Vaccinate And Why They Are Bad

[the171]

What vaccine was it? Curious and I don't want to search through pages and pages of threadage.

[elizabeth09]

MMR

[fides' Jack]

It's perfectly normal to be biased by experience. I received two full sets of vaccines. I was vaccinated properly as an infant, then my parents moved me to the USA. The doctors here refused to accept my foreign medical records, so I got everything again a couple years later. Because of my experience, I think vaccines are mostly harmless. If my mom noticed something strange after all those shots, I'd probably mistrust vaccines too.

 

Yay!  It's Adrestia!  I was wondering if you would pop into the thread...  :)

[CrossCuT]

It's perfectly normal to be biased by experience. I received two full sets of vaccines. I was vaccinated properly as an infant, then my parents moved me to the USA. The doctors here refused to accept my foreign medical records, so I got everything again a couple years later. Because of my experience, I think vaccines are mostly harmless. If my mom noticed something strange after all those shots, I'd probably mistrust vaccines too.

I think you need to be careful with personal experiences being used as evidence one way or the other. 

Remember that you need to look at things from a population perspective.

 

For instance, we all know smoking is terribad in too many ways to count, yet youll still find that anomaly person who is like "Ive been smoking 70 packs a day since I was 5 and I am totally fine! Therefore smoking is safe!!"

 

That means nothing.

Data from a population perspective is overwhelmingly contradictory. Like the guy in my example, we call those people outliers. 

[CrossCuT]

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Edited March 26, 2013 by CrossCuT

[Adrestia]

I think you need to be careful with personal experiences being used as evidence one way or the other. 

Remember that you need to look at things from a population perspective.

 

For instance, we all know smoking is terribad in too many ways to count, yet youll still find that anomaly person who is like "Ive been smoking 70 packs a day since I was 5 and I am totally fine! Therefore smoking is safe!!"

 

That means nothing.

Data from a population perspective is overwhelmingly contradictory. Like the guy in my example, we call those people outliers. 

 

Outliers are people too.  My post was specifically about personal experience causing bias.  One person's experience does not predict a pattern.  A pattern cannot predict one person's experience. 

 

If there were any evidence that a vaccine was unhealthy, the resulting lawsuits would bankrupt the pharmaceutical company that produced it.  They would never take that chance.  Millions and millions of dollars have gone into researching vaccines that never made it because of safety issues.  The cost of the current vaccines includes money for continuing research.

Edited March 26, 2013 by Adrestia

[MissScripture]

Outliers are people too.  My post was specifically about personal experience causing bias.  One person's experience does not predict a pattern.  A pattern cannot predict one person's experience. 

 

If there were any evidence that a vaccine was unhealthy, the resulting lawsuits would bankrupt the pharmaceutical company that produced it.  They would never take that chance.  Millions and millions of dollars have gone into researching vaccines that never made it because of safety issues.  The cost of the current vaccines includes money for continuing research.

:like: 

[CrossCuT]

Outliers are people too.  My post was specifically about personal experience causing bias.  One person's experience does not predict a pattern.  A pattern cannot predict one person's experience. 

 

It seemed like in your earlier post you were advocating for personal bias as an acceptable reason to refuse vaccines.

[Archaeology cat]

Some will always use personal bias, and I don't think anyone should be forced or pressured into receiving or denying treatment. Given unbiased info, absolutely. Personally, I would never take my experiences and extrapolate them to everyone. However, knowing my own circumstances better than another does, I do take my circumstances into account in making my decisions on vaccines and other medical issues.

[ToJesusMyHeart]

My future roommate, and another girl, have both never had any vaccinations in their life. They were both home-schooled and their moms (they're not related) opted out of all shots from birth. 

 

Neither of them have ever had a serious illness. I don't even think they had chicken pox...but I'll ask. :)

Edited March 27, 2013 by ToJesusMyHeart

[beatitude]

My future roommate, and another girl, have both never had any vaccinations in their life. They were both home-schooled and their moms (they're not related) opted out of all shots from birth. 

