FUCK THE POLICE
911 EVERY DAY
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4136
This is Dan from North Carolina, my wife and I just had a baby girl, and we have to decide if we want to give her immunization shots, I have heard rumor that some people believe that Autism is directly related to immunizing a child too early. Is this true?
It is true that some people believe that, which is tragic because there's a growing trend among misinformed parents to refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated, and new outbreaks of potentially fatal diseases like measles, whooping cough, diphtheria, hepatitis B, and polio have been the direct result. Among the worst offending communities is Ashland, Oregon, where 30% of kindergartners have been granted "personal belief" exemptions from the state, thus effectively eliminating "herd immunity" from the population. Only two US states require you to have a medical reason if you want to be exempted from the vaccination requirement to attend public school. A number of epidemics have broken out in communities with low vaccination rates, of diseases that had been otherwise largely eradicated by childhood vaccination.
The so-called "link" between autism and vaccines is a particularly bizarre superstition. It's an unfounded supposition depending on a chain of connections in which every single link is conclusively broken. Mythical link #1 is that autism can be caused by mercury. Autism is genetic, it has no environmental causes; at least none after the first trimester of gestation. Mythical link #2 is that mercury is found in the preservative thimerosal. In fact thimerosal contains ethylmercury, which is not absorbed by the body and is harmless; not methylmercury, which is the form responsible for mercury poisoning. Mythical link #3 is that thimerosal is found in vaccines. In fact thimerosal has not been an ingredient in childhood vaccines for over a decade.
Some parents also have been convinced that vaccination presents a dangerous immunological challenge, and so it's risky regardless of autism. This is a question that you should ask your pediatrician, not Jenny McCarthy. It's just not true. Even the common cold is a greater immunological challenge to the body than the full spectrum of early childhood vaccinations, and as you know, your child gets colds all the time and always manages to pull through. But you shouldn't get your children's medical advice from some random podcast any more than you should get it from deluded, uneducated celebrities. All you need to do is look at the data of disease rates among vaccinated and non-vaccinated children to answer any question about what you should do. There's no correlation between autism and vaccination rates, but there's huge correlation between vaccination and rates of diseases that the vaccines prevent.
Update. I did receive the following email from Dr. David Gorski at the Science Based Medicine blog, which is appropriate to include here. To his point about the vaccines that do still contain thimerosal, I was referring only to the scheduled early childhood vaccines, which apparently was not clear enough. So we're both right.
Point one:
You said that ethyl mercury is not absorbed and is harmless. While it is true that ethyl mercury is fairly rapidly excreted and appears to be harmless at the doses previously used in vaccines, it is not true that it is not absorbed. It is certainly absorbed into the bloodstream at easily measurable levels and can be incorporated into growing hair in mice and humans. It is also detectable in the CNS of experimental mice and monkeys. Also, thimerosal is toxic at higher doses. Basically, methyl mercury and ethyl mercury differ in pharmacokinetics, with ethyl mercury peaking early and then being rapidly excreted and methyl mercury having a more prolonged course of excretion and greater tissue buildup. You correctly said that methyl mercury is responsible for mercury poisoning, but inorganic mercury can also poison. These are not minor points. In any case, it would have been much better to say that the dose makes the poison and that numerous studies show that even the highest amount of thimerosal to which children were exposed (the late 1990s and early 2000s) was not associated with autism. Saying that it is "harmless" implies that thimerosal is completely harmless. It's not. It just is at the doses in vaccines. This is not just semantics. Another useful point is that it is a very effective preservative, and removing it means either accepting an increased risk of contamination of vaccines or finding another preservative, which may have problems we don't know about.
Point two:
The first point may have been more a matter of emphasis, but this second point is not. You said that thimerosal has not been an ingredient in childhood vaccines in over a decade. This is simply not true, at least not in the U.S. Other countries removed thimerosal over a decade ago, but not the U.S. In fact, it was only towards the end of 1999 that the CDC and AAP recommended that thimerosal be removed from vaccines. Then, thimerosal was not removed from common childhood vaccines until the end of 2001, seven years ago. Finally, it is not true that no childhood vaccine contains thimerosal. True, the vast majority of them do not and have not since early 2002, but the flu vaccine, even vaccines marketed for children, still contain thimerosal. See:
http://www.cdc.gov/FLU/ABOUT/QA/thimerosal.htm
There is more and more availability of flu vaccines that are thimerosal-free, but as of 2009 the majority still contain thimerosal. I expect that fewer and fewer thimerosal-containing vaccines will be marketed.
