Or from your side of the world, if you’re down there in the southern hemisphere and in a very different time zone from us Americans.
From Australia, we have news of a powerful program on vaccination. It juxtaposes the story of young Dana McCaffrey, a 4-week-old girl who died of whooping cough, with the anti-vaccination crusader Meryl Dorey, who at one point claims that no one “is going to die from [whooping cough] today”, and who says that she treated her own unvaccinated children with homeopathic medicines. Guess which one looks like an uncaring idiot?
The news is less cheering from New Zealand: Jim Salinger, a climate scientist, was fired for speaking to the media. Salinger is a member of the IPCC, and was an early contributor to our understanding of climate change. Apparently, the New Zealand government does not want scientists speaking uncomfortable truths about the weather.
Cain’t be no global warming none of the scientists say so.
Not now anyway.
Isn’t “How ’bout that weather we’ve been having?” the cliche completely unoffensive topic?
Oh no, are the glaciers and the snow already melting on Mount Egmont? I still think Stewart Island is the ideal place in New Zealand.
Could be the New Zealand government wants they “fairly” quiet country to be off the radar when all the shit hits the fan and many people are looking for new “fairly” quiet countries to call home.
Anti-vaxers are such idiots. They have no understanding of the science behind it, and no obligation to social contract at all.
Well, we have national in government now, they tend to be more “capitalist” than Labour..
So that’s not suprising..
A friend of mine is an anti-vaxer, and proponent of alternative medicine, including homeopathy. She has seven children, and the youngest came down with whooping cough a year or so ago. My friend told me that, as she held the gasping, choking infant one terrible night, she suddenly realized, deep down, that children really, really could die. Really.
Her baby recovered (thanks to emergency room care and modern medicine), but I could tell that she was rattled, and so didn’t say what I knew, she knew, I was thinking: but of course children really could die — and did die, in huge numbers, in the fairly recent past. Science made the difference. Faith and “natural remedies” did not.
She’s very much the old-fashioned ‘earth mother’ type, a Mormon who stays home, bakes bread, and lives a Little Christian House on the Prairie existence inside her own head, where God keeps watch over the humble. But there can be consequences to living in Fantasy Faith World Inside Your Head. Disease just doesn’t respect the boundaries, and play out the happy stories.
If you want to use 19th century medical care, expect 19th century death rates.
Well they’ve got a fun new scare to worry about. There are cases of swine flu in NZ.
That was the most disturbing video I’ve ever seen. Seeing a child suffering from whooping cough is just torture. The crying parents afterward were nothing compared to that. How can people see that and still not vaccinate?
If the principles of homeopathy were correct, drinking even the most purified water would be an incredible mixture of healing remedies, dinosaur feces, chemicals of all description, urine, and whatever else…
It’s so patently stupid and obviously worthless that I am almost lost for words.
“Mostly, we heard from doctors and scientists, such as a pediatrician describing his heart break at watching a baby turn blue from coughing.”
Imagine being a helpless infant, unable to breathe. If you are a parent, and can prevent your child’s agony, but choose not to because of the quackery condemning proven medical science, you should live with shame for the rest of your days.
Sastra, did your friend change her mind afterward? If not, I wonder what she’s going to say to her child when s/he learns that s/he nearly died as an infant, and that a vaccination could have prevented that.
I actually grew up with my Mum giving me homoeopathic medicine. Recently I went up to visit her and I ran into a practising homoeopathic practitioner on my busride. After a 3 hour conversation with the man (who was really nice and smart) I ended up ranting to my mother afterward about it. She was really taken aback because she had given me homoeopathic medicine when I was a child and I had gotten better. So I explained about the placebo effect and the body’s immune system and how that homoeopathic medicine working is impossible.
So glad Dad convinced her to have me vaccinated.
Posted by: Lorax “Could be the New Zealand government wants they “fairly” quiet country to be off the radar when all the shit hits the fan and many people are looking for new “fairly” quiet countries to call home.”
Too late. The word’s already out. NZ and Aust have been having been experiencing increased immigration from USA for a while now. The Bush presidency seemed to have rushed it along somewhat. I’ve been hearing American accents from a few Australian and NZ advocates of various Australian companies and causes for a few years now. It still surprises me though. None in government yet though.
