We found that out last year when an unvaccinated teen returned from a trip overseas and developed measles.
“Although patient A’s parents had chosen not to vaccinate him, his immunocompromised brother, an organ transplant recipient, had received intravenous immunoglobulin to protect him against measles before traveling overseas. When patient A’s illness was reported, SCCPHD recommended that his brother receive additional intravenous immunoglobulin and be quarantined 7 additional days; the family followed both recommendations. Patient C’s unvaccinated sister, aged 17 years, received parental permission to choose to receive MMR vaccine when her brother was quarantined; she opted to receive the vaccine.”
Notes from the Field: Measles Outbreak in an Era of Stricter Immunization Requirements — California, March 2018
While that isn’t so surprising, it is that instead of cooperating with health department investigators, so that they can find and quarantine contact, several people lied. That led to more people getting sick and the outbreak going on longer than it should have.
It is also amazing that they hadn’t already vaccinated their kids, having a high risk, immunocompromised child in the house who couldn’t receive the MMR vaccine!
Stanley Plotkin is typically described as “a prominent figure in the history of vaccinology, whose work on vaccine development has led to a significant reduction in morbidity and mortality from infectious diseases in the second part of 20th century. “
Why?
For one thing, he developed the rubella vaccine that we still use today.
He also worked on vaccines against CMV, polio, chicken pox, rabies, and rotavirus.
What Did Stanley Plotkin Say While He Was Under Oath?
That’s not why anti-vaccine folks are talking about him these days, or maybe it is…
Mostly, they are misinterpreting comments he made during a videotaped deposition.
“Lori Matheson is fighting her ex-husband, Michael Schmitt, for the right to decide if their two-year-old daughter should be vaccinated.”
Michigan anti-vaccination case to goes to court
A videotaped deposition in a case involving parents who disagreed about vaccinating their daughter…
Even though it isn’t his exact quote and anti-vaccine folks don’t give you the full context of what he was talking about, it is clear that Dr. Plotkin simply meant that you can’t prove a negative.
What do anti-vaccine folks think he said?
“I would say it is logically true that you cannot say, you cannot point to proof that it doesn’t cause autism. ”
“I could not say that as a, as a scientist or a logician. But I can say as a physician that, no, they do not cause autism, because as a physician, I have to take the whole body of scientific information into consideration when I make a recommendation for a child.”
Stanley Plotkin, M.D.
All he is saying is that you can’t definitively prove a negative.
Seth Mnookin explain it well – One of the different things in communicating the fact that there is no link is that science and English are not really the same language. So when a scientist says, “We have no evidence that there’s a link between vaccines and autism,” what they’re really saying is, “We are as positive as someone can humanly be that there’s no link.”
For example, just because I have never seen a black swan, I can’t use that as proof that black swans don’t exist somewhere. After all, I haven’t been everywhere.
“…scientists can be at a real disadvantage in this debate because they, by their nature, are careful in how they present their conclusions.”
Vaccines: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
What else do anti-vaccine folks have a problem with?
“After a detour to obtain credentials as a pediatrician, I returned to Wistarto work on rubella. Those years were fraught with advances and reverses, controversy and eventually vindication. The pandemic of CRS babies in 1964-65 was an important stimulus to research on the vaccine. “
Stanley Plotkin’s On the Occasion of the Presentation Of The 2002 Albert B. Sabin Gold Medal
During the rubella epidemic of 1964-65, there were 12.5 million rubella virus infections, which “resulted in 11,250 therapeutic or spontaneous abortions, 2,100 neonatal deaths, and 20,000 infants born with congenital rubella syndrome.”
And that’s just in the United States.
The controversy?
“There were only two fetuses involved in making vaccines. When fetal strains of, fibroblast strains were first developed, I was involved in that work trying to characterize those cells; but they were not used to make vaccines.”
Stanley Plotkin, M.D.
