A comment by Neil Paul on the piece Make Love, Not Measles, Jenny Mcarthy by Dr. Rahul Parikh struck me last night. It stuck with me all night and kept popping into my head uninvited today. It isn't a particularly controversial observation. Just a thought about how and why people become part of the tin-foil hat brigade. Neil said:
"It is notable that all these conspiracy theorists about vaccines were once middle class people who had only mainstream thoughts. This should give us pause when we encounter someone with a crazy theory or two. Rather than condemn them as idiots or weirdos we should consider that we are all, possibly, just one piece of horrible luck away from losing our minds and adopting tin-foil-hat style theories of how the world works."
Which is a very compassionate way to look at things. I can't argue that I can't understand why a parent or person, faced with sudden and catastrophic disability in their child or themselves, would become temporarily likely to grasp at any straw to explain why it happened. It is completely human to want to find something and someone to blame.
Things like genetics and the truism that sometimes things just happen are not very satisfying enemies. You can't point to them and say 'There! It was that person/company/conspiracy that caused all this heartbreak in my life!'
You can't punish genetics. It, like the truth that sometimes things just happen, simply is. Ephemeral, untouchable, but real.
And grief makes people a little nuts for a time. My own experience with it and with the loss of a child caused me to stalk some poor woman through a mall because her child looked like mine and some small part of my grief soaked mind thought that he might actually be mine. Crazy, but understandable.
Desperation and grief does explain why people decide to believe things like vaccines have caused autism in their children. However, it doesn't explain why they continue to believe it. Why they pour their entire beings into trying to convince others that there is irrefutable proof. Desperation does not explain a blatant refusal to consider research that proves otherwise.
Grief never really goes away and when a child is diagnosed with a disability there is grief. Not for the child, but for the loss of what might have been. Just as you do with a loss of a loved one you carry the loss of what could have been with you in fits and starts forever. But sanity usually does return. You stop rending your shirt or following people around the mall and you get down to the business of living and of dealing with what life has handed you.
When insane grief becomes the driving force ,and rationality gets packed off on a permanent vacation with no forwarding address, I can't help but think there is something else at work here besides desperation. Mostly because it isn't only the desperate or the grieving that suffer from this disconnect -- the cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias -- of cherry picking medical information to fit their world view.
You find it in unassisted birthers. Women who choose to give birth alone without even the supervision of a midwife because they believe that all the knowledge a woman needs to give birth is in her body. That if she relaxes and trusts her body everything will be okey-dokey wonderful. And spiritual and mystical, too.
The medical establishment is responsible, they say, for a host of bad birth outcomes. A healthy woman rarely has a poor birth according to them. They blame high maternal and infant mortality rates, before the advent of OB-GYN wards, on everything from poverty to corsets.
These beliefs lead them to do things like go to a cabin in the mountains accompanied by a small child when they are overdue. And then they write books about this insanity. And that is what it is, insanity. Doesn't matter that it was insanity that didn't bite them in the ass. It could have. The number of things that might have gone wrong give me nightmares.
These women, by and large, are not acting from grief or desperation. They throw out the baby with the bathwater in rejecting all medical advice and help for reasons that elude me. What they have in common with the anti-vaccine crowd is an absolute mistrust of modern medicine. They seem to be under the delusion that it intends to harm them.
And there is no middle ground for them which is true of the anti-vaccination people, as well. There are a host of choices between a hospital birth with pitocin, an epidural and an episiotomy and going up on a mountain to frolic with mother nature, Heidi, and the goats, to give birth alone. Just as there are-- and have always been-- options in between no-vaccinations and vaccinations formulated with Thimerosal.
This madness is not restricted to those that would breed and raise children either. You find it in cancer patients, people looking for ways to age more slowly, people who think they need to lose weight, people who want bigger, better erections...
The list is endless.
