What do we do with these children? I admit my sample size is tiny but my anecdotal evidence from the few people I’ve talked to who went through the foster care system makes me believe in the meta that the majority of children are best left with their parents.
I would rather require vaccinations for all children and remove a parent to have any say in the matter. I would also rather have everyone be opted in to become an organ donor upon death with no opt out possible. Sadly, I don’t rule the world.
We dont need to make there no opt out for organ donation, all we need to do is make organ donation the default and it would drastically increase the number of organ doners.
While I understand the numbers benefits of vaccines and their ability to eradicate diseases, here are a few points from a devil's advocate:
1. No medicine is 100% safe in all circumstances. Vaccines do have published risk of complications and while tiny are not zero and sometimes are greater than the risk of contracting the disease itself.
2. As a general rule, I don't want any government telling me what to put in my body or my kid's bodies. Why not ban sugar that leads to far more health conditions than some of these diseases? Why not force people to eat the government recommended ratio of fiber, fat, calories, etc.? Sure, people might be physically healthier but at the expense of freedom of choice.
3. The flu and common cold kills lots of people per year yet those vaccines are optional for adults while some are required for kids, why?
4. Vaccines are required for kids to come to public school in CA, but not required to go to placed where they're in even closer contact (sports, pools, etc.), why?
While I think free vaccines, good education and honest dialogue are important, punishing dissent doesn't seem right. I think understanding that non-vaxers have legitimate concerns helps create a better solution than enforcement and blame.
> greater than the risk of contracting the disease itself.
This is a circular argument. In G7 countries with highly developed economies and medical systems, the reason why the risk of contracting a disease like mumps, rubella or polio is extremely rare is because almost everyone is vaccinated against them.
I'll offer a counterpoint. Some people have extremely adverse reactions with vaccines. Those who have predispositions that can lead to extreme reactions should be able to opt out of vaccination because they may in rare cases be more harm than good.
Now, most people should be vaccinated and those few that aren't should hopefully be protected by herd immunity.
To say that the quality medical systems and herd immunity decreasing the risk of those diseases nullifies the dangers of adverse reactions is a bit unfair.
To close, I agree that most everyone should be vaccinated and that philosophical beliefs are not valid reasons to avoid vaccination. I do disagree in that I believe that there are a number of rare situations where vaccination is legitimately more harmful than just relying on herd immunity.
How does society reconcile this "all opinions are valid" viewpoint with the fact that anti-vaxxers are actively putting others at risk due to reduced herd immunity? It's not theoretical -- we have data that shows outbreaks of "cured" diseases in places with reduced vaccination rates.
Hm, it's not a complete response to your point, but I think the comparison is possibly mismatched, given the inherent risks with anti-vaxers, herd immunity, and the larger population.
The actions of a few can seriously impact large populations. The multiplier effect is, potentially, significantly greater than with guns/alcohol/driving. (And even then, those arguably border on even more divisive debates that we should leave for another thread.)
Totally agree. The US has a history of protecting the rights of the individual over the rights of the group perhaps more so than other nations. There are benefits and risks to that and many other countries are experimenting with other ways of evaluating those conflicts.
I think where the point gets contentious with libertarians is that forcing them to do something feels far scarier and authoritarian to them than forcing them not to do something.
I agree that we're all connected though and the decisions we make impact those around us no matter how individual we think our actions might be.
If something looks "purely bad", you're probably polarized on the issue. There's usually positives and negatives to everything, even if one far outweighs the other in your mind or in the mind of the vast majority of people.
When you run into stiff resistance like the anti-vaxx movement, which has little economic incentive (I can't think of who profits by a kid not taking vaccines), it helps to be able to understand where their points make sense even if you don't agree.
Once you're that beyond right and wrong, then you can educate more effectively. I've had much more constructive dialogues with anti-vaxx people once they know that I understand how scary it is for a government to tell you you have to inject your kid with something you don't understand and doesn't feel necessary and might have risks.
I think if you grant them the courtesy that they could be right (which science and medicine has examples of being highly confident and then being wrong), that then they are more open to at least getting the highest recommended vaccines on their own volition.
We don't give guns to kids, we don't allow drunk people to drive, so why would we allow idiots to not vaccinate and harm everyone else? All opinions are not valid when one's opinion goes against established scientific fact. That really seems to be a point mostly lost on Americans who think their beliefs are equal to facts. If that was the case, we should let people who think they drive better drunk do so and give guns to four year olds because without a conscience, they'll have no qualms about using them. The above two scenarios are as absurd as allowing people to go around unvaccinated, infecting and killing others randomly.
This. Nothing is 100% good or bad. The conversation on both sides has gotten laughably hyperbolic. Like any medical intervention the pros and cons of each vaccine need to be discussed rationally and with full informed consent for each patient. Other commenters posting outrage casting anti-vaxxing as mental derangement or child abuse are going to get as far as the worst kind of anti-vax rhetoric
If measles is more common now that anti-vax is more popular, that's a problem worth addressing. We had a known, working solution, so yeah, it does seem like child abuse.
> Vaccines do have published risk of complications
Yes, so the selfish will avoid the risk and free-ride on the herd immunity. In a society that is irrationally selfish, the government may reasonably choose to give incentives to vaccinate. For example, the vaccinations might be required for admission into government-paid health care, or the government could compensate victims of the side-effects with care, cash, etc.
> No medicine is 100% safe in all circumstances. Vaccines do have published risk of complications and while tiny are not zero and sometimes are greater than the risk of contracting the disease itself.
Yes. But the risk of a pandemic is the risk you are to compare with. Not the 1% risk of a side effect compared to a 0.01% risk of contracting the disease. Also: herd immunity means that those who can't take the vaccine are protected. Anyone who doesn't take e.g. the smallpox shot, is getting a free ride on those of us who DO take the shot. The reason they could dodge any side effect and STILL run almost 0% risk of getting smallpox, is because everyone else took the shot. I think this is what is lost on antivaxers. They think that the vaccine protects THEM and that they can thus weigh that benefit against the risk on THEM. But that's not how it works. Their shot protects ME.
> As a general rule, I don't want any government telling me what to put in my body or my kid's bodies.
As a general rule, I want my government to ensure the society is vaccinated. Government already tells you a lot of what you can and can't put in your body. Having them say you HAVE to put something is going one step further, but I don't see how it's a very big one.
> Vaccines are required for kids to come to public school in CA, but not required to go to placed where they're in even closer contact (sports, pools, etc.), why?
Presumably because of how laws work and how it might be legal for a school to require vaccines, but not another public location (perhaps because the school isn't a public place at all?).
> punishing dissent doesn't seem right.
Excellent point. Give a tax break to those who vaccinate etc. instead.
> I think understanding that non-vaxers have legitimate concerns helps create a better solution than enforcement and blame.
I think it's important to meet their concerns with information. But we can never ever give parents the idea that vaccines are somehow a controversial idea. It's not.
Although herd immunity is good for the entire community, medical ethicists insist (for sound philosophical reasons) on requiring that any treatment be a good idea _for the patient themselves_.
For example, many countries began vaccinating young female children against HPV on the rationale that understanding of cervical cancer says if we prevent HPV infection we prevent almost all of this type of primary cancer, and the vaccine seems to prevent infection with some strains of HPV implicated in cancer.
Now, you can immediately see that vaccinating their male colleagues could induce herd immunity, this is almost always an STI. But ethically that doesn't justify classes of boys.
What did subsequently cause some countries to vaccinate boys was the fact that HPV also causes cancer in other places, and vaccinating the boys protects them against that. It's a narrower call (fewer cancer cases prevented) but for a relatively safe vaccine it can still make sense.
Edited to add: This gets interesting for a "Chickenpox Vaccine". The virus that causes Chickenpox in children (Varicella-zoster) has much nastier consequences in adults. So if we vaccinate children so they don't a nasty but rarely deadly illness, but as a result more adults get infected without prior exposure, that might suck... Different countries have made different choices about what to do here.
Just to be clear, herd immunity protects those who aren't vaccinated. If you are vaccinated, your community's vaccination or lack there of doesn't affect you.
