A Drunken Madman

Have a quick look at this pair of tweets

These are emblematic of a major problem in the world of vaccine/antivaccine. We're dealing with genuine cases of harm and death. Over here on the pro-vaccine side, we try hard to be sensitive to grief, not always successfully, but occasionally something like this crops up and it's very hard to fight back because of a societal taboo against intruding on the grief of others.

Of course, this doesn't seem to apply in the case of Meryl Dorey, whose activities around Dana McCaffery's tragic death are well documented, however this case is slightly different.

The person above has asserted that a loved one died of "vaccine injury" at the same time as admitting to an official diagnosis of "cot death" (more likely to be officially recorded as SIDS, though in this case it's unclear). This assertion is clearly based in the fallacy of Post-hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, but it is difficult to challenge, due to the aforementioned societal taboo.

Well fuck that. I'm not putting up with it. I tweeted an enquiry to @emmiluvsjaeda asking who exactly gave this diagnosis. This bullshit cannot be allowed to continue. As of the time of writing, I have had no reply, but I suspect that whatever comes back will be more than interesting. I predict either no reply, or an indignant "how dare you?". Either would speak volumes.

I found it quite difficult to compose the response. It initially felt as though I was rubbing salt into a wound. Then I thought of Meryl Dorey's behaviour leading to the formation of Stop The AVN, and realised that this is too important to let my own squeamishness get in the way. This person is gullible, as her other tweets demonstrate - but she is not immune to scrutiny merely because she held up the death of a sibling as a talisman and shield. There is no evidence that this "vaccine injury" is anything but a made-up assertion. Children die of vaccine preventable diseases, and fictional deaths do not deserve the same arena.

I'm certainly not scoffing at the death. Any death is tragic, but to deliberately misattribute a death to an untrue cause is abhorrent, and does more to tarnish the memory of the loved one than I could ever do.

I'll keep you posted of any answer that arrives.

UPDATE 3 Feb 2012: The responses are in.

I have a couple of observations to make here.

First of all, there's absolutely no way to verify this version of events. The official diagnosis, as has been shown twice now, is SIDS. An assertion that the doctor really thought it was the vaccine is unverifiable and largely meaningless. We have to go with the official course of events here. To do otherwise would be to take a faith position and accept an assertion at face value - and I don't generally do faith positions.

Maybe it's true. Maybe the doctor really did say it was a vaccine complication. This doesn't get us as far as the truth of the matter being a vaccine complication - though it may be grounds for an investigation into this doctor's conduct.

And maybe it actually was a vaccine complicaiton. It's a long shot, but maybe - in which case the doctor in question has knowingly signed a death certificate with an incorrect cause of death - again, grounds for an investigation and one that's accompanied by genuine penalties.

Or it could be a mere assertion by a family member - the most likely reason and one that's not entirely unforgivable. I know from bitter experience that during a traumatic event like a death or serious illness, you're not really listening and taking in everything that's said. It could well be that the half-listened and half-remembered details have been coloured somewhat by a post-hoc rationalisation. If it makes @emmieluvsjaeda more comfortable to think it was a conspiracy, then in her mind a conspiracy it shall be.

Secondly, I can't think of a single "legal reason" why a diagnosis of vaccine complication shouldn't have been proffered if that was in fact the case. I'm not a lawyer and I'm certainly not a medical specialist, and I'd love it if someone in one of these fields could enlighten me, but it strikes me that this is either another hole in the story or another reason to investigate the doctor in question. I think, though, that it's the former.

My opinion, then, is that this looks even more like a post-hoc rationalisation than before.

And one final pic

The "eulogy" comment is a striking example of the armour of grief being hastily donned with the underclothes of a martyr complex left showing. It is utterly irrelevant to the verifiability of the story. Though the autopsy report would shed light, I would not be asking for that, either. The holes in the story are enough to mark it out as a rationalisation, and the following "I was there" tweet shows the signature antivaxer position of personal experience being able to trump all objective evidence. There's really nothing to go on here.

So, was I right in asking the question? I think I was. I don't mind being demonised by antivaxers - their opinion is worth naught anyway - and we've at least established that there's no objective evidence to support the original assertions.

Sometimes you just have to ask what planet antivaxers live on. Take for instance, this post over at the AVN Facebook page, a letter from "CC", which illustrates the archetypal introspection-free hypocrisy and glaring inconsistency of the antivax lobby. Here's the bit I'd like to highlight first:

OK, well, if that's true, that would be a bad thing. After all, the pro-vaccination side in this debate prides itself on rational analysis of the facts and figures, and regularly calls out the antivax side for its emotion-based, gut-feeling mode of thought*

So imagine my surprise when reading on, I started to see appeals to emotion lurching forward from the page like the zombies I'd expected all along

 It's certainly a shitty analogy if it's meant to support an antivax position, but it's also a glaring emotional argument. THINK OF TEH CHILDRENS, it screams, in barely coherent, guilt-trip laden english.