This is Dan from North Carolina, my wife and I just had a baby girl, and we have to decide if we want to give her immunization shots, I have heard rumor that some people believe that Autism is directly related to immunizing a child too early. Is this true?
It is true that some people believe that, which is tragic because there's a growing trend among misinformed parents to refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated, and new outbreaks of potentially fatal diseases like measles, whooping cough, diphtheria, hepatitis B, and polio have been the direct result. Among the worst offending communities is Ashland, Oregon, where 30% of kindergartners have been granted "personal belief" exemptions from the state, thus effectively eliminating "herd immunity" from the population. Only two US states require you to have a medical reason if you want to be exempted from the vaccination requirement to attend public school. A number of epidemics have broken out in communities with low vaccination rates, of diseases that had been otherwise largely eradicated by childhood vaccination.
The so-called "link" between autism and vaccines is a particularly bizarre superstition. It's an unfounded supposition depending on a chain of connections in which every single link is conclusively broken. Mythical link #1 is that autism can be caused by mercury. Autism is genetic, it has no environmental causes; at least none after the first trimester of gestation. Mythical link #2 is that mercury is found in the preservative thimerosal. In fact thimerosal contains ethylmercury, which is not absorbed by the body and is harmless; not methylmercury, which is the form responsible for mercury poisoning. Mythical link #3 is that thimerosal is found in vaccines. In fact thimerosal has not been an ingredient in childhood vaccines for over a decade.
Some parents also have been convinced that vaccination presents a dangerous immunological challenge, and so it's risky regardless of autism. This is a question that you should ask your pediatrician, not Jenny McCarthy. It's just not true. Even the common cold is a greater immunological challenge to the body than the full spectrum of early childhood vaccinations, and as you know, your child gets colds all the time and always manages to pull through. But you shouldn't get your children's medical advice from some random podcast any more than you should get it from deluded, uneducated celebrities. All you need to do is look at the data of disease rates among vaccinated and non-vaccinated children to answer any question about what you should do. There's no correlation between autism and vaccination rates, but there's huge correlation between vaccination and rates of diseases that the vaccines prevent.
Update. I did receive the following email from Dr. David Gorski at the Science Based Medicine blog, which is appropriate to include here. To his point about the vaccines that do still contain thimerosal, I was referring only to the scheduled early childhood vaccines, which apparently was not clear enough. So we're both right.
Point one:
You said that ethyl mercury is not absorbed and is harmless. While it is true that ethyl mercury is fairly rapidly excreted and appears to be harmless at the doses previously used in vaccines, it is not true that it is not absorbed. It is certainly absorbed into the bloodstream at easily measurable levels and can be incorporated into growing hair in mice and humans. It is also detectable in the CNS of experimental mice and monkeys. Also, thimerosal is toxic at higher doses. Basically, methyl mercury and ethyl mercury differ in pharmacokinetics, with ethyl mercury peaking early and then being rapidly excreted and methyl mercury having a more prolonged course of excretion and greater tissue buildup. You correctly said that methyl mercury is responsible for mercury poisoning, but inorganic mercury can also poison. These are not minor points. In any case, it would have been much better to say that the dose makes the poison and that numerous studies show that even the highest amount of thimerosal to which children were exposed (the late 1990s and early 2000s) was not associated with autism. Saying that it is "harmless" implies that thimerosal is completely harmless. It's not. It just is at the doses in vaccines. This is not just semantics. Another useful point is that it is a very effective preservative, and removing it means either accepting an increased risk of contamination of vaccines or finding another preservative, which may have problems we don't know about.
Point two:
The first point may have been more a matter of emphasis, but this second point is not. You said that thimerosal has not been an ingredient in childhood vaccines in over a decade. This is simply not true, at least not in the U.S. Other countries removed thimerosal over a decade ago, but not the U.S. In fact, it was only towards the end of 1999 that the CDC and AAP recommended that thimerosal be removed from vaccines. Then, thimerosal was not removed from common childhood vaccines until the end of 2001, seven years ago. Finally, it is not true that no childhood vaccine contains thimerosal. True, the vast majority of them do not and have not since early 2002, but the flu vaccine, even vaccines marketed for children, still contain thimerosal. See:
http://www.cdc.gov/FLU/ABOUT/QA/thimerosal.htm
There is more and more availability of flu vaccines that are thimerosal-free, but as of 2009 the majority still contain thimerosal. I expect that fewer and fewer thimerosal-containing vaccines will be marketed.
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