An Open Letter to the Vaccine Deniers

6 November, 2008

There now have been 16 separate, independent studies
undertaken in five countries, involving millions of children,
that have found no link between vaccination, vaccines or vaccine
preservatives (namely, the mercury-based thimerosal) and autism. We
have more data supporting this lack of association than for most other
“known facts” in medicine. The sheer number of children
included in
these studies precludes the theory that there may be even some small
but significant number of children for whom vaccination was at fault
for, or contributed to, any measurable degree of autism. [emphasis
added]

• Ms. Cournoyer first explains that there must be an
  epidemic of
  autism in this nation because of increased rates of diagnosis of autism
  — and that this cannot be a genetic disorder because genetic disorders
  “do not present as epidemics.”  The trigger must
  be vaccines, apparently, at least in Ms. Cournoyer’s thinking — but
  we’ll get to that.  The first and most basic misconception in
  this
  dialogue is that increased diagnosis of autism must of necessity
  indicate increased occurrence.  It does not.  Children diagnosed with autism
  now are often much more mildly affected than children previously so
  diagnosed.  Increased awareness of autism, and of an
  increasing
  number of related disorders that are similar to it, has resulted in
  increased diagnosis, therefore.  This correlation is not causation and
  should not logically be construed as such.  Doctor Michael Cohen said, in
  March of 2005, that “Experts, myself included, attribute it to better
  diagnosis, now that the medical profession is more aware of autism’s
  many forms. And with better diagnosis comes reclassification of
  patients as autistic.”

• Ms. Cournoyer accuses me of presupposing that “the success
  of modern technology automatically extols virtue upon vaccines, as if
  there is no credible controversy.”  I make no such claim of
  which I am aware.  I do indicate, however, that in the absence
  of credible evidence for a link between vaccines and autism, and given
  the volume of evidence directly
  to the contrary, it is illogical and irresponsible to
  continue promulgating this mythology.  The damage being done
  is obvious; increased outbreaks of preventable childhood diseases,
  which arise in unvaccinated children, are the result.  The
  purpose of vaccines is to create a “herd immunity” that creates a
  hostile climate for a given disease.  Releasing into a
  vaccinated population a sub-population of unvaccinated individuals
  helps those diseases take root once more.  Once established,
  they are more likely to mutate, endangering the entire community.

• Ms. Cournoyer claims that I somehow forget that
  complicated technology is not infallible — yet in making this claim
  she conveniently ignores the statements with which I begin my
  concluding paragraph in the presumably offending column:  “Technology must never
  be accepted blindly. It must always be examined critically.”
   Clearly, then, there is something more at work here than an
  earnest desire to correct what one supposes Ms. Cournoyer believes my
  misconceptions to be.

• Ms. Cournoyer correctly points out that what she calls the
  “controversy” over vaccines (and what I call the superstition
  regarding them) is “gaining strength and credibility.”  While
  I will freely admit that it is indeed gaining strength, it gains
  strength specifically because of people like Ms. Cournoyer, who use
  junk science and illogic to prey on the fears of anxious parents.
   It most certainly is not
  gaining credibility,
  for each attempt to establish this link between vaccines and autism is
  subsequently refuted (such as in the case of the debate about mercury
  toxicity and the Rochester study I cited previously).  Ms.
  Cournoyer also asserts, without evidence, that “credible evidence
  showing an association between vaccines and harmful effects is
  regularly suppresed and ignored.”  This is the kind of
  conspiracy theorizing that robs the vaccine deniers of credibility from
  the outset, for if the evidence is being suppressed and ignored, how is
  it that the deniers themselves find it — or that it is published in
  medical journals prior to its subsequent refutation?  We are
  asked to believe that a mighty and vast Medical Industrial Complex
  exists, whose operatives regularly maim, disable, and kill children out
  of some unnamed desire to make vague amounts of money from the
  practice, all while, one presumes, shouting “Hail, Evil!” and kicking
  puppies.  The real world simply does not work that way; it is
  both more boring and much more complex than any conspiracy theory can
  encompass.

• Ms. Cournoyer informs me (and you) that her fellow vaccine
  deniers who refuse to vaccinate their children do so after conducting
  copious research.  The problem with this assertion is that it
  presumes only
  the deniers are capable of research, and that no parents who do
  vaccinate their children conduct similar explorations of the available
  data (which I can say with finality is obviously false).  The
  other problem is that the deniers cherry-pick the research that
  supports their position, conveniently ignoring any and all
  contradictory studies (especially those that address previous studies
  specifically or in general).

