Bill Gates: Vaccine-autism link 'an absolute lie'

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/02/03/gupta.gates.vaccines.world.health/

by dclaysmith • 15 years ago

91 150 15 years ago

edition.cnn.com

fat_tony2• 15 years ago

Relativism is destroying our society. There are things that are not up for debate. They usually involve facts and science. Inoculation is one of them.

I think vaccines should be mandatory for all children. If you don't vaccine your kid, CPS should take the kid away after multiple warnings, because you are an unfit parent and a danger to our community otherwise.

ghshephard2• 15 years ago

There is relatively good science that demonstrates, in a well vaccinated population, that you are endangering your child's life by having them vaccinated for some diseases.

Vaccinations aren't without risk (though, clearly, autism is not one of those risks)- and, as long as all the other parents get their children vaccinated, your child can take a pass on some vaccines and come out ahead from a mortality perspective.

With that said, from a _societal_ perspective, it's imperative that parent's put their child's life at this (minor) risk so that the overall mortality rate goes down.

Don't be so quick to judge the parent as "unfit", though your comment about being a danger to the community does, in fact, hold.

And, perhaps we should be a little less quick to suggest the solution to other parents not doing what we want them to do is to have "CPS take the kids away after multiple warnings."

There is a cost to freedom, and sometimes it means that we have to let parents makes the call on these grey areas, even if it offends our own personal rational models of how the world should work. Vaccines are clearly not as cut and dry as something like a life-saving blood transfusion or surgery for appendicitis, in which I would suggest that there is an imperative to over-rule the parent should they decline treatment of their children.

fat_tony2• 15 years ago

I'm new here, but thank your for teaching me a better viewpoint.

Retric3• 15 years ago

Unfortunately, we don't currently bring up the parents of children who die from lack of vaccination on negligent homicide charges in large part because of your line of reasoning. Parents are in no way equipped to make informed decisions about vaccination, and giving them the option is a horribly bad idea.

Globally there is a huge unvaccinated population http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1272/is_2729_134/ai_n... all it takes is one passenger to bring something back and suddenly you end up with a large number of dead children. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1291987...

PS: Because it's often local doctors that accept this Anti-Vaccination bullshit small locations often lose their herd immunity. It's one thing to randomly replace 1/100,000 vaccinations with an inert substance it's another for 10+% of the children in a small area to avoid vaccination.

luigi• 15 years ago

Can you please post a link to the "good science" that demonstrates your claim?

dhimes4• 15 years ago

When things evolve along a bit and the pseudo-science hysteria dies down, we may be faced with the following question: Who gets to decide which children shall be saved because the rest of the herd is vaccinated, and which shall be forced to risk vaccination for the good of the herd? Perhaps we should do it by lottery, like when we decide who must go to fight in wars and who gets to stay home.

JoeAltmaier• 15 years ago

That is probably true, but also a selfish viewpoint. There's something called "enlightened self-interest" where you do something risky to yourself to help the community.

If vaccination were only about your own health, then your conclusion is valid. But its also about those you will infect should you get the disease.

I understand a parent making selfish decisions about their child - in fact that's a defining characteristic of a parent. Just understand that its not always morally defensible. Or scientifically. Or logically.

davidw• 15 years ago

> in a well vaccinated population, that you are endangering your child's life by having them vaccinated for some diseases.

I wonder what those risks are like compared to, say, driving your child around town on a somewhat regular basis.

nlogn• 15 years ago

"as long as all the other parents get their children vaccinated, your child can take a pass on some vaccines and come out ahead from a mortality perspective."

This is true, of course, but who decides which kids should get the benefit of reduced risk? If it's not ok for everyone to skip out on vaccines, it should be ok for noone (unless we can figure out ahead of time which kids are vulnerable).

logjam• 15 years ago

To be taken seriously, you are going to have to provide a citation to support your claim that "there is relatively good science that....you are endangering your child's life by having them vaccinated for some diseases." If you are talking about events with a probability of getting hit by lightning, then please say that happens to be the level of "danger" you are talking about. (The risk for an adverse allergic event like anaphylaxis after a hep B injection...regardless of whether the anaphylaxis is causally linked to the vaccination or not...is about the same risk as being struck by lightning, 1:700,000).

