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Gardasil Cleared of Anti-Vax Nonsense (slate.com)
New submitter Zane C. writes: A new study once again shows vaccines have no link with yet another batch of medical disorders. The vaccine in question is a relatively new HPV vaccine called Gardasil, mainly targeting preteens to reduce infection. Phil Plait has more on this, debunking anti-vax claims and explaining why you should receive the vaccine: "It’s another typical anti-vax call to arms due to a complete and gross misunderstanding of how reality works. To them, if something happens after something else, it was caused by that first thing. This is the classic post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy. But the Universe doesn’t work that way. And this kind of bad thinking has consequences. In the U.S. alone, 79 million people are infected with HPV. That’s more than a quarter of the entire population. Fourteen million new cases crop up every year. Gardasil can substantially cut those numbers back—it’s working, and working well, in the U.S. and Australia—but not if the fearmongering falsehoods by anti-vaxxers get traction."
I loved working on my VAX systems - a great little healthcare OS.
If you take a former playmate's advice on vaccinations, maybe the herd could do without you.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
That's the big excuse of the anti-vaxxers. That's why they fearmonger us into buying their vaccines. They need our money and they want to get rich off us. No vax for me!
Instead, let's all buy bleach at a few hundred bucks a gallon from an ex-scientology member. He sure ain't in it just for the money!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Let's also not forget that HPV causes a number of different cancers - cervical, penile, throat, etc. This vaccine dramatically reduces your chances of HPV-caused cancer. The press most often focuses on cervical cancer when they talk about it, which is why the vaccine has been more targeted to women, but boys and men also get a direct benefit, as well as all the indirect benefits through herd immunity.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
I'm glad it got cleared because this one vaccine might cut cancer rates in our children and their children by an enormous rate.
Gardasil is made by Merck Sharp & Dohme.
Cervarix is made by GlaxoSmithKlein.
Submissions like this just make those who support vaccines and vaccinations look like total kooks! This submission has the same "holier than thou" attitude that we see from those who push the Rust programming language or those who support systemd
Because people who rant about systemd in response to stories about HPV vaccine don't, even slightly, look like kooks.
What's the Japanese rate of HPV?
Why did they ban it?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Note this up front: Vaccines are good for you. I have zero problems with vaccination as it is beneficial to humanity individually and overall.
Now - about this article: Way the hell too much sensationalism, too much flamebait imputed, and IMHO way too much of this attitude: '...this study is right so I am right and therefore fuck you! Get right with us or else you are not worthy of life you troglodyte!' Seriously... is this what Salon has fallen to? Well, okay, I know they've always been a bit partisan (okay, quite partisan), but TFA and summary alike are indicative of what's wrong these days - too much sturm un drang, not enough persuasion.
Interestingly enough, Slate leans a bit to the left... and most anti-vaxxers lean very much to the left, so why was the bile necessary? You'd think that instead of turning it into a contest that hardens opinions (on both sides), that they'd try to at least be a little persuasive about it. ...or has science degraded into an echo-chamber shouting match these days?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
This is part of the problem.
Big pharma are greedy, lying bastards who would climb over us to make a buck and not think twice.
The anti-vaxxers are a bunch of loonies who can't look at scientific evidence or recognize the initial claims were fabrications by a discredited scientist.
Both of them aren't trustworthy entities ... one lies about its science and the other doesn't understand it.
I fear as long as we can still point to how the pharmacy companies have lied or manipulated their findings, people will be willing to believe they're just evil corporations out to make a buck. But then you just let a bunch of drooling idiots take over the conversation.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Believing that a vaccine is by nature safe. This article makes it out like it's ridiculous to believe that a vaccine could have serious negative side effects. It's not; being a vaccine doesn't make anything safe. Yes, the data show that Gardasil isn't the cause of the various things some suspected of it. But that wasn't a foregone conclusion.
Does Japan have any additional evidence that they feel invalidates TFA or did they ban it because of crying mom and her parents association? All articles say "amid health concerns", which sounds like a herd mentality reaction to unsubstantiated data. This article suggests they are conducting their own study (http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/06/15/national/cervix-vaccine-issues-trigger-health-notice/#.VpPyhd-rQUE), which may or may not match the finding of TFA.
It is good that people are conducting their own research, and would be noteworthy if their research produced conflicting results. But it is the wrong conclusion to assume that because Japan's government has done something, that it was a data driven decision produced by anything like a proper scientific study. Note the crying mom in the article I linked... that is more effective at policy setting than boring numbers.
To be clear, it is overly expensive - and most of the cost is profit. The company could recover the cost to research it and manufacture it within one year, if it cost just 1/5 the current price. But that excludes the money they spent on many other drugs that failed to make a profit. Most drugs they research fail to ever become profitable - success rates vary between 5 and 15%.
As such, a profit ratio of 5:1 is not unreasonable. It is a little bit on the greedy side, but no where near as much as the anti-vaxer 100% profit, 0% research and 0% results offer.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
In all the hoopla about Women's rights, remember, this stuff hits MEN too. If you have a lump in your throat, you might wish your girlfriend had that vaccine.
Call them what they really are: Hosts.
Which one can honestly say they've saved billions of lives?
This was my problem with Evil Pharma types going back to before Hillary talked about their "unconscionable profits".
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
What's the Japanese rate of HPV?
Human Papillomavirus and Related Diseases Report
"Japan has a population of 57.12 million women aged 15 years and older who are at risk of developing cervical cancer. Current estimates indicate that every year 9390 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer and 3645 die from the disease. Cervical cancer in Japan ranks as the 10th most frequent cancer among women and the 2nd most frequent cancer among women between 15 and 44 years of age. Based on Japan studies performing HPV detection tests in cervical samples, about 1.9% of women in the general population are estimated to harbour cervical HPV-16/18 infection at a given time, and 52.1% of invasive cervical cancers are attributed to HPVs 16 or 18."
Why did they ban it?
Cervix Vaccine Issues Trigger Health Notice
"The panel focused on 38 cervical vaccine recipients who reported widespread pain. Given the timing of their symptoms, the panel concluded that a causal link to the vaccines could not be ruled out in many of the cases.
There were 245.1 reports of side effects per million vaccinations for Cervarix, and 155.7 reports per million for Gardasil — more than two other, separate vaccines that affect both sexes and were added to the regular list at around the same time.
Reports of side effects from the other two medicines came to 89.1 per million for a set of pneumococcus vaccines and 67.4 per million for Japanese encephalitis vaccines."
As somebody who wholly supports vaccines and vaccinations, I absolutely hate it when I see really shitty submissions like this one. It doesn't even attempt to present something resembling an objective view of the situation. It's extraordinarily biased and sensationalist, with childish name-calling like "anti-vaxxer", and self-righteous babble like "fearmongering falsehoods".
Indeed. There are many different reasons for why someone might be against vaccinations, and TFA is largely strawman argumentation, with a dash of ad hominem. This is no better than "the classic post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy" he argues about.
Argue against views as they are presented; don't ascribe people views and then knock those views down, calling people names in the process.
For what it's worth, I am against vaccination precisely because vaccines are effective and have negligible side effects.
I believe that the "all lives are sacred" thinking is religious based, and not supported by science. A certain amount of predatory culling leads to fewer regressive genes being propagated, which I believe is good for the species long term. And as long as who gets a vaccine and who doesn't is largely based on what society you grow up in, vaccination seems to me to be a form of eugenics, where the rich get to decide who gets to live and who doesn't. I don't like the taste of that at all.