It is well known (this isn’t some shocking truth as some are trying to push) that some vaccines are made with fetal embryo fibroblast cells (the WI-38 and MRC-5 cells) from cell lines that are derived (they can replicate infinitely) from two electively terminated pregnancies (abortions) in the 1960s.
Those two fetuses weren’t the only two fetuses ever used in research though, they were just the only ones used to actually make vaccines.
“Human diploid cell strains (HDCSs) are batches of cells that are currently used for different purposes, including culturing viruses for the manufacturing of vaccines”
A brief history of human diploid cell strains.
They had to get to the point where they knew how to make vaccines in human cell lines though and that’s what he is talking about in the deposition.
“Q. In any event, so we have 76 in this study. Would you approximate it’s been a few hundred fetuses?
A. Oh, no, I don’t think it was that many. Probably not many more than in this paper. And I should stipulate that we had nothing to do with the cause of the abortion.”
It took some experimentation to find the right kind of cells and the right methods, but ultimately, they found that fetal embryo fibroblast cells were the best to use to grow many viruses.
What about the other “issues” brought up in the deposition?
Did he experiment on orphans, people who were mentally handicapped, or those who lived in third world countries?
“I don’t remember specifically, but it’s possible. And, again, I repeat that in the 1960s, that was more or less common practice. I’ve since changed my mind. But those were, that was a long time ago.”
Stanley Plotkin, M.D.
Those were different times, but Dr. Plotkin’s vaccine studies weren’t unethical and weren’t like what was done at Willowbrook, in which children were purposely exposed to hepatitis, with the justification that most of them ended up getting it anyway.
Surprisingly, in the early 1970s, there was still some debate about the ethics of doing experiments on children, and as you can see, using ableist language to describe children with a disability.
And from those times, experts developed the rules for how things are now done.
Ironically, anti-vaccine folks are pushing this stuff about Plotkin, but don’t understand why leaving kids completely unvaccinated and unprotected in a study is unethical.
“One is morally free to use the vaccine regardless of its historical association with abortion. The reason is that the risk to public health, if one chooses not to vaccinate, outweighs the legitimate concern about the origins of the vaccine. This is especially important for parents, who have a moral obligation to protect the life and health of their children and those around them.”
National Catholic Bioethics Center FAQ on the Use of Vaccines
Or why it’s immoral to push anti-vaccine propaganda or put others at risk to get a vaccine-preventable disease.
“Results indicate that the total number of cases of poliomyelitis, measles, mumps, rubella, varicella, adenovirus, rabies and hepatitis A averted or treated with WI-38 related vaccines was 198 million in the U.S. and 4.5 billion globally (720 million in Africa; 387 million in Latin America and the Caribbean; 2.7 billion in Asia; and 455 million in Europe). The total number of deaths averted from these same diseases was approximately 450,000 in the U.S., and 10.3 million globally (1.6 million in Africa; 886 thousand in Latin America and the Caribbean; 6.2 million in Asia; and 1.0 million in Europe).”
Olshansky et al on The Role of the WI-38 Cell Strain in Saving Lives and Reducing Morbidity
Breaking News – There are 2 new cases in Clark County (70 cases), bringing the total case count to 75 cases.
It started with a confirmed case of measles in a child in late December.
There were soon reports of more cases.
And more cases.
The Pacific Northwest Measles Outbreak of 2019
But the measles cases didn’t stay in Clark County.
Two of the unvaccinated kids from Clark County traveled to Hawaii while they were contagious.
As with other recent large measles outbreaks, cases soon spread to neighboring counties.
As of late January, there are now measles cases linked to this ongoing outbreak in Clark County and King County (Washington) and Multnomah County (Oregon).
The rapid growth of the outbreak led Clark County to declare a local public health emergency and Washington’ governor to declare a State of Emergency in all counties in the state of Washington.
“The measles outbreak and its effects impact the life and health of our people, as well as the economy of Washington State, and is a public disaster that affects life, health, property or the public peace.”