Someone posted a link below to a CDC summary of adverse effects from vaccinations. They describe other rare events which are orders of magnitude less likely than your child being killed in traffic on the way to school in the morning. If you want to argue that sending children to school endangers their lives, you can certainly find statistical evidence for children being killed on school buses...and by lightning strikes on the way to school, choking on hot dogs, etc.

In every instance I am aware of, the risks of a serious adverse event from a vaccine is orders of magnitude lower than these other dangers to which parents routinely (and unthinkingly) expose their children.

Please tell us exactly at what level this "good science" you've found somewhere <b>quantifies</b> this "endangering of" our children's lives, and the causal link(s) of this mortality to the vaccine.

At that point, we can compare them to lightning strikes etc, and most importantly, compare them against the well known and demonstrably associated common mortality and morbidity that has accompanied failure to vaccinate.

There may be much longer-term benefits to vaccination. Children vaccinated against polio and hep B, for example, appear to have a lower incidence leukemia (ALL), as well as all cancers combined.

http://www.pediatricsupersite.com/view.aspx?rid=80272

anthonyb7• 15 years ago

Yep, that's the kicker - as long as everyone else gets their kids vaccinated. Does the "endangering your child's life" part count the risk of a major epidemic due to other parents making the same decision?

If everyone else is refusing to vaccinate, that's exactly when you should vaccinate, because your child is much more likely to catch chickenpox or the measles with a whole bunch of unvaccinated kids running around.

_delirium• 15 years ago

Whether vaccines do or don't have certain effects is definitely science, and not a matter of subjective opinion, so I agree on that. But the proposal "vaccines should be mandatory for all children" depends on non-scientific views as well, such as your views on when state compulsion is justifiable. I'm not sure if that's "relativism", but it seems hard to escape having philosophical argument somewhere in there.

nika7• 15 years ago

The rejection of science, in favor of an ideological agenda, is literally destroying our economy, and may well destroy our society.

One of the key enablers of this is that people like you-- who soundly reject science-- believe they have "facts and science" on their side.

The idea that "things...are not up for debate" is the most profoundly anti-science (and anti-intellectual) thing that can be said. I have yet to meet a pro-vaccination person who was willing to talk about the actual science.

Please, also realize when you say "mandatory" you are saying that you endorse the use of violence on people who-- for whatever reasons-- choose to make a different choice about the healthcare of their children.

It is one thing to incarcerate, or kill if they resist, someone who has committed a crime like murder or rape. It is quite another for you to endorse the use of violence for the "Crime" of not being politically correct.

Your ideology posits that whatever you deem to be "good for society" gives you the justification of using violence to enforce. First I'd like to point out that there hasn't been a tyrant known to the face of the earth who didn't use such rationalizations. But secondly, it is worth noting that implicit in this claim is the presumption that everyone is your slave, and everyone's life is to be lived according to your (or your creed's) edicts.

That is the opposite of liberty, and contrary to the entire history of common law, and specifically the US constitution which recognizes people as having inalienable rights. One of these rights recognized in the declaration of independence is the pursuit of "life". Quite literally, that means the right and power to make their own health care choices, based on their best understanding of the state of knowledge at the time.

In my experience, those who are wary of vaccines are pretty well aware of the state of the science on the issue, while those are pro-vaccines are generally after an ideological agenda of mandatory vaccination, and only invoke the word "science" to put forth the idea that their opposition rejects it.

Well, I see thru your claim. You reject science, the scientific method and the entirety of intellectualism. You are being dogmatic.

Edit: Everyone who votes me down without responding to my issues, proves my claim. I made an argument here that substantially contributes to the discussion. You vote me down and you vote to make HN a popularity contest where posts are ranked by adherence to The Party Line, rather than contributing to discussion.

By doing so you just prove that the claim about being influenced by "facts and science" is false and the reality is political ideology over all.

lmkg• 15 years ago

> ... endorse the use of violence on people who-- for whatever reasons-- choose to make a different choice about the healthcare of their children.

> It is one thing to incarcerate, or kill if they resist, someone who has committed a crime like murder or rape. It is quite another for you to endorse the use of violence for the "Crime" of not being politically correct.