If we lose 10% of all children to external causes, I think it would be better for humanity. We can easily compensate for that. But the key point is that it should be external causes, not controlled by human bias. Whatever the causes are, be it wolves or measles does not matter as much as there is an external culling.
so avoiding vaccines is the safe call! Take your science and shove it!
Not having sex with someone you don't know is clean is the safe call, but hey fuck all that nonsense. Take your root cause analysis and shove it!
Is my grand ma criminal for having her computer infected and possibly infecting other?
I think so, yes.
Ignorance should not be a defence against liability. If anything, I think it should be considered an aggravation of crime, not a mitigation.
Has Joe_Dragon started giving English lessons?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If we lose 10% of all children to external causes, I think it would be better for humanity.
I'm guessing you either a) don't have children, or b) assume that it will be other people's kids who die, because yours are richer and/or genetically superior.
Big pharma lobbied for legal immunity against any vaccine damage claims decades ago. Claiming they don't have time to fight lawsuits since they are too busy "saving the world". I'll start using vaccines when they are able to actually take responsibilities of their own products.
If it's NPOV you're after, Thickypedia is over there somewhere --->
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Vaccines are not 100% effective. There are some people who do not develop the proper immunity even after taking a vaccine. There are also people who are allergic to vaccines. These people benefit from the herd immunity. There are also children not in a position to make the decision for themselves.
So yeah in a black and white world where the only people effected by negative consequences were adults who made bad choices, then the system you talk about would be more viable.
And as far as I know nobody is forcing anyone (even kids) to be vaccinated. The only measures I've heard being proposed is removing the personal belief exemption for allowing unvaccinated kids from attending public schools (while keeping the medical exemption), and forcing healthcare workers who don't want to get flu shots to wear masks. I have never heard of a mentally competent adult literally being forced to get a medical procedure they didn't want.
And while it's true that modern medicine is not perfect, comparing the knowledge of modern medicine to the knowledge of the people in the anti-vax community is like comparing modern chemists to alchemists of the middle ages.
I think a healthy skepticism of "expert opinions" is a good thing, but this skepticism in the anti-vax community is gone well into unhealthy territory.
The unvaccinated give pathogens a possible place to mutate into something that the existing vaccine does not protect against.
Can the "other people" just can vaccinated?
No vaccine is 100% effective, and some vaccines are far less than perfectly effective. The primary benefit of vaccines is not individual immunity, but herd immunity, that prevents a disease from spreading through a population.
Is my grand ma criminal for having her computer infected and possibly infecting other?
If her negligence is harming others, then she should be held liable.
If antivaxxers paid heed to evidence or thought critically there wouldn't be an antivax movement. They'll probably go a bit quiet about gardasil for a bit and start harping on about mercury or something else. Then that claim will be debunked (again) and they'll move onto something else ad nauseum. It's like whack-a-mole but with idiots. Most denialist causes employ remarkably similar tactics to deal with evidence to the contrary - cherry picking, straw men, quote mining, compiling lists of "experts", pseudoscience and so on.
Not always. Sometimes due to age (both directions) and sometimes personal health issues (allergies or auto-immune disorders). This is especially problematic in pediatricians offices, and there are many which forbid non-immunized people from waiting in the same area as regular patients.
"... In the U.S. alone, 79 million people are infected with HPV. That’s more than a quarter of the entire population. Fourteen million new cases crop up every year. Gardasil can substantially cut those numbers back—it’s working, and working well, in the U.S. and Australia—but not if the fearmongering falsehoods by anti-vaxxers get traction."
Isn't it odd that we'll do everything we can to focus on the vaccination and those who might be affecting that profit stream, all while ignoring the root cause and ever-growing infection rate.
Yeah, there's a fucking herd of elephants standing in the room, but they're making us a shitload of money, so...
I question the 79 million people being infected. Per the CDC site, in the summary:
How do I know if I have HPV?
There is no test to find out a person’s “HPV status.” Also, there is no approved HPV test to find HPV in the mouth or throat.
So if there is no way to know if someone has HPV, then how the fuck can there be a count of the people with HPV.?
Maryland State Motto: If you can dream it, we can tax it.
What's an "ascid"? Fluoride (not flooride) has really cut the amount of tooth decay, especially in kids (around a 35% cut in fluoridated water) It's only at 0.7 to 1.2 parts per million, which is probably millions of times less than you used to etch glass. You could also use hexafluorosilicic or hydrofluoric acid.
To them, if something happens after something else, it was caused by that first thing. This is the classic post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy.
.
Sounds like computer IT support. "My computer was working fine until YOU did (whatever)"
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
In the case of pertussis ("whooping cough"), infants cannot be vaccinated until they are four months old and the disease is most dangerous to infants.
We had an outbreak in my home town of pertussis at a private Christian school. Thankfully no infants died in that case.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Side effects in 0.0245% in recipients seems more than acceptable, and a very good way to reduce (roughly) 4500 cases of cervical cancer PER YEAR.
Somebody, probably many somebodies, are idiots in Japan.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Oh geez! How could I mistake GlaxoSharpDohme with MerckKleinSmith? Two totally different animals! Thanks for straightening me out!
Who knows why they banned it? Don't they know they can trust GlaxoSmithKlineMerckSmithDohme(tm) to provide safe vaccines? It is settled science, baby!
Better safe than sorry, so don't eat chicken sandwiches on a Tuesday. You can't prove conclusively to me that eating chicken sandwiches on a Tuesday won't give your family cancer!
Why look at me, I never eat chicken sandwiches on a Tuesday, and I don't have cancer. I think.
I'm guessing you either a) don't have children, or b) assume that it will be other people's kids who die, because yours are richer and/or genetically superior.
Good guesses, but false. If you had understood what I wrote, you would see that "because yours are richer" must be false, because I argued specifically against tribal factors like who's richer.
What it boils down to is that I don't see life as sacred. Deaths can be tough on a personal level, but I like to think that as a species, we are slowly moving away from basing our actions on base feelings or religious bias, and more based on rational thought. If a child of mine dies, I will of course be very sad. But if it means that future children will be healthier, smarter or more adaptable because of the culling, that is a reason to rejoice for humanity, which in my opinion should trump the personal grief
I agree. It is better to continue the sale of the drug, rather than trying to gather information on what is causing the side effects. After all, why stop the flow of cash to GlaxoSmithKlineFrenchDohme(tm)? If they say it is safe, it is safe.
there are a lot of people who are unable (for various medical reasons) to get certain vaccinations or whom otherwise are not completely protected by vaccinces, their only protection from certain terrible diseases is via herd immunity. Those people don't believe your pseudo-intellectual nonsense, but they are still affected by it if you choose not to vaccinate yourself and your kids.
If anti-vaxxers were only hurting themselves then I'd have less objection to it, as refusing to take simple steps to protect yourself from horrible diseases is clearly a trait that we should remove from the gene pool via natural selection.
And he also lied about the Japanese 'banning' the vaccine:
http://www.skepticalraptor.com...
All the Japanese Health Ministry did was note the generalized-pain side effect reported by 180 women out of the 8.9M Japanese women who have taken - and are still taking - the vaccine.
