If you love measles and live in the US, don't worry... its not going anywhere [0]. Thanks to all the anti-vaxxer "do your own research" garbage people.
When internal CDC employees are admitting to fraud and systemic corruption[1], it makes sense to do your own research. Conducting research is a welcome activity in most civilized groups.
[1]"Dr. Thompson has admitted in taped phone conversations and in a statement through his lawyer, that he and other authors of the study, which include senior officials at CDC, manipulated the data and violated study protocol to conceal their findings linking the MMR vaccine to autism."
http://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2016/05/03/836249/...
I hope this gets downmodded to oblivion. Googling your way through false information, conspiracy theories and outright lies does not constitute research.
The mmr-autism link is so thoroughly debunked that to keep repeating it is the dishonest in the extreme. The man that invented it has been shown to be an outright fraud, his research unethical and his ability to practice medicine taken from him.
That article should not be considered reliable. Even though that sentence was structured as a statement, all the sources are cited as "multiple reliable sources." There is no record of those "taped phone conversations" and the whole thrust of the article is that there is a rumor that the CDC will recant its study showing no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Where does that rumor come from? Those multiple unnamed reliable sources. Also, this article was written in May, so if they were truly on the cusp of releasing new information it's weird that we're at the end of September and none of these predictions have come to pass.
Though the article is a great example of how this type of misinformation can propagate and sound scary and true if you're already predisposed to believe its stance, so is still interesting to read from that perspective.
Let's be clear: there is no evidence linking MMR vaccines with ASD. There are literally hundreds of examples of research into this, and there is ample evidence that there is no link. Here are my favourites; I'm sure you'll agree that they carry substantially more weight than a press release from an anti-vaccination group.
So tell me this, polio and smallpox were eradicated, but I am 45 years old and never had a smallpox or polio vaccine, so that makes me an anti-vaxxer regarding those two, yet here we are and I don't see those diseases making big comebacks?
FYI, polio has not been eradicated. It's been eliminated from all but eight countries, and is endemic on only two of those. But it has not yet been eradicated.
> I am 45 years old and never had a smallpox or polio vaccine, so that makes me an anti-vaxxer regarding those two, yet here we are and I don't see those diseases making big comebacks?
Well, don't travel to Afghanistan or Pakistan.
More seriously: you can't contract polio without being exposed to it[1]. There is no poliovirus in the US (outside laboratory settings), so you wouldn't have had the chance to contract it.
That state (the situation in which there is no poliovirus in the US) would not have been achieved without the vaccine, though, so you are still benefiting from the vaccine's use.
[1] whether in the wild or in vaccine-derived cases
comebacks from what? Oh yeah thats right... eradication thanks to vaccines. Back in the heyday of the polio and smallpox vaccine programs the anti-vax movement was a tiny fringe group of religious nuts... it then exploded in the late 90's because of a combination of science fraud, and celebrity endorsement.
An anti-vaxxer is someone refusing appropriate vaccinations (as defined by the medical authorities for that country).
Conforming to the recommended vaccination regime for your area, whilst avoiding unnecessary vaccinations that are not recommended by medical authorities, sounds quite the opposite of an anti-vaxxer.
> Conforming to the recommended vaccination regime for your area, whilst avoiding unnecessary vaccinations that are not recommended by medical authorities
In the US, the CDC recommends 4 lifetime doses of IPV (usually administered as three doses between the ages of 2 and 18 months, with a booster shot when the child begins preschool or kindergarten (4-6 years old)). The schedule in other countries in which polio has been eliminated is similar. Some countries will even require evidence of the vaccination schedule in order to grant entry to travelers.
The only countries in which this is not the recommendation are countries in which polio is either endemic or circulating through vaccine-derived cases, in which case OPV is used instead of IPV.
I wasn't aware that the USA still vaccinated against polio, that's interesting to know.
In that case I agree, going against the CDC advice is an anti-vaxxer stance.
yet here we are and I don't see those diseases making big comebacks
Smallpox has been recognised as eradicated globally, so without the intervention of bio-warfare or a lab accident, I think that one's safe to ignore.
Polio has had flare-ups where vaccination levels have dropped (many of these because it's hard to deliver vaccines in a warzone), so if an imported case of polio coincided with an area of low herd immunity thanks to anti-vaxxers, I can see how a flare-up could easily occur in the USA.
> Polio has had flare-ups where vaccination levels have dropped (many of these because it's hard to deliver vaccines in a warzone)
To clarify that, the current problem is not that it's hard to deliver vaccines in a warzone (we've been doing that in various countries for 2+ decades, which is how we've gotten to current infection levels).
The problem is that the CIA decided to use polio vaccination as a front for gathering intelligence for bin Laden's assasination, and now people in Afghanistan and Pakistan don't trust actual vaccination efforts[0].
And unfortunately, this is not just limited to Afghanistan and Pakistan:
> The blowback from the raid may well have extended beyond Pakistan. Health specialists say the suspicion, anger, and violence that some Pakistanis and Taliban militants directed at health care workers after news leaked about the CIA-orchestrated vaccination campaign may have contributed to the spread of polio in Pakistan and war-torn parts of Syria and Iraq
> Were you not vaccinated by choice, or it just isn't a big deal in Germany / Europe?
I have no idea how it works in Europe. But it could be a question of age. Measles was once so common that people over a certain age in the US are simply assumed to have had it at some point. That is, vaccinations aren't recommended for them because they are unnecessary.
In Germany it has been recommended for half a decade and the majority of kids get vaccinated. There are similar anti-vaxxing groups though, not out of fear of autism but rather prefering "natural" infections to build resistance in kids instead of "big pharma" vaccinations. There were some worrying but minor outbreaks last year if I remember correctly.
I have a toddler in NYC and our pediatrician is strongly opposed to vaccines. I've met other intelligent, well-off parents who are in the same camp.
It's not a black and white issue; there's a plethora of cases of children having bad reactions to vaccines. And what I find particularly interesting is that the people arguing against vaccines tend have calm, reasoned arguments while people who argue for them (like you) often resort to ad hominem and passionate anger.
Antivaxxers are calm because they believe they are making the healthiest choice for their kids. Vaxxers are upset because they feel antivaxxers are just relying on the success of vaccinations to diminish disease prevalence and don't really have to worry about their kids running into the disease.
If I knew everyone else in the world was vaccinated, I might choose not to vaccinate my kid. It's a mostly unnecessary risk for my kid since they would be unlikely to encounter it in a completely vaccinated world. But that sort of thinking is horrible for public health.
It is a black and white issue, the potential harms from vaccines are utterly dwarfed by the harms of not vaccinating your child.
Those intelligent an well off parents are not as intelligent as they think, and are probably suffering from the illusion that their comparative expertise in one field maps easily to their biases in others. The pediatrician is simply irresponsible.
The problem with judging arguments by the tone you perceive to come across is that you are likely to assign negative tone to arguments you are already biased against.
And if you use mercola.com as a source, you are already lost to sense.
First claiming absolute authority over other peoples risk tolerance, then degrading the opponents as stupid and after that claiming that a critique on this behaviour is likely caused by bias. Brilliant.
Breastfeeding is recommended by every medical body for most populations. (Obviously there are some populations where the risks outweigh the benefits) it's about the least controversial thing ever.
Home birth only puts your own family's health at risk so very few people will care.
Your choice to not vaccinate is a grave danger to the population as a whole so yeah people are gonna get pissed off as hell.
Your attitude of "everyone is out to get me" isn't healthy or constructive.
I mean, I'd say similar things to flat earthers or chemtrails advocates, and these are absolutely on a level. How else do you respond to something that is blatantly and harmfully dumb?
I'm talking in the abstract here. Forget the subject matter of vaccines, what is the appropriate reaction to someone advocating harmful actions based on conspiracy theories?
I think there needs to be a distinction between people who oppose forced/obligated vaccination and people who don't trust current vaccine combinates.
Both are probably motivated very different. For example not believing in giving a government enough power to make universal health decisions for toddlers is not exactly comparable to someone insisting that the world is flat. I struggle finding a way to describe the difference, but I'm certain that there is a sphere of moral/political/psychological deviation that needs to be tolerated in a society.
