The Plane! The Plane!

My Friday "dose of woo" was temporarily interrupted by a rant on "legal thuggery" (good term) by the amazing Orac.

I love me some Orac and cannot do without my weekly "woo". But in the wake of Jenny McCarthy's performance on Larry King (covered on all the "Entertainment "news" shows I mindlessly - key word, mindlessly - watched this evening while blogging), Orac's rant is a particularly good one . . . directed against "anti-vaccination" litigator, Clifford Shoemaker . . . who has subpoenaed a blogger critical of his legal theories and tactics (today Overlawyered cites more reactions to the subpoena from the medical and legal blogosphere).

Quoting Orac (there's a reason I love him):

Mr. Shoemaker is a despicable scum-sucking piece of excrement. Not only is there no scientific evidence that vaccines cause autism, making Shoemaker's raison d'être (suing vaccine manufacturers for fantastical "vaccine injury") of no value to society, but he can't take the heat when a blogger takes a look at his profiting on scientifically a discredited hypothesis. True, if the Sykes believe that vaccines somehow injured their child, they have the right to sue, but if Kathleen Seidel (or anyone else for that matter) believes that they are engaging in a frivolous lawsuit based on a claim that has no basis in science (as Kathleen and I both do), they have the right to say that, particularly when backed up with evidence and strong arguments. What Shoemaker is doing is nothing short of using legal thuggery to indulge his paranoid beliefs that Kathleen is somehow a "pharma shill" and to intimidate other bloggers who may have communicated with her or helped her.

As Walter Olson of Overlawyered put it:

Should the subpoena somehow be upheld and its onerous demands enforced, it could signal chilly legal times ahead for bloggers who expose lawyers and their litigation to critical scrutiny.

What Orac said. What Walter said.

As for what Jenny McCarthy said on Larry King, (for those who missed it), "My son died in front of me." As I understand it now (and did not know at the time I saw the clip), her son Evan (who has autism and seizures) had a seizure and went into cardiac arrest and was revived after approximately 2 minutes (no doubt the longest two minutes of her life). Ms. McCarthy blames her son's condition on childhood vaccinations . . . "too many, too soon".

It's a theme I'm hearing more and more in the office . . . from parents frightened by what they are seeing on TV (things like gorgeous, articulate, perfectly coiffed and very earnest Jenny McCarthy dressed in black, wagging her finger at a group of Pediatricians and saying things like "anecdotal information IS science-based information" . . . or yelling, "Bullshit on your medical science!").

But when I first heard the remark (about her son "dying"), watching the segment in "mid-clip", I thought McCarthy was speaking figuratively (i.e. the difference between what Evan might have been as a "normal" child and what he is now), and the remark made my blood run cold.

Evan is NOT dead. He has autism and a seizure disorder. By Ms. McCarthy's own account, he got early intervention and treatment that seems to have worked very well for him. I expect it doesn't hurt to have Jim Carrey as a surrogate father - I can't think of anymore who might be more gifted at drawing a child out.

We don't know what causes autism yet . . . it appears to multi-factorial, perhaps even societal, and may have a genetic component (it's also diagnosed more now, I think, because we're better at diagnosing children with mental/behavioral disorders than we ever were before . . . and we're also lumping things into a diagnostic spectrum that we did not before). But NONE of the extensive research done so far bears out ANY causal relationship of vaccines to autism.

The benefit of childhood vaccination depends on herd immunity. In other words, a high percentage of the population (especially a population with free and open borders) has to be vaccinated on a schedule or disaster could just be a plane ride away.

As I've said before, I wasn't wild about adding Hepatitis A and Rotovirus vaccines to the mix. But I am lowly peon in the Pediatric army, so I do what the Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC and the state tell me to do. I follow the recommendations and the law because not to do so is folly. I've never felt particularly comforted or legally protected by one parent's signature on a vaccine "waiver". And, as I told a nurse just this past week (who expressed the same reservations about some of the "newbie" vaccines that I have), what if we don't give the vaccine when it's available & recommended, and a child dies of dehydration after catching Rotovirus?

That would be an open invite to "a despicable, scum-sucking piece of excrement" to sue. I'm not saying "the excrement" would be right to sue (or would win after suing) . . . only that some form of "excrement" would probably show up and sue.

It's an ugly world. We've simply got to keep vaccinating against the big bads . . .

. . . or "The Plane, The Plane" takes on a whole new meaning.