Your sarcasm seems to want to kill thousands per year so that someone else doesn't get a bit richer.
You're a fucking asshole.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I agree. They should have just trusted GlaxoSmithKlineBeechamDohme's studies which say the drug is safe. After all, "health concerns" aren't important. People are just being a bunch of crybabies. They should take their drugs and shut up.
Even if a person can receive it, no vaccine guarantees 100% immunity since diseases come in various strains which the vaccine might not offer total protection against .
So no is the answer. Diseases can and do spread because idiots refuse to vaccinate themselves and their kids.
Looking at Phil Plait's original article, I see nothing over-the-top about it. If there is any single political stand that Slashdotters should be taking as a community, it should be to defend science and its applications. That's the one thing we have in common as nerds. This means calling out kooks and shaming them as idiots.
That quote doesn't say anything about the infection rate growing. It just says that 79 million people are infected, and that the infection rate is 14 million per year. In order to show that infections are growing, you have to show that the number of infected people or rate of infection per capita is going up over time.
Yah, that sounds like a great idea. Spend lots of money to vaccinate everyone to save 4000 people from dying in the United States from a problem they could have saved themselves by curbing their own actions. That is why healthcare is so expensive.
No, they also suspended the vaccine from the regular schedule of vaccinations and stopped recommending it while it is under investigation. Why are you lying? Personally I think the vaccines are safe, but for people to trust the pharmaceutical companies is ridiculous. This "story" and your link look like they were written by the SmithKlineBeechamGaxo(tm) marketing department.
"My friend has throat cancer from HPV. He is straight, single , and a nice guy."
And if he's straight, then he got this cancer specifically from being nice to women. Hippie mothers of the anti-vax community, you need to think about that.
You are right. Just take your drugs and shut up like a good boy.
Considering there is no screening test for HPV for people with penises, how would you propose someone considering having sex with such a person ensure they're not carrying any strain of HPV?
Don't worry. The drug companies provided the estimates. You can trust them. If they say we have HPV and they can cure it for only $140 a dose, why wouldn't you do it? You don't want to die do you?
Classy. You seem to be off your meds. I am sure GlaxoSmithKlineBeecham(tm) can help you with your problem.
You are right. It makes a big difference that Merck Sharp and Dohme and GlaxoSmithKline make different versions of the HPV vaccine. Both of with have the same issues and both of which are not recommended for use in Japan. Thanks for the tip!
You seem to be under the misunderstanding that pharmaceutical companies are driven by science. That must be why they hire beautiful women to sell their drugs. They are all scientists.
Says the guy who, when science shows that the vaccine works, rants on about big $ for pharma without giving a shit about 50% deaths.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
"Someone else" would probably be infants, the very elderly, and the immunocompromised.
No, at least not all of them.
Some people are immuno-comprimised. This would be people like infants, the elderly, children with diseases like leukaemia, adults undergoing cancer treatment, or people who have received life saving organ transplants and must take drugs that suppress their immune systems (for the rest of their lives). These people's lives depend on the rest of us doing the right thing and getting vaccinated so deadly diseases cannot take hold in the population and then find a path to the chronically ill.
I just think that it is amazing that we have developed a vaccine that can prevent a type of cancer! It's really unclear how many lives can be saved by gardisil because cervical cancer is kind of a secondary effect of long term HPV infection, but just think about it. In the future, what other cancers be preventable with a few shots in childhood? Prevention is such a better option than treatment. Both of my children have been vaccinated against HPV (male and female). We have a chance to strike a blow against a troublesome disease, HPV, and a secondary deadly disease, cervical cancer. This is truly like the fight against polio, or mercury exposure. It can make a much better life for future generations.
Yeah, how can you be for 50% deaths? Derp...time to take your meds, dude.
And as far as I know nobody is forcing anyone (even kids) to be vaccinated.
31 states do indeed force children to be vaccinated, not having an exemption for philosophical reasons.
I don't know of anything - not just any vaccine, any thing that's ever existed in the universe - that is "accepted as 100% effective with zero side effects". That seems to be a high enough bar to be, er, perhaps obstructionist. To be honest, I wonder what your objection might be once this technique gets commercialized.
My wife and are teaching our children about how things work and what contraceptive options are available, emphasizing the effectiveness of each method, and the potential risks and benefits of sex, before and within marriage. And they either have received or will receive Gardasil, too. For much the same reason we have them wear seatbelts.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Gardasil is not banned; the just stopped recommending that girls take it, but because international studies have failed to prove any connection between generalized pain and Gardasil, the Japanese are taking it anyway.
argumentum ad monsantium all you like, but the safety is proven.
...but we still have seatbelts and crumple zones in cars.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
The other people might be too young to be vaccinated or have medical conditions precluding vaccination. Alternatively, they might have been vaccinated, but it didn't "take" (vaccinations aren't 100% - close, but not perfect). In those cases, the vulnerable rely on herd immunity. When people first started not vaccinating, herd immunity was able to take it but we're getting to the point, in some areas, where herd immunity is breaking down. All because some parents decided that a celebrity known for posing naked must give better medical advice than a group of doctors.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Thank you for this informative, well-reasoned and insightful comment.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
Actually, vaccines don't pull in big money for pharmaceutical companies. That's one reason why the vaccine court was formed. If pharmaceutical companies needed to face normal lawsuits (both real and baseless) over vaccines in the regular court system, they would lose money and stop making vaccines. Not because the vaccines aren't safe, mind you, but because lawsuits cost so much to defend against and vaccines bring in so little money.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Those people, and the anti-vaxxer community at large, should group up and pay for a study from someplace they feel isn't co-opted, who knows how to produce an honest result, and see what happens, rather than simply spouting their unsubstantiated nonsense and possibly slandering a company.
There's no question about GlaxoSmithKline's significant profit motive, but a profit motive does not necessarily create a crime. If a third party could show the drug is dangerous, that is best. Someone is either doing their job poorly, or outright lying.
More propaganda spread by the pharmaceutical companies.
I suggest you stop eating and breathing as well. That will make the rest of us much, much safer.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
condoms don't protect against HPV. abstinence or vaccines really are the only way to avoid it.
One (of many) problems with your thesis: the diseases we vaccinate against are not 100% fatal, or even more than 50%, so there isn't that much 'culling'.
It doesn't have to be highly fatal, and it's good if it isn't. It's the cumulative effect of culling that removes a higher proportion of those overall less healthy than their contemporaries, even if the effect for any given disease is small.
Mumps, measles, rubella, tuberculosis, smallpox - they all add up.
I'd be all for vaccination if combined with sterilization. Otherwise, it leads to eradication not only of diseases, but skews the genetic variation towards a less healthy future population.
In a way, there may be a link between vaccination and diseases like allergies, but not the one the "anti-vaxers" and "anti-anti-vaxers" think of. The effect is secondary, not primary, and affects the next generation.
Is it feasible that children with allergies would have a higher lethality rate for, say, tuberculosis or pertussis, than children without allergies? And is it feasible that at least some (>0) susceptibility to allergies is genetic in nature? If so, by vaccinating against these diseases, the ratio of people with allergies will increase in the next generation.
Nice side-fact: Driving to the doctor for any reason has death as a possible side-effect. The question is always about the probabilities and 95% or so of the population is not able to estimate them. If the start do to amateur medical statistics, chances are they will do much more harm than good.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The root cause is people having sex. If you think you can stop that, then you are utterly retarded.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
yes.
