to report a reaction. My congressman suggested I do such a thing, and I provided the practice with the correct information."

Very odd, since vaccines are accompanied by Vaccine Information Sheets containing information on VAERS and VICP.

Something fishy is going on with Monica.

Clearly.

 

[bluecollarscientist]

What I do know is that once one becomes frustrated, one does tend to become angry. And loud. And those who might otherwise have been amenable to the message tend to quit listening, leaving an audience composed entirely of those whose minds aren't going to be changed no matter what.

Baloney. If getting frustrated, angry, and loud causes "people who would have been otherwise amenable to the message" to quit listening, then anti-vaccers would have had no success getting their message across.

A lot of time, energy, and money is dedicated to effectively communicating the benefits of immunization.

That's a pretty strange use of the word "effectively" given what is happening with the Larry King Show and the headlines that this case has attracted.

I think it might be accurate to say that a previous generation's efforts resulted in a widespread cultural acceptance of vaccination, and that those efforts were effective. I'd also say that the current people communicating on the same issues are doing a very poor, ineffective job, given the effectiveness of the quacks' attack on vaccination.

Some of the folks involved in this work are highly trained and thoroughly experienced in the art/science of risk communication. If you have specific recommendations about how they might do their work more effectively, I'm sure we'd all be glad to hear them, but all I'm hearing so far is frustration. Not that I can't relate to that, of course.

Specific recommendations:

1) People interested in communicating these issues should stay in touch with reality, and not claim frustration, anger, and loudness are ineffective.

2) People interested in communicating these issues should understand that emotion trumps data. We should not shy from using emotional appeals to further the message. (Yes, it is virtuous to teach people to think critically. That is a lot easier to do once you've convinced them it is important to think.)

3) People communicating on these issues should be showing graphic and disturbing pictures of the worst outcome of diseases like polio, mumps, measles, etc. Part of the problem is that vaccination became part of our culture when parents where justifiably frightened by these kinds of scenes surrounding them. Vaccination has successfully reduced such scenes to extreme rarity, which has encouraged the anti-vacc movement.

4) Anti-vaccination nuts should be frontally attacked as people who seek to harm children. Other parents should be told that such peoples' teachings pose a physical danger to their children.

5) The medical community should lobby to pass laws to bar unvaccinated children from public places like schools, day-care centers, airliners, and similar opportunities to become a vector.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Further replies from me to Monica in Orac's blog:

[Monica:]...perhaps you inferred that because you feel guilty? Have you administered vaccines to a child who had a severe reaction?

As a matter of fact, in 30 years of giving thousands and thousands of vaccinations, I have yet to even see a single serious reaction. Besides a few people fainting, one person in all that time had an irritated brachial nerve after a flu shot. It eventually resolved. He still gets flu shots every year.

[Monica:] We CAN create safer vaccines, we have in the past, and we need to continue to do so. The first step towards that is a more accurate, accessible and well known adverse reporting system.
I find it sad that the ARNP and 2 pediatricians that have been treating my daughter did not know of VAERS, or how to report a reaction. My congressman suggested I do such a thing, and I provided the practice with the correct information.
Thirdly, I have real skepticism with our current state of affairs at the FDA. Let us not forget Ketek, Zelnorm, Oxycontin, Heparin and Vioxx. Let us not forget who funds the FDA.
I would also like to remind everyone that for every congressman in the US, there are approximately 40 pharmaceutical lobbyists. Pharmaceutical companies have more lobbyists in the US than any other industry.

You prove my point. You trust the medical community, you don't trust the medical community. You know stuff about the FDA you think we don't know. Your provider didn't know about VAERS so the entire medical community must not know. And you think I speak of the collective "we" as just care providers or whatever parameters you put on that "we" which allows you to discount vaccine information that is inconsistent with your beliefs.

The collective "we" includes all providers, all medical researchers, all countries, all medical universities, all government organizations involved in medical practice oversight from each state's board of pharmacy to the CDC, from the FDA to the ACIP to the WHO.

The overwhelming consensus in all these people and organizations is that vaccines are safe, they don't cause autism, and the misinformation which swirls around the anti-vaccine crowd regardless of whether or not you view yourself as one of them has been looked at and discarded as misinformation by that collective "we", the medical community. There is no debate within the medical community with the exception of a few oddballs one has to wonder how they ever passed their licensing exams. Dr Cutler, by the way, the 'doctor' who touts mercury in dental fillings as causing autism is a chemist, not a medical doctor. Having a college degree is no guarantee of having reliable opinions.

