Anti-Vaxxer Sympathy

[Aractus]

You didn't even address any of my more important points. Particularly that you shouldn't victim-blame people who have distrust in health services. We know without any question at all that distrust causes people not to access essential health services. Furthermore, forced medical intervention, passing judgement on "non-compliant" patients (victim-blaming), and expecting patients to blindly agree to treatments without any consultation all leads to people becoming disengaged with the healthcare system. It causes distrust, division, it allows the fears people have to take root and to grow exponentially.

I'll give an example. The 1998 Wakefield et al. paper (since retracted for containing clear falsifications) investigated the hypothesis that the MMR vaccine could potentially trigger autism in at-risk people. The paper concluded that there was a statistically significant association in their data and that further investigation is required. Since that time however, almost all the scientific evidence has supported the conclusion that the MMR vaccine does not trigger autism in at-risk people.

Many people from the anti-vaccine camp have read this paper and understood it. It was a perfectly reasonable hypothesis. At the time it appeared to have some evidence requiring further investigation. Overtime though, people in the anti-vaccination camp heard the misinformed public at large saying "they think vaccines cause autism" - clearly not what the paper was suggesting in the first place. You think they're going to trust people who don't even know what the 1998 paper says and clearly misquotes it? Do these people also deny that Type-1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease? Do they also deny the possible link between Autism and autoimmune disease?

Wu et al. August 2015. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews. Family history of autoimmune diseases is associated with an increased risk of autism in children: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

"An overall increased risk of autism in children with family history of ADs was identified. More mechanistic studies are needed to further explain the association between family history of ADs and increased risk of autism in children."

Now I'll bet you a dollar that if you go out and survey the public about whether they think that Autism is caused by an autoimmune disease that you will get a loot of strong opinions saying "No". Maybe you'll get a lot of strong opinions from people saying "Yes". But what I really doubt is you will get people giving a balanced response which would be "I don't know" or "You'd have to ask the experts" or "Maybe". And I'll bet if you repeated your little experiment, but this time the first question you asked was "do you think vaccines cause autism" and then you asked the question pertaining to autoimmune disease that even more people would respond "No" to there being a link to autoimmune disease.

So what does this tell you? I'll tell you what it tells me. It tells me that your argument that people who get their children immunised are more informed than those that don't is both an unfounded stereotypical view, and ignorant of what concerns that those parents may actually have. I guarantee you that most people who don't get their children immunised do not do it because "they think it will harm their child". They do it for one of the reasons I listed above - they have reason to distrust the healthcare system, they have become disengaged from the healthcare system, or they fear healthcare services.

Hell I even personally know someone who in the late 1980's was advised by her doctor not to vaccinate her children. Is she some misinformed loony as well? Yes that's very old information now - but that's the story she'll be telling her children about why she didn't have them immunised. They all got measles of course, and they were all fine. Of course her information is now nearly 30-years old, and that doctor more likely than not (if he's still practising) would be advising his patients to get vaccinated. Her doctor said to her that if her children get the measles (which they did) then in fighting off the antibodies it will build a stronger immune system than a vaccination provides for the future.

Most people don't have any goddamn clue to begin with about what medical services they need and that's why they need healthcare workers - doctors, pharmacists, nurses, etc. to inform them.