I know it's a private business and they can do what they want, but does anyone feel the open arms with which censorship is greeted, even begged for these days, is going to come back to haunt us?
What bothers me is how literally every story about this sees a horde of comments embracing the slippery slope fallacy. Not all slopes are slippery. It is possible draw lines and stick to them over time.
Couldn't agree more though I am on a bit on the fence.
I do not believe banning or censoring blatant misinformation is bad. We have more information at our fingertips than ever before and I personally believe that we should be able to access all that knowledge freely without censorship.
There is some information better not shared though and this is where I am divided. We do not have an obligation to inform or influence anyone's decisions - but when those decisions harm childrens' lives then I think action needs to be taken. This is the most obvious action that could have been taken and I'm glad it was.
Private companies draw those lines, as they always have done. This is GoFundMe. They also have a ToS that specifies what you're allowed to have on their service, so they've done this for as long as that ToS has existed. Anti-vax people can use some other service or create their own.
I run a site that makes it really easy to connect people who want to give money and people who have some reason they think they should have money. I decide that I don't want people who are raising money for anti-vax campaigns on my site, so I ban them.
Then, someone comes in and says "no no, you can't do that, you have to allow them to use your site." Who gets to decide that, and by what criteria? What if I also decide I don't want to allow anti-government militias to use my site to buy firearms? As soon as you force a private entity to do business with people even if they don't want to, you're also on a slippery slope.
...or maybe you're not. Maybe there are plenty of plaes to draw these lines, like, "you can't refuse service to people if you are doing so based on certain categories, like race, sex, religious belief, etc. because we as a nation have decided it's important."
I think we should allow companies like GoFundMe to ban whomever they like, unless they are discriminating based on the protected categories that are already clearly defined.
I agree with you, GoFundMe should have the freedom to do whatever they want.
I am just pointing out that there is no longer any real censorship any more that we are legally protected against simply because the government is never involved directly in it.
So simply repeating the mantra "business can't censor" isn't really true in a strict analysis.
Consider that the baker who didn't want to bake a cake with words on it that he objected to was sued (successfully). But I saw almost no support for _that_ business's freedom to choose.
> I am just pointing out that there is no longer any real censorship any more that we are legally protected against
Businesses have been refusing to do business with people and people have been refusing to use businesses for a very long time, this isn't some new thing.
And we actually do have protections, enshrined in civil rights legislation. You can't be denied service because of your race, gender, religion, and a couple other categories depending on the service and the state. But your stance on vaccinations is not a protected category. If you want to expand the protected categories, that's a different conversation.
> Consider that the baker who didn't want to bake a cake with words on it that he objected to was sued (successfully).
Yeah, because sexual orientation is a protected class.
> Censorship has turned into a mob controlled tool of control.
You're describing a boycott. It's a form of protest. It's "mob controlled" in the same sense as all other forms of protest
So if the government mandates it, then it's specifically the government censoring things.
If the company chooses to do so, then this is a non-issue. It's no different than YCombinator banning someone who decides to spam the comments. Or Youtube banning a channel because it's posting porn videos. This is literally the same concept as that, except it's GoFundMe with anti-vax.
It's obvious that private companies should draw their own lines. That's the entire point of private property, as long as it's not unconstitutional, they can do what they like. It's their property.
And of course they do it in their own interests, that's the duty of a fiduciary.
The entities who own the platforms draw those lines on their own platforms. If they want to use that power to serve their own personal interest that's their right to do so.
Free people. There is a legal line that circumscribes the lines that cannot be drawn. You cannot decide not to do business with someone on the basis of gender or of race, for example.
But if you don't want people jerking off in your restaurant, you're free to kick them out. Same for people spreading bullshit. (Though, importantly, the government can't do anything to the bullshit-spreaders.)
On one’s own property, it should be the default that one may draw the line where one pleases. Or delegate one’s authority to agents — employees — who will handle the question.
As far as your personal interests go, again the presumption should be that if it isn’t your property, and you have no contracts stating otherwise, it isn’t yours to decide whether a decision is made in your own personal best interest.
I am not an anti vaxxer, but this is more of a philosophical question. If we ban them, what are we banning them for? What happens if something they say ends up magically being true? How long would it take us to shift the tides back?
What if this was asbestos back in the day. "It's safe, we all use it, if it wasn't then our internal study would have told us." So they start banning anyone saying asbestos is unsafe. How long would it take us to fix all the blocks that are crying to save people from actual asbestos issues, that are 100% real.
And once again, I am not saying banning anti-vaxx is bad, vaccines are proven over and over again.
The evidence seems to be that if there was any legitimate/substantiated concern about vaccines not being effective or safe, those who say they are effective and safe based on the overwhelming and uncontroverted evidence saying so, would switch sides. So far, after nearly eradicating multiple fatal and horrible diseases, there is just no question that vaccines are fantastic.
Lots of things that people say in opposition to vaccines is true, or at least has some basis in fact. Polio vaccines decades ago were contaminated with sv40, which does have the potential to cause tumors. (So there is "vaccines cause cancer!") There is also probably a real link between Guillain-Barre and vaccines, but there is also a link between any infection and Guillain-Barre, do with a vaccine you essne tidally keep the risk of that very rare syndrome and lose the risk of infection.
Vaccines are not risk-free, they just have such incredibly high value that the incredibly low risk is completely worth it.
> if we ban them, what are we banning them for?
"We" are not banning them. GoFundMe is.
Call it whatever you like. "Subverting public health," maybe.
This is why the idea of labeling anyone who's not 100% on board with 100% of vaccines, 100% of the time, as "anti-vaxxers," and having corporations make a show of banning such speech on their private platforms is so strange to me. Let's assume that literally every current "anti-vaxxer" talking point is objectively incorrect... but, sometime in the future, some major manufacturer of vaccines somehow creates a public health risk, perhaps by contaminating a year's batch of vaccines with something toxic, or something. Would it be alright to speak out against that, or would anyone doing so get publicly labelled "anti-vaxxer!!" and prevented from spreading their legitimate concerns in various places?
I just can't understand why anyone would be in favor of corporations shutting down ALL dissenting speech on a particular topic on their platform. Perhaps the "anti-vaxxers" of today are 100% wrong about everything, but that doesn't mean that 100% of criticism of vaccines now and forever more is and will always be 100% invalid. Why would anyone think that?
> This is why the idea of labeling anyone who's not 100% on board with 100% of vaccines, 100% of the time, as "anti-vaxxers,"
Nobody is doing this, including GoFundMe. In fact there is quite a lot of active research into vaccines, both how to make them more effective and how to make them more safe. No one calls those people "anti-vaxxers." No one is piling into this thread to call tntn an "anti-vaxxer." Informed, rigorous consideration and investigation of vaccines is well-accepted by society and always will be.
What gets labeled as anti-vaxxer is the uninformed, or deliberately misinformed, content that is created to attract attention, for the purposes of monetizing said attention. Crowdfunding platforms like GoFundMe, Patreon, etc. are some of the ways people make that business work.
Snake-oil salesman is an old scam: you create or feed public fear, then you sell a (fake) solution to that fear. Anti-vaxxers have adapted an advocacy model to this pursuit--they use vaccines to feed paranoia about society, then they ask for money to "continue the fight" or whatever. The entire operation is done in bad faith: a scam.
Are you saying that everyone uses the term "anti-vaxxer" as absolutely conservatively as possible and always thinks critically before labelling someone with it? This has not been my experience whatsoever, and not only with this person-label but with literally every person-label that achieves mainstream adoption.
Given my above hypothetical situation—all current "anti-vaxxer" talking points are objectively false, but at some point in the future something happens that warrants objectively legitimate criticism of vaccines—do you really think many people who have been taught that "anti-vaxxers" are 100% wrong about 100% of what they say, 100% of the time, to the point where criticism is generally silenced or forced into the fringe, wouldn't say, "ah, looks like the anti-vaxxers are at it again!" People in this very thread are literally equating "anti-vaxxers" with literal terrorists. Do you think these people will ever be open to criticizing vaccines, given that they allow themselves to think in these terms?
tntn already pointed out that there are legitimate scientific concerns about vaccines, and no one is calling the scientists who work on those concerns "anti-vaxxers."
I understand your concern, but context matters. A trained scientist conducting rigorous research is treated differently from a random person with a blog and a GoFundMe, even if the latter tries to hang their anti-vaccine hat on something the scientist says.
I am usually radically Greenwaldian in arguing against deplatforming of any and all legal political speech on internet platforms, but it feels like a different set of principles apply in this case. To me GoFundMe is not a common platform for speech, it's a provider of material aid in the form of privately organizing fundraising. It's not that we need to let them be and convince enough people not to support these ideologies, it's that we've _already_ convinced GoFundMe to stop helping. I'm not sure!
I absolutely feel that. I've heard "they should make XYZ illegal" (talking about a type of media or discussion) more this decade than I have the last.
Censorship by private business is totally fine with me, and I'd do the same if I ran a user content business, but this of course creates a demand for "alternative" sites that hold the disallowed content. What is not okay with me is hearing "the alternative sites are bad because all they do is attract XYZ media/discussions." No, they're good because they exercise the right of free speech, which is useful when private content services go too far.
This misinformation is literally killing people. A private company fighting that is absolutely something to celebrate; GoFundMe gets my full support here.
The information is out there, and is being broadcast publicly. Shutting down misinformation is essential when people don't care about getting valid information.