[Monica:] The individuals at the core of this issue never even see patients! They sit in a lab, or behind a desk, and are very profit driven....
Skeptigirl, this is much different from what drives you to care for your patients. You see them, face to face. Corporations see them as dollar signs, and increased revenue.
Trust me, I am all for doctors, nurses, and practicing physicians who treat patients. They have a rough job these days. They are often fed even more b*llsh*t than us patients are.

Again proving my point. For this to be the problem, the part of that collective "we" in the medical community who provide care would have to be duped, stupid or in on it. And you, in your infinite wisdom would then be able to see what those of us with years of experience and education cannot see. You have that special ability to figure this all out while the rest of us are fooled.

[Monica:] Vioxx was a wonder-drug, and prescribed heavily, until people started DYING, only then it was found unsafe and pulled from the market. Why wasn't it removed BEFORE people died? Why did it take someone having an adverse reaction to see the problem with Vioxx? Because, we don't fix things that aren't broken.
The "medical community" that you refernce is comprised of physicians treating patients. The "medical community" is not responsible for the development and production of medication and vaccines.
I am certain that most of the medical community WOULD use safer vaccinations once they were made available.
It does not make sense to change a product if it is safe, and works. Again, why fix something that is not broken?Unfortunately, it often does take injury to even know that injury can occur, that is why we have adverse event reporting systems. When injury occurs, the individuals responsible for proucing and maintaining the safety of medication and vaccines also share the reponsibility in creating safer alternatives.
That is not your job, nor my doctor's job, nor my daughter's pediatrician's job.
That is up to the FDA and pharmaceutical companies.
If children were not contracting polio from the OPV, we would still use it. Before the switch to the IPV in 2000, the OPV was primarily the ONLY option, so that is what was used. Once a safer vaccine was available, doctors used it!
I am sure if "the medical community" had access to inactivated measles, mumps, ruebella and varicella vaccines, they would use them too, but sadly, they are not in production.

Here you are simply poorly informed as are many people. Perhaps I can actually help you understand these issues a little better.

Our system of medical care includes corporations, profit motives, more advertising than it should, market forces which encourage copycat drugs to take existing market share rather than incentives to make a better product and few incentives to make unprofitable drugs that are needed such as new antibiotics. These are extremely complex issues and it is naive to draw black and white, good and evil conclusions about them.

Let's just take the VIOXX example. You can only study a drug on so many people before you release it for use. It isn't practical to test a drug on a million people before marketing it. But if side effects are rare, then they are not always going to show up in testing. As a prescriber, I know that. So I use older treatments when they work and save newer drugs for people with no other options. After the newer drugs are on the market, more safety data is collected. And if the drug is truly superior, then I might switch it to being a first line prescription.

Companies do bad things. They decide to not release research they should have. But if this was the over ridding theme of prescription drugs, you'd have a lot more dead people than we do. We have people surviving terrible cancers, heart disease, trauma, infections, and so on. Medical care is successful. Because the system isn't perfect does not make me incompetent in assessing medical research. Because a company was unethical does not discount the fact the medical community detected the problem and corrected it. You can trust the VAST MAJORITY of the medical system.

And you can trust that when the vast majority in the medical community has looked at vaccine research, at decades of use, at public concerns, and have come to a general consensus identifying the valid information and the invalid information. Your imagination has run wild. Medicine is successful. The collective "we" are efficient at getting to the evidence and drawing the right conclusions.

The collective "them" as in anti-vaxers are not seeing something the rest of us can't. It is the other way around. We see where their logic fails. We see how they drew a false conclusion because they didn't understand something. We see how they overgeneralize single wrongdoings into an entire evil corporate world.

[Monica:] Most of us just think we need safer vaccines.

Vaccine safety is incredibly good. Vaccines prevent infections that would otherwise kill millions. I'd like to see an investment in research figuring out how to communicate that fact to people as much as research producing a safer flu vaccine for example. There are many things competing for scarce research and development dollars. If those resources were infinite maybe we'd have that cure for aging along with absolutely safe vaccines. Thinking vaccine safety is a pressing priority makes one lose sight of the real risk here, that of the actual diseases vaccines prevent.