 

Neither of them have ever had a serious illness. I don't even think they had chicken pox...but I'll ask. :)

 

Their absence of illness can be attributed to the fact that the vast majority of their peers will have been vaccinated, so the diseases that used to ravage the population are no longer spreading - as they will again, if enough people start refusing vaccinations.

 

It boggles my mind that the anti-vaccine crowd are somehow incapable of registering the fact that these diseases faded out with the advent of widespread vaccination. People are only able to get so complacent over health ("Oh, I'm not inoculating my kid, I'm going to build up his immunity through cold baths and organic alfalfa...") because the vaccination programs have already eliminated much of the risk. As I said in an earlier post, if you were to visit a country where these illnesses are widespread, you'd find parents from impoverished rural communities who walk for days to get their kids those injections. They can't afford to be complacent and they can't afford the scaremongering, because they have seen the consequences of measles epidemics.

 

Thanks to the low take-up of the MMR jab in South Wales, there is now a measles epidemic spreading there as I type. 116 new cases have been reported in the past week alone and 51 people have had to be hospitalised. Doctors there are now pleading with families to have their children inoculated.

 

Dr Marion Lyons, director of health protection for PHW, said: "Measles is now spreading at an alarming rate across areas of Wales.

"Worryingly there are still tens of thousands of susceptible children across Wales, yet our weekly monitoring of vaccination rates shows only a slight increase in numbers receiving MMR jabs.

"If the numbers of parents bringing their children for MMR jabs does not dramatically increase, measles will continue to spread and quickly reach levels last seen in the outbreak in Dublin in 1999/2000.

"In that outbreak over 1,200 children were infected and three died."

Dr Lyons added the risk to unvaccinated children is increasing as the disease spreads.

Typical symptoms of measles include fever, cough, conjunctivitis and a rash.

Complications are quite common even in healthy people, and around 20% of reported measles cases experience one or more complication. 

These can include ear infections, vomiting and diarrhoea, pneumonia, meningitis and serious eye disorders.

 

Andrew Wakefield and the other MMR conspiracy theorists have a lot to answer for. Perhaps this will serve as a wake-up call to people, especially parents, who really need to consider that when they decide not to inoculate their kids, they are making a choice that could potentially affect other people's children too.

[CrossCuT]

Their absence of illness can be attributed to the fact that the vast majority of their peers will have been vaccinated, so the diseases that used to ravage the population are no longer spreading - as they will again, if enough people start refusing vaccinations.

 

Beat me to it. People need to get educated on these things because knowledge is power! If people knew what was really going on then we wouldnt be facing these problems. Its easy to hide behind ignorance :(

[EmilyAnn]

beatitude is right. It's called herd immunity. Unvaccinated individuals are in a way protected by the vaccinated individuals, because the contagious disease is never given the chance to spread due to the immunity of the majority. You can almost get away with having a very small percentage of unvaccinated people - but they are still at risk if they come into contact with an infected person. But if people stop vaccinating, the herd immunity effect will be lost and these diseases will start damaging the population again. We've grown complacent about these diseases, but we need to educate ourselves and realise why these vaccines exist and are necessary. 

[Archaeology cat]

I'm not anti vax, but I don't think you can argue that vaccines ate <b>solely</b> responsible for the decline in some diseases (note I didn't say all). We also know more about disease transmission and have better access to clean water and hygiene. We also have better medicines to cope with them. And while I'm not anti-vax, I do think there can be cases made for forgoing at least some. For example, full-term (ie:2+ years) breastfeeding is protective against Hib.

I do greatly object to those who refuse vaccines as being ignorant or duped. Or that they refuse all modern medicine. Of those I know who refuse some or all vaccines, absolutely none do so because of a fear of autism or Wakefield, nor do any of them refuse modern medicines. Now, I'm sure some do refuse based on those things, but certainly not all do. I refused the MMR for moral reasons, personally.

[elizabeth09]

Anti vax right here.  I keep hearing how sick every one has becoming.

 

We do not have better water.  I live right near a water place where they put chemicals into the water.  My mom just got a water filter.  Even thought its does not clean out all the chemicals, it cleans pretty good.  I can`t even drink from the bathroom anymore without thinking about it.