Jim These Really Arent Funny on After the Other
The void behind Jim Carrey's rant: Arguments against California vaccine law have nothing to do with science
The argument of whether to make vaccines legally mandatory isn't clear cut … but any hesitations aren't related to the science of those vaccines themselves
In his widely publicized Twitter rant about California's new vaccine law, Jim Carrey raises two loaded and emotional arguments. One seems easy to dismiss, the other less so.
The Canadian-born comedian's continued suggestion that there is a link between certain vaccines and neurological disorders like autism has been solidly and repeatedly debunked. (And yet, like a Walking Dead extra, keeps bobbing up.)
The evidence refuting the allegation, says Dr. Shelly Deeks, director of immunization at Public Health Ontario, is "totally definitive."
"I can't really understand how people can buy in to the Jim Carrey and (ex-partner) Jenny McCarthy arguments, because they're not scientifically valid," she said.
California Gov says yes to poisoning more children with mercury and aluminum in manditory vaccines. This corporate fascist must be stopped.
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Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) July 01, 2015 His other complaint, over his state's new legislation making immunization mandatory for school children, touches on a more nuanced debate around public-health strategies and individual rights.
The vaccine-autism uproar – which lives on through countless websites, celebrity advocates and conspiracy theories – is generally traced to a small British study published by the prestigious Lancet in 1998 – and since roundly discredited.
It looked at 12 autistic children, and cited reports by parents of eight that their symptoms emerged shortly after receiving the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) combined shot.
Yet numerous, large-scale studies published since, involving tens of thousands of children, have failed to find any connection between the shot and rates of autism that have spiked sharply in the last few decades.
A 2002 Danish study, for instance, looked at 537,000 young subjects. The 82% who had received the vaccine were actually slightly less likely – though the difference was not statistically significant – to be autistic than the non-vaccinated.
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Finally, Wakefield's own research was found to be fraudulent, and the doctor himself caught in an undeclared conflict of interest.
Such evidence – plus the near-unanimous voice of public-health, infectious disease and neurological experts and agencies worldwide – has done little to convince many worried parents, however, and childhood vaccination rates have dipped since the Wakefield study in parts of the North America and Europe.
That phenomenon was blamed for a series of recent measles outbreaks in the States and Canada traced back to California's Disneyland theme park. Of the patients whose vaccination status was known, more than 70% had not had the shot.
But Carrey – whose ex-partner McCarthy helped drive public fears about the MMR – says he's not now anti-vaccine. His Tweets indicate he is opposed to the Mercury-based additive thimerosal used as a preservative in some shots, and blamed by critics for neurological problems.
Yet other studies have looked specifically at thimerosal and, again, found that children exposed to it were no more likely to get Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). And since it has been removed from most childhood vaccines, rates of autism have failed to decrease.
California's response to the Disneyland measles outbreaks was a new law that would not only require schoolchildren to be vaccinated, but remove the right to exemptions from that rule for religious or personal reasons.
The potential downside I see is that you further entrench views of the anti-immunization individuals
That goes farther than Canada's two most stringent vaccine jurisdictions – Ontario and New Brunswick – which require proof of immunization to get into school, but allow non-medical exemptions.
Carrey called the new California law "fascist."
Whether to make vaccines truly mandatory is, in fact, an unresolved issue even in the public-health world.
Evidence suggests that jurisdictions with more stringent rules have wider coverage, but leaving parents no say might create a backlash, said Deeks Thursday.
"The potential downside I see is that you further entrench views of the anti-immunization individuals," she said. "People will be angry that they have to do something, and not choose to do it."
• Email: tblackwell@nationalpost.com | Twitter: tomblackwellNP
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Source: https://nationalpost.com/health/the-void-behind-jim-carreys-rant-the-arguments-against-californias-new-law-have-nothing-to-do-with-science
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