The True Anti-Vaccine Warriors

We have known for quite some time that extremist terrorist groups like the Taliban have a hatred for vaccinations, but now it seems these terrorists are going so far as to actually kill people responsible for providing life saving vaccines for diseases such as polio.

Yes you read that correctly - terrorists are actually killing people who are providing vaccines.  The latest attack in Pakistan resulted in the deaths of five teachers and two healthcare workers who were involved in providing polio vaccines.  In the month prior, nine others were killed due to their affiliation with vaccinations.

So aside from senseless deaths, the effect of these killings is fewer people receiving their life saving vaccines. It means more children being infected with diseases which could have been prevented, and needless suffering and death.  That may seem like an overreaction, but we need only look at the latest numbers of children dying from the measles in Pakistan to witness the impact.

Measles deaths have surged due in no small part to the lack of vaccines.  According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 306 children died of measles in 2012 up from only 64 the year before.  Yet if you are to ask an anti-vaccinationist they will claim vaccines are harmful and that they don't even prevent disease.  They will claim the only people pushing vaccines are those who stand to profit from them, and they will claim that people are better off if they never receive any vaccines at all.

Tell it to the families who have suffered from the loss of one of their own.  Tell it to the healthcare workers who are putting their own lives on the line only to see ignorance and fear result in hundreds of senseless deaths.  Tell it to the grieving mothers who have had to bury those 306 children.

The truth is, anti-vaxxers have a lot in common with terrorists.  They both fear education.  They both fear legitimate science.  They both prey upon fear, and they both take drastic steps to prevent people from receiving vaccines.  Thankfully the anti-vaccinationists in the US have yet to resort to murder in order to push their viewpoints, but when you deliberately mislead people about matters of life and death, perhaps they aren't that far off after all.

One thing you won't see from the anti-vaxxers is any talk about the violence against those who are working in areas like Pakistsan, India, or Afghanistan.  You won't hear about the murders, and you won't hear about the growing numbers of children dying from preventable diseases.  Once again, anti-vaxxers will do their best to avoid the difficult conversations as they continue on their mission to mislead the uninformed and as they refuse to accept responsibility for the true impacts of remaining ignorant.

It would seem anti-vaxxers have a lot more in common with terrorists than they would like to admit.  They may claim they are warriors, but in the end they are still responsible for the deaths of children... and that is nothing to brag about.

The Real Victims

Mr. Shiny Shorts (NOT a victim)

I was thinking about innocent victims the other day and it seems very clear that vaccination conspiracy theorists like Mr Hubbs don't really care about others.  They would rather get their way regardless of how much science and evidence exists that prove that vaccines do far, far more good than harm.  They could care less about the millions of lives saved by vaccines, or the millions of humans who are protected from contracting diseases each and every year.

One only has to examine the published data from the World Health Organization (WHO) to clearly see those countries who have the highest rates of vaccination have a much lower infant mortality rates than those counties who have much lower vaccination rates.  Case in point, if you were to compare the US, Sweden, and Norway with countries like Niger, Nigeria, and Somalia here is what you would find:

United States:
Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 7
Under-five mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 8

Sweden:
Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 2
Under-five mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 3

Norway:
Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 3
Under-five mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 4

Chad:
Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births):  124
Under-five mortality rate (per 1,000 live births):  209

Nigeria:
Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 96
Under-five mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 186

Somalia:
Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 119
Under-five mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 200

Obviously vaccines are not the only determining factor when it comes to infant mortality.  There are other factors such as access to clean water and quality medical care as well as adequate supplies of food.  However if you examine the numbers you will find a direct correlation between vaccinations and child mortality rates regardless of these other factors.

If you really take the time to examine the numbers - no matter what countries you examine, the trends are clear.  Those countries who vaccinate the greatest portion of their population have fewer children dying while those countries who have not had as much success in vaccinating their populations have many more children dying each and every year from preventable diseases like measles (which according to the 2008 figures killed 164,000 people globally).

Think of that - 164,000 people dying from a disease we have a known and proven vaccine to prevent.  450 deaths every single day simply because our vaccination rates are not where they need to be worldwide.  However there is some good news - measles vaccination programs have reduced deaths 78% from 2000 to 2008 worldwide.  Those are indisputable facts and prove that higher vaccination rates lead to fewer deaths, yet people like Lowell Hubbs still refuse to accept these facts and act as if the WHO, UNICEF, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Red Cross, and dozens of other agencies are all in on some vast conspiracy to push vaccines for the sake of personal profit.

