Leaving the cult of antivaccinationism or alt-med

[SidDithers]

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2014/02/13/leaving-the-cult-of-antivaccinationism-or-alt-med/

The other day, I got to thinking about cults. The reason is that it’s been clear to me for some time that the antivaccine movement is a quack cult. In fact, a lot of quack groups are very cultish, the example that reminded me of this having been an excellent report published by a young mother named Megan Sandlin, who used to be antivaccine but is no longer. Her post, Leaving the Antivaccine Movement, reminded me very much of the genre of “deconversion” stories, in which atheists who were once fundamentalist Christians describe the process of their losing their religion or cult members describe how they ended up leaving their cult.

Sandlin begins her story by telling first how she became an antivaccinationist when her oldest daughter was about four months old. It was that time that she described discovering the world of “crunchy” parenting, which led her to a world of cloth diapers, “intactivism,” and home birth. It didn’t take her long to notice that a lot of her newfound friends who raised children that way were hostile to vaccines, which led her to a Google University education that provided her with all the antivaccine “knowledge” and “science” that would mesh with her preconceived notions about “natural” parenting, “toxins,” and the like, and fuel an antivaccine world view. And that’s exactly what it did. However, even at her most antivaccine, Sandlin had more self-knowledge than the typical antivaccinationist (like the one I described the other day), as Sandlin’s musings reveal, or at least, in retrospect she understands where she went wrong:

However, my research was very skewed. I was going into it with preconceived ideas – my anti-vaccine friends had put ideas into my head, such as not trusting government websites. I was forced to rely on whatever I could find while Googling, which were often websites like Mercola or whale.to. I even started “liking” anti-vaccine pages on Facebook – pages that I now understand masquerade as “information” centers. I got added to Facebook groups like “Great Mothers Questioning Vaccines.”

Even though all of my supposed research was coming from non-scientific sources, I trusted it.

Hilariously, what ultimately led Sandlin to start questioning her nice, cozy world view and her nice, supportive friends was the phenomenon of crank magnetism, in which a person with irrational beliefs in one area tends to have irrational beliefs in multiple areas. In this case, Sandlin started to notice things about her friends’ beliefs that disturbed her:

Always good stuff from Orac.

Sid

[anasv]

1. I'm one of those cult members

I got Guillian-Barre after my first flu shot. It took months to get back to normal and I have permanent nerve damage in some areas. My neurologist (Harvard trained) says he sees this type of thing every flu season.

[shraby]

2. I maintain a county genealogy site. You really need to see what and how many people died from

diseases that vaccines now prevent. Your's was a minor inconvenience as opposed to families losing as many as 5 children in a week's time from scarlet fever, measles, diphtheria, typhoid, smallpox, etc.
When the "cult members" reach a critical mass in an area, that area puts all at risk from preventable disease.

[joeglow3]

3. A friend refuses to wear seat belts

because his dad was hit by a train, wasn't wearing a seat belt and walked away. That is the problem when we rely on one or two personal experiences when there are millions/billions of studied examples to rely on.

Ask your neurologist how many people without the vaccine die from the flu every flu season.

[TheMathieu]

4. K&R for science. It trumps ideology.

Vaccinations have been credited with some of humanity's greatest technological triumphs over disease, including drastically reducing polio around the globe and almost eliminating smallpox entirely. But how many people have been spared life-threatening infections thanks to the introduction of vaccines? At least 103.1 million children in the US alone since 1924, according to a new analysis of historical infection rate data going back to 1888.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/30/5160490/vaccines-prevent-at-least-103-million-cases-disease-since-1924

[riderinthestorm]

5. Warning! Cloth diapers, home birth and not circumcising your son will lead you astray!

[SidDithers]

6. Crank magnetism...

look it up.

And keep wasting money on horse homeopathy in the mean time.

Sid

[riderinthestorm]

8. I do what my licensed clinical veterinarians tell me to do. Not some anonymous internet dude

That means I'm pro-vaccinations as well.

Cloth diapers and home birth are not "crank" practices. Neither is the choice to keep a boy baby intact.

But you knew that. You just want to throw more shit at the wall and see what sticks.

[SidDithers]

9. A vet who, with a straight face, recommends horse homeopathy...

is a vet that should have their license revoked.

Sid

[riderinthestorm]

10. Animals can't manufacture a placebo effect Sid. It either demonstrably works or it doesn't

You'll have to just revoke the licenses of most of the top sport horse vets on the planet then. Good luck with that effort. Let me know how it goes for ya.

For me, since I actually care more about my animals comfort and health, I will prefer to listen to the professionals and not some anonymous internet dudes.

Now quit trying to smear people who have chosen a home birth, or use cloth diapers, or who choose to keep their boy babies intact by linking them with the anti-vaxxers.

Its shameful.

[Vashta Nerada]

7. K&R

[zappaman]

11. Kick

and rec!