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Rethinking Autism

25 Jun

There have been many push-backs to Jenny McCarthy and her views on autism. There has been a lot of blogging, including right here on LeftBrainRightBrain. There is a website StopJenny. There is a Jenny McCarthy body count. Now there is a new site, Rethinking Autism. While it doesn’t directly mention Jenny McCarthy, it is pretty clear that she was a prime motivator for that project.

The person who created Rethinking Autism describes herself this way:

I am the mother of an autistic boy. I have had enough of the pseudo-science quackery that certain celebrities are pitching to parents of kids with autism. The media is concentrating on the pseudo-science and there needs to be a forum for more tried and tested information. It is virtually impossible for an individual to deliver a counter-message, but I may have found a way with RethinkingAutism.com.

The main page carries this message:

All too often in the world of autism, celebrity and sex appeal are used to promote pseudo-science that exploits autistic people, their family members and the public. We decided to put those very same factors to work in service of the truth.

What is her method? Videos. Not just videos, but videos that use autism, celebrity and sex appeal. OK, the Rethinking Autism “celebrity” is not as well known as Jenny McCarthy, but you will get the idea with these videos, by Leeann, who:

Leeann is the friend of a family with an autistic child. When asked if she would help, she graciously agreed. She immediately understood the tongue-in-cheek nature of the spots and, as you’ll see, brought her “A” game!

I’m also rather fond of this one…

There are a number of good videos, as well as concise, clear “key concepts”.

I got a good chuckle out of the videos–and I like the message being sent.

Over at Lisa Jo Rudy’s Autism.About.Com blog, there has been some discussion of these videos. Lisa poses this thought:

In my opinion, Commandatore may get a good deal of personal publicity for her arty and provocative style. She’s also likely to get a lot of flack for her anti-feminist, disrespectful approach to autism education. She’s unlikely, however, to make much impact as an educator.

The way I see it, this is as much a satire on the entire “sex sells” advertising culture as the vaccines-cause-autism-gotta-cure culture. As such, I didn’t see it as anti-feminist. However, I am a heterosexual male and a product of the “sex sells” culture, so I may be biased.

There is also discussion in the comments there about whether Jenny McCarthy was in any way an inspiration for the Rethinking Autism website. Commenter Lynne states:

Jenny isn’t posing seductively to tell the story of her son or otherwise leveraging her sexuality to share her experience with autism with other families. It’s a HUGE leap to say that Jenny McCarthy is responsible in any way for these totally dumb videos.

I find it odd that people who can draw such concrete conclusions from such bad data (i.e. vaccines caused an epidemic of autism, or Jenny McCarthy has a cure for autism) can’t see what is a much more simple connection. I’d bet good money that Rethinking Autism wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for Jenny McCarthy. And, what’s with that “…or otherwise leveraging her sexuality…”. Please. Jenny McCarthy has been leveraging her sexuality for about 20 years now. Do you really think that Jenny McCarthy would be on Larry King Live or Oprah without her career selling her sexuality? Come on.

Consider this. Before Jenny McCarthy telling about vaccines causing autism and recovered kids there was Stan Kurtz. Mr. Kurtz is quite good at self promotion too. But, this is Stan Kurtz:

Stan Kurtz

Stan Kurtz

Not a bad looking guy, but no potential male model either. Not a celebrity. No autism national exposure pre-Jenny McCarthy either. Yes, correlation is not causation. But, really, does anyone think he was going to be invited onto, say, The Doctors, without Jenny McCarthy?

Sorry, there is a very clear reason why Jenny McCarthy gets camera time. It isn’t because she is such a good writer (I’m not impressed). It isn’t because her message is new (it isn’t). I welcome Rethinking Autism’s approach to both the Jenny McCarthy message and the “Sex Sells” culture.

Jenny McCarthy Blocked Me on Twitter!

26 May

A fascinating Guest Blog piece here from Dawn Crawford, Communications Manager for the Colorado Children’s Immunization Coalition on their Twitter activities.

How One Small Nonprofit Irked a MTV Star

It’s amazing how one simple action can result in a landside of meaning.

On May 14, I realized that the organization that I work for, the Colorado Children’s Immunization Coalition (CCIC), aka ImmunizeCOKids on Twitter, was blocked by Jenny McCarthy, aka JennyfromMTV on Twitter.