Vaccine safety is continually monitored. The rotovirus vaccine was tried, stopped, reformulated and in use again. We switched to killed polio vaccine when the number of cases of vaccine associated polio exceeded wild viral polio. But there was a reason to use the live vaccine and there still is in parts of the world polio is still endemic. The killed vaccine is not as effective and takes longer to cover large at risk populations. That decision was not made lightly. It was made after careful evaluation of the risks and benefits of using each vaccine.

Couple other misconceptions in your posts:

We could not possibly eradicate polio without vaccinating infants. I believe I already addressed this. The pool of susceptible people would be too large.

The vaccinated person getting the live polio vaccine is not the usual victim of vaccine related polio, it is an unvaccinated person infected from viral shedding in the stools of the vaccinated person. The vaccine virus mutates back into a disease causing virus but only after passing through at least one host.

The reason for delaying live vaccines is not because the immune system is not mature. Either your doctor was misinformed or he/she oversimplified the explanation as a matter of expedience. Neither is a big deal since the recommendations of when to vaccinate comes from those who do know. Maternal antibody protects newborns to varying degrees for varying length of times. Live vaccines work by giving the person a mild infection rather than the risk of a severe infection with the real organism. So if the baby does not get the mild infection because the mother's antibodies protect it, then no permanent immunity occurs either.

You wait until 15 months to give live vaccines because maternal antibody is mostly gone by then. But we actually give MMR vaccines to 6 month and older kids during outbreaks. We just repeat the vaccine again at 15 months. It is not dangerous to do that.

We give more doses of the initial series of some vaccines to infants because their immune system is less mature. So 4-5 doses might be required when an unvaccinated adult might only require 3 doses in the initial series. Again, this does not endanger the younger children.

-

And I added this after re-reading some of Monica's comments:

Correction: After re-reading what you posted, Monica, about what your doctor said about immune system maturity, it sounds like it was correct and you drew incorrect conclusions about what it meant. The information in bold above should still explain the problem for you.

 

[Dymanic]

Are you just venting some personal frustration

Could be, I guess. I have experienced frustration with this. I've also experienced resignation. My current emotional state with regard to the issue surely includes at least residual aspects of both. I do think there is something approaching a point of balance between the two extremes, and while I don't claim to have found it, it's what I strive for.

...or are you seriously suggesting we already know everything there is to know about communicating science and medical information to the public and no further approaches or analysis are going to matter?

What "further approaches or analysis"? You've observed that people prefer misinformation to evidence based information, and that news media are motivated by profit, and I agree that both are trivially obvious. If you've reached some penetrating insight into human nature that you feel would be useful in overcoming these fundamental limitations, then quit waving your arms around and spill it. If people are reluctant to vaccinate, get all in their face about it? Is that your brilliant solution? Have you actually tried that?

If getting frustrated, angry, and loud causes "people who would have been otherwise amenable to the message" to quit listening, then anti-vaccers would have had no success getting their message across.

Any possibility that some messages lend themselves better to that sort of delivery than others?

People communicating on these issues should be showing graphic and disturbing pictures of the worst outcome of diseases like polio, mumps, measles, etc.

Oh, now there's a sparklingly original idea. You know, risk communication is the subject of semester courses in many colleges these days. Before you jump out with any more of whatever laughably naive ideas might pop into your head, maybe you should investigate a little more. Here, have a link:

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/risk/riskprimer/index.html

You might want to start with the "Seven Cardinal Rules", since you've just broken just about all of them.

Anti-vaccination nuts should be frontally attacked as people who seek to harm children.

I think you'll have a hard time convincing very many people on either side of the debate that that's true, and that you would even suggest it indicates that you have so thoroughly adopted an "us versus them" mentality that no effort on your part is likely to do anything but damage to the very cause you're attempting to argue for.

The medical community should lobby to pass laws to bar unvaccinated children from public places like schools, day-care centers, airliners, and similar opportunities to become a vector.

Maybe we could create special schools and restaurants and whatnot specially for "them". Drinking fountains.

 

[robinson]

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/risk/riskprimer/vision2.html#avoiding

Great link. Thanks.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

...
What "further approaches or analysis"? You've observed that people prefer misinformation to evidence based information, and that news media are motivated by profit, and I agree that both are trivially obvious. If you've reached some penetrating insight into human nature that you feel would be useful in overcoming these fundamental limitations, then quit waving your arms around and spill it. If people are reluctant to vaccinate, get all in their face about it? Is that your brilliant solution? Have you actually tried that?...

