Reddit reviews Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure
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If anyone is wants to read a good book on vaccines and how ridiculous the anti-vax position is, I recommend Autism's False Prophets.
It is an incredibly enlightening read.
Edit: "anti-vax" not "ant-vax," I kinda want ant-vax...
I highly recommend the book [Autism's false prophets](
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/023114637X/ref=mp_s_a_1?qid=1346834477&sr=8-1)
It goes over in detail the whole thing and is very accessible even to someone not familiar with the debate.
The trouble is your friend sounds like they are unwilling to even hear arguments against it if they don't trust the CDC.
Let me take each of those points individually though.
>She gave me a few links such as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyCJkiHykkk&fb_source=message and http://www.naturalnews.com/036328_Merck_mumps_vaccine_False_Claims_Act.html . As a result, she doesn't trust any links to the CDC. she also uses a lot of anecdotal evidence, which I can easily dismiss, but I haven't read much on the subject. Her focus seems to be on weakening our immune systems with drugs. Here are a few gems;
Our immune systems aren't weakened with drugs or vaccines. Vaccines actually strengthen our immune systems by allowing them to make antibodies to introduced pathogens. Same way the body would if you actually got the disease but without the risk of death or permanent injury that comes from many childhood diseases.
> Go ahead and read the CDC's list of vaccines ingredients and look up what each ingredient does to the body (even in the "small" doses they use) and virologists STILL don't know, and even claim so, what the interaction between all these ingredients with each other even are. It's just a cocktail of poisonous neurotoxins.
Relevant Skeptoid.
>during teething, a specific hormone is released into the infant's body to help decrease pain and stress, and this hormone just happens to open to a direct pathway to the baby's developing brain, so when injected with these vaccines at this age, the neurotoxins have direct access to actual brain tissues.
Not true. Vaccines do not show any signs of neurotoxicity in the general population and the overwhelming majority of research shows this. Also, I'm no neurologist but I'm doubtful about this hormone stuff.
> These vaccines suppress our natural immune systems, sometimes cause genetic mutations, ravage our neurological system and cause many things all the way into adulthood and beyond: Hodgkin's disease, lupus, cancers, lukemia, diabetes; mental illnesses like depression, bipolor disorder, increases or decreases in the production of natural chemicals integral to a balanced mental well-being like serotonin, norepinephrine, and melotonin.
Vaccines do not suppressed our immune system, they obviously don't know how either vaccines or our immune systems work. Vaccines work by provoking an immune response from our body. Basically we hand our immune system a dead or deactivated pathogen and then let the immune system develop antibodies for that pathogen.
> recently released information, some published by the FDA, surprisingly, and by the pharmaceutical (spelling??) Companies that actually manufacture the vaccines and how there is no evidence vaccines even work on humans.
Not true. The overwhelming majority of studies confirm that they work and are safe.
> I listened to a news report on NPR that a vaccine manufacturer just released an apology because it falisified its lab results- they used samples with animal cells and animal DNA, not human, to publish their findings, but the CEO of the company ordered the employees to lie so sales wouldn't decrease.
[Citation needed]. From a reputable source too, not natural news or age of autism (to show how great a source age of autism is they had a thanksgiving post a few years ago where they photo shopped Steve novella, Paul offit and others eating a baby).
> children vaccinated for say whooping cough for example where over 89% GOT whooping cough. 100% of children who were not vaccinated never got it.
Not true again, whooping cough is making a resurgence in areas where vaccination rates are low and has killed some unvaccinated children.
> *We are the only nation that has mandatory vaccinations and also the country with the highest number required- 17!! 17 vaccines before the age of 10. Europe, for example, lists only 7, and they AREN'T mandatory either; that being said, we are also the nation with the highest number of cases of autism, behavioral issues in children, brain damage, SIDS, you name it, all linked to vaccines and the harmful ingredients used to make them.
Not true. There are no reputable studies linking vaccines to brain damage or anything else of that nature in general populations. As for whether the US is the only country requiring vaccines... I don't even think we require them.
Also as for the number of vaccines, it is irrelevant. Some have said that the increased number of vaccines are too much of a shock to immune systems, but when you actually look at proteins in our vaccines vs older vaccines then older ones should have proven to be much more shocking as there were many more proteins to be immunized against in older versions of vaccines. I can't remember any of the citations off the top of my head, and while my girlfriend is stealing my computer to watch her silly vampire shows I only have my phone to help me out here. All of this and a ton more is talked about in the book I mentioned earlier.
The absolute best source to outfit you for this (and them if they will read it) is Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure by Dr. Paul A. Offit. I would say definitely one of the quintessential rebuttals to the anti-vax crowd.
Read Autism's False Prophets. This books cites numerous accounts of areas which stopped vaccinating and still had rises in cases of ASD (as well as spikes in preventable disease), of meta-studies about ASD and the lack of correlation between the diagnosis and being vaccinated, and it covers in depth Andrew Wakefield's study that purported a correlation (in just a handful of children); it also discusses the methodological and ethical errors of said study.
Also, this study which suggests that ASD occurs during pregnancy, not after.
autism's false prophets is another good read.
Check out these two books. They should have plenty of cited information in them, plus they are quite good.
Autism's False Prophets
The Panic Virus
Actually, IIRC (and I haven't had coffee yet so I may be wrong in which case somebody PLEASE correct me), it is/was a combination of the # of shots given at a single time and a mercury-based preservative in the vaccine that causes/caused autism.
Which is total bullshit.
I wish every time somebody said to me "But vaccines cause autism!" I had a copy of Autism's False Prophets to hand them. JFC.