Part 8 (1/2)

GO DEEPER...

Books Graves, Joseph L. The Emperor's New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003.

Harrison, Guy P. Race and Reality: What Everyone Should Know about Our Biological Diversity. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2010.

Montagu, Ashley. Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 1997.

Other Sources Unnatural Causes...Is Inequality Making Us Sick? es to important decisions, I prefer a.n.a.lysis and reason to hunches and fears. I may have felt the possible threat of an autism-vaccine link, but I knew the reality of how vaccines protect children. There is no doubt that vaccines save the lives of millions of children each year and prevent many millions more from having to suffer through painful illnesses. I want my children to be on that side of the fence. How could I possibly send my daughter out into a dangerous world without protecting her from known killers such as measles and diphtheria? In the end, I decided it is far safer to go with the known and the proven over the unknown and the unproven-especially when my daughter's safety is the issue. A few celebrities and one or two renegade doctors don't match up favorably against the world's top epidemiologists. There are no guarantees, of course, but it would have been reckless and irresponsible of me to withhold a very important protection from my child based on unproven claims.

The decision to vaccinate my children has been vindicated by very solid science in the years since that uncomfortable moment with a nurse and my baby back in 2002. Since then, vaccines have continued to do their amazing work, quietly and without much fanfare. Every day, vaccines prevent the deaths of countless children worldwide. Vaccines may have saved my children's lives as well. Unfortunately, irrational fears about vaccines have not gone away.

Anyone who researches the supposed link between vaccines and autism is likely to be surprised by how one-sided the controversy is. I certainly was. Mainstream medical science has evidence and credible studies to show that vaccines are not linked to autism. Meanwhile, the antivaccine activists fight on, continuing to rely on nothing more than fear and misplaced rage.

It is difficult to criticize parents of autistic children who condemn vaccines when already they are so burdened by challenges. One might feel the urge to give them a break and let them do or say whatever they want. But they need to hear the truth too. And their protests against vaccines, no matter how well intentioned, can lead to the deaths of children. It's also tragic that some parents compound their problems by blaming medical science and then running into the clutches of quacks and con artists who are all too willing to sell them the latest flavor of snake oil. By blaming vaccines-without proof-parents are most likely pursuing a dead-end path and discouraging other parents from vaccinating their children. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe that their hearts are in the right place, but their minds clearly are not. Attacking vaccines is not something to take lightly. Vaccines have probably saved more lives than any other form of medicine in history. One would think it would take a mountain of d.a.m.ning evidence to turn people against something with a track record like that. But apparently it takes only a little misinformation and a lot of fear because increasing numbers of parents are choosing not to vaccinate their children. Today an estimated four out of ten parents in America choose not to give their children one or more recommended vaccines.1 DEADLY CONSEQUENCES.