Okay, so that’s a little odd. That is the only user I know that blocks CCIC.

Sure, CCIC has put out some tweets about Jenny. She has made herself a major target for the pro-vaccine movement. What is really odd is that the block was in response to only three tweets with her user name in it. In the name of complete transparency, I’ve included the actual tweets:

ImmunizeCOKids: @shuwu – great work – “Open Letter 2 @Oprah” poetic, smart & dead-on post about deal w/ anti-vax @JennyfromMTV http://ow.ly/6uY7 (May 14, 2009 – http://twitter.com/ImmunizeCOKids/statuses/1796433253 )

ImmunizeCOKids: Poetic, smart and dead-on post about @Oprah signing deal with anti-vax @JennyfromMTV “Open Letter to Oprah” http://ow.ly/6uY7 (May 13, 2009 – http://twitter.com/ImmunizeCOKids/statuses/1776457638 = 13 RTs of this ow.ly shortener)

ImmunizeCOKids: Jenny McCarthy is on The Doctors TV show today – very inflammatory. She is on twitter now too @JennyfromMTV (May 6, 2009 – http://twitter.com/ImmunizeCOKids/statuses/1716401176 )

And in all fairness, here are the tweets that just included her name and not her Twitter ID:

ImmunizeCOKids: Weigh in! Future of BioPharma: Jenny McCarthy vs Autism and its effects on the public http://ow.ly/6ggj (May 11, 2009 – http://twitter.com/ImmunizeCOKids/statuses/1765254086)

ImmunizeCOKids: Why is Oprah Winfrey promoting vaccine skeptic Jenny McCarthy? Slate Magazine http://ow.ly/5rFB – thanks @JeffStierACSH & @bobfinn (May 6, 2009 – http://twitter.com/ImmunizeCOKids/statuses/1718911892)

ImmunizeCOKids: Agreed on the fiction of vaccines = autism part. Thanks Babble! “Jenny McCarthy To Get Her Own Talk Show?” – FameCrawler http://ow.ly/5gZ7 (May 5, 2009 – http://twitter.com/ImmunizeCOKids/statuses/1708699412)

Social media is a very important strategy for CCIC’s mission of increasing vaccination rates to keep Colorado’s kids healthy. CCIC engages in Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to share our message of confidence in the safety of vaccines. Specifically, we use Twitter to encourage and support the majority of parents who are vaccinating their children, confront misinformation about vaccine safety and share articles from a wide array of sources.

Blocking on Twitter? What’s the Point

As someone who lives and breathes social media (I author three Twitter accounts), the blocking function on Twitter has always perplexed me. Why would you ever want to sever a line of communication in this way?

For those unfamiliar with the function, the block feature on Twitter ensures that you and the blocked user do not follow each other or direct message each other. It doesn’t prevent the blocked user from visiting the user’s profile or writing ‘@ replies’ about them. It just ensures that the user is blissfully ignorant of all the comments the blocked user is continuing to add to Twitterspace. This is from Twitter on their blocking function:

Are you sure you want to block ImmunizeCOKids? Here’s what blocking means:

You will no longer show up in the blocked person’s list of friends.

Your updates won’t show up on the blocked person’s profile page.

The blocked person will not be able to add you as a friend.

For us at CCIC, it is the rich dialogue that makes Twitter so powerful. We receive tweets at least once a week from parents telling us that we are liars and that they staunchly believe that vaccines are dangerous or that vaccines cause autism. We want to keep the dialogue open with all parents. We want to know what exactly is frightening parents and what concerns them about vaccines. It is such a great asset to be connected with concerned parents, have a respectful conversation that educates and empowers parents to make an informed decision about the health of their children.

Moreover, a ‘brand’ like Jenny McCarthy blocking CCIC on Twitter has interesting social media branding implications. It encourages us to assume that she isn’t open to any opposing views. It tells us that contrary to what she says in the media, she doesn’t want a dialogue about this issue. She wants a platform.

David and Goliath

So why are we so excited about being blocked by Jenny? It’s that she cared enough to take the time to block CCIC. It’s that she cared enough about what we are saying to end the conversation.