>Countering “misinformation” by correct information is a far better approach than censorship.
The recent increase of people who believe the Earth is flat seems to be direct evidence against your claim. Scientific and information literacy is not a widespread skill.
Does believing earth is flat makes the earth flat or vice versa? If it is truth, It'll prevail. Who is this new authority on worldwide truths that gets to decide what the masses consume.
How so, exactly? I don't see any reason to think that the truth tends to prevail, except in processes where people are genuinely interested in discovering the truth. In fact, if you're not interested in discovering the truth, I would say that the truth is mostly powerless.
Is this really censorship, though? They aren't removing information, GoFundMe isn't a blogging site, they are simply refusing to do business with people they disagree with. That's more or less a boycott. Is boycotting something or someone censorship?
The idea we can just correct people who have non-factual beliefs with facts and they say, "oh ok, guess I was wrong" and change their beliefs is plain wrong. It doesn't happen, it doesn't work that way. In fact, it has the opposite effect: the non-factual belief gets stronger.
Except, this isn't censoring. It's a private company refusing to let an individual or organization use it's service for fundraising for a cause they believe to be harmful.
Countering “misinformation” by correct information is a far better approach than censorship
I'd like to see a reference for this -- there's plenty of evidence in favor of vaccinations out there from legitimate government and commercial sources, yet many anti-vaxxers dismiss those sources as "biased" or "in the pockets of big pharma", so it's not clear how presenting more of the information they already have access to will change anything.
But I can see how presenting less anti-vax "data" would be beneficial to public health.
There is real data that supports questioning vaccine safety. But even saying "vaccines _may_ not be safe" is considered "anti-vaxxer". What is the real FUD here?
Saying vaccines may not be safe doesn't make one an anti-vaxxer, your doctor will tell you that (and indeed, for some individuals they'll recommend against vaccination at all) -- but saying that vaccines in general are worse than the alternative (the return of serious diseases that have been nearly eradicated) does.
No medical procedure is 100% safe - even if they injected you with sterile saline, that's not 100% safe.
The risk of adverse effects from the measles vaccine is around one in a million doses. In comparison, you've got around a 1 in 8000 chance of dying in a car accident this year.
There's a misconception that public health policy is about keeping you (or your child) healthy -- it's not, it's about promoting health across the entire population. Even if there's a tiny risk of an adverse reaction to a vaccine to your child, it's outweighed by the global reduction in serious illness. It's a part of living in society -- you should not get to make medical decisions that are proven to cause serious problems for others just to eliminate a minuscule risk to yourself.
>you should not get to make medical decisions that are proven to cause serious problems for others just to eliminate a minuscule risk to yourself.
I wonder why this position does not inform people's view on other things in life, like driving or gun ownership or tourism or taxation or consumerism or..
In truth, i like this approach far more (and have personally find it more effective in neutralising antivax points of view) than the rabid shouting of the vocal minority of provaxxers. It shows you acknowledge them and their concerns as people who (right or wrong) actually deeply care, but position their actions in direct relation to the consequences.
Anti-GMO types also literally kill people. Example: Golden Rice.
I am all for companies taking public health into account, however I also think this in some part makes more people look into anti-vaxxination...because so much of it depends on a belief of conspiracy against the public. It's a hard animal to tackle.
It's weird how much the anti-vaxxers have become the whipping boys of the current US. Is it because they've got both the smell of dirty hippies and also anti-science religious conservatives and also annoying soccer moms so everyone can love to hate them?
Not giving your kid vaccinations is stupid. But on the scale of "ways you can mess up your kid," it's pretty mild. In terms of the amount of harm that non-vaccinated kids do to everyone else, it's extremely near zero. Almost certainly, if you drive a car more than a few times a year, you're endangering those around you more than any anti-vaxxer is.
And if you actually want to convince anti-vaxxers to change their ways, this is clearly not the right way to do it. Pouring hate on people feels (scarily) good in a lot of ways, but it doesn't change the minds of the people you're demonizing. Is there any clearer demonstration of this than the complete persistence of anti-vaxxing sentiment in the face of steadily increasing screams of protest over the last 5 years?
Because the science is so solid that it's beating a dead horse at this point.
But with anti-vaxxers, It's like telling someone the red apple you're holding is red, yet they insist that it's green. You can't argue "the merits" with people like this.
There are over 1 million doctors in the US [1]. Of course you will be able to find one that supports nearly any ludicrous claim.
There has been extensive research on vaccines in the major scientific literature, and the research has overwhelmingly reached the conclusion that there is no link with autism.
It's hardly an argument ad populum to say that the overwhelming amount of research says vaccines have no link to autism. That's simply asserting an undeniable fact
Moreover, are you seriously asserting the argument of "because one doctor says something, it has to be right"? I'm sorry, but the scientific process trusts the research, simple as that, and I largely trust the scientific process. The argument isn't "I think vaccines are safe because most of the world says so", my argument is "in the overwhelming amount of research that has been done on this, it has determined no link between vaccines and autism".
The linked sources aren't saying "don't vaccinate", they are saying "weigh the risks".
There is not a single scientific source anywhere that says vaccines have zero side effects and/or zero negative effects on _everyone_. (it's common knowledge that immune compromised people can't even take vaccines)
Ok, can you please send me a paper from a reputable scientific journal? Any idiot can make a YouTube video claiming whatever the hell they want. Look at how big the flat-earth movement is on YouTube.
If you link me to a paper in a peer-reviewed journal, I'd be happy to read it.
>There has been extensive research on vaccines in the major scientific literature,
You should probably look into said "research" and see who actually funded it. Finding research that was not directly funded by a pharmaceutical is quite rare.
Please stop now. At this point you've crossed into trolling, and there's no way this discussion is going to do anything except repeat and sink further into flamewar.
>Neither of those doctors have published anything peer-reviewed
And? If you have a mechanic friend who says "Toyota's latest family sedan has many problems", do you then ask where's his peer-reviewed research? No, because he is speaking of a direct observation. Vaccine injuries are eye witness accounts as well as seeing the lobbying power that vaccine manufactures have. You just have to look.
Data please. Are you claiming vaccines does not contain large amount of aluminum and mercury. Large enough to cause autoimmune diseases and even death.
Let us talk data instead of trying to shoot down the voice, which seems to have become the trend in the west lately
What is the CDC's allowable ppb of ethyl mercury in an adult vs an 8lb infant?
Now compare that to the amount in all the vaccines in all the shots on schedule from the CDC, and you will see some very plain data that counters the common narrative.
When you consume salt - would you describe it as consuming sodium and chlorine? Salt is inherently different from the two elements that form it. For the vast majority of us - the assertions about aluminum and mercury suffer from what appears to be a deep understanding over the nature of molecules vs. the elements that form them.
Personal attacks will get you banned here. I realize this thread is a wretched flamewar (and haven't had time yet to look at just how wretched) but this comment stands out as a bannable offense. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and please don't post like this to HN, no matter how wrong someone is or you feel they are.
Chlorine can cause blindness, burn skin off, or just kill you instantly, and sodium is an explosive that can cause blindness and severe burns, yet you casually shake these two disastrous chemicals on your salad at the dinner table daily.
That was their point: they were showing how ridiculous your first comment is, saying the same thing you are saying in your second comment. There is no elemental mercury in vaccines (this is probably the most debunked antivax argument).
Vaccines with Thimerosal is given to babies all over the world to this date. Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen (Cancer causing substance in human tissue) is one of the vaccine ingredients present in most vaccines.
Saying thimerosal is dangerous because of mercury is like saying salt is dangerous because of chlorine or water is dangerous because of liquid hydrogen. Moreover, it is mostly phased out of use.
> Not giving your kid vaccinations is stupid. But on the scale of "ways you can mess up your kid," it's pretty mild.
Measles and other dangerous diseases returning to the US after being iradicated is not a small issue. This effects other children's lives. It's selfish and harmful and we have a safe reliable solution.
People have become complacent to the horrible effects of diseases because of the protections vaccines have provided them over the last 50+ years.
I don't disagree that people are complacent, but on a factual level, most kids who don't get vaccinations do not get measles. Most who do get measles have a few weeks of discomfort and get over it. Most who do get measles do not give it to anyone else except maybe other unvaccinated kids.
In the years before a measles vaccine, there were about 500 deaths per year from measles (in the US). This was when the population was about half of what it is now, so if we returned fully to that rate, there would be about 1,000 deaths per year from measles today.
As I said, it's dumb not to get your kids vaccinated. I wish I could get vaccinated to more things! It's like a super power!
But the amount of actual harm that anti-vaxxers are causing is miniscule, certainly deeply out of proportion with the hate that they're getting.
And if you do sincerely desire to keep as many people as possible from getting the measles, rather than desire to feel the rush of heaping hate on people, then again, let me suggest that the current tactics are not working, and that de-escalating the rhetoric around this will do much more to let anti-vaxxers relax and start listening to your data.
> I don't disagree that people are complacent, but on a factual level, most kids who don't get vaccinations do not get measles.
This is because other children do not contract measles because they have been vaccinated for Measles, as have their parents. It's not because Measles is hard to contract, it's because Measles is uncommon in the modern Western world. It's uncommon in the modern Western world because people have been vaccinated for it.
> In the years before a measles vaccine, there were about 500 deaths per year from measles (in the US). This was when the population was about half of what it is now, so if we returned fully to that rate, there would be about 1,000 deaths per year from measles today.