On another subject:
Do NOT eat Smithfield Foods pork products. Not now. Not at all, right now.
Apparently a Smithfield CAFO-type farm in Vera Cruz, Mexico is the likely source for the swine flu outbreak.
“Less cheering?” A child dieing of whooping cough is cheering? I reckon it can be less cheering as in, “The good news is you don’t have to worry about children. The bad news is, we’re going to have to remove your testicles.”
I really hope you never have any really gloomy news.
I don’t mean to ruffle any feathers here, and I assure you I am not anti-vaccine, but the current AAP recommendation says the first DTaP shot should be given at two months of age. A four-week-old infant should not have been vaccinated for it yet, no matter the opinions of her parents.
You can find the schedule here: http://www.cispimmunize.org/
There’s a poll on Channel 7’s website asking if vaccination should be compulsory and amazingly (18 hours after the show was broadcast) 67% of recipients are saying no! I’d say this is a clear case of the other side hijacking it, so please go here: http://au.tv.yahoo.com/polls/popup/-/poll_id/44893 and vote.
This isn’t even a hijacking issue – this should just be common sense!
Newbie314- I think the point is not that the child was unvaccinated due to age, but that the herd immunity was low enough that the baby was exposed to whooping cough.
I think the point is not that she wasn’t vaccinated but that the rash of anti-vaccinationists causes the herd immunity to be worth squat for exactly these types of situations and that Meryl Dorey claimed no one would die of whooping cough today.
I caught this last night on television. The footage of the child with whooping cough was very distressing. The anti-vaccination crowd (and their children) seemed so convinced they were right, like nothing could change their minds.
Exactly right — she was not and should not have been vaccinated. In part of the program, they talk about the fact that herd immunity is important to protect the very young and the elderly, and those who are immuno-compromised.
Lack of herd immunity is becoming a real problem for the immunocompromised,very old and very young,and the ones with contraindications to vaccination,and not only on the NSW north coast,also down here in Victoria.
As to this baby dying of pertussis at 4 weeks,I havent seen the TV program,but there should have been plenty of time for the mother to get this kid to Hospital before it got so ill,usually with pertussis you have a one-week or so phase of prodromal symptoms,and then you develop the coughing fits with their potential complications(seizures/bleeds,hypoxia/apnoea etc).
Sorry it this looks like nitpicking, but it’s not “down” here. The north-up and south-down cultural convention is so that is makes some people look “inferior” to others, being lower. I’ve seem maps where the “south” is “up” and they are as valid as the usual convention, because in space there is no “up” and “down”.
I’m not going to attack anyone specifically. But some of you are down right ignorant and casting some seriously whacked judgements. Even with 100% childhood vaccination rate, the herd doesn’t have immunity. Vaccinations don’t always work, especially this one.
Some basic facts, as I understand them. With whooping cough, the fatality rate is about 1/2%. The fatality rate from the vaccination (which is not 100% safe) is far, far lower. Especially as they replaced the old, less safe vaccine, with a new vaccine in 1996.
From this perspective, it’s better to take the jab. BUT…
But, like many vaccinations, as I said, it doesn’t work for everyone. According to the NIH, one-in-four who receive the full set of vaccinations are still susceptible to the disease. Also, the DTP vaccination only lasts 7-12 years and isn’t given again because adults and teens react much worse to the vaccination than children. More and stronger side effects, for one. So, by the time you’re 18 you’ve got no vaccination immunity and the “herd” as you were, his totally fucking enormous consisting of one-fourth of the children and virtually all the adults in the population…
Whooping cough, itself, is highly contagious. It’s constantly circulating in the population. If you’re exposed, you’ve got a 90% chance of getting it according to the AMA.
In adults, teens and most children, it generally presents as a cold followed by a long period of hacking coughs that last for weeks. Many of you have had this very “cold.” I certainly have. You, like me, probably thought it was a “just a cold.” It wasn’t, it was whooping cough. The problem is that adults generally don’t “whoop” so they don’t get treated, they just pass it on…
It’s also chronically under-reported. A few years ago the State of NY Health Department did a survey of reporting vis cultures. What they found was for every five reported, there were another 100 or so not reported (misdiagnosed as “colds”).
