While I don't agree with the factual basis on which they are making their decision, it is entirely rational given their belief.
MMR are [edit] usually temporary and can typically be effectively treated by the medical systems of industrialized nations, whereas autism is permanent and generally untreatable.
It is analogous to purchasing a large heavy vehicle (e.g. SUV) based on the superior crash protection it provides passengers and despite the increased risk to other vehicles in a collision and the potential for increased long term environmental degradation.
For a start, 'MMR' isn't a disease. It's an acronym for the vaccine which is Measles, Mumps and Rubella. Each of which is thought of as a benign disease, but can have bad consequences.
Measles has a death rate of healthy adults of 3 in 1000. It is deadly for people with compromised immune systems, such as someone with AIDS.
Mumps is less of a threat but can still lead to other complications such as testicular infection and possibile sterility in young men.
Rubella is generally benign but if a pregnant woman contracts the disease in the first trimester it has a 1 in 5 chance of miscarriage, and in the remaining surviving cases the infant can be severely handicapped including sight, heart, bone and organ problems. You absolutely do want Rubella immunity amongst all women of childbearing age.
So I don't understand the anti-vaccine crowd either. Because the range of possible outcomes can be also very bad, and the chances are much higher of contracting one of the diseases than of developing Autism.
I have corrected the grammatical error. It now says, "MMR are temporary." I was fully aware of what MMR stands for, and thank you for pointing out my lack of clarity.
With a mortality rate of 3 in 1000 and an incidence of ~.2 cases per 1,000,000 per year in the US, one would predict a death from measles about every 5 years or so.
Given claims in the media that 1 in every 150 people is effected by Autism, a reasonable person might calculate that their child is 33,333 times more likely to be autistic than to die from measles.
Even if one believes there is only 0.1% chance that there is a causal link between MMR vaccines and autism, the probable risk of autism is still orders of magnitude higher than dying from measles.
It is only if one believes that the probability of a causal link between the MMR vaccine and autism is approximately zero that the risk of death from measles is greater than that of autism.
Once one believes that there is even a slight possibility of a link, then there can be a justified belief that the benefits of no vaccination outweigh the risks.
Yes, but it is wrong to compare the current measles infection rate with MMR vaccines to the autism rate. If you remove Measles vaccination, the figures will return to much, much higher rates of infection in a short space of time. To use your prior analogy, it would be using crash statistics from an SUV-free highway to argue for or against the introduction of SUVs. You can't use the current measles infection rate to make valid arguments to removing vaccines. The correct comparison is the pre-vaccination measles infection and death rates, which are probably 20 times higher.
Besides, a 'claim in the media' of 1 in 150 isn't a strong enough number for this debate.
I'm not debating the merits of MMR vaccines or arguing against vaccination. I'm not even making a statistical argument.
All I'm saying is that the decision of people who forgo vaccination is often a justified rational belief, even if it is incorrect. Keep in mind that most parents know a child with autism and very few know a child who died from MM or R.
While driving, it is rational and justified to believe that the vehicle's speed is 60mph when the speedometer reads "60mph." However, if the speedometer is miscalibrated your belief is incorrect.
It cannot be said that being anti-vaccine is a justified rational belief when it has an unjustified irrational basis. It is justified and rational to believe you're going 60mph when the speedometer says so because we all have experience with the reliability of speedometers, even though it's possible to be incorrect.
To use a different analogy, imagine I believed carpet was lava and stepping on it would burn me and break my mother's back. While this would explain why I'd avoid stepping on carpet, it would hardly be accurate to describe it as a justified, rational belief.
> MMR are [edit] usually temporary and can typically be effectively treated by the medical systems of industrialized nations, whereas autism is permanent and generally untreatable.
Sure, but forgoing the MMR vaccine to prevent autism makes as much sense as forgoing baths to prevent brain tumours.
Especially considering that measles has no effective treatment whatsoever. The treatment for measles is piss poor symptomatic treatment (IE you've got a fever? Here's some ibuprofen. You acquired bacterial pneumonia as a complication? Take some antibiotics.)
I really don't see symptomatic treatment as "effectively treated", I see it as a barely more effective treatment than placing leaches on a plague victim as they have to face the disease alone. Given that acute measles has a 15% mortality rate, I'd say it isn't effective treatment at all given that the measles mortality as a whole is 3 in 1000.
I find the blissful ignorance these people live in to be baffling. Do they not comprehend the statistics that there were hundreds of thousands of infections per year before vaccinations began and that this was attributed to deaths in the ten-thousands and countless more blindnesses.
I guess I'm rare in that I would rather see my kid alive and not suffering an agonizing death in childhood above my inconvenience of taking care of an autistic child and feeling like I have to blame someone else above simply accepting genetics.
It is common for people to prefer no child to a child with substantial medical problems. Hence embryo selection, prenatal genetic testing, abortion, adoption etc. When one considers that it is common for parents to know someone with an autistic child, and increasingly rare for a parent to even hear of a child dying of MM or R, a prophylactic vaccine can seem not to justify the potential risk.
To put it another way, even if a person believed that there was only a 1% chance that there was a 1% increase in risk of Autism due to the vaccine, that would still be significantly more risk than death from measles. Although epidemiology is a science, vaccine sales are a business, and it is not unreasonable to weigh pharma's economic interests in vaccines that scale to the degree that MMR does. Pharma is not in general a philanthropic endeavor and a healthy skepticism regarding their products is not unreasonable.
Vaccines are generally not very profitable, to the point where the various industrialized nations are having to subsidize production to keep supply up.
Healthy skepticism is certainly good and reasonable, but what we're seeing is unhealthy skepticism. The science is in and overwhelming, but antivaxxers consistently latch on to debunked, unreliable, or outright loony evidence to support the increasingly discredited claims.
Having been around since the 1970's development costs have long since been recovered. In addition with the recommendation of a second dose the number of doses delivered per year has almost certainly increased.
The contracted cost to the US CDC for Proquad (MMRV) is $8.57/dose (at which Merck is undoubtedly making a profit) and Merck charges $13.93/dose on the open market (additional 62% margin).
While I don't agree with the factual basis on which they are making their decision, it is entirely rational given their belief.
MMR are [edit] usually temporary and can typically be effectively treated by the medical systems of industrialized nations, whereas autism is permanent and generally untreatable.
It is analogous to purchasing a large heavy vehicle (e.g. SUV) based on the superior crash protection it provides passengers and despite the increased risk to other vehicles in a collision and the potential for increased long term environmental degradation.