Defending Science Isn’t Always Pretty

This month’s issue of WIRED features a great story by Amy Wallace: “An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All.” It’s an overview of the anti-vaccination movement in the United States, a topic that should be very familiar to anyone who reads Discover‘s baddest astronomer. At ScienceBlogs, Orac and Abel Pharmboy gives big thumbs-up to the article.

The anti-vaccination movement is a little weird — they claim that vaccines, which are universally credited with wiping out smallpox and polio and other bad things, are responsible for causing autism and diabetes and other also-bad things, all just to make a buck for pharmaceutical companies. The underlying motivation seems to be a combination of the conviction that things must happen for a reason — if a child develops autism, there must be an enemy to blame — and a general distrust of science and technology. Certainly the pro-science point of view is fairly unequivocal; like any medicine, vaccines should be used properly, but they have done great good for the world and there are very real dangers of increased risk for epidemics if enough children stop receiving them. Good for WIRED for taking on the issue and publishing an uncompromisingly pro-science piece on it.

But the anti-vax movement is more than just committed; they’re pretty darn virulent. And since the article came out, author Amy Wallace has been subject to all sorts of attacks. She’s been documenting them on her Twitter feed, which I encourage you to check out. Some lowlights:

  • I’ve been called stupid, greedy, a whore, a prostitute, and a “fking lib.” I’ve been called the author of “heinous tripe.”
  • J.B. Handley, the founder of Generation Rescue, the anti-vaccine group that actress Jenny McCarthy helps promote, sent an essay titled “Paul Offit Rapes (intellectually) Amy Wallace and Wired Magazine.” In it, he implied that Offit had slipped me a date rape drug.
  • Just now, I got an email so sexually explicit that I can’t paraphrase it here. Except to say it contained the c-word. And a reference to dead fish.
  • In his book, Autism’s False Prophets, Dr. Offit writes about scientists who have been intimidated into staying silent about autism/vaccines. If scientists – who are armed with facts and trained to interpret them – are afraid, can it be any surprise that a lot of parents are, too?


It’s pretty horrifying stuff. But there is good news: Wallace also reports that the large majority of emails she has received were actually in favor of the piece, and expressed gratitude that she had written it. There are strong forces arrayed against science, but the truth is on our side, and a lot of people recognize it. It gives one a bit of hope.

93 Comments

93 thoughts on “Defending Science Isn’t Always Pretty”

  1. Katharine:

    Parents are not the experts on their children. Pediatricians are.

    I have a child with PDD-NOS. During one of the conferences with the after-school care teachers, I remarked that “My experience with children consists of two children — my own. Yours consists of hundreds. I will defer to your expertise.” They were very pleasantly surprised; they said they almost never hear that, because parents are generally convinced they know more about raising children by virtue of having spent a few years raising a couple of kids, whereas as the educators have been specifically trained, and have worked with dozens or even hundreds of children, often for many years. One of the teachers has been working in the field for twenty-five years. I’ve been working with kids since my eldest was born six years ago. She definitely trumps me when it comes to experience.

    It’s interesting to learn how few parents acknowledge that — or at least, how few parents of challenging children realize that. But I suspect it is a common failing. We all have to believe that we are competent (have faith in ourselves) in order to get through our days, and it’s easy to overdo that.

  2. Anyone still talking about thimerosal can’t be taken seriously, as it hasn’t been present in childhood vaccines nearly a decade.

    And if one wants to avoid thimerosal (or any other preservative) in the seasonal influenza vaccine all they have to do is pony up the cash for the single-dose version.

  3. Man, who to believe? Paul Offit & Amy Wallace, or Dr. Jon Poling? You be the judge:

    Blinders won’t reduce autism
    By JON POLING
    Friday, March 13, 2009
    For the million plus American families touched by autism, like mine, there is real urgency to find scientific answers to help loved ones and prevent future victims. Unfortunately, some doctors still fail to even accept the increasing autism rate as real, rather than their own better diagnosis.

    The collateral damage of “better diagnosis,” the idea that we are simply better at detecting autism, is the abandonment of families coping with autism by the medical establishment, government and private insurance companies.

    Beyond the high emotional toll autism takes on a family, many have been financially ruined. Public school systems are drowning in the red ink of educating increasing numbers of special-needs students.

    Fortunately, the ‘better diagnosis’ myth has been soundly debunked. In the 2009 issue of Epidemiology, two authors analyzed 1990 through 2006 California Department of Developmental Services and U.S. Census data documenting an astronomical 700 to 800 percent rise in the disorder.

    These scientists concluded that only a smaller percentage of this staggering rise can be explained by means other than a true increase.

    Because purely genetic diseases do not rise precipitously, the corollary to a true autism increase is clear — genes only load the gun and it is the environment that pulls the trigger. Autism is best redefined as an environmental disease with genetic susceptibilities.

