Physician Survey: Parental Concerns On Childhood Vaccinations

 

 

# 5503

 

The continuing erosion of the public’s faith in the safety of routine childhood immunizations is dishearteningly displayed today in a new physician survey that appears in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine’s May edition.

 

The study, lead by Allison Kempe, MD, MPH, professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, is based on the results of a nationwide survey of physicians that provide routine childhood immunizations.

 

The major finding is that the majority of surveyed physicians believe that parent’s concerns over vaccine safety have either greatly or moderately increased over the past 5 years.

 

Despite the discrediting of one of their highest profile anti-vaccination advocates; Dr. Andrew Wakefield, and the preponderance of scientific evidence showing excellent safety and efficacy of childhood vaccines,  the anti-immunization rhetoric on the internet and in the media continues to escalate and to take its toll.

 

First, a link to the abstract, followed by a link to the University of Colorado Press release.

 

Prevalence of Parental Concerns About Childhood Vaccines:

The Experience of Primary Care Physicians

Allison Kempe, MD, MPH, Matthew F. Daley, MD, Mary M. McCauley, MSTC , Lori A. Crane, PhD, MPH , Christina A. Suh, MD , Allison M. Kennedy, MPH , Michelle M. Basket, BS , Shannon K. Stokley, MPH , Fran Dong, MS , Christine I. Babbel, MSPH , Laura A. Seewald, BS ,L. Miriam Dickinson, PhD

 

Results on national study of parental concerns about childhood vaccines announced

AURORA (April 13, 2011) – A new study led by Allison Kempe, MD, MPH, professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and director of the Children's Outcomes Research (COR) Program at The Children's Hospital, reports the results of a national survey of primary care physicians who deliver vaccinations to children. Major findings include a majority of physicians think that parents' level of concern about vaccines has either greatly or moderately increased in the past five years and that they are spending a significant amount of time at well child visits discussing vaccine safety with parents. Relying only on discussion of vaccines at visits where vaccines are needed may be too time-consuming and inadequate and may compromise providers' ability to focus on other important health care topics.

 

The study, Prevalence of Parental Concerns about Childhood Vaccines: The Experience of Primary Care Physicians, publishes in the May issue of American Journal of Preventive Medicine and online April 15.

 

According to the study results, in a typical month, 79 percent of physicians report at least one vaccine refusal; 8 percent report refusals for more than 10 percent of children. And, 89 percent report at least one request to spread out vaccines—20 percent report these requests for more than 10 percent of children.

 

Other study findings include the following:

• 40 percent of physicians always or often require parents to sign a form if they refuse a vaccination. Most physicians would agree to spread out vaccines in the primary series at least sometimes. Approximately 10 percent of physicians would often or always dismiss families from their practice if they refuse vaccines in the primary series and another 5 percent would sometimes do so.
• Although few physicians had considered no longer providing vaccines because of the need to discuss vaccine risks and benefits, about one-third of physicians reported that these discussions were negatively impacting their job satisfaction.
• From the physicians' perspective the most successful messages in convincing skeptical parents were personal ones, such as the fact that they vaccinated their own children or grandchildren, discussions of their personal experiences with vaccine safety or with vaccine-preventable diseases, or a statement that they think it is safer to vaccinate than not to vaccinate.

(Continue . . . )

 

The Internet, along with social media, and the hundreds of media outlets that are now available 24/7 are incredibly powerful, but not always accurate, conveyors of information. 

 

The anti-vaccination contingent has become expert in their usage to get their message out.  Today’s study, sadly, gives credence to the idea that they are gaining ground.

 

For more on the anti-vaccination movement, you may wish to revisit:

 

 

Dr. Paul Offit: The Dangers Of The Anti-Vaccine Movement

Referral: TWiV and the `Panic Virus’

NEJM: The Age-Old Struggle against the Antivaccinationists

The Monsters Are Due On Vaccine Street

»» Read More

The Monsters Are Due On Vaccine Street

 

 

 

 

# 5023

 

 

 

 

Fear and hysteria are wonderful weapons - and can undermine the sensibilities of even normally reasonable people -  as Rod Serling demonstrated so aptly in the classic 1960 episode of the Twilight Zone, The Monsters are Due on Maple Street.

 

All it takes is for someone to instill a bit of doubt .  . .   a modicum of suspicion . . .  backed up by random, but seemingly connected events . . . and our insecurities, fears, and prejudices do the rest.