1000 easily preventable deaths. Just because 1000 people isn't a large, scary number doesn't mean that it's a small number either. A single person dying of a preventable illness is heartbreaking. Each one of those 1000 people who die are someone's son, daughter, wife, husband, brother, sister, aunt, etc. What value do you place on human life?
Because of Vaccines. It even says right there in the link: "Measles remains a leading cause of vaccine-preventable infant mortality."
> But the amount of actual harm that anti-vaxxers are causing is miniscule, certainly deeply out of proportion with the hate that they're getting.
You say this until your child goes to kindergarten with an un-vaccinated child and contracts a deadly illness.
In addition, anti-vaxxers are doing harm to their own children. A parent's responsibility is to protect their children. I understand that anti-vax parents think hey are protecting their children by refusing vaccines, but it is objectively the opposite. Anti-vax parents are exposing their children to deadly illnesses that used to kill people at an alarming rate before vaccination was common. They are doing this to a child who cannot understand the implications of these decisions.
> And if you do sincerely desire to keep as many people as possible from getting the measles, rather than desire to feel the rush of heaping hate on people, then again, let me suggest that the current tactics are not working, and that de-escalating the rhetoric around this will do much more to let anti-vaxxers relax and start listening to your data.
This I can partially agree with. However, cognitive bias is very real and very powerful. Clearly, hate and spite are not a good way to communicate with anti-vaxxers, but how many children need to die and how may horrible illnesses need to become common before they realize the errors of their ways?
You appear to imagine that I don't understand how vaccines work. I do understand them! Also, my kids (who go to preschool and daycare right now) won't contract measles or other diseases-that-could-be-vaccinated-against from their unvaccinated peers, because... They're vaccinated.
Lots of people do lots of harm to their children. The amount of harm that anti-vaxxers do to their children is small. The amount of harm that anti-vaxxers do to anyone else's children is like 100x smaller.
Lightning strikes kill more people in the United States every year than measles does. Probably -- though I don't know how to get the statistics for this -- than every disease that might be vaccinated against that people decline.
This is not the threat that we need to compromise our principles over.
Good, because you're an example of someone who is complacent. This is what complacency looks like:
> but on a factual level, most kids who don't get vaccinations do not get measles. Most who do get measles have a few weeks of discomfort and get over it. Most who do get measles do not give it to anyone else except maybe other unvaccinated kids.
"Most." "Most." "Most."
Let's say only one child in the entire U.S. will die of measles over the next 10 years. Now, let's say you know it will be your child, or your neice, or your friend's child. Still seem acceptable?
The point is, there is no acceptable level of measles incidence in the U.S.
Zero. Period.
> de-escalating the rhetoric around this will do much more to let anti-vaxxers relax and start listening to your data.
This is not true. The rhetoric around vaccines started out de-escalated, because everyone thought the benefits were so obvious they did not need defending. That's what allowed anti-vaccine scammers to gain mindshare in the first place. Only by aggressive counteracting the anti-vaccine message will that be reversed.
My child won't get measles because my children are vaccinated. But my children will get other diseases because most diseases can't be vaccinated against. And also because I'm not willing to sacrifice every part of my life to make sure that my children have the minimal possible risk of disease.
So my kids will, for example, go to school rather than be home-schooled or tutored.
My kids are allowed to travel on BART, despite their propensity for touching everything and putting their hands in their mouths. And, like, I'll try to teach them not to do that, but it's not like I'll smack their hands.
My kids will probably at some point travel abroad to places where there are disease risks that there aren't in the United States, and while if travel vaccinations are available we'll certainly take advantage of them, we won't refuse to travel to Africa because malaria exists.
Also, my children are allowed to travel by car -- even in the cars of say their friends' parents who I haven't extensively vetted for maximally safe driving habits.
And they're allowed to go into San Francisco and Oakland, cities that are statistically more violent than their home town of San Bruno.
You can't remove all risk from people's lives -- even your own children's -- and if you try to, you end up making bad decisions.
This is a microcosm of what happens when you try to make policy around zero tolerance policies. Look, I wish that everyone would vaccinate their kids. But it simply doesn't make sense to sacrifice every other priority in the world to try to chase down a very small number of people who object to doing that.
And aggressively countering the message isn't working -- which we would have expected if we had seen every other case of aggressive messaging, which broadly speaking is more about virtue signaling than convincing people. Anti-vaxxers today are much, much, much more rooted in their opinions than they were at the beginning.
I mean, I'm not sure what a fictional show proves. It was certainly treatable in the 1960s and 70s, especially in a country with advanced modern medicine like the United States. But measles still killed a lot of people.
There's no such thing as a benign disease. That's kind of inherent to the definition.
Some diseases are more acute than others, but if we can eliminate even non-acute diseases, why wouldn't we? And to be clear: we know we can eliminate measles because we already did it once.
Measles is highly, highly, absurdly contagious and you spread the disease for up to four days before symptoms appear.
Therefore, even if its "mostly benign" in healthy individuals, it has a very high potential to infect immunocompromised individuals, so it's a public health concern.
1) I unequivocally believe all anti-vaxxers are wrong, 2) I absolutely support efforts to fight their misinformation, 3) I don't even necessarily think it was a bad decision by gofundme to do this;
Now, what I'd like to question is the effectiveness of taking down those campaigns. My points:
1) I doubt that an average user scrolling through gofundme would see and decide to support such a campaign, I'd imagine most of the funding comes from the links being directly shared
2) The above makes me think such campaigns will simply move to a GoFundMe competitor and be equally (un?)successful, effectively nullifying any changes
3) Gives more attention + victim points to anti vaxxers
4) If their discourse is further pushed out of mainstream platforms, does it actually reduce the spread of their ideas or just limit their exposure to counter-arguments and public condemnation?
Anti-vaxxers are like terrorists: they don't really do much per se, but the FUD they spread does immense harm to society. Defunding & deplatforming such groups is a methodology that is practically inescapable for as long as laymen are liable to believe anti-vaxxers or be afraid of terrorists.
Of course, the real solution is education: both of the purveyors of misinformation and of those who fall victim to it. That's a multi-generational process that should ideally happen in parallel with short-term fixes.
>[Anti-vaxxers] are like terrorists: they don't really do much per se, but the FUD they spread does immense harm to society. Defunding & deplatforming such groups is a methodology that is practically inescapable for as long as laymen are liable to believe [anti-vaxxers] or be afraid of terrorists.
You could replace that phrase with many different ideologies. Would you?
They're not like terrorists, they are terrorists. Some of these diseases we have vaccines for are vicious and could kill more than any suicide bomber could dream of.
Good question. I'd prefer to set a fairly high bar for elevating ideologies to the plane of terrorism. One criteria could be based on the willingness of an ideology's followers to exit the bounds of civilized discourse whenever it becomes clear that they're in the wrong. The basic blueprint seems to be "group X should stop doing thing Y to group Z", where X may be "doctors" or "the United States", thing Y may be "vaccination" or "occupation", and group Z may be "Muslim lands" or "children". There comes a point in each debate when it's time to give up the fight and accept defeat. Unfortunately, some folks simply cannot do this. It is then that I would consider them terrorists.
Labeling people you disagree with as terrorists. Great way to make friends, eh? It's always easy to discount the view of an opponent, but much more difficult to appreciate it.
Whether I agree with them or not does not matter. These people are provably, verifiably, objectively wrong. They are unable or unwilling to accept the wrongness of their ways. They resort to uncivilized methods of pursuing their goals. How are they not terrorists?
Saying that people are wrong without talking to them is a great way to destroy societies. There objectively are things they are wrong about and things they are right about, just like you.
We are talking about people who are endangering public health here, so while I don't personally agree with the "terrorist" stance, I still don't think it's just a case of "naming people you disagree with terrorists."
Endangering health happens on both sides. Big pharma pushes pain meds. They also push vaccines. The difference being vaccines don't normally harm people, but when they do, it's impossible to get compensation.
Pain meds can cause addiction and harm much more easily.
The problem is that this sort of move will make anti-vaxxing a bigger problem, not a smaller problem.
A huge part of this sort of thing is driven by distrust of institutions, which has been in long term decline. Can you trust doctors or are they in the pockets of big pharma? Is the government suppressing vital information related to the health of your child because they're afraid to admit they were wrong? Etc etc.
Attempting to suppress/oppress these people to shut them up is a bad idea because it'll simply be taken as evidence that there is in fact some sort of malign pro-vaccination conspiracy, that their arguments can't be rebutted, and they'll become more dedicated to spreading 'the truth' as they see it.
This is a typically short sighted decision by corporates. If GoFundMe don't like anti-vaxxers, they should make a video shooting down common anti-vaxxer ideas and then embed it at the top of every crowdfund related to it, so everyone who wants to contribute money to it is exposed to the counter arguments. Heck, make watching the vid mandatory before you can donate. But shutting down legal discourse is bad bad bad and will only inflame the situation.
They are perhaps impressively myopic, that they overestimate a statistically insignificant chance of an undesirable side effect of vaccination, while totally ignoring the significant chance of acquiring one of the diseases the vaccine will prevent, dying from it or having life long consequences as a result. But that is the mental health problem of anti-vaxx, is not looking at the big picture.
A widespread highly contagious fatal disease puts society at an even greater risk: panic. There's all kinds of examples of humans, even in relatively modern times, trying to eject sick people from society. And that's the kind version. Locking sick people in barns and churches, and burning them down, barricading burning entire villages to the ground due to fear of contagion.
