Mayim Bialik *is* Anti-Vax, But Not Anti-COVID Vaccine

[PGage]

This is a very long response to one small part of Aaron Barhart’s recent piece on Bialik, posted and discussed in its own thread. I have great respect and affection for our former Chief, but I believe he is wrong about Bialik not being an Anti-Vaxxer. Below I make my case in far too much detail (I had the day off today).

Here is the link to Aaron’s article:

https://www.primetimer.com/barnhart/mayim-bialik-is-the-future-of-jeopardy?mc_cid=3f186cba62&mc_eid=2ecf66baff

Aaron writes: “Bialik has also been finger-wagged online for not vaccinating her children, earning her the label “anti-vax” (she’s not).”  I’m afraid this is inaccurate. Bialik *is* anti-vax, in the sense that this term has been understood for most of the last quarter century. This has nothing to do with COVID, and everything to do with Autism (and other childhood disorders).

Bialik chose to reveal on her own, in her own book, that she did not vaccinate her children, and acknowledged less than two years ago that her children did not receive all of the vaccines recommended by pediatricians.  While not as crazy and dangerous as the anti-COVID vaccine conspiracy theories, the anti-Childhood Vaccine and Autism conspiracy theories  are still plenty crazy and dangerous.

 

In the context of the last two years (and really, just the last 13 months) the term “anti-vax” has become synonymous with being against the COVID vaccine. In that limited sense, Bialik is not, and never has been, anti-vax. This is a good reminder that, prior to the COVID Pandemic, many of us used the “Anti-Vax” position as an example of how anti-intellectual, anti-science conspiracy theories were prevalent on the Left as well as the Right, since many (though by no means all) of the anti-Vaxers prior to last year would locate themselves on the political and social Left.

 

However, the term “anti-vax” has a long and juicy history that predates COVID.  Since the late 1990s several developments (including a fraudulent article published in 1998 in the British Science journal Lancet by discredited former physician Andrew Wakefield) led to anxious conspiracy theories that childhood vaccinations, particularly the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, caused Autism (or were in some way related to the perceived rise in the diagnosis of what is now called Autism Spectrum Disorder). 

 

I cannot emphasize strongly enough that the connection between vaccinations in general (and MMR in particular) and Autism is false. This has been shown repeatedly in a number of scientific articles – see for example:  “Vaccines and Autism: A Tale of Shifting Hypotheses” by J. Gerber and P Offit, published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, 2009, Feb 15, available at this link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2908388/

 

Prior to 2020, the term “anti-vax” would have been applied (and in many cases proudly claimed) by anyone who believed that any or all of the childhood vaccines routinely recommended to be administered to children in the first 6 years of life were potentially dangerous, implicated in Autism, and should be either completely avoided or at least significantly delayed. It is in this routine and consensus pre-2020 sense of the term that Bialik clearly is “anti-vax.” 

 

In his article, Aaron cites and links a Vanity Fair article from last August, which contains the following quote from Bialik’s spokesperson: “She has been fully vaccinated for the COVID-19 virus and is not at all an anti-vaxxer.”  As noted above, in the limited, COVID sense of that term, this is undoubtedly true, and has never been in question (except perhaps by causal readers of the controversy who misunderstood what was meant by calling her an anti-vaxxer in the first place).

 

The VF article also cites a tweet from Bialik in 2015 which read:  “dispelling rumors abt my stance on vaccines. i’m not anti. my kids are vaccinated. so much anger and hysteria. i hope this clears things up.”

 

Unfortunately, no, it does not clear things up. She is being disingenuous here. The sentence “my kids are vaccinated” is only true if it is interpreted as meaning “my kids have had some vaccines.” But that is not what we mean when we say “kids are vaccinated.” What we mean is that they have had all medically recommended (in some cases legally required) vaccines on schedule. By Bialik’s own report, this was not true of her kids. In 2012 Bialik wrote that she had decided not to vaccinate her kids. In 2020 she said that her kids had not had all of the recommended vaccinations, and that she still believed that children were being over vaccinated in part so Big Pharma and doctors could make money.