By not getting vaccinations, they are putting other people's health at risk (cf. herd immunity, and children too young to be vaccinated). This is not simply an issue of free choice or ideology. This is not an issue of just what the consequences are to themselves (if it were, I wouldn't have issue). The issue is that they are endangering the lives of others. Force, or the threat of force, is a reasonable response to the endangerment of human lives. I would go so far as to say that it's qualitatively similar to murder (though quantitatively smaller). We have several documented cases every year of infants too young to receive the vaccination dying of whooping cough that they contracted from unvaccinated adults.

"Things are not up for debate" only in the sense that no amount of rhetoric can disprove an empirically proven fact. The facts, which were arrived at through science, are that vaccines save lives, and that when individuals are not vaccinated they put not just themselves but other people at danger as well. In the hypothetical, were science to discover new facts disproving this, I would revise my opinion, but these facts have been established over such a long time by so many studies that I consider the odds not just remote but literally impossible.

My experience, and you may be an exception although I doubt it, is that people who are ideologically opposed to vaccines have read scientific studies, but aren't actually familiar with science as a process. That is to say, they read a study, and think that it's science and its conclusion must be true. Evaluating a study means also examining its process for sources of bias, examining alternative explanations, and reproducing results in repeated studies. The effectiveness of vaccines and the concept of herd immunity has gone through that process. Anti-vaccination literature that I have seen does not withstand that process.

Robin_Message2• 15 years ago

> The idea that "things...are not up for debate" is the most profoundly anti-science (and anti-intellectual) thing that can be said. I have yet to meet a pro-vaccination person who was willing to talk about the actual science.

MMR doesn't cause autism, as was fairly obvious at the time and the now-settled science shows. Do you accept that, in this case, it is not true to say "those who are wary of vaccines are pretty well aware of the state of the science on the issue," and in fact those people were flat out wrong?

> their own health care choices,

We are talking about childhood vaccinations. I agree these are difficult moral and political issues, but you can't just quote the founding fathers and act like you've proved your point. Children do not make their own healthcare choices, their parents do, and society is more than happy to restrict the choices of both parents and children.

> politically correct

This is ridiculous dog-whistle. Please taboo it and use a phrase that describes what you mean in each case. It like "health and safety", to which I say: Do you object to having people not die in factory accidents or is it that you want the privilege of drinking polluted water?

jerf2• 15 years ago

"I have yet to meet a pro-vaccination person who was willing to talk about the actual science."

Either you're lying or not looking.

Here's the scientific argument of interest:

1. Before vaccinations, there existed several diseases that killed millions and maimed millions more on a routine basis.

2. Vaccines have been developed for many of these diseases, and deployed out into the population.

3. These diseases no longer kill millions and maim millions more.

If you find the "pro-vaccination" side a bit uninterested in the question of whether one in a few hundred thousand vaccinations have bad side effects at times, that's because scientifically it is worth how to further mitigate those risks but it isn't even remotely a scientific answer that vaccinations shouldn't take place.

In terms of the costs/benefits analysis of vaccinations, you are up against the deaths of millions on the plus side. You should expect it to be a bit of a challenge to lay out enough cons to win your point! The deaths of millions are hard to miss, if they weren't a great stonking benefit you wouldn't have to be arguing, it would be plainly obvious.

So, for the sake of argument, I will stipulate every pre-existing scientific argument you can show me is true. (Thatm is, you don't get to take advantage of my preemptive agreement to make new ones.) Show me how the scientific costs outweigh the scientific benefits, and given the nature of the benefits bear in mind that I'm demanding to see millions upon millions of bodies a decade and absolutely nothing less. Go for it.

