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Posted by LinksEtc
 - July 05, 2015, 01:06:27 PM
Tweeted by @DrJenGunter


"Andrew Wakefield is apparently a legimate source of vaccine info at University of Toronto"
https://drjengunter.wordpress.com/2015/07/06/andrew-wakefield-is-apparently-a-legimite-source-of-vaccine-info-at-university-of-toronto/

QuoteIf ignoring the concerns of scientists about the abuse of Quantum Mechanics wasn't bad enough, to conclude that the teachings about vaccines as represented by the curriculum are not "unbalanced" from a "scholarly" perspective simply renders one speechless.



-----------------


Tweeted by @DShaywitz


"California, Camelot and Vaccines"
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-california-camelot-and-vaccines.html?referrer=

QuoteI had sided with the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
QuoteThis is erudition in the age of cyberspace: You surf until you reach the conclusion you're after. You click your way to validation, confusing the presence of a website with the plausibility of an argument.





Posted by LinksEtc
 - July 02, 2015, 03:53:35 PM
"Measles kills first patient in 12 years"
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/07/02/measles-death-washington-state/29624385/

QuoteThe USA has suffered its first measles death in 12 years, according to Washington state health officials.

-----------------



Tweeted by @AliceDreger

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/boy-dies-diphtheria-spain-parents-rejected-vaccine-32069410


-----------------



Tweeted by @sethmnookin

"First Measles Death in US Since 2003 Highlights the Unknown Vulnerables"
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/02/measles-death-us/

QuoteThose unknown vulnerables represent a lot of people: cancer patients undergoing treatment, transplant recipients taking anti-rejection drugs, people living with HIV, anyone with an inborn immune deficiency, anyone getting high doses of steroids—and the 4 million children in the United States who at any point are less than 12 months old, the recommended age for the first dose of measles vaccine.

&


"This Mom Is Mad At Jim Carrey For Tweeting A Photo Of Her Son With Autism"
http://www.buzzfeed.com/virginiahughes/jim-carrey-tweeted-this-kids-photo

Quotethe boy has a genetic autism syndrome that has nothing to do with vaccines, his mom told BuzzFeed News.
QuoteOn Tuesday night, actor and comedian Jim Carrey began tweeting a string of messages expressing his dismay at California's new law that eliminates vaccine exemptions for personal or religious reasons.





Posted by LinksEtc
 - February 23, 2015, 10:13:06 AM
Tweeted by @Skepticscalpel

"Kearny mom speaks out about measles"
http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2015/02/26/kearny-mom-speaks-measles/24041541/

QuoteYslas-Roach says she "feels horrible" that his daughter was exposed to the measles, adding, "it completely broke my heart. We didn't do this intentionally." If Christian had been tested Jan. 11, Yslas-Roach says, the results would have been back in time to prevent the exposure to Maggie and others. "Our family has gone through hell, dealing with the commentary on social media and from the regular media over the fact that people think we were running around exposing people."


-------------------------


Tweeted by @Clippo

QuoteI'm offended. Are you? "Cartoon Compares School Allergy Accommodations to Anti-Vax" shar.es/1oS3lx #foodallergy

http://www.yummymummyclub.ca/blogs/alexandria-durrell-irritated-by-allergies/20150213/offensive-cartoon-compares-food-bans-to-0


-------------------------


Tweeted by @IgECPD


"Toddler dies as measles outbreak hits German capital"
http://news.yahoo.com/toddler-dies-measles-germany-says-health-official-002917361.html


QuoteThe 18-month-old boy died on February 18 -- the first known fatality among more than 570 recorded measles cases since October in the German capital -- a Berlin health department official told AFP.





Posted by LinksEtc
 - February 03, 2015, 09:59:32 AM
Tweeted by @medskep

"Vilifying Parents Who Don't Vaccinate Their Kids Is Counterproductive"
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2015/02/02/vilifying-parents-who-dont-vaccinate-their-kids-is-counterproductive/

QuoteThe study of the psychology of risk perception has established that our judgments and decisions about any possible danger are the product of both the facts and an emotional assessment of how those facts feel.
QuoteBut before the vitriol toward vaccine refusers and hesitants grows too shrill, those of us who criticize vaccine refusal and hesitancy as a selfish emotion-driven denial of the evidence and a threat to public health, need to consider how we level that criticism. Dismissing such fears as irrational and vilifying vaccine refusal and hesitancy as ignorant and anti-social may be factually accurate, and understandable as the fear of a resurgent disease spreads, but it is emotionally arrogant and combative, and could make the problem, and public health, worse rather than better.


