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Lack of Vaccination Sends Babies In Oregon To the Hospital
First time accepted submitter dmr001 writes "In its fortnightly Communicable Disease newsletter (PDF), Oregon Public Health officials note increasing cases of pertussis (whooping cough) in infants, with 146 hospitalizations noted in the 2 year period ending March 2011, and at least 4 deaths since 2003. Most cases are attributed to lack of vaccination, with 86% of those due to parents declining the vaccine. 'Most of our cases are occurring in under- or unvaccinated children, so getting these kids vaccinated seems to the most obvious approach to reducing illness. In principle... pertussis could be eradicated; but we have a long way to go.'"
but I don't want my kids to get Autism. So I will risk a deadly disease instead. /trolling
Today Vermont state will be voting today on taking away the philosophical exemption for vaccination.
You can show your support for this smart idea by contacting
Patti Komline (802) 867-4232,pkomline@leg.state.vt.us
Paul Poirier (802) 476-7870 paulpoirier33@gmail.com
There is a massive anti-vax push here, be sure to show your support if you live in Vermont.
Trolling is a art,
If you get caught abusing your kids or putting them in unsafe or unhealthy conditions, some government worker is going to step in and take corrective action. Is denying vaccinations not a similar situation that warrants a similar response?
Stop coddling the nutters, let them get pissed off, call the country communist and seek refuge from government tyranny in Somalia. It's the only way the problem will correct itself.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Anyone who's more willing to listen to a centerfold model/actress for medical advice deserves what they get.
I do feel bad for their children.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
I would agree for adults but I don't think the innocent kids deserve to suffer for their parents' idiocy.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I've never studied this particular branch of stupidity. What are the arguments to leave the decision about which medical treatments to give a defenseless child to people without medical education? Are they religious?
I'm genuinely curious.
Does it apply to vaccination only? Or in America you can choose not to give other life saving treatments to your children. Seems a bit extreme as birth control system.
I think the parents, being ultimately responsible for the health and safety of their offspring, should be allowed to make whatever (possibly ignorant) choices they feel necessary, up to the point where it endangers public safety. The parents who lose children to preventable diseases are probably already miserable from their choices. If you think that's too light, charge the parents with negligence/child abuse/manslaughter for which they can spend some jail time.
How many babies were hospitalized or died because of the pertussis vaccination during the same period?
Personally I am not afraid of vaccines for me or my children. A clear comparison in health issues and risks between vaccinated vs. non-vaccinated children should (hopefully) clear the whole controversy.
Right, because figuring out how to squirt his jizz into her snatch makes them better qualified than anyone else to make this decision.
I work in the NHS in the UK and it's amazing how some people don't want to get their kids vaccinated, solely because of the infamous Wakefield study and the subsequent media scare. I saddens me deeply to think that we could eradicate these diseases, but through ignorance and fear a minority of parents decline vaccination for their children. Children die of pertussis, children die of measles. These are achingly preventable, and no child ever asks for the disease. The parent is immune however.
I trust Government regulation based on scientific research more than other kids' parents' rumors, religion and pop culture when it comes to my kids health.
E pluribus unum
Parents are not give some magic ability to know science, or understand medicine.
Mom aren't magic and there gut feelings are wrong more then right. Fortunately on most matters there isn't an immediate effect.
That parents decision is killing children. When it comes to vaccines, I would welcome back the days where all the children got there shots at the school.
Don't confuse politicians with the agency doing the science.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Even 10 years ago whooping cough was pretty much considered eradicated. No one vaccinated for it. It's a small surprise when they start offering petrussis (sp?) vaccinations (typically as part of a tetanus booster, at least to adults) most people wouldn't feel it's important. Yes, we have whooping cough up here now, but I doubt many people realize this or even know what it is (it's not like some diseases, everyone's heard of polio and knows at least something about it, whooping cough not so much). Plus, I think the names of diseases probably affects how worried folks tend to be about it (hey, we're basically clever primates, it's not unexpected), whooping cough sounds like a bad cough, nothing more. I doubt the average person knows it's dangerous and it's not like a lot of people have health insurance. Even the public program for uninsured kids up here has been radically scaled back.
Even unvaccinated for whooping cough, your kid is far more likely to land in the ER for a case of pneumonia stemming from the flu. Yes, you don't want to take stupid chances, but let's keep some perspective on the scale of this.
The only people I trust less than qualified, vetted, officials is uneducated jackasses pretending to understand the world around them when really they are just ignorant twits. There is a mantra from conservatives "They think they know better than you!". Um, yep. I think the scientists and knowledgeable health professionals "know better" than the backward backwater assholes who raise their children as if it were the year 1512. Obviously that isn't a general rule -- bureaucrats make all sorts of boneheaded decisions -- but I basically reject the notion that only you can know what is best for you in all circumstances. No; no, no, no; often, others know what is best for you, and people should be open to that possibility.
If we lived in a perfect world, then parents would be rational, intelligent, and informed. Yes, we would all "rather" live in that world. But we don't, we live in a world full of hysterical ignoramuses. (Same basic argument against libertarianism.)
I would agree for adults but I don't think the innocent kids deserve to suffer for their parents' idiocy.
They will in all cases. Unless they are really lucky and lose their sub-normal parents in an accident.
If your parents are retarded enough to risk your life based on superstition, you're playing life in hard mode.
Public Health is a funny thing -- individual actions impact the health of our entire society.
The libertarian in me says that you should be able to make health decisions for your own [and kids] body, including unbelievably stupid things like declining vaccines. However, disease is hard to track -- if your action or negligence causes me physical injury, the libertarian philosophy suggests that you pay the bills. It's hard to employ that tactic for communicable disease. If it's very difficult to measure who is giving the disease to whom, how do we apply libertarian philosophy?
I'd remind you that
(a) this is by and large a state issue, not federal. You're blindly attacking the wrong people, and
(b) this is a generally a bureaucratic and technocratic issue, not a political issue. Public health experts recommend policies, not politicians seeking votes, and
(c) most government folks working for government are civil servants, not politicians. They're just interested in doing their job well, earning a fair wage, and leading a comfortable middle class lifestyle, just like nearly all of us. This idea that "they are sick (control freaks)" is really nonsensical and based on absolutely nothing but your bias. Are individuals troublesome in any organization? To be sure. But you're painting with a remarkably broad brush.
From where I sit, failing to vaccinate a child is reckless endangerment, and social services should get involved. It's easy and inexpensive to reduce your kid's chances of dying from whooping cough to almost zero. Vaccinations. In fact, I submit that since every adult was once a kid, we ought to just cover everybody's vaccinations at childhood 100% by medicare. No insurance, no co-pay, no out of pocket, for both poor and middle class and rich Americans. Hell, I'd include non-citizens too, since the public health costs to citizens can be very high whereas prevention is relatively cheap. Since most parents do this anyway, the net cost for individuals is a wash. Yeah, some old folks end up cross-subsidizing young people, but its a relatively small expense for a good and sustainable public policy.
I don't agree. After all, it was parents under/not vaccinating their kids what got them killed. Moreover, it'll have consequences for other kids if they can't be vaccinated for whatever reason, so it's not a personal/familiar issue. Refusing vaccination on principle is, therefore, negligent behaviour.
The government has many failures, but at least it can transcend individual's selfishness and ignorance.
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
If I'm going to have my kids near your kids, you damned well better have them vaccinated. If you're willing to keep them out of public, vaccinated events and areas (stadia, soccer leagues, public schools, the private school _I_ go to, public parks, my private club, etc.), then have at it.
Just as I don't want you to come into work with the flu, or shake my hand if you've got an open wound on your palm, please don't force your kids to infect the rest of the world with your 19th century diseases.
Did you know that after 50 years, we were almost rid of Polio? The International Rotary Foundation, and now with the help and massive warchest of the Bill Gates Foundation (to the historical combines tune of something like a Billion dollars) is trying to get rid of the last pockets of Polio on this planet. All it takes is one small village, mostly isolated from everyone, to keep this stuff around - destroying lives and families.
Please excuse me if I take this opportunity to say a hearty "FUCK YOU, GET YOUR GOD DAMNED KIDS VACCINATED" and quit perpetuating these diseases. This doesn't come from the government, it's from your next door neighbor, a parent who cares about his kids. Trust me.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
you don't have to get your kid vaccinated in a lot of places. only thing is that he/she won't be allowed into day care, school and some other places where kids are together
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield
And he is a murderer. It was a fraud.
Being stupid is no defense, but preying on the stupid is something worse: it's evil.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is somewhat misleading.
In general, the pertussis vaccine is not recommended for small infants. They need to be a few weeks/months old before receiving it. However, infants are probably the most succeptible group to complications from it.
It is recommended that adults get the vaccine to prevent them from passing it to their children. Again though, this vaccine is not always covered by insurance and the disease poses little threat to adults.
Unfortunately the ones making the bad decisions aren't the ones who die. Alas.
I thought we got rid of the idea of diseases arising from spontaneous generation a few centuries ago. Where are these unvaccinated people getting exposed to whooping cough? I'll tell you. The same thing is happening in California, except they sweep some important details under the rug. Virtually ALL of the cases of unvaccinated persons with whooping cough in California are immigrants, and most of them are undocumented immigrants. They are not Jenny McCarthy disciples as some would have you believe. Most of these people probably don't even have a television, let alone know who Jenny McCarthy is. This is one of the side-effects of allowing millions of people from third-world nations to come pouring into the United States. You can be for or against amnesty or whatever, but you can't ignore the facts that bringing in a couple million people a year from places with no health care system to speak of also brings disease.
While I personally am in favor of vaccination (the autism connection theory is too weak), I agree that parents should have the right to refuse to have their children vaccinated.
