OK. Lets do it. The Koran says that Jesus was a prophet (abliet rather a special one) and not the Son of God. That is blasphemy, so the Koran should be banned in all Christian countries. I may be an aetheist, but I know double standard where I see them.
This is technically true but grossly misleading:
England also already has Jewish courts. They have exactly the same standing, which is they have no standing in law. They operate purely where the plaintiffs agree to abide by their judgement. Really, they are no different from say two people going to a mutual friend and asking the friend to adjudicate on a disagreement.
I detest Ruby and ROR as much as the next man, but I have to take issue with "active record" causing security holes. Its not active record, its using active record with mass assignment that is the problem. Though, active record can cause horrible performance. I blame the lets-hide-SQL-behind-an-ORM culture; nothing wrong with ORM *provided* you understand what happens behind the scenes (and how RDBMSs can be performance killed).
So? "Measles once infected four million people and killed 4,000 of them each year, mostly young children". What year and over what period? Four million in the US population sounds around the birth rate, so that's one death per 1000; if that's around 1988 then the UK was a lot healthier - one death per 35000, but I bet it was longer ago than that, I'd assume the US wasn't that must worse. Ditto the savings: if you don't have the dates then the information is worthless.
At its core, the anti-vax movement is bad risk assessment for a few reasons. First of all, the horrors of the diseases that most vaccinations prevent against haven't been seen in a few generations. People my age (30's) with kids have never lived in a world where you could get polio or mumps at any moment and wind up dead, on an iron lung, deaf, scarred for life, etc..
That's right, people of your age never lived in a world where you could get polio or mumps at any moment. People of my age (55) have, so my experience might be a bit better than yours. I've had measles, I've had mumps, I've had chickenpox. So did all my friends. My wife (48) had all those and she had whooping cough, and so did several of her classmates. No big deal. Neither she nor I know anyone who were scarred for life, etc. Maybe we are both statistical anomolies, or maybe it just wasn't as bad as you seem to believe. I'm not suggesting it was perfect; but it just wasn't that way.
Because of the effectiveness of widespread childhood vaccination, we've had at least a generation of people with minimal firsthand exposure to all the wacky pathogenic fun that used to be quite common.
Indeed. BTW, how old are you. I'm 55, I've had measles, I've had chicken pox, I've had mumps, I've very likely had rubella. My wife is 48. She's had all those, she's had whooping cough. No big deal, and neither of us can remember "all the wacky pathogenic fun". In 1988, when MMR was introduced in the UK (measles vaccine had been around a while but take up was patchy) there were 16 deaths (http://www.hpa.org.uk/web/HPAweb&HPAwebStandard/HPAweb_C/1195733811885): since measles was endemic and virtually all kids would get it, that would be 16 deaths in around 600000. Not nice, but absolutely awful either.
So vaccines may be good (broadly, I agree); vaccine *policy* may be good (broadly, I disagree); but most of the things vaccinated against were not the mass killers/mass complications that the pro-vaccine people would have others believe.
Except: A woman is born with all the eggs she will ever have (they are not produced over the woman's lifetime). On the other hand sperm are produced more on an as-needed basis. So, there is much more opportunity for problems to arise with eggs (presumably why the chance of having a Down's Syndrome child increases with the mother's age).
For a bit of fun, I tried Haiku-OS out yesterday. Its a bit limited, but dear god its fast - in a VirtualBox, boot to GUI in maybe 5 seconds. If someone - anyone - could produce a mainline Linux/GUI that performs anywhere near like that, they'll get my vote.
Alternatively, suppose I run a company newsletter, which is posted out, and includes customer commends, and someone submits a comment "ThunderBird89 is a dirty paedo, go torch his house with him in it". Could I reasonably claim that I have no responsibility? BTW, this isn't a rhetorical question - the whole area is horribly complicated.
Met a Canadian once, he came over on Autumn (Fall) "You guys don't know what winter is", left in Spring "that was the coldest winter I've ever experienced". Because our weather is not as cold, we can manage with crappy houses with crappy insulation and crappy heating.... as he discovered!