Perhaps even more shocking than the number of children who die from measles is the number of children who contract measles but don't die.  It is estimated that between 1%- 5% of those children with measles die from complications from the disease, which tells us that 95%-99% recover and live.  That equates to over 16,000,000 children who contract measles each and ever year.  That is 16 million children that have to suffer in pain while their bodies fight against the virus.  Apparently in the mind of a vaccine conspiracy theorist like Lowell Hubbs, 16 million children suffering for two to three weeks is much better than those same 16 million children receiving a single dose of the measles vaccine.

So let me ask: Are those 164,000 children who die from the measles the true victims, or is it the children who receive vaccines in countries such as the US?  Is it the millions of other children who contracted measles but didn't die, or is it people like Lowell Hubbs who pretend to understand issues of medicine even though he has never set foot in a research lab or taken so much as a remedial biology or immunology course in any college or university worldwide?

It seems clear when you really examine the facts, people like Mr. Hubbs don't care about these people at all.  They might claim to care and they might pretend that what drives their insanity is a desire to protect others, but the truth is Mr. Hubbs and his ilk are only interested in one thing and one thing alone.  They wish to ban all vaccines - and by doing so they wish to prevent people from making informed decisions on their own. 

The antivaxxers would be more than happy to see millions of children die each and ever year if it meant there were no vaccines, because in their minds vaccines are responsible for autism.  Aside from the fact that is zero scientific evidence to support this theory, and although there never has been any scientific evidence to support such a theory,  even if it were true antivaxxers like Mr. Hubbs would have us believe millions of dead children are better than a few thousand with autism, even though the vast majority of children who fall within the autism spectrum go on to lead relatively normal or near-normal lives.

Yea that makes sense.  Sounds like a great trade off... provided you or your children aren't the ones suffering.  These types are arguments are always easy for the antivaxxers to make when they realize they have already been vaccinated so they are safe from the diseases they wish to push onto the world's populace.

With all of this said, there is another smaller group who suffers negative impacts from anything and everything Mr. Hubbs stands for, and that group includes other people who just so happen to share the name "Lowell Hubbs".  Imagine sharing a name with a prolific vaccination conspiracy theorist who spends dozens upon dozens of hours each and every week writing on blogs and forums and websites and discussion groups all about various conspiracy theories. 

Imaging interviewing for a job only to have the potential employer type your name into Google and see all of this quackery associated with your name.  Imagine people emailing you or calling you and asking if you are the nutcase on the Internet who believes all vaccines are harmful or that science should be determined based upon wild theory or fabricated evidence or perhaps even nothing more than a strong opinion?

There are a lot of victims here, but I dare say anyone who shares the name Lowell Hubbs is harmed (at least on an emotional and psychological level) as much as anyone who has ever suffered from a disease treated or eradicated by a vaccine.

But Lowell Kevin Hubbs from Sioux Falls, South Dakota doesn't care about anyone else.  He merely cares about himself and meeting his goal of convincing the rest of the world to believe what he believes.  Because in the mind of a crazed conspiracy theorist, collateral damage or side effects imposed upon others just doesn't matter.  The end goal is a complete and total eradication of anything and everything related to vaccinations - innocent victims and anyone else who gets in the way be damned.

Polio and Coca-Cola

As I have discussed in the past, Mr. Hubbs doesn’t tend to believe that Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine was very successful.  In fact, Mr. Hubbs actually believes that polio rates actually increased after the release of the vaccine.

To add to this, in the past Mr. Hubbs has claimed polio was actually due to excessive amounts of “refined sugar” being consumed.  Mr. Hubbs (along with one of his anti-vaccination friends) then went on to explain how polio “started the year Coke came out” as if to blame polio upon a soft drink.

Yes as sad as this is, this is actually the theory being pushed by the anti-vaccination clowns.  Here is an exact quote:

“If you look at polio for example the history it started the year Coke came out. It was in the summer & because the kids were all drinking a lot of refined sugar in the hot sun it triggered the polio out break [sic].”

