Vaccines

My first post is going to jump right into the controversial topics, but this is something I feel very strongly about. We will start with a story.

RhoGAM

My blood type is A-. Being a negative blood type introduced me to something fantastic called RhoGAM. I say this half sarcastically and half not. For those that do not know, RhoGAM is a shot given to women during pregnancy who have a negative blood type. After the baby is born, he or she is blood typed, and if he or she has a positive blood type, the mother is given another shot within 72 hours of the birth. It is a shot into the hip/butt and is honestly not really pleasant.

So now, given that I had to get two of these for my son (who is positive),  why would I say this is fantastic? Well, lets go back to the early 60s (and before) and look at what happened before this invention. There used to be this disease called Rh disease. It killed an estimated 10,000 babies a year in the US, but you have probably never heard of it; that is because of RhoGAM.

The negative in my blood type means I don't have something in my blood that all you positive people do called Rh. Furthermore, if exposed to Rh, my body gets very upset about it. Even though you all live with it just fine, my body will identify Rh as a kind of germ and make war. During said war, I would develop antibodies to Rh.

So how does this kill babies? Well, lets say I hadn't had RhoGAM with my son and I was exposed to his blood during pregnancy or birth (which is really common) and thereby exposed to Rh. My body then developed antibodies to RH. Nothing would have happened to my son, but I am now what you call sensitized. If I become pregnant with another baby that has Rh, my body will get very upset and make war--on the baby. My body will, instead of recognizing the baby as a pregnancy, recognize the baby as a foreign object. In mild cases, the baby will just have mild anemia. In most cases, it will have severe anemia, usually leading to death of the fetus. My sensitization would be discovered in all the blood tests they would do at the beginning of the pregnancy and I would be on close watch the whole pregnancy. The baby would likely need multiple risky blood transfusions in the womb. The womb would be a very hostile environment and the minute doctors thought it could live out of the womb, I would have the baby and the fight for its life would continue. Can you imagine knowing that your body intentionally killed your baby?

RhoGAM masks a baby's positive blood from the negative mother, thereby reducing the chance of sensitization to 0.1%.

The Trouble with Science

So now, what is controversial about this? Well, I never realized it was controversial (I never thought about it as a vaccine) until I was pregnant and was doing some more research. I am a bit of a nerd and I like to know things beyond just what the side-effects are. I turned to Google and I happened upon pages of misguided women who wanted to refuse the shot because of their baseless fear of any kind of vaccine. I say baseless because there has never been any proof of a link between vaccines and autism. Ever. There was a study done by a since discredited doctor that indicated a link. He got it published and received a ton of attention and money (which was what I think he was after). Turns out he falsified his data.

I fully admit that there has also never been a study done that disproves a link between autism and vaccines. There have been a ton of studies that failed to find a link, but they will almost all end with a disclaimer along the lines of "this does not disprove a link." That is just good logical science; disproving things is not science's strong point. Logically, it is much easier to say this does happen sometimes than this never happens. To say the first, you just have to find an instance where you know it happened. To say the second, you would have to examine every instance in the universe through all time and determine that it never did happen. Thus, science's way of saying "this doesn't happen" is saying "we haven't found an instance where this does happen."

So if all you need is one instance, what about my sister's neighbor's cousin's kid who was diagnosed with autism after getting vaccinated? This is not proof. There was a lady on one of the articles I read about RhoGAM who told a heart-breaking story. Her daughter had received the shot at 28 weeks (the recommended time to receive it during pregnancy). Within a week, she lost the baby. "Obviously," the woman said, "it was the RhoGAM." I cannot imagine the pain this mother (and grandmother) must be going through. I have never lost a baby at 28 weeks, but I know I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. But blindly blaming RhoGAM in this case is not wise.

Answers

I believe the whole war on vaccines is almost entirely due to the natural human tendency to want answers to tragedy. When we grieve, be it the death of a baby at 28 weeks pregnant or the diagnosis of autism at 3 years, we naturally ask ourselves what we could have done. We want to know why. The unfortunate result of this natural instinct is that we often start to play the blame game. We feel better if we can say "I know what it was that caused this." We feel even better if we think it was not our fault and we can prevent it in the future. Blaming the RhoGAM shot is convenient because we can push blame onto something specific and we can avoid the problem in the future (by refusing the shot).

Unfortunately, something happening prior to something is not the equivalent of it causing it to happen. Just because your autistic child has had his shots doesn't mean they caused autism. Just because you had a RhoGAM shot prior to loosing the baby does not mean RhoGAM caused the pregnancy loss.

