ANY truth to the vaccine debate?

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JP2740

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I am not VERY educated on this topic. I know the guy who started it basically bull****ted the whole idea. I know among scientists and medical experts there really is no debate.

But there must have been a ton of research done on this. Has anyone reviewed the literature. Is there ANY truth, whatsoever that vaccines can cause autism or other long term health defects?

edit: I know my topic sentence makes no sense. 1st
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JP2740 said:
I am not VERY educated on this topic. I know the guy who started it basically bull****ted the whole idea. I know among scientists and medical experts there really is no debate.

But there must have been a ton of research done on this. Has anyone reviewed the literature. Is there ANY truth, whatsoever that vaccines can cause autism or other long term health defects?

edit: I know my topic sentence makes no sense. 1st
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There are rare serious adverse reactions to vaccines sometimes - allergic reactions to egg proteins in vaccines are not unheard of and can be dangerous, for example. However, with appropriate quality control and screening for allergies or other contraindications, the risks posed by vaccination are orders of magnitude less than the risks posed by non-vaccination.

I'd be willing to bet good money that more children are permanently injured or killed driving to or from their pediatrician's office to get a vaccination than are permanently injured or killed by the vaccinations themselves.
 
phltz said:
There are rare serious adverse reactions to vaccines sometimes - allergic reactions to egg proteins in vaccines are not unheard of and can be dangerous, for example. However, with appropriate quality control and screening for allergies or other contraindications, the risks posed by vaccination are orders of magnitude less than the risks posed by non-vaccination.

I'd be willing to bet good money that more children are permanently injured or killed driving to or from their pediatrician's office to get a vaccination than are permanently injured or killed by the vaccinations themselves.
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Great, pretty soon the anti-vax crowd is going to advocate no vaccines because too many children get injured by going to get them...
 
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the original paper which correlated autism with vaccines was published in the Lancet, and it turns out the guy was paid by a legal interest group which wanted to go after pharmaceutical companies to alter the results and publish the link.

the lancet retracted the paper but the damage was done as it magically thrust playmates and half-wit african american talkshow hosts onto the same platform as medical professionals....
 
In a word, no. There is always a chance of a rare allergic reaction, but the odds of dying or having serious consequences by contracting one of these diseases if you're unvaccinated are much higher than having one of these allergic reactions. It's unfortunate that the features of autism begin manifesting coincidentally around the time that some vaccines are given, but there is no link between the two.
 
Heh we just covered vaccinations in class. There's no reputable scientific proof that there is a connection between stuff like autism and vaccinations. Can we make any promises there won't be any adverse reactions? No, however data does show that vaccinations is responsible for the eradication of diseases like smallpox. The benefits are pretty obvious.

This whole debate is pretty stupid overall. Parents get angry if their kid gets vaccinated, however I am willing to bet they'll go ballistic and blame healthcare providers for not persuading them to vaccinate their kid when they catch the plague or whatever.
 
The whole MMR/autism controversy, in my opinion, was a product of confirmational biases and media. However, I am not terribly knowledgeable in the area. One thing I can say as matter of fact though is that I personally know two people who have received the annual flu vaccine, and have come down with Guillain-Barre syndrome. Correlation, causation...who knows, but you have to admit that it is a weird coincidence.
 
JP2740 said:
I am not VERY educated on this topic. I know the guy who started it basically bull****ted the whole idea. I know among scientists and medical experts there really is no debate.

But there must have been a ton of research done on this. Has anyone reviewed the literature. Is there ANY truth, whatsoever that vaccines can cause autism or other long term health defects?

edit: I know my topic sentence makes no sense. 1st
Click to expand...

I hate you.
 
Zoopeda said:
Wish I could read German. 8000 kids seems significant...

http://healthfreedoms.org/2011/10/14/big-study-vaccinated-kids-2-5-more-diseases-than-unvaccinated/
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I read about two sentences into this article, and then my brain exploded from the silliness. There are a bunch of serious biases to that research. Poor response rate being one, and secondly being the fact that people who are unvaccinated are likely less aware of their health leading to significant underreporting of illness. And then there's the whole thing about atopic diseases and the hygiene hypothesis. And how the data is all messed up. I could make a long list, but frankly it's just not worth the time. Whoever did that study has a lot to learn about statistics.
 
