tschmath wrote:
People who don't vaccinate their kids should be sterilized so that can't do this to any others. Vaccines are a godsend. Plain and simple. Yes, there are some side effects, but they pale in comparison to the good they have done worldwide.
Parents who don't vaccinate their kids not only put their own kids at risk, they put the entire population at risk. This is just another great example of people rejecting science in favor of nutty conspiracists who make stuff up.
Jenny McCarthy has single-handedly done more to hurt the health of this country than anyone except the now disgraced doctor who falsely claimed his research proved vaccines cause autism. He was found to be a fraud and admitted it, but by then the damage was done. It should be a national law that all children have to be vaccinated.
In California children are barred from schools without vaccinations. No exceptions. And that is the way it should be. I read a story by a doctor who refused to see patients who will not vaccinate. That should be the law.
Can you tell this is a big deal to me?
People who don't vaccinate their kids should be st... (
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Giant thumbs up!
There has been a considerable increase in measles cases over the past few years, likely attributable to the foolish refusal to vaccinate kids. Whooping cough also is increasing, both in children and adults. My brother had whooping cough recently; he was then in his late sixties. Yes, he survived with a cracked rib and some weeks of misery, but it can be fatal for small children. The vaccine should be repeated for adults.
Herd effect can protect those foolish enough to forgo vaccination, but with increasing numbers of "refusals" that effect becomes increasingly tenuous.
Polio, which the Salk and Sabine vaccines had essentially eradicated, is now resurgent in areas of Africa where the local idiots in chief hold that vaccination is a western plot to destroy their people.
I vividly remember the yearly polio scare, the March of Dimes, children doomed to life in iron lungs, or clumsy braces and crutches, or wheel chairs. How many of the McCarthyites remember? How many UUHers do? Do the anti-vaccine folk pick and choose?
One poster alludes to aluminum and mercury compounds in vaccines; IIRC mercuric compounds are no longer used in vaccines. BTW, anyone else remember Mercurochrome, the painless alternative to tincture of iodine? Mercury has been and still is widely used in dental amalgams, my dentist sees no danger its use in this manner. And aluminum is, IIRC, the most common metal in the environment.
I wonder what credentials, if any, Jenny McCarthy has to lend any weight to her opinions. According to a Wikipedia article on her, her son may not have had autism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_McCarthy While it was a personal tragedy that her son had some sort of neurological problem this does not make her an expert. And Andrew Wakefield's study has been repudiated, he is now unable to practice medicine in the UK. He apparently cooked the data for potential profit.
Is it not possible that, since the majority of parents still have their children vaccinated, most diagnosed cases of autism attributed to vaccines are in the nature of "post hoc, ergo propter hoc", a logical error which should be obvious to anyone? Just because the rooster crows before sunrise doesn't mean he causes the sunrise.
From what I read there is little profit motive in developing vaccines, so big pharma isn't especially interested in such work, even less so with the increasing willingness of the Jenny McCarthys of the mass media to encourage law suits. Indeed, IIRC, supplies of one vaccine ran out until a company willing to produce it could be found.
Vaccines are such an elegant solution to many diseases. There's apparently no worry about the virus or bacterium developing resistance, as so many bacteria do to most of our antibiotics. And with widespread use of vaccines the disease may become extinct.
There seems to be some progress in developing a vaccine for the Ebola virus, the current "bete noir" of popular culture. Would Ms McCarthy and her disciples deny such a vaccine to their children? I'd imagine that these folks don't get flu shots, despite influenza killing thousands in the US alone almost every year. See this link:
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/us_flu-related_deaths.htmSmallpox is in the possibly extinct category. The virus may exist only in laboratory isolation; there has been discussion of destroying these samples, but then if some samples survive and are "weaponized" there would be no way to develop a new vaccine.
There has to be a rational consideration of risk versus benefits in any life decision. Driving a car brings hazards which can be ameliorated to some extent, but never completely. How many of us would forgo the benefits of personal transportation because of some risk? Similarly, vaccines MAY present some risks, but the personal and societal benefits far outweigh the risks.