quinncy

quinn cummings · @quinncy

31st Jan 2015 from TwitLonger

My response to an #antivaxxer and #measles


(This is in response to what a person, whom I assume is now a former friend, wrote to me on my private Facebook account. I've removed her name, for her privacy, but stand by what I said.)

I'm geniunely sorry for your experience, but the harsh truth is, the anti-vaccination movement as we know it began when Doctor Wakefield concocted lies and skewed data for a law firm who wanted to sue deep-pocketed pharmaceutical firms and we're now all living with it. Wakefield and those lawyers, in their greed, have done decades of lasting damage.

I don't say this because, as I keep hearing, I'm somehow in Big Pharma's pocket and don't get how this is all a way to keep us paying. I loathe Big Pharma and would love to see America on a National Health plan where making medication wasn't a hugely for-profit endeavor, but vaccinations aren't actually that profitable for these companies (1.82% of worldwide profit).

I say this because never, not once, has another experiment been able to replicate Wakefield's findings, which is why I loathe Wakefield even more than Big Pharma; he knowingly committed fraud. There is a reason he lost his medical license and it's not because he was on to finding out what "The Man" was up to; he took advantage of the fear of parents and the genuine grief of parents whose children are sick.

Don't talk to me about "Vaccine Injury," unless you are prepared to talk about the studies, actual replicable studies, which show children who will grow up to be diagnosed with autism show differences in eye-contact from birth, differences in their very brain structure, long before they have their first jab. Thimerosal, the Great Satan of the anti-vaccination movement, has been out of the vaccinations since 2001 and yet the numbers of people diagnosed on the spectrum keeps rising, which would lead most people to look elsewhere for a cause. At least part of the "explosion" of autistic children has been a change in diagnosis; twenty years ago, with cruder tools, these kids were diagnosed as "Retarded." Again, science and studies can confirm that the rate of "Retarded" children sinks as the rate of "Autistic" children soars; they're the same kids. All this to say, I believe science. Replicable, provable, science.

The day the kid got her first vaccine-when I saw that needle go into her tiny baby thigh- I felt the blood drain from my head; it's not a natural thing, watching that happen but you know what has been natural, until the last fifty years? Having a great many children and losing a fair amount of them. Hell, in 1980, before the MMR vaccine was widely available, 2.6 million people died of measles in just that year. My mother's first memory was of the priest over her, administering last rites, because of mumps, which anti-vaxxers have assured me is "Nothing." She's lucky; she only lost the hearing in one ear. When I hear "Harmless children's diseases," I think of my grandmother, sitting next to her daughter's bed, sewing the dress she thought her daughter was going to be buried in.

So, I recognize another mother who loves her child dearly but I don't believe the anti-vaccination movement. Not any of it. And if you want to talk about my "Cheering section," let me print out some of the vitriol I've gotten since I've come out and said what I think, starting with the people who suggested I die when I said that flu vaccines keep people like me- people with asthma- alive.

The philosopher Schopenhauer said something to the effect of when you argue with someone's beliefs, you argue with their will and you won't win; I have never written about any of this either expecting or wanting to change your views. I'm here for every person who wrote me after I wrote the first essay saying how relieved they were that someone was saying this, that they had started to think they were the only ones left.

I loathe conflict; I'd go the rest of my life without discussing anything of any degree of difficulty if I could, so that should give you some sense of how little I want to be doing this. But at some point facts matter more than feelings and, to quote John Adams, facts are stubborn things.

And here are the facts:

Vaccinations aren't perfect, but they're damn effective.
Vaccinations don't cause autism.
Vaccinations are better than complications and death.

Take care and stay well.

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