There’s a suspicion that subcutaneous injections of neurotoxins may not be good for you. I skin popped fifty mikes on Monday afternoon and was laid out Monday night and Tuesday for much of the day. Feeling better now, thanks.
It was a flu vaccination (all bird flu, all the time), my first. The HMO doles these out every year and this year, responding to the publicity around fears of a pandemic, I rolled up a sleeve and said "stick me!" It was my first flu shot and the tech said, "Don’t worry. The virus is dead. You won’t get sick." About six hours later I felt sick and for the next 24 hours I was laid low.
So, was it the vaccine or the medium that made me ill? According to the CDC "Simpsonwood transcripts," the link between neurodevelopmental disorders and thimerosal (a vaccine preservative that contains mercury) is "statistically significant."
Daniel Schulman has an article in the current Columbia Journalism Review that examines the coverage of the thimerosal-autism linkage. It reminds me of nothing so much as the concern about transmission lines and cancer clusters. There are vested interests that stand in the way of a dispassionate assessment.
Schulman gives a thumbs up to the Los Angeles Times’ coverage of the debate, and reports regarding doubts on the objectivity of New York Times coverage.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Frank, Frank, Frank…
“So, was it the vaccine or the medium that made me ill?”–how ’bout neither of those choices?
How about totally uncorrelated, like you picked up a bug and it just happen to manifest after your injection?
How about you were worried about getting ill, so got ill?
An experiment with N=1 is meaningless, as I am sure you know. The relationship between an influenza injection at time A, and subsequent illness, requires a double-blind study (to control for patient and observer variables) and a very large N.
I point your readers to Orac Knows for the best autism / thimerosal coverage
http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/06/saloncom-flushes-its-credibility-down.html
http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/06/swimming-through-thimerosal.html
And,
http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/06/thimerosal-and-autism-two-questions.html
In which he writes:
I’ve been trying to think of a way to boil the whole issue down to its utter essence, as one commenter suggested. However, I’m going to do it a little differently than what the commenter had in mind. I think two questions serve that purpose quite nicely:
1. What evidence would convince me that the Geiers and Boyd Haley and all the others who are so convinced that mercury in thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is a major cause of or contributor to autism are correct and that my skepticism is ill-founded?
2. What evidence would convince those of you out there who are utterly certain that thimerosal in vaccines either causes or is a major contributor to autism that there is no link between mercury in vaccines and autism?
Pretty simple questions, aren’t they? I bet some won’t find them that easy to answer. Let’s see how intellectually honest I am and mercury-autism advocates are, comparatively speaking.
And for all things autism, I also recommend to you and your readers Autism Diva
http://autismdiva.blogspot.com/
For a cleareyed look at the science of autism:
http://www.interverbal.blogspot.com/
Now, I hope you are feeling better and good work on getting the flu vaccine (except you know it does nothing against avian influenza).
Liz, Liz, Liz…
Schulman’s article in the Columbia Journalism Review does a good job of sorting out the sides of the argument, and pointing to the range of coverage it has received in the press. The exposure that vaccine manufacturers feel to liability suits seems to have skewed the science a little.
There is a statistically significant correlation between the increase of autism in the population and the increased exposure to mercury based neurotoxins in vaccinations.
I did get sick for a little less than a day after my flu shot.
The only reason I got the flu shot is because of the fear mongering that has gone on around an avian flu pandemic. It was a sales job. I bought the product.
None of this has anything to do with any of this. It was just a flimsy fabric of personal experience holding together a blog post… I read an article, I had a shot, I got sick, (I got better quickly), and I was reminded of our inability as a culture to do the math on childhood cancer clusters around power lines because, well-darn-it… we need power lines. Same for MMR shots for infants. But maybe the infants would be better treated without the 50 mikes of neurotoxin in every jab.
One study of Amish children who are not routinely exposed to vaccination showed a low incidence of autism overall, and a positive correlation to thimerosal exposure among those who had been diagnosed as autistic.
I know the difference between positive correlations and causality. Take global warming…