But: In general I'd guess that no human is ever convinced by being belittled. Spraying hate (not you personally) and incomprehension only helps the own moral compass, not the cause nor the conversation.
edit: words
edit: Sorry to those who replied. Hn tells me, I'm "too fast". May take a short while until I can reply again. :(
> "not believing in giving a government enough power to make universal health decisions for toddlers is not exactly comparable to someone insisting that the world is flat"
You're correct about them not being comparable - people who insist the world is flat won't have any effect on the physical health those around them. As opposed to children who are not vaccinated, who pose a major health risk to all those around them.
I hope that my reply doesn't come across as belittling - but there's no safe way to not vaccinate a child. There are, as you've pointed out in other replies, potential risks involved. This is part of life. Trying to shield someone from all risk would be impossible. Vaccines are a necessary risk right alongside letting your children out of your sight.
Parents are the sole stewards of their children - and they have every right and reason to be concerned for their safety. But arguing against vaccination because of the side effects which are proven to exist when weighed against the effects of the diseases we vaccinate for seems like you'd have to be drawing an incorrect conclusion.
The person I'm replying to was not opposing forced vaccination, it is clear they have neither been forced nor gone voluntarily.
I'm not sure someone who has gone so far in rejecting medical knowledge can be convinced by reason - the facts and good arguments are already out there within easy reach and have presumably been discounted.
FYI my comments on tone and bias were drawn from years of seeing people interpret tone to suit themselves online, either knowingly through tone-trolling or simply through bias.
These are not so different, though. There's no reason to not trust the current schedule and combinations, other than as a reactionary position to be so utterly wrong and shut down about the risks of vaccines. It's precisely the same stupidity, based on nebulous distrust and ignorance.
> But: In general I'd guess that no human is ever convinced by being belittled. Spraying hate (not you personally) and incomprehension only helps the own moral compass, not the cause nor the conversation.
In public discussions, there are many people to convince, not just the person advocating a viewpoint. If somebody has argued themselves into being anti-vax, changing their minds is not usually possible. They are 99% of the time a lost cause. I say this as somebody who has tried, tried so hard, on many approaches.
In my experience, the ridicule is borne from two directions: 1) fatigue of dealing with people that should be reasonable but are being fundamentally dishonest and tribalistic, and 2) preventing others from thinking that anti-vaxxers' "arguments" are worth anything except belittlement.
If a person doesn't like vaccines, I may try to convince them, but it's far more important to stop the lies from being perpetuated to more people than it is to convince just that single person. One of these goals is possible. Public discussion counts tremendously in these matters. I don't have to accept racist views without calling them out with force, and I certainly don't need to accept anti-vaxxer views without calling them out with force. There are times to convince and gently guide an individual, and a time to prevent them from poisoning the world. The way I talk about racism on a public forum is going to be different when dealing with a racist Uncle; different audiences and different approaches.
Your stupidity is actively harming innocent people, so please excuse my "passion". Reasoned arguments? All I see is "anecdata" backed up with sources that all link back to the anti-vax echo chamber. It is black and white and if your pediatrician is actually strongly opposed to vaccines... then they should have their license removed.
You must have never heard an actual epidemiologist speak about the anti-vaccine fad because what you're describing is the opposite of my experience. The anti-vaxxers get way more emotional, often falling to the "think of the children" default while ignoring decades of progress that have all but eliminated once fatal and life debilitating diseases from the developed world.
Vaccines, like any other medicine, have side effects and no doctor dispassionate on the issue will tell you otherwise. They will tell you that the side effects from smallpox, polio, measles, tuberculosis, tetanus, yellow fever, mumps, hepatitis B, meningitis, and many other diseases are so much worse and damaging. Even if you were to take all of the side effects anti-vaxxers claim vaccines cause and combine them for all vaccines, any one of these diseases have caused far more and worse suffering just in the 20th century.
Furthermore, there is good reason to be emotional. Anyone who doesn't vaccinate is a public health risk because they can become carriers that allow the pathogen to mutate and break herd immunity, risking the lives of everyone. With measles this has already happened in the last two decades and the CDC has conclusively traced all but one of them to an unvaccinated child. In each case, people previously vaccinated were infected by contact with someone who was not.
Please, vaccinate your child. The worst possible side effects from all of the vaccines put together pale in comparison to the damage these very preventable diseases can do and have already done to our society.
> Please, vaccinate your child. The worst possible side effects from all of the vaccines put together pale in comparison to the damage these very preventable diseases can do and have already done to our society.
Between my wife and I, I have been the one more open minded to doing it or not. We may end up vaccinating him. But for now we're exercising a lot of caution because it's not something that can be undone, and there are reasons to be skeptical about the quality of vaccines and the honesty of the industry that pushes them.
Edit: are people getting pleasure out of downvoting me? Am I not contributing to the discussion, whether or not you disagree with me?
You might as well be "contributing to the discussion" of whether the world is round or not. You'r not a scientist nor a doctor, so you don't have any firsthand knowledge.
Clearly not. It's utterly unacceptable that a pediatrician would recommend against routine vaccinations. Yes, some children end up having reactions (not autism). No, the risks of those reactions are not worse than the risks of the diseases the vaccinations prevent.
There's nothing wrong with an argument from authority - the problem with such an argument is when the expert is being cited from outside their sphere of expertise, for example. In this case the experts in the field are in agreement with a very strong scientific consensus based on a very solid body of data.
> There are reasons to be skeptical about the quality of vaccines and the honesty of the industry that pushes them.
When you make a vague statement like this with no evidence in the face of decades of successful vaccinations that has led to huge elimination of permanent life crippling diseases such as polio, your post doesn't seem that substantive.
Add to that the "think of my child" mentality being demonstrated at the expense of your own life and every other vaccinated human's life, it signals to me (what I get out of it) that your family is being irrationally selfish in a way that is dangerous to greater humanity as a whole.
As others have pointed out, the question isn't "health of my child with or without vaccines", it's "health of all children with or without vaccines". If your child doesn't get vaccinated, that puts other children at risk.
Further, you're implicitly relying on other children to be vaccinated to protect your child from debilitating diseases; were their parents to reach the same conclusion as you, your community would likely suffer a measles outbreak (as some such communities already have).
To choose not to vaccinate your child but to rely on the protection of others – while simultaneously putting others at greater risk – is a quite privileged and selfish decision.
> Edit: are people getting pleasure out of downvoting me? Am I not contributing to the discussion, whether or not you disagree with me?
Imagine, for the sake of understanding the downvotes you're getting, that your post could be read as "well, science might mostly be right, but we're exercising a lot of caution before relying on the germ theory of disease, because washing our hands could be dangerous; one person we talked to said that, so it might be true, and there are reasons to be skeptical about the quality of soap and the honest of the industry that pushes it". And, not only that, but imagine that comment was posted in the middle of a thread containing many links explaining the problem, and links debunking material that started the anti-soap conspiracy theories.
That post would get downvoted into oblivion, just like yours.
There's a giant pile of anti-science conspiracy theories and "think of the children!" paranoia, started around a single falsified paper, and your comment plays into that. There are already numerous comments in this thread explaining that, including links to articles about the falsified paper.
You're getting downvoted because, in the midst of all that, your posts suggest that your immediate reaction wasn't "we might have some deadly misinformation here that will hurt ourselves and others, we should learn more about this issue, figure out how badly we've been misled, and solve the problem"; instead, your reaction seems to be "eh, changing our minds would be hard, we're 'exercising a lot of caution' instead [and probably won't end up doing anything, because that's how hesitation like that works]".
Changing your mind, really changing your mind, is hard. Finding out that an expert you should have been able to trust was dead wrong is hard. Accepting, as an otherwise educated and intelligent person, that you were wrong about a question of fact is hard. The mind has non-trivial defense mechanisms that make it easy to avoid doing any of those things; people use those defense mechanisms every day, in lieu of feeling uncomfortable or incorporating new information.
Do you have any friends with babies? Because babies can get sick from diseases before they can be vaccinated. If your kid gets measles or whatever and gives it to an unvaccinated baby, your "caution" is not going to be any comfort to the baby's parents.
Similarly, immune-compromised people who might not be able to get vaccinated or, if they are, are vulnerable anyway.
Vaccination isn't just for you, it's for everyone around you.
What you're saying is true...the benefits of vaccination generally outweigh the risks.
