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NSFW: Penn & Teller On Vaccines

 

 

# 4828

 

 

I can hear the screams of protest already. 

 


NSFW stands for NOT SAFE FOR WORK, meaning that the link I’m about to give you contains language that might not be appropriate for all ears. In other words, the `F’ bomb gets dropped a couple of times . . .  if that bothers you, don’t follow the link

 

Penn and Teller are a pair of well known Las Vegas illusionists who employ comedy, gore, and `adult’ language in their act.  Penn Gillette is the one who speaks, Teller usually works in mime.

 

Together they host a show on Showtime cable called Bullshit! which takes an often scathing look at pseudo-science, quackery, and other forms of nonsense that far too many people accept at valid.

 

In doing so, they are practically assured of offending just about everyone at some point along the line.

 

This past week, Penn & Teller took on the anti-vaccine crowd’s concerns over autism in 90-seconds of inspired debunking genius.

 

Follow THIS LINK to watch it on Youtube. 

 

Although no link to autism has been established, vaccines are drugs, and like all drugs, they can have adverse effects.   No one in the government denies that. 

 

But then, so does aspirin . . . or acetaminophen . . . or penicillin.   There is no such thing as a 100% safe & 100% benign medication.   

 

Vaccines are no exception.  Generally adverse effects are minor, but occasionally a serious event does occur.

 

A risk-reward calculation must be made to decide if the benefits of a drug trumps any potential down-side to taking it. 

 

And the rewards from vaccines that prevent diseases like diphtheria, pertussis, measles, polio, tetanus, influenza, pneumonia and other childhood scourges are great.  

 

Not only for the individual, but for the community.

 

Seventy years ago Whooping Cough (Pertussis) infected more than a 160,000 Americans each year, and killed about 5,000 of them (mostly children).

 

All that began to change in the 1940s when the first whole-cell pertussis vaccine combined with diphtheria and tetanus toxoids (DTP) was introduced.

 

In what was a remarkable success story, by 1976 the number of reported cases reached a record-low of 1,010 cases, a decrease of 99%.

 

But since then, the number of cases has increased ten-fold, and on average 8 to 40 deaths now occur each year.

 

That resurgence is due in part to the reluctance of some parents to get their kids vaccinated, but is also due to a lack of adults getting their recommended booster shots.

 

No doubt the unbridled anti-vaccine rhetoric on the Internet, and in the celebrity-driven media, plays a part in discouraging the uptake of these potentially lifesaving vaccines.  

 

Hopefully demonstrations like the one offered above by Penn & Teller will help offset some of that propaganda.

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