The Anti-Anti-Vax - Part 3 - No Benefit?

An article was posted to Kootenay Debates that claimed little benefit from vaccines.  The article can be seen here: 

This is typical of the anti-vax movement, an attempt to discredit vaccines, the science behind the vaccines and public health in general.

My response went like this:  

Wow.  One rarely sees a web page that is so long and so filled with half-truths and misinformation and inaccuracies.  It would be almost the work of an honors thesis to refute all of their claims.  Doing some research takes time and most people will see the sensational headline of sites like these and go no further.

Seriously.  What are these assertions based on?  A serious belief that government and "Big Pharma" are out to kill us all or do us harm in some other way?  If that's the case, my questions would be "Why?" and "How"?  For what benefit to whom?  And how could a giant conspiracy like that actually be kept secret?  I do hope that believers in such conspiracies aren't suggesting that we go back to faith healing.

First, though, obviously your personal decision is yours to make.  I would just hope that it's based on real facts and not what's on this website.  There are a few medical reasons not to use a certain vaccine like MMR.  1) people with serious allergies to any of the components of the vaccine, 2) women who are pregnant or trying to conceive, 3) immunocompromised persons, 4) persons receiving cancer chemo, 5) people receiving blood products, and, 6) people who are seriously ill.

Otherwise, vaccines help and have been very valuable in combating certain diseases.  The history and the facts show it, clearly.

Also keep in mind that any individual choice doesn't just affect you.  It potentially affects every single person you come into contact with.  Just so you know.

As for the website's "expose".....  Let's deal first with measles and the MMR vaccine.

Before the first measles vaccine was licensed in 1963, almost everyone got measles by the time they were 20.  Since then, there HAS been a 99% reduction in CASES of measles.  This graph http://www.iayork.com/Images/2009/3-31-09/Measles.jpg shows the drop in cases as well as deaths, starting around 1963 with a further reduction in cases and deaths after the MMR vaccine was introduced in the 1980s.

Websites like the so-called "child safety" site, usually focus on deaths (mortality), not "cases" (incidence or morbidity). https://childhealthsafety.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/0707275measleslog.jpg actually supports the benefits of vaccines.  Just look at the reduction of deaths after 1963 and again after 1988.  And these are just "deaths", not "cases" of measles.

It is very true that deaths from measles were in decline before the vaccine was introduced.  There is no argument that improved sanitation, improved medical care of ill patients, even Vitamin A and better nutrition for young children, have all helped.  Just take a look at undeveloped countries who don't have those benefits.  Measles cases are still very high.

Speaking of undeveloped countries.  Some of these anti-vax websites cast aspersions on using vaccines in these countries.  I would agree that improving sanitation, medical care and nutrition in these countries would be a great help.  However, I see, on various social media sites, lots of bitching about how much money we're spending on foreign aid.   So the real story here is that many wealthy westerners aren't prepared to support foreign aid to improve basic conditions in poor countries and also don't think we should be providing vaccines either.  I have no polite words to describe how I feel about those kinds of attitudes.

By the way, measles is NOT a minor childhood disease.  It's not as bad as smallpox, but it's serious and often leads to deadly complications.

Those complications are: 1) pneumonia - about 5% develop this.  Treatable in western countries but a death sentence in undeveloped countries, 2) encephalitis, a brain infection, can develop, resulting in permanent brain damage, 3) SSPE - rare but fatal, 4) other conditions such as croup, conjunctivitis and diarrhea (very serious in small children).  I would NOT want my children, or my grandchildren, to be at greater risk of any of these.

Mercury.  Some chemistry wold be helpful here.  The mercury that "was" used in some vaccines wasn't elemental mercury or methyl mercury.  It was ethyl mercury, called thimerosal.  There is a big difference.  Look it up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal  In any case, the MMR vaccine in Canada has NEVER contained thimerosal.  Most other vaccines have not contained thimerosal since 2000 or earlier, yet autism rates continue to rise.  How could that be?

Risks and Effectiveness: Yes, vaccines have risks.  Any medical procedure has risks.  Nothing is 100% safe.  Nothing is 100% effective.  Just compare the risks from vaccines (negligible) to the risks from contracting a disease like measles, polio, smallpox.  Obviously we've forgotten what those diseases were like.

Autism.  Still, years after a fraudulent paper was published, we still hear about this supposed link.  The evidence doesn't support it.  And yet this single report, unproved, unsupported, proven to be fraudulent, has been responsible for large increases in measles cases and more deaths because of it.  It was blamed on thimerosal, yet that additive hasn't been in vaccines for years, and, in some vaccines, ever.

A recent article in the G&M perhaps puts it best, although with some sarcasm. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/the-return-of-measles-where-did-we-go-wrong/article598566/

There is a more serious series of articles about measles and the vaccines here: http://www.iayork.com/MysteryRays/index.php?s=measles