Science isn't about slinging around big words or running lab tests. It's about making hypotheses, testing them, looking for why your hypothesis is wrong, and iterating that process. A pro-vaccination advocate does not need to go into biochemistry or argue about sub-.01% cases to make their point. They simply point at the positive results of vaccination and rest their case. That IS science, in its purest form. Stringing together words and selectively reading studies and biasing the argument until if you squint you might have a point in some cases is the opposite of science. If you're not finding people "scientifically" engaging with you I submit it's because the pro-vaccinators do not have a need to engage in what you think is "science" to prove the point, because they've got real science (and millions upon millions upon millions of non-corpses) on their side.

philwelch2• 15 years ago

Of course every tyrant used such "rationalizations"--every governing institution in the history of man explicitly initiates force and infringes upon individual freedom in favor of the common good, and we have things like taxes, freeways, and food inspections to show for it. The kind of libertarian objection you mention isn't just an objection to especially oppressive government--it's an objection against all government.

This isn't a straw man attack, either. If you don't allow for some amount of initiative force for the common good, you don't allow for any system of government which has ever existed, including the US Constitution. Consistent libertarianism leads to anarchism. And that's why the force card isn't effective: it's the logical equivalent of saying "the government shouldn't mandate vaccination, because the government shouldn't exist".

The only two logical options are to be an anarchist, or to concede that some violence for the common good is justified--and then go on to discuss why this instance does or does not justify institutional state violence.

---

On the other hand, negligently infecting other people with communicable diseases is a form of physical force, and hence there is a legitimate interest in preventing this from happening.

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Finally, what you're discussing is ideology. Now, it's important to point something out. There is an important distinction between science and "ideology", or whatever you want to call about it, in that science is only concerned with matters of fact. Matters of value and morality are explicitly outside of science. The closest science can possibly come to ideology is when the facts would dictate any sane person to choose one option over the other. For instance, if scientists tell us they are 99.99% certain that an asteroid will collide into the Earth 20 years from now, and that in the event of a collision, it is 99.99% likely the human race will immediately go extinct, any sane person would conclude "we have to do something to stop that astroid". But science, qua science, can't come to that conclusion by itself. If you were some type of madman who wanted to destroy all human life on Earth, the science would be just as interesting and convincing to you as it would be to a sane person, you would just be led to a different reaction due to your value system.

Or, back to this point--if your value system favors children not dying preventable deaths from 19th century diseases, you probably favor vaccination. But if your value system favors not being forced to do things against your will over children not dying preventable deaths from 19th century diseases, that's entirely up to you--just as long as you accept the facts of the situation.

And, historically, this is what a lot of anti-vax people fail to do. People aren't rational enough to just say "I value not being forced to vaccinate my kids over my kids' lives" (which is a disgusting value system, but you can't argue against value systems), they'd rather lie about facts and say "vaccines cause autism, therefore it's in the best interests of my child not to vaccinate them".

michaeldhopkins• 15 years ago

I would never trust you to make decisions for my children. That is essentially what you are proposing, since you do not say "CPS should decide whether parents may keep their children" but rather say that CPS should follow your policy.

I consider people like you a menace to a free and healthy society.

dedward• 15 years ago

Things should always be up for debate.... because sometimes we get it WRONG. New science replaces old.

Personally? I think it's not up for debate. The exact age and type of vaccine used might be if there are various options and risks to weigh, and as a parent I might want to choose those, but vaccinating our children against incurable diseases they are likely to be exposed to isn't up for debate in my mind. Why, as a society, would we not want to wipe out said disease?

Now, I think of my own vaccination history (hypothetically). When I was a kid, they didn't vaccinate us against Hep-B. They didn't. It wasn't part of the program. Then a few decades later when I had a Hep-B scare and read up on it, I said, WTF, how on earth are we not vaccinating our society against one of the most virulent diseases on the planet?

(The answer would be cost, and chances of someone from my country contracting it short of travel to other locations or IV drug use)

We stopped vaccinating against smallpox before I was born. IF smallpox shows up again, that will change.

Handling this a society requires trusting your health organisations - and that's where the problem comes in - people these days don't trust the established authorities.

A single unvaccinated child in a vaccinated society is not a risk to the entire society. A small number of unvaccinated children spread around a vaccinated society is not a risk to the entire society. At a certain number, i imagine, things suddenly go from "safe" to "deadly" with no middle ground.... so this is the type of problem that can probably be dealt with through education rather than force.

nika7• 15 years ago

Thank you for a fair response. I think the salient point of yours to address is contained in this phrase: "Why, as a society, would we not want to wipe out said disease?"