Goodness, where to start?

First, you speak of risk communication again, as a knowledge deficit. If one merely points out the facts, and the person does not change their risk perception, then there is not much else that can be done.

Not knowing what your knowledge is on risk communication, rather than going further, I'll wait for your comment.

When it comes to these beliefs that Big Pharma, evil corporations, profiteering and so on are behind the supposed vaccine lies, take a look at how I have been addressing Monica's issues. What I am doing is, I've observed that in order to believe A (Big Pharma is behind the supposed vaccine lies) you have to ignore B (health care providers are not evil, greedy or too stupid to evaluate a vaccine). I am bringing B into the compartment Monica has left it out of when she contemplates A.

I do not expect instant recognition. I can predict Monica will react by continuing to ignore B. She will likely do that by rationalizing that you really can keep B out of the compartment she has A in. But other people reading the posts who have not adopted A completely will see that A and B are not compatible beliefs. Monica might see that as well depending on how convinced she is of A.

So in looking at how people compartmentalize these beliefs when they really are incompatible, it is worth seeing if you can bring that insight to their attention. You start by looking at what is going on with a deeper look into the mental process. Then generate ideas, try them, test them, reanalyze and continue. There is no end to how much further we can take this. That's like saying we have nothing new to discover.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I am most familiar with Peter Sandman on risk communication.

Here are the links from his work from your CDC link, Dy.

He did a lot of the early work on this issue. But risk communication is only one aspect of how we can address how people think and organize their beliefs.

 

[Chris Haynes]

....
I do not expect instant recognition. I can predict Monica will react by continuing to ignore B. She will likely do that by rationalizing that you really can keep B out of the compartment she has A in. But other people reading the posts who have not adopted A completely will see that A and B are not compatible beliefs. Monica might see that as well depending on how convinced she is of A.
....

She may actually be changing. She is more forthcoming with factual information. She now admits her child's disease with seizures was a full three weeks after the MMR. With luck she might understand that there are other things that cause fever and seizures.

Because the same thing happened to us. Only with a gastrointestinal bug that I also had (the funny thing was I was cured by the time the ambulance got him, with me accompanying him, to Children's).

Oh, a great way to meet the new neighbors who had a baby... have them meet you on the street and ask why there was a firetruck and MedicOne in front of our house the previous week.

 

[bluecollarscientist]

Any possibility that some messages lend themselves better to that sort of delivery than others?

Yes. That's one of several reasons why telling people not to be loud is completely bogus.

Oh, now there's a sparklingly original idea.

Oh, it's not original, I certainly didn't think it up. I've seen it done several times by doctors testifying to legislative committees and giving speeches to civic organizations, and by an astronomer (Tyson) who has a speech about how the universe wants to kill us all.

Or maybe that's what you are trying to point out. Whatever. I haven't claimed originality, only specificity.

You know, risk communication is the subject of semester courses in many colleges these days.

So are courses on how a magic sky demon turns wine into blood when asked to by his special men who wear dresses.

Before you jump out with any more of whatever laughably naive ideas might pop into your head, maybe you should investigate a little more. Here, have a link:

You might want to start with the "Seven Cardinal Rules", since you've just broken just about all of them.

You've just broken a bunch of them too. At least my specific recommendations about communicating the dangers of antivaccination activism can be accomplished in a way consistent with the Seven Cardinal Rules posted there.

I think you'll have a hard time convincing very many people on either side of the debate that that's true,

It is straightforward to show people that antivaccination crazies pose a danger to others' children. This is because, of course, antivaccinationists do not have the best interests of children at heart, and they do actually advocate something that is dangerous to children. Soft-pedaling the danger that their activities pose to children is, in my opinion, a highly ineffective communication strategy for this issue. If you can't even state what is at stake, why even have the discussion?

Maybe we could create special schools and restaurants and whatnot specially for "them". Drinking fountains.

Equating vaccination policies in schools with racism is in no way legitimate debate. I very much doubt that all the doctors and public health officials I've heard testifying that public school vaccination policies are a good idea also think that black people should be forced to use special drinking fountains. Do please try to ratchet down the sleaze factor.