Why do so many people keep insisting this isn't true?
I believe that the "all lives are sacred" thinking is religious based, and not supported by science. A certain amount of predatory culling leads to fewer regressive genes being propagated, which I believe is good for the species long term. And as long as who gets a vaccine and who doesn't is largely based on what society you grow up in, vaccination seems to me to be a form of eugenics, where the rich get to decide who gets to live and who doesn't. I don't like the taste of that at all.
Wow, you really don't understand evolution at all, do you?
Things like vaccines, insulin, or even eyeglasses or handwashing are beneficial evolutionary adaptations. These are precisely the things that have made our species more successful than our competitors. Caring for our sick and infirm is an adaptation that has made us more successful than our competitors. Cooperation has made us more successful than our competitors, although we are not unique in that trait. Civilization (and the wealth that accompanies it), far from being a form of eugenics, is a beneficial evolutionary adaptation. The list goes on.
Where do you draw the line? What health care do we deny people to ensure that a proper "culling" takes place? Do we not do C-sections? Do we not set broken bones? Do we not rescue drowning people? Seems to me that it smack much more of eugenics to forbid medical treatments because they prevent "culling".
YES IT IS BETTER TO KEEP SELLING THE DRUG THAT WILL LITERALLY SAVE THOUSANDS OF LIVES PER YEAR.
did you read the post you replied to? 3645 women DIE EVERY YEAR FROM CERVICAL CANCER.
The vaccine prevents most HPV infections, which prevents most cases of cervical cancer. If every person got the vaccine, it would prevent thousands of deaths per year. (projecting forward twenty or thirty years when the 11-year old girls receiving the vaccine are at the age where they would start succumbing to and dying from cervical cancer.)
so yes, they should keep giving the vaccine out while they investigate it. because a few hundred reports of pain are trivial when compared to thousands of deaths.
Ah, but here you aren't considering where you got your numbers. For the sake of argument, let's use your risk levels. If whooping cough kills 1 in a million people now (with a vaccinated population), that bears almost no relation to what the risk is in an unvaccinated population. Nobody is worried about a hypothetical infection that kills 1 in a million people infected. If people stopped vaccinating for whooping cough because almost nobody dies from whooping cough (because almost nobody gets it in the first place, because they got the vaccine), then a lot of people are going to start dying from it.
For diseases where we either can't or haven't eradicated them, we need to keep vaccination rates up so that they don't come back. Theoretically, we could balance rates so that risk of disease is equal to risk of vaccine, but practically speaking that's not an option. Furthermore, a lot of viral infections have other long-lasting side effects that the vaccine doesn't have, so just looking at fatality rates isn't always the best way to assess risk.
Essentially, when you say "nobody is doing the complete risk analysis to see if paying Big Pharma is worth the money being poured into Vaccines", you're wrong. If we took your very basic analysis and made policy from it, we'd stop vaccinating, because it's twice as safe! And then whooping cough comes back, and it turns out that no, the vaccine is still safer. The population-level risk analysis is a lot more complicated than you're making it out to be.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
How are you going to know someone is clean unless you do a blood test, a lot of people carry the viruses without having hat any outbreaks. HPV is commonly considered a sexually transmitted disease but;
some research indicates abstinence isn't a slam-dunk for prevention.
When you come back around and rant about how "Big Pharma" is suppressing a cancer cure or vaccine, all
I'm going to hear is "Blah blah blah" because we have a cancer vaccine and the same whackos will not let their kids have it.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Not $1B in profits - unless you're talking about spreading that over a decade or more. Vaccine trials are expensive to run, and vaccines themselves are relatively expensive to make (rightly so, for injectables). They tend to be guaranteed volume on a vaccine, but they really don't make much money off of them, especially compared to other drugs they could spend the money on.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
Apparently there is no test for the general public since the FDA has not approved any of the existing various tests due to them not being suitable for mass screening. The 79 million figure is probably extrapolated from the tests that have been done and then adding in the infection rate of the virus (60% of men who lived with a woman with HPV was also infected). When testing on men from the Mexican army the found HPV on 37% of the men.
Actually, the CDC provided the estimates. While the CDC is correct in that there's no one test for HPV status, you can test specific tissues for the virus - generally this is done via a pap smear. The estimates for overall population are partially based on extrapolating from pap smear results.
Furthermore, they aren't claiming they can cure it, just prevent most of the HPV strains that cause cancer.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
I question the 79 million people being infected. Per the CDC site, in the summary:
How do I know if I have HPV? There is no test to find out a person’s “HPV status.” Also, there is no approved HPV test to find HPV in the mouth or throat.
So if there is no way to know if someone has HPV, then how the fuck can there be a count of the people with HPV.?
You can run a test on a pap smear. You can't tell if a *person* has HPV, only if the tissue you run the sample on does - it can be quite a local infection. A clean pap smear doesn't mean their whole body is clear, for instance. That's one reason why there's no test for men yet. The 79 million people number is primarily based on pap smear results and extrapolated to the general population, so it's unclear how good of an estimate it is.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
it's a forward-thinking statement. he means that if we get our kids vaccinated today, in 20 or 30 years, many less of them will be dying from cervical cancer.
Okay, lets stop for just a second.
1) You're comparing death rates for those that catch (and report) Whooping Cough (relatively small numbers) to wide scale Vaccines immunizations. These skew the statistics, since very few people actually catch/report Whopping cough. If you spread that out to the MILLIONS of people who don't get it, have already gotten it, or otherwise, the numbers become relatively similar
2) Excluding the children Ineligible to get the Vaccine, which account for the most deaths, you're looking at even larger numbers. Young babies are the highest risk, riskier than ALL OTHER cases combined.
3) In the United States in 2012 there were over 41,000 reported cases.
4) There were 18 reported deaths.
If there is a 1:1,000,000 chance of death by vaccine, the vaccine will kill more than 18 deaths. That is proper RISK assessment. And you're saying that is a fair tradeoff. I'm saying we need to look at it more closely.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
There are no reported deaths from the vaccine. Zero risk of death from the vaccine.
Zero. None. Nada.
No risk of death.
No one has died.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Nurse Ratched: "If Mr. McMurphy doesn't want to take his medication orally, I'm sure we can arrange that he can have it some other way. But I don't think that he would like it."
Okay so McMurphy wasn't competent, but I have heard of Hunger-strikers having a Levine tube shoved down their nose for tube feeding (it pretty much feels like getting punched in the face too); but I'm not sure what country it happened in. I will say that anybody who has had the old rubber hose down the nose three or four times and still isn't eating is really dedicated. The nose is innervated by the Trigeminal nerve which when agitated transmits some exquisit pain.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Whooping Cough outbreaks in vaccinated populations exist. Including deaths of previously vaccinated children. The problem is, we don't know the comparative advantages (if any) in vaccinated population. There are no double blind widespread testing to verify anything.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Enough with this dead horse. We all know big pharma is an evil industry primarily driven by obscene profits just like insurance. Meanwhile, each of these industries do actually dispense as a side effect, on a regular basis, lifesaving medicine and paid insurance claims. Despite what you think, the drugs are indeed developed by scientists, using science. The fact that these companies have unconscionable practices in pricing, management, testing and marketing does not automatically undo this and make all of their drugs voodoo sugar pills, it just makes the company in general a big bag of dicks. Using the former to argue the latter is just bad logic. I'm not defending pharma, but I'll be damned if I am going to sit here and let you take a crap on logic.
