Idiots, Savants and Celebrities
In what can usually be ascribed to a slow news day, CNN has dramatically increased their coverage of autism. They even made a special section for it. Except that it's not just some random slow news day, today was Autism Awareness Day (which I didn't know until I was writing this blog). For too long, autism was ignored or seen as just a developmental problem. When it wasn't seen as that, it was seen as little more than a cool party trick, since so many autistic people can do complex mathematics quickly, or play music at a virtuoso level without training or many other feats that boggle the average mind. In either event, it was misunderstood in a lot of ways, much to the detriment of the people with autism and those who had to care for them. Now, as autism rates rise to record levels (from less than 1 person per thousand in 1996 to almost 5 people per 1000 in 2007), people have started to re-examine the causes and diagnosis of the disease. Parents who are trying to become more medically savvy, in the face of shows like ER and House, have now begun to question some of the facts they have been fed and have also begun to notice the sharp rise in autism. This has been coupled with a sharp rise in the number of recommended immunizations for infants. Some have suggested that the rise in autism is linked to the increased exposure to thimerosal as a preservative in immunization. Doctors are disagreeing and parents are blaming the doctors. And the children still suffer.
To be fair, both the doctors and the parents are concerned about the children. Doctors care about children and children's disease and want them to be safe from some of the nastiest things that attacked their grandparents. There is an immunization for chicken pox, which in my venerated generation hit almost all of it and was an accepted part of childhood. Now, there's a vaccine for it. There are flu vaccines that are recommended. There are vaccines for infants for viruses (viri, if you speak the original Latin) that many have never heard of and improved vaccines many of us had as infants. While there are those parents who are against immunizations, the rational autism advocates are not against all immunizations. They merely question the amount of immunizations, specifically pointing the increase of recommended immunizations, from 10 to 36 before age 6. Comparing them both until age 4, it's 10 recommended in 1983 to 34 recommended in 2007. A lot of the new recommended immunizations are better immunizations than the stuff that was available in 1993, and some of them are totally new immunizations. Immunizations are tricky business, as any epidemiologist will tell you. Most of the important ones are not one shot and done, instead they have to be boosted many times. But, let's run down the list MidnightRanter style.
Influenza vaccine (prenatal, 6, 18, 30, 42, 54 and 66 months). This is the vaccine that is most likely to contain thimerosal, so it's the most controversial. It is available without the thimerosal, but one generally needs to pay extra for it and tell the doctor you want it. Note, this the same flu adults get and the vaccine is the same one that doesn't cover everything. Since there are many strains of the influenza virus, one vaccine can't cover them all. In a healthy adult, the vaccine can take up to two weeks to take effect, which means while your body is fighting off the vaccine (to train it to fight off other viruses), you can get sick with something else. And, well, a lot of kids get the flu and recover. Then there are multiple Hepatitis B vaccinations. Read the description of Hep B. Are small infants in ANY of these groups? Yet, the CDC recommends FOUR vaccinations in the first 6 months. Hepatitis A is recommended twice, once at 12 and again at 18 months, even though, again, children are not at risk. IPV is the new and improved polio vaccine, and polio was once the scourge of small children, until the work of Dr. Jonas Salk. Polio was a disease that really affected children, and needs to be stopped as soon as possible. PCV is a fairly nasty virus, but if you read the information, it says that it's approved for children over 2, but the CDC recommends a vaccination at 12 months (1 year for those who flunked math) and also fewer doses are needed for older children. Rotavirus vaccine is recommended 3 times, but it kills 60 children a year, and in the developing world, most of THOSE are preventable with a hospital visit in time. So, if you cut out Hep A, Hep B, Rotavirus, and influenza, that's most of the vaccinations right there, and most of those can be done a single injection after 3 years of age.
While thimerosal isn't in all of these, it's in some of these. And while some studies have proven that individually no one immunization causes autism, there is a lack of studies about the combined effect of all these immunizations have on the infant body. The problem with thimerosal as a preservative is that it contains mercury. The FDA says it doesn't contain much and well below the limits, but reading this again, even the FDA admits that the number of vaccinations a child should receive might push the mercury limits into toxic levels. After all, mercury is not like bad Chinese food, you don't just pass it if it makes you sick. Mercury stays in your system and can build up over time and become more toxic. Note, the CDC didn't want to go into all this or seriously look at exactly how much damage can be caused by injecting that much mercury and that many live viruses into a baby. Mostly because that would be hard to do and might even be cruel to experiment on. Note, not SO cruel to not recommend all parents inject the hell out of their kids. Let's face it, we don't know much about infant epidemiology because either they live or they don't and they can't report symptoms well. So while one vaccine probably won't kill the average baby, and hell, a dozen probably won't, but over 30, especially with many multiplying the same virus, that can't be good for an infant.
I am not a doctor. Jenny McCarthy, strong advocate of autism concerns, isn't one either. But she speaks up since she has a son who has autism and many doctors wouldn't give her a straight answer about a lot of these things. She discovered other resources online that helped her treat her son and found a new treatment that might help. Doctors said she was nuts, she tried and her son got better. Not autism free, but a lot closer to average. Doctors then though that the initial diagnosis must have been wrong, or at least somehow mistaken. They say it is impossible to treat autism by detoxifying (which is what she did) the child's system. But, she did, and no doctor wanted to hear about it. No doctor wanted to follow up and no doctor wanted to examine the boy and try and replicate the procedures. Note, this is how science usually advances: someone notices something, they try to make it happen again, try to figure out why and then try to make a prediction and theory about it. Science shouldn't reject something out of hand, but that's what is happening. It's happening because there's a theory that contradicts a current fact of science: immunizing children saves lives. There's a thing called "herd immunity", which basically is the idea that if you immunize enough of a given population, then the population is effective immune to that disease. It works, but it's not a trump card. Herd immunity is important and a good goal, but not caring about the possibility of autism is not the way to go about it.
