Why do I do it? (introduction and vent)

[moc]

Why do I let myself get sucked into vaccine/autism debates? This is on another, non-DU parenting board. It never ends well. I just got accused of being condescending. A bunch of people were arguing that although vaccines may not cause autism, they may "trigger" it in a minute % of "vulnerable" children. WTF does that mean? And I'm condescending because I point out the illogic of that?

By way of introduction, I lurk here frequently. I have a doctorate in maternal and child health (Hopkins, '92) and I'm tenured at a major university, so I do have a bit of training in epidemiology, etc. I don't get into the autism/vaccine battles here because they're ridiculous. The illogical arguments of woo woos drive me nuts.

Thanks for letting me vent. Carry on.

[mr blur]

1. Why, you're just one of those closed-minded science types!

Lacking the imagination to see the reality beyond the limits imposed by your so-called "education".

Welcome to the Sanity Forum.

[TZ]

2. Tell me about it!

Actually having done vaccine research these woos really make me ANGRY! Not only do I hate having my profession, friends and colleages disparaged, but they are actually dangerous, IMO..Look at the outbreaks of diseases recently that vaccines can easily prevent..
BTW, count yourself lucky that you were only called condescending..I've been called much much worse by the anti-vax woos...including "child poisoner"....
Welcome to sanity indeed...:hi:

[moc]

16. Thanks so much, Turtlensue. Yes, the disparaging of my colleagues

pisses me off especially. I regularly sit on a review panel for MCHB's extramural research program, and frequently the panel is chaired by the woman who chaired the IOM committee, Marie McCormick. She is a deeply committed scientist and she's been skewered by the anti-vaccine woo woos. She told me a couple years ago that she received death threats.

[trotsky]

3. You do it because you care about their kids. And public health overall.

They don't understand statistics and they certainly don't understand the ravages of disease. They are making irresponsible decisions, and their poor children are bearing all the risks.

[moc]

17. Ah, thanks. Your comment made be feel good, Trotsky.

That's it, I care about the kids. After being painted as the evil-person-who-couldn't-possibly-understand-unless-god-forbid-it- happened-to-her-kid, you can forget that. :-)

[Orrex]

4. Hey, if you're tenured, now is the time to blow the lid off the big Thimerosal coverup

You have nothing to fear, so you could be a mighty champion of truth!


I lack the academic chops to go really toe-to-toe on the technical specifics of mercury/autism, but I've gotten pretty good at pointing out the obvious nonsense in the claims of anti-vaccine advocates.

My own particular weakness, in terms of getting sucked into futile arguments, is the supernatural. At least once or twice each week I wind up in some bitter spat with a coworker or friend or relative who notes off-handedly that this or that phenomenon was "proof" of whatever magical agent they're advocating.

I derive some minor satisfaction from it, I confess, and I enjoy the chance to hone my rhetorical skills, but I'm perpetually bummed out by the knowledge that it's ultimately going to be for naught.

No darkness is more profound than willful ignorance, and no light can illuminate it.

Keep on fighting the good fight, though. To do otherwise would be to leave fact and logic at the mercy of those who understand them the least.

[TZ]

5. FYI

Almost all the vaccine causes autism woos don't have the academic chops/native intelligence to have a clue what they are talking about! Like the idiot who claimed to be a "Med School Professor" and said that women SPONTANEOUSLY rid themselves of HPV.That's high school biology..Also this person also cited a study as "proof" of the "medical establishment"'s concern about Gardasil a paper that simply stated that the bad publicity surrounding mandation was causing a backlash agaisnt vaccines and that a better tactic was to back off on mandation.
Really, Orrex, I am only a highly experienced lab tech with a BS , my technical knowledge is nothing near PhD level...And I can make mincemeat of their arguments. Note that I don't even need any links in my posts (or rarely) to smack them around..You do quite well, you don't need a biology degree to argue with these idiots, just really good logic and reading comphrension skills (which they DON'T have). In fact, I find that overly technical arguments/details just get ignored. Its best to stay with basic concepts...