Of course, I have no proof that RhoGAM did not cause her to loose the baby.  I have no idea if the doctors could prove that in her case or not. Due to the fact that RhoGAM side-effects are not listed to include pregnancy loss, I am willing to conclude that RhoGAM causing this loss is not likely and that is the best science can do.

I understand that it is really hard to hear that there is something wrong with your child and not be able to explain it. I studied psychology in college and had a professor whose area of expertise was autism; I am sure he understood that sentiment better than some: his son was diagnosed with autism. But even he said that we do not know what causes autism. Sure, he had theories--it was his life's work--but he did not know causes.

Ethics

We now get to the never-ending question of ethics; we get to weigh the cost benefit ratio, which is honestly a rather unpleasant process most of the time. We have to decide if the problems of such and such are outweighed by the benefits

I have already discussed how RhoGAM saves an estimated 10,000 babies a year. It has almost entirely eliminated a disease in the US. Several other vaccines have also nearly eliminated diseases (though some, such as pertussis, are making a comeback due to more people failing to vaccinate their children and get their booster shots as adults). Vaccines do prevent disease and save lives.

But, on the flip side, they could (meaning we haven't absolutely proven that they don't) cause autism and other unpleasant things. They do in fact cause severe allergic reactions in a very small number of patients.

So, using the RhoGAM example: On the cost side there is a theory based on no factual information that this shot could cause autism in or death of my baby. There is also very small risk that I will have a severe allergic reaction the first time I receive the shot, which can result in all sorts of problems for me. On the benefit side, this shot will almost completely eliminate the chance that my body will develop the desire to kill at least roughly half of my subsequent babies (from 16% down to 0.1%). I feel like this one is obvious. Theoretical problems and minuscule chances versus fairly high chance that my body will kill subsequent babies? Give me the shot.

Father's Blood Type

I feel it only fair to address that my husband has a positive blood type. Since Rh is roughly a dominate trait, I don't know if he is double dominate or dominate recessive, but I know I am double recessive. If he is double dominate, all of our kids will be dominate recessive, which theoretically means every one of them would be positive. If  he is dominate recessive, about half of our kids will be dominate recessive and positive and half double recessive and negative. Thus, roughly 50%-100% of our kids will be positive. Theoretically.

So that means if my husband was negative instead, all of our kids would be double recessive, which would mean all of them would be negative. In this case, there should be no reason you need the shot, right? No Rh means no sensitization and no babies dying. Theoretically.

So why does everyone get the shot? I wondered this myself. I assumed it was doctors covering the possibility that the "father of the child" was not in fact the father. Apparently, there are even some doctors who don't suggest it for women' whose husband is negative. I don't know if I can really fault someone for refusing the shot under these circumstances.But, I think I should point out what I found out about this from my fabulous sister.

My sister is weird. She wants to study blood for a living. No, seriously. Right now she is finishing up an internship for her bachelor's degree in analyzing body fluids (I couldn't make this up) and plans to go on to specialize in blood. I asked her about why they would give the shot to everyone. She agreed with my initial assessment but had something else to add. Rh is not just an on and off trait. You can be different degrees of positive, some of which will seem to be negative on a test. She herself is only positive if you remember to shake the tube or something.  Furthermore, you might be truly negative but still have the gene to make a baby positive. I guess dominate doesn't really mean dominate. I don't know what the chances of such a thing are, but it is something else to weigh in your cost to benefit ratio.

Welcome to the Blog

This blog is going to be dedicated to my feelings on pretty much any topic I want to write about, some of them controversial. I will set a few ground rules:

1. This blog is dedicated to my opinion. I am not going to pretend like I am unbiased. However, I am going to take my high school history class approach and completely ban the word "biased" from this site. I will delete any and all comments that call another comment or my post biased. Anything that anyone says is biased. In fact, all the news stations that consider themselves "unbiased" are full of garbage. On the most basic level, since they can't report everything, they have picked what they think is news and in doing so shown a bias. Bias is not bad, it is just a fact. Here, I will accept that fact and then move on. There is no point in debating facts. On the other hand, what is useful and interesting is pointing out how one's experience has colored his or her perception of the world. This is not merely dismissing a point of view because of past experiences coloring perceptions, but rather discussing the strengths or limitations of a perception by taking the past experiences into account.
   
2. I reserve full right to delete comments. This is my blog, not your public forum for free speech; it is my public forum for free speech. I will not delete a comment merely because I disagree with it. I will delete it if it is offensive or calls someone a name (like biased).
   
3. I may reply to your comment simply with identifying a specific type of logical fallacy you used. In extreme cases, I may delete your comment for a logical fallacy.
   
4. This is my blog. If you want to be in charge, get your own.