Tomfoolery Blog

Archive for the ‘vaccines’ Category

After bugging people for long enough, some poor soul has given in and let me on a podcast! Gavin Schofield, Alex Dennerly and Dr Janis Bennion of the Greater Manchester Skeptics host the “Just Skeptics” podcast, where they discuss the skeptical issues of the day. In this episode, we discuss the state of homeopathy in the UK, skeptical issues in India, and my soap box segment is on the argument from authority.

Big props to Gavin for cutting out most of my “ummms” and “errrs”!

If you’ve got any comments on the show, please leave them on the Just Skeptics website, the GM Skeptics website, or on this very blogpost.

The show can be listened to here, and is available on iTunes. Just search for “Just Skeptics”.

By the way, if any Adam and Joe fans recognize my sign off, you know what to do!

Sometimes Facebook can provide some beautifully unintentional statements. Here is disgraced Andrew Wakefield showing what he really thinks about “callous disregard”:

Today, justice was finally done. After two and a half years, the GMC has struck Andrew Wakefield off the medical register. You can read the decision (free from tabloid fudging) here.

Many are deliriously happy about this decision, but why? I believe this case shows a doctor drunk on power and greed, and the further you dig the uglier it gets.

Let’s be clear on this: Wakefield has not been punished just for suggesting a link between MMR and autism. His crimes are numerous:

1. He was paid money from the Legal Aid Board (taxpayers money) to investigate a link between MMR and autism. He did not declare this conflict of interest to the Lancet when he wrote the 1998 paper.
2. He patented a measles vaccine (referred to as Transfer Factor), which could only succeed if MMR was deemed to be dangerous. Again, he did not declare this to the Lancet. If that wasn’t bad enough, the father of one of the children in the Lancet study was the Managing Director of the company that made Transfer Factor.
3. He infamously paid children for blood samples at a birthday party, and joked about it in a presentation. This is the origin of the phrase ‘callous disregard’, a phrase used by the GMC to describe Wakefield’s attitude to the pain and sufering he caused to the children at the party.
4. He published an extremely shoddy piece of research (the 1998 Lancet paper) knowing full well it would cause panic about the MMR vaccine.
5. Worst of all, he conducted invasive procedures on vulnerable children without the consent of an ethics committee. This is by far the most serious charge, and (I hate to invoke Godwin’s law here) puts him on a par with the doctors who experimented on children in Nazi concentration camps. The procedures included colonoscopies (inserting a camera into the rectum, which caused bowel perforations in one of the children), barium meals (exposing the children to unnecessary levels of radiation) and lumbar punctures (inserting a long needle into a patients spine to collect cerebrospinal fluid).

His striking off will come as no surprise, as he hasn’t practiced in the UK for many years. So, what will Wakefield do next? His only supporters are the lunatics in the antivax community, and sadly they have quite a lot of money. I hate to promote it, but he has written a book about the whole affair. It’s called “Callous Disregard”, and features a forward by everyone’s favourite Playboy playmate and all-round loudmouth Jenny McCarthy.

Wakefield’s chances of getting a job in a respectable medical establishment are practically zero, and his shot reputation has had an unexpected benefit for anyone who wants to vent their spleen: you can say pretty much anything about him. He tried to sue Brian Deer, the journalist who exposed him, before later admitting defeat and paying Deer compensation. Future articles on him should be interesting.

In conclusion, I’m hoping his appeal is short-lived, and this sorry episode is finally put to bed. Sadly, I don’t think we’ve heard the last of him.

Twat

It’s been said many times before, but vaccination has been one the great medical advancements. With it, we have been able to eradicate diseases like smallpox and polio, and severely reduce others such as measles.

However, there remain a small minority who are convinced that vaccines are bad. Why would anyone think that? In this post, I give my own opinions based on years of ‘debating’ antivaxxers on various websites. These are very much my own opinions. They haven’t been through the peer review process, so please take them with a pinch of salt.

The first thing that stands out is the MMR-autism controversy. This was started by Dr Andrew Wakefield and his (now retracted) Lancet paper. The paper itself did not provide evidence of a link between MMR and autism, and numerous peer reviewed studies have not found evidence for a link. So why do some still believe in this mythical link?

I believe (and I’m going to be controversial here) that a major factor of a parent deciding what caused their child’s autism is blame. If autism is just something that happens, in other words “bad luck”, then that isn’t particularly attractive to believe because there is nothing to blame. If the parent is religious, they may feel that they must have done something bad because they are being punished by their chosen deity. On the other hand, if autism is genetic, then the parent may (wrongly) feel that they are to blame because they have passed their genes to their child. Who would want to think that?

So far, the options are to blame no-one, or to blame yourself. But what if you could blame something else, something that is there, something that can be pinpointed, something that others are suspicious of? I believe that this is why people blame vaccines. If this view is enforced by others, the argument to blame vaccines becomes more compelling. Just to make it clear, I do not believe that anyone should be blamed for a child being autistic. Like I say, these are just my opinions, so if you think you can tell me why I’m off the mark here, please leave a comment below.

A more simple factor to consider as to why parent don’t vaccinate is the fact that administering a vaccine can be traumatic for a child. The child cries and screams because being injected hurts, and a parent’s natural instinct is to think that the vaccine is bad because it causes their child to be in pain. The parent may think “I don’t want to put my child through that again” and look for any excuse to not get their child vaccinated.

The final factor I will consider is the lack of scientific education on behalf of the parents. In my years of ‘debating’ antivaxxers, I never get pointed to peer reviewed studies to back up their claims, I only get post hoc fallacies, scare stories, misunderstandings and outright lies on crank websites. Most don’t seem to realize that any old idiot can get a website and put something on it (like I’m doing now), and the fact that something is ‘on the internet’ is not proof of anything. I consider this further evidence as to the importance of teaching the scientific method.

