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Anti-vax fever spreading in Massachusetts
By adamg on Fri, 11/14/2014 - 8:28am
WBZ reports state figures show growth in the number of children going to school without their full course of vaccinations. A MetroWest mother who refuses to let her kids by vaccinated says she is tired of people yelling "herd immunity" at her, when the problem is not her precious, unprotected tots but people whose own vaccinations have worn off or never worked.
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Comments
Haha
"Boston University professor of public health Kim Shea says that like-minded people often live near one another"
Thats why i stay away from The Peoples Republic of Cambridge!
Thanks!
Ha-ha! I didn't realize that Cambridge was on Cape Cod or in Franklin county or Hampshire county. Whatever you do, don't actually read the article. The People's Republic of Cambridge thanks you for staying away.
It says a metrowest mother,
It says a metrowest mother, not Cambridge. This type of idiocy tends to occur in areas of wealthy anti science people (conservatives), not wealthy people who believe in science (democrats). If you want to know where the anti vaccination people will be look to areas that voted for Baker.
Not really a conservative-only thing
Please note the story also mentions Franklin and Hampshire counties, which went solidly for Coakley.
Its becoming a thing in Hollywood too
Stupidity knows no political boundaries.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/17/meet-hollywood-s-anti-v...
Not all of Oregon is Portland.
Lot's of a) suprareligious clusters and b) wacky edge of libertarianism in Oregon.
Oregon, not a conservative
Oregon, not a conservative state at all, "leads" the nation in opting out of childhood immunizations (6% opt out).... also they do not fluoridate drinking water as they are concerned about a gov't plot to do something or other to them.
Large colonies of religious groups
Oregon may be progressive, but the availability of farmland means that it has become home to such technophobic sects as Old Believers, some types of Mennonites, among others.
That means a lot of religious exemptions, because it is difficult to push vaccines on people who also reject cars, telephones, electricity, etc.
Most of Oregon fluoridates water.
If that were a primary cause
Pennsylvania and Ohio would easily be above Oregon...and they're not.
Amish don't uniformly eschew medicine
They actually participate in health studies and many do vaccinate their kids.
Also, PA and OH have huge urban and suburban populations. Oregon has Portland.
It's just flavors of anti-science
The anti-GMO crowd (largely democrat) is just as anti-science, just on a different topic.
I'm not saying the axti-vax people are right (they're horrendously, dangerously wrong), but anti-science comes in all political flavors to match whatever bias/preconceived notion works for them.
Not entirely
Those of us with allergies to proteins built according to genes that were spliced into gmo foods might pass on the frankenberry stuff, but would love to see some labeling of what is and isn't GMO.
The pro-GMO crowd loves to ignore that bit of immunology, though.
The whole "sue neighboring farmers because our pollen drifted" thing has to stop, too. That isn't science, but ethics, policy, and law.
Except
Nobody is allergic to those proteins.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/08/can_gmo...
So, what "bit of immunology" are you barking on about? The only study even approaching a valid claim of allergenic transgenics was proven false when attempted to be reproduced. It's extremely analogous to the anti-vaccination arguments of being a cause of autism.
Documented allergy
There are epidemiological papers going back to the 1990s when Bt was first being sprayed (and not spliced) documenting allergic reactions in some individuals and in people applying treatments.
I worked with the stuff in the late 90s. I've done the research. I also know that I'm allergic to it from having worked with it and having been tested for it.
Sorry if that doesn't narrowly fit in your Slate article about an Elle article. Slate and Elle being scientific journals, after all.
No there isn't
There is no credible study of allergies from Cry proteins from spraying or ingestion. Put up or shut up. You have asserted that these papers exist. Prove it.
Most old studies showed that you could generate antibodies to Bt proteins. Our immune system is awesome. It will form antibodies to recognize pretty much anything. What isn't demonstrated is that anyone's immune system overreacts to the presence of Bt proteins.
Witness this 1999 article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1566654/
People tested positive on skin prick tests...they weren't allergic.
What about this 1999 article?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1566654/
Yes, same article - the problem is single articles and cherry picking and selective acceptance of the conclusions.