And they all have this one thing in common:
Natural is better. So they claim. Their cure/fix/ideology is superior because it is a natural thing. From childbirth to allergies to childhood diseases...a natural approach is a better approach. More balanced. Gentler.
When did so many start believing this? When did we lose touch with the reality that Mother Nature is not some filmy gown wearing, bird-charming, green version of Snow White? Nature is a bitch. That has more in common with a leather wearing, whip and pistol wielding, BDSM dominatrix (heavy on the S for sadistic) than she ever had with some benevolent goddess anthropomorphic personification of an idea.
Maybe it is because so many of us are so far removed from what nature is about in middle-class Western society. We've never actually met her; we just have people telling us what she is like. And in our ignorance we provide fertile ground for Quackery to spawn. We don't recognize her even whilst she is slapping us around.
We've forgotten that before medical science got rid of the hocus-pocus and settled down to being a true science people died in droves and suffered in even larger numbers. We don't know any longer on a visceral level what it means to be at the mercy of nature. We have forgotten that nature only cares that we live long enough to breed successfully and beyond that wouldn't notice if we dropped off the planet. In fact, it wants us to drop off the planet if we have a weakness, are old or just because. The more of us it prunes, the more room there is for the next generation.
What nature was thinking in giving us these big amazing brains that can come up with ways to thwart it, I'll never know. We've survived in the numbers we have because of this mistake she made. Maybe, just maybe, this trend towards irrationality and revering the natural over the scientific is her way of balancing things.
Because if we don't get a clue the bitch with the whip is going to be back on top and we will become just another experiment for her. A tryst gone bad and corrected.
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Comments
I mean, seriously, isn’t it possible to be in favor of both prevention and treatment, and that there can be a middle ground between the two extremes. Maybe both western and chinese medicine have something to offer.
Americans do have this soft focus lens view of this wonderful, loving mother nature – since most people are cut off from nature. I live near the Gulf of Mexico, and several people drown at the beaches here each summer. People don’t have it in their heads that the gulf doesn’t exist as a big swimming pool for their pleasure since it’s warm and green and so pretty. I mean, I swim in it, but I respect it. (Also, I know how to swim well.)
Tom Cruise is Grade A whackaloon, though. Nothing he does will surprise me. It's the otherwise reasonable people that puzzle me.
Biblio-
You know, I do think that the media is partially responsible for it. But only partially. It does explain why people start looking around for answers to some things. But it doesn't force them to adopt the worst of the junk science out there. And it isn't like most of these people are bad at research or stupid...they can certainly pull together cohesive arguments for their particular brand of quackery...so why don't they see it for what it is?
All you need to do is go down to your local library if you really want to understand why something could happen and what you can do about it. You can even use the internet if you are good at sifting through dross. You don't have to listen to the first snake oil salesman or medical Messiah that talks a good game.
It's being unable to comprehend, or misusing, information thats the issue. True, more babies die in medical facilities - but that's only because more babies are born in medical facilities. Flip a coin 10 times, note the heads. Then flip it 100 times. There'll be more heads but that doesn't change the underlying nature of flipping a coin.
Going outside of mother nature's laws? It's never happened and I would be surprised if it were possible.
Exactly. There is no middle-ground for so many. Sometimes Western medical pratictioners are a bit too interventionist but that doesn't mean the whole thing is bad. And Chinese culture has existed for a loooong time. It is possible that some of what they say has some truth to it, but that doesn't mean that they don't have their own quacks.
Some people I run into seem to have no capacity for balance. It is all of one or all of another and nothing in between.
"Soft focus lens view" is a good way to put it. I think because I grew up in Alaska I managed to avoid the idea that it was all beauty and butterflies. Nature is a little harsh outside of Fairbanks. And I both witnessed and participated in it a little more than your average American does.
