Comments on Games with Words: Vaccination and the Assault on Health

Indeed, one thing antivaxers conveniently overlook...

2009-11-05T14:43:44.960-05:00

Indeed, one thing antivaxers conveniently overlook is the harm of the diseases which are prevented by vaccination vs. the actual odds of contracting any side-effect from the vaccine itself. You have a much greater statistical chance (on the order of 5x) of being struck by lightning than you do of developing any serious side effect from any vaccine. Anyone telling you otherwise is gilding the lily for their political opinion's benefit.

@JC: Vaccination for children is already in effect mandatory in many locales- try sending your child to a public school without a complete vaccination record.

Vaccination is actually a victim of its own success. Vaccines are so effective in preventing communicable disease that there's few people around these days who have a living memory of the horrors suffered by now-preventable diseases like polio. Think about iron lungs and permanent mobility disability for a moment and compare that to the temporary discomfort from an injection- and in some cases, vaccines can be administered without a needle stick.

There's a common thread amongst anti-vax advocates; the argument for vaccination is supportable with independently duplicatable science and statistics, while the arguments against are all built on encouraging and spreading fear, misinformation, doubt and unprovable conspiracy theories.

If you oppose vaccination, hit the history books. Sensible parents, who have a complete understanding of the very high risks of contracting preventable diseases vs. the minuscule risks of vaccination side effects would never expose their children to the greater harm of the diseases.

I wrote the bit titled 'Anti-vaccination is child abuse' which coglanglab linked to for a very good reason- because that's what it is. It's completely negligent parenting to allow a child to suffer needlessly, which antivaxers absolutely do inflict not only on their own children, but those of others. Read with horror the story of Dana McCaffery, an infant too young to be vaccinated, who died of whooping cough because selfish, underinformed parents have decided it's trendy to not vaccinate.

If you don't want to vaccinate your children, fine- but you have no right to inflict disease on others' children. There's surely a cave somewhere far away from the general population which you can go live in, where your precious little unvaccinated biohazards can contract their diseases in isolation from responsible society.

Angela: Vaccines are 99-100% safe. Negative re...

2009-10-31T19:55:52.763-04:00

Angela:

Vaccines *are* 99-100% safe. Negative reactions are very low (so low, that for some vaccines the rate can't even be calculated). Polio, on the other hand, is really, really dangerous. Frankly, even Chicken Pox is more dangerous than your average vaccine.

There are a lot of numbers backing this up in the Wired article I linked to. And there is basically unanimity in the science. Any numbers you read to contrary were almost certainly made up.

When you can tell me that vaccines are safer for m...

2009-10-30T23:27:19.217-04:00

When you can tell me that vaccines are safer for my children than the diseases that they offer 85% protection to (at best!) we'll talk. Same goes for pre-natal ultrasounds and high fructose corn syrup, among other items. When I know based on scientific data that they are 99-100% safe I will expose my children to them. Until then, my children will remain free from them.

I appreciate where you are coming from, however, and I always enjoy reading a person's point of view from the opposing side of a hot button argument.

JC -- the article you cite is pretty skimpy on det...

2009-10-25T20:12:20.381-04:00

JC -- the article you cite is pretty skimpy on details. That is, there isn't even enough information to find out whether the study in question was ever done or published. I searched for the article on Google Scholar using several different search terms, but was unable to locate it.

it may well exist, but unfortunately it is an all too common practice by anti-vaccine advocates to simply invent studies to support their arguments. If you can find the actual study, I'd love to see it and even post a link here.

In fact, there is no evidence -- none -- that thimerosal is dangerous in the quantities used in vaccines. It's use is not controversial in the medical community. It is true that it can be dangerous in high quantities, but that's true of everything.

On the other hand, swine flu is incredibly dangerous in exactly the quantities that exist in nature.

1. I don't think you have all of the facts. The us...

2009-10-25T07:24:49.881-04:00