Edited by author 07-27-2005 03:11 AM
The Globe and Mail, which has relentlessly been irresponsible in its coverage of autism issues, managed to publish a reasonable editorial on Monday re vaccines (you have to pay to see it, hence no URL):
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Don't fear the vaccines
Monday, July 25, 2005 Updated at 12:05 AM EDT
Until a vaccine is developed for irrational fear, knowledge will have to do. And the best knowledge says that childhood vaccines do not cause autism, hyperactivity and other such disorders.
Such, however, is the power of unfounded worry that leaders of three top U.S. health agencies felt it necessary to hold a news conference last Tuesday to reiterate that childhood vaccines are safe. The agencies (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute of Child Health Development and the Food and Drug Administration) wished to pre-empt those parents who were set to tell Congress on Wednesday about the supposed dangers of vaccines. The agencies were hoping that science and reason would trump emotion.
Before a polio vaccine was introduced in Canada, there were 20,000 polio cases annually. Before there was a diphtheria vaccine, there were 9,000 annual diphtheria cases. Before there was a rubella (German measles) vaccine, there were 69,000 rubella cases each year. In 2002, there were 16 rubella cases, and no cases of the other two. Canadians (and people in other advanced Western societies) have forgotten just how bad these diseases were. In the United States, rubella killed 2,100 infants as recently as 1964.
Understandably, parents worry about rising rates of autism and behavioural disorders. Autism rates rose sharply in the 1990s in the U.S., at the same time that thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative, was being used in childhood vaccines in that country. But no credible evidence has emerged to link thimerosal and autism, notwithstanding the conspiracy-laced theories of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and some others south of the border. It may be that the apparent increase in the autism rate (to one in 200 children from one in 1,000 three decades ago) owes much to an expanded definition of autism. No one knows.
In Canada, thimerosal has not been present in most routine childhood vaccinations since 1994 (the flu vaccine is an exception). Thimerosal has never been used in the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine. When 5,000 children who received this shot had their medical records reviewed, there was no link to developmental problems, a Columbia University study published last year in The Lancet found.
Canadians are aghast when, in far-away countries such as Nigeria, diseases on the verge of extinction such as polio rise again after community leaders declare vaccines to be part of a deadly U.S. plot. Canadians need to make sure that knowledge continues to trump irrational fear at home.
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However, the Globe and Mail has never allowed knowledge (science, reason, ethics, etc) to trump its own published (in editorials, and in reporting) irrational fears of autism. Nor have they allowed knowlege, science, reason, or basic journalistic ethics to prevent them from widely disseminating irrational fears of autism and autistic people. In the absence of exactly the irrational fears of autism the Globe and Mail promotes, how would the anti-vaccine gang sell their position?
An objective observer might take note that the righteous and unassailable (no other views are allowed) prejudices against autistics held by Canada's most influential newspaper and editorial board innoculates them against recognizing irony when they are up to their eyes in it.
The above editorial generated an excellent letter, published on Tuesday, which you can probably see here
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/Art...TERS26-10/TPHealth/ . If not, here it is:
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Vaccinate your kids
By KARIN BJORNSON
Tuesday, July 26, 2005 Page A12
Montreal -- Re Don't Fear the Vaccines (editorial -- July 25): I wish the Canadian Pediatric Society would add its voice to that of the American health agencies and shout at the top of its lungs that parents must vaccinate their children.
I recently became acquainted with a woman whose child, like mine, is less than one year old. She informed me that she had not and would not be vaccinating her boy because according to her "research," it was harmful and could cause autism. This exemplifies the power of self-appointed experts whose disdain for medical science puts children at risk.
As I am a big believer in vaccines, I asked my pediatrician if any harm could come to my son if he were to play with a non-vaccinated child.
She explained that I should limit any socializing with such a child to the outdoors. My baby has not had all his vaccines and booster shots and is therefore not fully protected from potentially harmful and/or fatal diseases.
As this woman's child is not protected at all, he is more likely to become ill and expose others. This child will eventually enter the daycare system.
Let's hope most Canadians will continue to ignore any campaign of misinformation about the safety of vaccines.
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Interestingly, the Canadian Pediatric Society has taken a position re early intervention in autism, concluding that "There is no evidence to support adopting a single autism treatment program as the gold standard."
http://www.cps.ca/english/statements/PP/pp04-02.htm