Back when H5N1 was doing the rounds, my wife had a long running worse-than-average but not debilitating chest infection which came and went over two or three months; I had something pretty similar; and lots of people we know and work with had much the same. But none of us or them were ever diagnosed as having H5N1, because none of us got bad enough to see a doctor. My wife (a biologist who worked in an immunological research laboratory a while back) thinks that the H5N1 infection rate was really much much higher than it was supposed to be, but the infection was much much less severe than H5N1 was hyped to be in all those cases. If she's right - and it seems pretty plausible to me - then H5N1 was just not the risk it was painted as. Granted it was nastier than the average flu bug, but nothing like governments would have us believe.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
The important thing to understand about modern use of gamification, is that the benefit is not to the employees (or students), nor to the company (or school). The benefit is to the management, so they can say "look, we are actively monitoring performance" and "look, we are actively seeking to improve performance". Plus, with a bit of inflation in the system, "look, performance is improving". The wider the disjunction between how the company creates products, and the typical manager's understanding of that process, the more gamification you'll see.
WTF were they smoking?
on
GitHub Hacked
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
OK, the blog is slashdot'd at the moment, but lets see if I have this right. Basically, you take an active record and just copy values from the POST data into it and then save it... and this is the default behaviour? Do I have that right because, is so........ dear god, what were the ruby-on-rails people smoking when they thought that was a clever idea, its puts ROR on a level with PHP and its magic global variables. Note only that, but what were the github people smoking, the same? Using an insane facility is doubly insane.
Methinks a lot of people need to go and read some web design stuff and realise that active records (or models - django users take not) are not synonymous with the "Model" (business logic) in MVC.
Aside to the main topic, is there actually any data on how many people were infected with H5N1. Around the time of the last big scare (late 2009 in the UK IIRC) it seemed to me that a lot of people (myself and my wife and a lot of people we knew, and anecdotally in the population at large) got unusually bad colds and chest infections and what-not, that took a long time to shake off. FTA, "The virus, A(H5N1), causes bird flu, which rarely infects people but has an extraordinarily high death rate when it does".... are there actually useful figures from random sampling amongst the population, or it is based on people being actively diagnosed with the infection and their subsequent death rate? Call me a cynic, but I have the feeling that there is a significant chance that the number of people infected was much larger than commonly supposed, adn the death rate correspondingly much smaller.
IANA M.D., but it seems to me that when people around your are actually DYING from serious illnesses like cholera, scarlet fever, small pox and many, many more, the medical professionals (who were not in any way gathering statistical information in the 1800s) would tend to disregard all instances of allergies as imagined illnesses. Actual life threatening epidemics sweeping the country EVERY YEAR have a way of sharpening the focus of those who deal human suffering. Are allergy rates rising? Sure, why not. I'd like to see your stats but I'm flexible on this. Are allergy rates higher than in the 1800s? Who knows. There aren't any stats.
Please don't state your OPINIONS as facts. That's what started this mess in the first place.
I am also old enough to remember chicken pox 'parties' where stupid parents would force their perfectly healthy children to 'go play' with fever-ridden children in horrible itchy agony. I bet you never actually contracted measles or chicken pox from one of those 'parties'
Pre-vaccination, chicken pox and measles are far better as a child than later in life. I don't know whether I got them at a party or elsewhere, but neither chicken pox nor measles were "horrible itchy agony". Maybe they were for some, but don't misrepresent on groups experience for everybodies.
Again, please bring me the stats on the number of people per year who don't 'survive' multiple vaccine injections. I'm curious as to what that would be. Do you think it would be higher or lower than the number of people killed in car accidents each year, or killed by lightning, or killed in trout-fishing accidents, or suffocated by eating too many marshmallows. My lord, lets outlaw Campfire Marshmallows in that case.
No idea, and I have no need of those figures. My question - for what its worth, since you don't seem to be able to read my posts - is what are the negative effects; and I don't mean autism, I mean auto-immune problems in general, such as allergies (which also kill).
Talk about your knee-jerk reactions.
