Quote:
Originally Posted by
DoubleDouble 
I'm not pushing for that vaccine, really. I am just baffled by some of the twisted logic.
Let's consider these:
A). Something has a potential for harming children's health => predictable reaction of "oh no, everyone run and hide your children!"
B). Something is already well-documented as harmful for children's health => "everyone would be better off getting [that disease] in childhood." Say what? Not "run faster and hide your children better", but suddenly "Hep A is your friend"?
So, why is (B) such a great option? Because (A) is an evil thing called vaccine?
I don't get it.
I think some people just have a knee-jerk reaction to the word "vaccine", why on earth would option (B) look attractive to anyone? How can it be recommended?
And it's very troubling how the same technique is used to dismiss the data - "oh, Dr Sears says only 30% of kids act sick, no biggie!" While if someone said "oh, only 5% of kids act sick after vaccine", people would be mad that side effects are carelessly dismissed and the damage minimized. I don't get the hypocrisy.
It is true that those who don't vax often have a bias against vaxes. Our bias may be because we've learned that intervening in the body's systems can often cause unintended and difficult to identify harm. Decades may pass before a chemical is found to be unsafe after being used extensively for some "essential" purpose. Our bias is to leave nature alone if there is any reason to doubt safety. Vaxes meddle with a very complex and beautiful and effective system, and I believe the harm is also complex. We aren't tracking it because we are too ignorant to evaluate the causes of some of the problems that may be linked to vaxes. The bigger risk to me is what comes from the intervention in nature, and the illusion of safety only exists because of what we don't know. The health problems that I have suggested might be linked to vaccinations represent major risks. If we were to confirm that 20% of people will have permanent immune dysfunction to some degree as a result of vaccination, then that would not be a trivial number compared to your 30% that would experience an illness and recover, and at this point such damage may be occurring and we wouldn't know it. It could be that 90% of SIDS is related to vaccine toxicity. We don't have good enough scientific knowledge to know. We are willing to meddle with evolution's outcome, this human body, accepting 5% obvious reactions plus this unknown that may even be permanently altering the immune responses of 50-100% of all people, for the immediate effect of escaping potential normal illnesses. I am indeed biased against interventions in health that can't be proven safe. It's safer in my opinion to do without in such a case.
We see real risk. You believe we are only imagining risks. As long as you can't see that there is real risk, that is why you don't understand.
I don't have a knee-jerk reaction to the word vaccine. Maybe some people do.
When I see a massive pharmaceutical industry riding on the coattails of early vaccine successes to promote every shot they can come up with for their own profit, I tend to reject what they are offering me. When I know something can be unsafe and there is a blatant campaign to gloss over and keep that as quiet as possible, I'm not really so open to what they are selling me. I am extremely biased against the products of the pharmaceutical industry--they aren't all bad but I won't accept anything from them without better answers. Maybe I even have a knee-jerk reaction to anything that I am being manipulated into. I have a strong reaction to having the "other side" acting to hide the truth from the level of nurses writing off reactions to the level of scientific research being misrepresented. Well, I dont like that and I don't trust it. It makes their products more frightening to me.
I don't think Hep A is my friend. Quite frankly, people who refuse vaxes can't identify many friends when it comes to this choice. However, maybe the point is that having a natural immune system that can face and fight natural diseases is a blessing even though it does have risks as well. Controlling all risks is beyond us, and our effort to do so often causes more problems than it solves. I think vaccines are giving us false comfort--we pay for short term easy-to-see benefits by risking our long-term health in ways that are harder to see. So many people criticize and every single one of them seems certain of one thing--the risks of vaccines are too small too count. (And also worth facing if you love your neighbor.) The current propaganda is making not vaxing seem really scary because they want moms to put peer pressure on other moms to reduce noncompliance, and if the pro-vax faction gets excited enough by this soon we will have new laws to take away our individual rights to choices in our health as well. There are a lot of reasons this is being done, you know those who manipulate the information really think they are serving the greater good and protecting us from our own ignorance. No one will then be able to protect us from the larger ignorance--the ignorance we have of the full true effects of vaccines.
Why do you suggest that potential harm is less dangerous than known harm? That we can't measure risk or statistical occurrence or severity or long term effects definitely does not mean the likelihood of harm is smaller. It's more than a maybe and fear. Most things have more complex effects than we can measure. I am NOT worried about temporary feelings of sickness after a vax. I am interested in things like seizures and SIDs and brain damage and immune system damage. Permanent effects. I am interested in the toxic effects of the extra chemicals that always accompany the biological component that people think of when they think of what a vaccine is. Preservatives have anti-life effects whatever they are because they are intended to prevent natural processes from occurring. Whenever it isn't mercury, it's aluminum or something else. The bottom line is that those chemical have to be pretty intense to do their job stabilizing those isolated biological materials. These are things that you wouldn't want in your food, and why not? As I said before, this does not represent a smaller or a false body of risk. It's just less well-known.