When you say "as a society", you're talking about the collective- the whole society. This is the intrinsic basis of collectivism. Inherent in this phrase, and the ideology that it implies, is the assumption that the needs of society are more important than the needs of the individual. (the opposite view is individualism.)

Later you endorsed the use of education to persuade rather than force to, er, force, and so I am not making a moral criticism of your position.

What I am arguing is that those who are constantly attacking people who question the dangers of vaccines are doing so to futher an agenda of collectivism. I don't really think they care about vaccination at all. They have bought into an ideology that believes the "needs of society" (inevitably represented by a small number of elites, it seems) outweigh the needs of the individual.

For sake of argument, I can grant that a society that forced vaccination would be healthier in terms of these vaccindated diseases than one that did not. I posit that not only is this not a morally superior position (because some number of kids will be killed by the vaccinations, who wouldn't otherwise) even if more kids are saved on balance because there is a very distinct moral difference between taking a risk and being compelled.

If a parent takes a risk and their child dies that is unfortunate. But this is the nature of life. If a parent is compelled to vaccinate the child and that child dies, then compelling them is a moral crime, it is quite literally murder. While some parents in the first case might be found negligent, in the second case it is always murder.

Secondly, and more importantly, if you allow the ideology of collectivism to gain power (and the horses are out of the barn on that one in the USA, both parties are collectivist) then the negative effects of centralized control, inherent in the nature of economics, will wreck massive havoc on society. Example: our current economic crisis caused by the central bank and the clinton era laws forcing lending to people who couldn't afford to repay because otherwise was (racist- a previous witch hunt similar to this one.)

The reason people don't trust the established authorities is because they are not authorities.

Remember, these people were, only a few years ago, trying to sell us on a fabricated swine-flu epidemic. They hyped that to the stratosphere when there really was very little (scientific) risk. Clearly these "health organizations" are operating based on political desire, not on a scientific basis.

This is one of the aspects of centralizing power under collectivism.

Decentralization, that is, individualism where people make their own choices, actually works well, and results in better over all choices being made.

The reason most people vaccinate their children is because they are given the choice and analyzed the science. Forcing those whose kids are high risk to get vaccinated, will also discredit those health organizations and may well end up in much lower ultimate rates of vaccination (depending on how draconian they are.)

iamelgringo2• 15 years ago

They are in some places, and that is what happens unless you object on moral or religious grounds. I worked at a pediatric clinic, and on several occasions, we called CPS on parents that did not bring in their children for routine physicals and vaccinations.

Also, it's very difficult to get a child into the school system unless the child has been vaccinated.

/I moonlight as ER nurse, and I've done contract work at Chicago Children's, University of Chicago Children's, Fresno Children's and a satellite of Boston Children's.

Getahobby2• 15 years ago

Gee, I just don't know who to believe - Jenny McCarthy or billg.

MoreMoschops7• 15 years ago

Fortunately, you can go to the source data on this one and come to your own conclusions.

"And so the people who go and engage in those anti-vaccine efforts -- you know, they, they kill children." BillG certainly has. It's refreshing to see someone big just say it so clearly.

dhimes4• 15 years ago

I think he left off the SARCASM signal on his post.

techdmn• 15 years ago

One point I like to make when this topic comes up- Yes, it's unfortunate that people believe bad science linking vaccines to autism. That said, I think it is a symptom (at least in the U.S.) of people having very little faith in the F.D.A. or other government agencies responsible for consumer protection.

Mz13• 15 years ago

I hang out in an anti-vax community. I do not have the impression that people generally arrive there by reading some anti-vax study, concluding it is good science and promptly deciding to jump on the band wagon.

I hang out there for reasons having nothing to do with being anti-vax and I was very slow to agree with the idea that vaccines are a problem. I did eventually stop getting my annual flu vax. The reason: Every single person or good source of info that was actually helping me get healthier when doctors said it couldn't be done had very strong negative views of vaccines. My decision had nothing whatsoever to do with reading any anti-vax studies or with any personal opinions regarding the FDA or other government agencies. I was getting real world results in terms of solving "unsolvable" health issues and this gave me faith (so to speak) in the opinions of people helping me achieve that.