You get vaccinated. You don't get the disease. You don't die.
Is that so hard to understand?
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
...but we still have seatbelts and crumple zones in cars.
Does the population around you have a hard time keeping their genitals from crashing into each other accidentally?
I've heard some weak-ass excuses for infidelity before, and I know we've got a passion here for car analogies, but seriously...
The root cause is people having sex. If you think you can stop that, then you are utterly retarded.
The root cause of all STDs is people having unprotected sex. If you think we can't apply some of the same exact tactics to help control it, then you are utterly retarded.
The problem is, NOBODY is doing the complete risk analysis to see if paying Big Pharma is worth the money being poured into Vaccines.
That is totally wrong. People don't start vaccination programs on a whim. The law is very strict on the number and type of medical studies that must be done to allow medicines and vaccines can be sold, and even more to prove their effectiveness , safety, and cost-effectiveness before large scale vaccination programs are implemented.
How many times have you laughed at some scientific study because it seems to be attempting to prove what we already "know"? That is because science does check and recheck everything. They do studies and meta-studies all the time to do risk analyses on drugs to ensure that they do more good than harm. Similarly, the bean counters in government are always looking for ways to reduce medical expenses. There is a constant struggle between what is medically necessary and what is affordable. Accountants don't care if you live or die, as long as you take the cheaper option.
If you seriously think that both medical professionals and accountants would allow a vaccination program that killed double the number of people that they saved then you are misguided and naive. And to spout such erroneous and uneducated claims here is dangerously misleading.
Damn, fellow Slashdotters, the forced-vaccination fundamentalist shills are out in force today! The big money elite are pushing this forced-vax stuff HARD. Darned good propaganda operation, too. I bet at least 60% of posters who parrot the standard forced-fax talking points aren't even on the payroll!
As another posted said, the vehemence and even threatened-violence with which this agenda is being pushed is itself suspicious. It's a good hint - tho I'm sure a useful idiot will point out, not proof - that some of these vaccines have way more undesirable effects than is being disclosed.
90+ MILLION people were infected with Saulk vaccine that had CANCER virus in it. Me included!!! There were thousands of men vaccinated with Hemophilia vaccine in the 70's, remember what happened in the 80's - HIV, AIDS!!!
Is it the police or National Guard who come around and hold the children down for vaccination? If neither, then they aren't forcing children to be vaccinated. They're just adopting some prudent safety measures for being around other children.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Vaccinations do not confer perfect immunity. We have ways of making reasonable guesses as to how many people die at certain levels of vaccination, and for pretty much all vaccines we find that they save lots of lives.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
For instance you can not enroll a child in public school without immunizations records. Looks like home school only for your kids.
Of course your child in this hypothetical scenario probably didnt want to die and because you chose to not inoculate them from the disease they died from you indirectly killed them.
Honestly, you just sound like a psychopath to me. In your own words the big negative for some one dieing is other people feeling bad? No thought for the actual person who died, huh? The chief negative of a person dieing, particularly when it's not from old age, for a normal person is that the dead person can not go on living.
Hitler, as part of his ethnic cleansing, rounded up the mentally disabled and killed them in mass with the exact same idea in mind. While what you're advocating for is not as direct in method, purposely witholding something from the population that will save large numbers of people from dieing is pretty damn similiar.
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If you are talking about "kids being forced to get a vaccination as a per-requisite of attending public schools", then that's exactly what I said. If you are talking about "home schooled kids being forced to get vaccinated under penalty of their parents being fined or jailed", please provide a citation.
Wow, you really don't understand evolution at all, do you?
Things like vaccines, insulin, or even eyeglasses or handwashing are beneficial evolutionary adaptations,
How are they inherited?
Learned behavior is not evolution. An adopted son is going to pick up exactly as much learned behavior as a biological son. The biological son has no evolutionary advantage over the adopted son on that account.
Over time, evolution may reward specimens who can better adapt to things like handwashing, insulin and eyeglasses. But for mutations to occur where there is a statistically significant advantage is unlikely to occur within a single or a few generations.
Unless you subscribe to theories like "natural cooperation" and Lamarckism, where evolution has a direction and repeated acttions lead to genetic changes? Those beliefs have been discredited a long time ago.
They take a cell sample, a biopsy of the cancerous cells or a pap smear and test for the viral DNA, not finding the HPV DNA doesn't mean you don't have HPV, it just means it wasn't in the sample, finding the DNA means you do
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
In your own words the big negative for some one dieing is other people feeling bad?
Well, yes - the people who are dead feel nothing. Only those who remain can feel loss and grief.
That's pretty much the definition of dead. They feel exactly the same as they did before they were born. No more, no less.
Hitler, as part of his ethnic cleansing, rounded up the mentally disabled and killed them in mass with the exact same idea in mind. While what you're advocating for is not as direct in method, purposely witholding something from the population that will save large numbers of people from dieing is pretty damn similiar.
If you had bothered to read what I wrote, you would have seen that I'm against eugenics. Both negative and positive eugenics. Controlling who gets to live instead of die is the flip side of the coin of deciding who gets to die instead of live, and both are equally abhorrent to me. But perhaps you find it perfectly fine to save rich white kids while poor black ones die for lack of medical care?
And defining 'healthier' is pretty tough too. I think that people like you who score low on the empathy scale are very unhealthy. But don't worry, I won't advocate that you should be 'culled'.
You don't seem to understand the term "external culling".
If you have external factors that cause death rates high enough that it has a statistically significant impact, but not higher than reproductive rates can compensate for, it's culling. Predation keeps herds healthy, as it overall removes the least healthy without them competing for resources.
Manipulating the game of life is not culling. Murder is not culling. If you decide who gets a better chance of survival, or who can die because they're not like you and yours, it's called eugenics.
It's the choice that makes all the difference - whether you choose to kill someone or save someone.
Also: Immunizations are not effective in 100% of those immunized.
If enough of the "herd" are immunized so the exponential function of infection is quickly decaying rather than growing, outbreaks are tiny and peter out very rapidly. So individuals are protected by the immunization program even if their personal immunization failed. If enough have failed immunizations or refuse for the exponential to be growing, those whose immunization failed are S.O.L. - and if the refusnicks are the reason for the k > 1 situation, it can be argued that, in an outbreak that becomes large, they're responsible for the illnesses of those whose immunization failed or who couldn't be immunized.
(What matters for the outbreak is not the percentage unimmunized - through failure or refusal - but just the absolute number of susceptible individuals and the degree of contact between them. Those who are successfully immunized are just scenery, not players.)
(Note "immunization" rather than "vaccination" in the above text. The former is the general case and the latter a particular subclass of it. The herd immunity argument applies to all types of immunizations for communicable diseases.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The only measures I've heard being proposed is removing the personal belief exemption for allowing unvaccinated kids from attending public schools (while keeping the medical exemption), and forcing healthcare workers who don't want to get flu shots to wear masks.
I understand that many healthcare operations consider some immunizations a condition of employment for workers in contact with patients. Certain workers who refused immunizations would be subject to reassignment, demotion, and/or termination.
