Show me the science

Let’s say there IS a massive conspiracy and coverup. Big Pharma knowingly produces vaccines manufactured with a substance (thimerisol) that causes neurologic or immunologic damage (no one’s completely sure of the mechanism) to some children, who then become autistic.

Photo courtesy of Martin Burns (flickr.com)

Doctors are complicit in this malpractice: they prescribe and administer vaccines. And nurses ask you to hold the baby while they administer a shot they know could result in a devastating developmental condition.

There are people who believe this. But I’m not one of them.

You’re not going to meet many people who actively dislike and distrust doctors as much as I do.  Jeff and I transferred Alex as an infant from one hospital that declared, He needs a tracheotomy! He’ll never get off the vent, and he’ll never grow if he breathes on his own, to another that said, We’ll try to get him off. We hate to see kids on a ventilator. And they did, within a week. We look back on the first group of doctors with suspicion and no trust in their ability to practice medicine — at least when it comes to decisions about respiratory care.

Jeff and I used to talk bitterly about how blithe these doctors were about a baby on the vent, a possible trach that would mean Alex wouldn’t be able to make vocal sounds. “It’s not their child,” we said. “They’d feel very differently if it were their baby.”

Most doctors don’t have to face decisions about ventilating or traching their own children. But most doctors do have their own children vaccinated. People who work for pharmaceutical corporations — developing and marketing and promoting vaccinations — have their kids vaccinated. If there’s a Wendell Potter out there, someone from the industry who’s going to surface and say, “Vaccines ARE dangerous! We’ve known it for years but this is too lucrative a market to tamper with!” wouldn’t he or she have come forward by now?

In response to widespread concern, in 2001 drugmakers removed thimerosal from vaccines routinely given to children younger than 6 (except flu vaccines).  But autism diagnoses in children born since then have risen. I know children who have autism who were never vaccinated.

I’m not saying the FDA gets everything right — or even that the AMA and all doctors are infallible. But here’s what I do know: that medical degree really is worth something. You didn’t go to medical school? Then you don’t know what a doctor knows. You don’t even know what you don’t know. I’ll give you an example. Alex was born premature. This seemed particularly miserable since we’d gone through a long fertility struggle. In the neonatal ICU where he was born, I met another mother who had taken the same fertility drug I had taken. Aha! I thought. That drug causes prematurity! That’s why Alex was born so small for gestational age. I floated this theory to my obstetrician, who may well be one of the smartest doctors I know. He looked at me impatiently. No, he said, the underlying causes of your infertility were likely responsible for the pregnancy loss. Oh, I thought. I instantly knew he was right. And I also knew in that moment that linking two events in a sudden flash of what you think is insight is meaningless.

No point giving you sites or opinions I disagree with. Instead, here are people speaking on this topic who make sense, understand science, are willing to read through massive amounts of scientific data, who understand what they’re reading, and write reasonably well. I think the American Academy of Pediatrics is worth paying attention to. Sciencebasedmedicine does a good job sorting fact from fiction. Leftbrainrightbrain (autism news, science and opinion) is readable and sensible.