Heated debates that pit science against pseudoscience-evolution versus creationism, for example-rage on and on. But few of them rack up casualties and have the potential for mayhem like the anti-vaccine controversy. This particular clash between reason and irrational belief is literally killing children right now. Vaccination rates have plunged in parts of America and the United Kingdom because of misinformation and unjustified fears. According to the United Kingdom's Health Protection Agency, a drop in vaccination coverage levels has again made measles endemic in the UK after it had already been wiped out by vaccines decades ago.2 Much of the fears were stirred up in 1998 when British doctor Andrew Wakefield published research claiming that the measles vaccine causes autism. He said the vaccine inflamed intestines, causing harmful proteins to leak out that then made their way to the brain, where they caused autism.3 This generated considerable coverage in the mainstream media which, of course, sent waves of fear straight into the hearts of millions of parents. Many of them made the decision not to vaccinate their children as a result. Predictably, this was followed by outbreaks of preventable diseases that killed children. Soon after Wakefield's announcement, MMR vaccine rates dropped from nearly 90 percent to as low as 50 percent in some areas of London.4 Now comes the kicker: It turned out that Wakefield's research is garbage. Other scientists could not confirm his findings. Something was wrong, very wrong. But not only has his work been deemed scientifically flawed, it has ethical problems as well. Investigative journalist Brian Deer reported that Wakefield's study was funded by a lawyer who also was representing five of eight children used in the study for a suit against pharmaceutical companies. In 2010, the Lancet medical journal formally retracted Wakefield's study that they had published, and the General Medical Council removed Wakefield's name from the medical register. He can no longer practice medicine in England.5 In the late 1990s, antivaccination activists set their sights on a preservative used in some vaccines called thimerosal. No studies suggested that thimerosal might cause autism, but pharmaceutical companies removed it as a precaution anyway. Now, years later, autism rates have continued to rise. ”After all the research,” writes Michael Specter in his book, Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, ”thimerosal may be the only substance we might say with some certainty doesn't cause autism; many public health officials have argued that it would make better sense to spend the energy and money searching for a more likely cause.”6 Multiple studies have failed to find evidence of an autism-vaccine link. In j.a.pan, the feared MMR ”vaccine c.o.c.ktail” was withdrawn and replaced by single vaccines. A study of thirty thousand children there found that autism rates continued to rise even in MMR's absence.7 Other countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, and Sweden removed thimerosal from vaccines only to see autism rates continue to rise. Meanwhile, researchers in Finland looked for an autism-vaccine link by a.n.a.lyzing the medical records of more than two million children. They found nothing.8 It seems to me that vaccines are victims of their own success. People who are fortunate enough to live in countries with strong vaccination programs have been lulled into a false sense of security. Diseases once feared are not so scary anymore. Measles, for example, does not strike fear in the heart of the typical American. But it's not a disease we should take lightly. It causes brain swelling and high fever and is often fatal. In the past, measles killed millions in Europe and America. It still kills more than one million children per year in the developing world today.9 Nevertheless, many parents are being scared away from the measles vaccine by warnings with no credible science behind them. The percentage of unvaccinated children in the United States has doubled since 1991.10 This is as infuriating as it is absurd. We are moving backward.

Dr. Paul Offit, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, is one of the world's leading experts on vaccines. He is also currently waging a professional war against the antivaccine movement. But it is also clearly personal for him. His frustration and concern for children are often readily apparent when he describes the irresponsible decision to deny vaccines. ”The problem with waning immunization rates in the United States isn't theoretical anymore,” he told me. ”Recent outbreaks of measles, whooping cough, mumps, and bacterial meningitis show a clear breakdown in population immunity. Children are now suffering the diseases of their grandparents. It's unconscionable.”11 MISPLACED FEARS.

”Caught in the middle are children,” Offit writes in his book, Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All. ”Recent outbreaks of measles, mumps, whooping cough, and bacterial meningitis have caused hundreds to suffer and some to die-die because their parents feared vaccines more than the disease they prevent.”12 Maybe this would not have happened if more of us were aware of the constant a.s.sault we are under from dangerous viruses and bacteria. Microscopic monsters have killed far more people than all of history's wars combined. Some of the most important events in history involved disease. European contact with the New World, for example, is a story of germs and disease as much as or more than anything else. One thing is certain: too many people in the United States are unaware of their own recent history. Offit writes: In the early 1900s, children routinely suffered and died from diseases now easily prevented by vaccines.... Americans could expect that every year diphtheria would kill twelve thousand people, mostly children; rubella (German measles) would cause as many as twenty thousand babies to be born blind, deaf, or mentally disabled; polio would permanently paralyze fifteen thousand children and kill a thousand; and mumps would be a common cause of deafness. Because of vaccines, all these diseases have been completely or virtually eliminated. But now, because more and more parents are choosing not to vaccinate their children, some of these diseases are coming back.13 One likely reason for belief in an autism-vaccine connection is unfortunate timing. The first signs of autism often appear just around the time when children are getting routine vaccines. Parents, understandably, search for a cause for their child's disturbing symptoms, and vaccines seem a likely culprit. As often happens, however, correlation is easily confused with causation. Offit relates a story about a man who took his baby to get the DTP vaccine but after waiting in line for a time became tired and went home without ever getting the child vaccinated. Several hours later, the father discovered the baby had died in its crib, apparently of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. ”One can only imagine what the father would have felt if [the baby] had received DTP several hours earlier. Presumably, no study would have convinced him of anything other than that the vaccine had killed his son.14 As a parent who once worried about vaccinating my own children, I sympathize with mothers and fathers who are not 100 percent sure what to do. I would advise parents who are worried about vaccines causing autism to play it safe and go with common sense and reason. Of course playing it safe means getting your children vaccinated. And it's only common sense and reasonable to protect your child from as many of the numerous diseases lurking out there as you can.