But, this shouldn't lead to the complete discrediting of concern over the risk, as is often the case. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that you're doing so here.
Likewise, it shouldn't lead to a blind allegiance to a mandatory vaccine schedule, irrespective of what new vaccine pops up on it. That is, the risk-benefit equation should be evaluated per vaccine, not per the schedule as a whole.
The benefits massively outweigh the risks for common childhood vaccines.
Yes, risks should be honestly assessed, both for individual vaccines and the whole schedule. Yes, there exist vaccines which have questionable benefit, and there exist vaccines with higher risks that only make sense in certain situations.
None of this detracts from the abject denial of reality that is embodied in someone who has decided not to vaccinate their kids at all...
>None of this detracts from the abject denial of reality that is embodied in someone who has decided not to vaccinate their kids at all
I didn't suggest that it should comprise an argument for an automatic rejection of all vaccines. Quite the opposite, actually.
But, if you acknowledge that some vaccines have questionable benefit and higher risks that don't make sense for all, then it begs the question: who decides?
Seems to me parents should have discretion there. Now, it comes down to whether you agree with their tolerance for risk.
To be clear, I think vaccines are mostly wonderful. I just don't think it's my place to go around thumping people on the head about the choices they make for their own children.
Some babies aren't old enough to have been vaccinated. Some people are immunocompromised, including children. Some of these people are unable to be vaccinated. In order to avoid infection, these people depend on having enough other people be vaccinated.
If it's a question of personal discretion, shouldn't the parent of one those children have the discretion to force others to be vaccinated, in order that their own child won't die?
You asked "who decides?".
Jacobson v. Massachusetts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts ) decided "that it is within the police power of a state to provide for compulsory vaccination. That case and others had also settled that a state may, consistently with the federal Constitution, delegate to a municipality authority to determine under what conditions health regulations shall become operative. Laurel Hill Cemetery v. San Francisco, 216 U. S. 358. And still others had settled that the municipality may vest in its officials broad discretion in matters affecting the application and enforcement of a health law. Lieberman v. Van de Carr, 199 U. S. 552."
You may not like it, but Prince v. Massachusetts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_v._Massachusetts ) established that "the government has broad authority to regulate the actions and treatment of children. Parental authority is not absolute and can be permissibly restricted if doing so is in the interests of a child's welfare."
So yes, the parents have some discretion. It isn't absolute.
We have a government in part so we can collectively make hard decisions like this one.
I don't know how the count of these "unvaccinatable" people compares to those who suffer adverse reactions from vaccines, but it grows even stranger to demand that everyone assume risk for even smaller segments of the population; especially if the primary argument is a common welfare numbers game.
BTW, FWIW, some pretty heinous activities have been conducted in the name of the common welfare, including human experimentation. I'm obviously not saying this is happening here; only that "because common welfare" is not an ipso facto rationale. We've all benefitted from experiments, etc. at the expense of others. But, we later acknowledged that some of these things were completely unethical because, at some point, the rights of the individual trump even the common welfare.
Anyway, clearly the government has decided. My question was who should decide?
More specifically, I was speaking to the parent comment's acknowledgement that some discrimination among vaccines is prudent. At the same time, the commenter expressed anger over parents opting out of vaccines. Well, if discrimination is warranted but the commenter is angry about someone else's manner of discrimination, then that boils down to the commenter believing he/she should be the one who decides.
Again, I believe vaccines are generally beneficial, however, I also believe it's wrong to berate parents who don't blindly follow the vaccine schedule. The relatively low percentages of serious adverse reactions are little comfort when you're the one who is impacted. I'm just not prepared to demand that someone else do anything to their bodies for my sake, at any risk to him/her.
Parents have also done pretty heinous activities in the name of parental discretion. Simply pointing out that heinous activities have occurred is therefore meaningless.
Government policies also agree "that some discrimination among vaccines is prudent". That why some are mandatory and some are voluntary. That's why the polio vaccine switched from using attenuated live viruses to dead ones, even though the latter isn't as effective.
There is no requirement that everyone follow a vaccination schedule. As I pointed out, there are good medical reasons for why someone might not be vaccinated.
The question is, should non-medical reasons be enough to justify a variance? Should a general sense of malaise be enough? Or, if someone expresses a concern that their child might get ill as a result of a vaccine, and that concern - based on knowing the counts rather than expressed by people who don't - has already been factored into the decision to require vaccination, then should the opinion of one non-expert parent overweigh the opinions of thousands of experts made as the result of decades of study, with open publications and public participation, and repeated in scores of countries?
Any absolute statement like yours, which says the parent's discretion comes first, means there is no way to keep a parent from heinous activities, nor for that matter can children be required to go to school.
We see this tension already for Jehovah's Witnesses, where doctrine prohibits the use of blood transfusions. If a 2 year old needs surgery which requires a blood transfusion, should the JW parent have a right to let the child die in order to follow the faith? The US says (as do other countries) the doctor has the right to overrule the parent's wishes in that case.
>Parents have also done pretty heinous activities in the name of parental discretion
Actually, it's that counter-argument that's meaningless. The (rather obvious and enormous) difference is that no one is demanding that everyone else do something according to those parents' discretion. It's actually the point here.
>Government policies also agree "that some discrimination among vaccines is prudent".
It's odd that people are so trusting of "the government" in this one area. The mandatory vaccine schedule most certainly features vaccines for illnesses that are generally self-limiting, and for which the benefits are arguable, even for "experts" (gasp!).
>There is no requirement that everyone follow a vaccination schedule.
Huh? Your previous comment stated that I might not like it, but the government decides; then it painstakingly laid out supporting case law. Don't know what you're trying to say.
>The question is...
That whole paragraph progresses into a slippery-slope of increasingly discretionary rationale that highlights why people should have ultimate control over their own bodies. Yes, we could keep listing rationales until, eventually, even you might find a reason for pause.
And, your trust in the purity of the process is interesting.
>and repeated in scores of countries?
The schedule is not uniform and countries disagree over specific vaccines. Kind of blows your whole theory. Now, which "experts" do you trust to decide what you must pump into your kids?
>*We see this tension already for Jehovah's Witnesses...Do you want otherwise?
All you've done so far is spread FUD, and repeat issues were first visited 100+ years ago, and which have constantly been revisited over that century. Looking now, there was a set of articles about public health and constitutional issues for the centenary, like https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449224/ and the topics on the sidebar. You'll note that it goes into the changing understanding, in part to avoid new atrocities.
You haven't added anything new. Even your complaints about 'trusting of "the government"' are older than my parents. By "added nothing new", I mean that the existing policies have long since tried to respect people with viewpoints similar to yours.
You haven't proposed anything better than what we have now. All you seem to want to do is throw away a framework which has seemed to mostly work for generations.
You also malign me and the system with your statement "trust in the purity of the process". No system is pure, including whatever alternative you might propose. But yes, the vaccine system we have is a lot more transparent and externally verifiable than most of what goes on in government. What angels do you think will run things for us?
Of course different countries have different vaccine policies. The world isn't in lock-step, different countries have different levels of wealth and medical care, and many diseases are only regional. Most people in the US don't need the typhoid vaccine or yellow fever viral vaccine, even if they are required in places where those diseases are common.
The case law says that children with contraindications and adults are not required to follow a vaccination schedule. That's what I mean when I say that children with a medical reason do not need to follow the schedule.
FUD? Anything but blind allegiance to the schedule is raging FUD, huh? The real problem here is the zero-tolerance approach that people like you take to the meekest expression of any concern, even while you acknowledge that the system is imperfect. What is that, exactly?
"It's the best we got, so sit still while I ram it down your throat" seems to be your argument.
I'm not "anti-vaccine", but you seem to feel a need to lump me into that group in order to trot out the same tired lambasting of anyone who even raises his hand with a question. Calm down.
>different countries have different levels of wealth and medical care, and many diseases are only regional
I'm not talking about developing countries and I'm not talking about yellow fever. Look up the history of the varicella vaccine in Britain, for example. So, the set of vaccines you'd demand of others would be different based on the opinions of experts in your locale. And, you see nothing wrong with continuing to make those demands? No room for questions? OK.
I won't even refute the statement about maligning you, etc. I don't have the energy to continue pointing out the contradictions.
Have you been living under an anti-intellectual rock for over two centuries? Modern representative republics and bureaucracies were invented for this exact reason. We elect people we trust to implement bureaucracies in the best interest of the people so that we can receive guidance from real experts that we can trust. This democratic system of electing representatives and appointing experts to regulatory agencies has eliminated polio and smallpox, improved automobile safety a hundred fold, improved air and water quality across the country by a thousand fold, made safe air travel possible, all but eliminated industrial scale food poisoning, led the country to several moon landings, and countless other achievements. This system has also decided that vaccination is critically important to public health based on decades, if not centuries, of hard evidence and that no one has absolute freedom over themselves or their children because there exist life altering consequences for everyone in the case of vaccines.
If you don't like that social contract, you are free to elect different representatives or move to the autonomous regions of Somalia (you'll really want to get vaccinated though).
Because biology. Because anyone who isn't vaccinated is a potential carrier for the disease, which allows it to mutate and defeat the immune system protections created by the vaccine in everyone else. Because those who refuses to vaccinate, especially the mandatory schedules, are selfishly avoiding a tiny risk and instead putting everyone else at much greater risk.
I have a toddler in NYC too and if there is a pediatrician who is strongly against it then it's probably the one who is making a lot of money on people like you.
This is not about being a well-off parent it's about being an informed parent and I can guarantee you that most parents in NYC are anything but scientifically well informed.
There is an interesting societal element to this whole anti-vax movement that center around mostly white, mostly rich parents in NYC and Marin County. Which begs the question, why there? Why them?
I think it comes down to how anti-vaxxers receive and interpret information, as well as approaching things from the perspective of "I am smart and can see what is real better than most." This applies to medical dignoses of any kind, politics, culture. And it gets amped up when you have kids: what toys are best for my kid, what's the best diaper, which sunblock is safest, etc.
I live in SF and have a son and see this mindset everywhere. Everybody with the Honest diapers. Everybody with the Uppababy stroller. Everyone is doing all their own research online and asking friends who do the same, and it becomes a tight feedback loop where there is one right answer to everything about how to raise their kids. And the tricky thing is, everyone feels like they did the "research" themselves, so they can trust it.
The anti-vax movement is fundamentally anti-intellectual and promoted by people who should know better (and who pride themselves on knowing better). And to answer your question, people get angry because each anti-vaxxer increases their own children's risk for dying needlessly from a terrible disease.
There is no question that the antivax movement was started by an idiot fraud report and was pushed forward by Jennie McCarthy (who did her own research). She has since reversed her stance, but to support their established belief people keep drumming up new reasons vaccinations are bad, but it all boils down to a bunch of ZOMG TOXINS fearmongering.
I boil it down like this: your child is thousands of times more likely to die from catching the measles in Marin than having a terrible reaction from getting a vaccine. And vaccines are a tiny risk that is spread out amongst the community to protect us all. It is a civic duty to get vaccinated. It is the tiny price of living in a civilzation and to reject it is to say "A .0001 risk to MY child is not worth protecting everyone else's child." It is fundamentally selfish and fundamentally anti-intellectual which is why people are mad at you.
>It's not a black and white issue; there's a plethora of cases of children having bad reactions to vaccines.
You don't understand how medicine works then. ALL medical interventions have the potential for adverse outcomes. That doesn't mean all medical interventions are to be avoided though or are bad. We do a cost–benefit analysis. That is we weigh the potential benefits of each intervention against the potential risks for each individual patient.
This topic has been studied extensively. The numbers have been run and rerun. The facts are for most patients the benefits to both the individual and public health VASTLY outweigh the risks of the recommended routine vaccinations.
As far as medical interventions go it's as black and white as it gets.
Such a doctor needs to have his medical license taken away. Also by refusing vaccination you are putting your child and others in harm's way which to my mind is almost criminal.
Can any one explain how this anti-vaccination thing started in the US, and how is it continuing?
I do not know much but I know that anti-vaccination and climate change are heavily politicized in US, if I am not wrong. How did this don't trust the experts in the field, I know better thing start?
No matter which side you lean politically, I would like to believe most people would want the best for the kids, and essentially if its health related most people would take their doctor/pediatrician's advice. So, why are there so many people not vaccinating their kids? Is there a portion of doctors who believe in this and advice against vaccinations to the parents? Or are the parents just ignoring doctors advice and choosing to not vaccinate by themselves? Or anything else?
> There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
I think this is part of it, though I feel there's a healthy dose of egoism in there. Americans don't really live in communities like Europeans tend to, and when they do, it tends to be within an socioeconomic bubble. So I think we tend to easily dismiss the worth or even existence of others, the recognition of whom I think would put a damper on anti-intellectualism.
I just wanted to throw a bit of an extension so this, and keep in mind this is completely of my opinion/observation.
A big drive to what I think is fueling the anti-intellectual movement is a misunderstanding of the scientific research and purpose. Many of the "anti-intellectual" types I've interacted with often cite the same rational for their opinions and it usually falls into a few broad categories:
1) The Egg is Healthy Debate - "First they're healthy, then they're not, then they're healthy again! How can we trust them with this if we can't trust them with eggs!" - It shows lack of understanding that we can change opinion based on new information. Often they want to believe there's this black & white distinction to every issue and can't see the nuances of why something can be both good and bad for you but in different ways.
Somewhat of an additional point to this is people are taking it to mean scientists are often wrong, so maybe they're wrong this time too.
2) Bought & Paid Research - Sugar is the most recent one where lots of people are believing the war on fats was a driven narrative by interested groups. Maybe the food pyramid is a good example; something that was taught extensively but was heavily influenced by Agricultural groups. As an extension to this lots of people think they can ignore science at their leisure because they think everything is a bias from some group sponsoring the research that benefits them.
If Dr. Andrew Wakefield 'admitted it was completely fake' why would he produce a movie in 2016 with Dr. William Thompson of the CDC saying precisely the opposite?
You mean unsubstantiated bluster, as compared to the actual, you know, fuck-ton of science that shows there's no link and never has been?
No, that doesn't phase me in the slightest. If rumours of someone claiming to be from the CDC having said something provocative are a form of evidence to you, then I feel sorry for you.
I imagine part of it is the Streisand effect. So many news outlets gave attention to fringe groups that they became less fringe.
The other part is a side effect of elitism and marketing. "Natural", organic, hand processed goods command higher prices and margins than contemporary products, as such more individuals push "natural" living as a superior lifestyle. Ignoring science based medicine fits in nicely with this movement.
It's not a political thing at all, I'd say it's on both sides of the isle.
jameskilton explained the origin with links, but...
I would like to believe most people would want the best for the kids
I'll believe it started out that way, but now I think people have a narrative to support, the well-being of their kids be damned. Not that the anti-vaccination folk would say so in so many words, but after the guy behind the original study admitted it was faked, how else to explain it? Jenny McCarthy isn't going to back away from the only shred of relevance she has left. And those Mommies and Daddies who have been so shrill all this time? Many reasonable people change their minds every day on topics as they digest new information, but I argue that the people that look to Playboy models for their medical advice aren't reasonable people. So you're probably not going to get a lot of "mea culpa"s out of them.
It's not limited to the US - I know anti-vaxxers here in Germany, and it really doesn't help that most scientific studies are in English and hard to understand for non-nerds. Conspiracy theories are much easier to digest.
I think the people I know have simply seen the establishment fuck them over so many times (think [1], [2], TTIP, NSA, whatever) that they automatically believe the opposite of what "science" & the government want them to. Especially because "science" can be transparent bullshit too - the non-esoteric doctor we have on the countryside treats absolutely everything with a cocktail of antibiotics that never help. Why trust him to vaccinate anyone's children?
It makes me really unhappy to see comments on HN that liken human beings to garbage, even if they are ignorant human beings making dangerous choices. It makes me even more unhappy to see that such a comment is the #1 voted comment on a front-page story. If this situation is not corrected today, I will take a one-year break from commenting on HN. I encourage anyone else who values basic decency to other human beings to join me.
As of 2016-08-28, we have reached a point where the most upvoted comment on a popular post is vilifying ignorant people as "garbage". That means the problem is not one person or a small group of people; the majority of the active users on the site endorse such dehumanizing tactics. Of course, like everyone else, without listening to you, they won't be able to tell when they're actually the mistaken ones. But they won't be able to listen to you if they begin the process by deciding that you are subhuman scum.
Consequently, dialogue is impossible.
The best way to bring about change, barring immediate decisive action by moderators here, does not involve trying to bring it about on this website. It has become part of the problem. Maybe it always was by its very nature.
You shouldn't leave. The comments you posted here are waay more effective than leaving. I made the offending comment and even though I do think anti-vaxxers are garbage people... I do agree with your point that saying so is bad for discussion. Because of that, I would edit the word out now if I could... Thanks for speaking up.
You may be mis-parsing the parent comment. The phrase…
Thanks to all the anti-vaxxer "do your own research" garbage people.
…can also be interpreted as…
Thanks to all the anti-vaxxer people and their "do your own research" garbage.
That is, the garbage is the "do your own research" rejection of expertise, not the people themselves.
Participating in group discussions requires charitable reading, so if a 1st way of reading the comment makes you so disgusted you must storm out in protest, but a 2nd way of reading the comment lets you continue to participate, you should consider adopting the 2nd interpretation.
But perhaps, given the existence of 'garbage people' as a separately-occurring slur, you've read it as the writer intended. [And indeed I now see a confirmation from the original author, that labeling anti-vaxxers as 'garbage people' was their intent.]
Still, it's a throwaway bit of word-choice to indicate the speaker's anger and disgust at the situation. They (and their up-voters) likely believe, and with some justification, that the choices of these anti-vax people have put their own health at risk.
A bit of anger is natural in that situation, and language only has so many ways to express anger against others' practices. Every way of expressing that anger will in some way be seen as a slur against those people, lowering their relative-status, rejecting their choices, and rallying others to take corrective actions.
As long as those corrective actions don't include actually treating people like 'garbage' – destroying/disposing them – such adjectival choices should usually be forgiven as concise rhetorical flourishes. Most of the world communicates in such sloppy, emotional ways. Enforcing a standard of clinical precision and coolness, and careful word-choice against any ugly implications against any humans, would in fact exile many people, with valid perspectives, from your conversations.
It's probably personal preference like putting or not putting quotes around a book title, movie title, etc. They're not scare quotes but rather quotes to highlight.
This declaration of being measles free seems premature when there are still cases occurring and when such a highly transmissible disease is still common elsewhere in the world.
The article explictly makes a distinction between endemic and imported cases, which answers my initial confusion that there still are measles cases in the US.
I wish it had described what made a case endemic rather than imported. Some of the outbreaks in the US have spread rather widely, but I guess that still doesn't count as endemic?
My understanding is that his disease has to be able to flourish in the region to be considered endemic. Any outbreak of measles in the US would be expected to die out completely after a while, rather than continue moving through the population indefinitely.
This may be wrong, though.
From January 2 to September 10, 2016, 54 people from 16 states (Alabama,
Arizona,California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah) were
reported to have measles.
It looks like that with "free" they mean that there is no self-sustainable epidemic possible anymore in the Americas, given the degree of vaccine coverage. Nice.
116 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 143 ms ] thread[0]http://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html
[1]"Dr. Thompson has admitted in taped phone conversations and in a statement through his lawyer, that he and other authors of the study, which include senior officials at CDC, manipulated the data and violated study protocol to conceal their findings linking the MMR vaccine to autism." http://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2016/05/03/836249/...
The mmr-autism link is so thoroughly debunked that to keep repeating it is the dishonest in the extreme. The man that invented it has been shown to be an outright fraud, his research unethical and his ability to practice medicine taken from him.
Hopefully trolling.
Though the article is a great example of how this type of misinformation can propagate and sound scary and true if you're already predisposed to believe its stance, so is still interesting to read from that perspective.
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2275444
http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c7452
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2005.01425.x
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X01...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15259839
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10803-006-0157-3
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67...
A man who had a patent for a measles vaccine had to discredit that vaccine in order to be able to sell his own.
Andrew Wakefield was hired by a lawyer -paid hundreds of thousands of dollars- to discredit MMR.
He forged the data. He took samples without consent. He performed unnecessary tests and didn't get ethics panel approval.
http://tallguywrites.livejournal.com/148012.html
FYI, polio has not been eradicated. It's been eliminated from all but eight countries, and is endemic on only two of those. But it has not yet been eradicated.
> I am 45 years old and never had a smallpox or polio vaccine, so that makes me an anti-vaxxer regarding those two, yet here we are and I don't see those diseases making big comebacks?
Well, don't travel to Afghanistan or Pakistan.
More seriously: you can't contract polio without being exposed to it[1]. There is no poliovirus in the US (outside laboratory settings), so you wouldn't have had the chance to contract it.
That state (the situation in which there is no poliovirus in the US) would not have been achieved without the vaccine, though, so you are still benefiting from the vaccine's use.
[1] whether in the wild or in vaccine-derived cases
Conforming to the recommended vaccination regime for your area, whilst avoiding unnecessary vaccinations that are not recommended by medical authorities, sounds quite the opposite of an anti-vaxxer.
In the US, the CDC recommends 4 lifetime doses of IPV (usually administered as three doses between the ages of 2 and 18 months, with a booster shot when the child begins preschool or kindergarten (4-6 years old)). The schedule in other countries in which polio has been eliminated is similar. Some countries will even require evidence of the vaccination schedule in order to grant entry to travelers.
The only countries in which this is not the recommendation are countries in which polio is either endemic or circulating through vaccine-derived cases, in which case OPV is used instead of IPV.
In that case I agree, going against the CDC advice is an anti-vaxxer stance.
Smallpox has been recognised as eradicated globally, so without the intervention of bio-warfare or a lab accident, I think that one's safe to ignore.Polio has had flare-ups where vaccination levels have dropped (many of these because it's hard to deliver vaccines in a warzone), so if an imported case of polio coincided with an area of low herd immunity thanks to anti-vaxxers, I can see how a flare-up could easily occur in the USA.
To clarify that, the current problem is not that it's hard to deliver vaccines in a warzone (we've been doing that in various countries for 2+ decades, which is how we've gotten to current infection levels).
The problem is that the CIA decided to use polio vaccination as a front for gathering intelligence for bin Laden's assasination, and now people in Afghanistan and Pakistan don't trust actual vaccination efforts[0].
And unfortunately, this is not just limited to Afghanistan and Pakistan:
> The blowback from the raid may well have extended beyond Pakistan. Health specialists say the suspicion, anger, and violence that some Pakistanis and Taliban militants directed at health care workers after news leaked about the CIA-orchestrated vaccination campaign may have contributed to the spread of polio in Pakistan and war-torn parts of Syria and Iraq
[0] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/02/150227-polio-paki...
It should have been something you got as a kid, as an oral vaccine, back in the 1970s.
Polio vaccination for an adult living in a developed country is neither necessary nor recommended.
"Routine vaccination against smallpox ended in the United States in the early 1970s as its incidence lessened." http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/history-sm... . You are too young to have warranted receiving a smallpox vaccine.
I guess that makes me one of those garbage people.
I have no idea how it works in Europe. But it could be a question of age. Measles was once so common that people over a certain age in the US are simply assumed to have had it at some point. That is, vaccinations aren't recommended for them because they are unnecessary.
My parents certainly don't hold any strong feelings about it, so I guess it wasn't recommended at this point in time? I don't know.
It's not a black and white issue; there's a plethora of cases of children having bad reactions to vaccines. And what I find particularly interesting is that the people arguing against vaccines tend have calm, reasoned arguments while people who argue for them (like you) often resort to ad hominem and passionate anger.
http://vaccinechoicecanada.com/vaccine-ingredients/when-vacc...
https://www.mercola.com/article/vaccines/neurological_damage...
If I knew everyone else in the world was vaccinated, I might choose not to vaccinate my kid. It's a mostly unnecessary risk for my kid since they would be unlikely to encounter it in a completely vaccinated world. But that sort of thinking is horrible for public health.
Those intelligent an well off parents are not as intelligent as they think, and are probably suffering from the illusion that their comparative expertise in one field maps easily to their biases in others. The pediatrician is simply irresponsible.
The problem with judging arguments by the tone you perceive to come across is that you are likely to assign negative tone to arguments you are already biased against.
And if you use mercola.com as a source, you are already lost to sense.
First claiming absolute authority over other peoples risk tolerance, then degrading the opponents as stupid and after that claiming that a critique on this behaviour is likely caused by bias. Brilliant.
Home birth only puts your own family's health at risk so very few people will care.
Your choice to not vaccinate is a grave danger to the population as a whole so yeah people are gonna get pissed off as hell.
Your attitude of "everyone is out to get me" isn't healthy or constructive.
I mean, I'd say similar things to flat earthers or chemtrails advocates, and these are absolutely on a level. How else do you respond to something that is blatantly and harmfully dumb?
I'm talking in the abstract here. Forget the subject matter of vaccines, what is the appropriate reaction to someone advocating harmful actions based on conspiracy theories?
Both are probably motivated very different. For example not believing in giving a government enough power to make universal health decisions for toddlers is not exactly comparable to someone insisting that the world is flat. I struggle finding a way to describe the difference, but I'm certain that there is a sphere of moral/political/psychological deviation that needs to be tolerated in a society.
But: In general I'd guess that no human is ever convinced by being belittled. Spraying hate (not you personally) and incomprehension only helps the own moral compass, not the cause nor the conversation.
edit: words
edit: Sorry to those who replied. Hn tells me, I'm "too fast". May take a short while until I can reply again. :(
You're correct about them not being comparable - people who insist the world is flat won't have any effect on the physical health those around them. As opposed to children who are not vaccinated, who pose a major health risk to all those around them.
I hope that my reply doesn't come across as belittling - but there's no safe way to not vaccinate a child. There are, as you've pointed out in other replies, potential risks involved. This is part of life. Trying to shield someone from all risk would be impossible. Vaccines are a necessary risk right alongside letting your children out of your sight.
Parents are the sole stewards of their children - and they have every right and reason to be concerned for their safety. But arguing against vaccination because of the side effects which are proven to exist when weighed against the effects of the diseases we vaccinate for seems like you'd have to be drawing an incorrect conclusion.
I'm not sure someone who has gone so far in rejecting medical knowledge can be convinced by reason - the facts and good arguments are already out there within easy reach and have presumably been discounted.
FYI my comments on tone and bias were drawn from years of seeing people interpret tone to suit themselves online, either knowingly through tone-trolling or simply through bias.
These are not so different, though. There's no reason to not trust the current schedule and combinations, other than as a reactionary position to be so utterly wrong and shut down about the risks of vaccines. It's precisely the same stupidity, based on nebulous distrust and ignorance.
> But: In general I'd guess that no human is ever convinced by being belittled. Spraying hate (not you personally) and incomprehension only helps the own moral compass, not the cause nor the conversation.
In public discussions, there are many people to convince, not just the person advocating a viewpoint. If somebody has argued themselves into being anti-vax, changing their minds is not usually possible. They are 99% of the time a lost cause. I say this as somebody who has tried, tried so hard, on many approaches.
In my experience, the ridicule is borne from two directions: 1) fatigue of dealing with people that should be reasonable but are being fundamentally dishonest and tribalistic, and 2) preventing others from thinking that anti-vaxxers' "arguments" are worth anything except belittlement.
If a person doesn't like vaccines, I may try to convince them, but it's far more important to stop the lies from being perpetuated to more people than it is to convince just that single person. One of these goals is possible. Public discussion counts tremendously in these matters. I don't have to accept racist views without calling them out with force, and I certainly don't need to accept anti-vaxxer views without calling them out with force. There are times to convince and gently guide an individual, and a time to prevent them from poisoning the world. The way I talk about racism on a public forum is going to be different when dealing with a racist Uncle; different audiences and different approaches.
Ridicule.
Vaccines, like any other medicine, have side effects and no doctor dispassionate on the issue will tell you otherwise. They will tell you that the side effects from smallpox, polio, measles, tuberculosis, tetanus, yellow fever, mumps, hepatitis B, meningitis, and many other diseases are so much worse and damaging. Even if you were to take all of the side effects anti-vaxxers claim vaccines cause and combine them for all vaccines, any one of these diseases have caused far more and worse suffering just in the 20th century.
Furthermore, there is good reason to be emotional. Anyone who doesn't vaccinate is a public health risk because they can become carriers that allow the pathogen to mutate and break herd immunity, risking the lives of everyone. With measles this has already happened in the last two decades and the CDC has conclusively traced all but one of them to an unvaccinated child. In each case, people previously vaccinated were infected by contact with someone who was not.
Please, vaccinate your child. The worst possible side effects from all of the vaccines put together pale in comparison to the damage these very preventable diseases can do and have already done to our society.
Between my wife and I, I have been the one more open minded to doing it or not. We may end up vaccinating him. But for now we're exercising a lot of caution because it's not something that can be undone, and there are reasons to be skeptical about the quality of vaccines and the honesty of the industry that pushes them.
Edit: are people getting pleasure out of downvoting me? Am I not contributing to the discussion, whether or not you disagree with me?
combined with a wobbly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
edit: sooo, why the downvotes? You see that this is exactly what he did, right?
That topic seems so boiled up, reasonable, therefore non-faulty discussion doesn't even appear to be a goal.
When you make a vague statement like this with no evidence in the face of decades of successful vaccinations that has led to huge elimination of permanent life crippling diseases such as polio, your post doesn't seem that substantive.
Add to that the "think of my child" mentality being demonstrated at the expense of your own life and every other vaccinated human's life, it signals to me (what I get out of it) that your family is being irrationally selfish in a way that is dangerous to greater humanity as a whole.
Further, you're implicitly relying on other children to be vaccinated to protect your child from debilitating diseases; were their parents to reach the same conclusion as you, your community would likely suffer a measles outbreak (as some such communities already have).
To choose not to vaccinate your child but to rely on the protection of others – while simultaneously putting others at greater risk – is a quite privileged and selfish decision.
Spreading lost discounted vague FUD about vaccines while admittedly taking part in gravely endangering public health are not constructive.
Because of the population density of NYC your son of all people needs to be vaccinated. As long as he is healthy enough to be vaccinated.
Imagine, for the sake of understanding the downvotes you're getting, that your post could be read as "well, science might mostly be right, but we're exercising a lot of caution before relying on the germ theory of disease, because washing our hands could be dangerous; one person we talked to said that, so it might be true, and there are reasons to be skeptical about the quality of soap and the honest of the industry that pushes it". And, not only that, but imagine that comment was posted in the middle of a thread containing many links explaining the problem, and links debunking material that started the anti-soap conspiracy theories.
That post would get downvoted into oblivion, just like yours.
There's a giant pile of anti-science conspiracy theories and "think of the children!" paranoia, started around a single falsified paper, and your comment plays into that. There are already numerous comments in this thread explaining that, including links to articles about the falsified paper.
You're getting downvoted because, in the midst of all that, your posts suggest that your immediate reaction wasn't "we might have some deadly misinformation here that will hurt ourselves and others, we should learn more about this issue, figure out how badly we've been misled, and solve the problem"; instead, your reaction seems to be "eh, changing our minds would be hard, we're 'exercising a lot of caution' instead [and probably won't end up doing anything, because that's how hesitation like that works]".
Changing your mind, really changing your mind, is hard. Finding out that an expert you should have been able to trust was dead wrong is hard. Accepting, as an otherwise educated and intelligent person, that you were wrong about a question of fact is hard. The mind has non-trivial defense mechanisms that make it easy to avoid doing any of those things; people use those defense mechanisms every day, in lieu of feeling uncomfortable or incorporating new information.
You are spreading dangerous misinformation that leads directly to the spread of disease and death.
No, you're not.
Similarly, immune-compromised people who might not be able to get vaccinated or, if they are, are vulnerable anyway.
Vaccination isn't just for you, it's for everyone around you.
But, this shouldn't lead to the complete discrediting of concern over the risk, as is often the case. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that you're doing so here.
Likewise, it shouldn't lead to a blind allegiance to a mandatory vaccine schedule, irrespective of what new vaccine pops up on it. That is, the risk-benefit equation should be evaluated per vaccine, not per the schedule as a whole.
Yes, risks should be honestly assessed, both for individual vaccines and the whole schedule. Yes, there exist vaccines which have questionable benefit, and there exist vaccines with higher risks that only make sense in certain situations.
None of this detracts from the abject denial of reality that is embodied in someone who has decided not to vaccinate their kids at all...
I didn't suggest that it should comprise an argument for an automatic rejection of all vaccines. Quite the opposite, actually.
But, if you acknowledge that some vaccines have questionable benefit and higher risks that don't make sense for all, then it begs the question: who decides?
Seems to me parents should have discretion there. Now, it comes down to whether you agree with their tolerance for risk.
To be clear, I think vaccines are mostly wonderful. I just don't think it's my place to go around thumping people on the head about the choices they make for their own children.
If it's a question of personal discretion, shouldn't the parent of one those children have the discretion to force others to be vaccinated, in order that their own child won't die?
You asked "who decides?".
Jacobson v. Massachusetts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts ) decided "that it is within the police power of a state to provide for compulsory vaccination. That case and others had also settled that a state may, consistently with the federal Constitution, delegate to a municipality authority to determine under what conditions health regulations shall become operative. Laurel Hill Cemetery v. San Francisco, 216 U. S. 358. And still others had settled that the municipality may vest in its officials broad discretion in matters affecting the application and enforcement of a health law. Lieberman v. Van de Carr, 199 U. S. 552."
That quote comes from Zucht v. King, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/260/174/case.htm... , which settled that a city could require vaccinations in order for a child to attend school.
You may not like it, but Prince v. Massachusetts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_v._Massachusetts ) established that "the government has broad authority to regulate the actions and treatment of children. Parental authority is not absolute and can be permissibly restricted if doing so is in the interests of a child's welfare."
So yes, the parents have some discretion. It isn't absolute.
We have a government in part so we can collectively make hard decisions like this one.
I don't know how the count of these "unvaccinatable" people compares to those who suffer adverse reactions from vaccines, but it grows even stranger to demand that everyone assume risk for even smaller segments of the population; especially if the primary argument is a common welfare numbers game.
BTW, FWIW, some pretty heinous activities have been conducted in the name of the common welfare, including human experimentation. I'm obviously not saying this is happening here; only that "because common welfare" is not an ipso facto rationale. We've all benefitted from experiments, etc. at the expense of others. But, we later acknowledged that some of these things were completely unethical because, at some point, the rights of the individual trump even the common welfare.
Anyway, clearly the government has decided. My question was who should decide?
More specifically, I was speaking to the parent comment's acknowledgement that some discrimination among vaccines is prudent. At the same time, the commenter expressed anger over parents opting out of vaccines. Well, if discrimination is warranted but the commenter is angry about someone else's manner of discrimination, then that boils down to the commenter believing he/she should be the one who decides.
Again, I believe vaccines are generally beneficial, however, I also believe it's wrong to berate parents who don't blindly follow the vaccine schedule. The relatively low percentages of serious adverse reactions are little comfort when you're the one who is impacted. I'm just not prepared to demand that someone else do anything to their bodies for my sake, at any risk to him/her.
Government policies also agree "that some discrimination among vaccines is prudent". That why some are mandatory and some are voluntary. That's why the polio vaccine switched from using attenuated live viruses to dead ones, even though the latter isn't as effective.
There is no requirement that everyone follow a vaccination schedule. As I pointed out, there are good medical reasons for why someone might not be vaccinated.
The question is, should non-medical reasons be enough to justify a variance? Should a general sense of malaise be enough? Or, if someone expresses a concern that their child might get ill as a result of a vaccine, and that concern - based on knowing the counts rather than expressed by people who don't - has already been factored into the decision to require vaccination, then should the opinion of one non-expert parent overweigh the opinions of thousands of experts made as the result of decades of study, with open publications and public participation, and repeated in scores of countries?
Any absolute statement like yours, which says the parent's discretion comes first, means there is no way to keep a parent from heinous activities, nor for that matter can children be required to go to school.
We see this tension already for Jehovah's Witnesses, where doctrine prohibits the use of blood transfusions. If a 2 year old needs surgery which requires a blood transfusion, should the JW parent have a right to let the child die in order to follow the faith? The US says (as do other countries) the doctor has the right to overrule the parent's wishes in that case.
Do you want otherwise?
Actually, it's that counter-argument that's meaningless. The (rather obvious and enormous) difference is that no one is demanding that everyone else do something according to those parents' discretion. It's actually the point here.
>Government policies also agree "that some discrimination among vaccines is prudent".
It's odd that people are so trusting of "the government" in this one area. The mandatory vaccine schedule most certainly features vaccines for illnesses that are generally self-limiting, and for which the benefits are arguable, even for "experts" (gasp!).
>There is no requirement that everyone follow a vaccination schedule.
Huh? Your previous comment stated that I might not like it, but the government decides; then it painstakingly laid out supporting case law. Don't know what you're trying to say.
>The question is...
That whole paragraph progresses into a slippery-slope of increasingly discretionary rationale that highlights why people should have ultimate control over their own bodies. Yes, we could keep listing rationales until, eventually, even you might find a reason for pause.
And, your trust in the purity of the process is interesting.
>and repeated in scores of countries?
The schedule is not uniform and countries disagree over specific vaccines. Kind of blows your whole theory. Now, which "experts" do you trust to decide what you must pump into your kids?
>*We see this tension already for Jehovah's Witnesses...Do you want otherwise?
False equivalence.
You haven't added anything new. Even your complaints about 'trusting of "the government"' are older than my parents. By "added nothing new", I mean that the existing policies have long since tried to respect people with viewpoints similar to yours.
You haven't proposed anything better than what we have now. All you seem to want to do is throw away a framework which has seemed to mostly work for generations.
You also malign me and the system with your statement "trust in the purity of the process". No system is pure, including whatever alternative you might propose. But yes, the vaccine system we have is a lot more transparent and externally verifiable than most of what goes on in government. What angels do you think will run things for us?
Of course different countries have different vaccine policies. The world isn't in lock-step, different countries have different levels of wealth and medical care, and many diseases are only regional. Most people in the US don't need the typhoid vaccine or yellow fever viral vaccine, even if they are required in places where those diseases are common.
The case law says that children with contraindications and adults are not required to follow a vaccination schedule. That's what I mean when I say that children with a medical reason do not need to follow the schedule.
"It's the best we got, so sit still while I ram it down your throat" seems to be your argument.
I'm not "anti-vaccine", but you seem to feel a need to lump me into that group in order to trot out the same tired lambasting of anyone who even raises his hand with a question. Calm down.
>different countries have different levels of wealth and medical care, and many diseases are only regional
I'm not talking about developing countries and I'm not talking about yellow fever. Look up the history of the varicella vaccine in Britain, for example. So, the set of vaccines you'd demand of others would be different based on the opinions of experts in your locale. And, you see nothing wrong with continuing to make those demands? No room for questions? OK.
I won't even refute the statement about maligning you, etc. I don't have the energy to continue pointing out the contradictions.
Have you been living under an anti-intellectual rock for over two centuries? Modern representative republics and bureaucracies were invented for this exact reason. We elect people we trust to implement bureaucracies in the best interest of the people so that we can receive guidance from real experts that we can trust. This democratic system of electing representatives and appointing experts to regulatory agencies has eliminated polio and smallpox, improved automobile safety a hundred fold, improved air and water quality across the country by a thousand fold, made safe air travel possible, all but eliminated industrial scale food poisoning, led the country to several moon landings, and countless other achievements. This system has also decided that vaccination is critically important to public health based on decades, if not centuries, of hard evidence and that no one has absolute freedom over themselves or their children because there exist life altering consequences for everyone in the case of vaccines.
If you don't like that social contract, you are free to elect different representatives or move to the autonomous regions of Somalia (you'll really want to get vaccinated though).
Thanks for the Great Rant of Obvious Facts, none of which were being disputed.
Not sure why it's all or nothing.
Because biology. Because anyone who isn't vaccinated is a potential carrier for the disease, which allows it to mutate and defeat the immune system protections created by the vaccine in everyone else. Because those who refuses to vaccinate, especially the mandatory schedules, are selfishly avoiding a tiny risk and instead putting everyone else at much greater risk.
They should be thumped, when airing their views in public, so their ignorance doesn't spread.
This is not about being a well-off parent it's about being an informed parent and I can guarantee you that most parents in NYC are anything but scientifically well informed.