There was a concern about vaccines and Guillain-Barre syndrome in the past, but the strongest evidence of a link there is only to a 1970s era swine flu vaccine.

The scope of the article includes published reports that, regardless of method of case ascertainment, appeared in peer-reviewed literature between 1950 and 2008. Our review indicates that, with rare exceptions, associations between vaccines and GBS have been only temporal. There is little evidence to support a causal association with most vaccines. The evidence for a causal association is strongest for the swine influenza vaccine that was used in 1976-77. Studies of influenza vaccines used in subsequent years, however, have found small or no increased risk of GBS.
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19388722

Can't think of the name for it, but a lot of concerns over vaccines are due to the fact that the eradication of the illness has dulled people's fears about the illness itself. If you told a young parent today that there was a very slight risk of a complication with a polio vaccine, they would think twice about it. If you told a parent in 1955 about a polio vaccine with complications, they probably wouldn't care what the side effects were, because they couldn't possibly be worse than polio.

P.S. I hate seeing threads like this, because I don't want to see that medical colleagues actually believe the vaccine->autism garbage. It is like how we had a survey for our sexuality class, and one of the questions was, "All gay men are pedophiles. T/F." I didn't want to see that ANY of my classmates believed that (two answered true). Just so demoralizing. I realize that people do believe these things, I just sometimes want to pretend they don't....
 
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I never said I believed in it. I wanted to know if there's anything out there at all that could link or if it's purely based on absolute bull**** and nothing else.
 
JP2740 said:
I never said I believed in it. I wanted to know if there's anything out there at all that could link or if it's purely based on absolute bull**** and nothing else.
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Sorry, that wasn't targeted at you. I meant that at some point someone will reply that YES there is a definite link blah blah blah and it will kill another part of me inside that someone who has gotten as far/farther in medicine as I have actually believes this nonsense....
 
The increase in diagnoses of autism spectrum disorders may be linked to other environmental factors. Plastics in food containers, teflon, processed foods, soy phytoestrogens, leaded gasoline up to the late 1970s, mercury in fish, nickel-cadmium batteries, insecticides, pesticides, herbicides,homeopathy, etc. Who the ffffff knows?
 
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TooMuchResearch said:
Certainly non-randomized, controlled data from healthfreedoms.org and vaccineinjury.info must be valid.
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It could have other caused. Hippies are often health nuts, which may result in a different evironment and diet. Again, whole unprocessed foods, no plastic food containers, no teflon, less exposure to radiation or mercury, exposure to pets or farm animals, no antiperspirant on breast-feeding mothers, maybe even hash brownies? There are too many variables which were not or could not be adjusted. Now, if they studied one group, like amish or Montreal Hassidic Jews with closed societies and similar lifestyles and environments, there could be more weight to the argument. Who knows? Maybe the expecting mothers took something as benign as apirin before they found out they were pregnant? What about house moulds, dust mites, ear infections?

Too many variables to gauge.
 
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Guillian Barre Syndrome (GBS) is the only real concern that I have with vaccines. If someone has previously had GBS or maybe has autoimmune disease/family history of auto immune disease then there may be some cause for avoiding vaccines, otherwise it is speculation and paranoia.
 
I don't know about you guys. Recent active threads around here include homeopathy, chiropractic and anti-vax. You guys feeling OK? ;) :)
 
Kadava Reviva said:
The increase in diagnoses of autism spectrum disorders may be linked to other environmental factors. Plastics in food containers, teflon, processed foods, soy phytoestrogens, leaded gasoline up to the late 1970s, mercury in fish, nickel-cadmium batteries, insecticides, pesticides, herbicides,homeopathy, etc. Who the ffffff knows?
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Not just environmental factors but also the substantial increase in both parental and physician awareness of the disease. I don't mean to trivialize people with autism or their families, but "high functioning autism" has become somewhat of a fad disorder this decade much like ADD and ADHD were in the 90s and early 00s. Kids are weird, and parents like to put a label to that. There was a study awhile back that showed a strong correlation between the incidence of high functioning autism and high socioeconomic status. Now that might just be due to the fact that richer people have better resources so they are more likely to get a diagnosis, but it's also the same demographic where ADD diagnoses exploded in the 90s. Just something to think about.