MoreMoschops7• 15 years ago

" I was very slow to agree with the idea that vaccines are a problem."

Just out of interest (and without making any statement on what these problems are), would you agree that on a societal level (i.e. I'm not talking about individual unlucky cases where someone has a bad reaction to a vaccination, but in terms of wider society) the problems of not having vaccines (i.e. the problems that would exist had vaccines never been invented) outweigh the problems of having vaccines?

MoreMoschops7• 15 years ago

Which is in itself bizarre. It's as if theses government agencies have been too successful for their own good, and now people have stopped believing in the dangers.

Smallpox - eradicated from the face of the earth (barring lab samples).

Polio - only 50 years ago, there were tens of thousands of cases in the U.S. Ten years later, after a serious vaccination push, it was down to a bit over a hundred cases. 1979 - last indigenous Polio transmission in the U.S. (globally, it just won't die, in large part thanks to the efforts of religious fruit-loops convincing people it's a plot by the U.S. to sterilise them; we pushed it more or less down to a single country, and now heart-breakingly it's spreading from there again).

Whooping cough - beaten down from tens of thousands of deaths to dozens in the U.S., and then cases started rising again when people stopped having their children vaccinated at the start of the 21st century.

The list of diseases that no longer present a real daily threat to people goes on and on. Let's have someone big from the relevant government agency on the news telling people that they're killing children by dodging vaccinations.

tzs• 15 years ago

On the other hand, the government agencies have had a tendency in some areas to ignore science when it conflicts with industry interests. For instance, food regulation often puts industry profits ahead of sound nutritional and health concerns, and government climate scientists have had a hard time publishing research that confirms global warming.

Given that, I don't think it is that bizarre that people might have developed a general mistrust of these agencies.

bryanlarsen5• 15 years ago

FDA/regulatory failures have gone from being common, to being rare. And people are much more scared of rare events than of common events. For example, parents are much more scared of child abductions than they are of car accidents.

Alex39175• 15 years ago

"It's as if theses government agencies have been too successful for their own good, and now people have stopped believing in the dangers."

Of course you're conveniently leaving out all of the people who have died from FDA wrongdoing, and government wrongdoing in general.

The fact is that around 1 in 3 Americans die from drug use or drug-related causes. When you put it that way it doesn't sound like the FDA is such a trustworthy agency, does it?

parenthesis• 15 years ago

A public backlash against vaccination is nothing new. The introduction of compulsory smallpox vaccination in Britain in 1853 was controversial and protested against:

http://timelines.tv/index.php?t=3&e=10

nika7• 15 years ago

Because anyone concerned about the safety of something being forced on the population is an anti-science religious zealot, right?

Seriously, that's what this whole thread is about. If you are worried about whether vaccines are safe, then you want to "kill children".

I think the burden of proof is on those who want to force everyone to be vaccinated to prove that none of these vaccines will ever kill a child.

tomlin• 15 years ago

> I think the burden of proof is on those who want to force everyone to be vaccinated to prove that none of these vaccines will ever kill a child.

That's a poor argument. I was once a proponent of further study based on Dr. Wakefield's "connection". Turns out his findings were absolutely bogus. And yet, it continues to impose unnecessary fear, and at times - death.

The burden of proof is far-stretching in this matter. For example, any one could supposedly find anything and then progress needs to stop to prove otherwise.

If an issue with a vaccine were to come to light, the solution is to make the vaccine better - not eliminate it.

It reminds me of Aspartame, probably the most studied food additive in the world, yet it still suffers propaganda from armchair MDs claiming carcinogenic, cancerous connections. Some of the connections being made aren't even scientific, just anecdotal hearsay. It's really disappointing to see people pushing fear instead of progress.

ugh4• 15 years ago

1. Scientists have thoroughly looked into and still look into the safety of vaccines. The dubious autism connection, for example, was extensively researched. Nobody ever believed that the safety of vaccines is not important and doesn’t have to be tested.

3. As long as a vaccine kills less children than the disease it prevents, it is already preferable to the disease, there is no need to even prove that vaccines kill absolutely no one. A one percent likelihood of death is obviously preferable to a ten percent likelihood of death. (Numbers for illustrative purposes only.) All the evidence we have tells us that vaccines are perfectly safe — but even if they weren’t, they don’t automatically become useless.