Now to be clear, that quote was not actually posted by Mr. Hubbs, or at the very least it wasn’t posted using the same username he was using at the time.  However, Mr. Hubbs did support the theory and actually added his own “research” in an attempt to back it up even citing his own website as if that adds any credibility to the issue. 

To make matters worse, around 98% of what Mr. Hubbs has used as source material for his idiotic beliefs on this issue stem from none other than whale.to, the known purveyor of all conspiracy theories known to man.  According to Scopie’s Law that automatically puts Mr. Hubbs in the loser bracket for this particular debate, but I’ll humor him for at least a few minutes.

The main issue with this “Coke causes Polio” theory is that it can be disproved in approximately 15 seconds by anyone capable of performing a google search.  The fact is, Coca-Cola was invented in 1885 and was in wide distribution by the 1890s. By 1895 it was sold in every state in the entire nation.

Polio on the other hand was first recognized in 1840.  Major outbreaks occurred in Europe in the 1880s and soon thereafter in the US where it peaked in the 1950s and 60s.  However Coke wasn’t even sold in Europe in the 1880s, so it obviously wasn’t causing polio.  In fact it wasn’t sold in Europe until the 1930s and 40s, so unless Europeans were receiving shipments of Coke from Marty McFly and Doc Brown via a 1985 Delorean that also happens to be a time-machine, it doesn’t seem all that plausible that we can blame the polio outbreaks upon Coca-Cola.

Then again if we have learned anything about polio at all, we know it is a viral disease transmitted from person to person primarily via a fecal oral route, and it has nothing to do with drinking a beverage or refined sugar.

But hey – don’t take my word for it: 

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=16741562

http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/ourcompany/historybottling.html

Mr. Hubbs also believes the polio vaccine itself actually created more polio than it ever cured, and he attributes the eradication of polio based upon – well truth be told he never really explains it other than to claim it cleared on its own.

However the facts are in 1952 there were at least 58,000 cases of polio diagnosed in the US.  By 1957 after a mass immunization campaign, there were only around 5,600 cases of polio diagnosed in the US.  That is over a 90% reduction in less than five years that Mr. Hubbs would chalk up to either a coincidence, or dumb luck (but it should be mentioned that sales of Coca-Cola during this period continued to rise).  By 1964 there were less than 125 diagnosed cases of polio in the entire nation yet Coke was more popular than ever.

Maybe we should blame Pepsi?

So if the idea that Coke causes polio can’t be proven, then Mr. Hubbs has had to move on to other excuses.  In one case Mr. Hubbs has even claimed the decrease in polio was due to the elimination of the usage of the pesticide DDT, but once again we find evidence that Mr. Hubbs apparently has his own version of history since DDT wasn’t outlawed until 1972 (long after the polio epidemics of the 1950s and 60s).

One has to wonder how anyone could claim that the vaccine itself actually increases the rate of polio however because the numbers just don’t add up.  In fact, in 1994 China vaccinated over 80 million children with the polio vaccine and have we heard of massive polio outbreaks in China?  No.  What about the 150 million children from India that have been vaccinated – do we see huge outbreaks of polio in India?  No.

By 1999 more than 450 million children worldwide had been vaccinated.  In that same year the number of reported cases of polio had fallen to around 7,000 from 100,000 just six years earlier, so is this due to a sheer coincidence?  No.

In fact, the areas with the highest rate of polio infections are actually those areas with the lowest amount of vaccinations.  Areas such as Nigeria, the Republic of Sudan, and other African nations that have the lowest rates of vaccination continue to deal with the highest rates of polio even today.

Now please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not suggesting the vaccine is without risks, because as with any chemical or supplement or food or additive, chances are someone will suffer negative consequences.  Just as many people are allergic to peanuts and can suffer serious complications from eating peanut butter up to and including death, similar risks are associated with many medications or vaccinations including the polio vaccine.

The most significant reported issue with the polio vaccine is what is called vaccine-derived poliovirus of VDPV.  VDPV is basically polio which is a result of usage of the oral polio vaccine, and it occurs in approximately 1 person per 2,500,000 vaccine recipients or if you would like a percentage that is approximately 0.00004%.  This tells us the remaining 99.9996% of the population are safe from the polio virus, and has lead the World Health Organization (WHO) to conclude the benefits of vaccination far outweigh the risks of contracting VDPV.