It’s a lot like David and Goliath. Jenny is a super-human symbol of the anti-vaccine movement (Jenny states that she is ‘anti-toxin’ and not against vaccines- aren’t we splitting hairs?). CCIC is a small but vocal organization in Colorado making sure physicians, nurses and public health providers get the vaccines, resources, and continuing education they need to keep kids healthy. Our total budget amounts to about 1,400 copies of Jenny’s latest book (which not a dime of that budget comes from pharmaceutical companies, btw). CCIC is insignificant in Jenny’s world but important enough to heed a reaction.

Can this open a dialogue?

A good vaccine advocate friend pointed out that this might be an opportunity to have the sides of the great vaccine divide sit down and have an open, real conversation. We think this is an opportunity to come together on the one issue that we can agree on which is protecting the health of children.

So in the end, this is an honest, open invitation to Jenny McCarthy to have a conversation. We both want to do what is right for children; we just have different paths to the same goal. Let’s find a common ground of respect and move forward in protecting children.

Until then, we’ll be here in Colorado protecting children from disease just like we do everyday. Jenny, we hope to hear from you soon. You know where to find us on Twitter.

About the Author: As the Communications Manager for CCIC, Dawn Crawford leads all messaging for the Colorado Children’s Immunization Coalition (CCIC). CCIC is a state-wide nonprofit that ensures that physicians, nurses and public health departments get the vaccines they need to keep Colorado’s kids healthy. CCIC is very active on the ‘interwebs’ as an advocacy organization promoting the prevention of vaccine preventable diseases. You can find them on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Jenny McCarthy’s son was never autistic?

20 May

A provocative piece in the National Post suggests that very thing.

It is not even certain that her child ever had autism; neurologists have pointed out that her description of the symptoms, and recovery, are more consistent with a rare disorder, Landau-Kleffner Syndrome. Ms. McCarthy may thus be trumpeting a “cure” for a disease of which she has no parental experience.

More than a little interested I tracked down this Letter to Neurology Today.

In After Vaccine-Autism Case Settlement, MDs Urged to Continue Recommending Vaccines (June 5), Dawn Fallik correctly cites Jenny McCarthy as a celebrity fanning the flames of the vaccine-autism link. McCarthy also makes parents think that autism can be cured with unproven treatments – as she claims is the case with her son – documented in her much publicized book, Louder than Words: A Mother’s Journey in Healing Autism (Dutton 2007).

Unfortunately, what the public does not realize as well as perhaps McCarthy is that her son was most likely misdiagnosed with autism in the first place. His disorder began with seizures and, subsequently, with the seizures treated, he improved. This would be more consistent with Landau-Kleffner syndrome, which often is misdiagnosed as autism.

Daniel B. Rubin, MD, PhD

OK, so next stop Landau-Kleffner syndrome.

It is characterized by the sudden or gradual development of aphasia (the inability to understand or express language) and an abnormal electroencephalogram (EEG). LKS affects the parts of the brain that control comprehension and speech. The disorder usually occurs in children between the ages of 5 and 7 years. Typically, children with LKS develop normally but then lose their language skills. While many of the affected individuals have clinical seizures, some only have electrographic seizures, including electrographic status epilepticus of sleep (ESES).

…..

The syndrome can be difficult to diagnose and may be misdiagnosed as autism, pervasive developmental disorder, hearing impairment, learning disability, auditory/verbal processing disorder, attention deficit disorder, mental retardation, childhood schizophrenia, or emotional/behavioral problems.

And is Rubin right? Did Jenny McCarthy’s son Evan’s illness begin with epilepsy?

“I found Evan seizing in his crib,” she told ABC’s Deborah Roberts. “He was foaming at the mouth and his eyes rolled back.”

McCarthy rushed 2-year-old Evan to the hospital. After a few days of multiple seizures, doctors concluded that Evan had epilepsy, but McCarthy was not convinced. Her maternal instinct told her that something was still wrong.

Angry and skeptical of the medical advice she had been given, McCarthy went to a second neurologist who gave her an earth-shattering new diagnosis: Her son has autism.

So yeah he is. Evan’s first presentation was epilepsy.

Not exactly enough to give anything approaching a definite answer but still, interesting. I wonder who diagnosed Evan.

Jack Coleman talks back to Jim Carrey, Jenny McCarthy

12 May

Foxnews.com carries a story about Hero’s star Jack Coleman discussing autism and vaccines.

