Investigating the truth behind @steemtruth’s “truth” - Part 1: Vaccines do not stop desease?

in #health7 years ago (edited)

During the last weeks, @steemtruth has made a small fortune with a series of anti-vaccination posts, seemingly providing evidence for the complete failure of vaccines to immunize against illnesses and for their harmful, poisonous behaviour towards humans, especially children.

First off: I appreciate the guy.
Unlike many other vaccination sceptics, he seems to base his views on scientific studies and statistics – which makes his theories tangible, and opens the possibility for scientific evaluation. So let’s do exactly that: Let’s take his posts, evaluate his key points and recheck his statistics and cited studies. After all, @steemtruth’s credo is: “Truth Fears No Investigation”.

So let’s investigate, for real. Part 1 of my answer will focus on his first post (I will deal with his other posts asap, but RL stress is preventing this for tonight):

Vaccines DO NOT STOP Disease!

Here, he posted a series of graphs demonstrating that the number of deaths caused by several infectious deseases decreased long before vaccination programmes were started. Look yourself, this is an example:

Wow, at first glance this looks impressive. It gave me a pause for a second. But then...

First off, I have no idea where the numbers come from, as the quoted book states just one number for 1848-1954 (342), which is much lower than the number in the graph, but nothing for the time between 1854 and 1973. And I did not find those numbers from reliable sources in the net, so they are more than up to doubt.
Also, it seems @steemtruth has not only used all pictures of this source, but plagiarized a good part of text aswell. But that's just secondary and should be more a task for @steemcleaners than for me.

For now, let’s just assume the numbers are correct, and let’s analyze the graph.
Two minor points up front:

  1. The graph is formatted to look impressive. In the slim portrain format, any de/increase looks stronger than it actually is. This is a neat graphic trick that one can often observe on semi-scientific posts.
  2. making dots every 25th year and then drawing straight lines results in an immense loss in accuracy. A year, a dot. Then the viewer could see the up and downs, and that it was no straight development.

Now the real argument:

If you read the graph, you will notice it says mortality, which is the number of people dying from a illness. But vaccination does not primarily try to eliminate the death toll of a disease.
Treatment does.
And I think we can all agree that medical treatment improved a lot from 1850 to 1950, which is the logical reason for the decrease in mortality you can see.
Vaccinations, however, try to make people immune against a disease, which should primarily result in less cases per year, i.e. a lower "incidence".

Which is what you can see here, next to the graph you already know:

Picture2.jpg
Source: UK Parliament

When you compare the two graphs, you can see: until the late 1960s, the number of measles cases per year stay more or less constant. At the same time, if you believe the numbers provided by @steemtruth, mortality decreased drastically. This is a clear prove for the improvement of medical treatment and hygienic conditions.

But measles incidence did not decrease before vaccines were invented, and - after a last little spike in 1971 – incidence does dramatically decrease with increasing vaccination uptake rates.

The same principle can be applied to the other graphs provided in the post - I double-checked, but it's just too much for a post.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this does of course not 100% prove that vaccines were responsible for the decline of measle incidence, as there is no 100% in science. I feel generous: Let’s say 95% and call it a day.
However: It shows that building an argument against vaccinations on the base of mortality is completely invalid!

P.S.: A not so funny fact:

Measles are back. After being almost eradicated in Western countries, we see an increase of cases and some few mortal cases again during the last 10 years. Sadly, this correlates with an increased percentage of people rejecting vaccination, and the victims of the virus are most often unvaccinated (source).


Disclaimer: In my blog, I'm stating my honest opinion as a researcher, not less and not more. Sometimes I make errors. Discuss and disagree with me - if you are bringing the better arguments, I might rethink.

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Thanks for giving clear well-reasoned arguments against anti-vaxxers. Good choice on focusing on just one element of the argument at a time.

Good choice on focusing on just one element of the argument at a time.

Yeah, that makes it harder to throw smoke grenades ;-)

Thanks for reading!

Hey, thanks for posting this. This was necessary to see in the "Science" feed, and it's nice to have it come from an actual scientist.

Thanks for putting yourself out there, as I know these matters can be very contentious and people will vilify you for being intellectually honest and outing bullshit. I have resteemed this because I feel it needs to be shared!

Thx for this important work! I am sick of the bs that is spread concerning this topic. I hope @steemcleaners takes this seriously. People have to get informed in a proper state-of-the-art science based way. - BTW to promote your work i restreemed it. I hope it's fine with you!
Best,
mountain.phil28

thx for reading. And you really don't have to ask before you resteem a post of mine ;-)

Ok, i hope it will get read a lot!! 😎

Incredible article again, thank you!
Let's see if he answers here - would be interesting!
Most of the anti-vaxxers unfortunately aren't able to discuss - But on steemit there were at least some open to discussion!

I'm writing this not so much for the hardcore anti-vaxxers. They are very fortified in their opinion, and not really ready to debate its core. But there are a lot of people who are not convinced, who doubt vacc's protective abilities after reading such semi/pseudo-scientific posts in the trending section.
It's for them I just had to write a counterstatement.

Thanks so much for your support!

Good article, thank you for digging into the sources. The choice of a graph representing "mortality" is a good example of how one can demonstrate anything just by changing the way to represent the data.
Another great example is the number of cases of autism which seem to skyrocket after the introduction of the measle vaccine in the 70s, which is in fact due to the drastic changes in diagnostic standards around the same time:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mrdd.10029/abstract

thanks for this source, I wasn't aware of this!

Thank you so much for doing this! And so intelligently written... It drove me a little crazy when I read @steemtruth post. As a pediatrician, I always explain to my patients parents the importance of vaccines.
Besides, did you know that in 2010, the British doctor that published the article that related MMR vaccine and autism was struck from the UK medical register and may no longer practice medicine there? There is a 2011 article published in BMJ by Dr. Brian Deer that explains how it was all a fraud.
https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/history-anti-vaccination-movements
http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347

thanks, I might have to use that one soon ;-)

God thank you for posting this. People who don't get their children vaccinated for at least the basics need a solid slap around the ears in my opinion. But hey, what do I know, with my basic science ed from school and my common sense and capability of questioning. :/
This is the same eye-roll inducing idiocy as the whole "gluten-free" crazy for people who don't actually have gluten intolerance and ADHD being diagnosed left, right and center.
Only this is not just harmful in small ways, it's fricking bringing epidemics back. I mean come on people. by now the evidence is pretty clear...
also, this is pretty sweet, if you haven't seen it yet :D


I love these guys. Their videos are awesome. :D (at least in my humble opinion)

Glad you decided to tackle this issue with your own series as a counter. I have read @steemtruth ´s posts also, as you know, and it just drives me nuts how these people just ignore all the research that opposes their opinion and then using some sketchy sources and abuse some valid sources. I hope your posts teaches people to be more suspicious and to read research themselves. Cheers!

Exactly. There can be hundreds of peer-reviewed reputable studies done on how vaccines are effective. But give the anti-vaxxers one crappy study about how vaccines are bad and they'll run with it.

excellent publication

Thank you for writing this! I saw their misleading post and had similar thoughts as you.

Thank you for this. One of the reason I took a long break from Steemit was the rampant pseudoscience. The bottom line is that vaccines save lives, especially in developing countries (from which sooooo many steemit users are from).

I think as steemit obviously attracts anti-establishment people by design, pseudosciences are overrepresented - also with whales. But we're catching up^^

Thanks for commenting!