Let's back up a sec. What I did was provide a list of specific recommendations about communicating the issue, each of which are progressively more extreme. If the antivaccinationists gain ground, as they are doing handily right now, I believe the debate will grow more polarized, with the later items on my list increasingly taken up by those on the side of health.

A similar debate has played out in public health and epidemiology in the United States over the last 30 years. Those on the side of health have substantially lost that debate, and today, public health officials' inability to convince sufferers of virulent disease to voluntarily adopt practices to protect the rest of the population has resulted in the passage and application of laws that restrict those peoples' freedoms. I've got mixed feelings about that - on the one hand, I don't want someone with multiply-resistant TB engaging in behaviors that will maximize spread of the disease; but on the other hand, I don't want them under court injunction on their movements, under house arrest, or in jail, either. Yet that has now happened.

This is the direction that vaccination discussion is going. I've already heard health professionals testify to school boards and legislative bodies that unvaccinated children should not be allowed in public schools or state day-care centers. In some places such laws or administrative procedures are already in place: I provide astronomy and physics instruction in at least one school that mandates children be vaccinated for certain diseases, else they are not allowed to enroll.

Now, it would be really cool to discuss why this is or isn't a good idea, or whether the health professionals promoting the things on my list are doing something harmful or beneficial by doing that. Obviously, anyone posting such a list as the one I threw together is hoping for some kind of legitimate discussion and debate. Equating a school vaccination policy with an Alabama drinking fountain from the 60's doesn't really get us there. You see that, right?

 

[Dymanic]

First, you speak of risk communication again, as a knowledge deficit. If one merely points out the facts, and the person does not change their risk perception, then there is not much else that can be done.

Well, we're talking about knowledge deficits on two different levels here; knowledge deficits where public perception of the risks is concerned, and knowledge deficits where approaches to risk communication are concerned. I'm not sure t's entirely clear whether performance deficits, rather than knowledge deficits, are the main obstacle where either is concerned, but antivax fanatics don't have to worry about some of the constraints faced by public health officials. They can lie. They can make vague assertions knowing that they will be accepted by many at face value. They can make appeals to intuition, to ignorance, to emotion. Having had no real credibility to begin with, they have none to protect. You seem to be suggesting that because they fight dirty, we must do so as well. I'm saying that we must never fight dirty no matter what they do, because as soon as we do that, they win. In some situations, the best way to win is not to fight at all.

take a look at how I have been addressing Monica's issues.

I have been following that, and I think you're doing fine, and I agree that the effort is much more likely to be of benefit to someone other than Monica herself. Plugging away like that is about all we've got, as far as I can see, which is pretty much my point.

Equating vaccination policies in schools with racism is in no way legitimate debate.

I think you underestimate the degree to which ostracizing those who have qualms about vaccination plays right into the hands of the fanatics. It's an evil conspiracy, remember?

It is straightforward to show people that antivaccination crazies pose a danger to others' children.

I absolutely agree with that. What I don't agree with is your assertion that they seek to harm others. That sort of xenophobe-speak is seldom helpful under any circumstances, and in this instance I see it as being particularly reckless, not the least reason being that the assertion is patently false.

Equating a school vaccination policy with an Alabama drinking fountain from the 60's doesn't really get us there.

You're backpedalling. It was: "public places like schools, day-care centers, airliners, and similar opportunities to become a vector".

Welcome to the forum, by the way.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

Hmm. Looks like Monica's had enough.

 

[Chris Haynes]

I know... poor Monica. She doesn't see that blaming the vaccine received three weeks before is just like assuming it is a zebra behind you when you hear hoofs. I have given her all sorts of germy possibilities, and she is just not having it!

 

[bluecollarscientist]

I think you underestimate the degree to which ostracizing those who have qualms about vaccination plays right into the hands of the fanatics. It's an evil conspiracy, remember?

No, I don't remember there being an evil conspiracy. Regardless of whether there is one, or not, and regardless of what this supposed conspiracy - I really have no idea what we are talking about here - is all about, I don't think this explains why you think adopting the communication strategies in my list will result in the antivaccinationists winning.

I absolutely agree with that. What I don't agree with is your assertion that they seek to harm others.

And muggers just want your wallet. Any harm that comes about is completely incidental.

I agree there's a difference between motive and outcome. I don't question their motive - these deluded people genuinely believe that what they want to do is good. But I'm calling their actions like I see them. I'm clueless why we should not say that someone trying to dismantle the vaccine production infrastructure, interfere with vaccination of others, and discredit evidence-based medicine through falsehood, is not seeking to do harm. I'm happy to be clued in.

