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In an op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times, Jenny McCarthy claims she is not anti-vaccine. "I believe in the importance of a vaccine program and I believe parents have the right to choose one poke per visit. I've never told anyone to not vaccinate. Should a child with the flu receive six vaccines in one doctor visit? Should a child with a compromised immune system be treated the same way as a robust, healthy child? Shouldn't a child with a family history of vaccine reactions have a different plan? Or at least the right to ask questions?"
However Jeffrey Kluger, who interviewed McCarthy in 2009, responds in Time Magazine that McCarthy believes vaccines cause autism, that they are related to OCD, ADHD and other physical and behavioral ills, that they are overprescribed, teeming with toxins, poorly regulated and that the only reason we keep forcing them into the sweet, pristine immune systems of children is because doctors, big pharma and who-knows what-all sinister forces want it that way. "Jenny, as outbreaks of measles, mumps and whooping cough continue to appear in the U.S.-most the result of parents refusing to vaccinate their children because of the scare stories passed around by anti-vaxxers like you-it's just too late to play cute with the things you've said. You are either floridly, loudly, uninformedly antivaccine or you are the most grievously misunderstood celebrity of the modern era. Science almost always prefers the simple answer, because that's the one that's usually correct. Your quote trail is far too long-and you have been far too wrong-for the truth not to be obvious."
(Score: 1) by Immerman on Tuesday April 15 2014, @05:03PM
>The development of a vaccine, however, ... So developing a synthetic molecular component that has out paces the result of 3 billion years of evolution, is a huge technical challenge - huge.
I see a couple glaring holes in your argument:
1) The immune system is powerful, but basically trial-and-error: one unknown microbe may easily require many days worth of "immune responses" before something is found that can actually stop it. Which is why vaccines are necessary - several days of being effectively unopposed can give an infection an insurmountable head start in the battle.
2) Vaccines do not attempt to in any way replace or compete with the immune system - they simply train it. Essentially they amount to intentionally infecting people with a dead, weakened, or relatively harmless relative of the dangerous disease (or sometimes just synthesized versions of the "weak spot" for particularly nasty diseases) giving the immune system a relatively safe "target range" for it to learn how to deal with a particularly evasive family of microbes without the body being in eminent danger while doing so. Then if "the real thing" is ever encountered the immune system has already developed the counter measures to deal with it. Provided of course that it hasn't forgotten them in the meantime, which is why many vaccines require periodic booster shots - presumably the countermeasures generally aren't particularly effective against anything else, so the body needs to be convinced that the threat they defend against is real and they shouldn't be scrapped to make room for designs that are more useful on a more regular basis.
(Score: 1) by opinionated_science on Tuesday April 15 2014, @06:08PM
my summary was directed more at showing the scope of the problem, not to critique vaccines. They are a critical tool.
your point 1) is well taken, as the underlying mechanism is random recombination of the IGH locus. But it is the nature of microbial infection which makes it so powerful. Remember, infection is not passive it constantly evolves.
Humans also acquire antibodies directly from their mothers, which is a naturally occurring inoculation.
Your point 2) is also correct. Although the understanding of the immune system in many ways is greatly limited, as the impact of the largely untreatable auto-immune disease are showing.
Thank you for elborating on my points!