When more than X% of a population is vaccinated against a disease, the chance of an epidemic or wide spread outbreak is low. As you increase the percentage of the population that has been vaccinated, the risks from the disease continue to decrease. At some point, the risk from the disease (risk of contagion times risk of significant impairment from contagion) becomes lower than the risks of the vaccine. The exact percentage necessary varies based upon the communicability of the disease, and the risks of the disease. The point at which the vaccine becomes more or a risk than the disease depends upon those, and the risks of the specific vaccine. So, as long as a significant majority of the population chooses to get the vaccine, everyone is better off.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
What most people don't understand is that that immunization largely works through herd immunity. If a disease can't be transmitted through most of the hosts in a community it can't get a foothold and spread. Because of this, the un-immunized members of the herd nevertheless benefit because they are shielded by the immunized individuals around them. This leads to the, "I don't want my child immunized because it's unnecessary" mentality. Well at some point if enough of the herd is susceptible again that herd immunity breaks down and all of sudden the unimmunized are no longer shielded from the disease. So while the babies here are younger than the age of immunization, they are suffering because the other kids around them are not vaccinated. The hippies next door who don't believe in immunizations are putting your kids at risk. It's too bad it's going to take outbreaks of totally preventable diseases to remind people why immunizations are a pillar of public health.
For those that want to give the anti-vaccinators something to argue about, the summary title is misleading. From TFA:
"Diphtheria-Tetanus-acellular-Pertussis vaccine (DTaP) is recommended for all children at 2, 4, 6 and 15–18 months of age, with a pre-school booster between 4 years of age and entry into kindergarten."
"Infants too young to have completed the primary vaccine series account for the lion’s share of pertussis-related complications, hospitalizations and deaths (at least four in Oregon since 2003). We reviewed data on infants hospitalized with pertussis during a two-year period from March 2009 through February 2011. One hundred forty-six infants with pertussis were reported during this time, and 62 (43%) of them were hospitalized for a median of 3 (range, 0–32) days. The median age at onset for hospitalized cases was 8 (range, 2–25) weeks."
So in other words, many children hospitalized for whooping cough were too young to have been fully vaccinated.
It's pretty scary how quickly these diseases pop backup.
Still, it's well outside the foresight of the selfish and dangerous ant-vac morns. Yes, dangerous. Real harm has been caused and here is proof. I'm not one for frivolous lawsuits but I'd love to see some celebrity vac deniers drug in to civil suits to bring attention to these dangerous lunatics.
Not being vaccinated was once a social taboo and for some reason it's not anymore. We need to bring that back. Why are these kids allowed to attend school? Allowed to be at daycare? Those who are able to be vaccinated, but are not, need to be excluded from the general population because they are a danger to the general public. Even if they aren't' actively infected, they're a vector.
Vaccines are a population wide tool and need to be used as such. They don't work if people get to pick and choose and make a dangerous situation for others out of ignorance.
In principle... pertussis could be eradicated; but we have a long way to go.
Ummm .... no. Unlike measles or polio, pertussis is a bacterial disease. Bordatella Pertussis can live without humans. The only way to eradicate it is to sterilize all of its potential habitats (unlike viruses, bacteria don't need hosts per se) and clear the disease from any human carriers.
Ain't gonna happen.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I agree in principle. But sometimes, mostly by mistake, the politicians do make good decisions. In this case being one of them (following the science). This behavior should be rewarded - perhaps over time we can train them to not be morons?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
This far into a post about sickness in Oregon and there have been no comments about dysentery or loss of oxen ... thought it was just an odd day in the office, not on /. too.
No one vaccinated for it.
Rates for pertussis vaccination nationally in the USA have not gone below 80% since the vaccine was introduced before I was born -- and I well predate both polio vaccines.
What's changed is that there is now an adult vaccine in addition to the childhood series.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
but 14% had been vaccinated
No, what the article actually said was, that among the _completely unvaccinated_, the _reason_ for lack of vaccination in 86% of cases was parental refusal. That doesn't say that 14% were vaccinated: it says that in 14% of unvaccinated cases the lack of vaccination was _not_
assigned to parental refusal as the cause.
I'm afraid this is how numerical data gets mashed into garble.
After considering the other numerical data the authors of the report concluded that "declining the vaccine carries a whopping risk for pertussis" (p.2).
-wb-
There was a time when that was the mainstream belief.
The odd thing about the anti-vaccination movement is that nobody benefits from it. It's happening without eccentric billionaires funding doublethink tanks to push their economic interests.
Unless it's part of the general anti-science movement, which benefits people who owe their leadership to the ignorance of their followers.
>>>I trust Government regulation based on scientific research
I will never understand people who say "I trust government," and then 5 minutes later rail against the corporations and how they can not be trusted to take care of their employees/customers/factory environment.
Governments==corporations==strangers youve never met. You can't trust ANY of them. If you distrust Microsoft or Goldmann-Sachs or Foxxconn, you should distrust the government just as strongly.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Vaccinations aren't so much to protect your child, but all children (or people)..
Infants can't get the vaccination until they reach a certain age.. it is VERY important that people around the infant NOT have whooping cough. There are some kids that can't get it for other reasons (maybe a weakened immune system or something).. your vaccinating your child, helps prevent the spread of these diseases to kids who can't get the vaccine.. if it was just 1% of the population that wasn't vaccinated, (well, less) they would die out, because there would not enough people coming into contact with each other to spread.. but more people go without, then the chances of that contact happening do go up.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Yeah, well, it's just a world, and we are born into it and we should want freedom, even freedom to be total asses, regardless of all the 'do-gooders' and people who stick their noses where they don't belong.
You can't handle the truth.
>>>Don't confuse politicians with the agency doing the science.
Okay.
The current head of the U.S. Dept. of Health wrote in multiple papers/textbooks that he thinks it is acceptable to inject women with sterilants after their 2nd child, in order to limit population. Now remind me again: Why am I supposed to trust people like him w/ injecting children and teenagers??? I cannot think of any reason.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
And you have all the right to say what you want to say.
And it's their right not to care about what you say.
You may be absolutely right, but it doesn't mean you should have any authority to enforce your ideas upon others against their will.
You can't handle the truth.
What would Darwin Do?
As time wears on I see the fruitlessness of protecting people from themselves. The line drawn on protecting them from each other is getting a bit blurry too.
It could solve environmental problems, food shortages, over population, and reduce social anxiety as well as reduce the need for current broken forms of government.
Cold? Yeah , but in light of where we came from and how we got here and what we're doing with it . I always think about it. I wish I'd quit.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Not grant money. Money from trial lawyers who had cases against vaccine manufacturers.
As an Oregonian, it's always thrilling to see my home state in the news!! Uh... any publicity is good publicity, right?
This is an entry point for solid debate. The USA values personal freedom. At the same time, you can't drive without training, you can't sell drugs, etc. There is the concept of one's rights ending where one's fist ends and the next person's nose begins. Does this extend to vaccinations? How well understood are the risks? Are they worth the opportunity to eradicate scores of hideous diseases?
Someone want to play devil's advocate and argue "for freedom"? This being Slashdot, I know where approximately 100% of opinions are. I myself don't care passionately enough to pay attention long enough to make an opinion.
The Summary is mis-leading - no one in their right mind would refuse a vacination for Whooping cough.
The problem is that they're all-in-one vacinations - you can't get the "safe" vacination without getting the downs
(un-safe) vacination. This is the heart of the problem - but you'll never hear this in the media.
There are also no test to see if a vaccine is safe for that particular child or it's dosage. It's a shame we've
come to this point in our health care in this country. Vacinations are a real problem - but the incidence rate of
failure is very small - unless you're the parent of an unlucky recipant of one of these bad vacinations, but that's
a risk they're willing to take with someone's else's child.
Try having the lot# included on the offical record and see how far you get, or a sample saved. The manufacturer
should be liable, but often isn't. Very sad...
and by this logic, we have given someone the right to cause pain harm and hardship, up to and including death, against the will of those who did not want to be sick or dead. I am sorry, but the people who have to have a pokey shot against their will are suffering far less than people put at risk of disease and death. Both have something done against their will. Why do you side with the passive allowance of one team versus the active authority of the other?
The anti-vax movement doesn't have the obvious economic or religious angle that some other anti-science movements have.
Does that mean those other movements may not be as based in greedy self-interest as I thought, or that the harm done by pushing anti-science in those movements is spreading to other questions of science? I'm guessing the latter.
If you can't use a search engine, I can't be bothered to show you how.
It appears you're trying to prove the following assertion: "The scientific consensus as of today is that the vast majority of autism spectrum disorder cases do not result from vaccines." But refusing to at least give guidance on choosing keywords for DuckDuckGo or Google as a starting point, apart from autism vaccines, means at least one of you is probably committing a fallacy associated with shifting the burden of proof.
Yeah, it's a balance between absolute freedom (which is anarchy, do whatever you want at all times) and absolute good life (whatever that means, but it would include things like society and technology and health, all of which are anathema to anarchy).
But, to be clear, there is no place in the world where you have "freedom to be a total ass": everywhere you go, there are jails. If you push people, eventually pretty much everyone admits that government "do-gooders" do, in fact, "know better" than a rapist whether rape should be a crime.
please don't force your kids to infect the rest of the world with your 19th century diseases
So unvaccinated kids infect your vaccinated kids with diseases that they are supposed to be vaccinated?
Yes. Exactly. Some kids can't be vaccinated because of allergies or age. And unvaccinated kids are the cause of some of those kids dying.
It's precisely that simple.
everyone seems to blame mccarthy for this madness, wrong
mccarthy is just an idiot, the loudest, dumbest soccer mom
but this whole madness was started by this evil asshole:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield
being stupid is no defense. but this guy isn't stupid. his action is an intelligent calculated preying on the stupid
it was a calculated fraud. andrew wakefield is an evil mass murderer
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I don't vaccinate my kid. Not because I'm afraid of autism (as noted before, the autism link is flat out not there). But because the risks on either side are so minimal that I don't see the point.
.01%. The odds of having a major allergic reaction to the vaccine are about .008%. The odds of having brain swelling, fever that causes brain damage, or other severe outcomes is about 0.005%. And the odds of death are about 0.00005%. And even with the vaccine, the odds of her still contracting the disease are about 2%--with all the odds of the above multiplied by a factor of .02.
The odds of my kid being exposed to, say, pertussis are about 10%. The odds of her contracting the disease (ie the bacteria taking hold and causing symptoms) is about 0.5%. The odds of her having a serious case of the disease (involving hospitalization) is about 0.01%. The odds of her having any sort of permanent disability/harm are about 0.005%. And the odds of death are about 0.0001%.
