Vaccinations, autism…and Amanda Peet?
I wasn’t expecting Jonathan Kay’s latest opinion column — concerning celebrities and the supposed link between vaccinations and autism — to be something I’d fire out to the blog today.
But it appears I was wrong.
Grace and I were discussing the whole issue of vaccinations recently, and the supposed link between modern vaccines given to infants and autism. I’ll grant that there’s a correlation there, of course…but as I am often reminded by atheists with whom I correspond (and as I often remind them in turn, in other discussions), “correlation does not imply causation.” There may be some statistical correlation between vaccination and autism…but that by no means proves, nor gives credence to the suggestion, that the vaccinations themselves are to blame.
Unfortunately, many people do not see it this way, and there are still people out there in the world today who insist that their children not be vaccinated. A few Hollywood stars (of course) are at the forefront of that movement, giving it an artificial authority that it does not deserve.
But as Mr. Kay notes, the other side has its voice of authority as well. And unlike the knee-jerk emotionalism of the anti-vaccination voices, Amanda Peet seems to have done her homework on the matter.
“My husband and I were ecstatic when we learned we would be having our first baby,” she recently wrote on the Web site vaccinateyourbaby.org. “Our friends started asking us the same question: Do you plan to vaccinate your baby? Many of our friends in Hollywood were choosing not to vaccinate their babies (or to delay vaccines) because they feared that they might cause autism or other disorders. We were torn.”
In her confusion, Peet sought help from vaccine expert Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at Philadelphia’s Children’s Hospital (and the author of Autism’s False Prophets(buy it at Amazon.com!
)). “What became clear to us…was that scientists around the world clearly refuted any connection between vaccines and autism or other disorders,” she reports. “Most importantly, I learned that delaying vaccines could jeopardize our baby’s life.”<
After the birth of her child, Peet teamed up with Offit to debunk the scandalously influential propaganda movement peddling a mythical link between vaccinations and autism -- a movement led, in part, by celebrities such as Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy.
I’m not sure I’d take any sort of life advice from Jenny McCarthy, except perhaps in the sense that I would raise my daughter to do pretty much everything exactly opposite to how Ms. McCarthy did things.
Just saying.
What I like the most about Kay’s article, however, is how he highlights just how absurd the whole debate is, especially for being as celebrity-driven as it has become.
It is quite amazing that, in 2008, our society should be reliant on the charitable work of Amanda Peet to get the word out about a safe, miraculous medical technology that, over generations, has saved hundreds of millions of human lives. To an observer from a Third World country who doesn’t yet enjoy the blessing of universal vaccination, it must be a bewildering spectacle: Having acquired the ability to protect children from measles, diphtheria, tetanus, mumps, rubella, meningitis and a host of other ailments, some of the wealthiest people in our society have opted instead for the live-or-die craps game that parents played in ancient times.
But here’s the money quote:
Of course, the vast majority of children who don’t get vaccines won’t suffer for it — but that’s only because, growing up in a healthy society where most people do get their shots, the unvaccinated are rarely exposed to deadly, communicable diseases. As Peet rightly declared in a 2008 interview, parents who don’t vaccinate their children are effectively “parasites.”
And so it goes with progressives, I suppose — why do something active and beneficial, which contributes to the good of society as a whole, when you can just leech off of the common sense and good work of others?
Don’t get me wrong — I’m not exactly a fan of poking small infants with sharp needles. But I do recognize that in the grand scheme, the very slight risk that Ella might turn out autistic far outweighs the somewhat more tangible risk — especially the risk to her — that she’ll contract a disease like polio. Autism certainly presents no end of challenges to the individual that suffers it…but stuff like tetanus can kill you dead in 24 hours.
Learning/developmental disability…or death? Hmmn…tough choice, isn’t it?
Actually, for some people, it seems to be. And that’s what I don’t get about the anti-vaccination crowd. Okay…you don’t want your kid to get autism. I get that. But at what cost? Are you suggesting that your kid would be better off dead from something like tetanus (which is easy enough to contract whilst playing — step on a nail on that pile of boards you’re using as “time out” if you don’t believe me!) than have autism?
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