Oh, and by the way, I have this for you about Rubella from Wikipedia:
"During the epidemic in the US between 1962–1965, Rubella virus infections during pregnancy were estimated to have caused 30,000 still births and 20,000 children to be born impaired or disabled as a result of CRS (congenital rubella syndrome)." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubella
Thank you but I for one respect life and want everyone to have a fair chance of being born WITHOUT PREVENTABLE BIRTH DEFECTS. Obviously you feel differently and that's your right.
No, I don't feel differently. Test girls for rubella antibodies pre-puberty and then vaccinate as needed; there is no need for this blanket forced medication.
Although other forms of allergic disease were described in antiquity, hay fever is surprisingly modern. Very rare descriptions can be traced back to Islamic texts of the 9th century and European texts of the 16th century. It was only in the early 19th century that the disease was carefully described and at that time was regarded as most unusual. By the end of the 19th century it had become commonplace in both Europe and North America. This paper attempts to chart the growth of hay fever through the medical literature of the 19th century. It is hoped that an understanding of the increase in prevalence between 1820 and 1900 may provide an insight for modern researchers and give some clues into possible reasons for the epidemic nature of the disease today.
Natural immunity to measles (ie., getting the real thing) likely results in greater protection passed to the kids from the mother (can't give exact details but the wife is a biologist who's been involved in immune research in the past).
1. Immunity is passed through breast milk from mother to child. This is what your are thinking about.
No, it wasn't. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunity_(medical) and search for "placenta". There is an open question (unless someone can point me to some studies) whether vaccine induced immunity results in passive immunity as well as infection induced immunity. This should be testable with the current population in the UK. So far as I'm aware, it hasn't.
2. It sounds to me like you are suggesting letting people get Measles. This is a preposterous position.
Where exactly did I say that? I am suggesting that measles is not - and in the west in say the 50s and 60s was not - the killer it is portrayed as. My preference would be to drop multiple vaccines; to vaccinate for measles later that the current 12-15 months; and to vaccinate against mumps and rubella later as needed based on an antibody test.
Referenced in an other reply above: http://www.healthsentinel.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2654:united-states-disease-death-rates&catid=55:united-states-deaths-from-diseases&Itemid=55.... note that almost the entire drop occurs *before* mass multiple vaccination. Public vaccination may have been around for over a century; mass multiple vaccination has not. My point was that we *may* have reached the point where the costs of "improved health" outweigh the benefits.
My views - not a pet theory - is based on reading, discussions with my wife (a biologist with experience in immune research), and logical deduction. I'm quite aware that correlation does not imply causation. But, hey, why bother with rational argument when you can fling out a few ill-thought-out points and a bunch of insults.
By putting out mis-information like this you are part of the reason for the large number of deaths from measels. From the WHO.
Measles is one of the leading causes of death among young children even though a safe and cost-effective vaccine is available.
In 2008, there were 164 000 measles deaths globally – nearly 450 deaths every day or 18 deaths every hour.
More than 95% of measles deaths occur in low-income countries with weak health infrastructures.
Measles vaccination resulted in a 78% drop in measles deaths between 2000 and 2008 worldwide.
In 2008, about 83% of the world's children received one dose of measles vaccine by their first birthday through routine health services – up from 72% in 2000.
You clearly did not read the nature article as this is in no way a strawman. They did not just look at the relation between vaccines and MMR, but about negative effects of vaccines.
They found
We looked very hard and found very little evidence of serious adverse harms from vaccines
Stop putting out your own knee-jerk reactions and at least read the article you are criticising before putting out dangerous misinformation.
Note that I mentioned "the West". For measles death rates in the USA see http://www.healthsentinel.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2654:united-states-disease-death-rates&catid=55:united-states-deaths-from-diseases&Itemid=55... (I assume similar rates in western Europe), note that the rate has pretty well flat-lined since the 1950s. Didn't you realise the point of your third list item "More than 95% of measles deaths occur in low-income countries with weak health infrastructures". Sure, if you have an inadequate diet and crap housing, then measles vaccination probably is a good bet. But otherwise?