-------------------------------------------------------



Tweeted by @aaronecarroll


"Could we stop asking politicians "gotcha" questions about measles please? And anyone else for that matter?"
http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/could-we-stop-asking-politicians-gotcha-questions-about-measles-please-and-anyone-else-for-that-matter/


Quotewhat we're really asking politicians about is whether they think it's a good idea to force a parent to do something to their child that might run counter to their beliefs
QuoteYou have the right to refuse the vaccine. You don't have the right to put other kids at risk during an outbreak.

-------------------------------------------------------



Tweeted by @NPRHealth

"Once A Vaccine Skeptic, This Mom Changed Her Mind"
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/02/04/383567862/once-a-vaccine-skeptic-this-mom-changed-her-mind?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=health&utm_medium=social&utm_term=nprnews

Quote"I know what it's like to be scared and just want to protect your children, and make the wrong decisions," Russo says.
Quote"Fear, or the perception of risk, is subjective," Ropeik says. "It's a matter of how we feel about the facts we have, not just what the facts say.

-------------------------------------------------------



Tweeted by @eliza68

"How one vaccine skeptic became a vaccine supporter"
http://www.vox.com/2015/2/6/7992071/how-one-vaccine-skeptic-became-a-vaccine-supporter

Quoteempathetic toward mothers who fear vaccination while persuasively arguing for the morality of vaccines
Quotethe question of what is the relationship between the individual and the collective
QuoteI think the other way into empathy is to look at how scared people are, and to think about why they're scared, and what's happening culturally to support and encourage that fear.

-------------------------------------------------------



Tweeted by @DrLeanaWen

"To Get Parents To Vaccinate Their Kids, Don't Ask. Just Tell"
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/02/06/384322665/to-get-parents-to-vaccinate-their-kids-dont-ask-just-tell

QuoteThe study's surprising results: When doctors assumed parents would be OK with vaccines, they were. More than 70 percent had their child vaccinated.

On the other hand, when physicians were more flexible and allowed for discussion, most of the parents — 83 percent — decided against vaccination.




Posted by LinksEtc
 - February 02, 2015, 08:49:08 PM
Tweeted by @drJoshS

QuoteFor the best science on vaccines, you can't beat @theIOM goo.gl/lFIVug


Links to the
Institute of Medicine's Vaccine Safety Reports
sorted by Vaccine

http://www.vaccinesafety.edu/IOM-Reports.htm


-------------------------------



Tweeted by @FiveThirtyEight

"Your Brain Is Primed To Reach False Conclusions"
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/your-brain-is-primed-to-reach-false-conclusions/

QuotePaul Offit likes to tell a story about how his wife, pediatrician Bonnie Offit, was about to give a child a vaccination when the kid was struck by a seizure. Had she given the injection a minute sooner, Paul Offit says, it would surely have appeared as though the vaccine had caused the seizure and probably no study in the world would have convinced the parent otherwise.
QuotePsychologists have a name for the cognitive bias that makes us prone to assigning a causal relationship to two events simply because they happened one after the other: the "illusion of causality."




Posted by LinksEtc
 - February 02, 2015, 03:06:34 PM
Tweeted by @ScienceBasedMed



Warning - some language in this one ...



"Antivaccine cardiologist Jack Wolfson and the resurrection of false balance about vaccines...again!"
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/02/02/antivaccine-cardiologist-jack-wolfson-and-the-resurrection-of-false-balance-about-vaccines-again/

QuoteOoops, CNN did it again. Yesterday. In a story by Elizabeth Cohen and Debra Goldschmidt entitled Arizona measles exposure worries parents of at-risk kids CNN couldn't resist giving the vile Dr. Wolfson more national exposure.






