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Anti-vaxxer Trump may tap anti-vaxxer Kennedy for panel on vaccination safety

Kennedy
Robert F Kennedy Jnr

US President-elect Donald Trump opened up a new front in his war on science, according to a Boston Globe editorial, when he appointed – or seemed to appoint – anti-vaxxer celebrity Robert F Kennedy Jr to chair a panel on vaccine safety.

The editorial notes that the message is that decades of evidence-based research don’t matter as much as conspiracy theories and junk science pushed by celebrities.

And Kennedy is certainly that. The nephew of President John F Kennedy and son of slain presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy, he is the beneficiary of a half-century of Democratic hagiography that presumably adds a sheen of respectability to the issue that anti-vaxxers like Jenny McCarthy do not. But, the editorial says, he is utterly unfit to lead an effort that is utterly unnecessary.

Improbably, the anti-vaccination movement took off after the publication of a single, small study in a British medical journal in 1998 that linked the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella to autism. The report says the study was roundly debunked and retracted in 2010 after the journal editors discovered that the author, Andrew Wakefield, had been funded by attorneys for parents pursuing lawsuits against vaccine companies. Wakefield himself was found guilty of fraud and stripped of his medical license.

Kennedy joined the anti-vaxxer ranks more than a decade ago, fomenting unwarranted panic as he testified in state after state against vaccines. But, the report says, he and Trump are ignoring the broad scientific consensus and in suggesting a link to autism, they are also confusing causation and correlation.

Rates of autism spectrum disorder have been rising since the 1960s, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, but researchers don’t fully know whether that rise is due to more awareness and diagnosis or to an actual increase in cases. The report says there is no evidence that the rise is linked to childhood inoculations against infectious disease – or, for that matter, to the Internet, seat belts, diet soda, or the many other things that have become more common since the 1960s.

In fact, the report says, vaccines undergo rigorous clinical trials and require approval by the US Food and Drug Administration. Several federal advisory panels, made up of doctors and scientists, oversee supplies and monitor adverse reactions. And it’s important to remember that the vaccination of one person also protects the community at large, through a principle known as herd immunity. When a significant number of people have gotten shots to prevent, say, measles, it also protects individuals who, due to pre-existing medical conditions, cannot be vaccinated at all, simply because they are less likely to be exposed.

The editorial says Trump’s misleading pronouncements would be less alarming if the consequences were not so potentially dire. Measles can cause deadly health complications, including pneumonia and encephalitis, and weakened herd immunity is a public health threat.

Although health officials announced years ago that the disease had largely been eliminated in the US, there has been an uptick in cases in recent years, according to the CDC – in part because of outbreaks in communities where people have not gotten vaccinated. Governor Jerry Brown of California had the right idea when he signed legislation outlawing personal and religious exemptions from school vaccinations, after a mass outbreak at Disneyland in 2015.

The report says perhaps Trump’s stance on vaccines shouldn’t come as a surprise. During the 2016 campaign, he called global warming a hoax. But, it says, the stakes are exponentially higher as he assumes the presidency. In addition to the real risk of harming public health, he’s making it more likely that medical science will follow climate science into the maw of our divided politics, potentially driving Republicans to reject vaccines out of partisan loyalties.

The report says it’s worth remembering that another Republican in the White House, Abraham Lincoln, signed a law in 1863 creating the National Academy of Sciences because he recognised the economic and social value of scientific progress, even during the depths of the Civil War. By rejecting decades of settled science, and lending credence to fraudulent theories, Trump does a disservice to the party of Lincoln, and to a nation that expects better.

 

Members of the medical community quickly expressed strong concerns about the possibility of a US government committee on vaccine safety, headed by an anti-vaccine advocate, says a Live Science report.

“Claims that vaccines are linked to autism or are unsafe when administered according to the recommended schedule have been disproven by a robust body of medical literature,” Dr Fernando Stein, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and Dr Karen Remley, executive vice president of the AAP, are quoted as saying “Vaccines are safe. Vaccines are effective. Vaccines save lives,” they said.