You think the anti-vaxxers are terrorists? Not a good word anyway, but when the general population starts to freak out over a disease, that will be terror. The idea we're really that different from medieval times in the face of a virulent contagion is hilarious to me, especially with all the fantastic obsession with zombie shows.
I think this decision had 2 motivators, in order of importance:
1. Business
2. Ethics
The ethics effect the business. GoFundMe does not want to be known as a company that helped an organization allow the resurgence of Polio for instance. From a business standpoint, GoFundMe needs to maintain positive PR if it wants to keep making money. It is none of GoFundMe's concern if these anti-vax individuals or organizations move to a different platform.
I completely agree. That's why I was trying to distance my argument from the perspective of whether GoFundMe made a good or bad decision.
I just wanted to bring up the point from a societal perspective, since it's society as a whole who often calls for actions like this from big companies (making it a "good" decision for them even if just for the PR). Are we going to see a positive change in society from this, is it just irrelevant in the end, or could we even be making the issue harder to fight in the long run?
I don't necessarily have a strong opinion on what the answer to that question is, it's just genuinely a question.
5) A private company making an ethical choice on what to show on its platform is not responsible for where the discourse moves to but making a difference in the platform they control is a good start and a stance other platforms should take.
> 1) I doubt that an average user scrolling through gofundme would see and decide to support such a campaign, I'd imagine most of the funding comes from the links being directly shared
That's probably true, although I really don't know why it's particularly relevant. GoFundMe probably doesn't want people funding anti-vaccine campaigns regardless of how they arrived at the web page.
> 2) The above makes me think such campaigns will simply move to a GoFundMe competitor and be equally (un?)successful, effectively nullifying any changes
How does that nullify any changes? There are a finite number of crowdfunding platforms, and this reduces the number by one. And of course, this is a particularly large and prominent one.
> 3) Gives more attention + victim points to anti vaxxers
I don't really buy the "don't give them what they want" argument. If they really do want press about how harmful their practices are and how children are dying because of their campaigns, well okay, I'm fine with giving them this desire. I think that they should be "victims" of de-platforming, even if that's what they want. It's theoretically possible to get the Streisand effect, where their platform is increased, but I highly doubt that's likely when you remove them from huge platforms with massive market share, like YouTube or GoFundMe.
> 4) If their discourse is further pushed out of mainstream platforms, does it actually reduce the spread of their ideas or just limit their exposure to counter-arguments and public condemnation?
There are probably some anti-vaccers who are genuinely mislead, but the prominent voices in the movement almost certainly are aware of the invalidity of their claims. I don't think we have any lack of exposure to pro-vaccine arguments.
>...but the prominent voices in the movement almost certainly are aware of the invalidity of their claims.
What do you object about these two medical doctors issues with vaccines? I would consider them more prominent than you or I, so their opinion/knowledge should hold more weight than ours.
Yet, but the very limited standards set, they would be called "anti-vaxxers", even though Dr. Halverson provides vaccine services for children and familes.
Neither of these doctors have published a single paper relating to vaccination or immunity in general, according to PubMed. A Youtube presence does not an expert make.
I don't think you watched the videos. Their facts and arguments are what matter. I didn't say they were "experts" with vaccines, I said they were more "prominent" than us, and I asked "what do _you_ object to?" from those videos.
Arguing to authority is a logical fallacy any ways. Peer reviewed papers does not mean they are true. There are plenty of peer reviewed papers that disagree with each other or have results that are not reproducible.
Edit: I recommend anyone that think "peer review" means that a paper is automatically true to research how the peer review process works and also the results. (there was a scandal this past year or so on peer reviewed papers, most of them medical papers)
The impact on society won't come from the number of crowdfunding platforms, but from the number of campaigns and their reach. My point with 1) and 2) was that neither is necessarily affected by this.
> likely when you remove them from huge platforms with massive market share, like YouTube
It's really super hard to fully remove an idea from social media platforms. It's like playing whack-a-mole. They tend to find more ways of spreading the information.
If the discourse itself is moved to another platform, my concern is that it might be a much more hospitable environment for such ideas to fester. And I'm not certain we will significantly reduce the spreading of these platforms.
Context: I work in Trust and Safety and am genuinely concerned with how to best address these issues, which I fear has fallen to the same pitfalls as many political discussions (i.e. get the favorable public opinion to stay in power for the mandate even if it means sweeping the dust under the carpet and let it build up)
This will inevitably lead to 1984 style censorship. The next 5 things censored en mass will all be "objectionable", but then finally something good, normal or simply against the orthodoxy of the day will be censored that no average person would object to.
But then it will be too late, because everyone supported censoring ideas they simply didn't like being spread.
Then it will be against the law to object to anything that is official censored.
I think you might need to look up the meaning of that, pal. The point is – a globally decentralised publishing network also has obvious, quite possibly terminal, problems.
You are absolutely correct. They don't have to do anything they don't want to.
But do you really believe this is the only thing they will censor?
This is a canary dying, it's indicative of the problems that are coming, and it's going to be more and more censorship, until finally you object to something for real.
But because you didn't defend other's speech, there will be nothing left to do.
> But do you really believe this is the only thing they will censor?
This is how free societies work. Everyone has the freedom to assemble--and not assemble--with whomever they choose.
We have protected classes for lines one cannot draw. But an essential part of democracy, going back to the Athenians, is the public's freedom to associate--and transact--with people of their choosing, and being able to associate--or not associate--on the basis of political views.
GoFundMe is free not to do business with anti-vaxxers. You are free not to do business with them for that decision. Everyone decides what matters to them and acts on it to their own accordance. When there is consensus, it cascades and may even prompt the creation of a new protected class.
Would you be supportive of a campaign to hire a hitman to kill Donald Trump? I hate Donald Trump and even I would support that being taken down. Would that make me some tyrant that's trying to destroy free speech? Of course not; I don't think it's right to kill people, simple as that.
Anti-vaxxers kill people by reducing herd immunity. I think that's wrong, I wouldn't platform that.
To have the Orwellian nightmare that you're describing, you'd really have to have a governing body performing this, and to have them disallowing you from building your own.
Now, if the credit card processors were blocking anti-vax stuff, I think you'd have a point, but as it stands it seems like you're just falling into a slippery slope that doesn't exist.
I understand your point (and please don't take this the wrong way) but of course there is no thoughtful discussion for this nonsense.
Debating against people with absurd, unproven, and dangerous claims does nothing to help the legitimate sciences, but works depressingly well at lending credibility to the erroneous claims.
If I were to make the claim that "all kale is radioactive" and that "there's a strong link between eating kale and growing tentacles out of your brain" without providing any evidence of this in the academic literature, you almost certainly wouldn't "debate" me on this, and you'd probably make similar points to the ones I'm making. I'd then fire back with "if you even _question_ the radio-kale theory you are a complete nutter". I might even exclaim "see, they won't even debate me on the kale question! They're trying to censor me! ORWELL!!!"
The anti-vaxx delusion is a contagious viral illness of the brain that enables the spread of biological viruses that do physical harm. This is not a free speech issue, it's a public health issue.
Did you know that vaccine protection doesn't last a lifetime?
And that all the adults that got vaccinated as a child in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and maybe even the 90s are no longer immune? But none of those people have been required to get immunized again to maintain herd immunity.
This means we've been at 50% coverage or less for decades. Maybe there is some missing information that needs to be discussed?
Smallpox is eradicated and nobody is getting vaccinated for it anymore. It is not worth the hassle, expense, and indeed the very small danger of negative effects. I and the people I know get boosters for more common diseases (measles for instance) every 10 or 20 years.
Kids are gathered in groups from daycare -> high school. In daycare illnesses spread quickly because of kids putting things in their mouth, and hygiene only improves slowly into elementary school.
Furthermore younger kids are more likely to be killed or seriously affected by illnesses than healthy adults.
>Furthermore younger kids are more likely to be killed or seriously affected by illnesses than healthy adults.
That is moving the goal posts. If adults get measles, they can pass it on to the kids. And the stated belief is that 95% immunity is required for herd protection.
Yet, we simply don't have that, and there isn't mass sickness everywhere.
Vaccine effectiveness durations are studied. They vary by the vaccine you’re getting (which I would hope is obvious but your comment is very much a blanket statement).
Many of them might decline in efficacy but that can mean 90% effective which is very good. Furthermore many of them have mitigating effects if you do get the diseases anyway that reduce risk of death or complications.
> This is not a free speech issue, it's a public health issue
It is both. What it's not is a First Amendment issue. GoFundMe, a private entity, is deciding not to do business with a group of people. Anti-vaxxers are not a protected class (like race). This is totally legitimate and a healthy part of a democratic society.
One's view have consequences. The First Amendment just says they shouldn't have consequences from the government.
What bothers me about the ban is that anti-vaxxers - at least the ones I've read - are not Luddites.
I've never heard an anti-vaxxer say things such as "It's God's (or Gaia's) Will that Johnny died of measles."
They believe, wrongly in my opinion, that vaccines cause other medical problems serious enough to justify not using vaccines. To me, that's legitimate dissent.
Given the stakes, maybe GoFundMe did the right thing.
But what's an acceptable threshold of risk?
Because, for various reasons, anti-vaxxing has become a political problem as well as a health problem. Maybe more so.