I wish there was a JustFuckingSearchPubMed utility sometimes, so that you could show ALL the literature with a single link ...
In the meantime, this is getting off of the real topic: you have yet to explain what the fuck is the problem with just labeling food with ALL the ingredients so that those of us with serious allergies will know?
Seems to be a pretty rational solution to me.
I hate to agree with Kaz, but
I hate to agree with Kaz, but you clearly didn't read or understand the abstract, let alone the paper. The important finding is that nobody got sick or developed allergies, and they were farm workers practically bathing in the stuff. The other assays are the authors reaching to show something (anything!) different between pre and post exposure, and they're shoddily presented. For example, it's not a surprise that you can detect Bt on exposed workers by PCR, considering you'd only need one molecule of Bt DNA for a positive result. But they don't give their PCR conditions; the paper they cite for conditions doesn't have them, and isn't about Bt. That paper in turn references an early edition of Molecular Cloning, which is basically meaningless without the page number. The IgE results are similarly useless, since humoral IgE has a wide range of non-specific interactions.
The scientific consensus is that from the perspective of allergies, Bt is just as safe as the crops its combined with. You don't want to be a science-denier, do you?
See also:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19818822
and
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4118972/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24520311
(yes they're PLoS One, but where else can you publish negative results?)
Time to shut up, since you can't put up.
Swirly,
Swirly,
The problem with GMO labeling for me is I can't envision labeling that would actually help you or anyone else draw scientifically reasonable conclusions about what to eat or not eat. "This food contains a GMO ingredient" is useless for anything other that emotionally stigmatizing GMO technology.
And it's a shame, because *amazing* non-profit, "open-source" projects like Golden Rice (http://www.goldenrice.org/) suffer as a result.
Labeling on amounts of pesticide and herbicide residue would be e.g. *far* more useful.
When I hear "Metrowest Mother"
I think of some mom out in Wellesley. I don't care if they voted for Baker or not, I'd hardly classify that area as conservative.
I don't know if I'd classify anywhere in Massachusetts as truly conservative. Not after living in the deep South.
FWIW: Hampshire county is probably the most liberal and progressive county in the state. It's where Amherst and Northampton are and those towns are almost Berkeley, CA level liberal.
Liberal in some ways, not in others
Amherst and Northampton are extremely white towns in which many of said white people think that people of color exist for their curiosity.
Respectfully disagree
When I hear Metrowest mother, I'm thinking of a former "pink hat" who married a guy who works in finance or commercial real estate that she met at a bar near Fenway. She lives in a subdivision in a town like Hopkinton or Holliston. Lately, she is obsessed with Barre class, but before that was into Pilates. Her husband commutes and works at 60 hours a week and has a lot of other "obligations" on his time, but he makes good money, so she doesn't have to work. She went to college but majored in something like marketing, or she has a two-year degree in dental hygiene. She spends a great deal of time with her girlfriends. One of her girlfriends has a kid on "the spectrum." Over time, she has begun to adopt a blend of her husband's and her girlfriends' world views, such as "Obama is a socialist," or "vaccines cause autism," and all that positive thinking nonsense. As opposed to Wellesley mom, who is probably college educated, with a degree in art history, maybe has a bit of a trust fund, also doesn't work but does yoga and charity work, adopted a child from a Third World country, maybe also knows a friend with a kid on "the spectrum" but is also old friends with a professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education who is an expert on the subject.
Couldn't be farther from the truth
Just sayin'
Try getting out that cocoon you live in, it's a big world out there
From a Hopkinton resident
Not quite
Anti-vaccine people on average tend to be white, college-educated, and with above-average incomes - and the loudest among them often tend to be more liberal than not.
Anti-vaccine right wingers do
Anti-vaccine right wingers do exist, but they have the good grace to live in seriously isolated locales in the Pacific and Mountain time zones.
Cheers man, but get outta here
Thanks for your insightful hit-and-run dig at Cambridge, which did an admirable job handling the H1N1 case in 2010. Massachusetts requires certain vaccines in order to attend public school - the population cohorts who recklessly neglect to vaccinate their children also generally have their kids privately educated.
Let's give Jenny McCarthy a new TV show
She owns a lot of the blame for this.
