The Least Important Million-Dollar Question About Childhood Vaccinations
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With two little words, author Amy Wallace, childhood vaccination proponent Dr. Paul Offit, and Wired's editorial staff gave those who disagreed with the magazine's recent feature, "An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All," a hook upon which to hang a lawsuit—and gave every other news organ in the country another reason to step quietly back from the vaccination debate. "She lies," Offit said of vaccine "safety advocate" Barbara Loe Fisher. Now Fisher wants him to pay.
When my first child was born in 2001, nonvaccinating parents seemed relatively rare. By the time my youngest was born five years later, I was defending my decision to vaccinate him on schedule to crunchier parents while second-guessing myself, and that's thanks, at least in part, to the advocacy of Barbara Loe Fisher and her National Vaccine Information Center. Whooping cough seemed a distant and minimal possibility, whereas the chemical concoction the pediatrician planned to shoot into my baby's plump thigh was bubbling around in the hypodermic for anyone to see—plus, it was clearly going to make him scream. The shot represented immediate pain and unknowable risks, while not vaccinating was what good parents did—the ones with the vegan diets, the wooden toys, and the cloth diapers. It couldn't hurt (nobody ever gets the mumps any more). It might help (the government and pharmaceutical companies have been wrong about what's safe before, right?). And it was nobody's business but ours.
Last fall's article in Wired represented the flip side of that argument and was an indirect result of Loe's success at getting her position heard. Our collective protection against diptheria, rubella, and such requires "herd immunity," which in turn depends on herd action—and in recent years, enough members of the Western human herd have been free-riding on the rest of us that the whole system may be at risk. Writer Amy Wallace let her subject, Dr. Paul Offit, make the case that vaccines don't just protect the individually vaccinated, they protect us all—adults whose immunity has worn off, kids unvaccinated for legitimate reasons like egg allergies, or those for whom the vaccination wasn't, for one reason or another, effective. In other words, if an unvaccinated kid gets the measles, he could be fine (what with that healthy vegan diet and all), but the grandmother he coughed on in the grocery store and his classmate whose shot didn't take correctly might be toast.
But in making that argument, Dr. Offit allowed his frustration with a primary advocate of vaccine caution (to say the least) to get the better of him. "She lies," he said of Fisher, and those two words gave Ms. Fisher (and her attorney, a speaker against "mandatory vaccinations" at a recent autism event) an opening. They're suing Wired, Condé Nast, Dr. Offit, and Amy Wallace for a million dollars. Ironically, in context, the words were actually something of a compliment: "Barbara Fisher inflames people against me. And wrongly. I'm in this for the same reason she is. I care about kids," Dr. Offit went on.
That context—and the fact that Ms. Fisher is a public figure, generally expected to take stuff like this on the chin—makes it unlikely that she'll be successful in her suit. But what she may succeed in doing is turning other magazines off her topic of choice, and that doesn't do anyone any good. Ms. Fisher says she's not anti-vaccine, but rather for "informed and voluntary vaccination." If that's true, Ms. Fisher (and her lawyer, who claims to have "maintained an abiding conviction to achieve full First Amendment protection for the freedoms of speech and press") should simply let Dr. Offit be heard. An "informed" decision about childhood vaccinations should include a read of the Wired piece and of any and all other information Dr. Offit, Ms. Fisher, and others can get out there. Vaccines are safe and effective, but they're that way in part because of the advocacy of Ms. Fisher and those like her. Silence, in this case, serves no one.
KJ Dell'Antonia Former Manhattan lawyer and prosecutor, Xxtra Small reviewer, parent of four. Lover of books and bacon.
Comments
I will post this comment a lot
By: black cat | Fri, 03/19/2010 - 08:06
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Debate is one thing, but...
By: Kierra | Thu, 01/07/2010 - 08:19
There is nothing wrong with debate, but there is something wrong when one side is so convinced that they are right that no amount of scientific data will convince them otherwise (observe the moving goalposts: first thimerosol, then aluminum, and now unspecified "toxins" and "too many, too soon"). And there is something especially wrong if that side is convincing large numbers of people to forgo a safe, effective, disease-preventing treatment (and thus endangering large numbers of people) because said treatment is not 100% safe and effective (keep in mind that no medical intervention will ever meet this standard).
Scientists continually do this. The most prestige you can get as a scientist is to overturn an existing paradigm with a new and better explanation, testing method, or treatment. Not even counting the fact that scientists are just as human as non-scientists (ie they are mothers, fathers, etc with family and friends that all have a myriad of medical concerns), there are many incentives to make vaccines more effective and safer. The problem is that most of the concerns of the anti-vaccination movement are things that are either implausible (the actual mechanism is known and the concern therefore makes no logical sense) or they have been tested and found to be highly unlikely (science is never 100% certain, but it can be pretty close to that).
No medical therapy is perfectly safe. Chemotherapy clearly isn't a perfect therapy, but that does not mean you shouldn't have a course of chemotherapy if you get cancer. Vaccines may not be perfect, but they are vastly better than doing nothing. Advocating that people not get vaccinated is the equivalent of telling people not to wear their seatbelts because they may be trapped in their cars after a collision.
vaccines and bullies and growing up.
By: marina1 | Thu, 01/07/2010 - 00:11
Bullies are the ones that have to resort to calling other kids names like granola boy or vegan boy. I see many people get so bent out of shape that they stop talking like adults. Never let a bully intimidate you they are always the weakest ones.
Feeling better
By: Janipurr | Wed, 01/06/2010 - 14:53
I am reassured that the comments here seem to be 99-1 against the anti-vaccination idiots. It makes me feel better that people actually weigh the opinion of a scientist--you know, someone who actually knows what he is talking about--than an complete airhead like Jenny McCarthy. I think it's a shame when people use their "fame" to promote mindsets that result in making the rest of us less safe.