Anyway, you are latching on to measles. Check http://www.vaclib.org/basic/japanusa.htm... "when Japan raised its minimum vaccination age to two years in 1975 the overall infant mortality rate improved"
Oh, and in response to I'm so concerned about allergies that I'm willing to risk the death or serious illness of my child and many of the vulnerable children around him; I'm a fuckshit!!.... I have personally been hospitalised with Asthma, which in my case was 100% definitely allergic. Your concerns are indeed your concerns, but I object to my concerns being dismissed as those of a fuckshit.
OK, I'm going to get flamed for this by a bunch of knee-jerk vaccination good people, but WTF.
First strawman argument: which did not find convincing support for the idea that MMR shots caused autism . OK, so a load of people latch onto autism as a reason against vaccination, but its not the only concern. A lot of people are more concerned about lower-level negative immune system responses, such as increased allergy rates. Note that allergy rates have risen roughly in line with increasing hygiene and health-care in general (eg., hay fever was virtually unknown before the mid-1800s). Hygiene and health-care - vaccines included - affect the immune system, and its quite plausible that there is a balance point (between killing all but the healthiest or luckiest and weakened immune or damaged systems) which may have been passed.
I'm old enough to remember measle parties, clearly people in the 50s and 60s (in the West anyway) were not very worried about it. It was something your kids got, and the sooner the better. Why is measles becoming more serious? Natural immunity to measles (ie., getting the real thing) likely results in greater protection passed to the kids from the mother (can't give exact details but the wife is a biologist who's been involved in immune research in the past).
Then there's the multiple vaccination issue. The ability to survive an infection is a neccessary survival trait and would be selected for. The ability to survive multiple simultaneous infections much less so. Anyone see an issue here?
I'm not anti-vaccination per-se. I am against the knee-jerk vaccinate against everything policy that governments and pharma push. MMR. How many people get bad affects from Rubella - none, only the foetus, so test girls before puberty and vaccinate those who are antibody-negative. Similarly for boys and Mumps. And I have a particular downer on the majority unthinking reactions that seem common on Slashdot whenever this topic comes up.
Slashdot Mirror
OK. Lets do it. The Koran says that Jesus was a prophet (abliet rather a special one) and not the Son of God. That is blasphemy, so the Koran should be banned in all Christian countries. I may be an aetheist, but I know double standard where I see them.
England already has Sharia courts.
This is technically true but grossly misleading: England also already has Jewish courts. They have exactly the same standing, which is they have no standing in law. They operate purely where the plaintiffs agree to abide by their judgement. Really, they are no different from say two people going to a mutual friend and asking the friend to adjudicate on a disagreement.
I detest Ruby and ROR as much as the next man, but I have to take issue with "active record" causing security holes. Its not active record, its using active record with mass assignment that is the problem. Though, active record can cause horrible performance. I blame the lets-hide-SQL-behind-an-ORM culture; nothing wrong with ORM *provided* you understand what happens behind the scenes (and how RDBMSs can be performance killed).
http://www.healthsentinel.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2654:united-states-disease-death-rates&catid=55:united-states-deaths-from-diseases&Itemid=55 By the time the measles vaccine was introduced in the US, the death rate was down to under 1 per 100,000. Since almost everyone would have contracted measles once, and assuming a population of 200 million with an average life expectancy of 50 years, then that's about 4 million births per year, or 40 deaths. You are free to argue for vaccines, but please don't selectively quote misleading statistics, even TFA does.
So? "Measles once infected four million people and killed 4,000 of them each year, mostly young children". What year and over what period? Four million in the US population sounds around the birth rate, so that's one death per 1000; if that's around 1988 then the UK was a lot healthier - one death per 35000, but I bet it was longer ago than that, I'd assume the US wasn't that must worse. Ditto the savings: if you don't have the dates then the information is worthless.
Whooping Cough, Measles. I don't live worldwide, I live in the UK. If you live in the third world then the balance is different.
Slashdot. This is science. Pro-vaccine is science by definition. Abandon all hope, mate.
At its core, the anti-vax movement is bad risk assessment for a few reasons. First of all, the horrors of the diseases that most vaccinations prevent against haven't been seen in a few generations. People my age (30's) with kids have never lived in a world where you could get polio or mumps at any moment and wind up dead, on an iron lung, deaf, scarred for life, etc..