I don’t think anyone has anything against being worried. Being oblivious to evidence and spreading lies kills children, not being worried.

iamelgringo2• 15 years ago

I think the burden of proof is on those who want to force everyone to be vaccinated to prove that none of these vaccines will ever kill a child.

No, the burden of proof modern medical science is built on is that the benefits of a procedure or treatment outweigh the risks of the treatment.

There is never a guarantee that _any_ medical treatment will not kill you. Acetaminophen (Tylenol) while great at reducing fever and treating pain is one of the most toxic drugs that can be taken in an overdose. Same thing can be said for aspirin. But, the benefits of taking acetaminophen or aspirin in the proper doses, outweigh the small potential risk that you may be allergic to the medicines.

euroclydon• 15 years ago

There is a long and documented history of governments and other organizations abusing their power by performing unconsented tests on people under the auspice of a vaccine, which lends credence to people's skepticism.

nika7• 15 years ago

That's just crazy right-wing nutjob talk! Science and Facts prove you are wrong! Citation please!

natnat3• 15 years ago

There is also a long and documented history of people dying from preventable diseases. A history that, for many diseases, abruptly ended when governments began mandating vaccines.

Perhaps the threat of the government somehow secretly administering mind control drugs or whatever into everyone's vaccines is a little less likely than dying of polio if we stopped taking vaccines.

Natsu• 15 years ago

Can you give some examples? The one that sprang to mind for me was the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, but that was a study on the effectiveness of an antibiotic (penicillin), it had nothing to do with vaccines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment

I wouldn't argue the point that unethical practices have caused legitimacy problems, but one might think that could be offset by the list of horrible diseases that are today unknown, such as polio.

yankcrime• 15 years ago

Better coming from someone with an ever-so-slightly more relevant background, such as Ben Goldacre: http://www.badscience.net/2008/08/the-medias-mmr-hoax/

I encourage everyone to read his book - it's fascinating, enlightening, entertaining and rage-inducing all at the same time.

The media-at-large needs more people like him.

nkurz• 15 years ago

Goldacre is great, but don't disparage Gates as not having a relevant background. He's a really smart guy, has been involved in vaccination efforts for a long time, is known for trying to spend money effectively, and has pledged to spend $10 Billion dollars on childrens' vaccinations in the next decade. He's being quoted here as an expert and not a celebrity.

sambeau• 15 years ago

Dr. Andrew Wakefield should be in prison for fraud. Why isn't he?

Alex39175• 15 years ago

"Dr. Andrew Wakefield should be in prison for fraud. Why isn't he?"

Probably for the same reason Saddam didn't get a real trial. In addition to having dozens of high-profile collaborators, including the heads of several medical schools, the kinds of practices he engaged in aren't even that unusual for medical studies. Even if Wakefield could be convicted of criminal wrongdoing, which may well be possible, there is no one in pharma or the medical world who benefits from a highly-publicized show trial.

What's actually more interesting that the Bill Gates thing is the fact that Salon.com just retracted their 2005 RFK, Jr. article because it was apparently finally debunked in Seth Mnookin's new book:

http://www.amazon.com/Panic-Virus-Story-Medicine-Science/dp/...

jackfoxy• 15 years ago

More on the retraction of the Salon.com article http://sethmnookin.com/2011/01/17/salon-retracts-deadly-immu...

random422• 15 years ago

< pedantic > Wakefield was struck off the Medical Register in May 2010, and cannot practise medicine in the UK </pedantic >

(Genuine query )Should he still be addressed as Dr.?

tel• 15 years ago

Typically, you're eligible to use that title after receiving the degree. I know a number of non-practicing people who have degrees and sometimes (rarely, really) use the Dr. It's still a term of respect for completing a demanding program.

Of course, with Wakefield it's difficult to still muster such respect.

carussell• 15 years ago

Here's a suggestion: go the route of the Wikipedia manual of style and drop all honorifics. "Wakefield" suffices, as does "Salk".

drstrangevibes3• 15 years ago

0:30 the goal for bill gates? reducing population growth?!!

ugh4• 15 years ago

People get less children when less of their kids die, slowing down population growth.