…in his belief the “autism/vaccine” link was unwarranted.

“My sister is a pediatrician and she is not beholden to pharmaceutical companies, which, I know, that’s the big conspiracy theory out there. They did huge research in Europe and they have not found any ties to it at all, there is no longer live mercury in any of these calculations,” Coleman told Tarts. “I just think that from what I’ve read and heard I don’t think it’s connected. I do know that there is a MMR that it makes your child extremely cranky and sick but I personally don’t it contributes to autism, but I am not a doctor.”

And despite McCarthy and her longtime lover Jim Carrey’s relentless lobbying to put pressure on the federal government to remove toxins from vaccines and fight for fewer childhood vaccinations prior to the age of 2, Coleman still supports immunization all the way.

“I have given my child every vaccination there is, but when you are related to a pediatrician, you tend to look much more kindly at vaccinations. As she says, ‘I’ve never seen a child die from an immunization but I have seen one die because of a whopping cough.’ What our grandparents would give to have those immunizations,” he added. “If five years from now, science says that it is the cause, then I will eat my words, but I don’t see that happening.”

A rep for McCarthy did not respond for comment.

Seems like there are maybe more smart celebs in Hollywood than I thought, Jennifer Garner, Amanda Peet, Jennifer Lopez and now Jack Coleman.

Jenny Mcarthy on HBOT

6 May

Given the recent death of a woman and serious injury of a child in a hyperbaric chamber. It is perhaps worth highlighting Jenny McCarthy’s recent “tweet”.

Im inside a hyperbaric chamber. This thing makes me feel amazing.

If a vaccine “exploded” killing one person and critically injuring another with such clear causality, one can imagine McCarthy would be the first to stand up and denounce it. Instead, as one commentator says it’s “All risk, no benefit” when it comes to the quackery surrounding autism, and that’s before you risk dreadful gluten-free and casein-free cup cakes. Meanwhile, despite having no evidence, McCarthy suggests vaccines are dangerous toxic products and may be responsible for the start of an explosion of preventable childhood diseases.

Liar Liar

24 Apr

Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy are very critical of vaccines. They assert that vaccines cause autism.

Criticising vaccines is a dangerous business. Vaccines are arguably one of the greatest, if not the greatest, medical advances in history. Anyone whose causes people to stop vaccinating their children runs the risk of being blamed for illness, permanent injury and death if/when the diseases return.

Mr. Carrey seems aware of this. In his recent blog piece he made a point of noting:

We have never argued that people shouldn’t be immunized for the most serious threats including measles and polio

This statement bothered me enough that I discussed it in two pieces (here and here) about measles outbreaks in Wales and the US.

I wanted to highlight the fact that the website for Mr. Carrey’s organization (Generation Rescue) includes language specifically telling people to avoid the measles vaccine.

Even after blogging that, somehow Mr. Carrey’s statement statement still bothered me. Then I remembered why.

A year ago, Mr. Carrey’s movie, “Horton Hears a Who”, was in theaters. One group in New Mexico decided to offer a screening of Horton with an added benefit: free vaccinations for children who came.

This didn’t sit well with Mr. Carrey, who decided to put a stop to the free vaccination program. According to Lisa Akerman of TACA (Talk About Curing Autism, another group that has had Jenny McCarthy as a spokes-person):

Once word from the autism community (Who-ville in this case) got to the Carrey & McCarthy super team about this story of a New Mexico vaccination plot things got a brewing. After his morning coffee, Jim made a few calls this morning on behalf of the autism community.

Following a long discussion with his representatives at Fox Entertainment – Who-ville – once again through Horton – was heard. The New Mexico test market of drive thru vaccines while at the movies with your children was stopped. Halted by Horton himself…

So, Mr. Carrey doesn’t “argue” that people shouldn’t be immunized. He just stops them from being immunized.

Fallout of the vaccine-autism scare: Measles in Wales

24 Apr

Jim Carrey, Jenny McCarthy, Andrew Wakefield…what do these people have in common? They have all helped promote fear of vaccines–especially the Measles/MumpsRubella (MMR) vaccine–by claiming there is evidence vaccines cause autism.