 

In the 1950s, our collective paranoia was focused externally  . . . on the communist threat, and on nuclear annihilation.

 

Today, our animus is more likely to be reserved for our own government, and for large, profitable corporations (who we all know are evil incarnate). 

 

Over the past couple of decades, we’ve become generation X-files, where we believe there is a governmental conspiracy behind absolutely everything.

 

Belief in these all-powerful, manipulative, and evil plots gives us comfort, I suppose . . . since they absolve us of any responsibility for our own failings and disappointments.

 

We shake our fists and rail at `them’ because it’s so much easier than dealing with the alternative.

 

And it is at this point that I must admit to not being completely immune to this collective form of insanity.

 

While I like to think of myself as being strictly an `evidence based’, rational thinker . . . I’m willing to at least entertain the idea that some conspiracy theories are more `plausible’ than others.

 

I’m just damn selective in what unsupported scenarios I’m willing to abide (or worse, embrace), and try to show a little restraint in publicly voicing them.

 

It’s one thing to believe in a theory when there is little evidence to the contrary, but quite another when the evidence is overwhelmingly against it.

 

But for the anti-vaccine contingent, that doesn’t seem to be much of an impediment.  

 

Practically every day I see articles on the internet purporting to tell the `truth’ about vaccines, and in nearly every case it is about as far removed from the truth as you can get and still remain on this planet.

 

Their techniques are simple, but effective. 

 

First, they use  biased and inflammatory language, filled with incendiary adjectives like `deadly’, `useless’, `dangerous’, or `untested’ practically anytime the word `vaccine’ is used.

 

Second, they build a straw man, by claiming that vaccines are supposed to be 100% safe and effective (which no one in medicine claims), and then proceed to knock that down with some story about a purported bad reaction or side effect.

 

And third . . . and used with great effect online . . . they cherry pick a news article that somehow bolsters their claims, without acknowledging any evidence to the contrary.

 

An ongoing example are the stories proliferating on the Internet claiming that Australia Banned The 2010 Flu Vaccine due to side effects.

 

A quick Google of `Australia banned vaccine’ comes up with these top 4 web headlines.

 

About 252,000 results (0.18 seconds)

Australian Health Authorities Banned The 2010 Flu Vaccine

Flu Vaccine Banned in Australia but safe in the US?????

Australia bans flu vaccines in children after vomiting, fevers ...

Australian Health Authorities Banned The 2010 Flu Vaccine - 

 

Is it true?    Well . . . no, not really.

A temporary moratorium was put in place on giving the 2010 flu shot to children under the age of 5 after an unusual number of febrile convulsions were observed (see Australia Investigating Adverse Vaccine Reactions).

 

That moratorium was LIFTED a full month before these web stories appeared (see Ban on flu vaccine for young children lifted), after only CSL’s Fluvax was found to have caused an unusual number of reactions.  

 

But those are just messy details that get in the way of a good story.

 

The Narcolepsy-Pandemrix story from last August is another example.

 

Questions were raised about the H1N1 Pandemrix vaccine after a small, but unusual number of cases of narcolepsy were observed in Finland, Sweden and France.  

 

The anti-vaccine forces immediately started calling this a `probable link’, even though there was no evidence to support that assertion. 

 

In fact, within a couple of weeks it became apparent that any evidence of a link – if one exists at all – is pretty darn faint (see EMA Update On The Pandemrix-Narcolepsy Investigation and Sweden: No Link Between Pandemrix And Narcolepsy).

 

Yes, studies are ongoing.  And it is possible that some link may be established in the future.   But right now, there is no `probable link’.

 

Today a `shocking report’ is making the rounds that more than 3,500 miscarriages and/or still births may have been caused by last year’s H1N1 vaccine in the United States.  I’m hesitant to even provide a link to this story, but here it is nonetheless.

 

Go ahead and read it.  I’ll wait.

 

The story demonizes the CDC, ACIP, and of course, flu vaccines by quoting an activist organization (NCOW) – using their own polling and data from VAERS reports – that has estimated that 1588 fetal deaths may have been caused by the vaccine.  

 

What this story doesn’t tell the reader is that there are nearly 1 million miscarriages every year in the United States.  Roughly 2,500 a day.

 

And if you vaccinated all of the pregnant women in the country today, tomorrow, 2,500 would have a miscarriage. 

 

And 2,500 would the day after that, and another 2,500 the next day . . .

 

And it would have nothing to do with having taken the vaccine.