Does anybody remember the anti-vaccine mega church in Dallas? I think it was last year. Eagle Mountain church. 21 of their members contracted measles because they believed vaccination was the cause of autism in children and Jesus would protect them.
I think they won a few Darwin awards for their effort.
Can she be sued for malpractice?
That would be interesting to see - when one of her followers' kids actually "acquires natural immunity" and suffers predictable complications as a result.
Or does being deaf and blind and having regular severe seizures just make a kid more genuinely "indigo"?
How dare you impugn the name of Jenny like that!
She cured her son's autism! It's just tragic that she hasn't been able to cure anyone else's autism. :(
My nephew sure could benefit from her wisdom. It would save him a lot of trouble in his life if he could be cured of his autism.
LOL
These folks take medical advice from a person who rose to fame because she got nekkid as a job. And they wonder why we poke fun at them.
This news must be terrifying
This news must be terrifying for any parent of a child that can't be immunized for health reasons. These children rely on herd immunity to not catch these diseases, so when parents deliberately compromise that immunity it's just sad.
Terrifying, yes, but is it unlawful, too?
because I was under the impression that you could not send a child to a public school in the Commonwealth unless that child had been given the required immunizations unless there was a documented medical reason why they could not be given said immunizations.
Have I imagined that?
Yes and no
Yes, you must have a documented reason. No, it doesn't have to be medical, it can be religious. They say "yep, it's religious" and then the system isn't allowed to pressure them on "what religion would be so stupid" or anything...they just have to let the disease vector in and cross our fingers.
Here's the policy:
http://www.mass.gov/eohhs/docs/dph/cdc/immunization/guidelines-vaccine-e...
This policy is Mary Baker Eddy's fault
Unfortunately, Massachusetts was the birthplace of the only significant Christian sect to reject modern medicine. Her followers had enough political influence to get this misguided policy enacted.
Not quite Ron
Every state except Mississippi and West Virginia allows religious exemptions.
And caselaw on the federal level has established that one not need to hold said beliefs as part of an organized religion, nor can one be required to state which religion or bring in supporting evidence from clergy. Vegetarianism (as a standalone belief system) is consistently upheld as protected a religious belief. Basically, all one has to do is write a letter stating "I will not be vaccinating my child due to my religious beliefs."
http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/school-immunization-exemption-state-...
Obstinacy or Ignorance or Fear
Good of New Age parents to show us that fundamentalists don't have a monopoly on ignorance. In practical terms there isn't much difference between withholding a measles vaccine from your kid and asking them to stand down range while shooting clays.
I recommend this piece by Roald Dahl.
Exempted?
Why are these parents able to put unvaccinated children in public schools? The only exemption should be for the small number of children who don't have healthy enough immune systems to handle a vaccination. Otherwise, we should not be subjecting the greater public to potential harm from their stupidly selfish choices.
MA GL Chapter 76
I bet these people are going with the "sincere religious beliefs" thing, since finding a doctor who'd agree to sign that certificate might be somewhat difficult.
"sincere religious beliefs"
Oh man, this law needs to be changed. If your "sincere religious belief" endangers the greater public, then you need to stay home.
I don't know about that, do
I don't know about that, do you really want the only education these kids growing up with these types of parents receive to be from those very parents?
Make the kids pass MCAS
That would be one way to ensure that they are getting an actual education.
What's the alternative?
If the alternative is a resurgence of deadly and crippling diseases that were nearly wiped out, then yes, I want to make those parents make that choice. I am deaf in one ear because I had one of those diseases as a child -- a disease that subsequently almost completely disappeared. Now it's making a comeback, all thanks to these boneheads. We should stop pandering to them and their "religion."
Totally agree
Our society shouldn't allow anyone to harm others based on their religious beliefs. Massachusetts has ruled that parents can forego things for their children like yearly physicals or getting a sprained ankle looked at because of religious belief, because this doesn't meet the legal definition of child abuse or neglect, but parents cannot refuse to treat a serious illness or injury for any reason. So, why are parents allowed to skip vaccinations, thus seriously risking harm to their own child and other children?
What would happen if the rest of us asserted our constitutional rights and demanded that the state provide a public school in which our children were safe from communicable diseases?
