Measles Outbreak Hits Minnesota's Somali Community Hard

An ongoing measles outbreak in Minnesota highlights all that junk science has wrought and it again features the disreputable and lamentable Andrew Wakefield, whose report claiming an autism link with vaccines was disproven and repudiated by the Lancet and Wakefield's coauthors because Wakefield cooked the books.

Health officials struggling to contain a measles outbreak that's hit hard in Minneapolis' large Somali community are running into resistance from parents who fear the vaccine could give their children autism.

Fourteen confirmed measles cases have been reported in Minnesota since February. Half have been in Somali children, six of whom were not vaccinated and one who was not old enough for shots. State officials have linked all but one of the cases to an unvaccinated Somali infant who returned from a trip to Kenya in February. The state had reported zero or one case of measles a year for most of the past decade.

Amid the outbreak, a now-discredited British researcher who claimed there was a link between vaccines and autism has been meeting with local Somalis. Some worry Andrew Wakefield is stoking vaccination fears, but organizers say the meetings were merely a chance for parents to ask him questions.

"Unfortunately a lot of the media thinks he's saying 'Don't get vaccinated.' That's far from the truth. He's basically encouraging people to get vaccinated but do your homework and know the risks," said Wayne Rohde, a co-founder of the Vaccine Safety Council of Minnesota, which says parents should have other options for immunizing their children.

Measles has been all but eradicated in the United States, but accounts for about 200,000 annual deaths worldwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. None of those infected in Minnesota have died, though eight have required hospitalization.

The infections come as autism concerns have surged over an apparent rise in cases in Minnesota's Somali community, the largest in the U.S. Officials, though, haven't determined if that's really happening.

The outbreak began when an underage toddler who couldn't receive the vaccine became infected while visiting Somalia. That toddler became patient zero in the outbreak, as it spread among other children who were not vaccinated or who could not be vaccinated due to their age. This is a disease that was all but eradicated in the US except for the occasional case that was brought in just as this outbreak was.

It again highlights the junk science Wakefield peddled; kids should not be getting sick from diseases that are easily prevented by vaccination. Moreover, there's absolutely no way that Wakefield should be having anything to do with the practice of medicine or talking about vaccines. He's responsible for more misery and death and health care costs than one could possibly realize through his bogus claims.

Eight of the Minnesota kids have had to be hospitalized.

Autism Activists Head To Trenton To Support Misguided Vaccine Bill

Autism activists in New Jersey are heading to Trenton to rally in support of a seriously misguided bill that would allow parents to avoid giving their kids critical vaccines.

The state Assembly’s Health and Senior Services Committee is holding a hearing on the bill Monday. Supporters believe parents should be able to exempt their children from vaccinations, given that studies have yet to prove that the shots don’t have detrimental affects on some people, such as causing autism.

“When it comes to vaccines and autism, the science has not caught up,” said Louise Habakus, co-editor of the recently published Vaccine Epidemic and one of the organizers of the rally.

Opponents fear that fewer immunized children would increase the chances for diseases to spread.

No studies have shown an autism-vaccine link, and the one study that is often cited, turned out to be a total fraud. That study, carried out by Andrew Wakefield and published in the Lancet before it was fully retracted, was fraudulent in its means, methods, and statistical analysis.

Since Wakefield's original bogus study, significant time and effort has gone into trying to discern whether there is a link between vaccines and autism development, but there is no such link.

Moreover, the claimed link between thimerosol (a mercury-based preservative) that was used in the MMR vaccine and autism doesn't hold up to scrutiny either, since thimerosol was removed as preservative years ago, and the autism rates were not reduced.

What these anti-vaccine folks will do is increase the likelihood of disease outbreaks of wholly preventable diseases and cause significant economic harm. Vaccines don't just help prevent the spread of communicable diseases with the patient receiving the vaccine, but helps reduce the spread among those that the person comes in contact with.