[dropkickpa]

13. Hell

I'm a lowly fucking vet tech and my knowlege just from working in the biomedical research field and reading textbooks is greater than theirs!!

[TZ]

15. Hey, Vet techs do important work..

Damn, I think Vet techs have the worst of it..You work with animals who certainly can be hostile and difficult, then of course you get the animal rights woos. I confess I have done my darndest to avoid animal work, because I am too sensitive for it. But I well know how important the work you do is. You have more guts than me. I am more than happy to work with a vial of serum..in fact now I find even whole blood icky and dirty....

[moc]

18. I wish it were that easy, Orrex. As Turtlensue said, it's not like the

anti-vaccine woo woos have any academic credentials but it doesn't keep them from spouting all the crap they've heard. And they don't have any respect for actual credentials. My expertise is not in immunology or autism specifically but more the epidemiological methods side since I trained in public health. The problem with many of these woo woos is they truly don't know enough to know what they don't know, if that makes sense. They'll come at me with some diatribe about the Danish study (for example) which may SOUND good to anyone who doesn't know epidemiology/biostatistics, but is really so full of crap I don't know where to start. For example, once here on DU I got into an argument with someone regarding whether or not there's an "epidemic" of autism. Although autism isn't my area of research, I do a session in my graduate MCH class on the autism/vaccine debate, and last year, we read a couple of Fombonne's paper. Fombonne is one of the world's leading experts on the epidemiology of autism, and he has presented impressive evidence that the "epidemic" is at best questionable. However, when I posted this on DU, some woo woo replied with some canned response from SafeMinds (or likewise woo woo site) saying the Fombonne study was flawed. The problem was, the SafeMinds "critique" was full of crap. I could (and I have) taken the time to go point by point to pick apart their "critique" of the Danish study or their "critique" of Fombonne's work, but I have since realized that it makes no difference. Even if I try to painstakingly explain epidemiological concepts, they just ignore and move onto some other equally ridiculous diatribe or tell me I'm wrong with no backup to this argument. I've come to see that they don't really want to know. It's like a cult, a religion.

I like your statement: "No darkness is more profound than willful ignorance, and no light can illuminate it." This captures it exactly.

Sigh...

[semillama]

6. That wouldn't be motheringdotcommune, would it?

my wife checks it out sometimes because she was considering becoming a doula. She says there's a lot of really annoying crusty hippie militants there, but it's gotten better from last year. She had to stop going there because of some of the outrageous stuff.

I think that this is where she had gotten some of the misinformation on homeopathy from, that I had posted about last year. She's since come to her senses on it.

[moc]

19. No, it's a site for women (mostly) who experienced infertility trying to become

mothers. By and large, these women are VERY invested in their children and tend to read everything they can get their hands on regarding parenting. Unfortunately, sometimes they don't separate the good info from the bad. Well intentioned, perhaps, but not well informed.

[lizerdbits]

7. They want an answer to autism and need a scapegoat

It's easier than a mix of genetics and environment. They are also of an age where they didn't have elementary school classmates die of disease so they think we don't need them anymore. If they weren't needed anymore they wouldn't be given, just like they don't give the smallpox vaccine anymore with the exception of people who work with poxviruses. And what eradicated smallpox? VACCINATION! Now some diseases have environmental or non human reservoirs so we may never not need to vaccinate for them. If they STFU and get their kids vaccinated for polio maybe we won't need that one eventually either.

Condescending usually means 'have a scientific clue,' unlike the anti vax woos.

[Warpy]

8. Welcome to the hidey hole of all veterans of the

vaccine debates on DU. Don't forget your complimentary rubber chicken, given to all woo unbelievers from antivax debunkers to atheists.

There doesn't seem to be much you can do about a belief system, since it is the foundation of somebody's life and doesn't rely on fact. About all you can do is post a few facts for casual readers who might be unconverted and then bow out as the ranters and ravers continue to do what they do best.