Vaccines definitely have side effects. All medicine has side effects: it's about weighing the cost of treatment to the risk of not treating. The adverse outcomes for having mumps or polio far, far outweigh the small chance of a vaccine causing a serious effect. It does really suck when it's your kid, though. I actually had an adverse reaction to the oral typhoid vaccine I got before I traveled in India last year. I had pretty significant hand tremors for about five days afterwards. It scared the crap out of me. Thankfully. it completely resolved (and I didn't get typhoid in India).
 
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clifftacopter said:
Not just environmental factors but also the substantial increase in both parental and physician awareness of the disease. I don't mean to trivialize people with autism or their families, but "high functioning autism" has become somewhat of a fad disorder this decade much like ADD and ADHD were in the 90s and early 00s. Kids are weird, and parents like to put a label to that. There was a study awhile back that showed a strong correlation between the incidence of high functioning autism and high socioeconomic status. Now that might just be due to the fact that richer people have better resources so they are more likely to get a diagnosis, but it's also the same demographic where ADD diagnoses exploded in the 90s. Just something to think about.

Vaccines definitely have side effects. All medicine has side effects: it's about weighing the cost of treatment to the risk of not treating. The adverse outcomes for having mumps or polio far, far outweigh the small chance of a vaccine causing a serious effect. It does really suck when it's your kid, though. I actually had an adverse reaction to the oral typhoid vaccine I got before I traveled in India last year. I had pretty significant hand tremors for about five days afterwards. It scared the crap out of me. Thankfully. it completely resolved (and I didn't get typhoid in India).
Click to expand...

I would like to ditto the 1st paragraph, because plagiarising it here would be a little too obvious..
 
clifftacopter said:
Not just environmental factors but also the substantial increase in both parental and physician awareness of the disease. I don't mean to trivialize people with autism or their families, but "high functioning autism" has become somewhat of a fad disorder this decade much like ADD and ADHD were in the 90s and early 00s. Kids are weird, and parents like to put a label to that. There was a study awhile back that showed a strong correlation between the incidence of high functioning autism and high socioeconomic status. Now that might just be due to the fact that richer people have better resources so they are more likely to get a diagnosis, but it's also the same demographic where ADD diagnoses exploded in the 90s. Just something to think about..
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I don't really get the correlation here.
 
ScumBagChiropractor-vaccines1.png
 
JP2740 said:
I don't really get the correlation here.
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I just mean it's possible that a part of the huge autism boom the past decade is due to over-diagnosis of children... just like during the ADD "epidemic" of the 90s. If their kid is a bit weird, they want an explanation. These moms hear about Asperger's on Oprah and lo and behold they manage to get a diagnosis from a doctor after a vague explanation of their child's symptoms.
 
tiedyeddog said:
lol
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But if the 'scumbag chiropractor' really did this, wouldn't said chiropractor get sued? And if s/he does get sued, doesn't that mean the system is working to punish the 'scumbags'?
 
I am not aware of many chiropractors being held liable for their misinformation..... ESPECIALLY not to the same degree as physicians. anecdotally ive heard of ~1k fines and whatnot.... havent heard of license revocations.
 
SpecterGT260 said:
I am not aware of many chiropractors being held liable for their misinformation..... ESPECIALLY not to the same degree as physicians. anecdotally ive heard of ~1k fines and whatnot.... havent heard of license revocations.
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Believe me, if a DC screws up there's a lawyer somewhere waiting to pounce. DCs are not somehow shielded or given a pass.

You mentioned that you're not familiar with such cases. Do you have a malpractice-related background?
 
no. just my own searching around. Ive heard of fines and whatnot.... but there isnt a single operating chiropractic center that has the sort of money that a hospital has. therefore malpractice for DC's is virtually nonexistant. they can sue the practitioner, but they won't get too much...
 