To be fair, Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy relatively new to the scene, unlike Dr. Wakefield, whose flawed research really fueled the fear. Perhaps the actors could learn from the doctor’s lesson: you claim MMR causes autism, that reduces the number of people getting immunized and people get sick. Pretty simple logic.

Measles was considered basically wiped out in the UK until a few years ago when it returned, sickening thousands and killing a few. Last year, measles returned to the US, and it’s back this year. Now we see that the UK isn’t being spared int he 2008-09 season: Wales has approximately 60 cases of measles suspected or confirmed.

Nineteen cases are in Llanelli–that’s in the lower left corner of this map:

Map showing location of recent measles outbreak in Wales

Map showing location of recent measles outbreak in Wales

That’s a short ride from Swansea, Cardiff, Bristol…lots of high density population centers. Any reasonable person would find that scary.

We in the autism communities need to stand up against misinformation that leads to people being sickened and, in some cases, killed. The MMR-Autism link never had good evidence, and now there is good evidence that MMR does not cause autism Even people like the autism-is-vaccine-injury proponent Rick Rollens admitted it’s time to look beyond MMR (and here).

Jim Carrey seems to understand at least on some level that it is wrong to dissuade people from vaccination. He claimed (incorrectly):

We have never argued that people shouldn’t be immunized for the most serious threats including measles and polio…

Maybe there is some Clintonian logic about the words “We” and “argued”. But, on Larry King Live, Jenny McCarthy stated:

You need to find a doctor that can find an alternate schedule. Generationrescue.org has three of them on there.

Generation Rescue, aka “Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey’s Autism Organization” has alternate schedules on their website. The “favorite” of the three alternate vaccine schedules states, very clearly,

One should avoid vaccines that contain live viruses. This includes the combined measles mumps and rubella vaccines…

You’ve talked the talk, time to walk the walk, Jim. Pull that schedule off your website. Get your organization to make a clear statement about the value of vaccinating against measles.

I realize that I have concentrated a lot on Jim Carrey in this piece. But, there is a man who can make a difference in the future. That future will see people in the US and the UK sickened by measles. The question is how many. What Jim Carrey says could make that number larger or smaller, it all depends on whether he makes good on his sentiment that measles is a serious disease worth immunizing against.

Dr Jay Gordon, HIPAA violation? Really?

23 Apr

We’re back to the Huffington Post again and this time rather than Jenny McCarthy’s boyfriend, we’re talking about Jenny McCarthy’s son’s doctor Dr Jay Gordon.

He recently blogged about an LA Times piece by fellow medical man Dr Rahul Parikh. In his piece Parikh said:

One night, we admitted a 9-month-old girl who was having trouble breathing. She arrived with her parents — Mom in tears and Dad tense with worry. Her parents were movie stars from a Hollywood borough who…needed nothing. In a way, they had chosen “nothing” for their daughter from the time she was born — refusing all vaccines for her.

From this information alone Dr Gordon decided that Dr Parikh:

…commits ethics and HIPAA violations so egregious that the Medical Board must take him to task

Interesting, I thought as I read on…

Dr. Parikh is a well-published medical author and blogger and he speaks of a patient he saw as an intern in the year 2000 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. (His bio on many sites lets you know that year.) He identifies the parents, their unique profession and their child’s age and illness. This family can be identified by anyone who can use Google.

I was confused by now – Parikh hadn’t mentioned the year (in fact *Gordon himself* did!), he hadn’t identified the parents and as for their ‘unique profession’…how is being a movie star from Hollywood in any way unique? Surely Hollywood is full of movie stars? I mean, I’m a Brit so maybe I’m just buying into a cliché – are there really not many movie stars in Hollywood? And as for identifying the child’s age and illness – a 9 month old with a repository infection? Is that massively uncommon? I don’t think it is.

I stopped reading at that point as I have never been Dr Gordon’s biggest fan. He lacks the balls to tell Jenny McCarthy she’s wrong about there being anti-freeze in vaccines (silliness repeated by Jim Carrey yesterday) amongst other things. I was now more interested in this ‘ethics and HIPAA violation’.

False modesty aside I’m pretty good at digging at information on search engines and try as I could (and I really did try), based on the info in Parikh’s piece, I could not for the life of me identify who the movie stars were whos daughter was ill. I still can’t.