• Ms. Cournoyer cites, as support for her argument, the
  Hannah Poling case, which she erroneously claims constitutes “a
  landmark admission of vaccine-caused injury.”  The case
  constitutes no such admission, and it supports my argument, not Ms.
  Cournoyer’s.*  Far
  from being an admission of vaccine-caused injury, the Poling case
  represents a failure to apply basic standards of logic and the
  preponderance of evidence to the issue.  As such it has proven
  remarkably damaging to children nationwide, for it furthers the cause
  of the vaccine deniers in activating and upholding their mythology without evidence
  and in the face of basic medical science.  Note also that Ms.
  Cournoyer cannot claim that the Poling case represents proof of
  Thimerosal-caused autism, for that was not the argument; rather, the
  argument offered (without supporting evidence) was that a very rare
  pre-existing condition contributed to some form of “overloading” of
  Hannah Poling’s immune system.  This is clearly not the case
  in the majority of American children, considering only that the
  disorder in question is
  rare.

• Ms. Cournoyer states the rather impressive monetary sum
  awarded to what she calls “vaccine victims” through the “National
  Childhood Vaccine Injury Act.”  Unfortunately, the existence
  of this award does not constitute medical evidence of a link between
  vaccines and autism.  It only implies that, yes, vaccines have
  risks (no one has denied this fact, and every pediatrician who
  administers a vaccine informs that child’s parents or guardians of the
  symptoms to watch for in the event of an adverse reaction).
   We can refer again to the Poling case to separate the legal
  implications from the medical evidence.

• Ms. Cournoyer asserts that there exist no studies
  examining multiple doses of vaccines, or “vigorous” vaccination
  schedules.  If we accept her at her word, we must also
  conclude that there
  exist no studies concluding such dosing schedules are harmful.
   Given that the majority of children given these childhood
  vaccines are not experiencing the sudden onset of vaccine-caused
  autism, which is the more logical position — that vaccines somehow,
  mysteriously, without evidence, cause this problem, or that in the
  absence of any such evidence we should rest assured that there is no
  credible link?

• Ms. Cournoyer claims that ‘my’ interpretation of “medical
  technology” is somehow “responsible for recommending more and more
  vaccines simply on the belief
  that all vaccines are safe and good.”  This ludicrous
  assertion is belied, not merely by the words of my original column
  (which apparently have been ignored), but by the fact that vaccines are
  studied to determine if they are safe prior to their introduction, and
  often, such vaccines are questioned both within and without the medical
  establishment.  Take, for example, the controversy
  over attempts to lobby for and establish mandating the HPV vaccine Gardasil. The
  controversy is precisely the sort of critical examination
  of new medical technology that I advocate in my original column.
   Now, imagine that an advocacy group were to take to the
  Internet claiming that Gardasil causes manic depression in teenagers,
  because a flawed and subsequently retracted “study” published in a
  certain medical journal claimed that this was so.  Would the
  logical position be to accept and promulgate this theory, in the
  absence of any credible
  research establishing this?  Yet the entire vaccines-autism
  controversy begins with a single, flawed study in the medical journal Lancet ten years
  ago, which claimed to establish such a link.  That study was
  so deeply flawed that it was disclaimed at the time it was published.
   It has subsequently been thoroughly discredited.

• Ms. Cournoyer invokes the tragic picture of parents whose
  children suffer from autism as “front-row witnesses to the regression
  of their previously healthy children.”  While I sympathize
  with any parent whose child suffers from any disorder or disease, this
  is an emotional argument and an anecdotal one.  It does not
  represent any credible scientific evidence establishing causality in the
  matter of vaccines and autism.  Given that symptoms of autism
  generally manifest themselves in any afflicted child during the same
  time period when childhood vaccines would be administered if they are, this is again
  a case of correlation only.  It is akin to saying that crime
  increases as churches are built — because larger populations, which
  tend to have more crime, also tend to have more churches.