> Give a tax break to those who vaccinate etc. instead.
Yes, despite all the down votes my comment isn't about who is right or wrong, it's about respecting the other side. Just because you want your government to make laws about having to put medicine in your body there are millions of libretarians that would disagree on principle no matter how glaring the health benefits. It's less about taking the vaccine and more about the judgement and punishment if they don't that actually makes them resist more, not less.
You can't get rid of guns by deamonizing those that own guns and you can't increase herd immunity by deamonizing anti-vaxxers.
So I really like your idea. Offer carrots and respect, not sticks and judgement.
Please don't take threads into even deeper circles of hell. The community is already incapable of discussing this issue civilly, and upping the ideological ante makes the flamewar worse.
Isn't the anti-vaxxer craziness self defeating by definition? Eventually these people would die out leaving the reasonable ones to live in peace. Am I missing some obvious reason why we can't simply allow stupidity run its course?
Because I don't want my kids getting sick and dying because other peoples' ignorance negatively impacted herd immunity?
edit:
Just going to point this out: this comment thread has multiple instances of people on the anti-vax slant showing that they either don't understand what herd immunity is, or don't understand that vaccinations are not 100% and are only effective on large populations due to herd immunity.
Again, I argue that education would make the anti-vax problem go away.
Herd immunity. "Herd immunity is a form of indirect protection from infectious disease that occurs when a large percentage of a population has become immune to an infection, thereby providing a measure of protection for individuals who are not immune."
If strangers must die in order for us to live in a world where we can raise our children however we want, so be it. Their deaths indicate weak genetics that should be flushed from the gene pool anyway. Mewling, limp-wristed, hapless techno-weenies will never understand this.
The main problem I think the author of the article is trying to convey is that a lack of rational discussion may end up leading us to a situation where we potentially harm people with vaccines because we are shutting down any real understanding about the risks.
And then the result of that would be a ton of new anti-vaxxers, which would be bad for everyone.
US anti-vaxxers trend white and wealthy. It is in no way a "left" movement. Unlike with climate change denial, there is no major political party in the US which has integrated anti-vax into their platform. It is an insanity fully removed from the US political spectrum.
>anti-vaxxers are the left’s climate change deniers
They would be, if all anti-vaxxers were leftists, or if the anti-vax movement were politically and ideologically motivated by leftist politics the way that climate change denial is by the right, but no.
Sometimes equivocation works, but in this case it doesn't.
It’s true that it’s not as entrenched in the party platform as climate change however if you look at the supporters of the anti-vaxxer and anti-GMO movements you’ll find that they lean overwhelmingly liberal.
You are right about anti-GMO but my experience with antivaxers was that they were predominantly anti-science, often highly religious and more commonly conservative or fringe right than the other way around.
I don't think antivaxers are predominantly left wing. The whole Big Xxx (in this case Pharma) paranoia has long since left the camp of rational scepticism over suspiciously funded research and into the realm of uneducated lunacy that plagues both fringe ends of the ideological spectrum. But it is definitely more right aligned because it resonates well with the whole "my beliefs are at least as good as your scientific facts" thing that is firmly a right wing thing. This is further compound by the facts that fringe right is extremely well correlated with lack of education and by some studies even with lower IQ.
Well, the only major media outlet that supports anti-vaxxer's stance is Fox News...FYI. It is hardly a left movement, appeals to low educated crowd as well.
The right wing anti-vaxxers love to make analogy in between vaccine and guns, claiming it is their freedom to keep or resist and a unique denial of science and statistics, which I would say it mainly a right-wing hallmark.
1. Vaccines aren't 100% effective. Unvaccinated people are a threat to vaccinated people.
2. Vaccines aren't an option for 100% of people. People who choose not to vaccinated people are a threat to people who can't be safely vaccinated.
3. Information, including misinformation, spreads more quickly than death does. It won't die out due to natural selection.
4. Losing half our population to infectious disease, even if you consider them stupid and irresponsible, would have catastrophic effects for the economy.
5. A majority of the effected population are children.
6. Maybe, just maybe, letting millions of people just die of preventable disease, even if they're adults and made a foolish decision, isn't the right thing to do.
Anti-vaxx is probably culturally transmitted, not genetic. Either way, most unvaccinated people don't die of contagious diseases, so it won't "naturally" burn itself out.
We survived without vaxines or antibiotics otherwise we wouldn’t be here.
There is no indication that this lunacy is in any way shape and form is genetic.
Also the irony is that the vast majority of anti-vaxxers are vaccinated they will sadly survive their children might not but due to the sanitary conditions and herd immunity of western countries we will need a much larger portion of the population to be unvaccinated before we see major negative effects.
This is why we often see outbreaks in various spots that host large immigrant populations which are more likely to have lower percentage of vaccinated adults and even host asymptomatic carriers.
B) more seriously, antivax is a symptom; the real disease is memetic. At some point people gave up on fact-finding processes and the value of expertise. That is a disease vector where social media is the cholera-ridden communal water pump. Some of the things it spreads are harmless (moon landing denial) and some are even more dangerous than anti-vax, such as holocaust denial and sandy hook "paid actor" lies.
Growing up in the 1980s I never thought I'd see a world where a sizable percentage of people both believe that we never landed on the moon, that the earth is flat, and that vaccines are a mind-control plot by some shadowy cabal of "globalists".
If someone didn't want to feed their kid, you could use the same logic. Most people don't want someone else's kid to suffer because their parents are willful idiots. Most people don't want to get sick, either.
You get labeled anti-vax for just not wanting to follow the gov't imposed schedule. Many are merely critical of vaccines, and prefer the schedule of Scandinavian countries, Singapore, Japan or Israel. Here a graph that visualizes the number of vaccines (US highest with 36, lowest have 11) children <6 should have gotten by schedule. It is understandable that many in the US are asking questions with that number of vaccines while some of the most developed nations do with so few, and seem to have a much better public health care system. I think Finnish health care is good enough for me and any children I may have. I prefer 11 shots over 36. Am I now an anti-vaxxer? Well, I've been called one many times, but I do not think so myself. I'm critical of any chemical that goes in my (child's) body. E-numbers, supplements, air quality, pesticides, BPAs and vaccines as well.
Yes, you're anti-vax because you share misinformation on this topic and try to pretend that rather than irrational fears you're spreading "truths". That chart is garbage, the main thing they've done is sort a column chart by height with the implication that this signifies something, but it doesn't.
The US has higher than expected childhood and especially infant mortality because it deliberately doesn't provide decent healthcare to a substantial fraction of its population. If anything the US has lower than desirable rates of vaccination, which is why it keeps having problems with outbreaks of preventable diseases.
All I'm saying is that I'd rather go with the scandinavians when it come to a health care protocol that involves shooting substances in the veins of young children. I'm certainly afraid the US has the public health care system that is most "lobbied" by pharma, and the scandinavians have one that is most impartial.
No. The problem with that, along with many libertarian beliefs, is that people do not exist in a vacuum. Their actions can and do affect others who had nothing to do with their decision. Take the measles outbreak that happened at Disneyland a few years ago, or the whooping cough outbreak in SV. Those affected children other than the ones who's parents didn't vaccinate.
Morality aside, the concept of "herd immunity" means it works differently. A society (or, a population group) allowing anti-vaxxer nonsense is self-defeating because their people will die out while a neighboring society that does not tolerate such nonsense will live on and prosper.
Yes, this is a comically simplistic view, and shouldn't be taken seriously. I'm just pointing out that the pseudo-Darwinian "let them die" rhetoric actually means "let us die".
While I do fully believe in the benefits of vaccination, and am vaccinated for many things myself, I do think it's very important to question the formulations of certain vaccines.
I mean, a lot of vaccines are made in China and other places that have lackluster health and safety standards. Just this past week, China has been in an uproar over tainted vaccines. There is legitimate cause to be wary of whats included within certain vaccine formulations, despite the science underlying vaccination being sound.
Most vaccines are not made in China, at least not those that are in use in the West.