In fact, VDPV only occurs in under-immunized populations.  In fully-immunized populations people are protected from all strains of polio including VDPV.  So the question is, would it be better to avoid the handful of cases of VDPV by eliminating the vaccine while allowing thousands of children to contract wild poliovirus as a result?  I don’t think so, but anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists like Mr. Hubbs believe that would be an acceptable solution even though oral polio vaccines have actually prevented 6,500,000 polio deaths in the last 10 years alone.

Science Direct: One hundred years of poliovirus pathogenesis

But history and facts aside why should Mr. Hubbs care?  He himself has never suffered from polio and chances are nobody in his direct family has either (probably because they were all vaccinated), so apparently that suggests that Mr. Hubbs simply doesn’t give it any concern.  He doesn’t care about the millions of innocent children who have been spared from contracting polio.  He doesn’t care about the hundreds of thousands who may have died or been paralyzed, and he doesn’t care about all of the suffering, pain, and difficulty experienced by polio victims.  All Mr. Hubbs cares about is himself and trying to convince people that his google research and known conspiracy theorist websites should be more than enough to prove all vaccines are damaging.

Never mind the fact that throughout all of his silly and contrived arguments, Mr. Hubbs has never been able to actually provide any shred of reputable evidence to support his theories of the vaccine resulting in more cases of polio or that polio was caused by Coca-Cola or refined sugar or that DDT was a contributing factor or that the polio vaccine never worked.  This continues to be the nail in the coffin which holds all of Mr. Hubbs’ arguments, because to this day he still doesn’t understand the concept of burden of proof. 

Perhaps one day Mr. Hubbs will actually expand his knowledge to the point we can have rational debate about medical or scientific issues, but it is clear when someone actually thinks polio is merely some vast government or “big pharma” conspiracy in order to harm the populace under the guise of profit, or that a common soft drink actually causes polio – well needless to say that day is not coming anytime soon.

I wonder if Mr. Hubbs thinks Coke Zero causes shingles?

Autism-Vaccine Link: Evidence Doesn't Dispel Doubts

Here is yet another article I found which speaks of the mythical autism-vaccine link. It seems the more you read about this subject, the more evidence keeps stacking up against any link between vaccines and autism whatsoever. Granted the lack of scientific evidence to support such a link is sufficient for most able-minded individuals, but for the anti-vaxxers out there walking around unsupervised, it is likely they will ignore this evidence just as they always do. After all, what good is a conspiracy theory if there is evidence debunking it?

http://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/searching-for-answers/vaccines-autism 

One of the statements in this article caught my eye. It reads as follows:

"In the absence of any answers from the scientific community, any scintilla of suggestion is going to get magnified by the social process of talking it out," Sanders says. "All you need is one individual's story and it will expand."

 That is a good summary of what happens when Google educated "experts" such as Mr. Hubbs read something on the Internet and start to accept it is scientific fact even though it cannot be validated. These self-proclaimed anti-vaccination pundits hear a story about some random child or listen to preachings of a anti-vaccination pitchman and they drink it all in without ever taking a few minutes to ask objective questions.

The important factor to remember here is absence of scientific fact does not in any way add credibility to a theory. If someone claims dinosaurs were able to communicate verbally but cannot prove it with scientific fact, it does not in any way suggest all dinosaurs communicated telepathically. As always, when someone makes a claim or forms a hypothesis, it is their duty to support that opinion with real science which the anti-vaxxers are never able to do.

The article goes on to state the following:

"The MMR scare started 10 years ago with a report published in The Lancet that described the cases of eight children who, as their parents recalled, developed autistic symptoms and digestive ailments shortly after getting their first MMR dose. The researchers proposed that the vaccine might trigger a previously unknown form of regressive autism. They suggested that maybe the measles virus in the vaccine lodged in the intestine, causing some kind of reaction that then affected the brain.

After that, experts studied whether the MMR vaccine could cause autism. To do that, they looked for clues among kids who did and didn't get the vaccine.

Since that initial finding, 14 studies including millions of children in several countries consistently show no significant difference in autism rates between children who got the MMR vaccine those who didn't.