Are you familiar with the immunization rates in this part of the country? About the only good thing you can say about Washington’s immunization rates are that they are better than Oregon‘s…
How many of them are vaccinated? Anti-vaccine folks are pushing hard to convince folks that everyone in the outbreaks are vaccinated. Don’t believe them!
As in most outbreaks, almost all of the people in this outbreak are unvaccinated.
How many people will get sick in the Pacific Northwest Measles Outbreak of 2019 before it ends?
You will have to make an extra appointment if you followed his immunization plan and left your kids unvaccinated and at risk during this outbreak.
Are they going to realize that unless they are malnourished or have a vitamin deficiency, that taking extra vitamin A that you order from someone’s online store will not reduce their risk of severe complications if their unvaccinated child gets measles?
“Please contact your pediatrician or doctor if your child is scary sick, struggling to breathe or unable to eat or very lethargic or otherwise seriously ill. Let them know you are worried they may have measles so they can arrange not to contaminate the waiting room or the whole office.”
Paul Thomas, Integrative Pediatrician
Getting vaccinated can help keep your kids from getting “scary sick” from measles…
“The above recommendations are informational only. Please consult with your doctor before implementing anything you might learn here.”
more people don’t die from getting the MMR or any other vaccine than from the diseases they protect us against
whether the death rate of measles is 1 in 1000 or 1 in 10,000 cases, remember that just before the measles vaccine came out, in the early 1960s, nearly 500 people would die of measles each year. And it isn’t that a person dies after 1,000 or 10,000 cases. With more cases, there is just a higher chance that someone will eventually die.
Anti-vaccine folks don’t seem to like that they are getting more attention these days.
Why are they getting more attention?
More unvaccinated folks are getting sick.
But Did Anyone Die?
Is that really such a big deal though?
Hillary Simpson doesn’t think measles outbreaks are a big deal because she doesn’t think that anyone has died….
It’s not like anyone has died in all of these outbreaks, is it?
Actually, they have…
Most anti-vaccine folks conveniently seem to not be aware of her, but an immunocompromised woman died after she was exposed to measles during a 2015 outbreak in Clallam County, Washington.
“New details about the first confirmed measles death in the U.S. since 2003 show that the victim, a 28-year-old woman with underlying health problems, was likely exposed to the virus at a Port Angeles tribal health clinic.
Nearly three dozen other people also were potentially exposed to the highly contagious germ on Jan. 29, 2015, at the Lower Elwha Health Clinic by a 52-year-old man who became the first case of measles confirmed in Clallam County in two decades.”
Fatal measles case linked to exposure at tribal clinic, records show
So yes, someone did die during the recent measles outbreaks.
A 28-year-old woman died in Clallam County, Washington.
Not everyone is all better.
And during the 2013 measles outbreak in Brooklyn, a pregnant woman with measles was hospitalized and had a miscarriage.
Yes, tragically people have died because of the anti-vaccine movement.
And tragically, unless folks stop believing this kind of anti-vaccine propaganda and start vaccinating and protecting their kids, even more people will die unnecessarily.
I was about six or seven years old and it was bad. Still, I’m not sure if I remember because I had such a bad case or because it made me miss Halloween that year.
It was almost certainly both, as I remember being covered in spots from head to toe.
What I don’t recall is having many visitors. Why didn’t my mom throw me a chicken pox party!
I also don’t remember going to a chicken pox party to get sick.
Believe It or Not, Chicken Pox Parties Are Still a Thing
“Chickenpox (varicella) is generally a much milder illness in children than in adults, with considerably lower rates of severe disease and death. Varicella is also virtually universal in many populations, meaning that very few individuals escape infection over a lifetime. Thus, a sound logic underlies the idea of chickenpox parties, at which susceptible children can acquire the contagious causative pathogen, varicella zoster virus (VZV), from their peers. However, chickenpox is not without risks, even for children of this age; severe, complicated, and occasionally fatal varicella occur in previously healthy children, as well as the immunocompromised (who are at very considerable risk).”
