Journal: study linking vaccine to autism was fraud

One of the problems is that people who are parents now were never exposed to the horrible things these diseases can do, so they don't fully understand the danger they're putting their kids in (*And other kids too*).

alas.

I liked it, it was funny.

^^ Hell, what about the danger they're putting me in? Because my immune system is shot, I can't receive any form of vaccination that contains a live but weakened version of a virus. If a disease has no alternative vaccine, my best hope for not getting it is if most other people are vaccinated against it, so it can't spread to me. (Kids who're too young to be vaccinated have the same problem, as do elderly people who're no longer healthy enough for it.)

edited 7th Apr '12 11:23:21 PM by feotakahari

That's kinda what I meant with the (*Other kids too*), should have been more general.

edited 7th Apr '12 11:30:33 PM by inane242

The response I would anticipate is "well, I don't know anyone who has mumps and you don't either." And I don't. Because we all got vaccinated.

Anyway, I get the feeling that for a lot of these people, the supposed link with autism is a post facto justification for a dislike of vaccines. In fact, I seem to recall there being some evidence that Wakefield deliberately lied, manufacturing a link he knew didn't exist in order to turn people against vaccination. If that's true he "found" the link because he was an anti-vaxer, not the other way around.

Well, IIRC, after this story 'broke' in Britain, vaccination of the child population went down to around 75%.

That's dangerously low. Anything lower than about 85% and herd immunity stops.

Besides, how can autism - a psychological condition that's there from birth - be caused by... a vaccine administered years after said birth?

And the study itself had such a tiny sample size too.

And the effects are still occurring today. Because of this, total vaccine takeup is about 80%, still dangerously low for herd immunity.

I cant believe anyone fell for this.

I've been vaccinated to hell and back, who knows what negative effects that might hold.

On the bright side, I don't have to worry about anthrax in my fanmail! Thank you Department of Defense!

I think it has something to do with people having this crazed idea in their head that modern medicine is ultimately evil and trying to get you sick to sell medicine to you.

^ My impression was that modern medicine is trying to sell medicine to you. It just doesn't require you to be sick for it. (Of course, the same goes for "alternative" medicine, so long as it needs to turn a profit. Socialized medicine would be the only way out of it.)

edited 8th Apr '12 7:09:42 PM by feotakahari

We have vaccines for anthrax?

Of course.

Shit, was I ever out of the loop.

And here I was thinking Anthrax was a bacteria.

Actually it is. A Bacillus anthracis.

Am I correct in thinking that vaccines are only for viruses? or no... I remember them talking about an anthrax vaccine on NCIS...

All military members get them now I believe. I've been through the whole round of vaccines like most military members. Anthrax made me sick as fuck for a week, has that affect on about half the people who get it.

I got better.

Which is why it isn't part of the vaccine regimen for the average Joe.

The best way to get anthrax is by vaccine, no matter how fucking miserable you feel for a week.

Of course, you know this, but anyway.

But now you will survive when I inevitably try to assasinate you with anthrax. You know,for spoiling me about the incredibly important, totally plot relevant, not a meme at all, marauder that is your picture.

Not quite how it works. What it does is, essentially, infect you with a disease/bacteria/hostile force of some kind that uses an identical transmission/attack vector as a known dangerous vaccine target. This results in your body going into combat mode and trying to fight off the vaccine target. However, since the vaccine uses what amounts to a neutered version of the vaccine target, the attacking force doesn't make any real headway into your system, causing little to no permanent damage because it's not getting infection rates high enough to overwhelm your bodies abilities to compensate. As a result, your body thinks it's sick, and develops tactics to fight the sickness, so you still feel sick in some cases, but you're only experiencing the symptoms (most of which are "general purpose" illness responses), rather than having your organs eaten or anything. The reason this is done is so that when your body develops those tactics, it files them away in case something similar ever shows up again and then it breaks them out.

Vaccines are for anything that has a protein 'tag', IIRC.

...

Which basically means you can have a vaccine for any biological organism.

In fact, one could theoretically have a vaccine against oneself, but because the 'vaccine' would have the same protein identifiers as your normal body cells, it would be fruitless.

Vaccinations: war games for you body.

I was absolutely floored the other day when I heard my nurse friend say she doesn't like vaccinations. The context was that she was worried about her puppy who was pretty much a ball of lethargy after getting a round of shots, but that doesn't make it any better! Damnit, woman, you've seen a lot of the stuff we vaccinate against! No way you can be against it.

There's a case of a guy who lost his proprioception (the sense where you can feel the location of you limbs in real time and space. The sense that you use when you can to touch your fingers without seeing them) because those neurons got destroyed by his immunity system, which recognized the body tissue as foreign because it had fought off something that has similar protein identifiers with ones those neurons have.

edited 9th Apr '12 6:44:10 AM by IraTheSquire

My body already thinks my own tissue cells are invaders.

Ah, yeah. There's a virus that has similar protein identifiers to neurons in your brain, so you can literally self-induce a stroke.

It's all to do with the antigen-antibody complex and stuff like that.