The report says doctors know this because, firstly, the US requires that all vaccines undergo extensive testing on safety and effectiveness before they can be brought to market, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). And once vaccines are on the market, there are several systems in place to monitor the safety of the treatments within the general population.

These studies do show that, like all medicines, vaccines come with a small risk of side effects, but these side effects are rarely serious. What’s more, the alternative of not vaccinating a child also comes with risks, because vaccines prevent diseases that can be dangerous and sometimes fatal, the CDC said. For each approved vaccine, researchers have determined that the benefits outweigh the risks.

The report says here is a look at some of the data behind vaccine safety and effectiveness:

Over the past two decades, childhood vaccines have saved the lives of 732,000 US children and prevented more than 300m kids from getting sick, according to a 2014 study from the CDC.

Nearly 90% of vaccine side effects are not serious, according to the CDC.

More than 20 rigorous scientific studies have shown that there is no link between the MMR vaccine and autism, according to the CDC. The original study that claimed to find such a link has been discredited, and was retracted.

A 2011 report from the National Academy of Medicine reviewed more than 1,000 vaccine studies and concluded that serious reactions to vaccines are extremely rare. The MMR vaccine can cause fevers, and some children who develop a fever can have a seizure; these are called fever-triggered seizures. However, studies show there is one case of fever-triggered seizure for every 3,000 to 4,000 children who receive this vaccine. And these seizures almost never cause harm over the long term, the 2011 review said.

About one in 10 children who is infected with measles develops an ear infection, and such infections can result in permanent hearing loss, according to the CDC. For every 1,000 children who get measles, one or two will die from the disease, the CDC said.

Two doses of the measles vaccine are about 97% effective at preventing measles, the CDC said.

In rare cases, the rotavirus vaccine, called RotaTeq, is linked to the development of a serious intestinal disorder called intussusception. A 2014 study found that for every 65,000 children who received this vaccine, there was one case of intussusception.

A 2011 study found that the rotavirus vaccine had prevented 65,000 US children from being hospitalised with rotavirus since 2006.

A 2012 study found that the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine is linked with an increased risk of fainting. The study, which included nearly 200,000 girls who received at least one dose of the Gardasil HPV vaccine, found that there were 24 cases of fainting per 1,000 people on the day of vaccination. For comparison, there were an average of four cases of fainting per 1,000 people when studied months after vaccination.

The HPV vaccine was introduced in 2006, and during the next four years, the rate of HPV infections among teen girls decreased by 56%, despite a relatively low vaccination rate in this age group, according to a 2013 study. (HPV infections in women increase the risk of cervical cancer.)

Studies on the safety of the chicken-pox vaccine found that about 3% of children had a mild, chicken-pox-like rash after the first dose of the vaccine, according to the CDC. On average, these children had two to five lesions, compared with the typical 250 to 500 lesions found in children who contract the actual illness, according to the Immunization Action Coalition, a non-profit organisation funded by the CDC that creates and distributes educational materials on vaccines.

Although chicken pox is usually a mild disease, it can cause serious complications, including bacterial infections of the skin, pneumonia, inflammation of the brain and blood stream infections, according to the CDC. Before the introduction of the chicken pox vaccine, there were about 4m cases of chicken pox in the US per year, and of these, an estimated 11,000 people went to the hospital with complications and 100 people died from the disease, the IAC said.

After the introduction of the chicken pox vaccine, cases of the disease fell nearly 80% in the US over a decade, according to a 2012 study.

[link url="https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2017/01/14/kennedy-enlists-trump-war-science/FPAkP56PtlxObXyculcgmO/story.html"]Boston Globe editorial[/link]
[link url="http://www.livescience.com/57488-vaccine-safety-numbers.html"]Live Science report[/link]

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