And then just below this

 Another very shitty analogy, couched in emotional language. In fact, the pool analogy is bad because there's a known prophylaxis for pool deaths - solid fencing, education and vigilance - which are actually quite a good analogy for vaccination in and of themselves.

There's a danger - the pool. There's a way of preventing it harming your kids - a fence, some education and some vigilance.

Likewise, there's a danger - harm from transmissible disease - and there's a way of preventing it - vaccination, education and vigilance 

Then, of course, we get the icing on the cake:

 Now there's a textbook piece of emotional argumentation, coupled with strawman descriptions of the pro-vaccine position, and some hyperbole for luck. And so far I've seen not a single piece of research, fact, figure, graph or statistic. Just assertion and emotion.

What was that bit earlier in the letter?

 Oh yeah.

 Wow.

It must be free-for-all day over in opposite world today. And I'll remind you, Meryl Dorey said of this letter

"I had to share this one with you though as I think the writer is not only brilliant in the way she has presented the argument, she also goes right to the heart of why debate on this issue MUST be preserved."

So this is the acme, the pinnacle, if you will, of the antivax argument du jour. We are at war with Eastasia. We have always been at war with Eastasia. And pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

But what really did it for me was the responses. Unable to grasp what "CC" was attempting to assert about the contrasting styles of argument between the two conflicting camps, AVN acolytes posted the following emotionally-motivated responses, without evident irony (all names left unredacted because idiots need exposure)

So it made you cry, but antivaxers only ever present research, facts and information? Wow, your attachment to concrete data borders on the creepy. I mean, I'm a nerd, but I don't usually cry about research, facts and information. 

This next one has a person speechless at all the research, facts and information, and another who manages to present research, facts and information (definitely not hyperbole, totally not) about how people think antivaxers are evil or neglectful.

This one has trouble putting her research, facts and information into words without getting too emotional. I never knew cold hard evidence could inspire such responses.

And here's a wait, what? moment:

Wow, Meryl. You can afford to give people jobs now? I thought you'd recently laid off your part-time office staff due to hard times. Did you find some cash under the mattress? Oh, hang on. You don't mean job, you mean job, right? Like as in making Meryl Money on a volunteer basis. It's OK, I see now. Carry on.

Wow. A tear or FIVE? Surely you jest, because if you're really all about research, facts and information, you should be expressing this as "three tears +/- 2 tears" and offering notes on your data collection methodology. I mean, that would be more facty, right? And non-emotional.

And then there's this idiot

Oh, for fuck's sake.

Swimming Pool fences offer a false sense of security? How, exactly? How exactly does that work? This piece of research shows that fencing reduces death by 50% or more, and that 68% of drownings are in pools without isolation fencing. I recommend you read the whole thing, not just take my percentages at face value, but I quote:

 Installation of isolation fencing around outdoor pools, which separates the pool from the remaining yard and house, has been shown in some studies to decrease the number of drownings and near-drownings by more than 50% (Pearn & Nixon, 1977; Milliner et al., 1980; Present, 1987). In Australia, Blum & Shield (2000) found that in the childhood drowning that they studied, no child had gained unaided access to a pool fitted with a fully functional gate and fence that met the Australian standard. A systematic review of studies (Thompson & Rivara, 2000) examining the effectiveness of pool fencing indicated that pool fencing significantly reduced the risk of drowning, with isolation fencing (enclosing the pool only) being superior to perimeter fencing (enclosing the pool and the property). The results of the review are supported by Stevenson et al. (2003). This study, conducted in Australia, found that during a 12-year period 50 children under the age of five drowned in domestic swimming pools and 68% of the drownings occurred in pools that did not have isolation fencing

 Oh, wait, surely I'm cheating by offering research, facts and information? Isn't that what the antivaxers are meant to do?

 I guess that claim doesn't really hold water after all, huh? But the personal attacks bit? Yeah, I do that. Fuck you.

UPDATE: Here's Dorey's blog on the subject. I'm particularly fond of SK's comparison of pro-vaccine text to Adolf Hitler's Nuremberg speeches. Oh, and watch out for the Web Of Trust warning on that site

UPDATE 2: Dorey's call to the flying monkeys has produced some gems. Reasonable Hank pointed me to this glaring footbullet. Oh mercy.

* yes, I know, stretching the term and all that