”THEY'RE NOT STUPID, JUST IGNORANT”

Nurse Shawn R. Browning is in the trenches on the frontlines of this issue. She has nearly two decades of experience in the medical field, most of it working with the US Navy. She regularly administers vaccines to military personnel and their families. She also has been involved with immunization education for many years. Irrational fears about vaccines are nothing new to her.

”I have had plenty of parents and patients that are misinformed about vaccines,” she said. ”When they tell me they don't want to get a particular vaccine, the first thing I ask them is, 'why'? I have heard everything from the thimerosal content is bad for you, vaccines cause autism-particularly the MMR vaccine-and everything in between. By law I give them the VIS [vaccine information statements], but in addition I also educate them on the pros of receiving the vaccine versus not. What I have learned is that more times than not, people are willing to get the vaccine once it is explained to them in words they can understand and relate to. They're not stupid, just ignorant. They have listened to their neighbors, the media, and everyone else and have formed an unjustified opinion. Drives me crazy! Many parents and patients have expressed their grat.i.tude that someone has taken the time to explain things instead of just sticking a needle in them without any explanation. I think our particular patient population is more vaccine hesitant than antivaccine.”

Like most healthcare professionals, Browning is concerned that this reluctance to vaccinate might lead to major outbreaks of preventable diseases: The biggest fear is that preventable diseases will rise to epidemic proportions again. Infants and children are going to die or be disabled because adults are ignorant and won't vaccinate themselves or their children. The outbreak of pertussis [whooping cough] is the latest. People think that since they are adults, they don't need a vaccine. Yet how many die from complications from the flu every year? [Influenza virus, the flu, kills as many as five hundred thousand people each year worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.15] It's very scary. We also have an obligation to get vaccinated to protect those [who] can't be vaccinated due to various reasons [such as immune system problems].

There was this mom [who] came into our clinic a little more than a year ago to get her one-year-old daughter her immunizations. The corpsman that brought them back to the room started to explain the vaccines the child would be getting and their potential side effects to the mom. The mom politely interrupted the corpsman and proceeded to explain that this child was not her first baby. She had once been ”one of those moms” who didn't believe in vaccines, and her first little girl had died when she got the measles. Just how do you respond to that? Your heart breaks.16 Offit adds, ”The science is largely complete. Ten epidemiological studies have shown MMR vaccine doesn't cause autism; six have shown thimerosal [preservative once used in vaccines] doesn't cause autism; three have shown thimerosal doesn't cause subtle neurological problems; a growing body of evidence now points to the genes that link to autism; and despite the removal of thimerosal from vaccines in 2001, the number of children with autism continues to rise.”17 In 1997, 4,138 children entered California kindergartens without being vaccinated because they had exemptions. By 2008, that number had more than doubled. Parents citing religious or philosophical objections to having their children vaccinated are putting not only their own children at risk but the lives of many others as well.18 Babies who are too young to be vaccinated can be infected and die. Children who have immune system problems and cannot be vaccinated have to rely on others around them to be vaccinated in order to keep the diseases at bay. When vaccination rates drop, danger to these vulnerable groups increases. According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) expert, a parent's decision to refuse vaccination means his or her child is thirty-five times more likely to get measles and twenty-two times more likely to come down with pertussis (whooping cough). Please don't think for a second that this is exaggeration or fearmongering. Children are paying a price for this madness in small pockets across America now, and the potential for much greater suffering is real. In April 2011, for example, a private school in Virginia had to close because half its students were infected with pertussis. None of the children had been vaccinated. Many of the parents had obtained religious exemptions that officially sanctioned their negligence.19 News of several recent infant deaths in California due to pertussis either had not reached those parents or failed to impress them.