Hambleton et al on Chickenpox Party or Varicella Vaccine?
Most folks understand that. They get their kids vaccinated and have helped get chicken pox under very good control, with outbreaks of chicken pox declining over 95%.
“Each year, more than 3.5 million cases of varicella, 9,000 hospitalizations, and 100 deaths are prevented by varicella vaccination in the United States”
CDC on Monitoring the Impact of Varicella Vaccination
Apparently, not everyone has gotten the message though.
Remember when CPS had to investigate the mom who was having chicken pox parties in Plano, Texas a few years ago?
“On the page, parents post where they live and ask if anyone with a child who has the chicken pox would be willing to send saliva, infected lollipops or clothing through the mail.”
CBS 5 Investigates mail order diseases
Or when anti-vaccine folks were selling and mailing lollipops contaminated with chicken pox to folks so that they could skip the trouble of finding a chicken pox party?
And then there’s that time that a family served chicken pox contaminated punch at their chicken pox party. Oh wait, that was The Simpsons…
Chicken pox party – The Simpsons did it in the Milhouse of Sand and Fog episode in Season 17.
So what are they up to now?
Folks are still advertising chicken pox parties in anti-vaccine Facebook groups.
More of the same…
Does she know that the chicken pox vaccine likely decreases your risk of getting shingles later in life?
Apparently, there are still plenty of folks looking for chicken pox parties to infect their kids.
Why?
It is easy to see a lot of cognitive biases at play in the decision to host or bring a child to a chicken pox party, including ambiguity aversion (prefer what they think are the known risks of getting the disease), bandwagoning (they think everyone else is doing it, because in their echo chambers of anti-vaccine propaganda, everyone might), and optimism bias, etc.
There is also a very poor perception of risks, as the risks from a natural chicken pox infection are far, far greater than any risk from the vaccine.
Don’t forget to tent and share breath!!!
In bigger news, Facebook has groups who’s mission is “finding pox,” so that parents can get their kids sick!
The mission of PX Colorado is finding pox!
How many other PoX type groups are there on Facebook?
Do they understand the consequences of having these pox parties?
The latest chicken pox party hostess is apparently a nurse – at least for now…
Of course, an investigation from CPS, the health department, or a medical board isn’t the most serious consequence that should discourage folks from hosting or attending a chicken pox party.
Chicken pox can be a serious, even life-threatening infection. Sure, many kids just get a mild case, but others get more serious cases and have bad complications, including skin infections, encephalitis, sepsis, or stroke.
And some people do still die from chicken pox, which is supposed to be a mild, childhood illness.
“This report describes a varicella death in an unvaccinated, previously healthy adolescent aged 15 years.”
Varicella Death of an Unvaccinated, Previously Healthy Adolescent — Ohio, 2009
Fortunately, these deaths have been nearly eliminated thanks to the chicken pox vaccine.
And that’s why parents who are on a mission for “finding pox” should rethink things and switch to a mission to get their kids vaccinated and protected.
But even before the smallpox vaccine was developed by Edward Jenner in 1796, we had variolation. While we have evidence of smallpoxinfections as early as the 2nd millennium BC, the earliest use of variolation is from the 10th to 18th Century, well after the Bible was written.
“I just decided to just google what the bible says about vaccines. There’s nothing in the bible that talks about vaccines. I just want you to think about that. So if God knew in the future that he was going to create these amazing things that were going to be the best scientific advancements, like oh, my God, they’re so great, why isn’t there anything, any inkling of talk about these things called vaccinations coming into being later to save people? If that was really God’s plan and they’re so amazing, then why isn’t it in there at all? Maybe there’s a chapter where they talk about something like an injection, like this health injection, right? Like, why didn’t God talk about that if he knew that it was going to come and save the world?”
