I Speak of Dreams

Faretheewell, Freespeaker

What do you do when you hear the news that an online -- well, friend -- has died?

I heard today that someone I knew and esteemed as a fellow smiter of anti-science and pseudoscience, Freespeaker, had died.  I also knew Freespeaker as a fierce advocate for people with disabilites.

A couple of years ago, Freespeaker started a blog, Age of Ignorance.  I want to share with you a selection from his  introductory post:

I know that vaccination has been one of the most, if not the most, important developments of scientific medicine in the last two hundred years. Yes, sanitation and flush toilets did decrease disease incidence, but, that last stubborn rate of infection was resistant, until killed off by vaccination. My family and I have been affected by what are now vaccine preventable diseases.

My paternal grandparents died in the 1918-1919 worldwide flu pandemic. Two of their children, who would have been my aunts, also died. That left four young boys, with my dad being the oldest at 16, to fend for themselves. My father quit school and went to work along with one of his younger brothers. They raised themselves in the 1920's and suffered during the Depression of the 1930's. All because of a disease which is not vaccine preventable.

I recall that when I attended elementary school in the 1950s there were classmates who did not come back to school in September. One was in an iron lung, whatever that was, and another was going to a school for the deaf. Funny, he was not deaf in June. He had something called the mumps.

In Vietnam I saw people die from many causes. One entire village was infected with plague. Fortunately, we had been vaccinated against it.

"Freespeaker" was a pseudonym, or a nom de blogue but even so, if you are paying attention, you learn things about the person behind the pseudonym. 

He loved and admired his wife.  His pride in his children was immense, and he took great joy in their accomplishments.  He was a patriot and proud of his military service.

I don't know if Freespeaker approved of women rabbis, but I do know this is the appropriate prayer to say upon his death.  I never met him or spoke on the phone with him, but the man saying this prayer has the kind of voice I imagined he would have.

 

 

I wish his wife and his children take some comfort from this expression of appreciation for his life and works.

Carl Sagan Day 2010

Carl Sagan Day is celebrated on his birthday, November 9. How are you going to celebrate?

In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion.----Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP Keynote Address

#vaxfax On vaccine fears, adverse reactions to vaccines, autism as "vaccine injury" and parental beliefs

This week is vaccine awareness week  for blogs that are interested in reality- or science-based approaches to health.

As a lay person (that is, not a physician or public health professional) I want to bring my perspective to bear. 

I have a number of posts queued up, but I want to start not with the science, but with emotion and memory.

When I started writing online about vaccine issues, and the lack of connection between autism and vaccination, in about 2006,  I did so because somebody dear to me was immuno-compromised.  I thought if I just explained the facts, I'd be persuasive.

My own children are now adults and have children of their own.   I'm hearing more from young parents and their fears.  It is individual parents, one at a time, who make the decision to accept all vaccinations for their children, or none, or some combination.  

And mostly, it seems to me, what motivates parents to avoid some or all vaccinations is fear. 

You remember that old game of "Telephone", where you whisper a message around a circle?   The message becomes progressively more garbled.  This is what I think is causing parents' fears -- messages originated by professional anti-vaccinationists, like Joe Mercola, Barbara Loe Fisher, Mayer Eisenstein, Suzanne Humphries, Andrew Wakefield, and the like.  The professional anti-vaccinationists aren't constrained by truth or reason, and their entire method of operation is to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about the safety and efficacy of vaccines.  They deserve all the scorn and contempt reality-based vaccine advocates can heap upon them.

But the individual parents who hear and believe their messages?  Not at all.  They need their fears acknowledged and addressed.

Other things on my mind:

I am old enough that I had what are now vaccine-preventable diseases.  The two I remember most clearly are probably:  mumps, during which I rested my head on a chair by my bed and drooled into a basin on the floor, because it hurt too much to swallow; and measles, during which I tried to walk from my bed to the bathroom, and could not, and lost control of both my bladder and bowels.  I still remember the shame.  Why would I ever subject my children to such suffering if it were safely preventable?

When my daughter was not yet six, somebody very dear to me lost her son, a few months older than my daughter.  The boy had a brain stem glioma.  From diagnosis to death was less than a year. 

I have never given any credit to the vaccine-causation theory of autism, either the discredited Wakefield gut-measles meme, or the "autism is a unique form of mercury poisoning" meme.  The Wakefield theory all along struck me as footless.  The measles vaccine had been given since 1968  and the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine had been given since 1971.   If the measles vaccine was responsible for autism, why wouldn't the increase in incidence have begun in the 1970s?  The "mercury poisoning" notion struck me as equally without value. 

To me,  high vaccine uptake rates for infectious diseases are a social justice issue. The burden of vaccine-preventable diseases fall disproportionately upon the poor. 

A couple of weeks ago, my blog-pal Lesbian Dad went to a meditation retreat lead by the Buddhist nun and teacher,  Pema Chödrön, and came away with some nuggets.  Here's the one that resonates with me the most:

Don’t close your heart or mind to anybody. (Least of all one whose heart or mind you wish to open.)

Last month I took part in two online debates over vaccination.  The first was in the comments section of a post of Shannon Rosa's at the Shot of Prevention blog, Why My Child With Autism is Fully Vaccinated, and the second was a post at KQED's Quest Community Science Blog, Health Officials to Consider Tightening Vaccine Exemptions. 

So many of the most vociferous anti-vaccine commenters have children, even young adults, with severe behavioral and cognitive challenges.  Those commenters blame vaccines for their children's challenges, and they are deeply, deeply angry.

It is so easy, and so foolish, to respond with anger instead of compassion.  Yes, they are repeating lies and misinformation about vaccines -- but lies and misinformation fed to them by the professional anti-vaccine forces, those that profit from them. 

I'm going to try leading with compassion and the light of truth.