The West has had plenty of its own tainted vaccine issues but it’s not in any shape or form an excuse to not vaccinate just an excuse to have better standards which we already have.
Even with all the possible problems, side effects and complications vaccination saves millions of people each year.
Vaccination isn’t just about you if you don’t vaccinate your child you not only put them at risk but more importantly you those who cannot be vaccinated at even more risk as they would have a compromised immune system to begin with.
The sad truth is that not-vaccinating your child would likely won’t kill them due to modern medicine, however it can kill those who cannot be vaccinated which is why the moral imperative is for society to mandate vaccination because if we have one rule for a just society regardless of what system we use is that the strong should protect the weak.
We take money form you to feed and care for people that can’t take care of them selves, we will take your children away from you if you put them at risk sometimes for a silly reasons as leaving a child home alone, we as a society force conduct all the time I don’t understand why is this so different.
> we as a society force conduct all the time I don’t understand why is this so different
Because in america we believe in an individual's personal right and a limited government. A government free to take your children away when there is no immediate danger would certainly violate this.
A cop out: why don't we do something to address the education system that allows people to hold so strongly these anti-scientific conclusions? Don't want to stray off topic, but, as a society, we seem to have an increasing inability to distinguish junk science and random opinions passed as fact, from, you know, actual science.
If people understood herd immunity, understood that the underpinnings of the anti-vax movement are based on debunked fraudulent science, etc, this "anti-vax" situation would've never come into being.
It’s VERY important to question the make up of vaccinations, so important that most governments have huge teams of qualified people dedicated to evaluating the safety and effectiveness of vaccines (and any other licensed medication for that matter).
Are you one in of those teams? No? Then maybe don’t do your own “research” and maybe get your advice from a qualified person. Maybe someone you can see whenever you need to, perhaps someone who might have spent 8 years studying medicine in university? Maybe a doctor could help?
I dunno though maybe Facebook and news reports about Chinese vaccines are a more reliable, reputable source of information.
The fact that there's still countries where you can cite philosophical preferences to opt your kid out of vaccinations speaks to some sort of fundamental disconnect that's hard to put one's finger on.
The scientific evidence supporting vaccinations is undebatable, the fact that parents can opt their kids out because they disagree with reality and put other people's lives at risk should be as abhorrent in the public mind as drunk driving.
After all, maybe there's someone who disagrees with the science of how alcohol consumption impairs driving, and how this, statistically, will kill innocent people. Shouldn't they get to disagree with reality and put innocents in harm's way?
But with vaccines the harm is too far removed and only visible through statistics, you usually can't point to any one unvaccinated child and say they caused so-and-so to die (unlike in the case of drunk driving). But the image of a child being forcibly separated from its parents to be injected by agents of the state does produce a visceral image of harm.
> The scientific evidence supporting vaccinations is undebatable, the fact that parents can opt their kids out because they disagree with reality and put other people's lives at risk should be as abhorrent in the public mind as drunk driving.
Indeed. And although this might sound extreme: should be considered child abuse too. You're making a massively uninformed choice that could kill or disable your child and others that aren't physically able to take the vaccine. Being an idiot shouldn't be any excuse for this behaviour.
Drunk driving: you were able to drive, then you took alcohol, no you are unable to drive.
Going around unvaccinated: you were able to be infected and transmit a disease, then you (or your parents) did not allow others to vaccinate you, now you are still able to get infected and transmit.
I'm not against vaccination, but I'm critical. (See my other comment) US has by far the biggest vaccination schedule in the world, and is not exactly an example of a great public health system. Scandinavian countries have much smaller schedules than the US, and they have healthier children.
"Healthy children" has nothing to do with vaccines. Vaccines are for preventing specific diseases a population is at risk for. They don't prevent your kids from getting fat.
> The fact that there's still countries where you can cite philosophical preferences to opt your kid out of vaccinations speaks to some sort of fundamental disconnect that's hard to put one's finger on.
There's this concept we call freedom.
Edit: If you're hating on me, stop and consider where you'd draw the line regarding individual risk vs social benefit. What about eugenics? For me, the drug war is going too far.
Your freedom to not get vaccinated is impinging on my freedom not to die from some totally avoidable pathogen. When freedoms are incompatible someone’s freedom has to be curtailed. I vote for the irrational and dangerous freedom to be curtailed in favor of public health, in the same way that I don’t care about curtailing someone’s freedom to best me to death with a brick because they want to.
“Because freedom” isn’t an argument, isn’t a point being made, it’s nothing.
I get the argument. And maybe I'd be convinced if victims of vaccine side effects had the right to pursue class torts against manufacturers. But if they did, there likely wouldn't be any vaccine manufacturers. And that brings cost/benefit assumptions into question, no?
I find it hard to get as outraged about this as everybody else does. Part of this stems from the fact that I think the history of forcible medical interventions has been over-aggressive as often as it has been under-aggressive.
For example, there was a time when doctors deemed it prudent not give babies breast milk, to take the baby away from the mother for observation after being born, prescribe DES to try to prevent miscarriage.
I imagine vaccination is not one of these cases, but there's a lot we don't really understand at all about the immune system (e.g. why autoimmune conditions like allergies are growing so fast), or the human body in general.
"there's a lot we don't really understand at all about the immune system"
This, exactly this, is how the anti-vax movement exists! It is amazing how lay people will just dismiss the research and conclusions of an entire field of science with a handwave and an argument-less quip.
Maybe you'd be more upset if you had a child that got sick in an area where vaccination rates were low. Or if you had a child that had actual, real, medical reasons why they couldn't receive the immunization and need to rely on herd immunity for their literal survival.
I'm not dismissing anything. I didn't say the science is or isn't true, I didn't say I would or wouldn't vaccinate.
What I'm pointing out is that the side that says it knows, historically, has been wrong a lot more than we recognize.
>> Maybe you'd be more upset if you had a child that got sick in an area where vaccination rates were low. Or if you had a child that had actual, real, medical reasons why they couldn't receive the immunization and need to rely on herd immunity for their literal survival.
Of course I'd be upset in those circumstances, I'm not sure what your point is. Is it that we all need to get angry on the internet to save little kids? Because I'll tell you right now that's the least effective way to try to bring anybody to your side.
No. Historically, particularly in recent times, medicine has been more right than wrong when giving out advice. Generally speaking if you ask for medical advice from a qualified person it will be good advice.
You’re cherry picking specific scenarios where a recommendation was given that was later proven incorrect.
There is no evidence to suggest vaccines are going to be one of those scenarios. What we do know is that not vaccinating will lead to unnecessary deaths and serious illnesses.
Oh, I thought you were purporting to be an advocate of science.
Should we not use the scientific method to measure what percentage of the time medical diagnoses are wrong, medicines are withdrawn after being prescribed, and health outcomes of those born at home versus born at the hospital?
As a vaccinated person who just suffered from mumps thanks to a loss of herd immunity, it's hard to not get upset reading that type of logic. There's an incredibly clear correlation between vaccines and reduction of suffering, and your actions don't affect yourself alone.
They got the vaccine but it wasn’t 100% effective for them. Because enough idiots didn’t vaccinate their children the virus was still able to spread (no herd immunity) and infected them.
Funny. Your "vaccine" didn't seem to work. Maybe you should be mad at the company that got paid $100 for it instead of taking it out on society. And just think, if you had gotten it in early childhood, the side effects are very mild.
Sad to see how quick the downvotes came. It really wasn't that long ago that medical advice was to use formula instead of breast milk and sleep babies on their stomachs.
Many/most of the pediatricians/nurses who parents interact with have no idea about the details of the vaccines. They are just blindly following protocol because they are told to. They have a million other things to do and concern themselves about.
The down votes on this thread are insane. Science is not perfect especially medical advice.
Even though I think vaccines are safe and hugely beneficial I find the ideas that the safety of vaccines are "beyond debatable" to be the most rediculous of the arguments on both sides.
We should debate and question everything. There have been other medicines that had been considered safe and then were found to have long term side effects. And of course countless others that were considered safe and never produced side effects.