That sort of xenophobe-speak is seldom helpful under any circumstances, and in this instance I see it as being particularly reckless, not the least reason being that the assertion is patently false.

So it's xenophobia, this time.... There's nothing foreign or unknown about the consequences of not vaccinating children, or about unvaccinated people. The behaviors of disease in individuals and populations are well-characterized. Things that could be done to protect the population from such things are well-supported by evidence.

You're backpedalling. It was: "public places like schools, day-care centers, airliners, and similar opportunities to become a vector".

So, take it on, either as I first listed it, or in its "backpedaled" state, I don't care which. Show me why it is a bad idea to lobby for such a thing. Maybe you are right. If so, I can't be expected to believe it just because of the depth of your contempt for these ideas.

That list is a summary of the recommendations a physician made to a legislative committee in my state last year. She was responding to a question a legislator posed, something about, in the hypothetical instance that the situation gets worse, what should the state do? This expert said the state should bar the unvaccinated from those public places.

By saying this, did she hand a victory to the antivaccinationists? And if so, why? What research shows that this drives people into the antivaccinationist camp?

My state feels (I'm not sure it really is, or has to be, or should be) it is dealing with some regional public health problems related to vaccination and resistant diseases that aren't typical in the rest of the United States. Health care penetration into the bush here is not great, and we have proximity to and population exchange with Russia, which is the source of several resistant disease cases that have gained kind of a high profile here. So I'm seeing the debate play out in line with my list already. Meanwhile I'm watching the "expert" communicators at the national level fail miserably at putting a sock in the nonsense that hit the news this past week. I don't actually think I know better than anyone else what to do, but it is not obvious to me that the recommendations I listed are bad ones either.

Welcome to the forum, by the way.

Thanks.

 

[Dymanic]

No, I don't remember there being an evil conspiracy.

Perhaps you are somewhat new to the debate. Big pharma has them all in its pockets, see; the CDC; doctors; pretty much anyone who advocates immunization. Until you have at least some rudimentary grasp of the kind of mindset we're dealing with here, I don't see how you can expect to come up with any realistic suggestions for improvement.

That list is a summary of the recommendations a physician made to a legislative committee in my state last year.

I don't know what that physician's specialty is, or what would give you reason to regard her as an expert in risk communication, or how faithfully you "summarized" her comments. If you don't mind, I'll emphasize my doubts about the latter by further summarizing your summary, and perhaps the flaws will appear more obvious:

1) Get angry and loud.
2) Use appeals to emotion.
3) Use shock photos.
4) Attack antivaxers as out to harm children.
5) Treat non-vaxers as second-class citizens.

I also don't know the details of the hypothetical to which she was responding, but if I had to take a wild guess, it would be that it had something to do with a major disease outbreak. If that's the case, I think what just about everybody agrees on (and what even you might find obvious) is that measures which might be justified during such an emergency are not viable solutions to the broader problems public health officials face on a daily basis. There's enough trouble just deciding how much power should be given to officials even during such an emergency. Ever heard of the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act?

Meanwhile I'm watching the "expert" communicators at the national level fail miserably at putting a sock in the nonsense that hit the news this past week.

Do you consider biologists (or geologists) also to have failed miserably because they have not managed to put a sock in creationist nonsense? The newspaper I read every morning still includes an astrology column. Who do I see about getting a sock put in that nonsense? When it comes to anyone "putting a sock" in any of the nonsense that might appear in mainstream media, just how far would you be willing to go? What do we do if the scope of the problem turns out to be more extensive than what you're accounting for? Because what comes to my mind is the Straight Dope slogan: "Fighting Ignorance Since 1973 (it's taking longer than we thought)".

 

[Eos of the Eons]

From a layperson view, I finally have this case straight. No thanks to the media, of course.


Anyone with a mitochondrial disorder will be in trouble when they get an infection...

children with mitochondrial disorders often develop normally until they have an infection, when mitochondria are unable to manufacture the energy needed to nourish the brain. As a result, they regress

Saying that the girl has autism when she only got symptoms like autism (but actually she just got decreased mental capacity due to brain damage) caused by her mitochondrial disorder is completely misleading. It's the like the other misinformation antivaccine brigades like to go on about methyl mercury poisoning that leads to brain damage is the same as autism. It's not the same, it's barely like autism.