In contrast, the odds of having a mild reaction (mild fever, cold/flu symptoms, localized swelling) to a pertussis vaccine are about 1%. The odds of having a major reaction (lengthy illness, actually getting pertussis, etc) are about
In short, the risk involved in either course of action is ridiculously small--similar odds with winning the Lotto. BUT getting the vaccine costs me money, time (a trip to the doctor), possible fear of the doctor (something I don't want her to be afraid of) and discomfort/pain to my child.
I've weighed the risks. I've done a cost/benefit analysis for both courses of action. And I (and my wife) choose not to vaccinate. And yes, we have done similar comparisons for each and every vaccine that is offered, from the Diptheria, Pertussis, Tetanus (DTaP) vaccine to the HPV vaccine to the Chicken Pox/Varicella vaccine. And none of them make a definitive case that vaccination is orders-of-magnitude better than non-vaccination.
I have not ruled out the possibility that I will reevaluate that cost/benefit and risk analysis at some later stage in her life (say, when she goes to pre-school) and come to a different conclusion.
So again, I ask, what in all these odds and risks and everything, makes me evil for not vaccinating my child?
But these are not cut and dry cases. The freedom of the 'do-baders' to not immunize their children puts my child at risk. I'd like my child to be free from preventable diseases.
As noted elsewhere, bacterial diseases like Pertussis are NOT going to be eradicated, ever. They don't require a human host, so there will always be a risk of infection. So, taking the "disease eradication" out of the argument, why do you insist that everybody get vaccinated?
If you and your child are vaccinated, what is the risk to you if they come into contact with the disease? You've already given your kid immunity (or something like 95-99% immunity), right? So if my kid happens to carry the disease, you shouldn't have to worry about it.
So why do you care?
if your kid is vaccinated, then why are you afraid of the infected others?
There are people that benefit. I know a person who for a time was brainwashed to "reject negative thinking". This in fact effectively meant rejecting critical thinking. Since, "maybe this sugar water doesn't cure my ills, and the person selling it to me is a scumbag" is a negative thought. It leads to the most ridiculous things.
Luckily, she didn't seem totally committed to the concept... I can't imagine it's actually possible to live that way. She mostly just used it to justify what the said snake oil salesmen sold to her.
However, I think these are edge cases and it's much more just a general anti-science thing. America's taught a couple generations that their opinions are important... even entirely unfounded BS opinions. That supposed authority spouting 'facts' is really just another guy's opinion... so who's he to tell you what's right and wrong?
*sigh*
That, in the end, is the dream of guys like roman - down with civilization, give us a survival of the strongest libertarian paradise. Of course, guys like roman think they'd end up as the strongest, getting fellated by their subjects on an hourly basis, when in reality, the local warlord would pull them out of their basements within days and render them into objectivist jerky for the occasional snack.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
How is the absurd idea of believing vaccines cause autism, any different than believing that serpents tell people to eat forbidden fruit or that Thetans are making you unhappy?
You have the right to be absurdly wrong and harm yourself and your children by applying that belief. It is horrible but the alternative is (subjectively) just as bad. We see a child hospitalized or even dying because of this nonsense, but some people see innocent children being Damned To Hell For All Eternity (compared to which, hospitalization and death are nearly nothing) due to not worshipping the one correct god. We let those people anguish over all the lost souls or lost course fees, so why shouldn't believers in medicine similarly suffer? It's painful, but no one said freedom would be free.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
What you're actually saying is that unvaccinated kids infect other unvaccinated kids. What the GP said was that your vaccinated kids have nothing to worry about. Right?
Those that have to take the risk of exposure to the disease because of allergies or other factors are an entirely different matter.
In your place, I would start to think about why exactly my opinions are basically indistinguishable from trolling every time I post them. The result might enlighten you.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
When I was about to begin kindergarten, it was required that all kids had their MMR vaccinations. I know this continued at least through the 90s in my area. I'm curious if that has since changed.... it would be unfortunate if it did.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
the government/medical complex is partially responsible by requiring so many vaccinations.
So the G/MC should pick a few diseases that get to spread unchecked?
That's funny - the handful of anti-vaxxers I know are neo-hippie earth-children, not conservatives.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
And you got other peoples opinion of your opinion, live with it.
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
Thiomersal hasn't been included in vaccines since 1999. And Thiomersal isn't even mercury like Amalgam fillings were mercury. Still plenty of ignorance out there...
I think the problem with vaccination is its own success. Very few thought ill of vaccination when smallpox, polio, etc. were a very real possibility for most people. Here was something that could save you and your kids from those deadly swords of Damocles.
Now, though, those threats seem remote to most people. The devastation of so many infections diseases has been so successfully achieved through vaccination campaigns that lots of people have forgotten why they are necessary. People who are not vaccinated get away with it because most of the population is, and suddently they think it's nothing but a "government conspiracy" to get money into the pockets of pharmaceutical companies. Unfortunately, many of these people would only learn the error of their ways if enough people believe them for such deadly diseases to become common place again. I hope they don't get their way.
What's scary is people sharing chicken pox infected candy and cloth over mail with total strangers. Let's not trust "government" vaccination, let's just trust a total stranger to send me something "knowingly" infected with something. Nothing can go wrong with that scenario can it? Surely someone I don't know a thing about who is willing to send a disease to me via mail could never think of doing something bad could they?
The logic of people sometimes baffles me. It's like a portion of the population is addicted to being afraid. So if no imminent threat is detected, one must be manufactured.
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
Because how well someone can manage a national vaccination program has very little to do with their opinions on unrelated matters.
You don't have to trust him personally with injections, anyway. What are the chances that the head of the Department of Health is going to give you a shot?
People do benefit from it. Ex-Playboy models can sell books and go around talk shows. Discredited doctors can get grants from people desperate to find an autism cure. Alternative Medicine companies can sell sugar pills... I mean, Homeopathic remedies for diseases. There is money to be made here. Probably a lot more than to be made by selling vaccines.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Unlike you, with your appropriate nickname over there, I actually have principles, and all my positions result from my principles, and I do not change them based on the changes to my own circumstance.
You can't handle the truth.
The "lead" antivaxers do benefit from it though - they sell books, get paid to make public appearances and speeches, get their egos stroked with the attention they crave, and the fraud who started the whole thing did it entirely for profit - he was at the time very much involved with development of a non-functional "alternative" to vaccination, and attempted to use the bad publicity he was creating for vaccines to promote his snake oil replacement.
Also, I'm not sure he qualifies as a billionaire, (possibly only a multi-millionaire) but Jim Carey was definitely eccentric, and was pushing funding into the movement while he was sleeping with the porn star who is it's main spokesperson.
That, combined with the general anti-science movement you mentioned earlier, which has taken up the cause with enthusiasm, for exactly the profitable reason you mention. It's kind of funny, in a sad way, that the people screaming "CONSPIRACY!!!!" the loudest here are the ones being manipulated for profit.
I think that's a dangerous line of reasoning, that we should defer to experts alone and enforce their views. It's anti-democratic, and you end up in many cases deferring to the powerful. Condoleezza Rice knows a lot more about government and foreign policy than just about anyone, but I'll be damned if I'm going to follow her into another war to secure American dominance.
The natural sciences may be somewhat immune from distortion given that reality imposes a harsh discipline, but there's a lot out there from individual studies to whole disciplines that are categorized as "science" when it's a complete misnomer.
I'd rather we resort to education. New York City's anti-smoking campaign has been much more successful through education and incentives than the country's drug policy has been through force. If we want to get the vaccination rate up, I say we spend the money on educational campaigns rather than on the heavy hand of law enforcement and various Child Protective Services agencies.
Support NRA, America's oldest civil rights group.
Anyone taking medical advice from Jenny McCarthy http://www.generationrescue.org/ has no one to blame but themselves when their child is injured or killed by an easily preventable disease.
Its a totally preventable death. So sad.
Sadly, it takes a child dying to unearth this sentiment. I felt this way before anyone died.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Giovernemn is reletivly open, you can get records on mos tof that they do, and it has a oral res;ponsibility to all the people.
Corporations are largly secreitve, amfd have no responsibility with to the people.
That's why the default position should be to trust the government.
Also, 'The Government' is made of many separate agency, many different groups. A corporation only works on it's products.
Most of what the government says can be verified.
Note: I am talking about the government employees and records, not politicians.
This doesn't mean be stupid and stop thinking. Not at all. I can list several things I am unhappy with. Interestingly, all of the issues where forced on by politician, not decided on by knowledgeable people.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The only people I trust less than qualified, vetted, officials is uneducated jackasses pretending to understand the world around them when really they are just ignorant twits. There is a mantra from conservatives "They think they know better than you!". Um, yep. I think the scientists and knowledgeable health professionals "know better" than the backward backwater assholes who raise their children as if it were the year 1512.
I am very much pro-vaccination. I do have to point out it wasn't a "uneducated conservative" who started this mess, but Andrew Wakefield who was considered a "knowledgeable scientist and health professional". And there are thousands of examples where the scientists and medical professionals were wrong and/or completely changed their consensus (ex. breastfeeding bad/good). Someone breastfeeding in 1969/1970 may have been considered a ignorant, backwater redneck for choosing archaic breastfeeding over the scientifically developed, precision method of delivering nutrition that is Infant Formula.
So when your neighbor plays music at 135 db you won't stick your nose into their business?
If someone parks in front of your drive way?
If you see people in danger you wont call for help because you don't stick you nose into other peoples business?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You're probably thinking of thimerosal, which is a organic mercury compound. Not actually the same as mercury, although also potentially harmful.
Of course they include toxic compounds. They use antibacterial and antiseptic agents in the production of vaccines to inhibit the growth of undesirable bacteria. One of the commonly-used compounds is formaldehyde.
A few useful things to remember: One, almost everything is toxic above some level and harmless below some other level. Two, you are exposed, passively, to close to every chemical compound out there at some level on a daily basis. It's just that that level may be very, very low.
So complaining about the "toxic" compounds in a vaccine is meaningless without quantifying how much is in them and how it relates to daily exposure levels and toxicity levels. You're exposed to these compounds constantly anyway. There's mercury in the air and water. There's formaldehyde in your blood. There's methanol in your beer. There's ammonia in your food. How much is important.