SpecterGT260 said:
no. just my own searching around. Ive heard of fines and whatnot.... but there isnt a single operating chiropractic center that has the sort of money that a hospital has. therefore malpractice for DC's is virtually nonexistant. they can sue the practitioner, but they won't get too much...
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Every DC I know, myself included, carries a 1 million/3 million policy. Attorneys have motive to pursue legit cases.
 
didnt realize you were a chiropractor.

where do you stand on this issue? (and others... you mentioned you saw the other related threads)
 
SpecterGT260 said:
didnt realize you were a chiropractor.

where do you stand on this issue? (and others... you mentioned you saw the other related threads)
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The vaccine issue? I'll put it this way: I have 2 kids and they are both fully vaccinated. I'll admit that on 'shot days' at the pediatrician's, I do secretly have my fingers crossed, which unless you're a parent you may not fully understand. I do think the chickenpox vaccine may be a little over the top, though.

This topic has been bounced around in other threads, and I've commented from time to time along the way. (When it comes to anything chiro-related on SDN, none of these threads is original; they've all been discussed before and it's all re-hash, just with new faces who think they're being original. Having a dedicated chiro thread to deposit all these discussions might help to eliminate some of this...we'll likely never find out.)
 
well this adds a somewhat new perspective to that other thread we interacted on.

you postulated a few questions but never really answered them directly. It would have been nice to have an actual chiro come in and either lay out the current philosophy, or act as a voice of dissent and renounce the people who take their practices to places they were never meant to be.
 
facetguy said:
But if the 'scumbag chiropractor' really did this, wouldn't said chiropractor get sued? And if s/he does get sued, doesn't that mean the system is working to punish the 'scumbags'?
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Only if the kid
1. came down with it.
2. it caused enough problems a lawyer thought he could make some cash money off it.

We all know the system doesn't do a good job of actually weeding out the scumbags, MD's and DO's included.

Edit: what are you saying? No chiros actually preach the anti-vaccine line? This is from the first page of a google search. The last one seems to be from an actual chiro questioning if we should all follow what we are told to do.

My question to you: Why are vaccines in the realm of chiros at all?!? No chiro should ever be advising a patient about anything immunology related, doing so is pure quackery and ignorance of science.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/105/4/e43.full
http://www.chirobase.org/06DD/chiroimmu.html
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1069538,00.html
http://www.chiro.org/LINKS/ABSTRACTS/Issues_in_Chiropractic_Pediatrics.shtml
 
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SpecterGT260 said:
well this adds a somewhat new perspective to that other thread we interacted on.

you postulated a few questions but never really answered them directly. It would have been nice to have an actual chiro come in and either lay out the current philosophy, or act as a voice of dissent and renounce the people who take their practices to places they were never meant to be.
Click to expand...

Again, this discussion has been had numerous times over the years.
 
facetguy said:
Again, this discussion has been had numerous times over the years.
Click to expand...

which explains to a point why your questions were borderline rhetorical. however you never actually came out and said anything. If palmer has actually abandoned the idea of healing neural impulses from the spine causing all body diseases withing their classrooms I would be a little less skeptical and judgemental of the profession as a whole. Im well aware that there are chiros out there that do understand how the body works and don't try to peddle the associated voodoo, but until those concepts leave the classroom I am going to keep a few grains of salt handy for anything I hear
 
tiedyeddog said:
Only if the kid
1. came down with it.
2. it caused enough problems a lawyer thought he could make some cash money off it.

We all know the system doesn't do a good job of actually weeding out the scumbags, MD's and DO's included.

Edit: what are you saying? No chiros actually preach the anti-vaccine line? This is from the first page of a google search. The last one seems to be from an actual chiro questioning if we should all follow what we are told to do.

My question to you: Why are vaccines in the realm of chiros at all?!? No chiro should ever be advising a patient about anything immunology related, doing so is pure quackery and ignorance of science.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/105/4/e43.full
http://www.chirobase.org/06DD/chiroimmu.html
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1069538,00.html
http://www.chiro.org/LINKS/ABSTRACTS/Issues_in_Chiropractic_Pediatrics.shtml
Click to expand...

I'm saying that there are those in the chiro profession who do preach this, but they aren't the majority, not anymore. That's why I suggested the "scumbag chiropractor" (not my words) should be differentiated from the "non-scumbag chiropractor" instead of lumping all DCs together.

I'm not entirely sure, but perhaps chiros got involved in vaccines long ago when there was a much greater emphasis on all things non-medical. In other words, back in the day, if MDs were saying 'white', DCs should be saying 'black'. MDs said to vaccinate, DCs said not to. I think it stems from the notion of vitalism, let the body heal itself and develop its own immunity. Today, contemporary chiro education is not anti-medical, plain and simple, and the views of most DCs reflect this when it comes to vaccines.

