Anti-Vaccine Cartoon

Pat Bagley of Cagle Cartoons published the following cartoon about the anti-vaccine movement on November 12th. His image captures the truth about the anti-vaccine movement and the diseases making a comeback because of it.

Jenny McCarthy Causes Whooping Cough

Juilia Ioffe wrote a candid blog post for New Republic about coming down with whooping cough at age 31 and the perils associated with this vaccine preventable disease. “I have been coughing for 72 days. Not on and off coughing, but continuously, every day and every night, for two and a half months. And not just coughing, but whooping: doubled over, body clenched, sucking violently for air, my face reddening and my eyes watering. Sometimes, I cough so hard, I vomit. Other times, I pee myself.”

Ioffe continues to describe her symptoms and the odd and embarrassing situations it has created for her. She states, “And while my having pertussis at my age seems absurd, it can also be tragic: in babies, the infection can easily be fatal.” Ioffe notes that whooping cough had been conquered in the developed world until the anti-vaccination movement frightened parents with propaganda about autism. Vaccination has now become another consumer choice, like drinking coconut water.

“The problem is that it (vaccination) is not an individual choice; it is a choice that acutely affects the rest of us,” Ioffe continues. A recent study in Pediatrics indicated that areas with high concentrations of conscientious vaccine objectors were 2.5. times more likely to have an outbreak of pertussis (whooping cough). In Ioffe’s case, she was vaccinated as a child, but the vaccine wears off by adulthood. In the past, this wasn’t an issue because children were vaccinated. However, she came into contact with an unvaccinated child, who had the disease and spread it to her.

Ioffe concludes: “I understand your wanting to raise your own children as you see fit, but you’re selfishly jeopardizing more than your own children. …what gives you denialists the right to put my health at risk – to cause me to catch a debilitating, humiliating, and frightening cough that, two months after I finished my last course of antibiotics, still makes me convulse several times a day…”

After reading Ioffe’s posts, Razib Khan wrote a blog postfor Discover about the pressure he and his wife experienced from their peer networks not to vaccinate. He recalls that they were able to resist and rebuff peer pressure because of their strong scientific backgrounds. He also notes that he can imagine someone with less of a scientific background trusting the people they normally trust – their peer network – on vaccination. 

Khan suggests that the denialism be countered by shaming and recommends parents investigate the rate of vaccination in their community. If the vaccination rate isn’t high, he recommends moving away from the dangerous critical mass, and telling people why you are moving.

Vaccine preventable diseases like whooping cough have devastating consequences. Parents should be aware that these vaccines have a purpose. Vaccine Watch encourages parents to consult their pediatrician about vaccine choices.

The Ethics of Not Vaccinating

The anti-vaccine movement has been in the news a lot lately. Well-known anti-vaccination advocate Jenny McCarthy started on television’s The View this week, measles outbreaks struck Texas and Wales and children are headed back to school; prompting parents to question vaccine schedules.

During a Season 10 episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, the hypothetical scenario was a mother who decided not to vaccinate her child for measles based on rumors that the vaccine causes autism. The child contracts measles at age four and passes it on to a one-year old child at the daycare center who is too young for the vaccine. The baby dies in the episode with the title “Selfish.”

A paper in the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics explores whether people can be held legally accountable for damage they cause by not vaccinating their children. Bioethicist Arthur L. Caplan is a co-author on the paper and states: “One can make a legitimate, state-sanctioned choice not to vaccinate, but that does not protect the person making the choice against the consequences of that choice for others.” The paper argues that a parent who decides not to vaccinate and endangers another child is clearly at fault and could be charged with criminally negligent homicide or sued for damages.

“Parents who choose not to vaccinate their kids for reasons of personal belief pose a serious danger to the public,” stated Jed Lipinski of the Albuquerque Journal. “Take the San Diego measles outbreak of 2008. After unknowingly contracting the disease on a trip to Switzerland, an unvaccinated 7-year old boy infected 11 other unvaccinated kids, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).”

“The majority of the cases occurred in kids whose parents had requested personal belief exemptions through the state of California,” Lipinski continues. “But three of the infected were either too young or medically unable to be vaccinated. And overall, 48 children too young to be vaccinated were quarantined, at an average cost to the family of $775 per child. The CDC noted that all 11 cases were ‘linked epidemiologically’ to the 7-year old boy and the outbreak response cost the public sector $10,376 per case.”

Caplan, Lipinski and others all agree that the government’s interest in protecting children from getting measles should trump parents’ interest in making medical decisions for their kids. Lipinski believes extra measures need to be taken to ensure non-vaccinators understand the risk they pose to other people’s children.

Vaccine Watch urges parents to seek answers to vaccine questions from their child’s pediatrician. As Caplan and Lipinski point out – choosing not to vaccinate your child can have much greater consequences than most parents realize.

Jenny McCarthy and The View

ABC News made headlines this week when they announced that anti-vaccine advocate Jenny McCarthy is joining the popular daytime show the View as a host in September. McCarthy has been linked to the anti-vaccine movement for over ten years, claiming a vaccine caused her son’s autism. 

McCarthy has been so outspoken on the topic that a website tracking the number of illnesses and deaths caused by the anti-vaccine movement has the domain name www.jennymccarthybodycount.com. With 1,170 preventable deaths between June 3, 2007 and June 22, 2013 and over 118,000 preventable illnesses, vaccine advocates are concerned about McCarthy’s new platform to spread her views.

The View caters to mothers and the credibility of host Barbara Walters and others influences the decisions many people make.  Over twenty studies have proven that there is no link between vaccines and autism. On the contrary, vaccines are the most effective instruments of public health. However, talented speakers like McCarthy can spread their scientific illiteracy through media quickly; McCarthy already has a book and will now regularly have television as another venue.

Michael Specter of The New Yorker states, “It is understandable that people would suspect vaccines are a cause of autism; parents often first notice developmental problems when their children are about eighteen months old, the same time they often receive several vaccinations. Causation and correlation are often confused, however as many studies have demonstrated. (Assuming that events that happen at the same time are connected can lead to serious misconceptions: over the last decade, for example the rise in the sales of organic food in the United States has mirrored the growth in autism rates almost exactly. No sane person would suggest that those facts are related.)”

“By preaching her (McCarthy’s) message of scientific illiteracy from one end of this country to the other, she has helped make it possible for people to turn away from rational thought. And that is deadly,” Specter concludes.

The anti-vaccine movement has been blamed for recent outbreaks of measles and whooping cough. Communities across the world are working to increase education and vaccination rates. Wendy Sue Swanson is a pediatrician in Seattle and believes it will take decades to recover from the anti-vaccine movement. “In the medical community, we’ll work to undo myths around vaccine safety for the rest of our lives, in part because of Ms. McCarthy,” she states.

Vaccine Watch encourages parents to make their decisions about vaccines with the help of pediatricians and sound science, not Hollywood.