And yes, it makes no logical or legal sense to be allowed to use religious beliefs to break existing laws. My right to swing my fist ends at your nose, no? My religion says that I should stone adulterers and put infidels to death. Would this be legally defensible if I did this? No? Then why do other people get to harm their own children and my children because of their belief system?
Some schools are great!
There are a fair number of schools with no students with exemptions to vaccines at all, medical or otherwise, and many have only a few children that fall into this category.
At some point in the future the state is going to release information about immunization rates by school, and that may help drive discussion about immunization.
Religion
I didn't know willful ignorance and wanton stupidity was a religion.
Its not a type of religion,
Its not a type of religion, thats the definition of religion.
Happy Friday again, reddit!
Happy Friday again, reddit!
DAE le enlightened atheist?
DAE le enlightened atheist?
tips fedora
Are you sure?
I thought that was the definition of religion.
Quarantine Them All
Seriously - they are far more of a menace to public health than an asymptomatic nurse living in an extremely underpopulated area of Maine.
There should only be medical exemptions to vaccines. Period. These kids should not be allowed in school, as that's where epidemics very often start. If you don't want to vaccinate, be prepared to home school.
How Do Vaccinces Cause Autism
http://howdovaccinescauseautism.com/
LOL!
That was hilarious. Glad I Clicked!
Ha!
Once I was in a CVS with my son who has autism, about 8 years ago. Standing in line, the guy in front of us was telling me that vaccines caused my son's autism. He knew this because his sister told him so. She told him that it was the mercury in the vaccines. I asked if he meant thimerosal, vaccines with thimerosal? He said yes. I said that's funny, because my son has never had a vaccine with thimerosal in it. Science says thimerosal does not cause autism, I said, but even if there was a chance it does my son has never had a vaccine with thimerosal in it and he has autism. I must be wrong, he said, because his sister told him so.
It makes me laugh to think about this. People were dumb 8 years ago, and - despite even more proof that vaccines don't cause autism and the dangers of not vaccinating children out of fear - apparently people are still dumb about this now.
Sadly, most people don't want to go beyond
simple answers - this is the reason the media hardly does any in-depth investigative reporting anymore.
And others are of the "I read it on the Internet, therefore it must be true" school of thinking.
Had they heard of Temple Grandin?
She was born before most vaccines were available.
So was my grandmother.
My Aspy brother was nearly school age when MMR vaccines came out, and had already had measles and mumps.
Do these people realize that autism was with us long before the modern era? That most people on the spectrum were just "very odd" (like my grandmother) or classified as "retarded"?
In other news (a parable)
A bus made its way onto Storrow Drive because the ill advised driver apparently followed bad information and ignored good information. Had the driver not seen the low bridge up ahead, the bus would have hit it and caused damage to the bus, maybe the bridge and possibly injured and/or killed dozens of people on and around the bus.
That's not true
I have a friend who's a traffic engineer and he showed me a document which says that there is no height limit on the river roads. Any of the signs which say there's a restriction are wrong. The state is simply trying to brainwash people into thinking they can't drive trucks and buses on the road.
I'm sorry, what?
The good rabbi Nachman of Breslov, blessed be his memory, wrote "כל העולם כולו גשר צר מאוד, והעיקר - לא לפחד כלל" -- basically, that all the world is a [small] bridge, but we should not be afraid. As a devout follower of him and his works, I assert that it is my RIGHT to go forth an conquer any bridge, overpass, tunnel, or lane marking that mere mortals try and put in my way. I will not stand for any of you bridgeists or time-space-continuum-extremists who demand that your right to psychics trumps my right to worship and practice how I please. The constitution preserves my right to exercise my religion, and I find your "cars only" signs offensive and oppressive.
History of anti-vax
Just to be clear "what kind of people" would believe this stuff, a lot of these people are not anti-science. In fact it was science that led them to the conclusion that vaccines cause autism thus no vaccines for their kids. Unfortunately, it was very early, young research and was disproven when reviewed by the community (thus, science works).