When it comes to vaccines and autism, I think the various government agencies blew it long ago when it came to addressing the issue up front. They handled it badly and allowed doubt, skepticism and conspiracy theories to dominate the conversation.

And, just as an FYI, various government agencies are today investigating the possibility that there is a small subset of kids who are particularly susceptible to adverse vaccine reactions.

Vaccines do enjoy a special untouchable status in healthcare; to suggest that there may be even some small-scale problems with vaccines is to touch the 3rd rail.

Regarding flu vaccine, there are experts much better informed than I who feel that the flu vaccine data isn't as strong as one would think given the size, cost and emphasis on our flu vaccine campaign. (Again, this has been rehashed in the past on SDN).
 
SpecterGT260 said:
which explains to a point why your questions were borderline rhetorical. however you never actually came out and said anything. If palmer has actually abandoned the idea of healing neural impulses from the spine causing all body diseases withing their classrooms I would be a little less skeptical and judgemental of the profession as a whole. Im well aware that there are chiros out there that do understand how the body works and don't try to peddle the associated voodoo, but until those concepts leave the classroom I am going to keep a few grains of salt handy for anything I hear
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I can't speak for Palmer College, but I'd be inclined to believe that perhaps much of that is in a historical context.
 
palmer was just a non-concise way of saying "chiro elite" or whatnot. they are the premier school so I'd assume the views there are representative of the profession.

by "historical context" what exactly do you mean? I guess im just trying to get it from the horses mouth... in your practice, how do you describe and characterize subluxations and what symptoms are they responsible for manifesting in your patients?
 
SpecterGT260 said:
palmer was just a non-concise way of saying "chiro elite" or whatnot. they are the premier school so I'd assume the views there are representative of the profession.

by "historical context" what exactly do you mean? I guess im just trying to get it from the horses mouth... in your practice, how do you describe and characterize subluxations and what symptoms are they responsible for manifesting in your patients?
Click to expand...

I don't use the term subluxation. I think it has caused confusion, as can be seen in this thread and in countless others on SDN (and comparable discussions elsewhere). My practice is essentially a musculoskeletal one, so I don't get into discussions with patients about vaccines or how their mechanical low back pain is going to kill them. Repeating once again, chiropractors, in the vast majority of cases, do not unpinch pinched nerves. That's not how spinal manipulation works.
 
well then I really appreciate you having this viewpoint. if chiropractic as a whole was like that I would have nothing to complain about.

My issues are these guys (start at 1:42 for the setup, 2:20-4:20 for the bullsht) there was one good chiro providing counterpoint as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2Sw7De0E7c&feature=related


p.s. im not trying to straight douche on you either here. I really do appreciate any time someone from the alternative or supporting healthcare roles comes forward and provides a level head and a voice of reason. At the very least it gives the rest of us some perspective when all we see are the crazies like the curly headed **** in that video
 
Sure it's the wrong answer on the STEP 1 to ever fire your patient, but I think it's a good idea in reality to spurn willful *****s from your practice. The people who want quacks should go to quacks, the people who want evidence based medical care should go to MDs. Don't waste a real doctor's time if you think the best public health intervention in the history of mankind is bull****. Go play with your magnets, memory water, and chiropractors. Your neuroimmunospinal axis looks like it needs adjustment.
 
I think it could be hard to continue working with someone that is staunchly non compliant. Dr pt relationship is huge and I learned in kindergarten that relationships are a 2 way street
 
SpecterGT260 said:
I think it could be hard to continue working with someone that is staunchly non compliant. Dr pt relationship is huge and I learned in kindergarten that relationships are a 2 way street
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It's also important to be considerate to the other, compliant, patients. I know I would be pissed if I had a child with congenital rubella syndrome (assuming wife fell into the unimmunizable category for whatever legitimate reason) due to another mom refusing to immunize her child and passing rubella to my pregnant wife in the waiting room.
 
Yes, but how does retaining the non vaccinators as a patient fix this?
 
We just need to aerosolize vaccines and vent them into the hospitals and schools :)
 
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