Just because it's considered safe now doesn't mean we fully understand every aspect of the human body and chemistry and diseases well enough to say that vaccines will never be harmful.
The absolutist language actually makes people more skeptical. If we stick to un-arguable truths like: " In X studies, only 0.01% of people had side effects and each of them had pre existing conditions" sounds way better than "It's undebatably safe and you're an idiot/danger to society if you think otherwise".
People will make good choices if you respect them and stick to the facts.
Australia has taken an interesting approach to the anti-vaccine issue - if you don't vaccinate your child you don't get the tax break/welfare for your child. It is amazing when it affects a parents hip pocket how their views on vaccination change.
Interesting, force the poor to vaccinate according to schedule while allowing the rich freedom of choice. Sounds like income/wealth discriminatory to me.
Yes, I totally agree (and often argue) that fines that are not income/wealth-variable are a way to give liberty to the rich while restricting the poor. Only Norway has a system like this, afaik.
Would you call it discrimination to specifically target poor people to receive government aid?
Typically people call a policy discriminatory when some person or group is being harmed, but most people here agree that vaccinating children is helping to prevent harm from occurring, so it does not appear to be discriminatory. The fact that this policy does not apply to wealthy people is a red herring, since it doesn't impact whether or not poor people are being harmed.
> Would you call it discrimination to specifically target poor people to receive government aid?
Yes. It is called positive discrimination, because the object of discrimination is advantaged by it.
> so it does not appear to be discriminatory.
You want to choose the vaccination schedule yourself, now you have to pay a fine (or not receive a benefit: close to the same thing). It is said to prevent harm from occuring, but apparently the person who's making the decision here believes the Finnish schedule (which is 1/2-1/3 of the US schedule in size) is better for them.
No choice for the poor, all the choice to the rich. Discriminatory policy if you ask me.
Just tons of down votes for even explaining what anti-vaxxers might think, nothing wrong with your logic.
I think people feel genuinely scared about contracting serious illnesses so it's hitting a lot of buttons and the two sides don't seem to be able to hear or respect each other.
Note the name calling and judgement in many of the threads.
The two sides are not equal. This is a mistake I see constantly. One's dumb beliefs are not equal to science. Why would anyone respect the stupidity of anti vaxxers? How about throwing those assholes in jail for endangering not only their children but everyone else also? That would be better than the tax break proposed by Australia as it would apply to both the rich and the poor equally and be an even better incentive.
The name calling and threats actually just makes you look bad.
If someone says they're scared to vaccinate their kid, only respect and listening can possibly help you achieve your goal.
I actually think vaccines are a good thing but get down voted for even saying we should respect anti-vaxxers as people.
As I get older I've realized that resistance is usually valid even if I don't agree with it. People rarely make decisions against their own interest. The trick is to align their interests with yours and calling them names will just drive then farther from you.
It seems like many people here just want to spout anger at anti-vaxxers rather than make any progress as a community.
There's a difference here though. It's a lack of benefits, not a fine. You could adjust the latter based on the income, but not the former. Technical detail, but i believe benefits impact is easier to pass as a law than an outright fine.
Well that is the way of the world for everything else, but if the aim is ensuring herd immunity then encouraging the poor (who have most of the kids) to vaccinate then it works.
Yes, but this is another topic. In practice the middle classes (there are too few very rich children to really matter) respond to the 'incentive' just as well as the poor.
In Australia anti-vaccination is a middle class phenomenon, the poor (in the main) are not against vaccination and just need an effective reminder to vaccinate.
I wonder if adding a "layman abstract" after a typical abstract in the papers would help. It could state things that should be obvious to scientists reading the paper, but could prevent some mistakes when a random person reads it. Like "This is early research about a small number of people that X. We're not sure if Y. It doesn't contradict common knowledge Z or mean that Q is no longer true."
I feel like typical reporting of research could be improved this way.
> "Forget trying to understand this issue, let us explain how you should feel about it!"
Well... yeah. Because you stand no chance of understanding the issue, and there is a very high risk that you will develop irrational feelings that will lead you to do dangerous things.
Take for example the flu effectiveness in elders study. The biased journalists summarized it as "flu vaccine is killing elders". It would have been harder to misrepresent it to such a degree if the abstract contained something like this:
"Public health notice: the authors believe existing vaccines are safe and effective and strongly recommend people of all ages to undergo vaccination. This study is a scientific inquiry with the purpose of increasing that effectiveness for elder patients, and our current findings have no imediate clinical application. More specifically, we report no evidence that flu vaccination is a net health risk for the elderly."
That doesn't sound like it gets quite as many clicks, and people tend to fund more exciting research. I'm thinking that this problem wouldn't exist, except for the perverse incentives. This is probably particularly true of the substance-hysteria research. If you do research to show that tea tree oil is completely safe, that leaves less room for follow up studies.
A friend of mine wrote a paper and his university's PR department called him up to propose writing a press release, because it looked like it might be of popular interest. And my friend's first thought was to downplay the actual impact of the research, as it was a preliminary study.
It got me thinking that maybe every paper should include a similar thing.
Discussion/debate on these topics should be encouraged, not silenced. Disagreeing with the CDC schedule shouldn't paint one as a crazy anti-vaxxer yet that is the case more often than not.
These vaccines are not 100% safe nor 100% effective. The guidelines to vaccinate are designed for the well being of society, not one's child. Some parents will care about their child more than society overall or edge cases from people they do not know. Vaccine side effects are not recorded as often as they should be.
And yes, my children are fully vaccinated (CA requires them to be to attend school). We were able to do that (mostly) our way.
There's as many shades of "anti-vaccine" as there are people. I for one believe the changes in composition of vaccines in the 90s (different adjuvants, more combo vaccines as opposed to single ones) and the wildly increased CDC vaccine schedule requiring many many more times the number of shots as we had when kids is a big concern.
Big Pharma doesn't exactly have a track record of always using good judgment, but it does have a track record of using bad science and plain illegal activities like failing to report adverse reactions on plenty of things it sells.
Ultimately vaccines are a huge money-making machine for Big Pharma, and while the basic science of vaccines is sound and works, that's not the part that most anti-vaxxers are complaining about, but the fact that it's an ever increasing schedule of more and more vaccines, larger doses more bundled together with adjuvants that are at best "not gonna harm you" to at worst "may cause life-long issues".
When you're a parent and you're literally making choices that could affect the life of a child one way or the other for life (or worse cause his death), you take pause and weigh the pros and cons.
So instead of painting anti vaxxers as this "lunatic crowd of backwater parents who don't believe in science", let's stop to take a hard look at the very real forces in play and the Big Pharma interests that would love nothing more than to silence a movement that is eating at its bottom line.
The basic science on vaccines is sound. That's not what anti-vaxxers (the ones that actually did some research) are complaining about.
> Big Pharma doesn't exactly have a track record of always using good judgment, but it does have a track record of using bad science and plain illegal activities like failing to report adverse reactions on plenty of things it sells.
This is a key driver. And if you look further back, you find that there were some real vaccine safety issues, some decades ago. Enough that the pharmaceutical industry pushed through a law providing immunity for civil damages from side effects.[0] And setting up the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program,[1] which basically amounts to forced arbitration.
So yes, the anti-vaccine activists may come off as paranoid. But there are arguably some valid reasons for that attitude.