There is absolutely no reason that diseases like whopping cough, measles, and mumps should be contracted by anyone when vaccines are so readily accessible. Yet, if this bill gets passed, it will end up increasing the chances of outbreaks and that some may require hospitalization from complications relating to the disease (including death).

Instead, these groups claim that it is their choice not to give their children vaccines, even though as a matter of public health it should be mandated. These parents ignore the reality of life before these vaccines, when these diseases ravaged the population. Because we've largely eliminated these diseases, people think that the vaccination against these diseases is no longer required.

Yet, we've repeatedly seen outbreaks occur among populations that aren't sufficiently vaccinated and allowing junk science to trump sound medical practices would affect the long term public health. This is a bill that should be defeated.

Double Dose of Junk Science Vaccine Insanity

First up is Prince Charles of England, who has no qualms about giving a Royal warrant to a company that sells bogus "polio, typhoid, and yellow fever vaccines" based on homeopathic idiocy. As the article notes, homeopathy involves diluting substances to levels that make it all but impossible for the original substance to even exist in the solution.

Homeopathic remedy are commonly diluted, in their parlance, to 24C – that is, diluted to one part in a hundred, then that diluted solution is diluted to one part in a hundred, 24 times. To give you some idea of how dilute that is, the allowable concentration of arsenic in US tapwater is 4C, and at 12C there is only a 60 per cent chance of a single molecule of the original substance existing, if you started with a mole** of the substance. Or – I love this – one-third of a drop of the original substance would create a 13C solution if it were evenly mixed in all the oceans of the world. 13C is, remember, 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times stronger than 24C, a common dilution. A 200C dilution of duck liver is given as a treatment for the flu. That’s the equivalent of one molecule of duck liver in 10320 universes the size of our one. The more dilute it is, most homeopaths say, the better.

Polio is one of a few diseases that could be eradicated worldwide (following smallpox) but efforts have been stymied in the past by rumors that vaccines cause sterility or AIDS or other dangerous rumors. Instead of wiping out this scourge, it persists in parts of Africa and Asia despite the best efforts of scientists to immunize rural populations.

Vaccination is key, and now you've got Prince Charles (by giving the business Royal warrant) is endorsing junk science - homeopathy - as it provides "alternative travel vaccines" alternatives to conventional travel immunizations. Given the way that diseases can circumnavigate the globe in the time it takes to fly around the world, this is a stupendously stupid idea. It exposes the population to diseases that should be protected via standard vaccines and immunizations.

Prince Charles' position may lead to death or needless illnesses.

That's child's play compared to the damage done by Andrew Wakefield, whose bogus findings claimed to link MMR vaccines to autism. Parents have needlessly exposed their kids to easily preventable illnesses because a ginned up study by an anti-vaccine advocate claimed that there was a link.

There was none as researchers continue looking into the study data.

The conclusions of the 1998 paper by Andrew Wakefield and colleagues were renounced by 10 of its 13 authors and later retracted by the medical journal Lancet, where it was published. Still, the suggestion the MMR shot was connected to autism spooked parents worldwide and immunization rates for measles, mumps and rubella have never fully recovered.

A new examination found, by comparing the reported diagnoses in the paper to hospital records, that Wakefield and colleagues altered facts about patients in their study.

The analysis, by British journalist Brian Deer, found that despite the claim in Wakefield's paper that the 12 children studied were normal until they had the MMR shot, five had previously documented developmental problems. Deer also found that all the cases were somehow misrepresented when he compared data from medical records and the children's parents.

Called 'an elaborate fraud'
Wakefield could not be reached for comment despite repeated calls and requests to the publisher of his recent book, which claims there is a connection between vaccines and autism that has been ignored by the medical establishment. Wakefield now lives in the U.S. where he enjoys a vocal following including celebrity supporters like Jenny McCarthy.

While the British government stripped Wakefield of his right to practice medicine, he will not face justice for the fact that measles cases in the US and UK have exploded to epidemic levels as a result of his bogus study.

It will take years to recover from the damage done by this junk science.