Science isn't the result of a single study. However, when this one study was released, it became very popular. It "made sense" since it provided a correlation to a coincidence that people were noticing. Their kids were getting vaccines...then getting autism. The logical math worked in their heads when someone provided the study to show the link between the two. However, the research was badly done and not able to be reproduced independently. It was too late. The news was out and people latched onto it, considering the researcher to be a hero against the pharma corporations peddling vaccines (if anything these people weren't anti-science, they were pro-science and anti-corporate).
But they were wrong and it was later proven, by the scientific process of validation of past results, that the study's conclusions were wrong. The study was withdrawn by every author but the "hero" who was soaking in the fame (and money from speaking engagements). However, that news doesn't get the same popularity. There's no parades for the researchers who showed the study to be false. They're not heroes of science that people can rally behind like the guy that put out such a bold conclusion as "vaccines cause autism". So, it's left this lingering group of anti-vax people who followed bad science thinking it was good science and have given up on good science mid-stream creating their own dead end to sit in. Good science hasn't shown up to give them a new link to why their kid has autism. The news hasn't made vaccines "cool" anywhere near the same way it made them scary (which is a problem we have psychologically as humans anyway where fear is a much more powerful emotion than security).
That's how we ended up with anti-vaxxers. People following what they thought was science into the rabbit hole, but science was actually trying to keep them out of it in the first place.
Actually it's worse than that
Actually it's worse than that. An anti-vax doctor authored a phony study in the lead up to the marketing of his on "safe" versions of vaccines. Thankfully he was discredited and went to prison for fraud.
CA banned the use of the commonly blamed by anti-vaxers for autism preservatives in vaccines years ago. Since then their rate of autism has been the same as the rest of the country.
The Amish are also vaccinated and have a LOWER rate of autism. Could be genetics or that children elsewhere are being exposed or not exposed to something environmental resulting in the higher rates of autism.
US and all vaccines, actually
The anti-vax movement was screaming for thimerosal to be removed from vaccines, and it was, except in multi-dose flu vials. Nothing changed with autism rates. So the anti-vax movement changed their tune and said it was based on the number of vaccines being given, and when that didn't stand up to scrutiny, they looked at other ingredients, and have largely been disproven there as well.
To still be anti-vaccine requires a great disbelief in the scientific method.
And here I thought....
I thought anti-vax had something to do with an old DEC computer....
Nope
That is anti/vax.
$ WRITE SYS$OUTPUT "Heh"
$ WRITE SYS$OUTPUT "Heh"
My first thought too! VAX/VMS Sucks!
I still have some LCG (Large Computer Group) anti-VAX memorabilia (somewhere) on that stupid, overgrown, little-endian, minicomputer. Real men used PDP-10s, octal, and wrote code in MACRO (assembler) or Lisp, not Bliss (which I found an easier transition from assembly than C, while Fortran people trouble with forgetting periods before symbol names).
The main reason VAX sucks is because DEC management decided to retire the might PDP-10 in favor of the VAX architecture. The Internet was started with PDP-10 computers for good reason. It was a great machine.
$$VAX_AND_VMS$SUCK
Goddamn ignorant, selfish
Goddamn ignorant, selfish shit-for brains like this make me glad I moved to N.C.
Huh? Then why are you
Huh? Then why are you commenting on a Boston local website? How odd.
Odd?
I was born in Boston, lived in Eastern Mass and Greater Boston for close to fifty years and I like to keep up with the news from up there. Hope this helps clear up your confusion.
Besides...
... he likes to make fun of all of us who are still up here in Massachusetts. ;~} (or should it be ;~{ )
Stupidity knows no boundaries
N.C is not immune to this idiocy.
http://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2014/04/12/buncombe-parent...
No it certainly isn't immune
No it certainly isn't immune (ha), but the anti-vax movement is less popular down here, and much less popular than in some states.
Nice match with blue states!
Blue states: Oregon, Michigan, Vermont, Colorado, Washington, Illinois, Wisconsin, Maine.
Red states: Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Arizona.
AKA Nuts everywhere
There is no correlation between congressional voting preferences and anti-vax nutjobs. WHO KNEW?
What is this, Pakistan?
What is this, Pakistan?
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/10/26/mistrust-and-polio-pakista...