In this case they figure the vaccines caused her body to react like it was infected. She could have just gotten an infection too. Being as they are not sure...

The Vaccine Act became effective October 1, 1988. It
establishes the Vaccine Program as a no-fault compensation scheme whereby persons allegedly suffering injury or death as a result of the
administration of certain compulsory childhood vaccines may petition the
federal government for monetary damages. Congress intended that the Vaccine Program provide individuals a swift, flexible, and less adversarial
alternative to the often costly and lengthy civil arena of traditional tort
litigation.

http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:VRvMP1afF80J:www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/OSMPage.htm+U+S+Court+of+special+claims&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

I have the original email from the Healthfraud group if anyone wants me to forward it.

Journalists show time and time again that they are not qualified to report on anything other than local social gatherings and happenings, but they are allowed to.

We can rest uncomfortably knowing that the world is miseducated by its media, and that the majority of the wordly populace will remain as always very very ignorant as to what a fact could look like.

 

[Eos of the Eons]

There's so much misinformation! Most people I speak with about the flu vaccine tell me that they won't take it because they think it can give them the flu.

Woo woos pushing things like essential oils, naturopathy, supplements, homeopathy... etc. etc. will all tell you that the flu vaccine will give you the flu. One lady called into the local radio station, when they were talking about getting shots among the radio crew, to warn them away from getting the shots...saying it would only given them the flu. The only reason I know this happened is because they aired her call and then said on air that she might be onto something. I had only wished I'd had time to call in afterwards...


Nobody cares that it's impossible to get the flu from the shot when they use "dead bugs", but they also don't care that you can get the flu from someone else until the body has built up immunity from the shot. If you get the flu hours after the shot, then you didn't get it from the shot because that is too short of an incubation period... blah blah blah.
http://www.vaccineinformation.org/flu/qandadis.asp

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Excellent point.

Even if the vaccine was the cause of the worsening of this girl's condition, a fair risk/benefit analysis should have to include how much worse it could've been if she'd gotten the vaccine-prevented disease. From a public-health point of view, I'd even advocate accepting some ill effects of vaccines in rare cases for the greater good of the community. Luckily, we don't have much of that to worry about.

There's so much misinformation! Most people I speak with about the flu vaccine tell me that they won't take it because they think it can give them the flu.

Well that settles it, Dr Theysay is the best expert in the world on the subject.

Placebo controlled studies show flu vaccine rarely causes any 'flu like symptoms' in adults.
Flu is a serious respiratory infection, nausea and vomiting are not the primary symptoms of flu.
Healthy people can die from flu. It is one of the most underestimated infection hazards.
The vaccine is one of the safest we have.
Tens of thousands of people die every year from flu every year in almost every country. (I don't know if Lichtenstein has tens of thousands of people )
Children are hospitalized with influenza every year and hospitals are dangerous because of medical errors and side effects. A death from a med error would not show up in stats on death from flu.
A boy at my son's college died from flu that led to bacterial pneumonia just last month.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Baloney. If getting frustrated, angry, and loud causes "people who would have been otherwise amenable to the message" to quit listening, then anti-vaccers would have had no success getting their message across.

Not necessarily. If parents yell at a teenager, the teen rebels. If peers yell at a teen you would expect a different outcome. The approach to this involves looking first at the dynamics and then developing an appropriate intervention.

For example, people often view government control negatively. So they can side with the victim parents fighting back against the controlling system. If the 'system' uses the same tactic, that would not be effective. In this case, the system has to project the image of good guy protector rather than bad guy government controller. One way to do that is to establish a voice of the medical community that is clearly defined as outside of the big pharma and government systems. A union of concerned parents and health care providers for example could work.

That's a pretty strange use of the word "effectively" given what is happening with the Larry King Show and the headlines that this case has attracted.

We in the medical and scientific community need to improve our voice in the media. Why should some unqualified 'science reporter' be writing the news stories? We need to write them and hand them over. There are any number of options here and I suggest more public health funds be allocated for use in marketing public health messages. But we also need to go beyond the traditional public health service announcement. We need to employ the same marketing research as the the spreaders of misinformation employ.

I think it might be accurate to say that a previous generation's efforts resulted in a widespread cultural acceptance of vaccination, and that those efforts were effective. I'd also say that the current people communicating on the same issues are doing a very poor, ineffective job, given the effectiveness of the quacks' attack on vaccination.