So, while it sucks for this poor kid, there’s a lot of ignorance around this subject. But it’s not unexpected, which is why I seldom participate in these “debates” or this finger-pointing. For too long the interplay between the anti-vax crowd which has made such a fuss that the pro-vax crowd has become way to over-reactive and the truth has been killed in the war. Bottom line, it’s nearly impossible to talk about the actual effectiveness of vaccinations and the risks.
Another issue was the baby was too young. DTP, of which this is the “P,” are administered at 2 months, 4 months and 6 months. This baby was 1 month.
So, with a vaccine that only works in 75% of the population, with adults that are no longer immunized, even if they were as children… This baby is a tragic story.
Just a tragic story. Not even a good “just so” story. Just a painful story. One that shouldn’t be used to claim some kind of epic failure in parenting and the evils of the anti-vax crowd. There are plenty of those. But this is not one of them.
And that’s all I’m going to say about this.
Its difficult to say that it should be compulsory, but I would suggest that children not be able to be enrolled in schools or government supported child-care until they are on-schedue with vaccination.
Its sad that events like this (not long ago there was an outbreak of measles in Sydney) have to occur before parents are convinced to follow the advice of doctors and not conspiracy theorists.
Patola, I wouldn’t worry about that, I doubt there are many here that don’t understand the convention or would consider the ‘down unders’ to be inferior.
There is also a running teasing between PZ and a few members of the Australian contingent, especially the one that refuses to spell PZ’s last name correctly. He happens to be a philosopher that thinks rather well, despite the blood rushing to his head.
Yo, MosesZD, read before typing, and actually, stop to think before typing as well.
The baby was NOT immunized. That is the point. Normally, there is enough immunity in the community (that could be the title of an old Public Enemy track) to ensure that the infant would never have been exposed. In this case, the low immunization rate of the area residents caused a totally preventable death.
@Patola: those of you who put South at the top of the map are still longitudinists! We Latitudinists argue about whether to put West or East at the top.
Idiot Representative from Texas thinks he stumped Energy Secretary, Dr. Steven Chu. The idiot has disabled commenting…
But you don’t give a 4 week old baby a jab. You rely on the rest of the community for not having it. From wikipedia: “Before vaccines, an average of 157 cases per 100,000 persons were reported in the U.S., with peaks reported every two to five years; more than 93% of reported cases occurred in children under 10 years of age. The actual incidence was likely much higher. After vaccinations were introduced in the 1940s, incidence fell dramatically to less than 1 per 100,000 by 1970.”
Vaccinating works. There’s no other way around it. Of course it’s not perfect, but so what? The fact that an introduction of the vaccine strongly reduced incidence rates shows that vaccines work, and if a community where they aren’t vaccinated as much – that puts those who can’t get the jab at risk. It was a preventable death, no question about it. Not because the individual wasn’t immunised but because there wasn’t enough immunisation in the community.
The behavior of the New Zealand government is inexcusable. No civilized, democratic government should silence someone just because they communicated (possibly vital) information to the media. You expect such silencing from dictatorships, not from a presumably modern nation like New Zealand. Have they no understanding of free speech?
Unfortunately there are way too many people living off with the faeries in Northern NSW. The entrenched hippy pot smoking enclaves up there have killed a good many brain cells. Meryl Dorey and her evil brain dead minions should at the very least be charged with child abuse, but preferably as accessories to murder.
But some of you are down right ignorant and casting some seriously whacked judgements.
You’re a fine one to talk. The rate of whooping cough in unvaccinated children is a small fraction of what it was before the vaccine was introduced. That — as a matter of logical necessity — is because of herd immunity.
Even with 100% childhood vaccination rate, the herd doesn’t have immunity. Vaccinations don’t always work, especially this one.
Herd immunity isn’t 100%, but it still exists. Sheesh.
Sometimes I have to wonder how the hell myself and brothers survived. We got polio shots (yes, shots), small pox vaccine, typhoid and diphtheria shots. I got measles, mumps, chicken pox and pneumonia. To be honest no one I know in my generation has ever had scarlett fever or whooping cough, my mother had them both. My grandpa was the only child surviver of small pox in our whole family.
All of the children I went to school with were vaccinated. If there had been shots for measles, mumps, chicken pox and pneumonia I would have gotten them. How many of you get tetanus and flu shots? Poor old Jonas Salk is probably doing 400 RPM’s in his grave.