That's right, people of your age never lived in a world where you could get polio or mumps at any moment. People of my age (55) have, so my experience might be a bit better than yours. I've had measles, I've had mumps, I've had chickenpox. So did all my friends. My wife (48) had all those and she had whooping cough, and so did several of her classmates. No big deal. Neither she nor I know anyone who were scarred for life, etc. Maybe we are both statistical anomolies, or maybe it just wasn't as bad as you seem to believe. I'm not suggesting it was perfect; but it just wasn't that way.
Because of the effectiveness of widespread childhood vaccination, we've had at least a generation of people with minimal firsthand exposure to all the wacky pathogenic fun that used to be quite common.
Indeed. BTW, how old are you. I'm 55, I've had measles, I've had chicken pox, I've had mumps, I've very likely had rubella. My wife is 48. She's had all those, she's had whooping cough. No big deal, and neither of us can remember "all the wacky pathogenic fun". In 1988, when MMR was introduced in the UK (measles vaccine had been around a while but take up was patchy) there were 16 deaths (http://www.hpa.org.uk/web/HPAweb&HPAwebStandard/HPAweb_C/1195733811885): since measles was endemic and virtually all kids would get it, that would be 16 deaths in around 600000. Not nice, but absolutely awful either. So vaccines may be good (broadly, I agree); vaccine *policy* may be good (broadly, I disagree); but most of the things vaccinated against were not the mass killers/mass complications that the pro-vaccine people would have others believe.
40? Pah. I'm 55 and we've just had twins. Sure, its hard. Physically exhausting, nope.
Except: A woman is born with all the eggs she will ever have (they are not produced over the woman's lifetime). On the other hand sperm are produced more on an as-needed basis. So, there is much more opportunity for problems to arise with eggs (presumably why the chance of having a Down's Syndrome child increases with the mother's age).
For a bit of fun, I tried Haiku-OS out yesterday. Its a bit limited, but dear god its fast - in a VirtualBox, boot to GUI in maybe 5 seconds. If someone - anyone - could produce a mainline Linux/GUI that performs anywhere near like that, they'll get my vote.
Alternatively, suppose I run a company newsletter, which is posted out, and includes customer commends, and someone submits a comment "ThunderBird89 is a dirty paedo, go torch his house with him in it". Could I reasonably claim that I have no responsibility? BTW, this isn't a rhetorical question - the whole area is horribly complicated.
Met a Canadian once, he came over on Autumn (Fall) "You guys don't know what winter is", left in Spring "that was the coldest winter I've ever experienced". Because our weather is not as cold, we can manage with crappy houses with crappy insulation and crappy heating .... as he discovered!
Back when H5N1 was doing the rounds, my wife had a long running worse-than-average but not debilitating chest infection which came and went over two or three months; I had something pretty similar; and lots of people we know and work with had much the same. But none of us or them were ever diagnosed as having H5N1, because none of us got bad enough to see a doctor. My wife (a biologist who worked in an immunological research laboratory a while back) thinks that the H5N1 infection rate was really much much higher than it was supposed to be, but the infection was much much less severe than H5N1 was hyped to be in all those cases. If she's right - and it seems pretty plausible to me - then H5N1 was just not the risk it was painted as. Granted it was nastier than the average flu bug, but nothing like governments would have us believe. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
The important thing to understand about modern use of gamification, is that the benefit is not to the employees (or students), nor to the company (or school). The benefit is to the management, so they can say "look, we are actively monitoring performance" and "look, we are actively seeking to improve performance". Plus, with a bit of inflation in the system, "look, performance is improving". The wider the disjunction between how the company creates products, and the typical manager's understanding of that process, the more gamification you'll see.
OK, the blog is slashdot'd at the moment, but lets see if I have this right. Basically, you take an active record and just copy values from the POST data into it and then save it ... and this is the default behaviour? Do I have that right because, is so .... .... dear god, what were the ruby-on-rails people smoking when they thought that was a clever idea, its puts ROR on a level with PHP and its magic global variables. Note only that, but what were the github people smoking, the same? Using an insane facility is doubly insane.