Caruso, That is actually one of the 7 warning signs that you are dealing with bogus science. "A new law of nature, invoked to explain some extraordinary result, must not conflict with what is already known. If we must change existing laws of nature or propose new laws to account for an observation, it is almost certainly wrong." -Robert L. Park, PhD
I would venture: because it gives them a sense of control. Scared people, people who think that something in their genetics or the environment they created may have 'caused'their child's autistm...women feeling the mortality machine of having a baby gearing up with or without their permission....people realizing that if there is not God, it's just flimsy human will preventing chaos, and when we die there is just a big nothing, it's all over....these people deal with their fears by establishing a sense of control over their bodies and what they subject their bodies to. It takes a leap of faith to put your trust in someone who knows more than you do - scared people are notoriously poor leapers.
My uncle, a prominent cardiologist and researcher in California, says that there is reason to be concerned about thimersol in injections. Whether that caused the huge outbreak of autism is still unproved, but it is not off the table for study, unless you happen to be employed by Big Pharma.
I still know physicians that will argue with you that diet is not significant in cancer treatment. They are not infallible. Maybe a tin foil hat is not necessary to make the point, but maybe we should also be a little skeptical about the source and the motivation behind research that we are presented with.
Thanks. I'll have to admit to a yen for apocalyptic fiction here. But not that kind. I like books like Vanishing Point where the culprit is unknown and resulting society is believable.
I'll have to look for the Slate article. In my wackier moments I plan out in my head how I will keep me and mine alive after something like that. I'm pretty cocky about it, to tell the truth. I know how to do things like hunt and trap and I have an enormous garden and a couple of greenhouses. All I'd need would be some goats and a gun and I'd be all set if society collapses. ;)
I'm certainly not arguing that doctors are always right. They are as fallible and human as the rest of us. And I don't worship at the feet of mine. Just ask them. I'm a pain in the butt patient in that I research every damn thing they want to do to me.
And, yes, the state of healthcare in this country is appalling. But...
You can know all of that and still not go all extremist and decide that it is all going to kill you or is some sort of communist plot.
As far as Thimerosal is concerned, did you cardiologist uncle happen to tell you that it isn't in childhood vaccines now? That the vaccines that do still contain it also have formulation that are free of it? What concern there is should be for what it might have done.
I don't want to get into an extended discussion about vaccines and what research shows here (yes, yes I am a big topicality nanny) but if you want to talk about what research has been done, who funded it and what it has shown us so far, hi thyself to this post of mine and I'll talk about it until the cows come home.
The thimerosal debate is a bit of a hobby of mine. For the last decade or so.
Maybe that's where the disconnect comes for me. I'm just not wired like that. Fear makes me come up swinging. I want control, too, but I gain it by educating myself.
Which, come to think of it, these people probably think they are doing. It is just unfortunate that they stop the process with a theory that is junk science.
Yes, I do know that thimersol has been removed from most formulations. And sure, if parents aren't getting their kids vaccinated because they think it is still used , that's a little extreme. But, that's their choice, and their kids. If we don't have the option to opt out of the system, to vote with our pocketbooks, how will anything change?
And, there is precedent for seeing capitalist plots everywhere (as opposed to communist plots). Just this week, it was reported in Salon that Gulf Stream knew that formaldehyde levels were too high in the FEMA trailers, but they buried that information. I can well understand anyone's fear that there is no one they can trust to put their children's health before company profits, and I think that fear is well-founded. In this economy, it's the bean counters making the decisions, not the scientists. ( and that IS another lengthy topic for discussion.)
That I will not tolerate. Get them vaccinated or keep them at home.
Deciding not to vaccinate is much more than an economic decision or "voting with your pocketbook". And actually I'm a little unclear how it would bring economic pressure to bear anyway since vaccines are not money makers. For anyone.
The problem with the idea that "that's their choice, and their kids" is that it isn't just their kids that are put at risk. You get enough of these people together such as happened in Contra Costa here in my state where a bunch of students caught whooping cough. We've had
measles outbreaks in 15 states this year.
These are not benign diseases. They kill and maim. The young, the old, the immune suppressed. People who are either too young to be protected or can't protect themselves due to other health issues...