    We should be investing our research dollars into discovering environmental factors that we can change, not more poorly targeted genetic studies that offer no hope of early intervention. Pesticides, mercury, aluminum, several drugs, dietary factors, infectious agents and yes — vaccines — are all in the research agenda.

    An inspiring new text, “Autism-Current Theories and Evidence,” has successfully navigated the minefield of autism science without touching the “third rail,” as Dr. Sanjay Gupta aptly describes the vaccine-autism debate.

    Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, who has studied autism for decades, prophetically writes, “The clinical heterogeneity of this disorder, together with the inherent dynamic changes during children’s growth and development, confound static, linear models and simplistic, unilateral approaches.”

    Zimmerman’s book is dense with cutting-edge science on cell biology, metabolism, oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, auto-immunity and brain pathology. That’s right — autism isn’t simply a genetic program for brain development gone awry. Dr. Martha Herbert, of Harvard Medical School, writes the final chapter defining autism in the larger framework of a multiple organ system disease with potentially reversible impairments.

    As an affected parent, I am left with a sense of hope that these professionals will produce results to stem the tide of new autism cases and ameliorate symptoms of those currently suffering.

    On the other hand, Dr. Paul Offit, the vaccine inventor whose Rotateq royalty interests recently sold for a reported $182 million, has written a novel of perceived good and evil called “Autism’s False Prophets.”

    The tome is largely a dramatic account of why Offit, who self-admittedly is not an autism expert, feels vaccines should be exonerated in the autism epidemic. In the story, Offit takes no prisoners, smearing characters in the vaccine-autism controversy as effortlessly as a rich cream cheese.

    “False Prophets” has curiously garnered support from several senior physicians in respected medical journals.

    After Offit’s drama is complete, these cheerleaders fail to realize they have traveled the road labeled “Dead End — No Through Traffic.” In his epilogue, Offit credits autism parents who have likewise gone down the dead end path to autism acceptance, without search for cause or cure.

    As both parent and doctor, I cannot fathom turning my back on a child nor science, in order to avoid inconvenient questions about vaccine safety or any other reasonable environmental factor.

    President Obama has recognized that “we’ve seen just a skyrocketing autism rate” and plans to appoint an “autism czar” to coordinate his policy efforts. Science is moving forward to connect the three dots of environment, genes and plasticity of a developing child’s brain circuitry. In the end, logic and reason will prevail over politics and profits.

    • Dr. Jon Poling, an Athens neurologist, is an assistant professor at the Medical College of Georgia. His daughter, Hannah Poling, has been a successful petitioner in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

  4. No, you aren’t buying what Jon Poling said? How about Bernadine Healy?

    Here’s Bernadine Healy, talking to CBS Evening News:

    “We have to take another look at that hypothesis, not deny it. I think we have the tools today that we didn’t have 10 years ago, 20 yrs ago, to try and tease that out and find out if there is a susceptible group…A susceptible group does not mean that vaccines are not good. What a susceptible group will tell us is that maybe there is a group of individual who shouldn’t have a particular vaccine or shouldn’t have vaccines on the same schedule…I don’t believe that if we identify the susceptibility group, if we identify a particular risk factor for vaccines or if we found out that maybe they should be spread out a little longer, I do not believe that the public would lose faith in vaccines…

    I think that the government or certain public officials in the government have been too quick to dismiss the concerns of these families without studying the population that got sick…I haven’t seen major studies that focus on 300 kids who got autistic symptoms within a period of a few weeks of a vaccine…I think public health officials have been too quick to dismiss the hypothesis as irrational without sufficient studies of causation…I think they have been too quick to dismiss studies in the animal laboratory either in mice, in primates, that do show some concerns with regard to certain vaccines and also to the mercury preservative in vaccines…The reason why they didn’t want to look for those susceptibility groups was because they were afraid that if they found them, however big or small they were, that that would scare the public…I don’t think you should ever turn your back on any scientific hypothesis because you’re afraid of what it might show…

    Populations do not test causality, they test associations. You have to go into the laboratory and you have to do designed research studies in animals…The fact that there is concern that you don’t want to know that susceptible group is a real disappointment to me. You can save those children…The more you delve into it, if you look at the basic science, if you look at the research that’s been done on animals.

    If you also look at some of these individual cases and if you look at the evidence that there is no link what I come away with is the question has not been answered.”

  5. Quick question for JBHandley.

    Since the rooster crows, and then the sun goes up, it is roosters that are responsible for causing the sunrise, right?

  6. Jon Poling, he of “The Appalling Poling Saga” (just google this) doesn’t have much credibility left in the scientific community. Bernadine Healey was a member of TASSC, an association that promoted the interests of tobacco companies.