The reprehensible Meryl Dorey and her ilk are killing children with their lies. Just the fact that Dorey uses and recommends homeopathy for her kids should be enough of a red flag that everyone with an ounce of sense should ignore everything else she says about vaccines and medical science.
She claims her kids, including one that was vaccinated, had whooping cough and recovered well. I doubt they had whooping cough. Who told her they did, her quack homeopath “doctor”?
All children, except those with medical conditions making it inadvisable, should be required to have vaccinations. The public health trumps the “right” to be an idiot.
I read a lot of pseudo-science things on Pharyngula that upset me. This one really strikes a nerve.
I am recovering from pertussis (whooping cough).
It almost killed me. I wished I were dead at times. It is not a cough. It is a nervous system paroxysm that makes your rack in pain, vomit, break ribs and dislocate shoulders. It severely damages your trachea. You pass out in an instant, falling to the floor to crash your head into whatever is in the way.
You do not sleep for weeks. There is no treatment once you have reach paroxysm stage. None. No antibiotics, not cough suppressants, nothing.
Recovery can last years. It is also known as the Ten Year Cough.
To clarify, the infant mortality rate is low now, but at one time it was 50%. A tribute to good health and modern medicine, but once you have it, it is as nightmarish as century ago.
The only defense is vaccination. Anyone who does not vaccinate their children is worse that an idiot, they are a crime against humanity.
Their is an adult vaccine now, as the childhood vaccine does not protect into adulthood. I am proof of that. Go get your booster.
It was a preventable death, no question about it.
Well, the likelihood of the death could have been radically reduced. Such deaths still occur in fully vaccinated populations, due to the factors MosesZD mentioned.
I just caught this over on Phil’s blog as well.
I was thinking ‘how could this happen?’ until she started to say in the intro ‘here in Northern NSW’… ahhhhhh, I see.
To paraphrase Star Wars:
Sheesh! Woo-sters destroying our carefully cultivated image of pragmatism and good sense to the world.
I just read the comments from Moses above:
In adults, teens and most children, it generally presents as a cold followed by a long period of hacking coughs that last for weeks. Many of you have had this very “cold.” I certainly have. You, like me, probably thought it was a “just a cold.” It wasn’t, it was whooping cough. The problem is that adults generally don’t “whoop” so they don’t get treated, they just pass it on…
Whooping cough is diagnosed a couple of ways, the “whoop”, and then a test for the bacteria. I had the PCR test.
Moses paints a rather benign picture, and I have no reason to suspect the disease is not mild in most adults. But I am not sure what his point is.
And to correct his statement about vaccination — it is available for adults, it does not have side effects (all my children have had the booster).
MosesZD @ 25,
I dont know if that number is correct off the top of my head,but what’s wrong with your statement is that while there may still be some susceptibility,the illness mostly takes an altered,shorter,less severe course in vaccinated individuals.
The combination of higher herd immunity and a mother paying more attention to a 3-week-old showing signs of a febrile respiratory illness might have prevented this death.
Thank you PZ for blogging this.
It is very important that as many people as possible hear about the damage being done by The Australian Vaccination Network in Australia. I am asking people to email the show, marked “Attention Rebecca Maddern” to let her (and the producers) know that we support responsible scientific reporting.
http://au.tv.yahoo.com/sunday-night/contact
Please also vote in the poll on the homepage;
http://au.tv.yahoo.com/sunday-night/
The parents of Dana have set-up a website to raise awareness of the dangers of pertussis and not vaccinating here;
http://danamccaffery.com/
If you feel inclined, please send them messages of support. As Toni McCaffery stated at the end of the report; “..I did not want to be seen as a vaccine crusader, I just wanted to be a Mum”.
You can also help by blogging this story, linking to my blog (http://tinyurl.com/cd99xx), twittering this link etc.
Thanks, Rachael (Maggie)
@Rorschach
You might be interested to read Toni McCaffrey’s account of events leading up to her daughter’s death. I think you will find it is premature of you to assume she did not “pay enough attention” to her daughter’s respiratory illness. See “An Open Letter from Toni and David McCaffery” here http://danamccaffery.com/openletter.html
Further, the New South Wales north coast (including Lismore, Alstonville and Byron Bay) has one of the lowest rates of vaccination in the state. According to figures published by the New South Wales Department of Health, an average of 86.6% of children aged between 12 months and 15 months were fully immunised (as at 31/12/2007). This compares with ~ 90% for the rest of the state (as of 31/12/2008; this number varies with age-group).