However, finding out what constitutes a HIPAA violation in terms of identifiable data was very much easier. I hit gold on my first search. According to the site ‘Lawyers and HIPAA‘ a violation occurs when health information is made public – here’s the paragraph on health information and its public release:

Individually identifiable health information is information that is a subset of health information, including demographic information collected from an individual, and:

(1) Is created or received by a health care provider, health plan, employer, or health care clearinghouse; and

(2) Relates to the past, present, or future physical or mental health or condition of an individual; the provision of health care to an individual; or the past, present, or future payment for the provision of health care to an individual; and

(i) That identifies the individual; or

(ii) With respect to which there is a reasonable basis to believe the information can be used to identify the individual.

I simply cannot see how Jay Gordon realistically believes that the information in Rahul Parikh’s LA Times piece meets that criteria.

Update: I see Autism News Beat has covered this also. In the comments Dr Gordon appears and says:

Good points. I’ve removed the nastier comments in the HuffPo piece. The Internet lends itself to false bravado and unpleasant ad hominem attacks [please see above 🙂 ] and I have to work on not being part of that problem.

I stand by my original unhappiness at the inaccurate proclamation of whooping cough

Yet when I return to Dr Gordon’s Huffington Post entry, I still see the references to HIPAA violations. Does Dr Gordon really believe that Dr Parikh’s article is full of HIPAA violations? Yes, I’m a Brit and no, I’m not a lawyer but my common sense tells me that Dr Gordon is playing with fire here. Lets hope for Dr Gordon’s sake that Dr Parikh is not going to sue for defamation. According to Autism News Beat that would be distinctly on the cards.

Fallout of the vaccine-autism scare: Measles in the US

23 Apr

I thought we dodged the bullet this year in the US–no measles outbreaks like in 2008.

Then I read the Baby411 blog. Today’s post:

Several states are reporting measles outbreaks across the country this week, but particularly on the East Coast.

The following states are reporting confirmed cases of measles:
Iowa
Pennsylvania
Washington DC
Maryland
Virginia

So far, six cases in the Washington DC area, for example.

A very valid question is, “why bring this up on an autism blog?” Unfortunately, the autism community is tied to the measles vaccine scare. So, yes, I hang some of the responsibility for this outbreak on Dr. Wakefield for his terribly flawed research.

I also hang responsibility on Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey. Jenny McCarthy has been promoting her organization’s “alternative” vaccine schedule that gives no coverage for measles.

Here’s a quote from their “alternative”schedule:

One should avoid vaccines that contain live viruses. This includes the combined measles.mups and rubella vaccines…

Just today, her partner, Jim Carrey in a blog post denied this:

We have never argued that people shouldn’t be immunized for the most serious threats including measles and polio

Sorry, Jim, you can’t have it both ways.

Let’s hope this outbreak stays small.

Let’s go back to 1983!

22 Apr

One of the recurring themes in the vaccines-cause-autism discussion is the concept that if we were to go back to the vaccine schedule of 1983, the autism rate would drop to 1 in 10,000.

This, of course, is pushed hard by Generation Rescue and Jenny McCarthy. GR even took out ads in USA Today to promote this idea.

Before taking a look at the 1983 vaccine schedule, I have to offer Generation Rescue a few corrections to their advertisement.

1) There is no “mandatory” CDC schedule. Sorry, the CDC has a “recommended” schedule. States work from that to create their own schedules. Since in almost every state one can opt-out with a simple form, even the state schedules aren’t really “mandatory”.

2) Rotavirus isn’t “mandatory” even on the state level. Perhaps GR could show me which state has the Rotavirus vaccine as part of their schedule, but I haven’t been able to find one.

That said, GR would like us all to go back to the 1983 schedule. Really? Did they think this trough? I don’t think so.

Take a look at the 1983 schedule that GR list in their ad. Two vaccines pop up to me right away–DTP and OPV.

Consider first the DTP. I thought there were good safety reasons to move from DTP (with the whole-cell pertussis vaccine) to the DTaP (acellular pertussis) vaccine. Is it OK to have more vaccine injuries in their flawed experiment to try to reduce the autism rate? That would appear to follow from GR’s suggestion to “turn back the clock”. Do they really want to go back to DTP?