"Vaccine overload", a non-medical term, is the notion that giving many vaccines at once may overwhelm or weaken a child's immature immune system and lead to adverse effects.[134] Despite scientific evidence that strongly contradicts this idea,[113] some parents of autistic children believe that vaccine overload causes autism.[135] The resulting controversy has caused many parents to delay or avoid immunizing their children.[134] Such parental misperceptions are major obstacles towards immunization of children.[136]
The concept of vaccine overload is flawed on several levels.[113] Despite the increase in the number of vaccines over recent decades, improvements in vaccine design have reduced the immunologic load from vaccines; the total number of immunological components in the 14 vaccines administered to US children in 2009 is less than 10% of what it was in the 7 vaccines given in 1980.[113] A study published in 2013 found no correlation between autism and the antigen number in the vaccines the children were administered up to the age of two. Of the 1,008 children in the study, one quarter of those diagnosed with autism were born between 1994 and 1999, when the routine vaccine schedule could contain more than 3,000 antigens (in a single shot of DTP vaccine). The vaccine schedule in 2012 contains several more vaccines, but the number of antigens the child is exposed to by the age of two is 315.[137][138] Vaccines pose a very small immunologic load compared to the pathogens naturally encountered by a child in a typical year;[113] common childhood conditions such as fevers and middle-ear infections pose a much greater challenge to the immune system than vaccines,[139] and studies have shown that vaccinations, even multiple concurrent vaccinations, do not weaken the immune system[113] or compromise overall immunity.[140] The lack of evidence supporting the vaccine overload hypothesis, combined with these findings directly contradicting it, has led to the conclusion that currently recommended vaccine programs do not "overload" or weaken the immune system.[103][141][142]
Any experiment based on withholding vaccines from children has been considered unethical,[143] and observational studies would likely be confounded by differences in the health care-seeking behaviours of under-vaccinated children. Thus, no study directly comparing rates of autism in vaccinated and unvaccinated children has been done. However, the concept of vaccine overload is biologically implausible, vaccinated and unvaccinated children have the same immune response to non-vaccine-related infections, and autism is not an immune-mediated disease, so claims that vaccines could cause it by overloading the immune system go against current knowledge of the pathogenesis of autism. As such, the idea that vaccines cause autism has been effectively dismissed by the weight of current evidence.[113]
This wouldn’t be a problem if science 1). Wasn’t underfunded and 2). Made up of sellouts trying to shill for industry research. The latest scandal involving the NIH and alcohol funding that involved $100 million going to waste is an example of this.
I’ve also wondered about this with global warming. Obviously it’s true, but what if you found something as a scientist that said the heat increase will be 5% less than expected. Would they let you publish it?
In the end, distrusting science causes it to become distrustful. Ironic.
Better statement would have been science is funded in a very controlled manner. There is so much gate keeping with the funds to access them, that much of the funding winds up being used to pursue funding for the next round.
I can understand why the system was set up, and it is the way it is, but alas.
I don't think this problem will ever be solved while you can easily find books written by MDs arguing that vaccines are unsafe. Alienating civilians who believe in what these doctors say is probably not the best approach.
Is advocating for more rigorous science an anti-science or anti-vaccine position? It seems most vaccine "science" looks more like industry propaganda or simply bullying! Show me the studies... the real, peer reviewed, scientific studies. The more I dig, the more questions I'm finding. For those dismissing others as ignorant, how deep have you really gone?
Do you just shrug it off or ignore it? Or do you do some research (and what do you find?)?
One of the biggest red flags I see is all the lawsuits against vaccine makers in the 1980's. Out of fear of running out of money, pharma companies lobbied the government into making the vaccine court. Now a vaccine maker has no liability, any issues from a vaccine has to go through the vaccine court and settlements are paid out with tax payer money, the marker does not have to be involved. How is that not an issue or red flag?
If Ford lobbied the government for protection against lawsuits from accidental deaths due to faulty parts in a car would you still buy a car from Ford? And what if you put your kids in that car? How would that not be child endangerment? But yet this is how we treat vaccine makers.
Or what about the fact that "wild" polio in India has been reduced to only a few cases per year while "vaccine derived paralytic" polio is over 50k+ cases per year? Its arguable that wild polio was much more safer.
Or the fact that diphtheria and pertussis are a bacterial disease (not viral) and the vaccine simply makes one immune to the toxins that the bacteria produce, thus enabling one to carry the disease symptom free and spread it to others unaware?
Or, going back to money, for every new vaccine regiment that is prescribed a company then profits over a billion dollars every year thereafter?
Or how about the fact that a vaccine does not work by injecting a "dead virus" into your body. A dead virus offers no threat to your body and thus your immune system will not fight against it. To make a vaccine produce antibodies (debatable what role antibodies provide to immunity), you then have to introduce other ingredients along with it to cause the body to go into a state of response. And to continually inject these ingredients into your body to perpetually heighten your immune response, would it not be logical to see that as bad and causing an increase in allergies and other autoimmune diseases? None of this seems to be studied.
Or how about the fact that infant immunity was once established through breast feeding (which few do now out of "convenience") yet vaccine derived immunity is not spread through breast milks (thus leading to our current heightened infant infection rates)?
Trying to find actual scientific studies is also rather difficult. There is apparently no funding outside of what the vaccine makers provide for their own results/benefit. The only time a vaccine ever provides negative info on a vaccine is when they are marketing a "new and improved" version. I find that somewhat laughable.
These to me seem like red flags. And as long as there are apparent side effects, I don't see what right a government would have to force one to do something that is possibly dangerous (and against their will at that). You certainly can't say it is "for the greater good" as it has already been shown that vaccines shed and infect others (read: the vulnerable). This is usually stated right on the vaccine insert. I'm sure they'll remove that from the public view as well someday...
edit: I ask if you down vote me, please explain why.
edit: Also, note I have not stated whether I am pro or anti vaccine, so don't judge me based on that. But if you visit any anti-vaccine resources, the above is almost verbatim what you will see. And I am certainly curious what the argument against this is. Something other than "you're an idiot" as most anti-vax arguments point to "research" of some sort that certainly shows something other than 100% safety.
Thanks for sharing those links! I don't think many will watch due to the length and that they've already made their mind up about the issue.
I'm glad that you have posed several topics that I hope will spark discussion and have people critically think about the issue rather than blindly accept what the 'establishment' dictates.
Yes, my friends dad had paralytic polio. More than likely vaccine derived as he was born in the 1960s. My grandma's kids all had whooping cough, measles, chicken pox, and probably others. In her own words: "we were fine".
As much as mandatory processes could suck, the downside of letting people do whatever crazy thing they want is dead kids. Disneyland and other venues and organizations with high-density occupancy (sadly) should require visitors to present valid proof of current vaccinations prior to admittance. Yuppie flus aren’t real, and society shouldn’t pander to snowflake nonsense; the only exemptions should be for legitimate, independently-reviewed medical situations. People can bandy about “democracy” and “freedom,” which they mean anarchy that impacts others with their externalities.
All: I don't know what makes HN lose its mind on this topic, other than that the internet has been doing so for years. But since it's clear that the discussion will never land anywhere but endless repetition and flamewar hell—spiralling downward with invocations of people's children getting sick, demands for prison time, and you name it, I'm going to do what we basically never do and kill this thread outright.
133 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 184 ms ] threadI would rather require vaccinations for all children and remove a parent to have any say in the matter. I would also rather have everyone be opted in to become an organ donor upon death with no opt out possible. Sadly, I don’t rule the world.
1. No medicine is 100% safe in all circumstances. Vaccines do have published risk of complications and while tiny are not zero and sometimes are greater than the risk of contracting the disease itself.
2. As a general rule, I don't want any government telling me what to put in my body or my kid's bodies. Why not ban sugar that leads to far more health conditions than some of these diseases? Why not force people to eat the government recommended ratio of fiber, fat, calories, etc.? Sure, people might be physically healthier but at the expense of freedom of choice.
3. The flu and common cold kills lots of people per year yet those vaccines are optional for adults while some are required for kids, why?
4. Vaccines are required for kids to come to public school in CA, but not required to go to placed where they're in even closer contact (sports, pools, etc.), why?
While I think free vaccines, good education and honest dialogue are important, punishing dissent doesn't seem right. I think understanding that non-vaxers have legitimate concerns helps create a better solution than enforcement and blame.
This is a circular argument. In G7 countries with highly developed economies and medical systems, the reason why the risk of contracting a disease like mumps, rubella or polio is extremely rare is because almost everyone is vaccinated against them.
Now, most people should be vaccinated and those few that aren't should hopefully be protected by herd immunity.
To say that the quality medical systems and herd immunity decreasing the risk of those diseases nullifies the dangers of adverse reactions is a bit unfair.
