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Did the Anti-Vaccination Movement Cause the Whooping Cough Epidemic? | Health | Change.org var $j = jQuery.noConflict(); var _gaq = [["_trackPageview","/blog/view/did_the_anti-vaccination_movement_cause_the_whooping_cough_epidemic"]]; // Environment Variables var ENV = {}; ENV['BITLY_LOGIN'] = ‘change’; ENV['BITLY_API_KEY'] = ‘R_b0212d1925f49ac025bdc40b95931393′; ENV['GA_USER_TYPE'] = ‘Guest’;
Whooping cough is making a comeback. This summer, the highly contagious upper respiratory infection struck more than 6,000 people in California — the most cases since 1950. Ten people died, all infants.
What’s shocking about the disease’s resurgence is that we have a vaccine against pertussis, the bacterium that causes the disease, and it’s very effective. But the disease is rearing its ugly head again because groups like the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) are spreading misinformation about the supposed dangers of childhood vaccines.
In California, which had one-third of all the whooping cough cases, reluctance to get the immunization stems from the intractable, erroneous beliefs about the dangers of vaccination. One public health official called the area the “epicenter of vaccine refusal,” because schools let parents opt out of vaccinations for their kids for personal beliefs. It has the disease rates to prove it.
The stubborn belief that vaccines are harmful to a child’s health show just how damaging — even deadly–unscientific movements like the NVIC’s are. And how wrong.
First of all, the NVIC’s claim that vaccines cause autism is untrue. The Immunization Safety Office of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did a study of children born between 1994 and 1999 and found that there is no link whatsoever between inoculations and autism spectrum disorders. Over a dozen epidemiological studies have failed to find a link between autism and vaccines. In addition, the researcher that initially posited the theory of vaccines causing autism has had his originally study retracted and his medical license suspended.
On the other hand, there is a very strong link between refusing to vaccinate a child against an illness and the chance that the child will actually contract that illness.
And many parents still believe it’s the mercury-based preservative, thimerosal, that causes autism, even though the whooping cough vaccine doesn’t contain thimerosal.
Worse, not vaccinating children erodes the “wall of immunity” that keeps all kids safe from life-threatening diseases. When infections have fewer potential hosts, there is less of a chance that those infections will be able to spread from child to child. When kids are vulnerable to nasty germs — because their parents don’t immunize them — they put their friends and classmates at risk, too.
Researchers have found that it’s necessary to have at least a 93 percent vaccination rate to ensure “herd” immunity against pertussis, which will prevent whooping cough from rapidly spreading to unvaccinated people.
There is no reason not to vaccinate children, and every reason why we should. Do we really want to leave kids vulnerable to nasty illnesses like whooping cough, measles, polio, and smallpox because of unfounded fears about their safety? Why leave our kids vulnerable to illness if we can protect them instead?
The groups spreading the dangerous misinformation about vaccines should be held accountable — and should publicly correct their mistakes. If they don’t, they are helping to contribute to a public health disaster in the making. Tell the President of the National Vaccine Information Center, ground-zero for the anti-vax movement, to correct her erroneous and scientifically-unsound information by signing this petition.
Photo credit: Hygiene Matters
Molly Mann Molly is a New York-based writer. In addition to change.org, she contributes to DivineCaroline.com and maintains a blog on Green Living for Adelphi University.
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Oct 31, 2010 @ 11:18AM PT Keith Fry
In the petition text, the first sentence of the second paragraph reads “In doing so you are promotion” – promotion should be changed to promoting.
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Oct 31, 2010 @ 04:54PM PT M Sch
The anti-vaccine trend is easily explained when you consider how untrustworthy big pharma and the devoted, cowtowing FDA have become.
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Notify me of follow-up comments via e-mail Cancel Reply Comment Policy Nov 02, 2010 @ 03:24PM PT Chuck B
“On the other hand, there is a very strong link between refusing to vaccinate a child against an illness and the chance that the child will actually contract that illness.”
Actually, there is not. Vaccination is not the only preventative measure one can use to prevent illness. If your assertion were actually true, no one would have survived an outbreak of any contagious disease prior to the invention of vaccines.