In the 1983 schedule, kids got the OPV–oral polio vaccine (live/attenuated virus). Today, kids get the IPV–inactivated polio vaccine. OPV is used in places where people are trying to eradicate polio, since the OPV viruses can be shed in the stool. This leads to non-immunized people being protected as well, but may have a small risk of infecting others with paralytical polio. We could spend more time discussing this, but let’s just say that there are really good reasons to move from OPV to IPV.

For those two reasons alone, the idea of “turning back the clock” appears to be the result of very simplistic logic by people who didn’t spend 5 minutes considering their own proposal.

In addition to changing some vaccines (e.g. DTP–>DTaP), the schedule added vaccines. What are the “new” vaccines that Generation Rescue seems to be objecting to? Let’s go through them one by one. Let’s ask the question Arthur Allen posed to Jim Carrey at the Green Our Vaccines rally: which one(s) would they leave out?

Hepatitis B. This is such a common target that Dr. Bernadine Healy singled it out recently.

From Wikipedia:

However, only 5% of newborns that acquire the infection from their mother at birth will clear the infection. This population has a 40% lifetime risk of death from cirrhosis or hepatocellular carcinoma. Of those infected between the age of one to six, 70% will clear the infection.

Wow. 40% lifetime risk of death if a newborn catches HepB. How about the fact that 30% of children in the age 1 to 6 age range will not clear the HepB infection? Yep, they get a life-long, chronic condition that will kill a large fraction of them. Oh, you did notice that kids age 1-6 do catch HepB, right? So much for the “They aren’t at risk, why vaccinate them” nonsense.

Hib–Haemophilus influenzae type b. Otherwise known as Bacterial Meningitis. What’s that like?

Hib meningitis is fatal in about 5% of patients and causes brain damage in 10-30% of survivors.

And, for those who claim vaccines don’t work, EpiWonk (in his real life) showed clearly that Hib does work.

PCV–pneumococcal conjugate vaccine Prevents infection with Streptococcus pneumoniae. It causes 200 deaths a year amongst children under 5, it causes brain damage, deafness, and pneumonia. But, according to GR, we can do without preventing that.

Rotavirus. The Rotavirus vaccine is a constant target for groups like Generation Rescue. This is due in no small part to the fact that Paul Offit, an outspoken critic of the vaccines-cause-autism hypothesis, is a co-inventor of the vaccine in current use.

Again, from Wikipedia:

In the United States, rotavirus causes about 2.7 million cases of severe gastroenteritis in children, almost 60,000 hospitalisations, and around 37 deaths each year

My guess is that this would be particularly nasty for a child with a mitochondrial dysfunction. Just something to consider.

Hepatitis A. I find it odd that the Hep-B vaccine gets so much attention and Hep-A is all but ignored by vaccine critics. Hepatitis A appears to be a much less serious disease, where death or chronic infection are uncommon.

Influenza. This is a favorite vaccine for Generation Rescue to complain about. One big reason: flu vaccines often still contain thimerosal. Groups like Generation Rescue tend to ignore the fact that flu shot uptake is low. Otherwise, they would have to admit that the thimerosal exposure from vaccines is way lower than a few years ago–with no change in the “epidemic”. Note that of the 36 vaccines that Generation Rescue claims the CDC “mandates”, seven of them are influenza. Other than New Jersey, does any state require flu shots? More to the point, at the time that Generation Rescue put out their print ad, did any state require Flu shots?

As an aside, from NJ state law:

A student shall be exempted from mandatory immunization if the student objects thereto in a written statement submitted to the institution, signed by the student, explaining how the administration of immunizing agents conflicts with the student’s religious beliefs.

Yeah, that’s for older kids, but you get the idea. “Mandated” vaccines are “mandated” unless you don’t want them.

Varicella. This is “chicken pox”. This is often scoffed at by vaccine rejectionists because, after all, we all know it is basically harmless. Right? Well, while generally mild, some people do suffer severe effects or die from Chickenpox.

Generation Rescue would like to “turn back the clock”. Take us back to the simpler times of 1983. A simple time when people died from diseases we can now prevent. But, this is all to prevent autism, so it’s a good idea, right? Well, we saw how “turning back the clock” on thimerosal exposure worked in reducing autism…it didn’t. That doesn’t prove that changing the vaccine schedule won’t have an effect. It does prove that Generation Rescue uses faulty logic and, worse, doesn’t own their mistakes.

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