To close, I agree that most everyone should be vaccinated and that philosophical beliefs are not valid reasons to avoid vaccination. I do disagree in that I believe that there are a number of rare situations where vaccination is legitimately more harmful than just relying on herd immunity.
We'd be in less danger if no one did anything dangerous ever, but that doesn't leave much room for freedom.
It's extremely frustrating to see people doing something dangerous you disagree with, but it's likely that we all do it at some point.
The actions of a few can seriously impact large populations. The multiplier effect is, potentially, significantly greater than with guns/alcohol/driving. (And even then, those arguably border on even more divisive debates that we should leave for another thread.)
I think where the point gets contentious with libertarians is that forcing them to do something feels far scarier and authoritarian to them than forcing them not to do something.
I agree that we're all connected though and the decisions we make impact those around us no matter how individual we think our actions might be.
When you run into stiff resistance like the anti-vaxx movement, which has little economic incentive (I can't think of who profits by a kid not taking vaccines), it helps to be able to understand where their points make sense even if you don't agree.
Once you're that beyond right and wrong, then you can educate more effectively. I've had much more constructive dialogues with anti-vaxx people once they know that I understand how scary it is for a government to tell you you have to inject your kid with something you don't understand and doesn't feel necessary and might have risks.
I think if you grant them the courtesy that they could be right (which science and medicine has examples of being highly confident and then being wrong), that then they are more open to at least getting the highest recommended vaccines on their own volition.
Yes, so the selfish will avoid the risk and free-ride on the herd immunity. In a society that is irrationally selfish, the government may reasonably choose to give incentives to vaccinate. For example, the vaccinations might be required for admission into government-paid health care, or the government could compensate victims of the side-effects with care, cash, etc.
Yes. But the risk of a pandemic is the risk you are to compare with. Not the 1% risk of a side effect compared to a 0.01% risk of contracting the disease. Also: herd immunity means that those who can't take the vaccine are protected. Anyone who doesn't take e.g. the smallpox shot, is getting a free ride on those of us who DO take the shot. The reason they could dodge any side effect and STILL run almost 0% risk of getting smallpox, is because everyone else took the shot. I think this is what is lost on antivaxers. They think that the vaccine protects THEM and that they can thus weigh that benefit against the risk on THEM. But that's not how it works. Their shot protects ME.
> As a general rule, I don't want any government telling me what to put in my body or my kid's bodies.
As a general rule, I want my government to ensure the society is vaccinated. Government already tells you a lot of what you can and can't put in your body. Having them say you HAVE to put something is going one step further, but I don't see how it's a very big one.
> Vaccines are required for kids to come to public school in CA, but not required to go to placed where they're in even closer contact (sports, pools, etc.), why?
Presumably because of how laws work and how it might be legal for a school to require vaccines, but not another public location (perhaps because the school isn't a public place at all?).
> punishing dissent doesn't seem right.
Excellent point. Give a tax break to those who vaccinate etc. instead.
> I think understanding that non-vaxers have legitimate concerns helps create a better solution than enforcement and blame.
I think it's important to meet their concerns with information. But we can never ever give parents the idea that vaccines are somehow a controversial idea. It's not.
For example, many countries began vaccinating young female children against HPV on the rationale that understanding of cervical cancer says if we prevent HPV infection we prevent almost all of this type of primary cancer, and the vaccine seems to prevent infection with some strains of HPV implicated in cancer.
Now, you can immediately see that vaccinating their male colleagues could induce herd immunity, this is almost always an STI. But ethically that doesn't justify classes of boys.
What did subsequently cause some countries to vaccinate boys was the fact that HPV also causes cancer in other places, and vaccinating the boys protects them against that. It's a narrower call (fewer cancer cases prevented) but for a relatively safe vaccine it can still make sense.
Edited to add: This gets interesting for a "Chickenpox Vaccine". The virus that causes Chickenpox in children (Varicella-zoster) has much nastier consequences in adults. So if we vaccinate children so they don't a nasty but rarely deadly illness, but as a result more adults get infected without prior exposure, that might suck... Different countries have made different choices about what to do here.
Just to be clear, herd immunity protects those who aren't vaccinated. If you are vaccinated, your community's vaccination or lack there of doesn't affect you.
> Give a tax break to those who vaccinate etc. instead.
Yes, despite all the down votes my comment isn't about who is right or wrong, it's about respecting the other side. Just because you want your government to make laws about having to put medicine in your body there are millions of libretarians that would disagree on principle no matter how glaring the health benefits. It's less about taking the vaccine and more about the judgement and punishment if they don't that actually makes them resist more, not less.
You can't get rid of guns by deamonizing those that own guns and you can't increase herd immunity by deamonizing anti-vaxxers.
So I really like your idea. Offer carrots and respect, not sticks and judgement.
edit:
Just going to point this out: this comment thread has multiple instances of people on the anti-vax slant showing that they either don't understand what herd immunity is, or don't understand that vaccinations are not 100% and are only effective on large populations due to herd immunity.
Again, I argue that education would make the anti-vax problem go away.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity
And then the result of that would be a ton of new anti-vaxxers, which would be bad for everyone.
They will plague, they will survive.
They would be, if all anti-vaxxers were leftists, or if the anti-vax movement were politically and ideologically motivated by leftist politics the way that climate change denial is by the right, but no.
Sometimes equivocation works, but in this case it doesn't.
The right wing anti-vaxxers love to make analogy in between vaccine and guns, claiming it is their freedom to keep or resist and a unique denial of science and statistics, which I would say it mainly a right-wing hallmark.
1. Vaccines aren't 100% effective. Unvaccinated people are a threat to vaccinated people.
2. Vaccines aren't an option for 100% of people. People who choose not to vaccinated people are a threat to people who can't be safely vaccinated.
3. Information, including misinformation, spreads more quickly than death does. It won't die out due to natural selection.
4. Losing half our population to infectious disease, even if you consider them stupid and irresponsible, would have catastrophic effects for the economy.
5. A majority of the effected population are children.
6. Maybe, just maybe, letting millions of people just die of preventable disease, even if they're adults and made a foolish decision, isn't the right thing to do.
There is no indication that this lunacy is in any way shape and form is genetic.
Also the irony is that the vast majority of anti-vaxxers are vaccinated they will sadly survive their children might not but due to the sanitary conditions and herd immunity of western countries we will need a much larger portion of the population to be unvaccinated before we see major negative effects.
This is why we often see outbreaks in various spots that host large immigrant populations which are more likely to have lower percentage of vaccinated adults and even host asymptomatic carriers.
B) more seriously, antivax is a symptom; the real disease is memetic. At some point people gave up on fact-finding processes and the value of expertise. That is a disease vector where social media is the cholera-ridden communal water pump. Some of the things it spreads are harmless (moon landing denial) and some are even more dangerous than anti-vax, such as holocaust denial and sandy hook "paid actor" lies.
There have always existed morons. The internet has just shown light on what was once restricted to rumor mills.
(Of course, that's assuming the survey and reporting are reliable ...)
What's new is the internet.
Of course, irrationality is new! /s Uhm, what about religions?
http://vactruth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/number-vaccin... (I did not read any info from this website, just foud the image by ggl image search)
The US has higher than expected childhood and especially infant mortality because it deliberately doesn't provide decent healthcare to a substantial fraction of its population. If anything the US has lower than desirable rates of vaccination, which is why it keeps having problems with outbreaks of preventable diseases.
Don't strawman that which you do not understand.
Yes, this is a comically simplistic view, and shouldn't be taken seriously. I'm just pointing out that the pseudo-Darwinian "let them die" rhetoric actually means "let us die".
I mean, a lot of vaccines are made in China and other places that have lackluster health and safety standards. Just this past week, China has been in an uproar over tainted vaccines. There is legitimate cause to be wary of whats included within certain vaccine formulations, despite the science underlying vaccination being sound.
The West has had plenty of its own tainted vaccine issues but it’s not in any shape or form an excuse to not vaccinate just an excuse to have better standards which we already have.
Even with all the possible problems, side effects and complications vaccination saves millions of people each year.