To quote from the 2007 report, “Apart from pertussis (whooping cough), rates of vaccine preventable diseases in NSW are low”. NSW is currently in the grip of a pertussis epidemic, partly because herd immunity has been lost to a non-compliance in vaccination for childhood diseases.
To my UK, Australian, and New Zealand friends –
I love you, I really do. You all do a better job, overall, implementing secular ideals than we, in the US (who have it enshrined in our Constitution) do.
But there’s one thing about your major media that makes me very, very cross. Could you please, please, please, please start a campaign to stop the Daily Mail, The Age, and everyone else from calling vaccines “the jab?” It makes me CRAZY.
Yes, I know it’s catchy. Yes, I understand it’s shorthand that’s easily understood in a headline. But it’s bullshit. It paints a picture of violent nurses sticking needles in everyone’s arms, willy-nilly. Oh, for the love of Pete, if I never have to read another UK/Aussie headline: “Jab Makes Mums Worry.”
Sweet jesus, please stop it.
I hope all the HuffPo apologists have a rethink regarding Ariana Huffington’s iresponsible (on the level of shouting Fire! in a crowded theatre) promotion of anti vax lunacy.
Anti vax idicoy seems to be a prevalent of both the new agey left as well as the far right.
For the commenter who doesn’t understand herd immunity – the smallpox vaccination wasn’t 100% effective, mine did not “take” for example, but I don’t have to worry about it because due to herd immunity smallpox has been rendered extinct in the wild. Polio would have gone the same way if it wasn’t for a few paranoid religious idiots in Nigeria and other places.
We have a pertussis outbreak in Southern Alberta right now due to a low vaccination rate.
I’d be quite happy with this result to be honest. After all the Mail is responsible for the MMR scare (in its credulous and hyperbolic reporting of Wakefield’s results) which arguably started off the anti-vax trend.
Dear Josh,
Jab jab jabby jabby jab. Im throwing brainstorms and bullet points in your general direction.
In general, one has to wonder at the prevalence of whooping cough in areas of NSW and other parts of Australia (or indeed any other country) where there is a high Aboriginal population. In Taree (on the mid-north coast), for instance, a large number of the Aboriginal population live on an estate where the housing is inadequate and availability of healthcare is much lower and more inaccessible than that of other larger cities, similar with Kempsey. It is not that vaccination for whooping cough is not wanted for their babies, but rather that healthcare has become increasingly unaccessible for this group of people, especially since the state of the NSW health system is appalingly under-funded. Looking at the population breakdown of the non-vaccinated groups would give you a better indication as to why this happens, especially in a system that relies on immigrant doctors that spend only two weeks in a town before being shifted on by the state government.
Babies wouldnt die if the government pulled its thumb out if its arse and did something about indigenous poverty and the health system.
Well, that shouldn’t pose too much of a problem. I mean, it’s not like everyone in the industry is scrambling to make a go of Liepert’s
lack ofvision for amalgamation without letting the entire health system slip into total chaos.@JoshS
At your request, I have removed my reference to “jab” and replaced it with “first round on immunisations”. I hope this allays your fears and that you continue to keep loving us.
Cheers from Sydney.
Kel @ 13:
Is it really possible for a homeopathic practitioner to be both nice AND smart?
If he believes what he’s doing, he could be dumb and nice. If he doesn’t, he could be smart and malicious.
(Yes, I’m semi-joking. I know that smart people are quite capable of believing stupid things.)
Apparently, the New Zealand government does not want scientists speaking uncomfortable truths about the weather.
might be more of a coincidence than anything.
I just spoke with a former police officer who told me that they really do have contractual obligations to notify “the head office” first before having press meetings about information relating to ongoing research.
BTW, IIRC, NOAA has the same kind of contractual clauses in the States.
Moreover, with the new PM in place, evidently there’s been a bit of a shakeup in high and middle management in many gov’t institutions (NIWA being the one in question here), and a lot of anal-retentive types have been installed in various places, causing no end of havoc as they over-interpret rules and regs, etc.
so, bottom line, my sources tell me this is more likely just a case of over-active management than any attempt to stifle info.
They even have a poll, which currently requires adjustment.
http://au.tv.yahoo.com/sunday-night/
this can’t be a surprise.
climatologists have been dwindling for years. if they’re not religiously suspect, they’re certainly economically so.
the more or less recent bush drivel of sending a man to mars outsourced loads of money that could have been more usefully put to weather monitoring equipment, which some nasa employees, with balls, state will deteriorate as a result.
forget the exact numbers, but weather stations pay for themselves, basically…for every mile of coastline (extending inland) which needs be evacuated, you’re looking at, i believe, about $1 billion / hour.
and that’s not mentioning the other useful information which might be gathered for better earth-modeling and such.
oh, the vaccination thing…hey, if they want dead children, who am i to argue?
It definitely shook my view of people in the movement. He was very intelligent, very well spoken and had excellent people skills. Only problem was that he was hung up on the idea of natural remedies. As Shermer says “Smart people are great at rationalising things they came to believe for non-smart reasons.” It really did scare me when he talked about getting people off cancer treatment and onto homoeopathic medicine. One of those red flags came up in conversation when he used the word “cure”.
If Jim Salinger deserved being sacked over his media utterances, then James ‘alarmist psychopath’ Hansen deserves being sacked, hung, drawn & quartered!
It depends if you want them to be carriers for viruses and bacteria that can pass on to your own children…
Not to mention this jaw-dropping act of opportunist populism
oh, the vaccination thing…hey, if they want dead children, who am i to argue?
It depends if you want them to be carriers for viruses and bacteria that can pass on to your own children…It also depends if you’d hold to the “who am i to argue” line in the case of people who actually murdered their children.
But yeah, even if you do stand by people’s right to slaughter their offspring, herd immunity.
Surely this is one case where reason must override personal beliefs based on lies and misconceptions?
Even vaccination is not foolproof for this one. If indeed the kind you get after being vaccinated is “an altered, shorter, less severe course” – thanks Rorschach #41 – then my neighbours’ baby, 11 weeks old, who is on his third week now of no sleep and horrible spasmodic coughing and his poor parents should be thanking their lucky stars. Instead they are beset with helpful advisors blaming the fact that he was vaccinated for his illness and indeed the local homeopath has made an unsolicited housecall. Joy!
What generation are you Patricia? I am 40 and I had scarlet fever apparently – although my parents were a bit dubious, thinking the GP just really, really didn’t want to have to diagnose measles for the third time.
I think this is the biggest part of the anti-vaccine attitude. Most people alive today, especially people with young children, have never had to face the reality of these deadly diseases. They have never had to live with the fear that their child could get polio at any time and die or be permanently crippled from it. They have never had to the face the reality that almost every family lost at least one child. They just don’t understand how serious these diseases really are.
You forgot : don’t be born with a genetic defect. Don’t come in contact with pathogenic bacteria, some of which (like the infamous flesh-eating bacteria) live on your skin and bowels. And, oh yeah, don’t breathe oxygen. Dangerous reactive chemical, that stuff is. Makes nasty little free radicals all around your body.
Newsflash : life is a deadly disease. 100% mortality up to now.
P.S.: “Alkalizing” is a whole load of pure authentic horse hockey.
-From somebody who actually knows the real definitions of “acid”, “alkaline” and “pH”.
Exactly which part of your body do you want to alkalize with food? How do these foods actually alkalize your body? What are the mechanisms for an alkaline body to prevent infectious disease? If you want to alkalize your blood, do you realize that your blood is a very good buffer system and that it’s both dangerous and difficult to change the pH of your blood? In summary, do you understand anything about basic physiology?
Eating proper food is important, but certainly not a very efficient way of vaccinating oneself. But I suppose everybody knows that. Right?
Except if you put the vaccine in the food. Like we did not long ago to try and curb a rabbies epidemic. Little meat cubes to vaccinate raccoons.
Unfortunately not possible yet for most vaccines, except the oral Salk polio vaccine, which was discontinued. But it probably could be made, with a proper delivery system. Costly development though.
Oh, and woos generally don’t think that the food vaccinates them, but rather that it “boost their immune system”, whatever that means.
No, they don’t know much about basic physiology or immunology.
Is there any evidence that herd immunity to whooping cough is possible, when the vaccination does not persist until adulthood? Was the featured baby breast fed? If the mother had recently had whooping cough, or had been exposed to it often enough since vaccination to renew her immune response, she might have had protective antibodies to give the baby. If there was not enough whooping cough in ciruculation to keep up her immunity, then perhaps too much “herd immunity” is to blame. The anti-vaxers don’t seem relevant in the case of this particular disease.
I have a problem with mandatory vaccination because there are sometimes medically recognized reasons for not having the vaccinations.
When I entered school small pox vaccinations were still required. My doctor refused to vaccinate me because of my atopic dermatitis, a skin disorder.. My parents had to get proof from other doctors that I had the condition and that they agreed that it was not medically advisable to give me the vaccination. I had all the other vaccinations.
When there was talk about requiring small pox vaccination being required after 9/11, I did some research. It is still the accepted medical opinion that people with my condition not get the small pox vaccination and stay away from those who have recently received it.
I have had every other vaccination that was required as a child for school, and get the flu vax every year.
Another example is my co-worker is allergic to eggs. She shouldn’t be required to get the flu shot – to continue to work in public school. I think that if the accepted medical opinion is that a person with X condition should not have the vaccination, there should be a procedure that allows them to still attend public schools.
Any ideas of how to handle these situations in a way that doesn’t leave a loophole for the quacks.
What about, “in my neighborhood, where most kids get vaccinated, 4-weeks-old babies don’t get whooping cough ?”
And, do watch the movie. The mother recounts, at some point, how she had a hard time accepting the loss of her baby because her body was still producing milk that her daughter did not require anymore.
FYI, antibodies (and pathogens) from the mother pass meaningfully to baby from breastmilk only in the first 12 hours after birth, after which the stomach becomes an efficient barrier to absorption. This protection lasts for about 1 month.
Immunology primer:
Not only antibodies pass to feotus : pathogens also do. If one can pass, the other can too. Rubeola, for example causes malformations in unborn babies even though the mother is producing antibodies.
A person’s immune protection timeline goes like this : when you are born, you possess a fraction of an adult’s. It goes up to reach adulthood levels after adrenarche, then slowly levels off into old age. It’s normal, and no food habits or drug or other practice, including breastfeeding, changes that. The young and the old are more vulnerable to infections and have always been.
Kemist#74,
“What about, “in my neighborhood, where most kids get vaccinated, 4-weeks-old babies don’t get whooping cough ?””
I would have preferred something scientific.
“FYI, antibodies (and pathogens) from the mother pass meaningfully to baby from breastmilk only in the first 12 hours after birth, after which the stomach becomes an efficient barrier to absorption. This protection lasts for about 1 month. ”
The protection lasts 6 to 12 months. Apparently they cross the placental barrier also. Perhaps the baby had the misfortune to have a mother who didn’t produce antibodies to whooping cough.
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/extract/345/18/1331
On the general topic of science-swatting, there’s this from The Nation:
Hurricane Expert Fired by Bush Allies at LSU
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/426640/hurricane_expert_fired_by_bush_allies_at_lsu
MikeyM#76,
What a misleading headline. The article contains no evidence that he was fired by “Bush Allies”. Could some editor at the nation have indescriminately hacked out the evidence in the article AFTER writing the headline?
So, is Ben Stein going to do a movie defending Salinger? Or is it too much realism for Stein — real guy, real science, real firing, as opposed to real people, crank science, no firing?
I work at a school, and we recently had a student come down with whooping cough. He was vaccinated, and his parents still don’t know where he caught it– but he did, and was pretty actively infectious for a week or so, before he was diagnosed with pertussis and pulled out of school. Because I work with this kid closely (to the point that I had to tell him to stop coughing on me a few times), and I’m old enough that my age-13 booster vaccine wasn’t effective, I got my ass to the doctor as soon as I started showing early symptoms.
Now, imagine that the kid who infected me hadn’t been vaccinated, and didn’t get such a mild case. Imagine that the other kids he exposed to pertussis weren’t vaccinated. Imagine the kids I babysit, my housemates, everyone I came in contact with before I got antibiotics into my system– think about how far it could have spread.
Herd immunity isn’t the sort of thing you think about much, unless you have cause to. It’s like thinking about the interstate highway system or cable TV– it’s something that’s built into the modern world. But man, these days? I am a fan of herd immunity.
africangenesis#78
I think the key paragraphs are:
…LSU’s then-president, Sean O’Keefe, told plaintiffs’ attorneys that if van Heerden testified against the Corps he would be fired. O’Keefe had been appointed to high offices by both Presidents Bush – George W. Bush named him head of NASA in 2001, and George H. W. Bush had named him acting Secretary of the Air Force in 1992.
According to van Heerden, the LSU president said that “nobody from LSU was going to embarrass the Bush administration or upset the major Republican companies that benefit from Corps of Engineers contracts.”
Sorry to burst folks’ bubbles, but reading local news stories makes it apparent that the reason Salinger was fired from NIWA was because he was getting too much airtime in his own right. NIWA had brought in rules that contact with the news media be brokered through their comms unit so they could share the news exposure around. Salinger was approached for comment about something on a weekend, and broke this rule.
It’s still fucked-up, mind, but climate change denial doesn’t seem to be part of the story. Indeed, no one in the NZ government has to power to directly fire members of a Crown Research Institute. PZ’s summary is sloppy and wrong. It seems to be about the internal politics of the institution, not shutting down climate researchers.
@ sammywol No 66,
DPT vaccination is not complete at 11 weeks of age,it’s given at 2,4,6 months and 4 years.This kid should be in Hospital by the sounds of it,you can always alert the health department in your area.
My comment was referring to the other comments about homeopathy etc. I should have made it clear that I was not talking about vaccinations. That is a separate issue from general practice medicine and nutrition.
Re. acids/bases: one reason why fruits are good for you is that most of them are pH7+. And one reason why soft drinks are bad for you is that they’re way under pH7.
Oxygen: damned good stuff. Damned good.
Kemist #68: I’m all ears about pH. Go for your life.
one reason why fruits are good for you is that most of them are pH7+
really?
I suppose you mean other than citrus fruits, kiwis, guavas, pineapples, and things like berries and whatnot?
so that leaves…
bananas and apples?
well, other than tart apples like granny smiths I suppose.
moreover, you’re really not going to change your blood pH much with diet itself – blood has natural buffers, along with several strong independent mechanisms the body uses to control pH. I’m sure with a little thought, you could figure out why strictly regulating pH within your body is a GOOD thing. If not, suggest cracking a basic textbook on how your body works (physiology), or googling human physiology and “pH”.
or just read this:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/09/your_friday_dose_of_woo_acid_base_or_woo_1.php
however, I think you CAN change the pH of your urine effectively enough, and acidifying your urine can help to fight off some kinds of urinary tract infections.
Sheesh, isn’t the pH of orange juice a typical grade school exercise? Pull out some pH paper and start testing stuff?
Funny they would be alkaline, considering that it is citric acid that puts the cit in citrus…
MikeyM#81,
Sean O’Keefe is no longer with LSU and those comments are from a time when the Bush administration still had purse strings. O’Keefe can’t justify the Bush allies headline. If LSU doesn’t want to offend the Army Corp of Engineers now, it is because they are Obama allies by that line of reasoning. It is probably just a purse strings and local constituency thing, and the Nation can’t shake its Bush demonization mode.
Of course there are some fruits which are acidic. Give people some credit here. Lemon juice, too, are acidic – but it is special as it has an alkalizing effect after drinking it. It’s a substance that helps prevent kidney stones.
Give people some credit here.
too late, all your credits were revoked when you started spouting the acid/base woo.
Pikeman Urge,
“but it is special as it has an alkalizing effect after drinking it. It’s a substance that helps prevent kidney stones.”
Even when you are correct, it helps to know how you are correct. The acidic fruits are not so special, they have organic acids which are eventually metabolized to water and CO2, so in the long run the chiefly potassium base remains. Of course some of that CO2 will be in the form of carbonic acid, but it is easily eliminated through breathing. Because, people at altitude breath more to obtain oxygen, they also eliminate more CO2, so are naturally a little more alkaline (respiratory alkalosis).