Circuit Judge Pauline Newman dissented to the Court of Appeals decision, joined by Judge Jimmie V. Reyna. Although Judge Newman’s dissent carries no legal authority, it can be offered as persuasive materials in other cases. It should not, however, carry much weight, because Judge Newman’s dissent mischaracterizes the Oliver vaccine injury case, mischaracterizes the relevant science, and makes numerous other errors.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Health and Human Services have reported that the ongoing measles epidemic has, as of 11 July 2019, has resulted in 1123 cases in 28 states. This an increase of 14 cases since the last report. This makes 2019 (which is just over 6 months old) the worst year for measles since 1992, when there were 963 cases for all 12 months.
At this rate, we can expect well over 2000 measles cases for 2019, making it the worst year since the major measles epidemics of the late 1980s.
Good news for those of us who want to stop vaccine-preventable diseases – the German government has backed a bill for a mandatory measles vaccine for all children entering school or kindergarten. I’m sure the science-denying anti-vaccine crowd in Germany are angry.
If the German parliament approves the bill, which is almost certain, parents will have to provide evidence that their child has received the measles vaccine before they are enrolled in school. If the parents have failed to do so, they will be subject to fines up to €2,500 ($2,800).
If this bill is passed, Germany will join France and Italy as the other European countries with a mandatory vaccines law. Many other European countries have such high vaccination rates that they have little need for mandatory measles vaccine, but I’m sure they are watching carefully considering the rather large measles epidemic that has hit Europe over the past year.
The USA does not have a Federal mandatory measles vaccine law, but all 50 states and the District of Columbia require children to be fully vaccinated (according to the CDC immunization schedule, which includes the MMR vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella) before entering school. However, many states allow so-called “personal belief exemptions,” which allow parents to easily skip some or all vaccines based on whatever they want.
As a result, some states have either implemented or are considering strict laws to make certain that children entering school are fully vaccinated. California, Maine, New York, Washington, Mississippi, and West Virginia have mostly eliminated personal belief exemptions, only allowing medical exemptions, where the child has some contraindications to some vaccines. The German law also does the same – it only allows medical exemptions.
The German state of Brandenburg recently passed its own law instituting a mandatory measles vaccine for children entering kindergarten. The state government was concerned about Brandenburg’s relatively low measles vaccination rate, 72.5%, far below the 92.9% rate for the whole country.
The German government was motivated to consider a law because of pockets of anti-vaccine parents (like in the USA) along with Europe’s aforementioned measles epidemic. According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Germany has reported 429 measles cases for 2019 through June 14.
This bears repeating. The measles is easily prevented by a vaccine.
A quick measles primer
Measles (also called rubeola, not to be confused with rubella, or German measles, which despite its name, isn’t the issue in Germany) is a respiratory disease caused by the measles virus. Measles virus normally grows in the cells that line the back of the throat and lungs.
The virus is spread through respiration (contact with fluids from an infected person’s nose and mouth, either directly or through aerosol transmission), and is highly contagious — 90% of people without immunity sharing living space with an infected person will catch it.
There are no specific treatments for the disease. There are no miracle preventions.
The oft-repeated, and highly inaccurate, claim that vitamin A supplements can cure or prevent measles completely misses the mark. It’s important to supplement with vitamin A to prevent blindness as a result of measles, but it doesn’t reduce mortality or prevent some neurological issues. Moreover, it is most useful in children with vitamin A deficiency, not exactly a major issue in well-fed children in developed countries.
Which leads me to remind everyone that measles is not a harmless disease, despite the false claims of the anti-vaccine religion. According to the CDC, some of the many measles complications are:
About 30% of measles cases develop one or more complications.
Pneumonia, which is the complication that is most often the cause of death in young children.
Ear infections occur in about 1 in 10 measles cases and permanent loss of hearing can result.
Diarrhea is reported in about 8% of cases.
As many as 1 out of every 20 children with measles gets pneumonia.
About 1 child in every 1,000 who get measles will develop encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain that can lead to convulsions, deafness, and other long-term neurological deficits.
About 1-2 children, out of 1000 who contract measles, may develop subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), a rare chronic, progressive encephalitis that affects primarily children and young adults– it is caused by a persistent infection of the measles virus. The disease starts with measles infection, usually before the age of 2 years, followed by approximately 6-15 asymptomatic years. Some researchers think the asymptomatic period is around 5-8 years after the initial disease. Gradually, the disease progresses with psychological and neurological deterioration, which can include personality changes, seizures, and coma. It is always ultimately fatal.
And sadly, for every 1,000 children who get measles, 1 or 2 will die from it.
These measles complications are more common among children under 5 years of age and adults over 20 years old (usually those with lapsed immunity).
Even in previously healthy children, measles can be a serious illness requiring hospitalization. Measles also can make a pregnant woman have a miscarriage, give birth prematurely, or have a low-birth-weight baby.
There is only one good way to prevent measles unless you want your child to live in a hermetically-sealed bubble forever – get the MMR vaccine.
Serious complications to measles can be as high as 3 out of every 10 children who get the disease. Serious complications from the MMR vaccine is approximately 1 out of every 1 million vaccine doses. The benefit to risk calculation is way over on the side of vaccines.
Summary
Measles is a dangerous, highly contagious disease that can permanently harm or even kill healthy children. It is not a disease that should be ignored.
The German mandatory measles vaccine law is what needs to be done to protect the children of the country. It is great that Germany is taking this step – I’m sure other countries will do the same.
Vaccines save lives. And the German government knows this and is moving to make sure every child is protected.
Recent reports of another outbreak of acute flaccid myelitis in Minnesota has brought out zombie memes pushed by the anti-vaccine religion, they blame acute flaccid myelitis on the polio vaccine. Of course, these bogus claims aren’t based on any scientific evidence, but that’s never stopped the anti-vaccine zealots.