The political aspect - i.e. GoFundMe being vulnerable to political charges of endangering the public - is probably what drove GoFundMe to institute the ban.
Which leaves other politically charged uses of GoFundMe vulnerable.
> They believe, wrongly in my opinion, that vaccines cause other medical problems serious enough to justify not using vaccines. To me, that's legitimate dissent.
I don't get it. How is this any more legitimate than actually being a Luddite and saying "technology and modern medicine is bad"?
Would you say that racism and bigotry against minorities becomes legitimate if it's phrased as "this minority group will give you a disease if you let them near you"? Because that's actually a pretty classic feature of racist propaganda.
Both examples are about diseases. Your claim was that their argument is of a legitimate form because it makes a claim about medical risk. My rhetorical argument was of the same form.
I don't think this is a free speech issue. What's the difference between promoting a scientific falsehood that puts public health at grave risk and yelling "fire" in a crowded theater other than the proximity of damage done?
> What's the difference between promoting a scientific falsehood that puts public health at grave risk and yelling "fire" in a crowded theater other than the proximity of damage done?
Clear and present danger. Both yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre and refusing to vaccinate are a clear danger. But only one of them is clear and present. For comparison, yelling "fire" in an empty plaza would not be penalized.
Can we stop invoking unsupported non-binding dicta offered to illustrate the decision in a case which has since been overturned and is widely regarded as a travesty infringing on core political speech as if it were some kind of firm legal principal useful as a yardstick against which speech can be measured to determine if it is unprotected?
I'll stop being anti-vax when the corporations that manufacture vaccines can be held for legal liability. You do know they lobbied congress in the 1980's for legal immunity right? Would you actually drive a car who's parent company had legal immunity against any manufacturing defects? Probably not... Either way, the insert that comes with every vaccine bottle is a great resource. If you're too lazy to dig up the inserts on the FDA or CDC website there is a nice website that correlates many of them here: https://vaccine.guide/ Its a huge money making machine that cannot be sued for medical malpractice. That should raise anyone's flag. To say vaccines are 100% safe means you are either ill-informed or you don't have kids and therefore don't care.
I highly doubt gofundme had a personal conviction over this issue. This is a company that is being influenced by an outside source. That should be concerning.
Is this not a trivial counterargument to your claims: anyone that was harmed by a vaccine is eligible for a lot of money. Yet few people reach for this fund.
Not at all. You can spend tons of money to put your case before a special "vaccine court" who rarely does anything while the case drags on and on until you run out of money to fund your own case.
I get that anti-vaxers are considered dangerous. Equally dangerous is the revolving door between the CDC and vaccination companies which prevent correct levels of scrutinization when batches of vaccinations or specific vaccines are deemed unsafe. Without this comfortable level of accountability, vaccine companies can move forward indefinitely without supplying realistic testing which could prevent detrimental affects that very rarely occur, but can happen. Furthermore, sending bad batches of vaccines downstream to poorer countries should be illegal. Certainly things like this have happened historically.
Additionally, the way the government has cozied up to vaccination companies to prevent nearly any lawsuit from taking place related to vaccines seems ridiculous. Vaccines do represent a public good, and as such some protection seems appropriate, but to make it seem like the best possible thing we could ever do to protect populations? I think that's a touch overreaching.
People should use vaccines, absolutely. However, vaccine tech has not progressed much in 50 years and part of this may be attributed to the protection of vaccine companies.
Your links don't say what you think they do. 1) You're blaming the CDC for not holding people accountable, then linking the CDC ... holding them accountable. 2) The second two links don't have anything to do with the US, thus aren't in the CDC's purview.
Additionally, none of these talk about intentionally bad vaccines, which is one of your claims.
The CDC acknowledges that batches of bad vaccines do occur. How can a vaccine be bad except that (1) it doesn't work or (2) it actually hurts the patient?
Also, people from the CDC do leave to work for pharma companies. That is true...so a revolving door exists. Decide for yourself if that could produce unwanted collusion.
The other links support my claims that Vaccine companies send shoddy vaccines to other countries even if they are rejected here. World health should be about more than profit. Vaccines can be helpful, but not without honest discussions which Vaccine suppliers seem unwilling to have.
How about links to CDC leaked documents, released by William Thompson ( CDC scientist and whistle blower ) about scientific fraud at CDC by tampering with the research data of The link between MMR vaccine and Autism?
They conveniently don't share a key point: those on public healthcare or food stamps were required to vaccinate. This particularly affected those with special needs, e.g. autism, thus completely skewing the numbers. The vaccines didn't cause autism in these populations; the autism caused vaccines.
This is a good example of how mass vaccination has mostly flipped those who are susceptible: https://i.imgur.com/gdDkcJf.png Of course the answer from the pharmaceutical companies is just to require more vaccines. And around and around we go.
The one question 'pro-vaxxers' can't answer is: If vaccines work, why would someone fear non-vaccinated people?
Isn't that just taking 'anti-vaxxers' out of the gene pool?
I say this as someone who isn't anti-vaccine per se but only anti-unsafe-vaccines. And the safety of vaccines is very much in question today, which you wouldn't know if you only read and believe the mainstream media.
Illnesses killing non-vaccinated people is a health hazard to the innocent. People who can't get vaccines (too young, too sick, immunocompromised) rely on herd immunity to protect them. People who can get vaccines but don't endanger those who can't get vaccines. They also put a unneeded strain on the medical system.
We also have the power to eliminate some illnesses completely so that vaccines are no longer needed in the future generations. We've done this with smallpox and we are close with polio.
As far as "safe/unsafe," that's disingenuous, there's no such thing - no medical intervention is completely without risk, but we know that the benefits of vaccines on the marketplace today unequivocally outweigh the (very minor) risks for the vast majority of healthy people.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 226 ms ] threadFirst they came for the anti-vaxxers...
I do not believe banning or censoring blatant misinformation is bad. We have more information at our fingertips than ever before and I personally believe that we should be able to access all that knowledge freely without censorship.
There is some information better not shared though and this is where I am divided. We do not have an obligation to inform or influence anyone's decisions - but when those decisions harm childrens' lives then I think action needs to be taken. This is the most obvious action that could have been taken and I'm glad it was.
The government doesn't _need_ to censoring anything if they get the companies to it for them.
That is fascism.
So is telling private companies what they have to do with their property.
'Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power' ― Benito Mussolini
I run a site that makes it really easy to connect people who want to give money and people who have some reason they think they should have money. I decide that I don't want people who are raising money for anti-vax campaigns on my site, so I ban them.
Then, someone comes in and says "no no, you can't do that, you have to allow them to use your site." Who gets to decide that, and by what criteria? What if I also decide I don't want to allow anti-government militias to use my site to buy firearms? As soon as you force a private entity to do business with people even if they don't want to, you're also on a slippery slope.
...or maybe you're not. Maybe there are plenty of plaes to draw these lines, like, "you can't refuse service to people if you are doing so based on certain categories, like race, sex, religious belief, etc. because we as a nation have decided it's important."
I think we should allow companies like GoFundMe to ban whomever they like, unless they are discriminating based on the protected categories that are already clearly defined.
I am just pointing out that there is no longer any real censorship any more that we are legally protected against simply because the government is never involved directly in it.
So simply repeating the mantra "business can't censor" isn't really true in a strict analysis.
Consider that the baker who didn't want to bake a cake with words on it that he objected to was sued (successfully). But I saw almost no support for _that_ business's freedom to choose.
Censorship has turned into a mob tool of control.
Businesses have been refusing to do business with people and people have been refusing to use businesses for a very long time, this isn't some new thing.
And we actually do have protections, enshrined in civil rights legislation. You can't be denied service because of your race, gender, religion, and a couple other categories depending on the service and the state. But your stance on vaccinations is not a protected category. If you want to expand the protected categories, that's a different conversation.
> Consider that the baker who didn't want to bake a cake with words on it that he objected to was sued (successfully).
Yeah, because sexual orientation is a protected class.
> Censorship has turned into a mob controlled tool of control.
You're describing a boycott. It's a form of protest. It's "mob controlled" in the same sense as all other forms of protest
If the company chooses to do so, then this is a non-issue. It's no different than YCombinator banning someone who decides to spam the comments. Or Youtube banning a channel because it's posting porn videos. This is literally the same concept as that, except it's GoFundMe with anti-vax.
And of course they do it in their own interests, that's the duty of a fiduciary.
1. Gets removed from a platform and told go makes your own platform!
2. Goes makes a platform.
3. Gets removed from the DNS. Told to become his own DNS host.
4. Makes DNS service.
5. Gets kicked off the cloud hosting. Told go make your own hosting.
6. Gets his own hosting.
7. Gets blocked at the payment processing. Gets told to figure out how be his own payment processor.
Somewhere there there's also apps being pulled from Playstore and iTunes.
This will bite us in the butt. Pendulum always swings both ways and we will be on a receiving side of it in future.
Free people. There is a legal line that circumscribes the lines that cannot be drawn. You cannot decide not to do business with someone on the basis of gender or of race, for example.
But if you don't want people jerking off in your restaurant, you're free to kick them out. Same for people spreading bullshit. (Though, importantly, the government can't do anything to the bullshit-spreaders.)
As far as your personal interests go, again the presumption should be that if it isn’t your property, and you have no contracts stating otherwise, it isn’t yours to decide whether a decision is made in your own personal best interest.
