Vaccinate Your Kids Episode 2: Attack of the Celebrities
June 30th 2010 04:05
In my last vaccination post, I talked about the start of the anti-vaccination movement. The whole thing is based on an unethical doctor named Andrew Wakefield, and a study he did that has been discredited to the point that it was removed from the journal that published it based on bad research and huge conflicts of interest.
So if it's been proven that vaccines don't cause autism, why do people still believe it? Two main reasons are celebrities and bad logic.
There is nothing celebrities like more than a cause. Whether it be starving kids in Africa, adopting Chinese babies, or the oil spill in the Gulf, you'll find a celebrity slapping their name on it. So it is with the anti-vaccination movement. One of the main faces of the anti-vaccination movement is Jenny McCarthy. Now let me say this right off the bat-I have no idea if Jenny McCarthy's son actually had autism, or what his health issues were/are. I make no claims either way on that, and this should not be taken as an attack on her parenting. What I do disagree with is her supporting the anti-vaccination movement. She's a lot of the reason the movement gets as much press and support as it does.
Jenny McCarthy's main claim is that vaccines caused her son to develop autism. She goes on shows like Oprah and shouts down doctors with years of medical experience who try to tell her no, vaccines do not cause autism. She refuses to listen to anyone that might contradict her views. The problem is, she's changed her story a few times. As anti-vaccination arguments get discredited, she (and anyone else that supports it, usually) change their version of events so that they once again support their cause. Take, for example, an interview of McCarthy in 2007 where she said this:
But now in 2010, after vaccines have been cleared as a cause for autism, she changed her story to this:
So suddenly, it wasn't right after the MMR vaccine, it was a buildup that started even before her son had the MMR vaccine she originally blamed. There are many more examples of this kind of story-changing, but to keep this post from getting insanely long, I'll just use that one.
Now imagine for a moment that she hadn't said that first quote, and the second one is how it really happened. Around the time her son got his vaccines, he started developing autism symptoms. Sounds like the vaccines must have caused them, right? Wrong. This is a logical fallacy...the fancy way of saying it is that correlation is not causation. Just because two things happen at the same time doesn't mean they're related. I bet her son was wearing a lot of diapers at that time too. Say the diapers caused the autism, though, and people would say you were crazy. The usual onset age of autism symptoms is between two and three years old, which is also around the same time kids get a lot of their vaccinations. That doesn't mean the vaccinations caused or triggered the autism.
Another way this comes up in the anti-vaccination arguments is showing that at the same time vaccination rates have been going up, the number of autism diagnoses have been going up. Again, it looks like they might be related, but they're not. Autism is a wide-spectrum disorder-the number if disorders classified on the autism spectrum is going up. Think of it this way-If there are 5,000 kids with autism, and 5,000 kids with Asperger syndrome, and then it's decided Asperger syndrome is part of the autism spectrum, now you have 10,000 cases of autism. The numbers have doubled, but that's because our understanding of the disorder is growing, not because of some outside force that's causing more cases.
This post has gotten a lot longer than I originally intended, and I apologize for that. Hang with me, though, for the final episode in the trilogy-Vaccinate Your Kids Episode 3: Revenge of the Preventable Diseases.
So if it's been proven that vaccines don't cause autism, why do people still believe it? Two main reasons are celebrities and bad logic.
There is nothing celebrities like more than a cause. Whether it be starving kids in Africa, adopting Chinese babies, or the oil spill in the Gulf, you'll find a celebrity slapping their name on it. So it is with the anti-vaccination movement. One of the main faces of the anti-vaccination movement is Jenny McCarthy. Now let me say this right off the bat-I have no idea if Jenny McCarthy's son actually had autism, or what his health issues were/are. I make no claims either way on that, and this should not be taken as an attack on her parenting. What I do disagree with is her supporting the anti-vaccination movement. She's a lot of the reason the movement gets as much press and support as it does.
Jenny McCarthy's main claim is that vaccines caused her son to develop autism. She goes on shows like Oprah and shouts down doctors with years of medical experience who try to tell her no, vaccines do not cause autism. She refuses to listen to anyone that might contradict her views. The problem is, she's changed her story a few times. As anti-vaccination arguments get discredited, she (and anyone else that supports it, usually) change their version of events so that they once again support their cause. Take, for example, an interview of McCarthy in 2007 where she said this:
“Right before his MMR shot, I said to the doctor, ‘I have a very bad feeling about this shot. This is the autismshot, isn’t it?’ And he said, ‘No, that is ridiculous. It is a mother’s desperate attempt to blame something,’ and he swore at me, and then the nurse gave [Evan] the shot. And I remember going, ‘Oh, God, I hope he’s right.’ And soon thereafter — boom — the soul’s gone from his eyes.”
But now in 2010, after vaccines have been cleared as a cause for autism, she changed her story to this:
“You know, a lot of people think, and probably from me saying in some interviews, that it was after the MMR I noticed changes.
I don't think it was just the MMR shot that caused any kind of trigger with autism. I think it was a compilation of so many shots to a kid that obviously had some autoimmune disorders. So I would say maybe a couple of months, a month or so after the MMR, I started to notice some physical ailments such as constipation, rashes, eczema. That was like the first little sign. And then the train just kind of descended from there.”
I don't think it was just the MMR shot that caused any kind of trigger with autism. I think it was a compilation of so many shots to a kid that obviously had some autoimmune disorders. So I would say maybe a couple of months, a month or so after the MMR, I started to notice some physical ailments such as constipation, rashes, eczema. That was like the first little sign. And then the train just kind of descended from there.”
So suddenly, it wasn't right after the MMR vaccine, it was a buildup that started even before her son had the MMR vaccine she originally blamed. There are many more examples of this kind of story-changing, but to keep this post from getting insanely long, I'll just use that one.
Now imagine for a moment that she hadn't said that first quote, and the second one is how it really happened. Around the time her son got his vaccines, he started developing autism symptoms. Sounds like the vaccines must have caused them, right? Wrong. This is a logical fallacy...the fancy way of saying it is that correlation is not causation. Just because two things happen at the same time doesn't mean they're related. I bet her son was wearing a lot of diapers at that time too. Say the diapers caused the autism, though, and people would say you were crazy. The usual onset age of autism symptoms is between two and three years old, which is also around the same time kids get a lot of their vaccinations. That doesn't mean the vaccinations caused or triggered the autism.
Another way this comes up in the anti-vaccination arguments is showing that at the same time vaccination rates have been going up, the number of autism diagnoses have been going up. Again, it looks like they might be related, but they're not. Autism is a wide-spectrum disorder-the number if disorders classified on the autism spectrum is going up. Think of it this way-If there are 5,000 kids with autism, and 5,000 kids with Asperger syndrome, and then it's decided Asperger syndrome is part of the autism spectrum, now you have 10,000 cases of autism. The numbers have doubled, but that's because our understanding of the disorder is growing, not because of some outside force that's causing more cases.
This post has gotten a lot longer than I originally intended, and I apologize for that. Hang with me, though, for the final episode in the trilogy-Vaccinate Your Kids Episode 3: Revenge of the Preventable Diseases.
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