Brittney Kara
It also shouldn’t be a surprise that they do it to try and sell you stuff, like Brittney Kara’s “Awakening Reset Program.”
Or Isagenix products.
Wait, is Isagenix mentioned in the Bible?
“You can be confident that Isagenix is committed to your success by offering you the opportunity to live a healthy, clean, and lean lifestyle—and to create wealth while doing so.”
Are multi-level marketing companies?
Brittney Kara is not the first anti-vaccine person to say that God does not support vaccines and she likely won’t be the last.
“The society of the 21st century, just as many societies and cultures in the history of human civilization, use religion as an excuse for wars, discrimination, and now for vaccination refusal.”
Pelčić on Religious exception for vaccination or religious excuses for avoiding vaccination
She may be the first to say that “believing in vaccines is a mental disorder.”
Not sure where she gets that…
Still, despite the availability of religious exemptions to vaccines in most states, it is important to understand that no mainstream religions oppose vaccines.
“For its part, Catholic social teaching entails a duty to vaccinate in order to protect the vulnerable.”
Paul J. Carson on Catholic Social Teaching and the Duty to Vaccinate
In fact, most teach about a duty and moral obligation to vaccinate.
“Giving children a healthy start in life, no matter where they are born or the circumstances of their birth, is the moral obligation of every one of us. It is heartbreaking to think that three million children die each year from diseases that we can prevent.”
Nelson Mandela (2002 Vaccine Conference)
And if there is a moral obligation to get vaccinated, then what does that say about those who push propaganda that scares parents away from vaccinating and protecting their kids?
Parents likely aren’t going to agree on every single decision about their kids.
This is especially true when parents actually have different parenting styles.
Whether it is about discipline techniques, what time the kids should go to bed, or how much allowance they should get, disagreements are bound to come up at some point if both parents are actively involved in parenting.
What Does Your Significant Other Think About Vaccines?
What happens if you disagree about vaccines?
Do you even know what your SO thinks about vaccines?
Does your SO ever talk about a Big Pharma conspiracy?
Do they buy into the myths that vaccines are full of toxins or that they don’t even work?
Are they afraid that vaccines will damage your baby in some way?
Instead of going to the doctor when they are sick, do they instead grab some essential oils and head to their chiropractor, acupuncturist, and a naturopath?
Ideally, like most other parenting issues, you would have had a talk about vaccines way before you started planning a family and you would know what your significant other thinks.
Unfortunately, we often hear about disagreements about vaccines after a couple already has a baby.
In some cases, they not only have kids, but have already split up. Then, in addition to fighting about child support, visitation schedules, and who gets the house, you might have separated or divorced parents trying to convince a judge that only one of them should be allowed to make vaccination decisions.
That could mean that an unvaccinated child gets vaccinated over one parent’s objections or that a child stays unvaccinated, even though the other parent wants him to be vaccinated and protected.
When Parents Disagree About Vaccines
While it is hard to know the best thing to do in this situation, there is one thing that you absolutely shouldn’t do.
Don’t get your child secretly vaccinated if your SO is opposed to vaccines.
Don’t vaccinate your child behind the other parent’s back.
Ask what exactly they are worried about and make sure to get them answers for those specific concerns. It might also help to have them come to your next appointment and talk to your doctor.
Can you just agree to disagree about vaccines? I guess, as long as the one who didn’t get their way is going to agree to not be upset about it. If that’s the parent who wanted their child vaccinated, then that also means their is child is left at risk for getting a vaccine-preventable disease while they try to “hide in the herd.”
Can they just compromise?
While there is no benefit to skipping or delaying any vaccines over being fully vaccinated and protected, it is better than being unvaccinated. Hopefully, learning to compromise and lots of counseling can get you both to where you aren’t in a situation when a judge makes your vaccination decisions for you.
What to Know When Parents Disagree About Vaccines
It is best to know what your partner thinks about vaccines before you start planning on having kids.