By the way, have you met philb? :evilgrin:

[lizerdbits]

9. He emerged from the sewer last week

So he probably won't be back for another week or so.

[trotsky]

10. I HAVE POSTED LINKS TO OVER 3000 STUDIES! n/t

[varkam]

14. Have you looked at his citations page?

Good god it's embarrasing.

[moc]

20. I don't think I've met philb, but forewarned is forearmed, I always say.

:hi:

[LeftishBrit]

11. I know what you mean!

My worst clash was when someone accused Big Pharma of poisoning children in developing countries by donating vaccines. Considering that about two and a half million children die each year of preventable diseases, because they or their countries can't afford vaccines, that made my blood boil!

I am a developmental psychologist with an interest in developmental cognitive disorders, and my late supervisor was a leading researcher on autism, so I have lots of access to *real* research on the subject; but it's not as sexy as some website that claims to tell you THE TROOF THAT EVERYONE IS CONCEALING FROM YOU! Unfortunately, my country has contributed a fair bit to the woo, in the person of Andrew Wakefield.

[TZ]

12. I remember that idiot

Tried their hardest to paint me as a soulless monster because I had done vaccine work. Basically asked me how I slept at night knowing I was "killing the children".
And that was still when I was still really hurting from what happened to my NIH boss. Ugh. If that isn't proof that these anti-vaccine nuts aren't just like the anti-abortion nuts.....

[moc]

21. I admit being pissed at Big Pharma re: developing countries, but it wasn't

for vaccines, it was for those like Nestle (not pharma exactly, but you know what I mean) for pushing infant formula in countries where the populations don't have access to clean water sources. But that's another discussion. :-) People here are so clueless when it comes to the devastation of infectious disease. 100 years ago, more than one in every 10 infants did not survive until their first birthday, largely due to infectious disease. My own uncle, born in 1942, died of pertussis. I know my grandmother would have given her right arm for the vaccine. We are so naive about the ravages of these illnesses.

Andrew Wakefield is an SOB, in my opinion, and I have to wonder if he's associated with some woo woo doctors who scammed my neighbors a few years back. Our neighbors are the most wonderful people you'd ever want to know, and their youngest daughter is severely delayed. I don't know specifically what her IQ is, but to give you an idea, she's 13yo and appears to function developmentally at the level of about a 4yo. About 3-4 years ago, they told us that some "doctor" in Austin (we're in North Texas) told them that their daughter's problems were due to the failure of her brain to mylenate during prenatal development. Furthermore, all they needed to do was to "remylenate" her brain. WTF? It's not like she has motor symptoms of some sort that would be an indication of some sort of mylenation problem. And since when did remylnation become an option? They were told that if they gave their daughter this fish oil, they'd "re-mylenate her brain, and she'd be able to go to college. WTF?

This is the crap that makes me so angry. :mad: These SOBs are exploiting the hopes and dreams of parents who so desparately want to help their kids, just to make a buck. We didn't know what to say to our neighbors, so my husband just tried to tell them to be cautious. They used to include updates of their daughter's "treatment" in their Christmas letter (which they give us a copy of), and I noticed this year there was no mention of the woo woo stuff. Once again, their hopes have been shattered. :-(

I know that Wakefield re-established himself in Austin after he was shamed out of the UK. He directs some sort of woo woo institute down there. I have always wondered if that's the place where my neighbors used to see that "doctor".

On the by and by, although I'm in public health, most of my research is developmental in nature. My grad advisor was a developmental psychologist, and my masters is in human development, so my work crosses over between public health and developmental psychology. I study urban poverty, neighborhood effects, child behavior problems, and early academic achievement. :hi:

[LeftishBrit]

22. Sounds like your interests overlap with mine

My particular interests at the moment are the development of children's arithmetic, and early interventions for children who have difficulties in the area. I'm a great admirer of the American researcher Herbert Ginsburg's work - have you come across him?