Measles Image via Wikipedia
One of the stranger arguments made by vaccine critics over the years references an episode of the television sitcom The Brady Bunch where the kids came down with measles. The argument goes that because measles was treated as just a minor inconvenience for the family and not a life and death struggle on the show, it demonstrates medical authorities warning the public of serious risks from measles are nothing but alarmists using fear-mongering to increase vaccine sales for Big Pharma.
This Brady Bunch argument seems to originate with a tweet from leading vaccine critic Jay Gordon and has been repeated everywhere from random internet forums to Age of Autism, sometimes citing variations including different television shows and different vaccine-preventable diseases.
The most recent version, posted on Age of Autism, refers to a clip from a children’s cartoon called Arthur in which parents reassure their child that chickenpox is not serious. Nobody seemed to panic on the TV show and health authorities weren’t quick to condemn the show’s irresponsibility, so that must mean these diseases aren’t serious…right?
Wrong. I could harp all day on how utterly absurd it is to suggest television writers are better judges of the seriousness of childhood diseases than actual medical experts, but that would just be a rerun of the old “Playboy bunny is not a medical expert” rant. And I could cite past medical statistics showing how serious a problem measles was in first-world nations before widespread vaccination, but I know vaccine critics will just attribute it all to cleaner water and better diet, etc. And if I point out that measles, for instance, is one of the leading causes of child death, they’ll just deny it.
No, there’s a much better way to dispel this myth that these diseases don’t carry any serious consequences, one that utilizes the same emotional tactics vaccine critics thrive on. Pointing to real anecdotal cases of families who have experienced first-hand the destructive power of diseases like measles and chickenpox.
For instance, watch Rachel’s story as well as this family’s story concerning chickenpox and numerous other personal accounts of the serious — sometimes even deadly — consequences of contracting vaccine-preventable diseases. There’s also a direct refutation of Jay Gordon’s response comments here.
What about the families like mine who has not one but TWO vaccine injured children. Because the first was just a coincidence! No one has died from the measles in this country this year, no encephalitis. But the vaccine has caused AT LEAST 5 deaths-700 adverse reactions. People like you are trying to scare ignorant parents like I USED to be-when you do the research and see how NONE of your arguments have real science, real test-you just pull numbers out of your ass about how many could have been saved-it’s ridiculous. Us anti-vaxxers have the FACTS. People like you are why there is an increase in all sorts of childhood diseases.
Right Lydia. In fact no-one has died from measles in this country since 2003. But there are 51 reported cases of death in VAERS from measles vaccines. Of course we will hear the argument about correlation doesn’t equal causation, but the vaccine damage denialists ignore any correlation and dismiss it without justification. Of course VAERS is estimated to have only 10% of actual adverse reactions reported, so the number of deaths could be extrapolated to 510. So many children die after vaccinations and it is just written off as SIDS.
Wow! Two vaccine injured kids! You really hit the vaccine injured jackpot! It’s not like your kids share anything else in common like their genes or their environment. The only explanation for whatever the nature of their “injury” is is the vaccines. And every doctor on planet Earth just wants to scare people for no good reason! Of course! Why didn’t I see it! It all makes sense when you bludgeon your skull repeatedly with a blunt object until pieces of your brain fall out!
Then again, outside of heavily vaccinated countries, measles is still one of the top killers of infants in the world. I’m sure it’s that force field surrounding the vaccinated countries that protects us from measles deaths and nothing at all to do with the vaccines.
Oh, and you’re so right about how correlation definitely always equals causation in every possible instance. Clearly the decline of piracy is the direct cause of the rise of global warming, despite what all those denialists say. I don’t know what all those scientists do every single day but it’s certainly not science like you. Real science is reading what random yahoos on the internet think and credulously accepting it as fact because it perfectly fits into one’s own paranoid view of the world.
If you are going to use VAERS as a proof that the vaccines caused damage and death, please provide the evaluation reports showing that the vaccine did indeed cause injury and death. Here is an example.
VAERS is a self-selected reporting system of raw data. This is explained here, please read if fully: http://vaers.hhs.gov/data/index . Take note of these words:
Ms. Bush and Mr. de Koekkoek, do you fully understand what that means? Did you read the disclaimer on that page? Do have any actual evidence outside of the VAERS reports that the MMR vaccine caused deaths in the past ten years?
By the way, the CDC Pink Book Appendix G does list that there were at least three deaths from measles from 2001 to 2007. Plus there are numbers in the “deaths” column for both mumps and rubella, and some in the Congenital Rubella Syndrome column. Because death is not the only tragic outcome.
There is a slight problem with the argument that VAERS is an ineffective system, or inaccurate system for collecting data on vaccine injuries. The problem is: Why isn’t there a good system? If vaccine safety is important, then accurate information about vaccine injuries is very important.
It would also be a great way to shut up vaccine critics. “See, we have a system that catches every single problem after vaccination and matches up lot numbers and everything. And there really aren’t a lot of problems after vaccination.”
But you cannot say that, because, as vaccine defenders proudly point out, VAERS sucks. But this fact doesn’t mean what you think it means.
But there is a good system; it’s called the scientific method. No self-reporting system on its own will ever match the quality of research as a well-designed study. That’s not why the VAERS report exists. As Chris explained above, VAERS only confirms that the reported event occurred some time after vaccine receipt. This might be useful in suggesting a direction for future research but is not itself a substitute for a study. So your entire premise that VAERS constitutes as an “accurate information about vaccine injuries” is fundamentally incorrect. I could stub my toe after vaccination and report it to VAERS; that doesn’t mean the vaccine caused me to stub my toe, nor does it even make the implication.
VAERS tries to be impartial by taking all reports, and since the people who are doing the reporting are not perfect: it is not perfect. The people who do the reporting even miss putting in certain data or put in erroneous data, but the system takes them anyway. Even the report from outside the USA (where it is only supposed to work) that a vaccine turned a child into Wonder Woman.
Be reminded in that it did work when the first rotavirus vaccine, RotaShield, caused issues in one out of 100000 to 1000000 cases.
To understand better, take a basic course in statistics. Learn what is a good way and a bad way to collect data, plus how there are limits no matter how many sources of data you gather. You will always have “error-bars.” That should help you sort out the limitations of a self-selected survey.
The big problem with VAERS is that people want to see it as an end result, rather than a first step. It’s part of the ongoing surveillance of vaccines, and is a decent tool to use to catch indications of problems that might need further investigation. But the initial reports don’t really tell us anything by themselves. Too often they can’t even be verified. You really don’t want medical or scientific decisions being made about something that affects millions of people because ‘somebody said something’, do you?
The argument is not that VAERS is an ineffective system. The argument is that it’s only a part of the whole system.