Methinks a lot of people need to go and read some web design stuff and realise that active records (or models - django users take not) are not synonymous with the "Model" (business logic) in MVC.
Aside to the main topic, is there actually any data on how many people were infected with H5N1. Around the time of the last big scare (late 2009 in the UK IIRC) it seemed to me that a lot of people (myself and my wife and a lot of people we knew, and anecdotally in the population at large) got unusually bad colds and chest infections and what-not, that took a long time to shake off. FTA, "The virus, A(H5N1), causes bird flu, which rarely infects people but has an extraordinarily high death rate when it does" .... are there actually useful figures from random sampling amongst the population, or it is based on people being actively diagnosed with the infection and their subsequent death rate? Call me a cynic, but I have the feeling that there is a significant chance that the number of people infected was much larger than commonly supposed, adn the death rate correspondingly much smaller.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt8aAy_8Ub4
IANA M.D., but it seems to me that when people around your are actually DYING from serious illnesses like cholera, scarlet fever, small pox and many, many more, the medical professionals (who were not in any way gathering statistical information in the 1800s) would tend to disregard all instances of allergies as imagined illnesses. Actual life threatening epidemics sweeping the country EVERY YEAR have a way of sharpening the focus of those who deal human suffering. Are allergy rates rising? Sure, why not. I'd like to see your stats but I'm flexible on this. Are allergy rates higher than in the 1800s? Who knows. There aren't any stats.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2222.1988.tb02872.x/abstract "It was only in the early 19th century that the disease was carefully described and at that time was regarded as most unusual"
Please don't state your OPINIONS as facts. That's what started this mess in the first place.
I am also old enough to remember chicken pox 'parties' where stupid parents would force their perfectly healthy children to 'go play' with fever-ridden children in horrible itchy agony. I bet you never actually contracted measles or chicken pox from one of those 'parties'
Pre-vaccination, chicken pox and measles are far better as a child than later in life. I don't know whether I got them at a party or elsewhere, but neither chicken pox nor measles were "horrible itchy agony". Maybe they were for some, but don't misrepresent on groups experience for everybodies.
Again, please bring me the stats on the number of people per year who don't 'survive' multiple vaccine injections. I'm curious as to what that would be. Do you think it would be higher or lower than the number of people killed in car accidents each year, or killed by lightning, or killed in trout-fishing accidents, or suffocated by eating too many marshmallows. My lord, lets outlaw Campfire Marshmallows in that case.
No idea, and I have no need of those figures. My question - for what its worth, since you don't seem to be able to read my posts - is what are the negative effects; and I don't mean autism, I mean auto-immune problems in general, such as allergies (which also kill).
Talk about your knee-jerk reactions.
Oh, and by the way, I have this for you about Rubella from Wikipedia: "During the epidemic in the US between 1962–1965, Rubella virus infections during pregnancy were estimated to have caused 30,000 still births and 20,000 children to be born impaired or disabled as a result of CRS (congenital rubella syndrome)." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubella Thank you but I for one respect life and want everyone to have a fair chance of being born WITHOUT PREVENTABLE BIRTH DEFECTS. Obviously you feel differently and that's your right.
No, I don't feel differently. Test girls for rubella antibodies pre-puberty and then vaccinate as needed; there is no need for this blanket forced medication.
Although other forms of allergic disease were described in antiquity, hay fever is surprisingly modern. Very rare descriptions can be traced back to Islamic texts of the 9th century and European texts of the 16th century. It was only in the early 19th century that the disease was carefully described and at that time was regarded as most unusual. By the end of the 19th century it had become commonplace in both Europe and North America. This paper attempts to chart the growth of hay fever through the medical literature of the 19th century. It is hoped that an understanding of the increase in prevalence between 1820 and 1900 may provide an insight for modern researchers and give some clues into possible reasons for the epidemic nature of the disease today.
1. Immunity is passed through breast milk from mother to child. This is what your are thinking about.
No, it wasn't. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunity_(medical) and search for "placenta". There is an open question (unless someone can point me to some studies) whether vaccine induced immunity results in passive immunity as well as infection induced immunity. This should be testable with the current population in the UK. So far as I'm aware, it hasn't.