NxguiGui• 15 years ago

1-1+1 = 1. Population growth?

adammichaelc2• 15 years ago

Gates seems to imply in the first paragraph that vaccinating children will somehow lead to population control. He made the same connection in a TED talk. I don't see the link. Does anybody know what he's referring to?

m0nastic2• 15 years ago

I assumed he was referring to the idea of families in areas with higher rates of infant mortality and childhood disease having more kids to perpetuate their families.

If kids are less likely to die, then in theory, parents don't need to have as large a family in order to ensure that some survive.

adammichaelc2• 15 years ago

Interesting. I always thought that people stopped having large families mostly due to the economic reasons. ie In an agrarian society more kids = more wealth because they can work on the farm and so on, whereas in an industrialized society more kids = less wealth because they mostly eat up resources for 2 decades or more.

dereg• 15 years ago

There is a significant link between the health of a population and its economic growth. When societies are ailed by preventable diseases, the labor force productivity remains hindered. By working to improve the health of people within impoverished countries, they can better spend allocate (which includes time) to education, industrialization, etc. The goal is the increase the labor force productivity.

Eventually, with growth, people find that it's not as much of a necessity to have as many children, so they produce less. http://www.doceo.co.uk/background/riesman.htm The key here is to get to the top of the 'S'-shaped curve, and the only way to do that is to first improve public health.

nxgui4• 15 years ago

Why nobody listens. Why is so important to "reduce population growt"? Gates clearly stated that (look in transcript of the interview on cnn). Am i crazy? Why packard foundation also is big on this? Why this elites make decisions for all of you? http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=...

ceejayoz8• 15 years ago

High levels of population growth are unsustainable. There's a finite amount of land and other resources on the planet, and we've seen world population go from a billion in 1800 to about seven billion now. That level of growth cannot continue without triggering wars, famines, etc., and slowing it is a pretty admirable goal.

Infant mortality and subsistence farming in the developing world is one of the big causes for it. Raise the quality of living, prevent babies from dying, and people suddenly don't need to have 20 kids to subsistence farm a plot of desert.

It's only counterintuitive if you don't examine it closely.

MichaelSalib2• 15 years ago

You might want to read Jared Diamond's book Collapse, particularly the chapter about how population pressure contributed to genocide in Rwanda.

iterationx2• 15 years ago

Bill Gates: We can lower the population through vaccines and medicine. Minute 4:42 http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates.html

Not really the go to guy for vaccine info.

sorbus• 15 years ago

The actual quote: "Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower [the population] by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent."

You can read that to mean that he wants to kill people off using vaccines, health care, and reproductive health services, I suppose. I would read it as meaning that he believes that if quality of life increases, making it less likely for an individual to die due to preventable disease or injury, people will have fewer children.

Opie_taylor7• 15 years ago

Maybe he just wants to sterilize them with the vaccines?

Wow - that was an incredibly dumb thing for him to say, given some of the third world's beliefs about vaccination.

iterationx2• 15 years ago

Reproductive health services is a euphemism for condoms and abortion a clear way to lower the population. Vaccines have been used to sterilize people before and maybe in the name of saving the environment they will be used again.

seattlefrnd12• 15 years ago

Gates most recent annual letter is a great read if anyone hasn't seen it yet

random422• 15 years ago

Can you please put a link here?

cgcardona• 15 years ago

What he says from 1:15-1:35 is a bit extreme IMO. :-/

michaelcampbell• 15 years ago

While I believe in the science that has shown no link between autism and vaccines, of what importance is Bill Gates saying so? He's not an authority on the subject; it (should) carry no more weight than Jenny McCarthy saying there is a link.

drstrangevibes3• 15 years ago

anything which prolongs life increases population growth any other argument is absurd, yes I know the theory that populations with high infant mortality have more children, but surely the infant mortality acts as a population regulating factor, and besides large populations with a high decay will always eventually be taken over by lower populations where fertile couples are living longer!

Bill Gates: Vaccine-autism link 'an absolute lie'

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