The Number One Health Hazard in America?
August 6, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
In light of this discussion, consider statement from Bad Astronomy (a blog for Discover Magazine):
…….antivaxxers are potentially the Number One health hazard in America
????!????!!!?!?????!
Or maybe Bad Astronomy’s statement could just be punctuated with a plain old, definitive, period.
There are worse hazards out there. Most people will still vaccinate; and the minor epidemics we’d get will only kill hundreds–not thousands of people, like many of the other health hazards in this country do. I could name a lot of them–the biggest, I think, is that unless you are at least lower middle class, it’s quite hard to afford good, healthy food (and if you’re not upper class, you have to make at least minor sacrifices to be able to fit it into your budget). When a mom can’t afford to give her kid milk and whole-wheat, the kid will get Kool-Aid and Twinkies instead–and then we wonder why he’s short for his age and behind in school! The brain’s a machine that runs only as well as the fuel we give it… Not that I’m an extremist; the occasional Twinkie hurts nobody but a diabetic; but it’s really ridiculous that I and people of my income level have to carefully budget the food stamps so as to afford lettuce (milk is out of my price range, sadly).
Not restricted to this topic and not even excluding myself from the critique–I would say that irrationality is the number one health hazard anywhere.
It’s a beautiful evening here. ‘Hope it is where you are.
@chaotic idealism, where I work in Jersey City 99 cent bags of Cheetos and Doritos are the most readily accessible food item, along with candy bars, Snapple, soda. Fruit and vegetables sold in the little grocery stores and convenience stores just don’t look as appetizing (or as clean).
@Regan, Doses of the “i-word” all over.
Squinting a lot can make piano practice a little challenging—-worked through and settling into bedtime now……
I agree, that while the “advice” of not vaccinating kids is extremely harmful, that my experience growing up with limited funds, has left my parents, who have to work four jobs between them, to opt for fast food because of time and money. Fortunately, I weaned myself off of over-eating sweets by drinking water instead of soda and starting out by replacing a bowl of ice cream with a small extra helping of main course, and ditching potato chips and fast food. I’m still overweight, but I’m eating a lot healthier, and getting more exercise.
Just more of the never-ending opinionated hyperbole.
Kind of goes with the territory.
I’ve appreciated the side-discussion about other candidates for Top American Health Hazard.
Hello friends –
Or maybe Bad Astronomy’s statement could just be punctuated with a plain old, definitive, period.
What’s so funny is that I could not count how many times I’ve seen the argument made on this site regarding people making associations they want to see, as opposed to what is really there. Could there possibly be a more concise illustration of this argument?
Heart disease is largely preventable with diet and exercise, and kills half a million Americans a year, or more. Likewise with smoking. Diets rich in animal protein are much more likely to lead to a vareity of cancers and auto immune disorders. Mistakes in the medical industry have been reported to be the fourth leading killer in America.
Yet a hundred people get measles, and ‘antivaxxers’ are the ‘top health hazard in America’. That is some serious double think!
- pD
pD, based on reading what the blog said, it would appear that this statement is predictive in nature, ergo any discussion of currently quantified health hazards is not relevant. And it’s just a blog, right?
A small comparison of the difference in numbers of measles in fifty years:
Year_Cases_Deaths_Year__Cases_Deaths
2000____86____ 1__1950_319124__468
2001___116____ 1__1951_530118__683
2002____44____ 0__1952_683077__618
2003____56____ 1__1953_449146__462
2004____37____ NA_1954_682720__518
2005____66____ NA_1955_555156__345
2006____55____ NA_1956_611936__530
Total___460_3 or more___3831277_3624
This does not show the one in 5000 of those who get measles who get permanent neurological damage (blindness, deafness, mental retardation, etc, http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/160/3/302). Do we really want to back to the way it was before the MMR? Right now measles is returning to the UK and Japan, and increasing in the USA.
Data from:
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/appdx-full-g.pdf