 

As noted in the VF article linked to by Aaron, Bialik wrote about her vaccine practice in her 2012 parenting book “Beyond the Sling” (which is about her approach to what is called “Attachment Parenting” – which is I find as increasingly popular approach to raising children among millennial parents which sets fewer limits with children, emphasizes natural childbirth and prolonged breast feeding when possible, and other facets which may seem a little over indulgent to many Boomer and even Gen-X parents, but which for the most part fall in the range of parental discretion).

 

In the book, Bialik wrote: “We made an informed decision not to vaccinate our children…but this is a very personal decision that should be made only after sufficient research, which today is within reach of every parent who seeks to learn about their child’s health regardless of their medical knowledge or educational status.”

 

In a Youtube video she put out in October 2020 (this is also in the VF article) Bialik said:

 

 “I wrote a book about 10 years ago about my experience parenting, and at the time my children had not received the typical schedule of vaccines. But I have never, not once, said that vaccines are not valuable, not useful, or not necessary, because they are…The truth is, I delayed vaccinations for reasons that you don’t necessarily get to know about simply because you follow me on social media…. As of today, my children may not have had every one of the vaccinations that your children have, but my children are vaccinated.”  In the rest of the video Bialik explains her  beliefs that children receive “way too many vaccines in this country” and that “the medical community often operate[s] from a place of fear in order to make money.”

 

I have not been able to find specifically which vaccines Bialik most objects to and did not give her children. If she is smart (and she is) she would not say, because that would take her closer to giving medical advice, which she is not qualified to do (and neither am I). But in the context of the anti-vaccine debates of the last 25 years, the most natural understanding of what she has written and said is that she believes it reasonable to avoid or delay the MMR vaccine because it might contribute to Autism. At the very least, if she does not believe this, in a book about parenting in which she talks about not vaccinating her children, the burden was on her to make it clear that she rejected the conspiracy theory  that the MMR vaccine caused Autism, because it was very predictable that without that qualification her statements would be understood by millions of parents as an endorsement of that conspiracy theory. The fact that she has been so quick to emphasize that her negative statements about vaccines should not be understood as an endorsement of the conspiracy theories about COVID vaccines suggests that she would have made a similar disclaimer if she was not a proponent of conspiracy theories about Autism and vaccines.

None of this is directly relevant to Bialik hosting Jeopardy! I am not in favor of banning her or “deplatforming” her. It does make me not trust her. And this is on top of her record of using her real and perceived scientific credentials to endorse unsupported memory supplements, which I have discussed elsewhere on the list.

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[Adam Bowie]

This is the line that you quote that annoys me the most:

“We made an informed decision not to vaccinate our children…but this is a very personal decision that should be made only after sufficient research, which today is within reach of every parent who seeks to learn about their child’s health regardless of their medical knowledge or educational status.”

That's simply not true. "Every parent" cannot do "sufficient research" on these kinds of subjects. 

To be clear, there are very few of us that can honestly "research" things like immunology. Whenever I hear anyone say that they're "doing their own research" I despair, as this isn't the kind of thing you can casually Google. 

To be clear, when I buy, say, a new camera, I do some online "research" but in truth, that probably means visiting websites I trust, and reading pieces written by people I believe have sufficient knowledge about the product that I can get a reasonably informed determination on the merits of said camera. Even then, I can't be a 100%. Maybe the reviewer skews towards a particular brand that they have an affiliation with. Maybe there's some kind of unethical deal going on behind the scenes. I'd hope not. But in the end, the worst that can happen is that I end up with a camera I'm not entirely satisfied with, and I'll be more careful next time.

But with drugs, this is completely unknowable. I've not done the trials, and even with a degree in statistics, I'm not sure that I have the science to fully understand the nuances of those trials if the data is even fully available. The average person simply cannot "research" this subject themselves. Instead, they have to trust others to do it for them. And yes, those are probably governmental/federal organisations making those determinations.

