Pertussis Peril

[porphyry]

A few years ago, despite no science to back it, but lots of Hollywood B-list celebrities on the talk show circuit to tout this insanity, a vaccination denial movement caught on this country. Apparently, some doctor, Andrew Wakefield, who thankfully is no longer allowed to practice medicine, published an article in The Lancet that there might be a connection between infant vaccinations and autism. Wakefield didn't tell the journal that he'd been paid nearly a million dollars by some lawyers anxious to sue the pharmaceutical companies who manufacture the vaccines, but I guess Wakefield didn't think that was important, not after performing unethical invasive exams on poor autistic children, what's a little conflict of interest after bribing the guests at your son's birthday party with five pounds each to give a blood test? I guess he also didn't consider the health of all the infants whose idiotic parents would buy into this lunacy, or if he did consider it, he just didn't care. After all, he got a million dollars.

So, measles came back first. It had virtually been wiped out in this country. Kids died. Now pertussis, also known as whooping cough, is also back. Five babies have died in California--all unvaccinated against pertussis, of course--and the state has declared an epidemic in some parts.

I certainly hope that parents who think the likes of Jenny McCarthy ("Fuck science" is her mantra) and her ex-boyfriend, Jim Carrey, have anybody's best interest in their hearts except their own, are satisfied with their "well-informed" decision. As for McCarthy and Carrey and all those of the same group, I hope they look forward to their red-hot iron sarcophagi in the level of hell reserved for liars.

Yes, it's hard to watch your child get a shot. They cry. But five minutes later, they're asleep and the benefit from a moment's discomfort could save a baby's life. I just hope more children in California don't die, but I won't be surprised to see more fatalities.

As a final note, I wonder about the psychology of parents, laymen in medicine in science, who despite having no ability to understand science and medicine, instinctively react with their preconceived unfavorable attitude towards anyone they perceive as an authority. In my opinion, that's the real problem. How else could they so easily reject something proven and sound and tested--I mean, we haven't had massive outbreaks of so many diseases (polio, smallpox) due to these vaccines in decades--and adopt the "Fuck science" approach instead? I wish they'd find some other authority to go up against, one in which their children's lives aren't at stake.

Comments

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Can you unpack the grammar of that?

Does it by any chance mean that parents who refuse vaccination have just experienced OBs (do you mean pediatricians?) abusing their positions of authority? If so, how would it be an abuse of authority to recommend scientifically sound medical treatment?

[mercyorbemoaned.livejournal.com]

can't, must wash spit up out of hair
no more internet for me

[yechezkiel.livejournal.com]

mercyorbemoaned is cleaning puke out of her hair, so I've been asked to step in and be her translator.

OBs are causing harm, whether or not they intend to, because the current model of obstetrics does the harming. Parents have experienced this, and it breeds distrust in, let's say, the whole allopathic medical profession. You're thinking that these people are distinguishing between "scientifically sound" methods of treatment or not, when that isn't even on the radar. The problem isn't authority, here, it's that the authority has delegitimized itself in their eyes.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Allopathic medicine? Why didn't you say so? Goodbye!

[yechezkiel.livejournal.com]

Huh?

[yechezkiel.livejournal.com]

OK, so reading the rest of the thread, I think I've got a grasp on your strange freak-out.

I used the term "allopathic medicine" because that is what these people use, and (furthermore) the term is becoming increasingly common among practitioners of science-based medicine (if that's the term you prefer), anyhow. Merely using a word, especially when it has clear literary value in context, is not reason to shut someone out.

I've lived and worked my entire life around people in the medical profession: doctors, nurses, clinical nutritionists and pharmacists. Even a couple of researchers. I'm kept alive by the pharmalogical products of modern medicine. I love it. I was vaccinated. My kids will be vaccinated. (But, most obstetrics practice is still disturbed.) In practically every way, I am not prone to be empathetic to the anti-vaccine activists, and I do think the ones in media positions are causing active harm.

What mercyorbemoaned is trying to explain is that your model of why persons become anti-vaccine or whatever has little relation to the actual thought processes and worlds of the people who go through this stuff. There certainly are promoters who come at it through some misplaced desire to be iconoclastic or have minority knowledge or whatever (I would include, in here, many of the celebrity proponents), but for the average middle class lady it's because of trying to square some awful, alienating experiences with medicine to a world that places a whole lot of implicit trust and power in the hands of medical professionals (and the "God complex" is not wholly an unearned stereotype, as I'm sure you've realized if you've socialized long with many doctors). There are––and this is not controversial––areas of the standard model, especially regarding patient relations and making childbirth seem like a disease, where there are issues. For someone who thinks like, well, most people do, they don't articulate this as "oh, there's some problem with certain inherent features having gone monstrously wrong, here, likely due to the breakdown of culture and familial support", but rather as "there is something evil here, and that evil thing is the whole medical system". This is because they are emotively or intellectually incapable of the former, which is more an object of pity (the medical profession has failed them), than one of contempt.