"Immune to Reason"

The title is taken from a Mother Jones article discussing parents who choose not to have themselves and their children vaccinated (Allen 2008). The article points out that studies that have attempted to find links between vaccines and different conditions - most notably, autism - have failed to show that there is any population based link between vaccination and the conditions it has been putatively linked to. This means that, as a population, we aren't seeing increased rates of autism or other diseases because of vaccination.

Yet this hasn't stopped some people from opting out of the process altogether. A key point to make about the vaccination-autism link is that evidence has stacked up against it only at a population level. This means that in individual cases this might have been a cause of the problem. At the same time, as Collins and Pinch (2006) discuss as they review this facet of medicine through the lens of the sociology of science, we don't know what the potential "masked markers" that determine if vaccination will cause autism are yet (or even that such markers even exist). Another problem is that when enough people fail to get vaccinated, there is a loss of what is called "herd immunity" - if enough people get vaccinated, it will protect everyone, even those who aren't vaccinated. Vaccination can never be at 100% because of various issues (for instance, some people will be too young; some will be allergic to vaccinations; some will mistakenly believe they are vaccinated when they are not for some reason; people may immigrate from other places where vaccination wasn't undertaken; and so on), but the problem is that every single person who chooses not to be vaccinated makes it more likely that others who aren't vaccinated for whatever reason will also fall prey to the disease.

Both discussions of "herd mentality" interestingly miss a key point of what might motivate vaccination skeptics to not become vaccinated. Ironically, it is located in the very successes of medicine and nutrition. Because these two factors have eliminated the incidence of previous diseases which were deadly or debilitating (e.g., polio, whooping cough, etc.) people are now in a historically significant position where the risk of these diseases appears lower than highly visible and publicized conditions such as autism. The success of medicine has created the ironic possibility of more doubt of medicine. But as Collins and Pinch (2006) point out, despite the low profile of these diseases in most western nations, the risk of developing them is probably much higher than autism - particularly if one chooses not to vaccinate.

I am not suggesting that we ignore any potential vaccine-autism (or vaccine-other condition) link; indeed, testing new vaccines in the future will demand that they are tested to monitor for such conditions, to establish that the new medicines are doing much more good than harm. Hypothesized "markers" may even be found so that doctors will be able to recommend to parents that their particular child has a good reason to not be vaccinated. But under current conditions, we are all "blind" to what those markers might be. As terrible as autism might be, we should not forget that other terrible conditions can more easily infect the non-vaccinated. In such conditions, we would all be advised to take a scientific leap of faith and roll up our arm cuffs.

References:

Allen, Arthur. 2008. "Immune to Reason." Mother Jones, October, pp. 91-2.

Collins, Harry and Trevor Pinch. 2006. Dr. Golem: How to Think about Medicine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Miro

I've just found a new program online that I've been enjoying for the past couple of days called Miro. It's a totally free media program that can handle everything from RSS feeds to music and movie files (of many varieties), as well as acting as a Bittorrent client for those of you wanting to download files this way. All of these features would be great alone, but the program also includes an integrated "channel search" that allows you to find media from a wide variety of providers, much in the way of a video blog, but with a prettier interface. For example, one of my favourite online news programs Democracy Now! is available this way. I've also found channels that link to Bill Moyers' Journal (PBS program by the populist journalist), The Onion News (incredibly funny satire), as well as some stuff from Discovery Channel (I have an inner science geek that I haven't adequately nurtured since I left middle school).

The footprint of the program seems to be relatively small, using about 112-130K of RAM on my computer when I've checked, which is another bonus as many of the other media programs as hogs in this way. (It's also a bonus if you consider how much memory separate programs would use collectively if you were running them at the same time.) There is a version for all of the major platforms (Mac, Linux, Windows), although the Windows version apparently includes some issues with the firewall. I haven't run into them yet, but the page includes a helpful workaround if this happens to you.

So far I'm in love.