Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Reaping What You Sow
Say, I've got an idea. Let's disregard more than a 100 years-worth of evidence that tells us that vaccines work in preventing nasty childhood diseases like measles, mumps, and rubella because after all, vaccines make Baby Jesus cry.
THURSDAY, Aug. 21 (HealthDay News) -- Some parents' refusal to vaccinate children seems to be behind the highest rate of measles cases reported since 1996, federal officials said Thursday.
Between Jan. 1 and July 31 of this year, 131 measles cases have been reported in the United States, many of them among children whose parents have philosophical or religious objections to the vaccine, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nice. Now your children get to suffer because you believe in magic.
How's that working out for them?
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Bad Science
Agreed, I think this is due to the Jenny-McCarthy-fueled non-link between vaccines and "autism" (new definition soon).
immunisation
It's spreading to australia too, woo everywhere. We have just had a mother and father grab their 2 day old newborn from the hospital and go on the run rather than have her immunisided against hepatitus B which the mother is carrying. they are scared of the aluminium in the vaccine and they are being supported by anti immunisation fundies even tho with the shot straight after birth her chances of getting hep b are reduced by 90%. With hep B contracted so early her chances of liver cancer or other life threatening outcomes are very high.
One-legged Statistic
This is a classic misuse of a single statistic. The stand-alone number.
To have an accurate picture, you need to have the prevalence of the disease w/o immunization, the efficiency of the immunization with the risk of negative immunization reactions.
Just for illustration, say the disease strikes just 1% of the population not immunized, and the immunization for that disease carries a 90% protective efficiency, but has only a 1% risk of complications.
Then, for a population of 1 million, 10,000 would catch the disease if not immunized. But 11,000 would be sick if immunized (1,000 from the base disease, and 10,000 from reactions to the immunization itself).
This is only to illustrate how a single statistic can give a false picture, not to prove that immunizations are bad. I had my kids immunized.
RGG
Gah!
Phil Plait constantly rants against this nonsense. Sheesh!
Jim Downey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
Is that the reason?
How many are skipping the injections for religious reasons, versus how many opt out because of the supposed autism-vaccination link?
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