Because destroying lives is not the way to save lives.
So it is written, so do I see it.
To be fair, both the doctors and the parents are concerned about the children. Doctors care about children and children's disease and want them to be safe from some of the nastiest things that attacked their grandparents. There is an immunization for chicken pox, which in my venerated generation hit almost all of it and was an accepted part of childhood. Now, there's a vaccine for it. There are flu vaccines that are recommended. There are vaccines for infants for viruses (viri, if you speak the original Latin) that many have never heard of and improved vaccines many of us had as infants. While there are those parents who are against immunizations, the rational autism advocates are not against all immunizations. They merely question the amount of immunizations, specifically pointing the increase of recommended immunizations, from 10 to 36 before age 6. Comparing them both until age 4, it's 10 recommended in 1983 to 34 recommended in 2007. A lot of the new recommended immunizations are better immunizations than the stuff that was available in 1993, and some of them are totally new immunizations. Immunizations are tricky business, as any epidemiologist will tell you. Most of the important ones are not one shot and done, instead they have to be boosted many times. But, let's run down the list MidnightRanter style.
Influenza vaccine (prenatal, 6, 18, 30, 42, 54 and 66 months). This is the vaccine that is most likely to contain thimerosal, so it's the most controversial. It is available without the thimerosal, but one generally needs to pay extra for it and tell the doctor you want it. Note, this the same flu adults get and the vaccine is the same one that doesn't cover everything. Since there are many strains of the influenza virus, one vaccine can't cover them all. In a healthy adult, the vaccine can take up to two weeks to take effect, which means while your body is fighting off the vaccine (to train it to fight off other viruses), you can get sick with something else. And, well, a lot of kids get the flu and recover. Then there are multiple Hepatitis B vaccinations. Read the description of Hep B. Are small infants in ANY of these groups? Yet, the CDC recommends FOUR vaccinations in the first 6 months. Hepatitis A is recommended twice, once at 12 and again at 18 months, even though, again, children are not at risk. IPV is the new and improved polio vaccine, and polio was once the scourge of small children, until the work of Dr. Jonas Salk. Polio was a disease that really affected children, and needs to be stopped as soon as possible. PCV is a fairly nasty virus, but if you read the information, it says that it's approved for children over 2, but the CDC recommends a vaccination at 12 months (1 year for those who flunked math) and also fewer doses are needed for older children. Rotavirus vaccine is recommended 3 times, but it kills 60 children a year, and in the developing world, most of THOSE are preventable with a hospital visit in time. So, if you cut out Hep A, Hep B, Rotavirus, and influenza, that's most of the vaccinations right there, and most of those can be done a single injection after 3 years of age.
While thimerosal isn't in all of these, it's in some of these. And while some studies have proven that individually no one immunization causes autism, there is a lack of studies about the combined effect of all these immunizations have on the infant body. The problem with thimerosal as a preservative is that it contains mercury. The FDA says it doesn't contain much and well below the limits, but reading this again, even the FDA admits that the number of vaccinations a child should receive might push the mercury limits into toxic levels. After all, mercury is not like bad Chinese food, you don't just pass it if it makes you sick. Mercury stays in your system and can build up over time and become more toxic. Note, the CDC didn't want to go into all this or seriously look at exactly how much damage can be caused by injecting that much mercury and that many live viruses into a baby. Mostly because that would be hard to do and might even be cruel to experiment on. Note, not SO cruel to not recommend all parents inject the hell out of their kids. Let's face it, we don't know much about infant epidemiology because either they live or they don't and they can't report symptoms well. So while one vaccine probably won't kill the average baby, and hell, a dozen probably won't, but over 30, especially with many multiplying the same virus, that can't be good for an infant.
I am not a doctor. Jenny McCarthy, strong advocate of autism concerns, isn't one either. But she speaks up since she has a son who has autism and many doctors wouldn't give her a straight answer about a lot of these things. She discovered other resources online that helped her treat her son and found a new treatment that might help. Doctors said she was nuts, she tried and her son got better. Not autism free, but a lot closer to average. Doctors then though that the initial diagnosis must have been wrong, or at least somehow mistaken. They say it is impossible to treat autism by detoxifying (which is what she did) the child's system. But, she did, and no doctor wanted to hear about it. No doctor wanted to follow up and no doctor wanted to examine the boy and try and replicate the procedures. Note, this is how science usually advances: someone notices something, they try to make it happen again, try to figure out why and then try to make a prediction and theory about it. Science shouldn't reject something out of hand, but that's what is happening. It's happening because there's a theory that contradicts a current fact of science: immunizing children saves lives. There's a thing called "herd immunity", which basically is the idea that if you immunize enough of a given population, then the population is effective immune to that disease. It works, but it's not a trump card. Herd immunity is important and a good goal, but not caring about the possibility of autism is not the way to go about it.
Because destroying lives is not the way to save lives.
So it is written, so do I see it.