I have a mental list of the types of individuals I refuse to accept medical advice from, and this week I made a couple of new entries: political TV show hosts, and physicians who run websites that try to sell homeopathic health products.
Political funnyman Bill Maher posted on his Twitter a week or two ago that “if u [sic] get a swine flu shot ur [sic] an idiot.”
This coming from a man who is needlessly using “interweb speek” when there is plenty of space for a complete, coherent sentence.
On the other end of the spectrum of ingenious medical advisers is one Dr. Joseph Mercola, a different breed of funnyman. The good doctor runs a website selling health products that have received absolutely zero FDA testing, and medical advice for which he is not legally responsible, as a membership on his website does not constitute a doctor-patient relationship.
Dr. Mercola posted a list of “9 reasons” why people should not let their children be vaccinated against the swine flu – or H1N1 – virus. Here are a few of the highlights:
The swine flu is simply another flu. It is not unusually deadly.
If you consider that about 20,000 people in the United States die from a regular flu each year, then I suppose the few thousand known worldwide deaths from H1N1 do not look like a staggering number so far. However, consider for a moment that of those 20,000 deaths caused by a regular flu, 90% are among the elderly who typically have other underlying medical conditions or poor immune systems.
H1N1 has keeled over college students, 50-year-olds, and it even killed a 9-year-old elementary kid here in my small town.
Certainly in most cases there are other medical problems that contribute to a patient having a hard time fighting the virus. And I do believe that the best case scenario is letting your own immune system do the work.
However, sometimes that is insufficient, and it seems irresponsible to me for anyone to make such recommendations as to warn parents from giving their children vaccines because “other types of flu kill people, too.” It is even more irresponsible when this “advice” is coming from a person who has no existing doctor-patient relationship with said parents or their offspring, and he therefore has no knowledge of what medical considerations there might or might not be.
Continuing on, Dr. Mercola’s list has another great piece of evidence:
Modern medicine has no explanation for autism, despite its continued rise in prevalence. Yet autism is not reported among Amish children who go unvaccinated.
The Amish also refuse to subscribe to any kind of health insurance, and resist modern medicine in favor of home remedies whenever possible. Due to limited external income, the Amish often opt to go to Mexico for medical procedures due to the high cost of health care in the United States. Having said that, let’s change the quote to reflect these facts:
Modern medicine has no explanation for autism, despite its continued rise in prevalence. Yet autism is not reported among children of uninsured citizens who have been known to frequently go to Mexico for medical procedures they cannot afford to have done in the United States.
I am not outright suggesting that uninsured children fall through the cracks when it comes to Autism detection, but I don’t see the Amish being a particularly great sample group for comparison.
Dr. Mercola’s list suggests a possible connection between rampant over-vaccination of children in the United States, and the increasing numbers of Autistic children. Dr. Mercola claims that kids in America are subjected to 29 vaccines by the age of two. However, the fact that kids are given an awful lot of vaccines growing up is not in and of itself a sufficient reason for recommending against the H1N1 vaccine.
At the end of the day, I am no more qualified than these guys to make medical recommendations to you. I have not gotten the shot nor do I plan to, but if I had considerable health issues that might make me more vulnerable, or if I were working at a place where the risk of infection was particularly high, I would certainly go for it. When I worked at a long-term care facility as a nursing assistant, the company provided us the option of free shots, and I did take them then. I have never paid for a flu shot, though, and in my own case consider it unnecessary…for now.
My problem with guys like Bill Maher and Dr. Mercola is not with them being of the opinion that people should not get the H1N1 vaccine. They are, of course, entitled to their opinions. But when they – particularly applying to the likes of Dr. Mercola – shout from the rooftops that you should not get a vaccine that the CDC and the WHO have highly recommended, they do this without any level of accountability, and I find that far more unnerving than any of the CDC-related conspiracy theories.
Tagged as:
epidemics,
H1N1,
health,
health care,
medicine,
pandemics,
swine flu
Mika Salakka is a Finn living in the United States. He is a nursing assistant, a creative writer, a devoted husband, and an observer of the human condition. His interests range from music and literature to psychology, sociology, medicine, technology, and spirituality.
Oink Oink, Bang Bang
October 7, 2009
in Commentary
Political funnyman Bill Maher posted on his Twitter a week or two ago that “if u [sic] get a swine flu shot ur [sic] an idiot.”
This coming from a man who is needlessly using “interweb speek” when there is plenty of space for a complete, coherent sentence.
On the other end of the spectrum of ingenious medical advisers is one Dr. Joseph Mercola, a different breed of funnyman. The good doctor runs a website selling health products that have received absolutely zero FDA testing, and medical advice for which he is not legally responsible, as a membership on his website does not constitute a doctor-patient relationship.
Dr. Mercola posted a list of “9 reasons” why people should not let their children be vaccinated against the swine flu – or H1N1 – virus. Here are a few of the highlights:
If you consider that about 20,000 people in the United States die from a regular flu each year, then I suppose the few thousand known worldwide deaths from H1N1 do not look like a staggering number so far. However, consider for a moment that of those 20,000 deaths caused by a regular flu, 90% are among the elderly who typically have other underlying medical conditions or poor immune systems.
H1N1 has keeled over college students, 50-year-olds, and it even killed a 9-year-old elementary kid here in my small town.
Certainly in most cases there are other medical problems that contribute to a patient having a hard time fighting the virus. And I do believe that the best case scenario is letting your own immune system do the work.
However, sometimes that is insufficient, and it seems irresponsible to me for anyone to make such recommendations as to warn parents from giving their children vaccines because “other types of flu kill people, too.” It is even more irresponsible when this “advice” is coming from a person who has no existing doctor-patient relationship with said parents or their offspring, and he therefore has no knowledge of what medical considerations there might or might not be.
Continuing on, Dr. Mercola’s list has another great piece of evidence:
The Amish also refuse to subscribe to any kind of health insurance, and resist modern medicine in favor of home remedies whenever possible. Due to limited external income, the Amish often opt to go to Mexico for medical procedures due to the high cost of health care in the United States. Having said that, let’s change the quote to reflect these facts:
I am not outright suggesting that uninsured children fall through the cracks when it comes to Autism detection, but I don’t see the Amish being a particularly great sample group for comparison.
Dr. Mercola’s list suggests a possible connection between rampant over-vaccination of children in the United States, and the increasing numbers of Autistic children. Dr. Mercola claims that kids in America are subjected to 29 vaccines by the age of two. However, the fact that kids are given an awful lot of vaccines growing up is not in and of itself a sufficient reason for recommending against the H1N1 vaccine.
At the end of the day, I am no more qualified than these guys to make medical recommendations to you. I have not gotten the shot nor do I plan to, but if I had considerable health issues that might make me more vulnerable, or if I were working at a place where the risk of infection was particularly high, I would certainly go for it. When I worked at a long-term care facility as a nursing assistant, the company provided us the option of free shots, and I did take them then. I have never paid for a flu shot, though, and in my own case consider it unnecessary…for now.
My problem with guys like Bill Maher and Dr. Mercola is not with them being of the opinion that people should not get the H1N1 vaccine. They are, of course, entitled to their opinions. But when they – particularly applying to the likes of Dr. Mercola – shout from the rooftops that you should not get a vaccine that the CDC and the WHO have highly recommended, they do this without any level of accountability, and I find that far more unnerving than any of the CDC-related conspiracy theories.
Tagged as: epidemics, H1N1, health, health care, medicine, pandemics, swine flu