• Ms. Cournoyer attempts to assert that none of the studies
  failing to find a link between Thimerosal in vaccines and the onset of
  autism included unvaccinated control groups. They are therefore
  part of the vast conspiracy in which she apparently believes.
   She repeats the falsehood that the Amish, whose children are
  unvaccinated, have no autism.  This is based on the assertions
  of UPI reporter Dan Olmsted, who in 2005 wrote that there was little or
  no autism among the Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
   “Olmsted’s
  anecdotal evidence is cited ad
  nauseam as evidence that Thimerosal causes autism,” writes
  Ken Reibel.  “The
  case rests on twin assumptions: that the Amish don’t vaccinate, and
  that they don’t have autism.  But Olmsted never visted the
  cryptically-named Clinic for Special Children in Strasburg, where
  doctors treat children who exhibit autistics behavior.”  As it
  turns out, the Amish do vaccinate, and there are children among them who do
  exhibit symptoms of autism. To accept the existence of the “Amish
  anomaly,” we are also expected to accept the absurd notion
  that members of a population that shuns technology and most of the
  modern world would run right out and report high-functioning (or the
  easier to diagnose low-functioning) autism, after first being just as
  willing and able to diagnose this disorder as are their modern-world
  counterparts (“Autism isn’t a diagnosis,” Reibel quotes Doctor Kevin
  Strauss, “it’s a description of behavior.”)

• Ms. Cournoyer claims that “real studies have been carried
  out and duplicated” that link the MMR vaccine to autism.  To accept this,
  we must ignore the existence of the most recent study that finds
  no link between the MMR and autism, the fact that “no
  scientific data link thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines with
  any pediatric neurologic disorder, including autism,” and the fact that the
  removal of Thimerosal from vaccines has not
  resulted in any measurable decrease in diagnosis of autism (the rate
  continues to increase as we become better able to diagnose the
  disorder).  The vaccine deniers, like Ms. Cournoyer, react to
  these inconvenient truths by making the topic a moving target.
   Depending on which fact they attempt to refute, autism is
  caused either by Thimerosal or by some other quality of some specific
  vaccine, by the vaccination schedule and the cumulative effect of the
  vaccinations (but not the individual vaccines), or by some other
  undefined but otherwise suppressed and known quality of vaccines that
  is even now being covered up by a shadowy industrial conspiracy whose
  members have no agenda save financial gain on the bodies of dead and
  mentally damaged children.

• Using simplistic logic, Ms. Cournoyer points to the
  “potentially harmful ingredients” contained in vaccines.  The
  toxins within vaccines are a frequent object of the vaccine deniers’
  outrage.  To point to this as if we are intentionally (or
  through some omission, caused by greed, ignorance, laziness, blind
  trust, or some other negative quality) poisoning our children is to
  ignore some the most basic facts of medicine.  Substances that
  are, in certain quantities, harmful to the individual can, in measured
  doses, be used to benefit.  Thimerosal, for example, is a very
  effective preservative, and that is why it was used.  Can you
  safely go to your medicine cabinet and consume large quantities of
  anything you find inside without experiencing harmful effects?
   Obviously, you cannot.  By the illogic of the
  vaccine deniers, almost every medicine you take for a variety of ills,
  prescribed by your physician, is a deadly toxin because taking too much of it
  will harm you.  The very concept of a vaccine is
  based on this counterintuitive truth.  By injecting a very
  small amount of something harmful (or, as is now done, some component
  of the disease), the body’s immune system develops a defense against
  the more harmful and uncontrolled manifestation of that disease.
   

For daring to stand up for
established medical science and
against superstition and willful ignorance, I have been subjected to a
tremendous amount of personally insulting abuse by the “angry mob” of
vaccine deniers to whom celebrity spokesperson Jenny McCarthy referred.
 I quoted McCarthy in my original column because she
unwittingly betrayed the attitudes and the agenda of these people.
 Anyone who dares to dissent, who presumes to speak against
them, is reviled and villified, shouted down for heresy in the face of
their impenetrable dogma.  Allow me to quote just a few of the
many e-mails I received when one vaccine denier posted a public call to
“bombard” my e-mail address:

---

Your
column on vaccines
is undoubtedly one of the most
revolting I have read in some time. To call those of us who have
thoroughly researched the matter
“willfully ignorant Americans” is truly arrogant beyond hope. What
hypocrisy for you to accuse McCarthy of arrogance, when you are
the master of it.

---

Autism is not the only danger and you know it… I’ve
HAD measles, mumps, whooping cough – and more.  NO – I didn’t die! 
Your assertion is over-generalized.  Who’s scaring who, now? …you’re gonna be in hog heaven in the new Obama regime [sic]

---

I’m sorry but your article is pure BS. Jenny McCarthy is not the only one speaking out against vaccines…

---

Thanks
for nothing; a totally thoughtless piece of advocacy in an area about
which you know nothing… You have a lot of homework to do before you
can ever write on this subject again; or else confirm again your
cluelessness. 