What if this was asbestos back in the day. "It's safe, we all use it, if it wasn't then our internal study would have told us." So they start banning anyone saying asbestos is unsafe. How long would it take us to fix all the blocks that are crying to save people from actual asbestos issues, that are 100% real.
And once again, I am not saying banning anti-vaxx is bad, vaccines are proven over and over again.
Lots of things that people say in opposition to vaccines is true, or at least has some basis in fact. Polio vaccines decades ago were contaminated with sv40, which does have the potential to cause tumors. (So there is "vaccines cause cancer!") There is also probably a real link between Guillain-Barre and vaccines, but there is also a link between any infection and Guillain-Barre, do with a vaccine you essne tidally keep the risk of that very rare syndrome and lose the risk of infection.
Vaccines are not risk-free, they just have such incredibly high value that the incredibly low risk is completely worth it.
> if we ban them, what are we banning them for?
"We" are not banning them. GoFundMe is.
Call it whatever you like. "Subverting public health," maybe.
I just can't understand why anyone would be in favor of corporations shutting down ALL dissenting speech on a particular topic on their platform. Perhaps the "anti-vaxxers" of today are 100% wrong about everything, but that doesn't mean that 100% of criticism of vaccines now and forever more is and will always be 100% invalid. Why would anyone think that?
Nobody is doing this, including GoFundMe. In fact there is quite a lot of active research into vaccines, both how to make them more effective and how to make them more safe. No one calls those people "anti-vaxxers." No one is piling into this thread to call tntn an "anti-vaxxer." Informed, rigorous consideration and investigation of vaccines is well-accepted by society and always will be.
What gets labeled as anti-vaxxer is the uninformed, or deliberately misinformed, content that is created to attract attention, for the purposes of monetizing said attention. Crowdfunding platforms like GoFundMe, Patreon, etc. are some of the ways people make that business work.
Snake-oil salesman is an old scam: you create or feed public fear, then you sell a (fake) solution to that fear. Anti-vaxxers have adapted an advocacy model to this pursuit--they use vaccines to feed paranoia about society, then they ask for money to "continue the fight" or whatever. The entire operation is done in bad faith: a scam.
Given my above hypothetical situation—all current "anti-vaxxer" talking points are objectively false, but at some point in the future something happens that warrants objectively legitimate criticism of vaccines—do you really think many people who have been taught that "anti-vaxxers" are 100% wrong about 100% of what they say, 100% of the time, to the point where criticism is generally silenced or forced into the fringe, wouldn't say, "ah, looks like the anti-vaxxers are at it again!" People in this very thread are literally equating "anti-vaxxers" with literal terrorists. Do you think these people will ever be open to criticizing vaccines, given that they allow themselves to think in these terms?
I understand your concern, but context matters. A trained scientist conducting rigorous research is treated differently from a random person with a blog and a GoFundMe, even if the latter tries to hang their anti-vaccine hat on something the scientist says.
Censorship by private business is totally fine with me, and I'd do the same if I ran a user content business, but this of course creates a demand for "alternative" sites that hold the disallowed content. What is not okay with me is hearing "the alternative sites are bad because all they do is attract XYZ media/discussions." No, they're good because they exercise the right of free speech, which is useful when private content services go too far.
There, finished it for you!
The logical fallacy of “censorship is okay when I know it’s wrong” sets such a dangerous precedent, yet it’s downright celebrated by America’s left.
It’s quite frightening.
The recent increase of people who believe the Earth is flat seems to be direct evidence against your claim. Scientific and information literacy is not a widespread skill.
If more people believe the Earth is flat today versus 20 years ago, the truth is not prevailing: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2017/11/28/americas...
How so, exactly? I don't see any reason to think that the truth tends to prevail, except in processes where people are genuinely interested in discovering the truth. In fact, if you're not interested in discovering the truth, I would say that the truth is mostly powerless.
An example of how the truth is stifled in China because you can't discuss an historical event.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-06-03/how-china-has-censore...
https://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/
Anyway, GoFundMe isn't in the business of informing anyone about anything.
This is how the future of censorship will work. And there won't be a legal protection against censorship because of this.
But I agree, GoFundMe can legally block anything they want.
They can block anything they want because that's what free speech means.
I'd like to see a reference for this -- there's plenty of evidence in favor of vaccinations out there from legitimate government and commercial sources, yet many anti-vaxxers dismiss those sources as "biased" or "in the pockets of big pharma", so it's not clear how presenting more of the information they already have access to will change anything.
But I can see how presenting less anti-vax "data" would be beneficial to public health.
How is it better to have _less_ "data" to base potentially life threatening choices on?
No medical procedure is 100% safe - even if they injected you with sterile saline, that's not 100% safe.
The risk of adverse effects from the measles vaccine is around one in a million doses. In comparison, you've got around a 1 in 8000 chance of dying in a car accident this year.
There's a misconception that public health policy is about keeping you (or your child) healthy -- it's not, it's about promoting health across the entire population. Even if there's a tiny risk of an adverse reaction to a vaccine to your child, it's outweighed by the global reduction in serious illness. It's a part of living in society -- you should not get to make medical decisions that are proven to cause serious problems for others just to eliminate a minuscule risk to yourself.
I wonder why this position does not inform people's view on other things in life, like driving or gun ownership or tourism or taxation or consumerism or..
In truth, i like this approach far more (and have personally find it more effective in neutralising antivax points of view) than the rabid shouting of the vocal minority of provaxxers. It shows you acknowledge them and their concerns as people who (right or wrong) actually deeply care, but position their actions in direct relation to the consequences.
I am all for companies taking public health into account, however I also think this in some part makes more people look into anti-vaxxination...because so much of it depends on a belief of conspiracy against the public. It's a hard animal to tackle.
Not giving your kid vaccinations is stupid. But on the scale of "ways you can mess up your kid," it's pretty mild. In terms of the amount of harm that non-vaccinated kids do to everyone else, it's extremely near zero. Almost certainly, if you drive a car more than a few times a year, you're endangering those around you more than any anti-vaxxer is.
And if you actually want to convince anti-vaxxers to change their ways, this is clearly not the right way to do it. Pouring hate on people feels (scarily) good in a lot of ways, but it doesn't change the minds of the people you're demonizing. Is there any clearer demonstration of this than the complete persistence of anti-vaxxing sentiment in the face of steadily increasing screams of protest over the last 5 years?
Why not discuss the merits of the science instead of ad hominem attacks?
But with anti-vaxxers, It's like telling someone the red apple you're holding is red, yet they insist that it's green. You can't argue "the merits" with people like this.
Dr. Richard Halvorsen (England)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMs1ue8j9CM
Dr. Suzanne Humphries (USA)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFQQOv-Oi6U
There has been extensive research on vaccines in the major scientific literature, and the research has overwhelmingly reached the conclusion that there is no link with autism.
[1] https://www.statista.com/topics/1244/physicians/
Your argument is a logical fallacy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum
Moreover, are you seriously asserting the argument of "because one doctor says something, it has to be right"? I'm sorry, but the scientific process trusts the research, simple as that, and I largely trust the scientific process. The argument isn't "I think vaccines are safe because most of the world says so", my argument is "in the overwhelming amount of research that has been done on this, it has determined no link between vaccines and autism".
There is not a single scientific source anywhere that says vaccines have zero side effects and/or zero negative effects on _everyone_. (it's common knowledge that immune compromised people can't even take vaccines)
Here is a discussion about the data set from a pediatric hospital in America. The concerned Doctor Paul Thomas is not even against vaccines.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjvjf4MnFqc
In reply to tombert
If you want to go over more than 1000 studies about vaccines published in established scientific journal get a copy of Neil Z Miller's book https://www.amazon.com/Vaccine-Safety-Concerned-Families-Pra...
For those who want a summary go through this video with references to studies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoT10nxZrVo
If you link me to a paper in a peer-reviewed journal, I'd be happy to read it.
You should probably look into said "research" and see who actually funded it. Finding research that was not directly funded by a pharmaceutical is quite rare.
Neither of those doctors have published anything peer-reviewed on the subject or in an adjacent field.
Just because it's on YouTube doesn't mean it's accurate.
Do you believe that who they are as a person is more or less important than the facts they present?
And? If you have a mechanic friend who says "Toyota's latest family sedan has many problems", do you then ask where's his peer-reviewed research? No, because he is speaking of a direct observation. Vaccine injuries are eye witness accounts as well as seeing the lobbying power that vaccine manufactures have. You just have to look.
Let us talk data instead of trying to shoot down the voice, which seems to have become the trend in the west lately
If you don't know the difference between an ethyl compound and a methyl compound, learn those first, then come back.
Now compare that to the amount in all the vaccines in all the shots on schedule from the CDC, and you will see some very plain data that counters the common narrative.
Extending your logic makes drinking liquid hydrogen perfectly safe because we drink water everyday.
Measles and other dangerous diseases returning to the US after being iradicated is not a small issue. This effects other children's lives. It's selfish and harmful and we have a safe reliable solution.
People have become complacent to the horrible effects of diseases because of the protections vaccines have provided them over the last 50+ years.
In the years before a measles vaccine, there were about 500 deaths per year from measles (in the US). This was when the population was about half of what it is now, so if we returned fully to that rate, there would be about 1,000 deaths per year from measles today.
There were no deaths from measles in the years 2016 or 2017, per this document from the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/measles/downloads/measlesdataandstatssli...