I'm all about personal freedoms but not to the extent that we although them to override the public good. We are heading pell-mell towards a health crisis because of this. And it won't be pretty. My hope is that not too many will suffer before people get a clue.
The other thing is, parents really don't have the right to sacrifice their children on the altar of their own ideology. A parent who refused medical care for their child for religious reasons would likely lose custody of that child. We legislate this kind of thing all the time...because society, when it works correctly, is in the business of protecting those that can't protect themselves. Children fall into this category. So even if it was just the unimmunized kids that were at risk, they are still at risk and the idea that a parent's idea trumps a child's safety is a dangerous one.
A little explanation: I'm just young enough, relatively speaking, that I didn't have to get the smallpox vaccination when I was born in the UK. I did get whatever was required, but that didn't include things like measles (had it twice), whooping cough (once), mumps (once), chickenpox, etc. The scarletina episode was unexciting, but not more than that.
The missus has patiently explained to me that in the modern era, the risk - benefit ratio has changed and there's a real public health benefit to children letting their little immune systems remain unchallenged by the measles. Fair enough. But the chickenpox vaccine is really just there to save people having to take time off work. That doesn't strike me as being a public health issue. And that's why the chickenpox vaccine was what triggered my "uphill both ways in the snow" rant about vaccinating for what used to be run of the mill childhood diseases.
But...diptheria and polio are not chicken pox. They are dangerous diseases that killed and maimed in large numbers pre-vaccines. Whooping cough, even though we both survived it, can kill infants in a matter of 24 hours. Measles can cause babies to be born blind and deaf...
What you and I managed to avoid in terms of consequences for these diseases doesn't really matter all that much. Not when you consider what can happen and has happened in the past. Go look at an old graveyard someday. You can tell when the outbreaks happened by the cluster of dead children entombed in them for certain years.
WHO Measles fact sheet
You notice that almost a quarter of a million children died from measles in 2006. That' s hardly a namby-pamby disease.
As for 250,000 children a year dying of measles, that's pretty awful. But we tolerate between 10 and 11 million children dying of starvation every year, and some portion of those deaths were preventable too. Both figures are a demographic rounding error unless it's your child.
Also, no religious exemptions where you are? Because here all you have to do is fill out a little form that gives you a pass from vaccinations and your kid gets into school. You don't even have to prove it.
Demographic rounding error sounds so...cynical. The number of people who starve on this planet is a huge avoidable tragedy. I dunno, any avoidable tragedy is shameful for all of us. We need to do more to address it. But I'm a bit of a Pollyanna.
Where, exactly, are you seeing knee-jerk adulation in this particular conversation? There is no question that we are vastly over medicated. And I'm always a little appalled when I listen to some drug commercial or another for something like foot fungus and the side-effects include things like cancer, heart attack and death...
There is certainly something wrong with that.
But, again, throwing the baby out with the bathwater is not the way to go. The intelligent way to handle it, as you said, is to be informed and to question any prescription that you get that isn't a known quantity. I'd kind of disagree on the doctors, though. I've had a lot of doctors over the years for a variety of health issues and while some are, indeed, arrogant bastards with a god complex who will fake it if they don't really know...not all of them are. I've had some very informed and good docs.
One thing to keep in mind, is that general practitioners are really not the best source for pharmaceutical information. They are required to take very little in the way of pharmacology and unless they are the kind to keep up on such things or are highly specialized they probably know just a little more than you do. So if you are going to ask anyone it should be a pharmacist whose entire line of work is devoted to that and you should always, always do your own research.
As for being cynical about rounding errors, it is - but it's also a deliberate shield. I used to be sort of intellectually empathetic (even though that seems a contradiction in terms) about things like starving children, and then I had my own. It changed my sense of how appallingly awful it would be to hold your child while she starved to death - and I have to be detached about it, because if you really paused to think about all the pain from disease and poverty, and absorbed it, you'd go mad.