Mmr Quotes

[I]t seems to me that a lot of the stranger ideas people have about medicine derive from an emotional struggle with the very notion of a pharmaceutical industry. Whatever our political leanings, we all feel nervous about profit taking any role in the caring professions, but that feeling has nowhere to go. Big pharma is evil; I would agree with that premise. But because people don't understand exactly how big pharma is evil, their anger gets diverted away from valid criticisms - its role in distorting data, for example, or withholding lifesaving AIDS drugs from the developing world - and channeled into infantile fantasies. "Big pharma is evil," goes the line of reasoning; "therefore homeopathy works and the MMR vaccine causes autism." This is probably not helpful. ~ Ben Goldacre

They claim that autism naturally occurs at about 18 months, when the MMR is routinely given, so the association is merely coincidental and not causal. But the onset of autism at 18 months is a recent development. Autism starting at 18 months rose very sharply in the mid-1980s, when the MMR vaccine came into wide use. A coincidence? Hardly! ~ Bernard Rimland

In a section of The Vaccine Book titled "Is it your social responsibility to vaccinate your kids?" Dr. Bob asks, "Can we fault parents for putting their own child's health ahead of that of the kids around him?" This is meant to be a rhetorical question, but Dr. Bob's implied answer is not mine. In another section of the book, Dr. Bob writes of his advice to parents who fear the MMR vaccine, "I also warn them not to share their fears with their neighbors, because if too many people avoid the MMR, we'll likely see the disease increase significantly." I do not need to consult an ethicist to determine that there is something wrong there, but my sister clarifies my discomfort. "The problem is in making a special exemption just for yourself," she says. This reminds her of a way of thinking proposed by the philosopher John Rawls: Imagine that you do not know what position you are going to hold in society - rich, poor, educated, insured, no access to health care, infant, adult, HIV positive, healthy immune system, etc. - but that you are aware of the full range of possibilities. What you would want in that situation is a policy that is going to be equally just no matter what position you end up in. "Consider relationships of dependence," my sister suggests. "You don't own your body - that's not what we are, our bodies aren't independent. The health of our bodies always depends on choices other people are making." She falters for a moment here, and is at a loss for words, which is rar ~ Eula Biss

Vaccine trials are done on healthy individuals. Let's say they measure the safe rate of replication for a healthy child and then use that same vaccine on a child with a compromised immune system. What appears to happen at times, is that some children have such a severely compromised immune systems that it causes the virus to replicate out of control[68]. Vaccines that are manufactured this way are the rotavirus, measles-mumps-rubella (MMR), smallpox and chickenpox vaccines. ~ James Morcan