 

Could the flu vaccine have contributed to some small number of miscarriages?

 

Well, yes.  It is certainly possible.

 

But that sort of thing is awfully hard to accurately ascertain when we are talking about 1,500 possible cases amongst a background rate of 1 million miscarriages a year.

 

But you don’t need proof to bring out the monsters on to Vaccine Street. 

 

All you need is the allegation.

 

Never mind the good that vaccines do, or the lives they save (subjects rarely addressed by the anti-vaccine crowd).  If they are shown to be anything less than perfect - or not 100% benign - they are apparently worthy of our suspicion and mistrust.

 

A impossibly high standard, by the way, that no medicine or drug can hope to reach.

 

 

In searching for a closing for this blog, I can come up with nothing that comes close to the closing narration by that master of prose . . . Rod Serling, from more than 50 years ago.

 

 

“The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.

 

For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own - for the children, and the children yet unborn.

 

And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone”

 

A pity, indeed.

 

 

 

 

Note: This first week of November a number of vaccine critics have announced their intent to promote an Internet `Vaccine Awareness Week’ to promote their agenda.

Hence my humble offering this morning.

»» Read More

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.

»» Read More

A Worthless Argument

 

 

# 4171

 

 

One of the reasons I don’t try to take on every conspiracy nut or anti-vaccine crank on the internet is that there are simply too many of them.  I’d have no time for anything else in my life. 

 

After all, once you start . . . where do you stop?

Besides, the small but erudite readership of this blog hardly needs a daily reality check from me.   And those netizens who might benefit are unlikely to wander this way.   

 

So . . .  I try to concentrate on providing good information, and not so much shooting down the bad.

 
But sometimes I come across something so egregious, so outlandish, that I simply can’t stand it.  I have to say something.

 

Today is one of those days.

 

My RSS reader – which is keyed to phrases like `pneumonia’, and `influenza’ and `vaccine’ pulled up a blog post that supposedly proves that influenza vaccines are worthless . . . and that scientists have known that for 90 years.

 

I’m not going to give this website a link.   They get far too much traffic as it is.   If you want to read it, Google `Influenza Vaccine to be Worthless as Early as 1918’.   

 

The basis for this assertion comes from a January 24th, 1920 NYTs article that plainly states that the `influenza vaccines’ used during the 1918 pandemic were worthless in preventing influenza . . . but did help prevent pneumonia.

 

The website simply puts this 90-year-old article up, without comment (other than the provocative headline).   The lack of context or commentary are, at best, a sin of omission.

 

First, an excerpt from the NYTs article, then a little dissection.

 

 

 

Proof positive that the influenza vaccine is a failure.  Right?

 

Not even close (but of course, you know that).

 

The `influenza vaccine’ used in 1918 wasn’t an influenza vaccine at all.   At the time of that pandemic, and the writing of this NYTs article, scientists didn’t even understand that influenza was caused by a virus. 

 

Up until the early 1930s, scientists thought influenza was caused by a bacteria; Hemophilus influenzae. A gram-negative rod-shaped bacterium first described in 1892 by Richard Pfeiffer during an influenza pandemic.

 

Given the level of scientific advancement, the mistake was understandable.   Bacteria, being much larger than viruses, were possible to detect with early light-microscopes. And many flu victims developed secondary bacterial pneumonias, presenting with their lungs filled with bacteria laced pus.  

 

And so the `composite vaccine’ made from the germs believed to be responsible for colds, influenza, and pneumonia was nothing more than a very crude, scattergun approach bacterial pneumonia vaccine.  

Just because they called it an `influenza vaccine’ 90 years ago doesn’t make it so.   And so there should be no expectation of that sort of vaccine inhibiting the influenza virus.

 

Damning today’s influenza vaccine based on this 90 year old news story is about as cynical and disingenuous as it comes.

 

It wasn’t until 1931 that viral growth of the influenza virus was demonstrated in chicken eggs, and not until the early 1940s that the first inactivated influenza vaccine was developed and used by the US Military.

 

In other words, the first true influenza vaccine wasn’t even developed until 20 years after this NYTs article appeared. And in the 70 years since then, many advances in the science and technology have occurred.

 

 

But of course, to some people, the truth is secondary . . . assuming it matters at all.   To offer this 90 year-old article as `proof’ of anything shows how far some people will go to push an agenda.

 

Sadly, arguments such as this one – as worthless as they may be – will probably convince some people to avoid taking the influenza vaccine.  

»» Read More