2. It sounds to me like you are suggesting letting people get Measles. This is a preposterous position.
Where exactly did I say that? I am suggesting that measles is not - and in the west in say the 50s and 60s was not - the killer it is portrayed as. My preference would be to drop multiple vaccines; to vaccinate for measles later that the current 12-15 months; and to vaccinate against mumps and rubella later as needed based on an antibody test.
Referenced in an other reply above: http://www.healthsentinel.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2654:united-states-disease-death-rates&catid=55:united-states-deaths-from-diseases&Itemid=55 .... note that almost the entire drop occurs *before* mass multiple vaccination. Public vaccination may have been around for over a century; mass multiple vaccination has not. My point was that we *may* have reached the point where the costs of "improved health" outweigh the benefits.
My views - not a pet theory - is based on reading, discussions with my wife (a biologist with experience in immune research), and logical deduction. I'm quite aware that correlation does not imply causation. But, hey, why bother with rational argument when you can fling out a few ill-thought-out points and a bunch of insults.
By putting out mis-information like this you are part of the reason for the large number of deaths from measels. From the WHO.
You clearly did not read the nature article as this is in no way a strawman. They did not just look at the relation between vaccines and MMR, but about negative effects of vaccines.
They found
We looked very hard and found very little evidence of serious adverse harms from vaccines
Stop putting out your own knee-jerk reactions and at least read the article you are criticising before putting out dangerous misinformation.
Note that I mentioned "the West". For measles death rates in the USA see http://www.healthsentinel.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2654:united-states-disease-death-rates&catid=55:united-states-deaths-from-diseases&Itemid=55 ... (I assume similar rates in western Europe), note that the rate has pretty well flat-lined since the 1950s. Didn't you realise the point of your third list item "More than 95% of measles deaths occur in low-income countries with weak health infrastructures". Sure, if you have an inadequate diet and crap housing, then measles vaccination probably is a good bet. But otherwise?
Anyway, you are latching on to measles. Check http://www.vaclib.org/basic/japanusa.htm ... "when Japan raised its minimum vaccination age to two years in 1975 the overall infant mortality rate improved"
Oh, and in response to I'm so concerned about allergies that I'm willing to risk the death or serious illness of my child and many of the vulnerable children around him; I'm a fuckshit!! .... I have personally been hospitalised with Asthma, which in my case was 100% definitely allergic. Your concerns are indeed your concerns, but I object to my concerns being dismissed as those of a fuckshit.
OK, I'm going to get flamed for this by a bunch of knee-jerk vaccination good people, but WTF. First strawman argument: which did not find convincing support for the idea that MMR shots caused autism . OK, so a load of people latch onto autism as a reason against vaccination, but its not the only concern. A lot of people are more concerned about lower-level negative immune system responses, such as increased allergy rates. Note that allergy rates have risen roughly in line with increasing hygiene and health-care in general (eg., hay fever was virtually unknown before the mid-1800s). Hygiene and health-care - vaccines included - affect the immune system, and its quite plausible that there is a balance point (between killing all but the healthiest or luckiest and weakened immune or damaged systems) which may have been passed. I'm old enough to remember measle parties, clearly people in the 50s and 60s (in the West anyway) were not very worried about it. It was something your kids got, and the sooner the better. Why is measles becoming more serious? Natural immunity to measles (ie., getting the real thing) likely results in greater protection passed to the kids from the mother (can't give exact details but the wife is a biologist who's been involved in immune research in the past). Then there's the multiple vaccination issue. The ability to survive an infection is a neccessary survival trait and would be selected for. The ability to survive multiple simultaneous infections much less so. Anyone see an issue here? I'm not anti-vaccination per-se. I am against the knee-jerk vaccinate against everything policy that governments and pharma push. MMR. How many people get bad affects from Rubella - none, only the foetus, so test girls before puberty and vaccinate those who are antibody-negative. Similarly for boys and Mumps. And I have a particular downer on the majority unthinking reactions that seem common on Slashdot whenever this topic comes up.