In vaccines, there's very little.
To whoever thinks that vaccines are bad/cause autism/whatever, and to those who started and fuel those rumors:
Fuck you.
This makes it a troll:
" I don't trust the people inside the DC Beltway. They are sick (control freaks)."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Now, I understand the science behind vaccination, and am actually PRO vaccine, but when you can the ingredients to a box of cereal, but NOT the ingredients to a shot your a directly injecting into your infant, and more importantly a giant mega-corporation's shot with a proven track record of including known toxins like mercury.....
Sure, there is ignorance out there, but blaming parents who want to protect their children is stupid. Blame the giant corporations who included mercury in the shots in the first place.
According to the FDA and Wikipedia the only commonly recommended vaccination for children under 7 years of age that still contains Thiomersal is an Influenza vaccination for children over 2 years of age.
That suggests that those parents were not only panicky and over-reacting, but also over-generalizing and uninformed.
Also, I am pretty sure that manufacturers are not allowed to put inactivated viruses inside a box of cereal they intend to sell in stores, but that inactivated virus is the entire point of a vaccine, making your box of cereal example less than useful.
Finally, the reason that those Evil Giant Corporations put it in those vaccines in the first place might not be quite so evil...
Thiomersal's main use is as an antiseptic and antifungal agent. In multidose injectable drug delivery systems, it prevents serious adverse effects such as the Staphylococcus infection that, in one 1928 incident, killed 12 of 21 children inoculated with a diphtheria vaccine that lacked a preservative.[4] Unlike other vaccine preservatives used at the time, thiomersal does not reduce the potency of the vaccines that it protects.
(this is the first three sentences of the Use section of the Wikipedia Thiomersal article)
References:
http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/SafetyAvailability/VaccineSafety/UCM096228
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal
Principles are worth shit. Pol Pot had principles. Stalin had principles. Torquemada was a very principled man. Principles neither shield you from being an idiot nor from being downright evil.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Except that the consequences of large numbers of people not vaccinating their children is the breaking of herd immunity and the potential serious threats to children who for a number of reasons cannot be vaccinated.
Or, to put it another way, complete Libertarianism is evil and its adherents are sociopaths.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yes. For example a world-wide effort to eradicate polio is stymied by Islamic fundamentalists in Nigeria who spreading a rumor that the shots are really intended to sterilize male children.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15819797
Ignorance spread intentionally for political reasons has to be the most evil of all human activities.
"Troll"? I was serious. On one hand you have the libertarians freaking out at the idea of the government mandating vaccinations, and on the other hand you have the social-welfare advocates freaking out about child abuse. It seems to me that a solution that gives people a theoretical "out" while still having the desired effect in most cases would be a classic compromise.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Four deaths in 8 years, given the number of children who are vaccinated, is a pretty small number. Out of curiosity, I wonder how many children died from severe reactions to the pertussis vaccine during this same period? (Not saying it's higher; just wondering).
It's a self correcting problem in the long run. Go be a left wing green weirdo equivalent of modern day voodoo. Please.
children who can't be vaccinated
There are very few "children who can't be vaccinated". They're immunosuppressed after a transplant, have a self-allergy problem, or have AIDS. Children in any of those situations are being kept alive only by extensive medical efforts. They're not normal, healthy kids.
So unvaccinated kids infect your vaccinated kids with diseases that they are supposed to be vaccinated?
The short answer: Yes.
The long answer involves two factors:
First, unvaccinated, disease-ridden older children who go near children too young to be vaccinated (or children who could not be vaccinated for health reasons such as a compromised immune system) cause those children too young to be vaccinated to become infected, and often to then die horrible painful deaths. This is the fault of the parents who refused to vaccinate their child, and said parents should be arrested and put on trial (and then imprisoned) for said death in the same way they would if they'd been planting random explosives around the suburbs and had blown the children up instead. The net result is the same, even if the explosions are slightly less painful.
Second, when a sufficient number of unvaccinated people become infected with a disease, this weird thing called "mutation" happens, and the vaccines become ineffective as the new strain created by irresponsible parents refusing to vaccinate their children then spreads unchecked. This is why the Flu vaccines that are available need to be re-done every single year, and while it's entirely possible for it to happen with even a single infected carrier, as more people become infected, it becomes more likely. Again, the parents responsible for this should be put on trial and imprisoned in exactly the same way they would had they used their own personal lab to cook up a bio-weapon and spread it around town to slaughter the neighbor's children.
Yes, it's true, you're totally free to go and build your own explosive devices*, or cook up designer virii** in the privacy of your own mad science lab, but it becomes illegal once you start spreading it around town where people will get hurt. The same thing should apply to deliberately allowing your children to go unvaccinated - if you are turning your children into a public health risk, you should be keeping them away from the public that you're risking.
* Technically this does require a license to work with explosives in some areas, but not all.
** This one however, there are currently no actual laws against that I am aware of. Yet. Most laws like that show up because someone, somewhere, demonstrated that it was necessary.
This is why - when the inevitable child death happens due to some other parents' anti-science bullshit - those 'attack vector' parents should be arrested and tried for the crime of manslaughter at very least. Though a case could be made for straight murder, given the willful intent of the decision.
No, FUCK YOU. You DO NOT have the right to tell me what to do with myself or my kids. FUCK YOU.
Wrong.
Many individual health decisions affect not only the person making the decision, but also people NOT making the decision. Vaccines depend on a certain percentage of the population (say 95%) of the population to prevent the disease from spreading to those who for health reasons could not take the vaccine, or for those whose immune systems reacted in such a way as to make the vaccine ineffective.
If YOUR decision only affects YOU I don't care. But it affects others too, and that's when you lose the right to make it on your own.
Does anyone else think its an interesting contrast how people in Haiti right now are literally begging for vaccinations against cholera because they know it will kill them, and helicopter parents in the US are fighting vaccinations for the one in a trillion chance that it may in some way cause autism (despite a huge amount of evidence otherwise).
if your kid is vaccinated, then why are you afraid of the infected others?
Because the vaccine doesn't have a 100% success rate.
Since when somebody playing music is a problem exactly? Do you mean playing it at night, when people are intending to sleep?
That's actively interfering with people's life, and anybody can come to that neighbour and it's between them two.
Your examples are about somebody actively getting in front of you, doing something to you.
But this is about doing something to oneself, not to you. If you were allergic to red hair, would you then expect all people with red hair to shave it off, just so that you wouldn't have a reaction to their hair? They are not getting in front of your drive way with their red hair on purpose, they may just walk by one day.
You are not talking about somebody limiting your freedom, you are talking about limiting freedoms of others even in the sense that they have to do something actively to accommodate you. Well, tough luck.
You can't handle the truth.
As does Jenny McCarthy for being more deadly than any prick yelling 'FIRE' in a crowded theater.
Because vaccines can't guarantee an effective immune response against a pathogen, although they significantly improve the odds.
You got it right but you could have just used one sarcastic example of the over simplified idiocy of some Public Health arguments: - Women have babies that can lead to them becoming sources of communicable diseases or even worse, murderers, we should enact a law that vaccinates all women from having children in the name of 'Public Health'. Yeah thats what we need, more nanny laws like Vermont wants to enact. Biology isn't a one size fits all science, try giving everyone a dose of pencillin the wonder drug and see what the results are. If people are so worried about the potential disease riddled children affecting theirs, get yours vaccinated... problem solved. But no that's not good enough we have to enact laws to tell everyone how they should live, eat, breathe, love, cough, fart.....
Principles is what makes a person. Not having principles is being just another animal, but I am not surprised at your stance, Mindcontrolled.
You can't handle the truth.
And these are probably the same hippy mom types that opt not to have given birth to their children in a the safety of a hospital too.
the fraud who started the whole thing did it entirely for profit - he was at the time very much involved with development of a non-functional "alternative" to vaccination, and attempted to use the bad publicity he was creating for vaccines to promote his snake oil replacement.
No, Wakefield wasn't quite that evil. The company he had stake in made separate measles and mumps vaccines rather than the MMR combination vaccine he was trying to discredit.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
You're not going to convince Mr. Mir of that.
The Good Libertarian Solution would be to sue the person who infected your child.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Too fucking bad. You do NOT have a right to put others at risk.
There's the anti-science movement, and a lot of the shitbags peddling this filth are also heavily into homeopathic medicine and other "natural" bullshit.
No, we won't, you pile of shit.
I will never understand people who keep bitching and moaning about government, and yet, still continue to live here and enjoy all the benefits and privileges that we get from our government.
and then 5 minutes later rail against the corporations and how they can not be trusted to take care of their employees/customers/factory environment.
Ahh yes, the retarded argument that "corporations and government are the same!" Completely disregarding the fact that I have a say in how government is run. I don't have a say in how the company is run. And that companies have far more power than I do.
What you're actually saying is that unvaccinated kids infect other unvaccinated kids. What the GP said was that your vaccinated kids have nothing to worry about. Right?
Wrong, because vaccines aren't 100% effective in producing immunity. Following current protocols, they're generally 80-90% effective.
Also, the pertussis vaccine isn't started being administered until 2 months and is given in 4 doses at 2, 4, 6, and 15-18 months, followed by a booster at 4-6 years. That results in a rather wide window of vulnerability where herd immunity is critical.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Proof needed on that.
And remember, we have say in who these people are. We don't have any say in anything going on in the banks, or in Microsoft.
1. The pertussis vaccine is given in multiple doses over several months (2, 4, 6, and 15-18 months). There's a rather large window of vulnerability where one may not have immunity.
2. Even with such multi-dose measures, vaccines aren't 100% effective at provoking immunity. For various reasons, they simply don't work sometimes, about 5-20% of the time, depending on the vaccine.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I'm glad you found an excuse to justify the intentional murder of other human beings. It's always nice to see horrible inhuman monsters who feel they have the moral high ground.
The consequences delineated in the article are the inevitable consequence of non-vaccination by a statistically significant portion of the populace. That's just the nature of diseases.
Whooping cough is often seen in infants too young to safely get the vaccine, because it wears off. So adults get whooping cough, and then give it to the infants. So why aren't we vaccinating the adults instead? Maybe it isn't safe to vaccinate a pregnant or breastfeeding person, but if all the adults around her are vaccinated, it will stop spreading. Another way to help would be to stay home when sick, keep your kids home when they are sick, and keep your kids away from sick people. I would say this is more caused by lack of doing those things than by lack of vaccination.
That being said the government/medical complex is partially responsible by requiring so many vaccinations.
9 is too many for you?
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
You don't have the right to infect my kids with your easily prevented diseases.
No, good sir. Fuck you for your wanton disregard for my own child's health. Fuck you.
:(){
I ask again then, what in your principles makes it ok for someone to subject me to significant harm that does not allow me to prevent that? Your freedom to swing your fist stops at my face. If you are actively engaged in behavior that can harm me, I should be allowed to do what I can to stop it, and prevent it from continuing.
Yes, that's fair. Although the "You always know what is best for you in every situation" ideology comes mostly from the right, a majority of the anti-vax bullshit comes from the loony left. My comment was directed more at that political/ideological statement than at anti-vax crows specifically; in fact, that post didn't even mention vaccines or autism. Still, I could have been more clear that the screed against conservative nonsense was ancillary to the present topic.
I explain to you once more: there is nothing that is actively done to hurt you.
In fact, when did /. not only lose its individualism but also its intelligence? If you have your vaccine, your kids have their vaccine, what do you worry about? That some other people, who do not have that vaccine may get sick?
It's their problem, not yours. You want to vaccinate yourself and your kids - it's your choice.
They don't want to vaccinate themselves and their kids - it's their choice.
If they get sick with something that you are vaccinated against, they are clearly not hurting you in any way.
If they get sick and you are not vaccinated against it, well, it's like everything else in life. Do you want everybody who is outside to stop driving before you go outside, because they may run you over?
When did this place become a place of unintelligent paranoid pussyfied slaves exactly?
You can't handle the truth.
Well, the cost of liberty is eternal vigilance, sometimes against wrongheaded experts. Fair point, and I hope I never said anything to the contrary. Even though experts are usually right, sometimes they are wrong. (But, I don't think "should we go to war" is a question which even tenuously attaches to a scientific fact.)
Your example of smoking in New York, though, I don't think is a strong example. You can call it education if you want, but I think it is extremely high taxes and strictly enforced no-smoking in many public places. We've had education all over the country for longer than I've been alive; nobody alive today doesn't know that smoking causes cancer. Education can take society a long, long ways (and has!), but it can't take it all the way, because there will always be a metric shit-ton of willful ignorance out there. You can't cure willful ignorance with education, but sometimes you can overcome it with a little social or legal pressure.
No vaccine works for 100%. So even vaccinated, my kid is put at additional risk by your uninformed decision. Another risk factor lies in the fact that many vaccines can only be administered safely after a certain age. Below that age, my kid depends on herd immunity. But, well, scientific facts obviously are for unintelligent paranoid pussified slaves. You know what, roman, if I'd really wanted to curse you, I'd wish your libertardian paradise upon you. But I am a humanist, so you can rest assured that I, together with the reasonable majority of people, will keep on saving you and the likes of you from themselves.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
You forgot they're Hardworking American Christian Values that the Leftist Elitist Radical Liberal Extremists that incompatible with the 100% Christian Founding Fathers defined to NOT be overturned by Activist Judges attempting to destroy the Constitution the Greatest Nation God Ever Created.
Troll Right, Asshole.
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
I recently encountered this conundrum as well with a new arrival in my family. Without having been exposed to the recent "controversy" and the usual polarization of "you're either for vaccination or you're with the child pornographers", I did what I usually do and that is question the merits of whatever course of action has been recommended to me. Living in Canada, vaccines are crowd sourced, so money does not factor into my decision making. There is actually a pretty good federal resource here, so it is convenient to inform myself.
The Public Health Agency of Canada recommends vaccinating your child against 13 separate "diseases". My "cohort" has been vaccinated against maybe half that number. Why the change? Why those 13, why not more, or less? What are the risks and benefits for each one? Are they all equal? Are some more beneficial than others? Who made these decisions? What research was used in each case? How long have they been in general circulation? Unfortunately the government FAQ doesn't contain that information.
We ended up getting the DTaP-IPV-Hib (Diphtheria, Tetanus, Whooping Cough, Polio, Hib) and Pneu-C-13 (Pneumococcal disease) vaccines but opted out of the Rot (Rotavirus) vaccine after weighing the risks and benefits. I am still not sure if I have made the right decision; it seems that there are people on both "sides" using emotional arguments to try and sway me one way or the other. The nurses looked at us like we were criminals for not getting the Rotavirus vaccine. In the coming months, we will have to choose whether to vaccinate against Influenza, Varicella, Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and Meningococcal disease. Wait, why are Chicken Pox and the Flu on the immunization schedule now? I don't get the free flu shots every year and I had chicken pox when I was younger, to no great detriment of which I am aware. Do I blindly trust what the health agency recommends? Policy and science do not always go hand in hand -- I'm a scientist and I work for government so I know how that shit works.
I once had a serious adverse reaction to a vaccine and want to avoid that risk for my children where possible, if it is reasonable to do so. Maybe I will only give my child a few of those vaccines... Have I made a horrible mistake? Do I deserve to burn in hell like some of the commenters suggest? Do I get to wear an "anti-vaccine" badge now? In which bi-chromatic "camp" do I belong?
I am doing my darnest to live in as close to a libertarian society as I can possibly find. I do not in fact have a problem with vaccines, whatever the hell you may believe, but I do have a problem with assholes like you, telling other people how to live their lives, no matter what it is.
You are absolutely free NOT to send your kids to a place where other children can congregate, you are also free to sit in your house and not go outside, you may get hit by a car.
As I said, your nick is appropriate.
You can't handle the truth.
what an incredible job of trolling you have done. I do not feed trolls, have a good day.
If your parents are retarded enough to risk your life based on superstition, you're playing life in hard mode.
I think you mean Hardcore.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
AFAIC you are the troll obviously, as you pretend that you have a shred of intelligence, declaring that your vaccinated kids are somehow in danger of contracting a disease from unvaccinated ones, so you want everybody to do as you please, for your pleasure, and you'd use gov't threat of violence to achieve that goal also, and you are calling me a troll? You are not only a troll, you are the real danger to society, as you'd descend it into the dark ages of tyranny with your well laced intentions.
You can't handle the truth.
Yours was a response based on logic and backed up with (attributed) facts. You caused me to think and learn something.
Thank you.
Here we go again. Your freedom trumps everything - anyone else has the "freedom" to not venture where your divine feet tread the earth. In other words - "freedom" is for you, fuck everyone else. You are a pathetic little sociopath. It'd be funny if not for the sadness of observing such a wretched mind.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Yeah, but I keep trying to debate the litigious libertarians. Most frequently, this is related to pollution and suing whoever was responsible for whatever harm it caused. But the debate always ends before the libertarian can explain how to assign blame to polluters in any but the most cut and dry cases.
Wrong... If YOUR decision only affects YOU I don't care. But it affects others too, and that's when you lose the right to make it on your own.
You drive a car. Your car outputs poison into the shared atmosphere, meaning your driving a car affects the health of others. Therefore, by your reasoning, YOU don't have the right to decide where and when you drive, but rather society does. That's just one example from my list; there are several others.
The slope, she is slippery.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
You got it right but you could have just used one sarcastic example of the over simplified idiocy of some Public Health arguments:
- Women have babies that can lead to them becoming sources of communicable diseases or even worse, murderers, we should enact a law that vaccinates all women from having children in the name of 'Public Health'.
Damn, that is a good one!
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Freedom does trump EVERYTHING.
You are absolutely right about it. My feet are none of your concern, and clearly you are taking an argument into something it is not - making it personal? I wonder why, is it because you have no more arguments left? Obviously you do not.
1. I have no problem with vaccines.
2. You are free to have your vaccines.
3. Other people who may have problems with vaccines must have their right not to be abused by the threat of violence because of assholes like you.
4. You are free to avoid those other people, you can go as far away from them as your little heart desires, not only can they give you a communicable disease, they can also kill you accidentally or even on purpose!
Run.
You can't handle the truth.
I'm glad you found an excuse to justify the intentional murder of other human beings. It's always nice to see horrible inhuman monsters who feel they have the moral high ground.
Ah, no. BTW, if you hear a knocking, that's probably the Hyperbole Police coming to take you to Exaggeration-Traz.
Pro-birther, I presume? The rhetoric fits...
The consequences delineated in the article are the inevitable consequence of non-vaccination by a statistically significant portion of the populace. That's just the nature of diseases.
If a society has guns/cars/unhealthy foods/scientific research/etc., inevitably one individuals use of them is going to negatively affect someone else, and possibly the population at large. That's the nature of humanity.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Well, I am taking my freedom to just tell you to fuck yourself, you pathetic little creep. Guys, mod the idiot up to expose his sociopathy to the world. Preferably as "funny".
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
"Very little" for whom? A 3 week old infant? And who says it is "very little"? The corporation selling the drugs? Give me a break, there is a reason they no longer make vaccines with mercury. They got caught and called out on it and now they use a different process.
You are missing his entire point that true risk involved here is based on a comparisons between daily environmental exposures and those specific to the vaccine. Not on the vaccine compared to the size and mass of the child.
Whether the kid is 3 wks or 3 yrs doesn't change how much it is exposed to in the daily environment (unless of course the kid is in a NICU or PICU, but that's a different beast).
Being stupid is no defense, but preying on the stupid is something worse: it's evil.
I would argue that the stupid exist to be preyed upon, and there is nothing immoral in that; in fact it is just, in that their stupidity usually causes splash damage for which they should pay. Any time a stupid person gives his or her money to a self-centered charlatan who spends it on entertainment, there are less dollars that stupid person can spend buying theocratic laws, etc...
However, an immoral act occurs when stupid people are used as a resource to commit harm to the population at large, such is the case with the autism/vaccines scare, and most religious and political efforts... the Catholic Church's efforts against prophylactics, the selling of the Iraq war, the selling of the upcoming Iran war, etc...
Go ahead and mod me down! I will only get stronger!
It's pretty amazing to me how violent a lot of people on here sound when talking about this issue. Things like "You and your spawn deserve to die" and other very pleasant thoughts. I am not against vaccines, but I think a parent needs to decide which ones are needed and not get every one of the hundreds they want to stick into a person. Ohhh, this vaccine is for a disease that is as bad as getting a cold, but it is super rare that you would ever get it!!! I must get that vaccine right away, I don't want to get a COLD!!!~ [end-sarcasm]. And yes, there are vaccines for things that are that mild.
And don't forget the studies that have shown the hazards of injecting aluminum into your blood. A single vaccine in an adult may not be very much aluminum, but when it's a 2 or 3 month old infant and they want to stick 6 or more vaccines into them at once, all with their own dose of aluminum, it adds up. The studies to see what level of aluminum is safe for an infant have not been done. Then you also see stories like that cheerleader that got all messed up. Vaccines aren't perfect either, but most people on here think everyone had better get every damn shot your great and powerful gov'mint says you should get. Be sure to drink your fluoride while your at it (toxic leftover waste from munitions production).
It comes down to risk assessment. Each vaccine must be weighed in on the severity of the disease for the person and the rest of society balanced against it's rarity and the makeup of the vaccine itself and any questionable ingredients that can cause problems (infected monkey kidneys used in polio vaccine). The problem is that most people are very bad at risk assessment. And they don't want to think for themselves. They want to be told what to do and just do it (and buy it)!
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
what you just wrote is stupid. i'm seriousness. the callousness you display can be manipulated just as much as any other form of stupidity
irony takes care of the rest of my comment
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As the parent of a non-autistic child I say: vaccinate. Statistically it is safer than not doing so.
As the parent of an autistic child I say: correlation is not causation. Don't be a moron. Vaccinate yer damn kids.
Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult.
If I say gravity pulls things down, I don't feel a need to cite that
That's common knowledge in the sense that it is something a child can teach himself experimentally on the playground through any form of play that involves a ball.
if I say that vaccines don't cause autism, I don't feel a need to cite that.
Medicine is a far more advanced topic, something that one can't teach oneself experimentally. One can practice intramural sports in middle school; one needs a doctorate to practice medicine. So instead, one must learn by reading, and a lot of people happen not to have already read news reports about the latest findings about the lack of correlation between vaccines and autism spectrum disorders.
There was a Law and Order SVU episode in 2009 that addressed this issue, titled 'Selfish'. (Season 10, Episode 19).
I thought it brought up a lot of good points, and was well written. IMHO, kids of parents that refuse vaccination should not be sharing public spaces with other people's kids. That includes schools, parks, busses, etc. If you choose not to vaccinate your kid, be prepared to pay for private schooling / home school, pay for cabs or drive them everywhere, pay for private play spaces (or just let them rot inside their rooms), etc. Also, be prepared to bring up an antisocial, spoiled brat.
Parents who choose not to vaccinate their kids and then allow them to come in contact with the rest of society fully deserve to bear the brunt of any criminal or civil charges when someone else loses their kid (too young to be vaccinated, unable to be vaccinated for medical reasons, etc.) due to exposure to their germ-ridden snot producer.
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
Don't be a smartass; it doesn't help the conversation.
1) No one is more familiar and in a better position to understand a child than their parents. Parents spend huge amounts of time dealing with their child and learning their quirks, emotions, and knowing their history.
2) Parents expend vast, enormous amounts of resources raising their children, and are directly and massively affected by the decisions that affect their children.
3) Without a doubt and by orders of magnitude, parents are most invested and concerned about their children's well being. There is simply no comparison to the love and care a parent feels towards their children. If there are people who can be trusted to do their best for a child, it's their parents.
4) Parents are legally obligated to provide the resources necessary for a child until they are 18, and to deal with the results of that child.
5) Parents MAY not always be the most rational decision makers concerning their children, and MAY not be the most expert on the decision at hand.
The obvious conclusion from this information is that PARENTS, by large orders of magnitude, are the ones who should be making decisions for their children. They are the defacto most trusted, invested, and authoritative people capable of making the decisions. In my opinion, the government should only step in when it is clear that the parents are giving worse general and long term care than the alternative (IE foster homes, etc.). That line is very, very low.
The information you seek is on the first page of the article...
...but since you are apparently too lazy:
Fully vaccinated: 68 cases
Partially vaccinated: 20 cases
Not vaccinated: 191 cases
>>>" I don't trust the people inside the DC Beltway. They are sick (control freaks)."
Have you bothered to read the crap the D.C. politicians and bureaucrats are putting out? When they take-away the right to trial (NDAA), arrest Amish farmers for selling natural unpasteurized milk, forbid little girls from drawing guns in school (and then arrest the father of said child), give laptops to kids for the purpose of spying on them at home, send out VIPR teams to social security centers and post offices to force people to submit to breast & crotch-groping patdowns, regulate that it you deposit more than $1000 cash you should be placed on a Terrorist watchlist, and then put warning labels on bottles that say "Water does not cure dehydration".....
Well it's damn obvious they are a load of control freaks.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Sure, it's your freedom to say whatever, however that freedom is only between you and your government, and we all are well aware how far your government is willing to go when they decide that they do not like what is being said.
You want your government to control what goes into you, well, you already have that. You have no freedoms, given your self-description on this site it doesn't bother you too much. So when exactly did they attach that mind-controlling slug, that parasite to your head? Don't you scratch it?
You can't handle the truth.
No vaccine is 100% effective. Some have failure rates as high as 10% or 15%. In those cases, the only thing protecting the 'vaccinated' person is herd immunity.
Yes, but in those cases, those people make CHOICES that directly instigate the harm, and can be held accountable. Here the harm is purely statistical in nature, and the instigators are those who choose to create the risk. Hence liability law. You're actively endorsing the death of other people. You're just happy about it.
Except that these unimmunized children can then spread these same diseases to other children. So, no, it's not just the parent's business when their choices can cause harm to those around them.
You're actively endorsing the death of other people. You're just happy about it.
Didn't your mother ever tell you, if you can't say something without being a hyperbolic douche about it, don't say anything at all?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
True that vaccines don't make money. Many pharmacies would prefer not to waste time on them because the profit it so small.
There are two factors I think that are encouraging this anti-vaccine crowd. First is the entertainment industry, plenty of people with empty minds watching daytime talk shows which means the producers of these shows have to keep bringing in all the controversial subjects and guests that they can even if this means inventing controversy where there is none. Second is the anti-mainstream-medicine feeling that is so common, where any alternative medicine is treated as authentic and superior. It's a bit of a persecution complex I think where some people feel that mainstream medicine is holding society back, or that it's all about making huge profits, or that they haven't cured my cancer with a pill whereas I heard Bob's sister's cousin was cured with a pill down in Mexico. After all a retired school teacher knows more about how to cure the common cold than all the scientists in the world, it says so on the label!
Ignorance grows and thrives unless it is fought.
A parent who wants to immunise his kid will do so, and the one who doesn't immunise his kid won't, so one kid had the vaccine, the other doesn't. So if the one who doesn't have the vaccine gets sick, supposedly this won't be transmitted to the one with the vaccine, so this point is a ruse.
Your hidden point is of-course that you want to force people to take that shot and if they don't want to you want gov't to force them. That is you, using threat of violence to force other people to behave the way you want. By that logic, by the way, you should use gov't to stop everybody from driving as well, after all, what if they run you over when you get out of your basement?
You can't handle the truth.
This would be prove if you could show that the majority of parents are highly informed and educated on all the issues. Instead I see lots of ignorant parents, I see lots of apathetic parents, I see lots of abusive parents. No doubt what you say is true for some parents but sadly I think it is true only for a small minority of them.
You can't assume a parent will do what's best for their children if they don't actually know what is best and refuse to listen to experts. There is no magical force that causes parents to know this stuff, and it is not instinctual.
You're disingenuously arguing this topic by focusing on just one of the points I raised (5).
However, yes, parents are not always 'highly' informed and educated on all issues. Are you seriously suggesting that a person needs to be in order to make a decision?
I'm not being hyperbolic. Lack of vaccination is literally proportionate murder in my eyes. That reflects a just if you drained 1/5th the blood to kill a person, and the next 4 people came along and did the same. There's a direct liability, and I see an ethical failing in ignoring it.
I'm concerned more about when experts are merely powerful people advancing their own best interests, which seems to come up peculiarly often. Granted, that is not the case here, and my example of deferring to Condoleezza Rice's foreign policy expertise is dramatic.
Even so, the political question of whether or not we should force parents to vaccinate their children is not a question of science but of subjective human concerns like justice, fairness, morality, ethics. There's little doubt that a child is better off vaccinated, and that the society is healthier if everyone is vaccinated. On the other hand, and we're probably talking past each other here, I'm extremely loathe to force parents to vaccinate children. It does not strike me as an issue that is appropriately dealt with through law enforcement or child protection agencies, which is how such matters would ultimately be enforced. As with the case of NYC and smoking, however, I would support fairly heavy incentives and launching an educational campaign. Video of children disabled by easily preventable diseases is just as thought-provoking as elderly people dying of lung cancer.
Support NRA, America's oldest civil rights group.
...is it any of the state or government's business whether or not I accept or decline their offer of help? "Thank you, yes" or "thank you, no" should be enough.
You're only welcome in my house if I invite you in. Short of that, you're an interloper.
~Just as a thing fails if it lacks a kernel, so too it fails if it lacks a skin. ~ Rumi, Discourses
I'm not being hyperbolic. Lack of vaccination is literally proportionate murder in my eyes.
Well, then, if you feel so strongly about it, perhaps you should be pressuring your representatives to pass a law making refusal of vaccinations grounds for murder charges. Arguing with me isn't going to get you anywhere.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I can see if you have red hair, just like I can avoid cats because I'm allergic to cats.
I cannot see if your child isn't vaccinated for the mumps, and I cannot get the vaccination because of a LEGIT medical complication.
But yeah I can see how a disease can be the same as an allergy to a color of hair.
> However, yes, parents are not always 'highly' informed and educated on all issues. Are you seriously suggesting that a person needs to be in order to make a decision?
If the stakes are high enough, that does seem like a reasonable position to take. If your child has appendicitis, will you remove it yourself, or visit a hospital with a highly informed and educated specialist to do the surgery for you? Are you better qualified because nobody knows your child better?
Why couldn't you have posted with an account? Attach a name to these crazy claims. It's like you're afraid of looking like the rest of the anti-vac group. (Which is, a little crazy).
Back in 'the old days' mothers stayed home most of the time with young infants, reducing their exposure to the public. But now, try telling mom that bringing baby into Starbucks for a couple of hour yak session with the girls while sitting next to the hobo with the TB cough isn't a good idea.
Have gnu, will travel.
Any person who performs surgery on another without proper training is likely mentally unstable, barring extraordinary circumstances. Anyways, this example is about action, not decisions. The appropriate comparison would be if the parent made the decision to not have surgery done. And yes, that decision should be (and is) within the parents rights. What should happen (and what does) is that the government takes the child away if the parent makes a grossly dangerous decision (such as not allowing surgery for a life threatening affliction). That's fine and good, in my opinion.
Are you seriously suggesting that a person needs to be in order to make a decision?
If the stakes are high enough, that does seem like a reasonable position to take.
It doesn't seem reasonable to me. I agree that its DESIRABLE for a person to be as highly informed as is practical to be, but not that they NEED to be. Do you think the government should step in and make decisions for you for everything that you are not an expert at?
1) They may understand their children well, however this doesn't make them experts in medical issues surrounding vaccinations.
2) Ok. Except that many of the results of those decisions may only occur later on in the child's life, when the parents may well be dead and gone.
3) This is also suspect. Parents love and care for their children enormously (or at least, the good ones do), however this is not the same as them having the most investment in their children's well-being. In the case of vaccinations it is the other children with whom they interact that have the greatest investment.
4) Ok. Except that the 'results' of that child may include increasing the likelihood of other people getting sick. Further those results may also effect other people in myriad ways, and the parents are not legally obligated to deal with all of these.
5) Quite.
Your premises are largely false, and thus so is your conclusion. This is also why parents who refuse medical care for their children because they want to pray the disease away, end up in jail.
He was such a mellow baby and he fell completely off the deep end for over a week
A whole week. Goodness.
RSVP now: Chicken Pox party at my place. Sometime during K-12.
Chicken Pox isn't on the schedule in NZ, where I live. My kids all got it. They were very very miserable for more than a week, and were left with a few scars too. But in your books, that's better than a week of misery to avoid many many different diseases (mostly much more unpleasant than Chicken Pox).
Other than that point, I agree with your other points.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Sebelius
That person? Doesn't seem likely, also I can't find any citations for your claim. It seems extremely likely to be false. I hope she doesn't decide to sue you for slander (or libel, or defamation, or whatever it's called) because I expect you would lose.
This is so irrational. Do you seriously believe that those advocating compulsory vaccination believe that just because they want people to be given shots?
As has been explained in multiple posts, vaccination is not 100% effective and only works properly when more than a certain number of people have been vaccinated. Vaccines slow down diseases, and if enough people are protected in this way then the disease cannot spread. Vaccination is not 100% immunity.
You clearly have an opinion on this subject. Please try to turn it into an informed opinion by reading something on the subject.
Oops - just realise I wasn't logged in when I posted this. It was Me! It was Me! Does that stop me being an anonymous coward?
1) Shorter protection time than expected indicating boosters are required
(See: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22423127 for example)
and
2) Emergent bacterial strains with modified surface antigens being selected due to evolutionary pressure (gasp!) from the acellular vaccine
(See: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22416243 for example)
If you want to understand the science, go to the scientific literature. Not 'naturalnews.com'...
If you have your vaccine, your kids have their vaccine, what do you worry about?
Here is the problem with that line of argument:
1. I might not have the vaccine, and neither might my kids. Either can happen due to medical reasons completely beyond anybody's control. In this situation, your chances of getting a disease are strongly influenced by voluntary decisions by others to not vaccinate.
2. I might have the vaccine, and yet I can still get sick and die from the disease the vaccine is designed to protect against. Vaccines are not 100% effective, and they never will be.
Both of these situations come up fairly rarely, but statistically they matter. Let's suppose each group is 1% of the population. Now let's consider two worlds:
In world #1 vaccination is mandatory except for medical reasons. In this world 99% of the population is vaccinated, and 1% of that group is vulnerable without realizing it. Now a random sick person enters the population. Chances are they will not spread the disease much, since only 2% of the people they run into are vulnerable. The disease is contained, and not much happens.
In world #2 vaccination is voluntary. In this world 60% of the population is vaccinated, and 1% of that group is vulnerable without realizing it. Now a random sick person enters the population, and 40.6% of the population around them is vulnerable, so an epidemic breaks out. Within the area of the epidemic (just an entire town if you're lucky) the 39% of the population that chose to not be vaccinated gets sick, as does the 1% who couldn't be vaccinated, as does an extra 0.6% of the total population (people who did get vaccinated but were not protected).
So, that 2% is protected in world #1, and vulnerable in world #2.
Now, in the perfect "libertarian" paradise we can then all go to court and sue each other (well, I guess you sue the estates of the dead people) and vaccine manufacturers (who are guilty I guess of not achieving perfection), and lots of lawyers get rich, and plenty of money changes hands. Nothing changes the fact that there are lots of sick/dead people in a completely preventable calamity, with 1.6% of the entire population of the area impacted despite not having made any personal choice to expose themselves to that risk.
Now let's step back further and consider that those who aren't vaccinated often don't make this choice for themselves in the first place - their parents make the choice for them.
I used libertarian in quotes up there as I don't really see this as a legitimate libertarian position. It really sounds more like anarchy. Most libertarians consider it a fundamental purpose of government to ensure that people are secure in their freedoms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I'd be the first to agree that government should not protect people from themselves. However, in this case we're talking about protecting people from the actions of others, which is pretty much the job description for the police.
That being said the government/medical complex is partially responsible by requiring so many vaccinations.
Uh, vaccines are probably the safest and most effective form of medicine we have. If there were 40 vaccines with good safety profiles, then chances are it would be to the benefit of all for people to take all 40 of them (vaccine recommendations aren't always universal - medical evidence should of course always be our guide).
Why do you think the greedy bastards who run insurance companies are happy to shell out $100 for a vaccine injection? Trust me, it isn't because they're feeling generous. They know that if they don't pay $100 for that vaccine, there will be a lot of situations where they'll be paying $50k to keep somebody in the ICU for a week. Unless you like the idea of spending a week in the ICU while your family frets for your life, chances are you should consider that a good investment as well.
The reason the "government/medical complex" is so in favor of sticking people with needles is because they work so well. Vaccines usually have effectiveness close to 100% and cost $100 or less most of the time. The next best kinds of treatments have much lower success rates and cost much more. Most drugs might have a 40% success rate, compared to 30% for a placebo. Surgery might have a 95% success rate in many cases, but at a cost of $100k and a risk that you die before you make it to the hospital to have the surgery in the first place. A vaccine stops a disease before it ever affects you in the first place.
No, what is irrational is the idea that you can force people to do something to their own bodies that they clearly are objecting to.
NOTHING is 100% effective, you walking on a street is not always going to end well because there are other people around you, you can get hurt. Why don't you quit walking or maybe become a dictator and force everybody else to be wrapped in pillows while walking around?
My opinion on this subject is always the same: you are the enemy of freedom, a wannabe tyrant.
You can't handle the truth.
Well, isn't that just sad that you can't get your vaccine? Well, you'll just have to take your risks, or do you also walk around wrapped in bubbles and with a helmet on? Because, you know, you can fall or somebody can run into you.
You can't handle the truth.
I might not have the vaccine, and neither might my kids.
- well that is YOUR problem, not a problem that government is supposed to be "fixing".
strongly influenced by voluntary decisions by others to not vaccinate.
- it's their choice. It's their bodies.
How about abortions, do you want government to control who gets them and who doesn't, if they are legal at all or not?
I might have the vaccine, and yet I can still get sick and die from the disease the vaccine is designed to protect against. Vaccines are not 100% effective, and they never will be.
- do you walk around with a helmet on? Because you know, something may fall on your head too. Somebody can run into you!
Your examples, I am not going to quote, I'll just say this about them: I do not want to live in a world where people are forced to do things to themselves. It's a freedom concept you are missing. It's the same with the TSA in the airports, I am AGAINST TSA in the airports, yet it is POSSIBLE that a 'terrorist' can bring some weapon on him. I rather live in a free society than in a bubble wrapped one with chains on top.
Now, in the perfect "libertarian" paradise we can then all go to court and sue each other
- you can't win a lawsuit against somebody just because they sneezed on you on a street.
I used libertarian in quotes up there as I don't really see this as a legitimate libertarian position.
- being a 'libertarian' implies having a position, as in a principle. I don't think you ever had them, people don't drop principles just because their circumstances change. It means you never understood what the hell you thought you were.
You can't handle the truth.
With every vaccine there are side effects; sometimes minor and sometimes major. Depending on the disease it may be worthwhile to do the vaccinations or not.
It may be a good idea to vaccinate against whooping cough but sometimes the disease itself is easier on you than the vaccinations. This was the case for example in Finland and Sweden with the swine flu vaccinations. Of those who got swine flu less than 0.02% died. That would be around less 10 deaths in Finland. Of these people none were really healthy in the first place. They were in the risk group so basically they would have died anyway of common cold, flu etc. In this case it happened to be the swine flu. BUT regarding the vaccinations: Pandemrix and Arepanrix vaccines contained immunologic adjuvant that triggered narcolepsy on several dozen (a hundred?) children. These children have the narcolepsy for the rest of their lives. Narcolepsy of course occurs also naturally but it has been clearly proven that the vaccine (or the adjuvant) multiplied the narcolepsy cases 4 to 9 fold! That is statistically significant. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix . There is also speculation regarding the connection of other autoimmune diseases and vaccines. But these are more or less speculation still.