These outbreaks have caused the public health sleuths to search for the actual causes of this polio-like syndrome. And there just isn’t any robust or valid evidence that the polio vaccine is anyway related to acute flaccid myelitis.
As we know, polio can be a crippling and potentially deadly infectious disease caused by the poliovirus, a human enterovirus, that spreads from person to person invading the brain and spinal cord and causing paralysis. Because polio has no cure, the polio vaccine is the best way to protect ourselves from the crippling disease.
Because real scientists wanted to know what caused this acute flaccid myelitis outbreak, they tried to hunt down the actual cause. And that’s when they landed on enterovirus 68, a once-rare virus. As we always do, we’ll look at the facts behind this virus and its relationship to polio (or polio vaccines).
But first, we need to start with some virology, because unlike the pseudoscience of the anti-vaccine zealots, real science is important to our understanding of acute flaccid myelitis.
One of the most popular zombie memes and tropes of the anti-vaccine movement is that Japan banned Gardasil, the HPV vaccine. And like most of those zombie memes and tropes, the facts are a lot different than the anti-vaccine claims. Per usual.
Although I don’t quite understand the reasoning, the anti-vaccine religion absolutely hates Gardasil, possibly more than any other vaccine. These zealots maintain that the HPV vaccines cause all kinds of harm to teens and young adults. Yet, there are literally mountains of data derived from numerous huge epidemiological studies that the Gardasil cancer-preventing vaccine is one of the safest vaccines on the market.
There are so many random claims from the anti-vaccine activists about evil chemicals in your child’s vaccines. Aluminum in vaccines is dangerous? No. Mercury in vaccines? No. Formaldehyde in vaccines is killing our kids? Nope. And of course, MSG in vaccines is causing something.
Of course, many of you have heard about MSG in our food. It’s up there on the evil food chemical list along with aspartame, high fructose corn syrup, GMO‘s, and whatever else is the food danger of the day. But MSG certainly has been on the top of the “avoid” list for decades.
I’ve been refuting nonsense about chemicals for at least 25 years on the internet (back before we had social media, yeah I’m an old dinosaur). From my perspective, I think that 50% of the issues with “chemicals” is their long complex names. And the other 50% is because of the appeal to nature logical fallacy, which is the argument that natural substances are somehow superior to “chemicals.”
Ironically, everything in nature is a chemical, and unless you think everything in the universe is designed for human health (ridiculous), a “natural” chemical is not even close to being superior to a “man-made” chemical.
But let’s get back to MSG – how many times have you seen “No MSG” in a sign Chinese restaurant? So if we don’t want to put MSG in our kung pao chicken, then why would we want MSG in vaccines?
What we’re going to show in this article is that MSG dangers are a myth. And the dangers of MSG in vaccines is a bigger myth.
On July 12, 2019, Judge Mackey of the Albany County Supreme Court (see Note 1) rejected the temporary restraining order request of plaintiffs challenging the updated New York vaccine exemptions law which removed the state’s religious exemption for school immunization requirements. While this is only the first step in what is almost certain to be a long process, and full arguments were not yet heard, the content of the decision does not bode well for plaintiffs – in line with abundant jurisprudence. Continue reading “New York vaccine exemptions law – judge rejects restraining order request”
The moving goalposts of the anti-vaccine arguments can be annoying. First, it was mercury (no mercury in vaccines). Today, it’s aluminum and vaccines. What next, the water in vaccines causes something because of reasons?
There is overwhelming and solid evidence that the tiny levels of aluminum in some vaccines are biologically irrelevant. Of course, the anti-vaccine religion is rarely convinced by science, because of only their beliefs matter.
The anti-vaxxers have a preconceived conclusion that vaccines are dangerous – aluminum and vaccines cause it. Then they find every bit of “evidence” to support that conclusion, irrespective of the mountain of evidence that says they are wrong. Continue reading “Aluminum and vaccines, it’s time to clear up the pseudoscience”
One of the enduring myths (there are so many) about the HPV vaccine is that it is linked to one or more autoimmune syndromes, an abnormal immune response to a healthy body part. These claims, pushed by an Israeli physician, Yehuda Shoenfeld, are called “autoimmune syndrome induced by adjuvants (ASIA)” and, sometimes, Shoenfeld’s Syndrome.
But we call it a myth, a lie, pseudoscience, and quackery. Despite the rejection of Shoenfeld’s bogosity by scientists worldwide, he was recently elected to the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities. What were they thinking?
Furthermore, the European Medicines Agency, which is the primary regulatory body in the EU for pharmaceuticals, has rejected any link between the HPV vaccine and various autoimmune disorders. The science stands in direct opposition to autoimmune syndromes being caused by any vaccine.
Despite the lack of evidence supporting the existence of autoimmune syndromes induced by adjuvants, and even more powerful evidence that it doesn’t exist, the anti-vaccine religion still cherry-picks articles to support their preconceived conclusions that the HPV cancer-preventing vaccine is dangerous.
So, let’s take a look at Yehuda Shoenfeld and his ridiculous ASIA claims. Then we’ll criticize the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities for seemingly endorsing his junk science.
You’ve probably seen the clickbait headlines across the press that, in a recent poll, 45% of Americans doubt vaccine safety. At first, such a poll would make me think that the anti-vaccine zealots were gaining some sort of traction with their fear, uncertainty, and doubt campaign against the settled science of the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.
Then a friend of mine, a pro-vaccine nurse in northern California, gave me a heads-up as to the actual data. And it wasn’t even close to that number doubting vaccine safety.
Even the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which is one of the leading American science organizations, which generally casts a very critical eye toward this kind of data, kind of got it wrong.