Why subject children to this unnecessary danger? To protect them from autism? Very large, thorough, and expensive scientific studies did not find any reason to conclude that vaccines cause autism. Therefore it simply makes no sense to withhold such important protection from a child.

GO DEEPER...

Books Mnookin, Seth. The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011.

Offit, Paul A. Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.

Offit, Paul A. Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All. New York: Basic Books, 2010.

Offit, Paul A., and Charlotte A. Moser. Vaccines and Your Child: Separating Fact from Fiction. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.

Other Sources The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintains an informative collection of articles and fact sheets about vaccines at mon misconception is that nonbelievers claim to have disproved the existence of all G.o.ds. This is not accurate. I can't even imagine how one could do such a thing. For example, short of exploring the entire universe and all possible dimensions, how can anyone ever really know if the Aztec G.o.d Quetzalcoatl exists or not? The best a skeptic can do is point to the absence of proof and go from there.

It might help if believers recognized the common ground they share with nonbelievers. When it comes to G.o.ds, everyone is skeptical and everyone is a nonbeliever. It's just a matter of degree. I have met Muslims in the Middle East who were hardcore skeptics-about the claims of Hinduism and Buddhism. They were quick to point out many sound reasons to doubt the more extraordinary claims of those belief systems. I know a Jewish person who dismisses Mormonism as a collection of totally unsubstantiated claims put forth by a questionable source. South American Christians tell me that Islam fails the test of a.n.a.lysis and reason. Catholics have explained to me that Protestants are way off course and have failed to prove their claims. Some Protestants say the same about Catholics. Yes, when it comes to religion, every believer is a skeptic-almost. The only difference is that they stop a.n.a.lyzing, doubting, and asking questions when their thoughts arrive at the doorstep of their own religion. That's where critical thinking ends and faith begins.

THE G.o.dS MUST BE LAZY.

If only the G.o.ds had made the effort to clearly establish their existence and communicated their desires to everyone on Earth. How hard could that be for a G.o.d? But either the G.o.ds are not real or they have chosen to be elusive and utterly confusing, leaving us to spend thousands of years doubting, bickering, and slaughtering one another over religious differences. This conflict is impossible to escape given the state of religion: Millions of G.o.ds have been said to be real and none of them proven to exist. And there can be no compromise. At the very least, everyone must reject most G.o.ds. There is no person on Earth-alive today or at any time in the past-who would or could believe in every G.o.d. It is impossible to believe in all G.o.ds because n.o.body even knows all the G.o.ds. There are simply too many of them to keep up. People have declared so many G.o.ds to exist over the last several thousand years that n.o.body has been able to keep an accurate count, much less list names and attributes. These G.o.ds, and the hundreds of thousands of religions that proclaimed them to be real, are far too contradictory to be reconciled under one roof. Jesus either is the only way to heaven, or he is not. Allah is the one true G.o.d with no son, or he is not. There are millions of Hindu G.o.ds, or there are not. Ramses II either was a G.o.d, or he was not. Zeus was top G.o.d and really did hurl lightning bolts down from Mount Olympus, or he did not. (This could go on for thousands of pages, but I'm sure you get the point.) One or some of these G.o.ds may be real. Maybe none are real. What we can be sure of is that they cannot all be real. No wonder belief in G.o.ds has been a source of constant conflict throughout history.

