Children Are Dying Of Parental Ignorance

I had just finished writing a closing comment last time about how science is often ignored in the courtroom. This is especially true in jury trials where each member of the jury arrives with individual prejudices and faulty beliefs. The following day I ran across two recent articles related to that subject.

The first was about an anti-vaccine activist who was hiring himself out as an expert witness in child abuse cases. As he testified about the case the prosecutor began questioning him about his other beliefs in an attempt to undermine his credibility.

Among the ideas he admitted to believing was that “Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, a charity funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to increase vaccination rates in poor countries, was committing genocide” by promoting vaccination of children. He also admitted believing that “Gavi – along with the World Health Organization, the Gates Foundation and UNICEF – were using vaccinations to force sterilization on people in third-world countries.” He likewise blames the rise in autism cases on the increased use of vaccines.

As justification he cited a 1972 report and a 1974 study “warning about the dangers of population growth” saying that it was “ ‘no leap of faith’ to believe that vaccination is being used to carry out this agenda.” But it is a huge leap of faith – in fact it is completely wrong and  unscientific to ignore the benefits of vaccination over the last century. Smallpox, diphtheria and polio, to name just a few, have been all but eliminated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states, “studies have shown that there is no link between receiving vaccines and developing ASD” (Autism Spectrum Disorder). The World Health Organization (WHO) agrees.

So his credibility should have been destroyed. Such a stance should be laughable to any educated, well-informed jury. But he has been called as an expert witness in over 80 child abuse cases, despite the fact that he trained as a radiologist, not a pediatrician.

I have posted a complete explanation of why the anti-vaccine activists are wrong, how it is based on faulty and fraudulent science, discussing the risks of such an idea. For a review of the evidence, see here from a year ago and here from 2015.

The second article was from the BBC reporting on the latest data about measles. They call it a devastating, “highly contagious disease that in severe cases can lead to complications such as blindness, pneumonia and infection and swelling of the brain.” WHO saw a 30% increase in cases in 2017 among children from the prior year, including 110,000 deaths. They expect the same for 2018. Some cases even arose in countries where it had been considered wiped out.

According to WHO experts, the primary reason behind this measles increase in developed countries has been that “vaccine hesitancy” is becoming more of a problem. "In some groups, this is driven by religious beliefs but in quite a few populations it is spread by false concerns about the safety of vaccines" often on social media where people like and re-post without any attempt to verify facts. A major challenge facing healthcare providers is how to counter such misinformation.

Many facets of this subject are scary: that superstitious people, led by some superstitious doctors and celebrities, promote this dangerous belief; that lawyers try to pass off as an expert witness someone who has not trained in the field and has demonstrably erroneous beliefs in closely related areas; and that the general public is blinded to scientific facts by social media misinformation. Anyone who really cares about child abuse should shudder at the death of 110,000 from a single preventable disease due to parents’ intentional or negligent inaction.