Andrew Jeremy Wakefield wants rabies back

Known fraud and former physician, Andrew Jeremy Wakefield, recently had a picture taken of himself with a dog and a sign. Here it is:

Tip of the hat to Ren, who found the picture on Facebook.

Andrew Wakefield seems to be the kind of person who has gone so far off the deep end in his anti-vaccine crusade that he is willing to do almost anything to continue the conspiracy. The man has used race baiting in the past. He’s spliced audio for his latest faux documentary. So why not pose with a “vaccine injured” dog to get a couple more bucks?

As if making children sick wasn’t bad enough, anti-vaccine zealots have been on a campaign of spreading their nonsense to pet owners. They claim all sorts of things about vaccines for pets like they do with vaccines for children. No, seriously, they claim dogs can be “brain damaged” and become aggressive if they are vaccinated. And now, Andrew Wakefield, the one quack to rule them all, is buying into the con.

Seriously, the man doesn’t know a con he doesn’t like, I bet.

But what if rabies came back? How bad could it be, really? After all, water sanitation and proper hygiene should hold it back, right?

Not quite. Rabies is transmitted through the bite of warm-blooded mammals. In North America, raccoons and bats make up most of the transmissions in animals. Because we do a bang-up job of vaccinating dogs and cats, and identifying exposures in the wild, human rabies is unheard of in the United States, Canada and Mexico. In places in the world where the resources are not there for veterinary public health, rabies still kills a lot of people.

When you hear these anti-vaccine loons clamor for no more vaccines for pets, please remind them what rabies looks like on a dog:

(Caution. Graphic content.)

And that’s just the first stages before the dog completely loses it and becomes violent. Here’s a violent cat with rabies:

(Again, graphic.)

But this next video is why I applaud vaccine manufacturers and veterinary public health workers. Because of their efforts, you can take your pet outdoors and not have to worry about them coming back and biting you, infecting you, with rabies. And, if they do catch rabies and they do bite you, there’s a vaccine that stops the infection in its tracks and keeps you from dying. Because death is certain without vaccines.

(Graphic, of course.)

Look, maybe some vaccine-preventable diseases are not as deadly as others. Maybe. They still cause disability and physical sequelae. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say that we as a society are okay with children being out of school and miserable with measles or chickenpox, and that we don’t care if children are born with deformities due to things like German measles.

But do you really want to gamble rabies? Do you really want your dog or cat to die from it like that? And do you want a person to die from it like that?

It looks like Andrew Wakefield does, and it doesn’t surprise me. He’ll do anything for glory and adulation from his followers.