So, that is why I think some parents don’t vaccinate their children. If you think you can say why I’m wrong please leave a comment. Thanks!

Ever since Wakefield published his Lancet paper, antivax ratbags have repeatedly tried to claim that vaccines cause autism. One such mechanism they propose is that the preservative thimerosol is involved. The basis for this is that each molecule of thimerosol contains an atom of mercury, so they equate injecting a vaccine to injecting a syringe full of mercury. Of course, this is a million miles from the truth. Nowadays, thimerosal is present in very few vaccines, and even if it is it is present in minute amounts. There is no evidence that thimerosol has ever caused ill health.

So, it should come as no surprise that the USA ‘vaccine court’ has ruled that thimerosol does not cause autism. This is yet another body blow for the antivaxxers, as they repeatedly mention this case (no longer pending) as being important to their cause. Will they give up in the light of this judgment? Almost certainly not, but hopefully this decision will shut them up for a time.

In the wake of the Wakefield scandal, I’d like to think that newspapers really consider articles on children’s health before printing them. But, what about animal health? Can that be covered with a different rulebook?

Well, guess what? The Daily Mail have published an article where any concerns about responsible reporting, fact checking and balance have been thrown out of the window. The article reports that a certain charity claims that vaccines ‘are making our dogs sick as vets cash in’, and it goes on to recycle a load of tired old antivax arguments, without providing any real evidence to back up their claims whatsoever. There is even a case of owner-diagnosis of ‘autism’ in their dog, Charlie the springer spaniel.

The ‘charity’ in question is Canine Health Concern. A quick browse through their website (in true ‘Welcome to 1997′ style) instantly reveals that the charity is quite simply, balls. It’s just reams of the usual antivax nonsense. They even endorse Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) for dogs!

One quick question: can anyone tell me how on earth Canine Health Concern qualifies as a ‘charity’?

According to this article in the Telegraph, a secret government report reveals that 18 children in the past 4 years have died following vaccinations.  Now, any scientist worth their salt should not be surprised by this, but if you are a concerned parent this kind of sensationalist headline will surely be a source of worry.

Of course, I have issues with this article. First of all, it cites a ‘secret report’, so there is no way of verifying it. Second, it states that the 18 children have died FOLLOWING vaccinations. No evidence of causation at all.

Think about it. How many vaccinations are given to children every year in the UK? I don’t have the numbers to hand (if anyone does please let me know!) but I’m guessing it’s in the hundreds of thousand. If that many children have vaccinations, it’s no surprise that a handful die every year, but that is not evidence that the vaccines caused the deaths.

The article was summed up here:

After the death of a child who developed meningitis and swelling of the brain three weeks after an MMR jab in 2004, a claim for compensation was made by the child’s parents. It is not known if this was successful.

That there is absolutely nothing. A three week gap between the vaccine and the death? Unsubstantiated compensation claim? This is nothing but scaremongering.

However, buried within the article is some perfectly sensible commentary:

Prof Peter Openshaw, a leading immunologist from Imperial College London, said parents should not be alarmed by the report’s findings.

“A lot of vaccine reactions are just inexplicable,” he said. “It may be that someone had an infection before they got a jab, it may be something in their genetic make-up or sometimes there are allergic reactions. But vaccines are extraordinarily safe compared to the diseases they prevent.”

Overall, thousands of lives have been saved by childhood immunisation. Smallpox and polio have been eradicated.

I just wonder why this was published in the first place.

ADZRSHQNGUAY

Andrew Wakefield is getting his comeuppance, big time. He’s been shot down by the GMC, had not one, but two papers withdrawn from journals, and now, he has left the Thoughtful House Centre for Children, the very clinic that he set up.

So where does this leave Wakefield? On the face of it, it would appear that he no longer has a voice. But just how low will he stoop? He’s already been shown to bribe children at birthday parties, as well as perform unnecessary colonoscopies and lumber punctures. To be honest I really wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up at naturalnews.com.

One quote from the Times really riled me:

My work will continue at Thoughtful House until we get a definitive answer into whether vaccines can cause autism.

This is so unscientific it hurts. He’s starting with a conclusion and trying to prove it, which is turning the scientific method on its head. And anyway, all the peer-reviewed evidence shows that vaccines (in particular the MMR vaccine) do NOT cause autism. Funny how Wakefield never mentions any of that.

Scum.

The Daily Mail, the UK’s premier bastion of reason, has published this article stating that girls in Birmingham are being given shopping vouchers in return for completely a course of HPV. To be honest, I’m not really in favour of giving people trinkets for completing medical procedures, but as expected, the Mail’s coverage of this subject gives easy access to the paranoid antivax bridgade.

Apparently, this campaign of vaccination will cause an increase in promiscuity and teenage pregnancy. What a load of crap. HPV protects against viruses that cause cervical cancer, nothing else. I’ve heard of never underestimating the stupidity of the public, but the respect some ‘family groups’ have for people is ridiculous.

More worryingly, the comments on this article are riddled with David Icke-type idiots who believe that Gardasil is a secret government plan to make women barren. Even more worryingly, these are the most popular comments!

In case you’ve been living under a rock the size of Hartlepool, Andrew Wakefield is the doctor who started the MMR-autism scare. He has since been held up in front of the GMC on charges of acting unethically, and his 1998 Lancet paper withdrawn.

More recently, he and his colleges published a study into the effects of a thiomersal-containing Hepatitis B vaccine on macaque monkeys. Their findings were published in the journal NeuroToxicology, and they suggested that the vaccines resulted in impaired neurological development.

Well guess what? It’s been withdrawn from the journal! As of yet I don’t know why, but I will keep you updated as soon as I find out!