Vaccination isn’t just about you if you don’t vaccinate your child you not only put them at risk but more importantly you those who cannot be vaccinated at even more risk as they would have a compromised immune system to begin with.
The sad truth is that not-vaccinating your child would likely won’t kill them due to modern medicine, however it can kill those who cannot be vaccinated which is why the moral imperative is for society to mandate vaccination because if we have one rule for a just society regardless of what system we use is that the strong should protect the weak.
Who has more rights ?
Because in america we believe in an individual's personal right and a limited government. A government free to take your children away when there is no immediate danger would certainly violate this.
If people understood herd immunity, understood that the underpinnings of the anti-vax movement are based on debunked fraudulent science, etc, this "anti-vax" situation would've never come into being.
Strong or weak I don't think it is in anyone's interest to have a large percentage of the population die due to rampant disease.
So I will go with "forced" medicine, and fluorine in my tap water.
Unfortunately comments like this convey misinformation and could help to spread anti-vax positions.
There's very little research to suggest that ingestion of fluoride has any positive health impact. Comparing the two issues is quite misleading.
Are you one in of those teams? No? Then maybe don’t do your own “research” and maybe get your advice from a qualified person. Maybe someone you can see whenever you need to, perhaps someone who might have spent 8 years studying medicine in university? Maybe a doctor could help?
I dunno though maybe Facebook and news reports about Chinese vaccines are a more reliable, reputable source of information.
The scientific evidence supporting vaccinations is undebatable, the fact that parents can opt their kids out because they disagree with reality and put other people's lives at risk should be as abhorrent in the public mind as drunk driving.
After all, maybe there's someone who disagrees with the science of how alcohol consumption impairs driving, and how this, statistically, will kill innocent people. Shouldn't they get to disagree with reality and put innocents in harm's way?
But with vaccines the harm is too far removed and only visible through statistics, you usually can't point to any one unvaccinated child and say they caused so-and-so to die (unlike in the case of drunk driving). But the image of a child being forcibly separated from its parents to be injected by agents of the state does produce a visceral image of harm.
Indeed. And although this might sound extreme: should be considered child abuse too. You're making a massively uninformed choice that could kill or disable your child and others that aren't physically able to take the vaccine. Being an idiot shouldn't be any excuse for this behaviour.
Going around unvaccinated: you were able to be infected and transmit a disease, then you (or your parents) did not allow others to vaccinate you, now you are still able to get infected and transmit.
I'm not against vaccination, but I'm critical. (See my other comment) US has by far the biggest vaccination schedule in the world, and is not exactly an example of a great public health system. Scandinavian countries have much smaller schedules than the US, and they have healthier children.
There's this concept we call freedom.
Edit: If you're hating on me, stop and consider where you'd draw the line regarding individual risk vs social benefit. What about eugenics? For me, the drug war is going too far.
“Because freedom” isn’t an argument, isn’t a point being made, it’s nothing.
For example, there was a time when doctors deemed it prudent not give babies breast milk, to take the baby away from the mother for observation after being born, prescribe DES to try to prevent miscarriage.
I imagine vaccination is not one of these cases, but there's a lot we don't really understand at all about the immune system (e.g. why autoimmune conditions like allergies are growing so fast), or the human body in general.
This, exactly this, is how the anti-vax movement exists! It is amazing how lay people will just dismiss the research and conclusions of an entire field of science with a handwave and an argument-less quip.
Maybe you'd be more upset if you had a child that got sick in an area where vaccination rates were low. Or if you had a child that had actual, real, medical reasons why they couldn't receive the immunization and need to rely on herd immunity for their literal survival.
What I'm pointing out is that the side that says it knows, historically, has been wrong a lot more than we recognize.
>> Maybe you'd be more upset if you had a child that got sick in an area where vaccination rates were low. Or if you had a child that had actual, real, medical reasons why they couldn't receive the immunization and need to rely on herd immunity for their literal survival.
Of course I'd be upset in those circumstances, I'm not sure what your point is. Is it that we all need to get angry on the internet to save little kids? Because I'll tell you right now that's the least effective way to try to bring anybody to your side.
You’re cherry picking specific scenarios where a recommendation was given that was later proven incorrect.
There is no evidence to suggest vaccines are going to be one of those scenarios. What we do know is that not vaccinating will lead to unnecessary deaths and serious illnesses.
Source?
Should we not use the scientific method to measure what percentage of the time medical diagnoses are wrong, medicines are withdrawn after being prescribed, and health outcomes of those born at home versus born at the hospital?
Many/most of the pediatricians/nurses who parents interact with have no idea about the details of the vaccines. They are just blindly following protocol because they are told to. They have a million other things to do and concern themselves about.
Even though I think vaccines are safe and hugely beneficial I find the ideas that the safety of vaccines are "beyond debatable" to be the most rediculous of the arguments on both sides.
We should debate and question everything. There have been other medicines that had been considered safe and then were found to have long term side effects. And of course countless others that were considered safe and never produced side effects.
Just because it's considered safe now doesn't mean we fully understand every aspect of the human body and chemistry and diseases well enough to say that vaccines will never be harmful.
The absolutist language actually makes people more skeptical. If we stick to un-arguable truths like: " In X studies, only 0.01% of people had side effects and each of them had pre existing conditions" sounds way better than "It's undebatably safe and you're an idiot/danger to society if you think otherwise".
People will make good choices if you respect them and stick to the facts.
"It's OK for the rich to park on double yellow lines, litter in the streets, etc.."
Typically people call a policy discriminatory when some person or group is being harmed, but most people here agree that vaccinating children is helping to prevent harm from occurring, so it does not appear to be discriminatory. The fact that this policy does not apply to wealthy people is a red herring, since it doesn't impact whether or not poor people are being harmed.
Yes. It is called positive discrimination, because the object of discrimination is advantaged by it.
> so it does not appear to be discriminatory.
You want to choose the vaccination schedule yourself, now you have to pay a fine (or not receive a benefit: close to the same thing). It is said to prevent harm from occuring, but apparently the person who's making the decision here believes the Finnish schedule (which is 1/2-1/3 of the US schedule in size) is better for them.
No choice for the poor, all the choice to the rich. Discriminatory policy if you ask me.
I think people feel genuinely scared about contracting serious illnesses so it's hitting a lot of buttons and the two sides don't seem to be able to hear or respect each other.
Note the name calling and judgement in many of the threads.
If someone says they're scared to vaccinate their kid, only respect and listening can possibly help you achieve your goal.
I actually think vaccines are a good thing but get down voted for even saying we should respect anti-vaxxers as people.
As I get older I've realized that resistance is usually valid even if I don't agree with it. People rarely make decisions against their own interest. The trick is to align their interests with yours and calling them names will just drive then farther from you.
It seems like many people here just want to spout anger at anti-vaxxers rather than make any progress as a community.
As the GP explained, there are a lot fewer anti-vaxxers when it requires them to voluntarily take a financial hit.
> the two sides don't seem to be able to hear or respect each other.
You’re not going to find a lot of support or respect for anti-science positions on a strongly pro-science message board.
And yeah, you can influence any behavior with financial insensitive.
How impractical is it to make fines income/wealth-variable?
Btw, higher income people are also impacted by policies like kindergarten access http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/no-childcare-o...
In Australia anti-vaccination is a middle class phenomenon, the poor (in the main) are not against vaccination and just need an effective reminder to vaccinate.
I feel like typical reporting of research could be improved this way.
"Forget trying to understand this issue, let us explain how you should feel about it!"
It will immediately be abused. Still, probably better than the current situation.
Well... yeah. Because you stand no chance of understanding the issue, and there is a very high risk that you will develop irrational feelings that will lead you to do dangerous things.
Take for example the flu effectiveness in elders study. The biased journalists summarized it as "flu vaccine is killing elders". It would have been harder to misrepresent it to such a degree if the abstract contained something like this:
"Public health notice: the authors believe existing vaccines are safe and effective and strongly recommend people of all ages to undergo vaccination. This study is a scientific inquiry with the purpose of increasing that effectiveness for elder patients, and our current findings have no imediate clinical application. More specifically, we report no evidence that flu vaccination is a net health risk for the elderly."
