Some good news about vaccinations

My cold has mostly gone, so I went and had a flu shot. I’m based in Randburg, so I had to use the pharmacy in Cresta shopping Centre. Discovery, my medical aid, pays for it. My copay was less than R3.
I don’t much like our health minister Aaron Motsoaledi. He’s been trying to introduce National Health Insurance, despite the fact that South Africa can’t afford it. But he’s now done something with which I agree. From next year, the HPV vaccine will be made available to schoolgirls. Unfortunately, this news provoked the anti-vaxx pillocks, who brought their usual lies to the discussion.
In 2009, vaccines against rotavirus (rotarix) and pneumonia (prevenar) were added to the schedule. The results of this are now showing. Hospitalisations for these two diseases are down 40%. Notch up another victory for vaccines.

The measles situation in Wales, autism in the nonvaxxed, and flu jabs

The measles outbreak in Wales has now topped 1000 cases. So far, 85 people have been hospitalised. Given the numbers, this total will probably increase. What is worse, epidemologists think the outbreak hasn’t yet peaked.
Most of the affected are children. When Andrew Wakefield had his “case study” published, a lot of UK parents decided to forgo the MMR vaccine. Many of them are now ruing their choice. A “catch up” programme, targeting those children who weren’t vaccinated, has now been introduced. In addition, prisoners and the homeless are also receiving the MMR. I really hope that no parent may wind up with a dead, deaf, or brain damaged child because of their decision to not vaccinate, but given the numbers it may be inevitable.
A paper is to be presented at IMFAR (the International Meeting for Autism Research). The paper is about the difference in autsim rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated children. There isn’t one. Hat tip to Matt Carey for the info.
The flu inocculation is now available. I plan to get mine on Tuesday. I’ll report back if successful.

On genetics, autism and related things

This post may be a little disorganised. I have a number of related things on my mind about this.
Normally, I don’t go onto antivaxx websites. I have enough problems with my temper as is. However, a post by Orac caught my eye so I went over to Age of Autism. I don’t know how to use NOFOLLOW, so if you like, I’ve munged the link. It’s h_tp://www.ageofautism.com/2013/04/guardian-uk-this-comment-removed.html.
There’s the usual junk in the post. “…no evidence that children are born with autism…” (my mother would disagree) “…no official can tell us the cause of autism..” (that’s why research is ongoing, Dachel) “Autism is an epidemic and there’s never been a genetic epidemic in human history…” (I beg to differ on the “epidemic” tag.)
But then, Dachel makes an eyebrow-raising remark.

No longer are we blaming cold, unaffectionate refrigerator moms for autism. Now we have our [sights] on the parents with defective genes that produce autistic babies.

Umm, what?
How is saying that autism has a genetic basis “blaming the parents”? Some cancers are genetic in origin. But if a child came down with one of them, the response wouldn’t be to blame the parents, but to be sympathetic to them because “there but by the grace of God go I”. In fact, when I was in primary school, I knew a boy who died of cancer and attended his funeral.
Then, on Orac’s post, Herr doktor bimler made a remark that pricked my ears up.

He does comment on his patients’ parents as being analytical, unemotional…

So I asked

If the parents were “analytical, unemotional” to quote HDB, wouldn’t that be a pointer to them having autism, and that it had a genetic origin[?]

Grant revealed that genetic research into autism has been going on since the 60′s, and then Krebiozen reminded me that at around the time autism was discovered, the Nazis engaged in the most horrific eugenic exercise ever, and

I suspect that for some time after WW2 the suggestion that autism was inherited was unthinkable.

That made sense to me.
It shouldn’t be surprising that antivaccinationists reject the evidence that autism has a genetic basis. That they should then use a strawman argument accusing people of blaming the parents for their children is very disappointing.

A brief item of news

At a Special General Meeting held on the 23rd April at the Constantia Hotel and Conference Center in Midrand, it was decided that the Computer Society of South Africa (CSSA) would be renamed the Institute of IT Professionals – South Africa (IITPSA), and that the Memorandum of Incorporation put forward by the CSSA Board for the IITPSA would be adopted.

A film, three deaths, and the consequences of Wakefield’s lies

I mentioned that I was planning on seeing “The Sessions”, the story of how poet and polio survivor Mark O’Brien lost his virginity with the help of sex surrogate Cheryl Cohen-Greene. Well, I did, and I would urge everyone to see it. There is a great deal of wit in the film, and during some moments, the entire audience was laughing out loud. As a warning, there is also some full-frontal nudity, but this is done tastefully. But what I remember most about the film is the look at faith. O’Brien was a devout catholic, and is often shown in counsel with his priest. Cohen-Greene is shown having a mikvah as part of converting to judaism.
Roger Ebert recently died. The cancer that destroyed his jaw and that had been in remission returned. There is now a memorial site set up to him. If you have the time, read some of his reviews. Ebert loved films and hated it when they were badly done. I read his scathing review of “North”, and it raised a big smile.
Margaret Thatcher also passed away recently aged 87. What angered me was that people decided to have parties to celebrate her death. To me, that is not on. I don’t care how vile a person was in life; you do not celebrate his or her death. John Dryden’s bit of prose “No man is an island” says it best: “every man’s death diminishes me.”
Finally, some very bad news related to Andrew Wakefield’s lies about MMR. There has been an outbreak of measles in the Swansea area with over 700 infected so far.
And now a 25 year old man has died.
The patient had measles at the time of his death, but it has not yet been determined if the measles is what killed him. Andrew Wakefield has a lot to answer for.

On Autism Advocacy, April Fool’s and other stuff

To all my christian readers, I wish you a joyous Easter.
Today was April Fool’s Day. There is a tradition of joke stories in the media on April Fool’s. Some people find them childish, I find them amusing. Even when you know it’s false, it’s like listening to a joke where you know the punchline: still entertaining. This year, two hoax stories were that ex ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema was joining the Democratic Alliance, and that all South African restaurants were going to start charging a cover fee of R100 a head. Several years back The Star, Johannesburg’s main daily newspaper, ran a story that South Africa had purchased Mocambique from the UN for R40-billion.
April is Autism Awareness Month. A number of places are going to “light it up blue” for autism advocacy. Disappointingly, it appears to have passed South Africa by. There are no news stories about it in the South African media websites. I’ll try to post some stuff, if life doesn’t intervene too much. As it is, I currently have a cold and am hoping to get better soon.
Finally, the “vaccines cause autism” myth is now as impressive as the Black Knight in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”: a disarmed, legless and helpless thing. Researchers looked at the “too many too soon” argument – the claim that too many vaccines are administered too soon and that this is a cause of autism. It wasn’t. A PDF of the study can be found here.

Autism prevalence up, antivaxxers have a haffy

The anti-vaxx blogosphere is up in arms. A new study has found that the rate of autism may be as high as one in fifty. Age of Autism and the (not so) Thinking Moms’ Revolution are both throwing their toys out of the cot. Orac and Matt have both covered this. I’m not linking to AoA or TMR. I’m not sure how to use NOFOLLOW, and I have no intention of giving link love to anti-vaxxers.
My belief is that there is no change in the real autism rate. I remain certain that autism has existed since before recorded history, and that 70 years after Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger named it, we are realising that it is a lot more common than we first thought.