I have a better idea--let parents "choose" whether or not to vaccinate, but have them sign a waiver that they agree to never send their unvaccinated children to (any) school, forcing them to homeschool; and agree to a family wide quarantine (nobody leaves the house, period) should any family member break out with childhood disease that can be vaccinated against. Dad doesn't go to work, mom doesn't go to the market, nobody gets to visit until they are cleared as "safe" by a licensed medical practitioner.
Even better--my "intuition" tells me that those parents with autistic kids will just be proven to have bad genes--lets sterilize them. We can wipe out autism entirely with a slash and burn policy!
important things to realize about vaccination
By: Kierra | Wed, 01/06/2010 - 14:40
Because the efficacy of a vaccination is not 100%. Some individuals will get the vaccine and not produce antibodies. Also, a person's immune system decays as they age, so Grandma becomes less protected the older she gets. In addition, individuals that are treated with radiation for certain types of cancers (especially leukemia) can lose the resistances that they have picked up from both vaccinations and infections that they have had. Not to mention that many vaccines are not given until a baby is one year old or older, so Vegan Boy is also putting infants at risk.
The thing that Grandma has to worry about most, though, isn't measles, but the flu and pneumonia. It is recommended that those over 65 get annual flu shots and pneumonia shots, but since their immune systems are not very strong, the vaccine effectiveness in this population is relatively low. It's therefore actually more effective to vaccinate the children that older individuals are exposed to instead, since the vaccine is more likely to be effective in younger individuals. One study found that widespread vaccination of children under 5 years old for pneumonia decreased the rate of pneumonia in those over 65 by about 60%!
Pandora's Box
By: Will70115 | Wed, 01/06/2010 - 14:13
Fisher and her atty may regret opening this Pandora's Box. While Fisher's case against Offit seems prima facie unlikely to meet burden of proof, her "National Vaccine Information Center" website is just chock full of misleading, erroneous and otherwise reckless misinformation.
Sadly, the result of parents being misled by Ms. Fisher's ill-advised crusade is inevitably the death of some unfortunate children. When this tragedy awakens those parents to how they have been misled by the misinformation on Ms. Fisher's site, then she'll be getting up close and personal with a REAL lawsuit.
Let's see how a jury reacts to distraught parents and the inevitable grusome shredding of Ms. Fisher's "experts" by, well, essentially everyone in the medical and scientific community. My guess is Ms. Fisher may be in for a bad time.
But, you know, that's what can happen if you don't think through the consequences of your actions.
Hmmm
By: ccc0123 | Wed, 01/06/2010 - 13:32
Why would Grandma or anyone get measles from Vegan Boy if they've already been vaccinated?
Debate is still good
By: Mama Eve | Wed, 01/06/2010 - 13:23
I came back this morning to read the additional comments posted after leaving mine yesterday, and I find the polarization of the vaccination debate so interesting. In my original comment I said I think the debate over vaccination safety has helped make vaccinations safer for all of us and opened the doors to consider alternatives, which are good things. I didn't say whether I vaccinated my own child, or thought others should. I actually have no problems acknowledging that vaccinations save lives, and right now they are the best way for protecting large populations of people against scary and deadly diseases. *However*, the debate is so important. It's what keeps us moving forward and thinking of alternatives to solutions that clearly aren't perfect, and have caused great harm in the past. If we don't have people advocating for new ways of thinking and innovation, then we wouldn't even be where we are today in terms of our standard of living. For all our sakes, I hope the debate continues and neither side is able to drown out the other.
curious reasoning
By: you know it is | Wed, 01/06/2010 - 13:01
It might help (the government and pharmaceutical companies have been wrong about what's safe before, right?).
Heh. Yeah, they're not perfect. On the other hand, your "crunchy" vegan non-vaccinating parent types are just great and reliable sources of good sense and accurate information. All these scientists who actually know stuff about it aren't infallible, so the reasoning is that the likes of Jenny McCarthy probably do know what they're talking about.
Or, to use another example, suppose you have a math problem you can't solve, and the kid in the class who's best at math has made the occasional mistake. So, with the above reasoning, you instead go to the kids in the class who've never been right except by random guessing on multiple choice tests and who don't know anything at all about math, on the theory that they're going to somehow be better.
To be fair, I appreciate that Ms. Dell'Antonia did end up vaccinating and not listening to the anti-vaccination crowd. My point is that I can't see why you would consider listening to them in the first place. Ms. Dell'Antonia cites as evicence of their "good" parenting that they are vegans (?! -- I guess she moves in different circles than I do if "vegan" == good parent), use of wooden blocks, and use of cloth diapers, but none of those characteristics are due to habits of thought or practices of reasoning which would make them a reliable source of information on the merits of vaccination. Indeed, one might argue that they derive from a largely emotional process stemming from the same sort of thinking as the naturalistic fallacy (the same sort of thinking that leads people to erroneously assume that "organic" foods would for some reason be healthier than non-"organic" ones), based on distrust of technology and labs and science and a belief that natural==good. And this simplistic sort of thinking based on emotional reactions rather than actually understanding anything is not very good at getting the right answer when it comes to questions like whether vaccination is a good idea or not.
Libel suit. Perfect.
By: Rocket88 | Wed, 01/06/2010 - 11:20
I hope the Rule 11 sanctions are crippling.
The fact is that the anti-vaccine people are like the birthers, the anti-global-warming people, and the "intelligent design" people. They cling to their beliefs as articles of faith and no amount of facts, reason, logic, data, or reality will ever penetrate their delusions.