As I said, it's dumb not to get your kids vaccinated. I wish I could get vaccinated to more things! It's like a super power!
But the amount of actual harm that anti-vaxxers are causing is miniscule, certainly deeply out of proportion with the hate that they're getting.
And if you do sincerely desire to keep as many people as possible from getting the measles, rather than desire to feel the rush of heaping hate on people, then again, let me suggest that the current tactics are not working, and that de-escalating the rhetoric around this will do much more to let anti-vaxxers relax and start listening to your data.
This is because other children do not contract measles because they have been vaccinated for Measles, as have their parents. It's not because Measles is hard to contract, it's because Measles is uncommon in the modern Western world. It's uncommon in the modern Western world because people have been vaccinated for it.
> In the years before a measles vaccine, there were about 500 deaths per year from measles (in the US). This was when the population was about half of what it is now, so if we returned fully to that rate, there would be about 1,000 deaths per year from measles today.
1000 easily preventable deaths. Just because 1000 people isn't a large, scary number doesn't mean that it's a small number either. A single person dying of a preventable illness is heartbreaking. Each one of those 1000 people who die are someone's son, daughter, wife, husband, brother, sister, aunt, etc. What value do you place on human life?
> There were no deaths from measles in the years 2016 or 2017, per this document from the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/measles/downloads/measlesdataandstatssli....
Because of Vaccines. It even says right there in the link: "Measles remains a leading cause of vaccine-preventable infant mortality."
> But the amount of actual harm that anti-vaxxers are causing is miniscule, certainly deeply out of proportion with the hate that they're getting.
You say this until your child goes to kindergarten with an un-vaccinated child and contracts a deadly illness.
In addition, anti-vaxxers are doing harm to their own children. A parent's responsibility is to protect their children. I understand that anti-vax parents think hey are protecting their children by refusing vaccines, but it is objectively the opposite. Anti-vax parents are exposing their children to deadly illnesses that used to kill people at an alarming rate before vaccination was common. They are doing this to a child who cannot understand the implications of these decisions.
> And if you do sincerely desire to keep as many people as possible from getting the measles, rather than desire to feel the rush of heaping hate on people, then again, let me suggest that the current tactics are not working, and that de-escalating the rhetoric around this will do much more to let anti-vaxxers relax and start listening to your data.
This I can partially agree with. However, cognitive bias is very real and very powerful. Clearly, hate and spite are not a good way to communicate with anti-vaxxers, but how many children need to die and how may horrible illnesses need to become common before they realize the errors of their ways?
Lots of people do lots of harm to their children. The amount of harm that anti-vaxxers do to their children is small. The amount of harm that anti-vaxxers do to anyone else's children is like 100x smaller.
Lightning strikes kill more people in the United States every year than measles does. Probably -- though I don't know how to get the statistics for this -- than every disease that might be vaccinated against that people decline.
This is not the threat that we need to compromise our principles over.
Good, because you're an example of someone who is complacent. This is what complacency looks like:
> but on a factual level, most kids who don't get vaccinations do not get measles. Most who do get measles have a few weeks of discomfort and get over it. Most who do get measles do not give it to anyone else except maybe other unvaccinated kids.
"Most." "Most." "Most."
Let's say only one child in the entire U.S. will die of measles over the next 10 years. Now, let's say you know it will be your child, or your neice, or your friend's child. Still seem acceptable?
The point is, there is no acceptable level of measles incidence in the U.S.
Zero. Period.
> de-escalating the rhetoric around this will do much more to let anti-vaxxers relax and start listening to your data.
This is not true. The rhetoric around vaccines started out de-escalated, because everyone thought the benefits were so obvious they did not need defending. That's what allowed anti-vaccine scammers to gain mindshare in the first place. Only by aggressive counteracting the anti-vaccine message will that be reversed.
So my kids will, for example, go to school rather than be home-schooled or tutored.
My kids are allowed to travel on BART, despite their propensity for touching everything and putting their hands in their mouths. And, like, I'll try to teach them not to do that, but it's not like I'll smack their hands.
My kids will probably at some point travel abroad to places where there are disease risks that there aren't in the United States, and while if travel vaccinations are available we'll certainly take advantage of them, we won't refuse to travel to Africa because malaria exists.
Also, my children are allowed to travel by car -- even in the cars of say their friends' parents who I haven't extensively vetted for maximally safe driving habits.
And they're allowed to go into San Francisco and Oakland, cities that are statistically more violent than their home town of San Bruno.
You can't remove all risk from people's lives -- even your own children's -- and if you try to, you end up making bad decisions.
This is a microcosm of what happens when you try to make policy around zero tolerance policies. Look, I wish that everyone would vaccinate their kids. But it simply doesn't make sense to sacrifice every other priority in the world to try to chase down a very small number of people who object to doing that.
And aggressively countering the message isn't working -- which we would have expected if we had seen every other case of aggressive messaging, which broadly speaking is more about virtue signaling than convincing people. Anti-vaxxers today are much, much, much more rooted in their opinions than they were at the beginning.
Some diseases are more acute than others, but if we can eliminate even non-acute diseases, why wouldn't we? And to be clear: we know we can eliminate measles because we already did it once.
They're really an outlier there, huh?
Measles is highly, highly, absurdly contagious and you spread the disease for up to four days before symptoms appear.
Therefore, even if its "mostly benign" in healthy individuals, it has a very high potential to infect immunocompromised individuals, so it's a public health concern.
1) I unequivocally believe all anti-vaxxers are wrong, 2) I absolutely support efforts to fight their misinformation, 3) I don't even necessarily think it was a bad decision by gofundme to do this;
Now, what I'd like to question is the effectiveness of taking down those campaigns. My points:
1) I doubt that an average user scrolling through gofundme would see and decide to support such a campaign, I'd imagine most of the funding comes from the links being directly shared
2) The above makes me think such campaigns will simply move to a GoFundMe competitor and be equally (un?)successful, effectively nullifying any changes
3) Gives more attention + victim points to anti vaxxers
4) If their discourse is further pushed out of mainstream platforms, does it actually reduce the spread of their ideas or just limit their exposure to counter-arguments and public condemnation?
Edit: formatting
Of course, the real solution is education: both of the purveyors of misinformation and of those who fall victim to it. That's a multi-generational process that should ideally happen in parallel with short-term fixes.
You could replace that phrase with many different ideologies. Would you?
Pain meds can cause addiction and harm much more easily.
A huge part of this sort of thing is driven by distrust of institutions, which has been in long term decline. Can you trust doctors or are they in the pockets of big pharma? Is the government suppressing vital information related to the health of your child because they're afraid to admit they were wrong? Etc etc.
Attempting to suppress/oppress these people to shut them up is a bad idea because it'll simply be taken as evidence that there is in fact some sort of malign pro-vaccination conspiracy, that their arguments can't be rebutted, and they'll become more dedicated to spreading 'the truth' as they see it.
This is a typically short sighted decision by corporates. If GoFundMe don't like anti-vaxxers, they should make a video shooting down common anti-vaxxer ideas and then embed it at the top of every crowdfund related to it, so everyone who wants to contribute money to it is exposed to the counter arguments. Heck, make watching the vid mandatory before you can donate. But shutting down legal discourse is bad bad bad and will only inflame the situation.
A widespread highly contagious fatal disease puts society at an even greater risk: panic. There's all kinds of examples of humans, even in relatively modern times, trying to eject sick people from society. And that's the kind version. Locking sick people in barns and churches, and burning them down, barricading burning entire villages to the ground due to fear of contagion.
You think the anti-vaxxers are terrorists? Not a good word anyway, but when the general population starts to freak out over a disease, that will be terror. The idea we're really that different from medieval times in the face of a virulent contagion is hilarious to me, especially with all the fantastic obsession with zombie shows.
1. Business
2. Ethics
The ethics effect the business. GoFundMe does not want to be known as a company that helped an organization allow the resurgence of Polio for instance. From a business standpoint, GoFundMe needs to maintain positive PR if it wants to keep making money. It is none of GoFundMe's concern if these anti-vax individuals or organizations move to a different platform.
I just wanted to bring up the point from a societal perspective, since it's society as a whole who often calls for actions like this from big companies (making it a "good" decision for them even if just for the PR). Are we going to see a positive change in society from this, is it just irrelevant in the end, or could we even be making the issue harder to fight in the long run?
I don't necessarily have a strong opinion on what the answer to that question is, it's just genuinely a question.
That's probably true, although I really don't know why it's particularly relevant. GoFundMe probably doesn't want people funding anti-vaccine campaigns regardless of how they arrived at the web page.
> 2) The above makes me think such campaigns will simply move to a GoFundMe competitor and be equally (un?)successful, effectively nullifying any changes
How does that nullify any changes? There are a finite number of crowdfunding platforms, and this reduces the number by one. And of course, this is a particularly large and prominent one.
> 3) Gives more attention + victim points to anti vaxxers
I don't really buy the "don't give them what they want" argument. If they really do want press about how harmful their practices are and how children are dying because of their campaigns, well okay, I'm fine with giving them this desire. I think that they should be "victims" of de-platforming, even if that's what they want. It's theoretically possible to get the Streisand effect, where their platform is increased, but I highly doubt that's likely when you remove them from huge platforms with massive market share, like YouTube or GoFundMe.
> 4) If their discourse is further pushed out of mainstream platforms, does it actually reduce the spread of their ideas or just limit their exposure to counter-arguments and public condemnation?