Posted by SilverLining
 - February 02, 2015, 11:37:31 AM
I love Scott the Pharmacist. I follow him on twitter.
Posted by LinksEtc
 - February 02, 2015, 06:55:03 AM
Evidence of peanut proteins in vaccines



Quote from: CMdeux on February 02, 2015, 12:37:27 AM
TO anyone reading:  this is what is SO dangerous about looking for information about vaccination on the web-- people like this ABOUND, and most of them have exactly no self-awareness when it comes to the limitations in their ability to accurately read and understand professional literature in proper context.    They fail to understand that just because something is in writing, just because that writing exists within an archive-- does not make it currently the best available explanation.  Sorry, but you really do have to have all that advanced education when you play in the deep end of the pool.  That's a bummer for laypersons wanting to challenge paradigms, I realize-- but there are people who have a few decades invested (who are probably smarter than you), and who regularly invest 50 to 80 hours each week on this stuff, and they do NOT get the same thing out of reading those references.  In fact, they shake their heads over this kind of thing. 

It certainly gives ME a headache.  It's whack-a-mole.    And really, this 2008 blog post about the exact same phenomenon is a good demonstration of the kinds of tactics used here.  While it never gets old for those moles, it sure gets old for those of us holding the mallet.   :pout:

Please stop this.  A community whose children are at elevated risk from respiratory diseases, some of which are vaccine-preventable-- a community which has one member who has lost a child to such an agent-- this is just rude. 
Posted by CMdeux
 - February 02, 2015, 12:39:58 AM
Well, possibly-- but do understand that at some locations in the west-- in the locations where measles cases are out in the community, these people DO exist, and they really are that wacky.

They seem to be not entirely unrepresentative of the typical variety out west, actually.  I wish that I could say otherwise, but that's also my impression, living where I do.   :-/  My DH is already trying to figure out if he can tell a coworker who often has his child with him at work to keep that (unvaccinated, Waldorf) child the hell away from him in the event that we have measles cases in our community...  and we've concluded that such a thing is probably going to be a no-win situation for my spouse, who has an underlying medical condition.    The entire thing is making us EXTREMELY nervous. 


Costs of containment:

Whoahhhhhhh.... ouchie-ouchie-ouchie.

Vaccines just plain work.  And they are actually really, really safe, too.    Repeating this one here.

Okay, okay-- along with the fun cartoon.  I love married to the sea:



In all seriousness, though-- please read that very well-referenced blog post written in April by Scott Gavura, who is a Canadian pharmacist. 


An interesting previous blog post by Scott notes:

Quote
Are the anti-vaccine tactics effective?

If we accept that decisions to vaccinate are based on an evaluation of the risks of both commission and omission, then we should ask if exposure to anti-vaccine information has a meaningful impact on perceptions of the safety of vaccines. There is some literature that has studied this question. An interesting paper published earlier this year by Betsch and colleagues set out to prospectively measure the impact of anti-vaccination websites. They recruited 517 internet users (from sites for parents or those interested in medical information) and compared risk judgment and vaccination intentions before and after viewing different websites. (The evaluation was in German and used German websites. ) Users were directed to view a vaccine-critical website, or a neutral website, and then evaluated again.  The authors found that viewing anti-vaccine material for only five to ten minutes increased the perception of risk of vaccination, and decreased the perception of risk of omitting vaccines, compared to viewing neutral websites. It also lowered vaccination intentions.

Overwhelmingly, policy analyses of the anti-vaccine movement have centered on the need to address fears by providing reliable, accurate understandable information. But if H1N1 taught us anything, it's that traditional public health advocacy and messaging is probably insufficient to deal with anti-vaccine tactics used today. We believe that providing the facts alone will be effective, but this tactic is probably ineffective when responding to unfounded fears. Providing factual information, and correcting misinformation needs to be at the core of our advocacy, but it alone does not address the strategies used by anti-vaccine advocates.  It's the reality we need to accept if we're going to effectively counter these messages.

Conclusion

One of the biggest drivers of health behaviors is risk perceptions. Anti-vaccine information effectively shapes this, and science advocates need more effective responses. The opportunity to get a real-time understanding of popular anti-vaccine sentiment could help us improve our responsiveness. But unless we focus on prospectively influencing the key factors that drive decisions about vaccination, we'll continue to struggle.


Posted by lakeswimr
 - February 01, 2015, 07:33:03 AM
I read that article yesterday.  Honestly, I think they went out of their way to find people who have very poor reasons for not vaccinating.  I do not think M. Foster is representative of the reason people don't vax.  And nearly all anti-vaxers get tetnus from what I know.  Many who don't vax are not into natural foods or essential oils.  Certainly some are but those things do not all go hand in hand.