    And those are the only two experts that JB Handley can trot out to partially support his position. Weigh that against thousands of scientists who oppose his views.

  7. You will always be able to find at least one scientist that supports a position that is not supported by the data and opposed by the mainstream community.

    Global warming
    Evolution and ‘design’
    vaccines etc etc

    The lack of any causal link between vaccination may not be as well established as truth of global warming and evolution, but what is is the fact that if parent stop vaccinating their children, every child will experience an increased risk of serious infection.

  8. More and more these days I remind myself that “freedom of speech does not include yeling “FIRE!” in a crowded theater”.

    When a company wants to market a drug, it has to undergo an extensive testing process, both for its function and its side-effects. If negative side-effects surface later (Thalidomide?), the company is liable for corrective measures. If the same standards were applied to those making bogus claims, I suspect there would be a lot fewer such claims.

    If someone knowingly endangers public health: delberate AIDS infection, poison food/medicine, selling dangerous products, etc., the offender is put behind bars.
    Anti-vaccine agitators should be taken to court, as threats to the general welfare and if found guilty, should be given substantial penalties. If McCarthy were fined $500,000 and given 5 years in jail, she might pull in her horns. If a doctor or scientist cannot establish the truth of his allegations – and is using his medical/scientific status as justification – that status should be terminate. An MD’s license can certainly be revoked. Maybe we need some way to strip a PhD…

  9. Still waiting for Handley to explain why discontinuing thimerosal in childhood vaccines didn’t result in a measurable drop in autism.

    The latest articles he posted here contain nothing more than generalities, with no causal hypothesis for any alleged vaccine-autism link.

  10. Personally, I’m waiting for Handley to stop committing the fallacy of appeal to authority by asking us if we “believe” one or another supposedly expert doctor. The factual correctness of an argument is independent of who supports it.

  11. I skimmed this thread and noticed an incredibly amusing similarity between two other loud and stupid groups of people: anti-relativity kooks, and “apollo hoax” kooks.

    All the hallmarks are there. Wingnut supporters, rampant intellectual dishonest, inability to stay on topic, constantly moving goalposts, etc.

    I’m sure its’ a complete coincidence that all the behavioral markers are the same.

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  13. Henry @52: thanks for that link. Very enlightening read.

    Re: cures as causes of disease…the 1976 swine flu vaccine campaign resulted in a number of deaths and a slew of lawsuits from over 500 cases of apparently vaccine-related Guillain-Barre Syndrome. The campaign was stopped after a couple of months. Apparently several countries are now keeping an eye out for an increase in cases as the latest vaccination campaign gets underway…

  14. Don’t expect Mr. Handley to reply any more here. He’s run off to defend his behavior/ideas on other blogs. You can see him in action here:

    http://thefastertimes.com/medicineandsociety/2009/10/30/the-anti-vaccine-movements-nasty-behavior/
    (posting as Dr Snotfit)

    http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/10/the_anti-vaccine_movement_strikes_back_u.php

    And over on that bastion of anti-vaccine wing-nuttery Environment of Harm, Amy Wallace and Paul Offit hatred is in full flight:

    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EOHarm/messages

    Calling Amy Wallace a “whore” is not okay. Unless of course, you called her a
    “pharma whore,” and said she was “prostituting herself out for WIRED,” which is
    different than simply calling a whore and a prostitute. Hmmm.

    In any event, she got what she wanted, which is everyone now knowing her name.
    ___

    I wanted to be Paul Offit for Halloween, I could not find a big enough syringe or a scary enough costume. Lucky for him, he doesn’t have to dress up to be scary..
    Candyce

    ____

    Alternatively, you could have dressed up as a baby with a multitude of hypodermic needles sticking out of you with all the names of various vaccines on them, and a sign that Paul Offit says that all of these vaccines will keep you healthy (NOT!).

    Boo hoo,

    Aasa

    ____

    Candyce,

    Seriously, it should not no be all that hard, This year I paraded around in my serial/cereal Killer costume yet again. I did have to tell kids not to eat the cereal on my costume!

    ____

  15. MedallionOfFerret

    I myself am convinced the peas in peanut butter have caused not only my own exceptionally severe mental derangement but also that of my friends and family and of the society I live in. You’n me J.B.–we’ll make this a better world, as soon as we get rid of vaccines and peanut butter!

    Well, maybe we really ought to keep vaccines–they save lives. But peanut butter! How many lives do any of you Great Brains know of that have been saved by peanut butter? Join your work to mine, and we’ll rid the known parts of the multiverse of this scourge forever! Subscribe now, at LushRimbaugh.com!

  16. They develop vaccines in pig byproduct cultures,so that precludes Jewish,Muslim and Witness use. Dump it on the Catholics,Protestants and Buddhists. Education is not salvation.

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