The bottom line: It's very unlikely that the MMR causes autism, researchers say."

I should note the report published in The Lancet that is referenced above is the now-discredited study by Andrew Wakefield which The Lancet has actually retracted due to it being based upon flawed methodology and unsupported scientific methods. Nevertheless it shows how time after time, study after study, country after country, group after group, the science consistently proves there is no increase in autism rates in vaccinated children when compared to their unvaccinated peers.

Rest assured the anti-vaxxers don't accept science however, and they are quick to point out how some of these studies must have been financed by "big pharma" or how they information is corrupt because of the association with the FDA, CDC, AMA, or some other agency with a three letter acronym.

However try as they might, even if they stretch far enough to eliminate several of the existing studies to what they feel is bias or potential conflict of interest, a logical person still has to acknowledge the growing body of evidence that clearly dispels the autism-vaccine link. Notice I said "logical person", which tells us that someone like Mr. Hubbs is most likely convinced that vaccines do cause autism, and no amount of research or science will tell him otherwise.

It is in situations like this that we need to review the first quote above - because this is a prime example of where absence of science is often used to push forth an unsupported opinion. Even if we were to discredit or eliminate every single one of the studies referenced in this article, and even if we eliminate the dozens of such studies that have been done elsewhere around the globe that overwhelmingly prove that vaccines do not have any link to autism whatsoever, that still does not in any way prove that vaccines DO cause autism!

The concept is clear - an absence of scientific evidence does not prove a hypothesis, and that is a simple fact that continually trips up even the most ardent anti-vaxxer alive (including Mr. Hubbs). Then again, if we continue reading the article we find even more good news for science:

"The 2004 IOM review included five large-scale studies that compared autism rates in vaccinated and unvaccinated children. These and other recent studies, including one published in The New England Journal of Medicine in September 2007, have shown that children who received vaccines with thimerosal are not more likely to have been diagnosed with autism than those that weren't vaccinated or received less thimerosal from vaccines."

Once again, we have large studies which discredit the supposed vaccine-autism link including specific research about the dreaded thimerosal, but yet even this is not enough to convince the anti-vaxxers than vaccines aren't the root cause of autism. When pressed with this evidence or when asked questions about why the rates of autism haven't decreased since the phase-out of thimerosal in the late 90s and early 2000s, the anti-vaxxers don't have a legitimate answer. Instead of admitting that they were wrong, they continue to move the goal line and now claim instead of thimerosal or the MMR vaccine, autism might be "triggered" by vaccines rather than actually "caused" by it.

Yes I know - the difference really doesn't matter to those who have autistic children, and no matter the excuse it doesn't change the facts that study after study has found no difference in autism rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated children. If there was any shred of merit to the anti-vaxxer claims, we should witness a huge disparity where unvaccinated children rarely are diagnosed with autism while vaccinated children are diagnosed at a much higher rate -but that just isn't the case.

So does it really matter? What is the big issue with someone choosing to not vaccinate their children or why should we care? Well the simple truth is, unvaccinated children are at a much greater risk to contract and spread these diseases, and that has a significant and detrimental health to our populace.

Case in point:

“Every year, 2.5 million unvaccinated children worldwide die of diseases that vaccines could have prevented, and vaccines prevent the deaths of an additional 2 million children, according to the World Health Organization.”

So according to the WHO, 4.5 million children would die each and every year if it were not for life saving vaccines, and yet the anti-vaxxers out there spreading unfounded fear about some mythical link to autism don't seem to care. Not only do they put the lives and safety of these children in danger, but they have the audacity to proclaim they actually care about children when they promote their extremely dangerous anti-vaccination views.

Obviously each parent needs to decide for him or herself what is best for their child, but this decision should be based upon sound science and proven fact rather than hysteria, unsupported opinion, or random conspiracy theories. If anti-vaxxers such as Mr. Hubbs really cared about children, they would easily recognize the benefits of vaccinations (and the 4.5 million lives they save each year) far outweigh any known or perceived risks, but that viewpoint requires compassion rather than cynicism which suggests we won't be seeing it from Mr. Hubbs anytime soon.

Additional Reading Material: No link found between vaccine mercury and autism.