I think it comes down to how anti-vaxxers receive and interpret information, as well as approaching things from the perspective of "I am smart and can see what is real better than most." This applies to medical dignoses of any kind, politics, culture. And it gets amped up when you have kids: what toys are best for my kid, what's the best diaper, which sunblock is safest, etc.
I live in SF and have a son and see this mindset everywhere. Everybody with the Honest diapers. Everybody with the Uppababy stroller. Everyone is doing all their own research online and asking friends who do the same, and it becomes a tight feedback loop where there is one right answer to everything about how to raise their kids. And the tricky thing is, everyone feels like they did the "research" themselves, so they can trust it.
The anti-vax movement is fundamentally anti-intellectual and promoted by people who should know better (and who pride themselves on knowing better). And to answer your question, people get angry because each anti-vaxxer increases their own children's risk for dying needlessly from a terrible disease.
There is no question that the antivax movement was started by an idiot fraud report and was pushed forward by Jennie McCarthy (who did her own research). She has since reversed her stance, but to support their established belief people keep drumming up new reasons vaccinations are bad, but it all boils down to a bunch of ZOMG TOXINS fearmongering.
I boil it down like this: your child is thousands of times more likely to die from catching the measles in Marin than having a terrible reaction from getting a vaccine. And vaccines are a tiny risk that is spread out amongst the community to protect us all. It is a civic duty to get vaccinated. It is the tiny price of living in a civilzation and to reject it is to say "A .0001 risk to MY child is not worth protecting everyone else's child." It is fundamentally selfish and fundamentally anti-intellectual which is why people are mad at you.
THIS. Totally insightful.
You don't understand how medicine works then. ALL medical interventions have the potential for adverse outcomes. That doesn't mean all medical interventions are to be avoided though or are bad. We do a cost–benefit analysis. That is we weigh the potential benefits of each intervention against the potential risks for each individual patient.
This topic has been studied extensively. The numbers have been run and rerun. The facts are for most patients the benefits to both the individual and public health VASTLY outweigh the risks of the recommended routine vaccinations.
As far as medical interventions go it's as black and white as it gets.
Only positive thing about measles - you theoretically only get it once.
This is why near-universal vaccinations are so important, and why anti-vaxxers are responsible for allowing these diseases to continue to spread.
I do not know much but I know that anti-vaccination and climate change are heavily politicized in US, if I am not wrong. How did this don't trust the experts in the field, I know better thing start?
No matter which side you lean politically, I would like to believe most people would want the best for the kids, and essentially if its health related most people would take their doctor/pediatrician's advice. So, why are there so many people not vaccinating their kids? Is there a portion of doctors who believe in this and advice against vaccinations to the parents? Or are the parents just ignoring doctors advice and choosing to not vaccinate by themselves? Or anything else?
It was a paper written written that tried to claim that vaccines were behind the rise in Autism.
The paper was later redacted and the author admitted it was completely fake.
But the seed of fear was planted, and no amount of discussion, truth, or facts can change what many Americans "feel" is the truth.
There's also an ever growing "anti-science" and "anti-intellectual" wave in this country that this paper did not help with.
Isaac Asimov, 1980.
http://aphelis.net/cult-ignorance-isaac-asimov-1980/
A big drive to what I think is fueling the anti-intellectual movement is a misunderstanding of the scientific research and purpose. Many of the "anti-intellectual" types I've interacted with often cite the same rational for their opinions and it usually falls into a few broad categories:
1) The Egg is Healthy Debate - "First they're healthy, then they're not, then they're healthy again! How can we trust them with this if we can't trust them with eggs!" - It shows lack of understanding that we can change opinion based on new information. Often they want to believe there's this black & white distinction to every issue and can't see the nuances of why something can be both good and bad for you but in different ways.
Somewhat of an additional point to this is people are taking it to mean scientists are often wrong, so maybe they're wrong this time too.
2) Bought & Paid Research - Sugar is the most recent one where lots of people are believing the war on fats was a driven narrative by interested groups. Maybe the food pyramid is a good example; something that was taught extensively but was heavily influenced by Agricultural groups. As an extension to this lots of people think they can ignore science at their leisure because they think everything is a bias from some group sponsoring the research that benefits them.
He still makes movies because that's how he makes his money these days - scamming rubes.
No, that doesn't phase me in the slightest. If rumours of someone claiming to be from the CDC having said something provocative are a form of evidence to you, then I feel sorry for you.
Facts have no effect on you either then?
The other part is a side effect of elitism and marketing. "Natural", organic, hand processed goods command higher prices and margins than contemporary products, as such more individuals push "natural" living as a superior lifestyle. Ignoring science based medicine fits in nicely with this movement.
It's not a political thing at all, I'd say it's on both sides of the isle.
I would like to believe most people would want the best for the kids
I'll believe it started out that way, but now I think people have a narrative to support, the well-being of their kids be damned. Not that the anti-vaccination folk would say so in so many words, but after the guy behind the original study admitted it was faked, how else to explain it? Jenny McCarthy isn't going to back away from the only shred of relevance she has left. And those Mommies and Daddies who have been so shrill all this time? Many reasonable people change their minds every day on topics as they digest new information, but I argue that the people that look to Playboy models for their medical advice aren't reasonable people. So you're probably not going to get a lot of "mea culpa"s out of them.
I think the people I know have simply seen the establishment fuck them over so many times (think [1], [2], TTIP, NSA, whatever) that they automatically believe the opposite of what "science" & the government want them to. Especially because "science" can be transparent bullshit too - the non-esoteric doctor we have on the countryside treats absolutely everything with a cocktail of antibiotics that never help. Why trust him to vaccinate anyone's children?
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-ind... [2] https://corporatewatch.org/company-profiles/monsanto-influen... (Links with government)
I'll add the fear of GMO food in the list. To be fair though, Europeans behave much more stupidly when it comes to GMO.
The biggest obviously is Jenny McCarthy.
But some may surprise you such as the Foo Fighters who said AIDS wasn't real, I think they revered that point of view but I am not sure.
It pretty sad when one profoundly dumb celebrity can cause so much harm to so many people.
As of 2016-08-28, we have reached a point where the most upvoted comment on a popular post is vilifying ignorant people as "garbage". That means the problem is not one person or a small group of people; the majority of the active users on the site endorse such dehumanizing tactics. Of course, like everyone else, without listening to you, they won't be able to tell when they're actually the mistaken ones. But they won't be able to listen to you if they begin the process by deciding that you are subhuman scum.
Consequently, dialogue is impossible.
The best way to bring about change, barring immediate decisive action by moderators here, does not involve trying to bring it about on this website. It has become part of the problem. Maybe it always was by its very nature.
Edit: for clarity
Thanks to all the anti-vaxxer "do your own research" garbage people.
…can also be interpreted as…
Thanks to all the anti-vaxxer people and their "do your own research" garbage.
That is, the garbage is the "do your own research" rejection of expertise, not the people themselves.
Participating in group discussions requires charitable reading, so if a 1st way of reading the comment makes you so disgusted you must storm out in protest, but a 2nd way of reading the comment lets you continue to participate, you should consider adopting the 2nd interpretation.
But perhaps, given the existence of 'garbage people' as a separately-occurring slur, you've read it as the writer intended. [And indeed I now see a confirmation from the original author, that labeling anti-vaxxers as 'garbage people' was their intent.]
Still, it's a throwaway bit of word-choice to indicate the speaker's anger and disgust at the situation. They (and their up-voters) likely believe, and with some justification, that the choices of these anti-vax people have put their own health at risk.
A bit of anger is natural in that situation, and language only has so many ways to express anger against others' practices. Every way of expressing that anger will in some way be seen as a slur against those people, lowering their relative-status, rejecting their choices, and rallying others to take corrective actions.
As long as those corrective actions don't include actually treating people like 'garbage' – destroying/disposing them – such adjectival choices should usually be forgiven as concise rhetorical flourishes. Most of the world communicates in such sloppy, emotional ways. Enforcing a standard of clinical precision and coolness, and careful word-choice against any ugly implications against any humans, would in fact exile many people, with valid perspectives, from your conversations.
http://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html
Which I guess is a meaningful milestone.
The perils of easy global air travel.
I wish it had described what made a case endemic rather than imported. Some of the outbreaks in the US have spread rather widely, but I guess that still doesn't count as endemic?
https://www.britannica.com/science/endemic-disease