During the swine flu outbreak the government and the health officials here in Finland basically said that you are crazy if you don't take the A(H1N1) vaccine! People should _think_ if taking a particular vaccine is better than suffering the disease. Mandating the vaccinations by law is stupid but I guess in the US people like laws and lawyers... ;-)
There's little doubt that a child is better off vaccinated, and that the society is healthier if everyone is vaccinated. On the other hand, and we're probably talking past each other here, I'm extremely loathe to force parents to vaccinate children.
Indeed. It's a tough issue and those two sentences sum it up pretty well. I too would have serious reservations about forced inoculation, but so do I have serious reservations about the lack of it. It's hard.
I don't disagree with anything you said. You sound quite reasonable and thoughtful. (So, what the hell are you doing on the internet?)
I don't see one reference to Oregon Trail anywhere. Surely that would be a modern age scenario if the game was made today
I might not have the vaccine, and neither might my kids.
- well that is YOUR problem, not a problem that government is supposed to be "fixing".
I suppose it is my problem if my next door neighbor hires a bunch of thugs to steal my car? What makes the latter a problem that the government is supposed to fix, and not the former?
strongly influenced by voluntary decisions by others to not vaccinate.
- it's their choice. It's their bodies.
How about abortions, do you want government to control who gets them and who doesn't, if they are legal at all or not?
Well, that's opening a can of worms, but I maintain that the government has the right to restrict the actions of those who cause harm to others. In this case we're talking about harm to an unborn child, so I'm fine with the government outlawing abortion except where the life of the mother is at stake (since in that case we're weighing life against life and not life against personal convenience).
On the other side of the fence, I'm also fine with the government outlawing conception without a license as well. That makes the issue of abortion fairly moot, since it is pretty unlikely that somebody who went to all the trouble to get permission to breed would then neglect the child they already so heavily invested in. Criteria for such a license is the subject of an entirely different debate, and I realize it is a can of worms. However, if you want to protect children you're generally better off regulating who becomes parents than trying to control what they do after the fact.
I might have the vaccine, and yet I can still get sick and die from the disease the vaccine is designed to protect against. Vaccines are not 100% effective, and they never will be.
- do you walk around with a helmet on? Because you know, something may fall on your head too. Somebody can run into you!
In this case, my choice of wearing a helmet only impacts my health, and not others. That makes them none of your concern. However, your choice to vaccinate or not DOES impact the health of others, which makes them my concern.
Your examples, I am not going to quote, I'll just say this about them: I do not want to live in a world where people are forced to do things to themselves. It's a freedom concept you are missing.
Most would disagree with you to some degree. I understand that there is a difference between forcing somebody to take a positive action like vaccination vs forcing somebody not to take a negative action like not killing their neighbors. However, the end results are the same in both cases, and the means are not unreasonable, so I think the end does justify the means in this case.
Now, in the perfect "libertarian" paradise we can then all go to court and sue each other
- you can't win a lawsuit against somebody just because they sneezed on you on a street.
All the more reason to just prevent the problem in the first place. The threat of civil lawsuit is not sufficient deterrent to cause behavior in the public interest.
I used libertarian in quotes up there as I don't really see this as a legitimate libertarian position.
- being a 'libertarian' implies having a position, as in a principle. I don't think you ever had them, people don't drop principles just because their circumstances change. It means you never understood what the hell you thought you were.
Where do I show conflicting principles in my argument? I haven't dropped any principles because of changing circumstances - my principles are just different from yours. I'd argue that my principles are fairly libertarian, and so would you, which just means we disagree on the definition of the word. That's OK, my principles say that you're welcome to be wrong in this case without any interference from me. :)
I suppose it is my problem if my next door neighbor hires a bunch of thugs to steal my car? What makes the latter a problem that the government is supposed to fix, and not the former?
- you are correct, this is also NOT a government problem. It is your problem.
Have you ever tried asking government to watch over you, what do you want, an armed guard? They can do it, it's called a jail cell.
Police can come afterwards and clean up the remains, whatever mess there is on the floor and the walls, but that's all. They can start an investigation, but the purpose of it is not to help you, the purpose is to get rid of the type of people who do not care about authority. What good is it to you, if you are dead?
If you need actual protection from thugs, that's your problem, you didn't know that? It's your problem, and you can deal with it, it's called private security.
so I'm fine with the government outlawing abortion except where the life of the mother is at stake
- so you are consistently into other people's business, that's at least something.
In this case, my choice of wearing a helmet only impacts my health, and not others. That makes them none of your concern. However, your choice to vaccinate or not DOES impact the health of others, which makes them my concern.
- that's your business to walk around with a helmet, but it's none of your business to force other people from walking around you without pillows strapped to them, or to prevent other people from driving where you are going, because you know, they can run you over.
However, the end results are the same in both cases, and the means are not unreasonable, so I think the end does justify the means in this case.
- the ends never justify the means, when the means are restriction to individual liberty to do with ONESELF as one sees fit. It's not about your health, it's about ability of person to control his own body.
All the more reason to just prevent the problem in the first place. The threat of civil lawsuit is not sufficient deterrent to cause behavior in the public interest.
- yeah, well, you are wrong on this completely.
The only interest that is of any consequence is that of an individual, preserving his freedom. There is no public interest that is above individual interest, not with a government threat of violence, that is. A personal choice of doing something for so called 'public interest' is just that - a personal choice.
--
And the last part - you don't have principles, if you had them, you wouldn't be changing them. What you change are not principles. You can have principles and change characteristics of it when you develop the principles further, but saying that you had principles and then you went away from them and changed them to something else, that is the point - you never had principles.
Principles are not a pair of socks.
You can't handle the truth.
People have gotten too used to finding conspiracy theories everywhere. Never attribute to malice what you can explain with stupidity. Most of the dumb stuff in the world happens because people have silly beliefs and make dumb decisions, not because there's a giant conspiracy.
Moron.
What do you think vaccines do?
They do exactly what you claim needs to be done. They stimulate the immune system with an 'irritant' so it builds up muscle against that 'irritant' -- making for a stronger immune system.
The way that you get a weak immune system is by not exposing to any foreign substances. so that it becomes a muscle that is never exercised and is worthless as you grow older.
Our culture's obsession with cleanliness and things being sterile and clean for baby is a two edged sword. Their immune systems need to be exposed to small amounts of pathogens in order to be stimulated to grow. Of course too much and their immune system is overwhelmed and they get sick. That's why vaccines were developed -- to give what is 99+% of the time, a safe dose of a pathogen (or a safe form of the pathogen). They are exactly what makes immune systems stronger.
Stick to the facts! No need to bring wild fantasy into this.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I fail to see anything here that accounts for the number of annual polio infections in the US going from 38,000 to 161 in 8 years in the 1950s where sanitation was never an issue. Every fact Hawden brings up as a possible explanation for the decline of infection is one that would have had no impact whatsoever on the US in this time period.
Oh wait...it couldn't have been the March of Dimes Polio Vaccination campaign that started the minute the vaccine came out in 1953 and was proven to be 70-94% effective depending on the particular strain now could it????
It's not difficult.
It's probably just as well that they died young ; they'd have suffered more at the hands of such stupid abusive parents if they'd lived longer.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Breastfeeding to age 2+ has been shown to reduce disease (WHO). Eating a great vegetable-heavy diet based mostly on vegetables, fruits, and beans has been shown to reduce disease (Dr. Joel Fuhrman). Getting enough sunlight or supplements to get vitamin D has been shown to reduce disease (Dr. John Cannell). Having a less stressed-out household, have all been shown to reduce disease (Dr. Andrew Weil). Exercise has been shown to reduce disease. Some of these have actually been shown to be more effective than immunization for some diseases (like vitamin D and the flu in some studies), Hardly any US American families do any of these things to a significant degree.
For an example of what I'm talking about, see:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/shop/ChildBookReviews.aspx
"Dr. Fuhrman has the solution for your frequently ill child. Backed up by a multitude of scientific studies, he explains how eating particular foods and how avoiding others can have a significant impact on your child's resistance to dangerous infections, their intelligence and success in school. For example, a change in dietary habits can have a dramatic effect on reducing the occurrences of illness like ear infections, asthma and allergies. The right foods introduced early in life can increase your child's IQ. Dr. Fuhrman presents the fascinating science which demonstrates that the current epidemic of adult cancers and other diseases are closely linked to what we eat. In the first quarter of our life, he explains that eating right in childhood is the most powerful weapon against the growing cancer epidemic. Also, he reveals how the seeds for future auto-immune diseases are sown in childhood, and how by eating right today, children can be healthy tomorrow."
So, are parents who do not maximize their children's and their own health not equally culpable? Or are parents who do not get their children to do such things even more evil, because while vaccines have demonstrable risks (and some questionably science behind some of them full of conflicts-of-interest), most of these more basic approaches to healthy living do not have significant associated risks (except maybe some forms of exercise) and all are based on fairly solid science.
Also, it seems sending a kid to school or sending a kid to a doctor's waiting room is one of the fastest ways to get a kid exposed to pathogens. That is something else to consider for those parents who choose to not to have personal physicians or who choose not to homeschool. Where is the moral outrage for parents who choose to send their children to schools and thus participate in spreading disease? Or where is the moral outrage for people who take unnecessary car trips (including to schools) and create traffic hazards? And so on, for all sorts of things people do that can create risks for others (including making the world a more depressing place by too much competition and greed).
The posts to this story frequently show an extreme moral outrage about parents who for whatever reason do the cost-benefit analysis and say a specific vaccination does not make sense for their child (as if parenting wasn't hard enough already involving many sacrifices and tough judgement calls). Yet, given the sad state of health for most people in the USA always getting colds and flus and so many being obese, the hypocrisy and ignorance in these posts is mind-boggling for anyone who knows something about how to ensure good health like through the above approaches. See, for more details:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823
I wish people posting here would apply even 10% of their moral outrage about vaccination to those who eat poorly or make risky lifestyle choices and thus become disease carriers. I'd suspect that outrage would apply to most people posting on slashdot (including most of the outraged people).
But I don't think we'll see th
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2782637&cid=39697029
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I'm sure the rest of the "I'll rely on others to protect my children" crowd enjoyed reading your posting.