Shared Illusion...

The issue of vaccines administered to young children used to be a favorite hobby-horse of Don Imus before he was jerked from the air. Despite the definitive findings to the contrary of the Institute of Medicine, some parents and their advocates insist that the mercuric preservative thimerosal is the causative agent in autism. As with other types of scientific findings, the action of collective human belief, particularly where it relieves fear or uncertainty, appears to carry at least equal weight with some.
As Paul A. Offit writes in The Boston Globe,

"Now, vaccine makers are again threatened. Lawyers will argue that either the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine or a mercury-containing preservative (thimerosal) in vaccines or the combination of the two can cause autism. This theory has been advanced on television shows such as 60 Minutes, in popular magazines like Time and Newsweek, and on national radio programs such as Imus in the Morning. Most prominently, the mercury-causes-autism theory has been advanced by a parents advocacy group called Safe Minds -- a group now at the center of the litigation."

Thus, simple media exposure creates belief, and belief in the hands of any group of people -people backed by tort lawyers- is enough to counterbalance definitive scientific proof, if only twelve people on a jury can be convinced.

Then, there is evidence that while mercury is certainly capable of causing debilitating conditions or even death, there is no evidence that autism is one of them:

"Certainly there is plenty of evidence to refute the notion that vaccines cause autism. Fourteen epidemiological studies have shown that the risk of autism is the same whether children received the MMR vaccine or not, and five have shown that thimerosal-containing vaccines also do not cause autism. Further, although large quantities of mercury are clearly toxic to the brain, autism isn't a consequence of mercury poisoning; large, single-source mercury exposures in Minamata Bay and Iraq have caused seizures, mental retardation, and speech delay, but not autism."

Finally, anyone with a sixth-grade education ought to be able to understand the argument that if mercury is withdrawn from a vaccine, yet the incidence of autism is not only unaffected, but increases, then there is NO connection!

"Finally, vaccine makers removed thimerosal from vaccines routinely given to young infants about six years ago; if thimerosal were a cause, the incidence of autism should have declined. Instead, the numbers have continued to increase. All of this evidence should have caused a quick dismissal of these cases. But it didn't, and now the court has turned into a circus. The federal and civil litigation will likely take years to sort out."

The track record of vaccines is clear, particularly in young children. The use of vaccines has a track record that is clear, going back to Edward Jenner's inoculations against smallpox in the eighteenth century. I can sympathize with any parent having to deal with a condition as serious as autism, but that does not, and should not preclude the access to vaccines, which our current system of litigation threatens to do. Risk is a part of life, and the risks of being vaccinated are without doubt enormously less than not being vaccinated.


And yet, curiously, we are threatened with the possibility -and out of pure belief- that vaccines might become a thing of the past, or manufactured completely under government ægis in order to block litigation that can place drug companies in receivership. The demand of the vast majority, supported by evidence that vaccines are safe is curiously sidelined by a group of about 5,000 people supported by their attorneys. My demand that my children and my grandchildren have vaccines available is therefore validated only if I sue in their behalf- evidently.

If anyone believes that contemporary mankind is necessarily more clear-headed and rational than our predecessors, this sorry business should quell that argument. We ARE the same ancestors who believe that "bad air" caused malaria, and that necklaces of flowers could protect against the Black Death, and who burned old ladies at the stake when epidemics occurred. Or, put more succinctly:

"I reject your reality and substitute my own."

- Adam Savage