Not only would they be putting the patients at risk of disease - they'd be putting the institution and its officials and personnel at risk of lawsuits.
(On the other hand - someone who has recently had a live-virus vaccination must be kept separate from immune compromised patients until their own immune systems have cleared them of the virus.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If you provide a host population for a virus it will mutate over time. It could mutate around the vaccine the others have taken and become generally infectious again.
Or mutate to jump a "species barrier" or other population immunity difference. (For instance: In principle measles might mutate to become able to infect some host other than humans. This would then provide both an additional host pool and strong selection pressure for further mutations, which in turn might change it enough that the current human immunizations are no longer effective.)
Sort of like some African animal (current guess - bats) serving as a reservoir for Ebola, which occasionally jumps to primates and humans.
Or like Microsoft software providing a malware agar big enough to generate a multibillion dollar criminal industry, which developed lucrative infrastructure and software payloads, the bulk of which payloads could then be ported to other operating systems once an exploit was found allowing an infection head to be generated for the new target.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
not news for nerds.. ... DHI get a clue
My nerd credentials are impeccable. I say this is "news for nerds" and "stuff that matters".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You're not really getting my point with people dying which sort of reinforces my point. Those people who are dying in their dying moments almost always don't want to die. What's sad is not sad people, what's sad is people not existing anymore. What's tragic is not that someone feels sorry their child died, it's that the child is dead.
Furthermore, what you're describing is eugenics. The "weak" die and not because they are "weak" but because they are denied something that will save their lives. Just because you arent advocating going out and directly killing the "weak" doesnt mean it isnt eugenics. Finally, your attempt to turn this into a race issue (which is pathetic) is only relevant in the US as far as first world nations go as we're the only nation dumb enough not to embrace more cost effective socialized medicine. As far as third world nations go, many get the most important inoculations for free via funding from first world nations. Polio didnt almost entirely get rid of itself planet wide.
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The question isn't whether government scientists are right or wrong about any particular vaccine, it is whether the government should have the right to force people to inject stuff into their bodies.
Private schools can make that argument and require vaccinations to their hearts' content. Public schools, however, are bound by limits on governmental powers; for example, they can't advocate particular religions, and likewise, they shouldn't be able to impose vaccinations. A compromise would be to move to a voucher system that allows kids who don't want to attend public schools to use the money to pay for private schools, but that is something progressives and their public sector union lobbyists are fighting tooth and nail.
"Thankfully no infants died in that case."
Risk analysis is never used. Vaccines are "Safe" even if the risk is greater than the actual disease. Let say, that Whopping Cough kills 1:1,000,000, but the Vaccine kills 2:1,000,000, it is considered "safe" but twice as risky as not having a vaccine. The 2 don't count as "unsafe" even though it is less safe than nature. After all, vaccines are proven effective!
The problem is, NOBODY is doing the complete risk analysis to see if paying Big Pharma is worth the money being poured into Vaccines.
Conclusion: You're an idiot. The risk 1:1000000 changes with each increase of unvaccinated individuals in the herd. Let's assume a best case scenario here: a herd of 1000000, with two people (intentionally) unvaccinated. That's your 1:1000000 number. If three people are unvaccinated that number goes up to 3:1000000. If 500000 people are unvaccinated then your odds of infection are roughly 1:2.
I left out a lot of details - this is the best case scenario for your argument.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
The question isn't whether government scientists are right or wrong about any particular vaccine, it is whether the government should have the right to force people to inject stuff into their bodies.
That's not the question until law enforcement start showing up at your house with vaccines and guns.
Private schools can make that argument and require vaccinations to their hearts' content. Public schools, however, are bound by limits on governmental powers; for example, they can't advocate particular religions, and likewise, they shouldn't be able to impose vaccinations.
I don't see how these are the same at all. One would be a regulation on thought (i.e. religions are belief systems), the other is a regulation on public safety. If the government can prevent people from coming into government buildings with firearms, then they should be able to kids from going to schools if they are a public safety hazard due to lack of immunizations.
A compromise would be to move to a voucher system that allows kids who don't want to attend public schools to use the money to pay for private schools, but that is something progressives and their public sector union lobbyists are fighting tooth and nail.
Schools are paid for by property taxes. This is a horrible system in general. Vouchers don't fix this problem, because you are still paying for the schools if you have zero kids. Just like your taxes are paying for government buildings like courts that prohibit firearms even if you are an open carry proponent.
Law enforcement doesn't have to show up with vaccines on your doorstep in order to coerce you; they can arrest you, or take your stuff, or limit your freedom of movement, or whatever until you "choose" to get vaccinated. Those approaches are just as coercive as if they showed up with vaccines at your house.
Whether people who don't have any kids pay for the education of other people's kids, and how that education is delivered are two entirely separate issues. Regardless of where you stand on the first point, delivering education through a public school system with politically determined curricula and policies is increasingly failing.
Law enforcement doesn't have to show up with vaccines on your doorstep in order to coerce you; they can arrest you, or take your stuff, or limit your freedom of movement, or whatever until you "choose" to get vaccinated. Those approaches are just as coercive as if they showed up with vaccines at your house.
The way government *forces* you to do something is with guns. They have other tools like fines and prison, but should you refuse to pay fines or report to prison, the guys with guns show up to your house. Simply preventing you from using some public services like public schools is not coercion. It's just a normal requirement like any other.
Whether people who don't have any kids pay for the education of other people's kids, and how that education is delivered are two entirely separate issues.
It is the same issue as the issue of paying for public schools if you don;t vaccinate your children, because in both scenarios you are forced to pay for a service you aren't using. And the reasons for this situation are the same. It is because public schools are funded by property taxes and not, for example, tuition. Everyone who is paying property taxes is paying for schools they may or may not be using for whatever reason. It's not unique to opponents of vaccination. Vouchers only "fix" one aspect of this larger problem.
Regardless of where you stand on the first point, delivering education through a public school system with politically determined curricula and policies is increasingly failing.
What political determined curricula are you referring to?
I think American schools just suck even ignoring the effect of politics. We spend more money per capita than any country in the world on public schools and our schools are terrible. It's not that public schools in general are bad, there are many examples of countries who do public schools very well. We just don't seem capable of it at the moment.
How are they inherited?
Learned behavior is not evolution.
It is widely accepted that traits like compassion, empathy, and cooperation are inherited. Our desire to alleviate the suffering of others is an inherited trait. Our revulsion at seeing a child die unnecessarily is an inherited trait. Things like insulin and vaccines are phenotypic expressions of those underlying behavioral genes. You seem to be willing to sacrifice those traits in favor of a slight reduction in susceptibility to measles, which I think is a really terrible tradeoff.
I'd be all for vaccination if combined with sterilization. Otherwise, it leads to eradication not only of diseases, but skews the genetic variation towards a less healthy future population.
But if the diseases are eradicated, then immunity to those diseases no longer provides an evolutionary advantage. Think of smallpox: having a natural immunity to smallpox doesn't incur any advantage at all, since smallpox doesn't exist any more. (Your "allergy" argument here is pure speculation.)
Well, actually, a rather large number of humans throughout history have had a spot of trouble controlling their genitals, yes. Humans are, er, far from perfect.
With Gardasil, by far the primary issue is sex before marriage, not adultery. I'm not sure where you're getting that from - certainly not from anything I actually wrote. Did I miss something in the previous comments?