No marketing needed, people saw the devastation first hand. Times have changed.

Specific recommendations:

1) People interested in communicating these issues should stay in touch with reality, and not claim frustration, anger, and loudness are ineffective.

2) People interested in communicating these issues should understand that emotion trumps data. We should not shy from using emotional appeals to further the message. (Yes, it is virtuous to teach people to think critically. That is a lot easier to do once you've convinced them it is important to think.)

3) People communicating on these issues should be showing graphic and disturbing pictures of the worst outcome of diseases like polio, mumps, measles, etc. Part of the problem is that vaccination became part of our culture when parents where justifiably frightened by these kinds of scenes surrounding them. Vaccination has successfully reduced such scenes to extreme rarity, which has encouraged the anti-vacc movement.

4) Anti-vaccination nuts should be frontally attacked as people who seek to harm children. Other parents should be told that such peoples' teachings pose a physical danger to their children.

5) The medical community should lobby to pass laws to bar unvaccinated children from public places like schools, day-care centers, airliners, and similar opportunities to become a vector.

You have the passion. Now you just need the science. It's easy to make snap judgments we should do xyz. But that is not the scientific approach. The science of marketing is extensive, we should borrow and add to the research data base.

The science of why people believe what they believe is in its infancy. Other than studies in persuasion and marketing, I think this is an important field of study.

And, the science of education is is extensive, we should borrow and add to that research data base as well.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Well, we're talking about knowledge deficits on two different levels here; knowledge deficits where public perception of the risks is concerned, and knowledge deficits where approaches to risk communication are concerned. I'm not sure t's entirely clear whether performance deficits, rather than knowledge deficits, are the main obstacle where either is concerned, but antivax fanatics don't have to worry about some of the constraints faced by public health officials. They can lie. They can make vague assertions knowing that they will be accepted by many at face value. They can make appeals to intuition, to ignorance, to emotion. Having had no real credibility to begin with, they have none to protect. You seem to be suggesting that because they fight dirty, we must do so as well. I'm saying that we must never fight dirty no matter what they do, because as soon as we do that, they win. In some situations, the best way to win is not to fight at all.

I didn't mean performance deficits were the only other deficit by my example. What I did mean however was a knowledge deficit is easy to fix. You provide knowledge. In the performance deficit in my example, I had to then go back and rethink what were the barriers to these guys doing what they were supposed to do.

Not perceiving the risk is a big one, but that isn't the only reason people do not act in their best interest. We looked at the barriers and in that case there were many. We began to address those instead of just repeating our classes once a year. Then I went into business for myself so I don't know if success was ever achieved. But if the measures had not worked, I'd have reassessed them and the interventions and started again.

And why people so often jump to the wrong conclusion when I bring this stuff up is interesting. But it is wrong. The word persuasion implies persuading someone to do something they wouldn't normally and that implies abnormal and that implies bad. Nope, that's not the case at all.

Marketing is the science of what makes people believe and make certain decisions. But to think you cannot employ that science for good things is rather short sighted. If a problem is rooted in inadvertent marketing of the wrong message, "vaccines are dangerous, diseases are no longer a risk" then we probably need at least some marketing in our arsenal to correct the problem. In this case the news media attention and misinformation needs to be addressed.

Some of that happened here. CNN put Dr Gupta on and tried to present the facts, all the while leaving the controversy open because after all, that's what CNN is selling. If we don't recognize CNN is selling controversy as a commodity and they are not really selling news as information, then we would be left wondering why these idiots don't get it. They don't see the science because their job is selling controversy. They see what they are looking for.

We need to look for ways to get around that barrier.

I have been following that, and I think you're doing fine, and I agree that the effort is much more likely to be of benefit to someone other than Monica herself. ....

Thank you.

 

[biostudent]

Well here's my beef with communication from the medical community: Patient information sheets are too dumbed down. I never even read them, personally. If someone gives me one, I just toss it into recycling. I've been doing that since I was a kid. Even now, with the internet, patient information sites are incredibly dumbed down (and I get especially annoyed by sites that immediately present me with two paths, one for doctors and one for patients). They are insulting to the average patient's (or parent's) intelligence. If I were the sensitive type, I might take that kind of insult personally and maybe, ya know, distrust the source and start down that long road...