There are probably some anti-vaccers who are genuinely mislead, but the prominent voices in the movement almost certainly are aware of the invalidity of their claims. I don't think we have any lack of exposure to pro-vaccine arguments.
What do you object about these two medical doctors issues with vaccines? I would consider them more prominent than you or I, so their opinion/knowledge should hold more weight than ours.
Yet, but the very limited standards set, they would be called "anti-vaxxers", even though Dr. Halverson provides vaccine services for children and familes.
Dr. Richard Halvorsen (England)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMs1ue8j9CM
Dr. Suzanne Humphries (USA)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFQQOv-Oi6U
Arguing to authority is a logical fallacy any ways. Peer reviewed papers does not mean they are true. There are plenty of peer reviewed papers that disagree with each other or have results that are not reproducible.
Edit: I recommend anyone that think "peer review" means that a paper is automatically true to research how the peer review process works and also the results. (there was a scandal this past year or so on peer reviewed papers, most of them medical papers)
The impact on society won't come from the number of crowdfunding platforms, but from the number of campaigns and their reach. My point with 1) and 2) was that neither is necessarily affected by this.
> likely when you remove them from huge platforms with massive market share, like YouTube
It's really super hard to fully remove an idea from social media platforms. It's like playing whack-a-mole. They tend to find more ways of spreading the information.
If the discourse itself is moved to another platform, my concern is that it might be a much more hospitable environment for such ideas to fester. And I'm not certain we will significantly reduce the spreading of these platforms.
Context: I work in Trust and Safety and am genuinely concerned with how to best address these issues, which I fear has fallen to the same pitfalls as many political discussions (i.e. get the favorable public opinion to stay in power for the mandate even if it means sweeping the dust under the carpet and let it build up)
But then it will be too late, because everyone supported censoring ideas they simply didn't like being spread.
Then it will be against the law to object to anything that is official censored.
And this will not end well for people, because the government doesn't have to censor any more that loophole has been by-passed.
The problem is when corporations convince the populace to agree to censor information that is damaging to their profits, and we buy it.
If the anti-vaxxers don't feel that they have a good platform to raise money, they are welcome and encouraged to make their own.
But do you really believe this is the only thing they will censor?
This is a canary dying, it's indicative of the problems that are coming, and it's going to be more and more censorship, until finally you object to something for real.
But because you didn't defend other's speech, there will be nothing left to do.
This is how free societies work. Everyone has the freedom to assemble--and not assemble--with whomever they choose.
We have protected classes for lines one cannot draw. But an essential part of democracy, going back to the Athenians, is the public's freedom to associate--and transact--with people of their choosing, and being able to associate--or not associate--on the basis of political views.
Other businesses censored their products but because it was something the masses didn't want censored, that business was mercilessly attacked.
There are no rules. That’s freedom of assembly.
GoFundMe is free not to do business with anti-vaxxers. You are free not to do business with them for that decision. Everyone decides what matters to them and acts on it to their own accordance. When there is consensus, it cascades and may even prompt the creation of a new protected class.
There are lots of them.
>...it cascades and may even prompt the creation of a new protected class.
Eventually there will be a protected class that you absolutely object to. And then it will be too late to alter the way they are created.
People forming an informal consensus, organizing and getting a bill passed is fundamental to the democratic legislative process.
Anti-vaxxers kill people by reducing herd immunity. I think that's wrong, I wouldn't platform that.
To have the Orwellian nightmare that you're describing, you'd really have to have a governing body performing this, and to have them disallowing you from building your own.
Now, if the credit card processors were blocking anti-vax stuff, I think you'd have a point, but as it stands it seems like you're just falling into a slippery slope that doesn't exist.
The fact that companies don't want that label is evidence that vaccine safety is not being discussed rationally, but with a mob mentality.
This is how I think we end up with 1984, through mobs and irrationality, not thoughtful discussion.
Debating against people with absurd, unproven, and dangerous claims does nothing to help the legitimate sciences, but works depressingly well at lending credibility to the erroneous claims.
If I were to make the claim that "all kale is radioactive" and that "there's a strong link between eating kale and growing tentacles out of your brain" without providing any evidence of this in the academic literature, you almost certainly wouldn't "debate" me on this, and you'd probably make similar points to the ones I'm making. I'd then fire back with "if you even _question_ the radio-kale theory you are a complete nutter". I might even exclaim "see, they won't even debate me on the kale question! They're trying to censor me! ORWELL!!!"
That said, yes, public safety is a real concern.
And that all the adults that got vaccinated as a child in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and maybe even the 90s are no longer immune? But none of those people have been required to get immunized again to maintain herd immunity.
This means we've been at 50% coverage or less for decades. Maybe there is some missing information that needs to be discussed?
Also, Merck has been caught falsifying their data on at least one of their vaccines for decades. But this is not commonly shared or known.
https://www.courthousenews.com/Class-Says-Merck-Lied-About-M...
Furthermore younger kids are more likely to be killed or seriously affected by illnesses than healthy adults.
That is moving the goal posts. If adults get measles, they can pass it on to the kids. And the stated belief is that 95% immunity is required for herd protection.
Yet, we simply don't have that, and there isn't mass sickness everywhere.
Many of them might decline in efficacy but that can mean 90% effective which is very good. Furthermore many of them have mitigating effects if you do get the diseases anyway that reduce risk of death or complications.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/adult.html
It is both. What it's not is a First Amendment issue. GoFundMe, a private entity, is deciding not to do business with a group of people. Anti-vaxxers are not a protected class (like race). This is totally legitimate and a healthy part of a democratic society.
One's view have consequences. The First Amendment just says they shouldn't have consequences from the government.
I've never heard an anti-vaxxer say things such as "It's God's (or Gaia's) Will that Johnny died of measles."
They believe, wrongly in my opinion, that vaccines cause other medical problems serious enough to justify not using vaccines. To me, that's legitimate dissent.
Given the stakes, maybe GoFundMe did the right thing.
But what's an acceptable threshold of risk?
Because, for various reasons, anti-vaxxing has become a political problem as well as a health problem. Maybe more so.
The political aspect - i.e. GoFundMe being vulnerable to political charges of endangering the public - is probably what drove GoFundMe to institute the ban.
Which leaves other politically charged uses of GoFundMe vulnerable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMs1ue8j9CM
But if we shut down all discussion about it, even _rational_ discussions will be censored.
Here's a peer reviewed article on science that is "peer-reviewed". His conclusion? It's based on "belief".
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/
I don't get it. How is this any more legitimate than actually being a Luddite and saying "technology and modern medicine is bad"?
Would you say that racism and bigotry against minorities becomes legitimate if it's phrased as "this minority group will give you a disease if you let them near you"? Because that's actually a pretty classic feature of racist propaganda.
>this minority group will give you a disease if you let them near you = talks about people.
HN, just fucking delete my account and ban my IP address, as you obviously have a huge fucking problem with my fair-mindedness.
Clear and present danger. Both yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre and refusing to vaccinate are a clear danger. But only one of them is clear and present. For comparison, yelling "fire" in an empty plaza would not be penalized.
Can we stop invoking unsupported non-binding dicta offered to illustrate the decision in a case which has since been overturned and is widely regarded as a travesty infringing on core political speech as if it were some kind of firm legal principal useful as a yardstick against which speech can be measured to determine if it is unprotected?
I highly doubt gofundme had a personal conviction over this issue. This is a company that is being influenced by an outside source. That should be concerning.
Is this not a trivial counterargument to your claims: anyone that was harmed by a vaccine is eligible for a lot of money. Yet few people reach for this fund.
Additionally, the way the government has cozied up to vaccination companies to prevent nearly any lawsuit from taking place related to vaccines seems ridiculous. Vaccines do represent a public good, and as such some protection seems appropriate, but to make it seem like the best possible thing we could ever do to protect populations? I think that's a touch overreaching.
People should use vaccines, absolutely. However, vaccine tech has not progressed much in 50 years and part of this may be attributed to the protection of vaccine companies.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/23/asia/faulty-vaccine-china-int...
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/18/world/middleeast/syrian-c...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-merck-gerberding/former-c...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childhood_Vaccine_Inj...
Additionally, none of these talk about intentionally bad vaccines, which is one of your claims.
The CDC acknowledges that batches of bad vaccines do occur. How can a vaccine be bad except that (1) it doesn't work or (2) it actually hurts the patient?
Also, people from the CDC do leave to work for pharma companies. That is true...so a revolving door exists. Decide for yourself if that could produce unwanted collusion.
The other links support my claims that Vaccine companies send shoddy vaccines to other countries even if they are rejected here. World health should be about more than profit. Vaccines can be helpful, but not without honest discussions which Vaccine suppliers seem unwilling to have.
Additionally, linking to vaxxed is like linking infowars: https://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/vaxx...
Isn't that just taking 'anti-vaxxers' out of the gene pool?
I say this as someone who isn't anti-vaccine per se but only anti-unsafe-vaccines. And the safety of vaccines is very much in question today, which you wouldn't know if you only read and believe the mainstream media.
We also have the power to eliminate some illnesses completely so that vaccines are no longer needed in the future generations. We've done this with smallpox and we are close with polio.
As far as "safe/unsafe," that's disingenuous, there's no such thing - no medical intervention is completely without risk, but we know that the benefits of vaccines on the marketplace today unequivocally outweigh the (very minor) risks for the vast majority of healthy people.