But I'm going to continue the car analogy. Our oldest is learning to drive, and we're teaching him to be careful, cautious, and defensive. Not to take stupid risks, etc. Of course, most parents do that when teaching their kids to drive. And yet, kids do impulsive and stupid things with cars every day. (Heck, so do adults.) So we're also teaching him to use his seatbelt. Even if he does everything right, someone else could do something terrible. (I'm sure you can't imagine any analogy to sex there, right? Something about involuntary sexual activity even if someone's being sensible? There's a word for it...)
I certainly want my kids not to make mistakes. But if I can minimize the consequences of mistakes - particularly preventing long-term and/or fatal consequences - I'm going to do that. You can disagree as you choose, I guess.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
It would be "the same issue" if we were talking about a small expense. But schooling is major and mandatory. Lower income families do not have an economic choice: they must send their kids to public school, no matter what.
All of them: curricula are politically determined, through legislatures and school boards.
I come from one of those countries whose public schools are supposedly very good; they aren't. Even if you look at something like the PISA study, the US is just fairly average, with the differences between countries not being all that large. European schools have the same kinds of problems that US schools do. When they work a little better (e.g., in Finland), it's due to social and cultural factors.
That's why you look at other sources. In this case, vaccines save lots and lots of lives, which you can see with basic statistics. There have been scientific medical studies. Never trust Big Pharma, but look at people who have actual evidence and are willing to share it with you.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It would be "the same issue" if we were talking about a small expense. But schooling is major and mandatory. Lower income families do not have an economic choice: they must send their kids to public school, no matter what.
Lower income people pay lower taxes from having dependents. Paying for the local schools is a requirement for everyone regardless of whether they use the schools.
I have been paying for public schools for the past 11 years. I have a 1 year old and I won't be able to start using public schools for another 4 years. That's even if we deem the schools in our area to be good enough quality. Otherwise we are sending my daughter to private school in which case we will not be getting any of the benefit of public schools. Believe me, this issue of paying for public schools without using them affects way more people than just people who don;t want to get immunizations.
Saying that poor people who forced to get immunized because they must send their kids to public schools, is like saying that I am forced to use public transportation because I can't afford a car. That's not what force is. That's still well within the realm of choices. Everyone must make choices, and being poor means making some harder choices.
I think it's actually good that this is a hard choice. Maybe it will mean that some idiot parents will actually decide to immunize their kids which may prevent them from getting a horrible disease or giving someone else a horrible disease. The kids don't get a say, but I'm sure the countless kids saved by vaccines every year appreciate that their parents made the right choice when they grow up, or more likely that they don't even have to think about diseases that they avoided.
All of them: curricula are politically determined, through legislatures and school boards.
I thought you were using "politically" in the colloquial sense. You want the curricula to be determined non-politically (i.e. without the influence of the citizenry) ?
I come from one of those countries whose public schools are supposedly very good; they aren't.
Which country is that? Sweden?
Even if you look at something like the PISA study, the US is just fairly average, with the differences between countries not being all that large. European schools have the same kinds of problems that US schools do. When they work a little better (e.g., in Finland), it's due to social and cultural factors.
I don't think anyone disagrees that social factors and cultural factors effect school performance. But it is also true that education affects social and cultural factors. They effect each other. Part of the problem with improving schools is that you need a smarter population to solve problems of society properly, and you don't get that without a good education system.
People could just as easily say the converse. We can't fix these social and cultural problems because the education system is broken.
Think of smallpox: having a natural immunity to smallpox doesn't incur any advantage at all, since smallpox doesn't exist any more.
Smallpox exists. In labaratories in both the US and Russia, and quite possibly in historical artifacts or preserved bodies. It's only a few years ago that smallpox scabs were found inside a handwritten medical book.
And there are around a dozen animal "brethren" to the two human smallpox viruses. The human varieties started out as mutations to the animal varieties, and this can happen again.
It's basically what happens with influenza every couple of years, and why we need new vaccines.
Also, many diseases have disappeared and then reappeared later. Our DNA codes for antibodies for a whole bunch of diseases that at present isn't a problem. Having the immunities does less harm in the long run than not having them.
You're not really getting my point with people dying which sort of reinforces my point. Those people who are dying in their dying moments almost always don't want to die. What's sad is not sad people, what's sad is people not existing anymore.
No, I most certainly do not get your point. Who are sad, if not the survivors?
What's tragic is not that someone feels sorry their child died, it's that the child is dead.
Who is that tragic for? The dead have no sense of tragedy.
Furthermore, what you're describing is eugenics. The "weak" die and not because they are "weak" but because they are denied something that will save their lives. Just because you arent advocating going out and directly killing the "weak" doesnt mean it isnt eugenics.
No, eugenics is when you choose who should live and who should die. If you don't make or try to influence the choice, it is not eugenics. Vaccination, unless it's universal at no cost, is inherently eugenics, as you choose to improve the odds of those vaccinated over those who do not have available vaccines or cannot afford them.
Whether it's done for good intentions or not does not change that it's eugenics. Ask anyone who have ever done eugenics, and they will all say it's for a good purpose.
Not doing it in the first place, and letting some people die who otherwise would have lived might not be an acceptable alternative in our culture, but at least it doesn't skew the survival numbers towards "more of us, less of them".
- What you are advocating is eugenics. You just trying to get rid of the guilt by outsourcing the killing.
No, eugenics is when you choose who should live and who should die, or otherwise try to increase or decrease the odds for some but not others. Not making a choice at all is not eugenics.
- You are assuming that evolutionary adaptations in your non-vaccine world will be an improvement. This has two problems: defining improvement (that's your eugenics plan), and being a wrong assumption.
The wrong assumption is all yours. There is no need to define what's an improvement. Evolution is the score keeper.
Your worship of 'external culling' is a variation of a religion. It is emphatically not 'rational'.
But your two statements here aren't backed up by anything. They're just claims from thin air? And that's rational?
Exactly what science is that? Was it the report which is locked behind a paywall? Because I always trust the word of someone who refuses to share the data. Hell, I have no way in which to even determine who funded the study, but my money says that the manufacturer/s funded the study, and I do not trust them at all.
In case you have had your head too far up your ass to notice we have been facing a severe problem with fraud in the medical science community, especially when large pharmaceutical companies are involved. Trusting them blindly is the height of stupidity.
You forgot something very important here. pay attention to who funded the study and what financial ties all the people involved have. In this case both of those things are hidden from us by a paywall.
Darn! I thought this thread was about the old Minicomputer wars.
Tracy Johnson
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BT
You don't get the disease. You don't die.
Except that is not entirely true. Both have happened in Vaccinated populations.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Thank God for some sanity. All of this interference in the natural order does nothing in the long run but propogate genes and defects that should have been bred out of the species by now. Just wait until a really virulent strain of something comes along helped along in its evolution by vaccination then we will see the corpses being stacked.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
Protect your Digital Equipment VAX computer with the Gardol invisible shield.
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No, the "force" is in the taxation itself, something lower income people are disproportionately subjected to.
Correct. I want curricula to be determined by the market. That is, there should be a wide range of schools offering a wide range of educational options, and parents vote with their dollars.