What we can conclude from the mult.i.tude of claims for very different G.o.ds is that, at the very least, most believers must be wrong. This is just the way it sorts out and there is no getting around it. Do the math, either polytheists are wrong or monotheists are wrong, for example. The fact is, the majority of people today are missing the mark when it comes to G.o.ds and most people in the past got it wrong too. If Christianity is correct and Jesus/G.o.d the Father/The Holy Spirit are real, then that would mean the majority of people alive today and the vast majority of people who have ever lived were wrong. If Islam is true and Mohammed was correct about the Koran and Allah, then it would mean that the majority of people alive today and a majority of the people who have ever lived were wrong on the G.o.d issue. The same is true for every religion and every G.o.d claim. If somebody's h.e.l.l turns out to be real, it's going to be awfully full. And it will be filled mostly with religious people who got in line behind the wrong G.o.d.

Many people mistakenly believe that the popularity of G.o.d belief in general somehow validates their belief. Not so. In fact, the conflicting claims of so many beliefs casts suspicion on all of them. If my neighbor can be wrong, perhaps I can be wrong. Christianity, for example, is currently the world's most popular religion. That sounds impressive, but some 70 percent of the world's people are non-Christians. Muslims are a minority, too, at 21 percent. Hinduism is a major world religion, but only 14 percent of all people are Hindus. These conflicting minority belief systems do not validate or support one another.

In my book 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a G.o.d, I a.n.a.lyzed the most common justifications for belief that I heard from people in various religions around the world. I found it interesting that people defending very different belief systems would almost always rely on the same handful of justifications. For example, I have been told that answered prayers, miracles, divine healings, and feelings of joy ”prove” the existence of a G.o.d. I have been told these things by Christians in Europe and the Americas; Muslims in Syria, Jordan, and Egypt; and Hindus in India and Nepal. Once again, somebody has to be wrong here. If a Hindu who successfully prays for a favor from Ganesha proves that Hindu G.o.ds are real, then why aren't the answered prayers of a Muslim proof that there is only one G.o.d? If a Christian and a Sikh pray for better jobs and then both get better jobs, whose prayer should we consider to be proof that Jesus is or is not the only way to salvation? Meanwhile, we have to consider why the past prayers of ancient peoples such as the Greeks and Romans are not compelling evidence for the existence of their long list of G.o.ds. They said prayer worked too.

It is the same with faith healing. I have spoken with a variety of believers in a variety of unique religions who a.s.sured me that their G.o.d or G.o.ds must be real because of some supernatural recovery from illness or injury that they experienced or witnessed. But I have attended faith healing services and was not impressed. When you consider the global/historical context and recognize that claims for divine healings have been taking place for thousands of years within numerous contradictory religions, it becomes clear that this is not good evidence for the existence of a G.o.d or G.o.ds.

No one claim for a G.o.d or G.o.ds holds a decisive advantage over all the others. Sure, many people within each belief system will say that theirs is true and all others false, but they are in a poor position to judge. It must be difficult to observe the religious landscape as it really is while standing inside the high walls of just one of them. From the nonbeliever's vantage point outside the walls, however, it easily comes into sharp focus. The great number of G.o.ds that we humans have confidently believed in since the dawn of history and probably deep into prehistory, suggest only one thing: we are a G.o.d-inventing species. We see divine beings everywhere and then imagine that we know their desires. The fact that there has never been agreement on who the real G.o.ds are and what they want of us hints to the likely source of our tales. The G.o.ds have not spoken to us. Most likely it is we who are simply speaking to one another, in their name.

GO DEEPER...

Books Chaline, Eric. The Book of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses: A Visual Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Deities. New York: It Books, 2004.

Harrison, Guy P. 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a G.o.d. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2008.

Hemenway, Priya. Hindu G.o.ds. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 2002.

Jordan, Michael. Dictionary of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses. New York: Facts on File, 2004.

Kurtz, Paul. The Transcendental Temptation: A Critique of Religion and the Paranormal. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991.

Mills, David. Atheist Universe. Berkeley: Ulysses Press, 2006.

Sagan, Carl. The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for G.o.d. New York: Penguin, 2007.

Thompson, J. Anderson, and Clare Aukofer. Why We Believe in G.o.d(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith. Charlottesville, VA: Pitchstone Publis.h.i.+ng, 2011.

Other Sources The Atheist Experience, /archive/.

Letting Go of G.o.d (DVD), Julia Sweeney and Indefatigable, 2008.

Modern science is beginning to understand the neurological mechanisms that give rise to the religious experience of the believer. Given these results, the skeptic may present the believer with a simple question: How do you know that your religious experience is not a simple trick of your brain-the unfolding of a perfectly natural temporal lobe transient? How can you trust such an experience when, through science, we can convincingly mimic the face of G.o.d?

-David C. Noelle One of the world's most common and enduring beliefs is that one particular religion is true while all the many thousands of others are wrong. Of course, those who hold this view are always sure that it's their religion that happens to be the one that is correct. This is another belief that can be difficult to address due to a force field of traditional respect, legal protection, and the outright threat of violence that often surrounds it. Reaction varies by religion, context, time period, and society, but one might be considered rude for challenging the concept of religious favoritism, arrested or even killed for it. It is usually considered good manners, and safer, to simply duck this one while repeating the live-and-let-live cliche. Unfortunately, however, total confidence in one religion over all others encourages many bad things, from the Crusades to discrimination to suicide bombers. This makes religions fair game for all those who care about such things as peace and human rights.

So what is wrong with the claim that one religion is true and all others false? Three points reveal the problem with religious isolationism. First, we need to look at how people come to follow one religion over thousands of others. Second, we must explore the religious landscape as it really is, not as people tend to imagine it is. Finally, we need to address the problem of religious illiteracy. How can people judge their religion to be the most sensible and accurate of all when they know virtually nothing about any others?

RELIGIOUS INHERITANCE.

How do people choose a religion? They don't! The dirty little secret about religious belief is that it's imposed, not chosen, in almost every case. Very few believers voluntarily and consciously select their particular religion. The religion usually is introduced to a child by family members-without debate, questions, or consent-and then reinforced by the immediate social setting. This is clearly the case because we can look at the geography and family patterns of religious belief and see that the best predictors of a person's religious belief are what their parents believe and where they live. So if a person was born to Muslim parents and raised in Egypt or Syria, for example, the odds are very high that she or he will be a Muslim in adulthood. If a child has Buddhist parents and grows up in Thailand, it's likely that he or she will end up a Buddhist. It's nearly certain that a person raised by Christian parents in Mississippi will be a Christian. If one is born in a small village in Papua New Guinea, most likely she will not be a Scientologist or Raelian. If one is born and raised in Pakistan, chances are not good for becoming a Baptist. What this shows is that very few of the world's people are doing much thinking, if any, when they first become tied to a religion. There is virtually no comparison shopping going on when it comes to the adoption of religions throughout the global population. There is no weighing of evidence and a.s.sessing of arguments. There is no time given for fair hearings of alternative beliefs or counter explanations for religious claims. In almost every case religion is a family and social inheritance that the individual has little say in. For typical believers, religious loyalties develop early in life and within the context of trusting authority figures. These beliefs are able to grow deep roots in relative isolation, safe from challenge. Then the confirmation bias protects the imposed belief, as observations and arguments that seem to support their religion are embraced while everything that supports rival religions or casts doubt upon all religion is ignored or trivialized. There may be movement within religions by individuals, from Catholic to Protestant or from fundamentalist Muslim to casual Muslim, for example. But allegiance to the original primary religion does not change for most people.