To the original point of your article:
“Did the Anti-Vaccination Movement Cause the Whooping Cough Epidemic?”
The answer is no. If you were to actually review the literature on both the geographic locations of higher populations of unvaccinated, you would notice that California is not the highest. You would also know from CDC records that Whooping cough usually has a large scale outbreak every three to four years since records have been kept. It seems that 2006 had a big spike, but the unvaccinated were not blamed then because most of the cases were in the vaccinated community and there was no statistical evidence to prove there were more unvaccinated or they were the cause. There continues to be no evidence in this spike four years later as well.
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Notify me of follow-up comments via e-mail Cancel Reply Comment Policy Nov 02, 2010 @ 08:43PM PT sheldon 101
1. When there’s a decent rate of vaccination, it isn’t unusual that in an outbreak, the absolute number of those vaccinated who get infected is roughly the same or higher the number of those not vaccinated. That’s because vaccination (getting the vaccine) doesn’t always mean you are immunized (can’t get infected). The mumps outbreak of 2009-2010 is an example of this. The CDC explains this at http://www.cdc.gov/mumps/outbreaks/outbreak-providers-qa.html
2. Did the work of vaccination opponents contribute to the number of cases of pertussis in California? Probably. Did the work of vaccination opponents contribute to the number of deaths from Pertussis? My understanding is that the deaths were to infants too young to be vaccinated who were the children of poor Hispanics. See for example, http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5926a5.htm
3. Is there a solution to the problem of protecting infants too young to be vaccinated? Yes, sort of. If you vaccinate everyone who comes into contact with the infant (cocooning) then the infant will be protected. The October 27-28 2010 meeting of ACIP expanded the recommendation for vaccination against Pertussis to protect the very vulnerable. I didn’t watch that part of the proceedings. I had hoped that they might endorse vaccinating pregnant women against Pertussis (preferably late in pregnancy) so that the newborn would have some protection passed on from the mother. They didn’t do that. They didn’t endorse the California Health Dept. recommendation to vaccinate pregnant women against Pertussis. But they did expand those who should receive the vaccine. See http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/blog/recommendations-pertussis-whooping-cough-vaccination-adolescents-and-adults
Finally, I would love to blame blame unvaccinated kids and those who irresponsibly oppose vaccination for the Pertussis outbreak. I just don’t know if the evidence is there yet. The evidence is that Andrew Wakefield’s actions caused deaths in Ireland from measles.
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Notify me of follow-up comments via e-mail Cancel Reply Comment Policy Nov 02, 2010 @ 08:50PM PT sheldon 101
Oops. I thought I was careful with the article on ACIP. Please ignore the link to history of vaccines and instead see this. http://www.medpagetoday.com/InfectiousDisease/Vaccines/23063
As to the best way to protect newborns, ACIP decided not to change its recommnendations on vaccinating pregnant women. That advice is to only vaccinate pregnant women when circumstances, such as an outbreak, make it something to consider. That’s different from the advice of the California Department of Health which recommends that women who are thinking of getting pregnant get vaccinated, pregnant women get vaccinated and women who haven’t been recently vaccinated against Pertussis get vaccinated as soon as the baby is born.
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Notify me of follow-up comments via e-mail Cancel Reply Comment Policy Nov 03, 2010 @ 12:14PM PT Science Mom
I appreciate Sheldon’s measured response. I would like to add that I am disappointed in this blog’s author’s tactics and apparent lack of basic research. For example, B. pertussis, the causative organism of whooping cough is a bacterium, not a virus. To believe that a globally-eradicated disease, such as smallpox will come raging back as a result of non-vaccination, is sloppy, at best and disingenous, at worst.
Fear of vaccination and resultant vaccine refusal is a problem that needs to be addressed with facts, not histrionics. We require epidemiological data that includes, vaccination status, index cases and contact tracing, for example, before we can determine if anti-vaccinationists are or aren’t responsible for the current pertussis epidemics. Let’s counter their pseudo-science with science, not deceptions.
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Nov 03, 2010 @ 12:28PM PT Brie Cadman
Hi Science Mom. Thanks for pointing out the error — it is a bacterium, not a virus.
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