We’re living in 2014, and people are cowering in fear over recent outbreaks of measles and mumps. Or rather, you may be cowering in fear. I’m not. You see, I got vaccinated as a kid. My kids are also vaccinated. And so I can go to a public washroom without fear or to the grocery store without wearing a surgical mask.
Speaking as a veteran of the SARS scare, I would like to inform that surgical masks are meant to keep your germs from infecting others. They don’t work the other way around. Just sayin’.
BLUNTmoms is no stranger to vaccination issues, btw, and you should read that post as well. Since I keep hearing these vague statements from anti-vaccinators about how you shouldn’t get the MMR because of “Jenny McCarthy and that guy who linked MMR to autism” I thought I’d do a PSA: “That guy” is Andrew Wakefield, formerly MD., and because the previous article only mentioned him briefly, let me enlighten those who may have missed the years-in-process dismantling of Wakefield’s MMR “study.”
#1 – nobody was able to reproduce his findings or confirm his hypothesis. This is a bad thing in science. The whole idea of peer review is that other people are supposed to be able to independently confirm your research.
#2 – Wakefield was charged with abuse of the developmentally challenged children he was studying because he subjected them to unnecessary and invasive tests without applying for and getting ethical approval beforehand.
#3 – Sunday Times identified that Andrew Wakefield stood to make money by convincing you that MMR was dangerous. How much money? Lots. Wakefield was on a “fishing” expedition to create a statistical link between MMR and chronic diseases. Why? A lawyer named Richard Barr (and eventually others) paid him to look and asked him to find one so that they could file a class action suit against vaccine manufacturers. Wakefield was paid by lawyers to the tune of some £400,000. He was apparently also suggesting could make $43 million a year from diagnostic kits for this new condition “autistic enterocolitis.” Here’s a lengthy article about the scam.
After a lengthy inquiry, Mister Wakefield charged with was removed from the Medical Register and has been barred from practising medicine in the UK. But the damage he did is still rippling through industrialized nations, in the forms of severely reduced vaccination numbers and recurrences of illnesses that were almost extinct in North America.
We worry about doing right by our kids; I get that. I, too, worried about getting the MMR done on my youngest. Wakefield had only just come out with his accusations saying that the vaccine was unsafe when it was time to get her MMR shot done, and it sent me into a tailspin.
It took a lot of soul searching to go through with it when the questions loomed that large. And it seems like everybody knew somebody who knew someone who “wasn’t quite right” after a vaccine. It’s true, they’re not foolproof; the CDC admits that there can be adverse reactions. Statistically, however, the odds are so long as to be difficult to assess. Your lifetime odds of dying in a car crash or even being killed by an asteroid impact, of all things, are estimated to be higher.
Life isn’t risk-free. The best anybody can do is to try to mitigate it.
I hate this guy, Wakefield. It took years to discover the truth about what he had done. It’s people like him who devalue what science can offer to us and the better place it can make the world. His report wasn’t an honest mistake; he was out to make a profit from the suffering and fear of others. And because of him, hundreds of people, perhaps thousands, are suffering for no reason other than because of his lies and greed. Kids!
There is no “debate” about whether or not to vaccinate. Stall for a bit if you want to. Make sure that your kid is healthy and normal or a few months older before you do it if you want to. Break up the shots. Ask questions. Do your homework. But don’t let some bozo’s say-so be the reason not to do it.
Don’t make your kids statistics. If you’re going to play games of chance with the health of you and your loved ones, make sure you know the odds:
Measles
- Risk of Pneumonia: 6 in 100
- Risk of Encephalitis: 1 in 1,000
- Risk of Death: 2 in 1,000
Mumps
- Risk of Orchitis (painful inflammation of testicles): 1 in 5 (in adolescent/adult males)
- Risk of Pancreatitis: 1 in 30
- Risk of Encephalitis: 1 in 5,000
- Risk of Permanent Hearing Impairment: 5 in 100,000
- Risk of Death: 1 in 10,000
Rubella
- Risk of Congenital Rubella Syndrome: 1 in 4 (if woman becomes infected early in pregnancy)
MMR – Vaccine
- Risk of Encephalitis or severe allergic reaction: 1 in 1,000,000
- Risk of catching Measles, Mumps, or Rubella in spite of being vaccinated: estimated to be less than 1%
Source: CDC and WHO.