US public schools are pretty decent, and US private schools are excellent. And for all its problems, the US is still culturally and socially way ahead of Europe, although unfortunately, European political mistakes are gradually making inroads in the US. The US should return to its more classically liberal tradition of individualism and personal responsibility, instead of trying to have government "fix" society.
I'm going to abandon the first part of this conversation because I don't think you're capable of getting the point I'm making.
As for the second, you're not paying attention to what I'm saying. MOST OF THE TRULY IMPORTANT VACCINES ARE NEAR UNIVERSAL. That's why diseases like Polio (one of many) almost don't exist anymore. Honesty, you're being ridiculous. You don't even seem to understand how vaccines work. Heard immunity for the worst diseases is maintained in almost every country except for the most war torn or violent by providing cheap / free inoculations.
AGAIN, what you're arguing for is most definitely eugenics. Denying vaccines that already exist from people is the same as condemning a certain portion of the population to death. You stated that society would benefit from this "culling". What is eugenics but an intentional culling of the population? Shoot, you've even made the typical psychopath argument of divorcing ones self from morality and embracing pure logic.
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No, the "force" is in the taxation itself, something lower income people are disproportionately subjected to.
Yes the taxes are certainly forced. But this is not the same as being forced to get immunizations.
Correct. I want curricula to be determined by the market. That is, there should be a wide range of schools offering a wide range of educational options, and parents vote with their dollars.
There are. They just aren't free. And I'm not even opposed to vouchers. All I am saying is that it doesn't solve the larger problem of people paying for schools they don't use. It only solves this problem for a small subset of people who already have kids but can;t go to public school for whatever reason. I thoink if anything vouchers probably help wealthy people most of all. They are the people who would be sending their kids to private school anyway, but with vouchers they can get a big discount.
US public schools are pretty decent, and US private schools are excellent. And for all its problems, the US is still culturally and socially way ahead of Europe, although unfortunately, European political mistakes are gradually making inroads in the US. The US should return to its more classically liberal tradition of individualism and personal responsibility, instead of trying to have government "fix" society.
Europe is a big place. There is no doubt a lot of diversity in European schools, just like there is a lot of diversity in American schools. Most of the schools I've seen in Europe were way better than the schools I attended in early life (LAUSD). It was only until my parents moved to a wealthy neighborhood that schools became much better.
We certainly have some very good public schools, and definitely some good private schools, especially when you get to the university level, but this is not the whole story. There are lots of people stuck in substandard schools in poor communities. The difference in quality between affluent schools and low income schools is immense.
Taking people's stuff through the threat of force and then giving it back with conditions certainly sounds like "forcing" people to me.
No, vouchers mostly help lower income people, who finally get a choice about schools. A "discount" on high school doesn't make a big difference to wealthy people.
About half of the schools in countries like Germany don't even attempt to prepare students for college or university; did you "see" any such schools?
As it is in Europe. What matters is, in fact, not the amount of money available to schools, but the demographics of students and parents.
http://articles.mercola.com/si...
You benefit even if you don't have kids in school, as you will interact with graduates all day, and every single service you require from the local area will have benefited from education. It's amazing that some people don't understand that other people are people too, and just how interconnected our lives are.
You clearly have no idea why the numbers for 3) and 4) are so low - hint: VACCINES. Did you not go to school or something? This is trivial stuff to understand. You are looking at a country relatively full of vaccinated people...
Taking people's stuff through the threat of force and then giving it back with conditions certainly sounds like "forcing" people to me.
It's absolutely force. It's forcibly taking property. It's not forcibly immunizing people. For one thing, the property is taken regardless of whether the child is given immunizations or attends the public schools.
No, vouchers mostly help lower income people, who finally get a choice about schools. A "discount" on high school doesn't make a big difference to wealthy people.
It doesn't help poor people who can't afford to pay for private school even with the vouchers. Those people will be be stuck in a public school with even less funding as wealthier people flee to private schools. And as I said. I am not against vouchers. This is just the reality of what happens.
About half of the schools in countries like Germany don't even attempt to prepare students for college or university; did you "see" any such schools?
Yeah, my friend teaches at one. The kids attending it are mostly from children of poor immigrants. These teachers are doing the best they can. One key difference is that my friend actually gets paid more to work in a troubled school, while in America we pay teachers in low income schools less, furthering the divide.
As it is in Europe. What matters is, in fact, not the amount of money available to schools, but the demographics of students and parents.
The difference being that in the US and Europe seems to be an honest attempt at remedying the situation rather than simply being complacent with the vast difference in quality of education for low and high income students.
You're replying to the wrong person. All I am arguing is that vouchers don't fix the "problem" of people paying for things they don't benefit from.
You're completely out of touch with reality. First, the US redirects vast amounts of money to inner city schools and problem schools, far more so than any place in Europe. Second, increased per student spending does not lead to improved educational outcomes. The latter point is true both within the US and across nations. In the US, many of the worst performing schools are also the most expensive ones. It is particularly obvious when comparing countries because the US spends far above OECD average on students, but achieves only average results.
That's not a "reality", it's something you're fabricating out of thin air. It is absurd to think that "poor people" wouldn't find a wide range of private school offerings for the average $12000/student that the US spends on education, if handed out as vouchers.
The idea that the US isn't spending enough money on primary or secondary education, anywhere in the country, is ridiculous, in particular if you compare US numbers with Europe.
In this particular case it's paywalled, although it's quite possible you can get access through a University library. There's a heck of a lot of stuff that's not paywalled that anti-vaxxers deliberately ignore.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
There are certainly a lot of studies which are ignored, but they are ignored for a reason. You cannot trust a study which is funded by the company who wants to sell the product, these companies have proven this thousands of times over. You also cannot trust a study by someone who receives funding from the company who sells the product. They are just as likely to commit fraud as the company themselves. There is also a large amount of corruption in this sector, to the point that if you publish a paper which reveals harms caused by vaccines your career is almost certainly over.
I think you need to pull your head out of your ass and read what I actually said.
Given that HPV is primarily a sexually transmitted disease Gardasil really doesn't fit under this public health justification of the likely form of disease transmission in a school setting. HPV isn't transmitted in the air or on surfaces even, so this vaccine doesn't fit the justification for other vaccines. Making Gardasil mandatory really does get into the territory of forcing medical treatment on people because we think it is good for them. Whatever you think of vaccines, as a society we are better off with public health policies that only intrude on medical decisions when absolutely necessary.
BINGO! Vaccines for serious diseases which would spread easily in a school setting should be mandatory for attending public school (barring valid medical reasons, such as allergy to the vaccine). This group of vaccines includes MMR. Vaccines against diseases which require more intimate contact than one would expect at school should be optional. There could even be different standards for students, teachers, and cafeteria workers. Any school which does not require vaccines should make it known so parents can make an informed decision before enlisted their children.
I did read what you said, and it is nonsense. You are starting with so many faulty assumptions about the US and European educational system and about the relationship between spending and quality of education that one simply can't debunk it all in a few lines. You really need to read up, get some facts, and use your head before you keep spouting the progressive party line.
Really? Because your "refutation" of my faulty assumptions includes repeating things that I already said. Which to me says that you either can't read, or you have problems with logic.
Furthermore, if you think the worst performing schools in the US are the ones getting the most money, you are out of your fucking mind. You may as well claim that it's poor people that are driving all the Ferraris.
Are you sure about what happens to people who publish vaccine harm? How many careers died to produce this government report?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes