I was one of a handful of bloggers invited into a conference call with Dr. Ari Brown, a pediatrician, a mother, and author of Baby 411 and Toddler 411. The interview was organized by Amy Pisani of Every Child By Two, an organization started by Rosalynn Carter as an advocacy group for vaccination. Naturally, the subject of the interview was about vaccine safety, and focused on the recent deadly outbreak of Hib in Minnesota.
I found Dr. Ari Brown to be extremely well informed on the science of vaccines, and the arguments against them. I was impressed with her depth of knowledge and her passion on the subject, but I was a little miffed that she kept using the term “skeptic” disparagingly. She was, of course, using the loose definition of skeptic, but some of the newspaper reporters might quote the term, which would be a shame because the skeptical community are some of the most tireless advocates for vaccines.
Dr. Brown started with an anecdote about how she was one of a few to receive the trial varicella vaccination in the 80s. Sadly, one of her young patients died of chicken pox during the time Dr. Brown was part of the vaccine’s trial. This tragedy happened only six months before the chicken pox vaccine was approved to be added to the schedule, and it’s one of the many reasons she is so passionate on the subject. Vaccine haters tend to trivialize chicken pox with pox parties, so it was nice to hear someone speak of the dangers of varicella.
The first question was by Autism News Beat. *All questions and answers are paraphrased, and the answers are framed in third person.*
There are 70,000 members of the American Academy of Pediatrics (with whom Dr. Brown is a spokesperson), but only a few choose to speak up and defend vaccines. Why is that?
They are speaking out, but they do it in the exam rooms on a daily basis with concerned parents. Not all of them have the access to the media such as Dr. Brown, but they are still tireless and passionate about the subject of vaccines. They are always receptive to Dr. Brown when she speaks about the topic, but they choose to make their opinions known professionally and not publicly.
Heather from the blog The Mother Tongue asked:
How can you combat this pervasive distrust of “Big Pharma” and corporate medicine?
Dr. Brown is from Austin Texas, the home of Whole Foods, so she sees this type of parent all the time. She wonders why it is that these parents feel comfortable listening to advice on lotions and herbs from the teens who work at Whole Foods, but they feel skeptical of professionals with degrees in medicine and science. She says that there isn’t much you can do because “birds of a feather flock together”, which you can notice in certain populations such as Oregon where a quarter of the parents fail to fully vaccinate their children in time for the start of school.
I asked a few questions that were on the same line of thought:
How do you feel about spacing out vaccines, like what Dr. Sears recommends? How about for the purposes of isolating side effects? How about parents that don’t feel comfortable jabbing a newborn on day one of life?
Dr. Sears recommends waiting until the fourth month for the Hib vaccine. Will he change his mind now that a child in Minnesota (and probably more to come) has died from Hib, a disease that could have been prevented by a vaccine? Dr. Sears publishes his alternative vaccine schedule with absolutely NO SCIENCE and with NO EVIDENCE behind it.
Parents don’t need to worry about isolating side effects because vaccines are tested for side effects by themselves and as part of the recommended combination doses. We know the side effects of vaccine combos, so parents don’t need to “do their own study”. MMRV was an example of a combo shot that was tested, and it was pulled because there were multiple adverse side effects (that’s just one example).
It isn’t a big deal if parents want to wait on that first Heb B vaccine. The reason they try to give it on the first day is because they don’t want children to slip through the cracks. The actual recommendation for when to give the Hep B jab is “birth to two months”.
Some parents argue that they are not at risk of Heb B because they were tested or they are positive that they don’t have an STD, but 1/3 of carriers of Hep B are non-traditional carriers (no std, no drug use) and (this next fact came from a fellow blogger) testing can result in false positives.
Will from Parenting Squad asked:
How can we convince these folks that “Big Pharma” isn’t out to get them?
She doesn’t know why drug companies are always portrayed as a conspiracy since they make products that improve our lives. These people don’t complain when their headaches are cured by Tylenol, do they?
I followed up on her answer with my standard response. Yes, drug companies want to make a profit, but can anyone tell me what is so profitable about making drugs that will damage children? Wouldn’t that open up litigation and bad publicity and affect their bottom line?
Heather played devil’s advocate and said that the antivaccine response would be that pharmaceutical companies are immune to prosecution because of the vaccine court, but Amy Pisani countered that it would still be bad for public relations and that parents have the option of pursuing traditional litigation against the pharmaceutical companies if they are unhappy with the results of the vaccine court. She also said that she liked my argument!
I asked:
Are you ready to step up and speak out more publicly about vaccines. Jenny McCarthy’s and RFK Jr, and the like, are defeating the science advocates by being louder and more obnoxious.
Dr. Brown spoke about vaccines on Good Morning America, but there is only so much she can do when Oprah won’t let her on the show and won’t let Every Child by Two on the show. She is happy to speak out whenever called on to do so.
I followed up someone else’s question about whether there was a difference in the vaccination schedule in the European subjects of the recent Italian study:
What are the differences between the way Europe and America vaccinates?
She couldn’t speak on either question, but she noted that Japan seperated the MMR vaccine out of fear of autism, but the rates of autism continued to climb during that time.
I also asked:
Could you tell us whether the children who contracted Hib in Minnesota were parented at home or at daycare?
Their personal information wasn’t released, but she gets this argument all the time. ‘My kids don’t need vaccines because they stay home’. Look, even if your kids stay home, they don’t live in a bubble. You have visitors, you go to the grocery, you have a spouse who works, so just be safe and vaccinate.
That was pretty much the end of the interview because of time.
So where do you stand?
Very interesting to read. I was just wondering what the general feeling on vaccines is in the States? Over here in the UK, I think it WAS pretty 'pro' across the board (maybe having free health care makes us more blindly trusting of our doctors, I don't know) and our incidence of the major diseases was really low - measles, for example, was extremely rare. Then a couple of years back, that all changed (I don't know whether the hoo-ha made it across the pond?) To cut a long story short, a doctor published a very limited study (based on 12 kids, I believe) wherein he argued that their autism was linked to the MMR (Mumps, Measles, Rubella) combi-vaccine we get here at about two years and then just before school. This kicked off a huge debate in the media and medical community over whether there was a link to this vaccine in particular (Japan pulled the same vaccine for much the same reasons), whether it was the multiple vaccines overloading the system or whether vaccines were dangerous per se. Upshot was, the take-up of the MMR dropped off and the incidence of measles shot up, a couple of kids have died. The doctor involved was villified and may well be struck off, but there was also a big counter argument that it is in the government's interest to discredit the doc's findings, because they've already invested millions in the MMR vaccine and don't want to back down and have to pay out compensation. Wondered if there's a similar general debate going on over there, or whether it's just concerned parents who are looking for more information?
UK vs US
There were a couple of articles on this topic in the Guardian recently
'No jab, no school'
MMR: Why we should follow US policy on vaccinations
In Chicago you need to have your kids vaccinated before you start school but you can claim a religious exemption if you want.
About that doctor...
Yeah, Dr. Andrew Wakefield was also paid 400,000 pounds by lawyers who wanted to sue the company that makes MMR. It was also recently revealed that he made up everything in his study. You can check it out on my blog at http://skepticdad.wordpress.com/2009/02/08/discredited-dr-wakefield-further-discredited/.
Americans are more concerned with thimerosal than they are the MMR, but Wakefield's (bogus) study is slowly starting to creep up in the public's awareness. The real problem here is Jenny McCarthy spreading nonsense on Oprah about how she just knows that vaccines cause autism from her personal experience with her son (and her years using google)
We are not children...
Blimey, I didn't know about the 'no jabs, no school' thing. I'm actually supportive of vaccination generally (my lad has had the measles jab among others) but I'd be resistant to anything that is effectively forced on my child. If you look at the comments under the second Guardian link, you can see the whole debate/mad irrational argument we're having over here. There's a hell of a lot of ignorance and fear there, but then I guess that's parenting for you - I can well remember the guilt and terror when we first gave him formula. Now I think 'What was the big deal?' but when you're suddenly responsible for a tiny life, you don't necessarily act rationally. Anyway, personally, I think the whole mess over here could have been avoided if the government's reaction hadn't been so bloody-minded and knee-jerk. If they'd spent less time attacking Andrew Wakefield himself and more time addressing parents' concerns, it probably would have blown over. By telling people their fears are stupid, you only get them to dig their heels in more. Surely the answer isn't forcing jabs on kids, it's explaining the facts to parents, supported by proper research?
Trust and lack of it
I think one of the big failing arguments about getting the vaccines and that they are safe is that the big pharmacies would not do anything that would harm the public due to bad PR. Unfortunatly if you look around that is currently the case. Also, big pharmacies are in business for the money not some great public service to rid the world of diseases. Pharmacies put money into cost benefit analysis and can determine with known side effects or even unknown problems, how much a lawsuite would cost them and how bad it would impact the bottom line. The same thing occurs with the airline industry where they don't or are not required to implement saftey measures because the cost benefit analysis says it will cost more then if an airplane or two falls out of the sky. The number of lawsuites against pharmacies has increased. In alot of cases, I'm sure the pharmacies were not aware that some drug or product would cause something to occur. Part of this is probably due to rushing things to market as well as our still lack of full understanding of the human body and how everything would impact it. Some vaccines contain mercury. It has already been established that mercury in large quantities is bad. What about Mercury in small quantities? What exactly does that do to the human body? How does it impact the development of the brain? Mercury has already been found in small quantities in fish, how does the combination of both quantities impact the human body? It seems the jury is still out on the full impacts of mercury and how everything is impacted.
I personaly don't fully trust a commercial company to rid the world of a problem if ridding that problem would impact their bottom line. They are in it for the money after all. I also don't fully trust our federal government to tell me what is good and not good for me. The list of things not good generally comes from public outcry because someone finally died due to something. The biggest case in point is milk. There have been studies that show that milk might increase the risk of prostate cancer. The theory has been it's due to natural estrogens being more potent thand environmental estrogens, and with cows being milkd so often, they will produce estrogen in their milk. The latest article I can find about it is here http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/41720/title/Scientists_find_a_soup_of_suspects_while_probing_milk%E2%80%99s_link_to_cancer and looks like it will be published on March 28th. The problem is, and this goes to my point, when is this ever in the main stream media? I mean basic logic would tell you that it's possible that it might not be a good idea to drink milk as an adult. Animals naturally stop producing milk and when the animals get older they don't drink their mothers milk, or any other milk the entire time. Humans don't continously produce mlik either, so why would it be considered a good idea to continually drink it? It would be at least worth looking into a long time ago.
The feds still allow food coloring that's has a high risk of causing problems in children in other countries ( not sure why children in this country would be different ) so why trust them? They not only have to listen to you and I ( when they do ) but also the lobbies for various industries.
Anyway, the problem is who can you trust? Seems no one and it will always be a gamble one way or the other.
That's my story and I'm sticking with it.