---

I pray that you never have to
experience autism first hand.  That would be some “credible
evidence” you could not choose to ignore.

---

I’m not writing to argue or reason with you, because neither is possible.

 

I
AM writing, however, to state that neither of my two children have been
vaccinated and they do not have ear infections,  cancer, autism,
arthritis, allergies, leukemia, asthma, SIDS, SBS,  or any OTHER
diseases/ailments of which vaccines ARE causing epidemics.

 

You can take the studies you cited which are rife with conflicts-of-interest and shove them in your ear.

 

There
are thousands of doctors who are fully AGAINST vaccination, in case you
didn’t know.  They aren’t “superstitious” or “ignorant”.  They have
hundreds-of-years of history on their side which also includes
instances that happen OUTside the laboratory.

 

Vaccines have NEVER prevented any disease – they’ve only CAUSED disease.

---

This is a group driven, not by reason, not by logic, and not
by  fact,
but by ideology.
 Further, as is obvious, they react with hostility and even open
hatred, not to mention irrational conviction to their dogma, whenever
confronted by medical truths that fly in the face of their advocacy and
activism.  While I understand the emotions a parent must feel when
dealing with a child who suffers from any disease or disorder, and I do
sympathize, it does a great disservice to the entire nation to
promulgate anti-vaccine mythology as a means of coping with this.
 There is a quack science industry that preys on such parents, and I
blame this industry as much as anyone for exploiting people who really
do just want to care for their children.  

I am honored that Ms. Cournoyer
considered my column noteworthy enough to attempt to rebut it.  I wish
more of her supporters had attempted to write a rebuttal as she has
done, rather than sending largely anonymous invective to my inbox.
 While I’m willing to be tolerant, I cannot in good conscience ignore
the continued willful ignorance and intellectual dishonesty exhibited
by such activists.  As I have demonstrated here, their arguments are
neither logical nor otherwise supportable.  They are not based in fact.
 They are simply wishful thinking, coupled with and facilitated by a
variety of very routine logical fallacies and failures of reason.
>>

<<
PhilElmore.com  ::  Go Home

*
As Paul Offit wrote in
the New York Times,

ON March 6, Terry and Jon Poling stood outside a federal
courthouse in Atlanta, Ga., with their 9-year-old daughter Hannah and
announced that the federal government had admitted that vaccines had
contributed to her autism. The news was shocking. Health officials at
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and at the American
Academy of Pediatrics have steadfastly assured the public that vaccines
do not cause autism. Now, in a special vaccine claims court, the
federal government appeared to have said exactly the opposite. What
happened?

The answer is wrapped up in the nature of the unusual court
where the Poling case was heard. In 1986, after a flood of lawsuits
against vaccine makers threatened the manufacture of vaccines for
children, Congress created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation
Program, financed by a tax on every dose of vaccine.

…The system worked fine until a few years ago, when
vaccine
court judges turned their back on science by dropping preponderance of
evidence as a standard. Now, petitioners need merely propose a
biologically plausible mechanism by which a vaccine might cause harm
— even if their explanation contradicts published
studies. 

…In 2000, when Hannah [Poling] was 19
months old, she received five shots against nine infectious diseases.
Over the next several months, she developed symptoms of autism.
Subsequent tests showed that Hannah has a mitochondrial disorder
— her cells are unable to adequately process nutrients
— and this contributed to her autism. An expert who [filed an
affidavit]
in court on the Polings’ behalf claimed that the five
vaccines had stressed Hannah’s already weakened cells,
worsening her disorder. Without holding a hearing on the matter, the
court conceded that the claim was biologically plausible.

On its face, the expert’s opinion makes no sense.
Even five vaccines at once would not place an unusually high burden on
a child’s immune system. The Institute of Medicine has found
that multiple vaccines do not overwhelm or weaken the immune system.
And although natural infections can worsen symptoms of chronic
neurological illnesses in children, vaccines are not known to.

…The vaccine court should return to the
preponderance-of-evidence standard. But much damage has already been
done by the Poling decision. Parents may now worry about vaccinating
their children, more autism research money may be steered toward
vaccines and away from more promising leads and, if similar awards are
made in state courts, pharmaceutical companies may abandon vaccines for
American children. In the name of trying to help children with autism,
the Poling decision has only hurt them.

For more on the vaccine deniers and refutations of their
reasoning, The
Martialist recommends Paul A. Offit‘s Autism’s False Prophets: Bad
Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure.