UPDATE: NBC has blocked my clip from the Morning Joe program, an interview the morning after CNN’s GOP candidate debate, Donald Trump weighed in on his performance, and specifically here, the science of immunology, and climate change, as he understands them.
In the debate, Mr. Trump repeated long-debunked fictions about vaccinations and public health – but the real shocker was when the two physicians onstage, Dr. Ben Carson, and Dr. Rand Paul, responded in such a timid fashion that Trump was able to claim they “backed him up” on his anti-vax rhetoric.
It’s not pretty. On climate change, the performance was equally grim.
People are going to die because of this exchange.
Carson then turned the subject to the scheduling of vaccines:
“But it is true that we are probably giving way too many in too short a period of time. And a lot of pediatricians now recognize that, and I think are cutting down on the number and the proximity in which those are done, and I think that’s appropriate.”
Are pediatricians cutting down on the number and proximity of vaccines? As for Trump’s claim about autism, as PolitiFact has noted before, decades of epidemiological research have demonstrated autism rates do not increase when vaccines are introduced to a population.
We contacted Carson’s campaign to ask for his evidence and did not get a reply.
Vaccines
Doctors follow a childhood vaccination schedule prepared by the U.S. Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Children may receive as many as 24 immunizations by their second birthday and may receive up to five injections during a single doctor’s visit, according to a 2013 paper by The Institute of Medicines of the National Academies. That vaccine schedule is also supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control.
UPDATE: NBC also blocked my clip from the Rachel Maddow show, describing the horrified reactions from the American Academy of Pediatrics to the epic spew of lies and ignorance from self described presidential candidates, on a critical issue of public health. Thanks NBC.
More than 90 percent of children entering kindergarten have been immunized with recommended vaccines in accordance with this schedule. But some parents have sought to delay vaccines or reduce the number given per visit, while others have rejected them entirely, despite recommendations by the scientific community.
That’s not a good idea, according to the report.
“Delaying or declining vaccination has led to outbreaks of such vaccine-preventable diseases as measles and whooping cough that may jeopardize public health, particularly for people who are under-immunized or who were never immunized,” wrote researchers.
The researchers also concluded that there is “no evidence that the schedule is unsafe.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a press release in 2013 stating that it agreed with the paper’s conclusion. After the Republican debate, it issued a new statement in support of vaccines:
“Claims that vaccines are linked to autism, or are unsafe when administered according to the recommended schedule, have been disproven by a robust body of medical literature. It is dangerous to public health to suggest otherwise,” wrote Karen Remley, executive director of the academy.
Despite the scientific consensus, pediatricians are facing pressure from parents to delay vaccines.
A survey of 534 pediatricians done for the American Academy of Pediatricians in 2012 showed that 93 percent reported that within a typical month some parents asked to spread out the vaccinations. The vast majority thought these parents were putting their children at risk for disease but thought they would build trust with the families if they agreed to the request.
While there is anecdotal evidence that some pediatricians have acquiesced to parents’ requests to delay vaccinations, that decision is not rooted in public health or science.
“There is no evidence that pediatricians ‘recognize’ that we give too many vaccines in too short a time,” said Mark Schleiss, division director of pediatric infectious diseases at University of Minnesota. “Far from it. … There is no evidence at all that spacing vaccines out or changing the schedule would improve health or help children.”
Eugene R. Hershorin, chief of the division of general pediatrics at the University of Miami, pointed to what happened a decade ago when England and Japan delayed the DTaP vaccine, a combination vaccine used to prevent diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis.
“There was a tremendous increase in the incidence of pertussis in both countries, leading them to re-institute the schedule immediately,” he said.
The test of character here was that, the medical community has completely debunked claims of harm from vaccines, and this was a chance for Carson, or Paul, to substantially differentiate themselves from Trump, and the rest of the field, by making a strong defense of science. Not only that, they could have delivered a powerful positive message to an audience of 25 million.
They both failed to do so for the same reason. They are keenly aware that the success of their campaign in the early stages depends on appealing to a small slice of the most ignorant, most paranoid and uninformed slice of the Republican electorate – and they were willing to sacrifice an important message about the most powerful medical advances of the last 200 years for their own political ambition. This goes triple for their non-responses on climate change.
To be fair, as far as medical hypotheses go, Trump’s idea is not completely crazy. Or at least it wouldn’t be if this were still 1998.
That year, a well-respected journal published a paper by researcher Andrew Wakefield and 12 of his colleagues linking a standard measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism. Despite its tiny sample size of 12 and its speculative conclusions, the study was publicized far and wide — launching a global movement involving celebrities like Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey (and of course Trump) who warned parents to stop vaccinating their children. The result was what public health officials reported was a dangerous drop in MMR vaccinations.
The problem: The study was an elaborate fraud.
Editors of the Lancet, which published the original piece, discovered that Wakefield had been funded by attorneys for parents who were pursuing lawsuits against vaccine companies and that a number of elements of the paper were misreported.
In February 2010, the journal retracted the piece, and in an investigative piece in 2011, in The BMJ found even more shenanigans in the way the study was conducted. Some parents of children in the study reported by Wakefield to have autism said they did not, and others who were listed in the study as having no problems before the vaccine actually had had developmental issues.
Journalist Brian Deer wrote: “No case was free of misreporting or alteration. Taken together … records cannot be reconciled with what was published, to such devastating effect, in the journal.”
THE FACTS: Medical researchers have debunked claims that vaccines given to children can lead to autism and developmental disorders. The Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, says vaccines are not free from adverse effects, “but most are very rare or very mild.” A study that drew a connection between autism and vaccines was found faulty and retracted in 2010.
Concerned that unsubstantiated claims about vaccines have resurfaced in the campaign, Dr. Karen Remley, executive director of the American Academy of Pediatrics, sought to put doubts to rest.
“Claims that vaccines are linked to autism, or are unsafe when administered according to the recommended schedule, have been disproven by a robust body of medical literature,” she said in a statement. “It is dangerous to public health to suggest otherwise.”
As to the idea of spacing out vaccines or lessening doses, she said: “There is no ‘alternative’ immunization schedule. Delaying vaccines only leaves a child at risk of disease for a longer period of time.”
Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was just as categorical Thursday at an annual news conference on flu vaccination.
“Study after study have concluded there is no risk” of autism from vaccines, he said. He added that the discredited claims have sometimes interfered with research aiming to understand and prevent autism.
Last night, the war on facts continued – Trump failed to correct a questioner who asserted President Obama is a Muslim.
“Are pediatricians cutting down on the number and proximity of vaccines? ”
No. No, they are not.
As a former pharmaceutical rep, I can tell you that Official Treatment Recommendations put out by government departments or national physician boards are taken very seriously indeed. The scientists and physicians who make up these panels are among the most informed in the country, and their deliberations are careful and comprehensive.
Treatment recommendations are not some slap-dash fabrication, you know, like a Republican candidate’s platform or the talking point they are using this week.
If a mindnumbingly stupid section of society want to increase their mortality and improve the gene pool, why stop them? 🙂
Unfortunately, an unvaccinated stupid person is a threat to those not yet old enough nor able to be vaccinated.
is there a Darwin award for this?
There should be quite a few honorable mentions at least!
Parents have already passed on their genes so they would only technically qualify for a full award if their failure to vaccinate their progeny resulted in all of them not making it to reproductive age, and if the parents decide not to, or can’t have any more.
Given the numbers, there are probably a few examples that merit nomination.
We have laws in Australia that prevent unvaccinated children from attending daycare and also prevents parents of unvaccinated children from receiving some social security payments. After the laws were recently introduced, the number of conscientious objectors decreased substantially. It didn’t stop one group of idiots from applying to open a daycare centre for unvaccinated children. These same idiots in the past have said they are happy to benefit from the herd immunity supplied by those who do vaccinate. That they can seemingly hold the two contradictory positions simultaneously is evidence that they are morons.
Morons indeed! We have laws in the U.S. that mandate vaccinations for school children and day care recipients, but all one has to do to avoid them is care for your own pre-schoolers at home and home school them when they get older. Nearly 1.8 million kids (about 3.5% of the total) are home-schooled in the U.S.
IMO, we need laws that follow up on each recorded birth and require vaccinations on the recommended schedule—-of course, people can have their babies at home and stop reporting births to get around that, but I don’t think even the diehards are ready to do that in substantial numbers.
You said it all with:
“The test of character here was that this was a chance for Carson, or Paul, to substantially differentiate themselves from Trump, and the rest of the field, by making a strong defense of science….They both failed to do so for the same reason. They are keenly aware that the success of their campaign in the early stages depends on appealing to a small slice of the most ignorant, most paranoid and uninformed slice of the Republican electorate”.
Yep, we can cross Carson and Paul off the list—-neither one has the courage to stand up to Trump and they thereby dishonor the Hippocratic Oath and disqualify themselves as presidential material.
Those “most ignorant, paranoid, and uninformed” are the christian fundamentalists and libertarians that interpret the bible literally and fear “big government” (and vote overwhelmingly for Repugnants).
Anyone who has followed the “vaccines cause autism” issue knows that it was totally debunked many years ago, and that it was something that was believed by people across the political spectrum back in the early days. It was perhaps actually somewhat more of a “Hollywood liberal” belief back then, but the fact that true liberals believe in rational analysis of valid evidence and are willing to update their beliefs based on new evidence means that the issue now lives mainly in the minds of the Repugnants (who never seem to change their minds about anything, and when confronted with overwhelming facts and evidence just double down on their original ignorance).
And in answer to the question “Is there a Darwin Award for this?”. Yes, the entire human species will win a Darwin Award for allowing that “mindnumbingly stupid section of society” known as the free-marketers, conservatives, plutocrats, and Republicans to destroy the biosphere and kill off most of mankind, but the killing will be mainly through AGW (vaccination is really a side issue in the greater picture)
Carl Sagan once said “Science is a way of thinking”. It seems to me that “popular politics is a way of not thinking” and those that practice it are proud of it.
Nice observation!
Does anyone think the press will now stop equating science denial on the left with science denial on the right, on the grounds that it’s ‘left-wingers’ who deny the safety and efficacy of vaccines while the right denies climate science? I’m betting that the equivalence trope will survive this obvious refutation… It’s not just Republicans who have given up on the idea of evidence, it’s the press, too.
As to why NBC is blocking the clips, I strongly suspect they’re too desperate to keep these clowns happy and willing to appear on their broadcasts to allow what appears in those broadcasts to be used (in the cold light of day) to criticize what these nut-bars and snake-oil salesmen are saying. The intellectual legitimacy of Republican politics cannot be challenged (else the ‘neutral’ political framework of the mainstream press will collapse altogether…).
I used to think the answer to ignorance was education. But we now know that strongly held beliefs define who we are, and are thus immune to facts. The internet echo chamber that allows us to marinate in our own juices — and avoid everybody else’s — seems to only make matters worse. We can all find others who will support whatever nonsense we wish to hold dear. So the answer is laws and policies that coerce behaviors that minimize the risks to all of us from preventable diseases.
Carson doesn’t “believe” in evolution, either.
‘Nuf said.