I do understand that there is often an innate distrust in Big Pharma, because they're constantly selling us things that we probably don't need. But that doesn't mean that every drug or vaccine is worthless or is only being made for some nefarious reason. And the reality is that most of us don't have the toolset to be able to make that determination.

Adam

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[Kevin M.]

You both say it better than I could. 

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

[two...@gmail.com]

I’ve been meaning to comment on this thread but when I form my argument it spins out to something book length. So I have taken my time and this is me trying to be concise.

To begin this is not a defense of Mayim Bialik or what she has written about vaccines. I support the mandatory vaccination of children.

In our capitalist system we allow monopolies by regulating them as utilities. An advantage of a single payer healthcare system is that we could treat healthcare and wellness as utilities instead of as a marketplace. A marketplace has two properties: it’s open to all ideas and its basic unit is the individual.

In a marketplace people make their choices according to what they can afford and whatever motivates them to choose. In an ideal marketplace the aggregate of decisions favors the good options and drives out the bad. A marketplace is easily corrupted by money and any number of biases including grifters. Structurally the US is determined to keep healthcare and wellness as a marketplace no matter what the consequences to health. This isn’t about vaccines. Every aspect of our health has become subject to these market rules. Each of us has to filter the information and make the best decisions. To take everyday decisions about things like diet or supplements, where do we find good information or more to the point how do we filter out bad information? Our system won’t exclude anybody from offering anything that promotes health unless the product causes measurable harm or makes specific unsubstantiated claims.

We live with it. I was in a drugstore in the cold remedy and pain reliever aisle when I saw an interesting new medicine. I looked on the back of the package to see what the active ingredient was and it took some investigation into the fine print to find it was homeopathic. Now I know homeopathy is a scam but I wouldn’t in good conscience try to talk a stranger in the same aisle out of buying the remedy let alone try to get the drugstore chain to stop carrying that brand.

The other part of this is that we see healthcare decisions as individual decisions and not community decisions. We then see healthy people as people who made good decisions and people with healthcare problems and some disabilities as people who made bad decisions without regard to outside factors like socioeconomic status or access to healthy food or medical help.

As consumers we look to make choices for what will bring personal rewards. Vaccines don’t do this. We take them when we’re healthy. What they do provide is community reward. They not only prevent us from getting the disease they keep us from infecting others. This isn’t hard to grasp but it is counterintuitive to the incentives of our healthcare marketplace.

In regards to “do your own research,” we read it as “keep your bias and find research that confirms it” but with all of the bad information out there in the healthcare marketplace it’s also vital to do just to figure out who the grifters are and how to avoid bad decisions.

When someone puts forward bad medical advice we have to judge by intent to figure out some kind of social sanction. Mayim Bialik is misguided but is not a charlatan or a grifter. Oprah and Dr Oz aren’t either yet they opened the floodgates to charlatans and grifters on their shows and today Oprah is deified and Dr Oz won’t get off my TV in PA. Bialik and her misinformation are a result of the way we treat healthcare and wellness in this country and the remedy is a systemic change rather than canceling her.

On Feb 22, 2022, at 5:13 PM, Kevin M. <drunkba...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[PGage]

I appreciate this thoughtful response (and the time and effort it takes to pack it into a relatively concise package, something I so frequently fail at doing). I don’t disagree with much of it. Certainly health and wellness advice, even from credentialed professionals, would be more trustworthy the more we could move healthcare away from being a commodity.

As I have noted several times, I am not in favor of canceling Bialik because of her vaccination views (my reasons for preferring Ken have more to do with the merits of their performance).

Where I might disagree is this: Almost all anti (childhood) Vaxxers are basing their opposition on a study published in Nature that is clearly fraudulent (or “fake science”). This is so baked into the debate, that I do put the onus on anyone who opposes childhood vaccination for any other reason to first make it very clear that there is zero evidence that vaccinations cause Autism, or have reliably been associated with any net negative outcome. I have to view anyone who does not do this as advancing fake science, and I do believe this applies to Bialik.

Also, I am not as certain as you seem to be that Oprah and Bialik are not charlatans, and I am certain that Oz is.

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