A friend of mine wrote a paper and his university's PR department called him up to propose writing a press release, because it looked like it might be of popular interest. And my friend's first thought was to downplay the actual impact of the research, as it was a preliminary study.
It got me thinking that maybe every paper should include a similar thing.
These vaccines are not 100% safe nor 100% effective. The guidelines to vaccinate are designed for the well being of society, not one's child. Some parents will care about their child more than society overall or edge cases from people they do not know. Vaccine side effects are not recorded as often as they should be.
And yes, my children are fully vaccinated (CA requires them to be to attend school). We were able to do that (mostly) our way.
I found the following book incredibly helpful though you may feel like a pariah for reading it: https://www.amazon.com/Vaccine-Book-Decision-Parenting-Libra...
Big Pharma doesn't exactly have a track record of always using good judgment, but it does have a track record of using bad science and plain illegal activities like failing to report adverse reactions on plenty of things it sells.
Ultimately vaccines are a huge money-making machine for Big Pharma, and while the basic science of vaccines is sound and works, that's not the part that most anti-vaxxers are complaining about, but the fact that it's an ever increasing schedule of more and more vaccines, larger doses more bundled together with adjuvants that are at best "not gonna harm you" to at worst "may cause life-long issues".
When you're a parent and you're literally making choices that could affect the life of a child one way or the other for life (or worse cause his death), you take pause and weigh the pros and cons.
So instead of painting anti vaxxers as this "lunatic crowd of backwater parents who don't believe in science", let's stop to take a hard look at the very real forces in play and the Big Pharma interests that would love nothing more than to silence a movement that is eating at its bottom line.
The basic science on vaccines is sound. That's not what anti-vaxxers (the ones that actually did some research) are complaining about.
This is a key driver. And if you look further back, you find that there were some real vaccine safety issues, some decades ago. Enough that the pharmaceutical industry pushed through a law providing immunity for civil damages from side effects.[0] And setting up the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program,[1] which basically amounts to forced arbitration.
So yes, the anti-vaccine activists may come off as paranoid. But there are arguably some valid reasons for that attitude.
0) https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/300aa-22
1) https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/
"Vaccine overload", a non-medical term, is the notion that giving many vaccines at once may overwhelm or weaken a child's immature immune system and lead to adverse effects.[134] Despite scientific evidence that strongly contradicts this idea,[113] some parents of autistic children believe that vaccine overload causes autism.[135] The resulting controversy has caused many parents to delay or avoid immunizing their children.[134] Such parental misperceptions are major obstacles towards immunization of children.[136]
The concept of vaccine overload is flawed on several levels.[113] Despite the increase in the number of vaccines over recent decades, improvements in vaccine design have reduced the immunologic load from vaccines; the total number of immunological components in the 14 vaccines administered to US children in 2009 is less than 10% of what it was in the 7 vaccines given in 1980.[113] A study published in 2013 found no correlation between autism and the antigen number in the vaccines the children were administered up to the age of two. Of the 1,008 children in the study, one quarter of those diagnosed with autism were born between 1994 and 1999, when the routine vaccine schedule could contain more than 3,000 antigens (in a single shot of DTP vaccine). The vaccine schedule in 2012 contains several more vaccines, but the number of antigens the child is exposed to by the age of two is 315.[137][138] Vaccines pose a very small immunologic load compared to the pathogens naturally encountered by a child in a typical year;[113] common childhood conditions such as fevers and middle-ear infections pose a much greater challenge to the immune system than vaccines,[139] and studies have shown that vaccinations, even multiple concurrent vaccinations, do not weaken the immune system[113] or compromise overall immunity.[140] The lack of evidence supporting the vaccine overload hypothesis, combined with these findings directly contradicting it, has led to the conclusion that currently recommended vaccine programs do not "overload" or weaken the immune system.[103][141][142]
Any experiment based on withholding vaccines from children has been considered unethical,[143] and observational studies would likely be confounded by differences in the health care-seeking behaviours of under-vaccinated children. Thus, no study directly comparing rates of autism in vaccinated and unvaccinated children has been done. However, the concept of vaccine overload is biologically implausible, vaccinated and unvaccinated children have the same immune response to non-vaccine-related infections, and autism is not an immune-mediated disease, so claims that vaccines could cause it by overloading the immune system go against current knowledge of the pathogenesis of autism. As such, the idea that vaccines cause autism has been effectively dismissed by the weight of current evidence.[113]
I’ve also wondered about this with global warming. Obviously it’s true, but what if you found something as a scientist that said the heat increase will be 5% less than expected. Would they let you publish it?
In the end, distrusting science causes it to become distrustful. Ironic.
Citation needed[0].
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_...
I can understand why the system was set up, and it is the way it is, but alas.
Peter Higgs (of Higgs-Boson particle) talks about this here: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-...
Keeping people ignorant and forcing them via government regulation is a very scary path to go down IMO.
People aren't reading books with bad info, they're reading Facebook posts and random blogs.
Do you just shrug it off or ignore it? Or do you do some research (and what do you find?)?
One of the biggest red flags I see is all the lawsuits against vaccine makers in the 1980's. Out of fear of running out of money, pharma companies lobbied the government into making the vaccine court. Now a vaccine maker has no liability, any issues from a vaccine has to go through the vaccine court and settlements are paid out with tax payer money, the marker does not have to be involved. How is that not an issue or red flag?
If Ford lobbied the government for protection against lawsuits from accidental deaths due to faulty parts in a car would you still buy a car from Ford? And what if you put your kids in that car? How would that not be child endangerment? But yet this is how we treat vaccine makers.
Or what about the fact that "wild" polio in India has been reduced to only a few cases per year while "vaccine derived paralytic" polio is over 50k+ cases per year? Its arguable that wild polio was much more safer.
Or the fact that diphtheria and pertussis are a bacterial disease (not viral) and the vaccine simply makes one immune to the toxins that the bacteria produce, thus enabling one to carry the disease symptom free and spread it to others unaware?
Or, going back to money, for every new vaccine regiment that is prescribed a company then profits over a billion dollars every year thereafter?
Or how about the fact that a vaccine does not work by injecting a "dead virus" into your body. A dead virus offers no threat to your body and thus your immune system will not fight against it. To make a vaccine produce antibodies (debatable what role antibodies provide to immunity), you then have to introduce other ingredients along with it to cause the body to go into a state of response. And to continually inject these ingredients into your body to perpetually heighten your immune response, would it not be logical to see that as bad and causing an increase in allergies and other autoimmune diseases? None of this seems to be studied.
Or how about the fact that infant immunity was once established through breast feeding (which few do now out of "convenience") yet vaccine derived immunity is not spread through breast milks (thus leading to our current heightened infant infection rates)?
Trying to find actual scientific studies is also rather difficult. There is apparently no funding outside of what the vaccine makers provide for their own results/benefit. The only time a vaccine ever provides negative info on a vaccine is when they are marketing a "new and improved" version. I find that somewhat laughable.
These to me seem like red flags. And as long as there are apparent side effects, I don't see what right a government would have to force one to do something that is possibly dangerous (and against their will at that). You certainly can't say it is "for the greater good" as it has already been shown that vaccines shed and infect others (read: the vulnerable). This is usually stated right on the vaccine insert. I'm sure they'll remove that from the public view as well someday...
edit: I ask if you down vote me, please explain why.
edit: Also, note I have not stated whether I am pro or anti vaccine, so don't judge me based on that. But if you visit any anti-vaccine resources, the above is almost verbatim what you will see. And I am certainly curious what the argument against this is. Something other than "you're an idiot" as most anti-vax arguments point to "research" of some sort that certainly shows something other than 100% safety.
I'm glad that you have posed several topics that I hope will spark discussion and have people critically think about the issue rather than blindly accept what the 'establishment' dictates.
The worst one is the silliness about high infant infections rates.
My grandma had polio and it impacted her from the time of infection to the time she died. I wonder if you've ever met anyone that had polio.