I think that article will make anti-vax people feel they have been stereotyped as idiots and painted by wide brush and turned off.
Posted by CMdeux
 - February 01, 2015, 12:43:07 AM
This is a really interesting story-- the comments, though-- that is what was truly a fascinating look.   :watch:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/31/us/vaccine-critics-turn-defensive-over-measles.html

Posted by Macabre
 - January 31, 2015, 09:15:43 PM
I heard this on NPR the other day and I was waiting for the dad tinsay his child with leukemia (I think it's leukemia) has a right to FAPE as part of his argument that unvaxed kids should not be allowed at school.

It's a very interesting story and doesn't take long. What an amazing dad he is.

via npr: To Protect His Son, Father Pushes School To Bar Unimmunized Kids http://n.pr/1yFXlcd
Posted by lakeswimr
 - January 31, 2015, 08:28:03 PM
It would not be reasonable for all physicians to address this issue in that much detail but books on the subject and articles should be able to fully address the concerns of those who are not vaxing and the people writing those things should know what those concerns are.  My son's first pediatrician did a great job addressing my concerns with me.  He told me that he had read about the issue widely, that he felt vaccines were safe, that the benefits greatly outweighed the risks, that he used to not push people that hard to vax but changed after one of his patients or maybe just a child in our state died or nearly died (it is a long time ago now so I forget) of a disease preventable by vaccines.  He did not spend a lot of time talking about this with me but enough that I felt heard and I appreciated his answer.  It is common around here for people to interview perspective pediatricians and that is when this type of conversation would often take place.

There are books by MDs that say that some vaccines have more risk than the disease they are designed to prevent so if a lay person reads that and believes it I don't think that makes them an idiot.  I think that attitude will not be helpful in trying to get more people to vaccinate. 

Quote from: CMdeux on January 31, 2015, 08:06:49 PM]
And while I agree that in a perfect world, a physician should be able to take a fifteen page manifesto (which may include everything from fairly nuanced statistical risk modelling to out-and-out bizarre and clearly impossible things) and calmly, patiently address each item one by one, the simple reality is that there is NO TIME for that in modern medicine.

SO yeah-- I'm fine with that solution, but pragmatically, I have to say, okay, but even ONE of those people in a day puts my physician at a place where s/he can't see three other patients.  At least.  What if I have to wait another two MONTHS for an appointment because there are a bunch of those people?

That, too, has costs for others.  Besides, not all physicians are great educators, when you get right down to it, and many of THEM aren't vaccine experts by any means-- but they do read practice parameters and the like.  So can they answer EVERY off-the-wall thing that a patient reads on the internet?  Most certainly NOT-- and even if they go and look it up, or ask an expert, that's yet more time devoted to it.

  So I'm a bit impatient with this nonsense-- because that is what it is. If they have "concerns" after reading at the CDC, etc. then I'm not sure what to say to that.  I guess that I do sort of think they aren't all that bright.  I'm sorry, and I know that seems mean.  But at that point, I do have to sort of shrug and point out that they ought to listen to people who are, and hopefully not waste SO much time in the process that those people spend their entire lives patiently explaining and explaining things that are really fairly obvious.

NONE of the "vaccines are not safe" rhetoric has any backing to it.  So it is a waste of time, when you get right down to it. :-/




Well, darn!  That Pediatrics paper is behind a paywall now, which is a bummer.  Library access, that'd be my recommendation on that one.
Posted by lakeswimr
 - January 31, 2015, 08:13:51 PM
Quote from: CMdeux on January 31, 2015, 08:06:49 PM
Ahhhh-- but (and I say this recalling many people in the generation older than us) those people who drove drunk back when it was socially just a "personal choice" weren't irrational either.  Not really.

They really believed that they were being rational in what they were basing their decisions upon.

I don't think those people had books from doctors (MDs) saying why it was good to drive drunk and books and articles claiming statistics showed it made them better drivers.  I do not think the comparison is a good one.  I think even back then if you asked people they knew on some level that driving drunk was not a smart idea.  I think as a whole people did not realize just how dangerous it was just like driving without a seat belt and loads of other things people used to do.
Posted by lakeswimr
 - January 31, 2015, 08:11:41 PM
I really want to read the article going through Dr. Bob's ideas but it won't let me see the full text.  I registered but still can't see it.  What can I do to read it?