Today is April 2nd - World Autism Awareness Day. With this day, as pretty much everything else in the world in modern times, comes a certain amount of polarizing charge. By that, I mean that this issue of childhood Autism, much like almost every other topic in today's discourse, is full of people on two opposite sides. On one side, we have the Anti-Immunizers. This group of people believe a study from 1998 in the UK's former science journal, The Lancet, that has been thoroughly debunked and discredited. This study claimed a link between the Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR) vaccination and the rising rate of Autism among children. Read the CNN story here. On the other side, we have the people that realize that this published paper was scientific malpractice, and is nothing more than conjecture at best, but more or less, it is an issue of correlation not being causation.
However, this is not what my blog is going to be about. There are plenty of places online to find good scientific discourse on this subject, and I am neither a scientist, a doctor, nor a journalist. Therefore, I urge you as the reader to become current with the merits of the discussion. No, the issue I want to talk about is how does a person that has intelligence, that has information, that has knowledge inform someone who does not currently possess those things without sounding like a pompous asshole?
The issue in my mind arose as I was explaining to someone that I think highly of that the myth of the vaccination-Autism link had been thoroughly debunked, that there was absolutely no link whatsoever that would indicate causation, and that we need to start trying to discover the real issue instead of spending our time and money chasing around false stories. I made a few analogies that sounded good in my mind, such as my standard religion debate weapon of choice. That weapon is as follows: If I told you that I had a magic pendant that will prevent tiger attacks, and you buy it, and never get attacked by a tiger, it isn't the fact that you bought the tiger pendant that saved you from tiger attacks. Correlation is not causation. I also compared the myth spreaders to 9/11 "Truthers", or the group of people that claim that our American government was behind the 9/11 attacks in order to justify getting America into war...all while continuing to live in the nation ran by the government that they believe murdered 3000 people in one day to justify getting another 6600 American deaths overseas. Yet, after I read the entire passage that I wrote, I couldn't help but feel like an asshole, as though I'd been talking down to her the entire time. But that wasn't my purpose; that wasn't my intent.
This is what I wrote:
That's actually a myth. One that was debunked, the journal that published it has been discredited, the scientist that wrote it has been shunned by all of the rest of the scientific community. Now, that myth is continued by 9/11 truthers, other whackjobs, alternative medicine-ists and Jenny McCarthy.
The evidence is correlation, not causation. If I told you that I had a magic pendant that will prevent tiger attacks, and you buy it, and never get attacked by a tiger, it isn't the fact that you bought the tiger pendant that saved you from tiger attacks. The same goes with the autism-vaccination myth. Just because a kid got his MMR shot and has Autism doesn't mean that one led to the other. There's only been one actually published journal entry on it, and that was completely debunked. All other scientific literature points to vaccines being generally safe.
In fact, the rate of autism, while startlingly high, is not even in real correlation with the rate of the MMR vaccination (which is the only immunization that is actually discussed as being dangerous). While we are almost fully vaccinated in America except for some loonys, the rate of Autism just doesn't fit in with the rate of vaccinations.
However, there is something. And scientists and researchers and educators, and tons of people are looking into it. I hope that they find it, because this is a growing epidemic among children.
I guess that I just do not know how to speak to people. It's not like I want to be a pompous jerk. It's not like I want to act like have more knowledge than other people. It's just that I just cannot physically stop myself when I believe that someone has something wrong. I try. Oh man, do I try. But I've come to realize that the only way that I won't use the internet to continue to correct people is if I don't use the internet at all. And let's face it, as a child born in the early 80s, after growing up watching video games and PCs become a real thing right in front of my eyes, the internet and I are not parting ways any time soon.
Like I said, I never mean to come across as rude. I never mean to come across as crass. But I just can't stop myself from debating, arguing, correcting, and generally being an asshole on the internet. Maybe things will get better, but as I get older, I tend to believe that I'm only getting more "get-off-my-lawn"ish. Who knows, it's just my opinion.
well done indeed sir - Brandon
ReplyDeleteThis made me laugh:
ReplyDelete"But I've come to realize that the only way that I won't use the internet to continue to correct people is if I don't use the internet at all."
But the last paragraph made me feel like we have the same mind.
Good read.