Not in my backyard: Vaccines, autism and acceptable losses

In her post The AAP vs. Eli Stone (January 2008), Ginger Taylor at Adventures in Autism tells the AAP that her son is not "an acceptable loss in the war against TREATABLE viruses" (emphasis hers). The steel trap that is my mind (ha!) remembered that Ginger had brought this up before when talking about vaccines. In Where I stand on vaccines (June 2005), Ginger wrote:

The CDC’s vaccine policy is based on the principle that the good done for the many outweighs the harm to the few. And that is fine if you are making vaccine policy for 300 million people. But I am not responsible for holding back another Rubella epidemic; I am responsible for two little boys who just may fall into that sliver of the population that the CDC considers an acceptable loss. (my emphasis)

An anonymous commenter responds:

YOU are not responsible, but you do share that responsibility with all of us parents. If enough parents assumed your attitude, pertussis, mennigitis, and perhaps even measles would make a deadly comeback. I'm not saying you must vaccinate, the risks/benefits must be evaluated carefully. But if you choose not to, please acknowledge dropping your share of responsibility for the good of all children for what it is - selfish. Please note that I do not consider selfish anything more than a decision taking only you or your children into account. It does not mean you are an all-bad person.

I've thought about this very thing quite often when looking at the vaccine question. Does any single parent have any responsibility to "hold back another Rubella epidemic?" I've come to the conclusion that no, they don't. Though the commenter takes great pains to say being selfish doesn't make Ginger a bad person, the fact that he had say that at all points to the general feeling that being selfish is bad.

But, and this is a big but, everything that everyone does is for selfish reasons. I've written about this before in the context of behavior in the world of business, but the general principal is the same. Every action that we take, or influence, or try to make happen, we do because we want a benefit for ourselves or someone we care about. The Founding Fathers of the US knew this fact, and they also realized that this is the only way it can be if the fundamental freedoms they believed in were to be realized. (This is also why you can't, and shouldn't, try to get rid of Congressional 'ear-marks' .)

The obvious pop culture reference here is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Spock was right that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, but Captain Kirk was just as right - maybe more so, considering what happens later - in not accepting this "axiom" in this case.

The AAP, and others, have gone overboard over Eli Stone, if you ask me, but this is how it should be. I'd expect nothing less if the tables were turned and the proverbial shoe were on the other foot.

On vaccines and autism

Last week I asked the question: What would it take to change your mind? I figured I should probably think of an answer for myself, this post includes some thoughts from my contemplation. This is not a complete argument for or against anything that I haven't already stated, just some thoughts in process. Any thoughts of yours are certainly welcome.
= = == === =====

I don't believe that autism is mercury poisoning, I've said that before. As for the number / types of vaccines being a trigger (I don't believe it is a cause in the Newtonian sense), I've been thinking about it lately but haven't seen any data to help me make a my mind.

Along those lines, the Age of Autism (which is, I must note, very openly of the opinion that mercury in the form of thimerosol in vaccines and/or the number of vaccines given to kids is the primary cause of most autism) yesterday pointed to the 2008 pediatrics vaccination schedules (0-6 years and 6 years and over).

WOW!!

That was about all I could think when I looked at the schedule. The schedule in and of itself doesn't lead me to believe anything different than what I knew before, but it does give me an extra data point. The human immune system is an incredible, incredibly intelligent, incredibly complex system. (Though I'm sure there are many books specifically on the subject, The Genius Within includes a very description of how the process works.)

The challenge with a complex system (as opposed to a merely complicated system) is that the outcome of any given input to the system can not be predicted and that a specific cause for a measured outcome cannot be identified. From Dave Snowden (who thinks about complexity a lot):

• Complex systems can not be predicted, they are non-causal (taking cause in its normal Newtonian sense) in nature they evolve and the same thing will not happen again twice, we can predict aspects of the system and different aspects of time but never the outcome of the whole system
• The concept of a non-causal system is a very difficult one to grasp as the west abandoned the idea at the time of the Enlightenment (Vico and others were prophetic in arguing against this).
  
• A complex system can be simulated - which increases understanding but simulation should not (although it is often) confused with prediction
• We can understand starting conditions as a complex system evolves and we can influence their evolution if we focus on barriers and attractors (1st and 2nd order constraints) but not if we look at the end point (so attempting to predict makes things worse not better)
• Humans tend to premature convergence (seeing a pattern too quickly before it is stable) and also to retrospective coherence (implying past causality where there was none). Both of these tendencies are pervasive and dangerous

Which brings me to a very interesting dilemma:

• If autism (has a cause and) is indeed caused by an insult to the immune system, we can not predict which vaccine or combination of vaccines will cause it; and,
  
• Once autism is caused in an individual we can not look back through their vaccination history to determine which vaccine it was that did the causing.

And this doesn't even bring into play the complexity of the interaction between the immune system and the rest of the body or the role of genetics, and genetic predisposition.
===== === == = =