Author Topic: Mandated Vaccination?  (Read 5643 times)

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Offline William Wallace

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Mandated Vaccination?
« on: September 22, 2010, 11:39:51 AM »
It's pretty clear that vaccines save lives. But should we mandate that people vaccinate their children? I'm usually pretty clear on these kinds of issues, but this one is a bit more difficult. First, there's the issue of people withholding medicine that could prevent their children from contracting a preventable disease. And there's also the risk that unvaccinated children may pose to everyone else. 

Are those reasons enough to require vaccination?

Offline Adami

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #1 on: September 22, 2010, 11:42:50 AM »
As a man who refuses any medicaiton under any circumstance, I am very against ANY mandatory medical treatement that is in intrusive.
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Offline El Barto

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #2 on: September 22, 2010, 12:19:25 PM »
As far as I know, the only mandatory requirement is if you want to send your kids to school.  This seems perfectly reasonable to me.  Plenty of nasty diseases have been wiped out this way.  If some silly religious beliefs say that you have to leave your kid vulnerable to polio so that God can inflict him if he so chooses, then yeah well.  Your kid would probably be obnoxious anyway, so go ahead and home school him until the cholera fairy pays a visit.

The ones that really crack me up are the people who won't get their daughters vaccinated against HPV because it will turn them into harlots.  Self fulfilling paranoia.  These are the very people who will raise promiscuous kiddos, though they just don't realize it. 
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Offline rumborak

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #3 on: September 22, 2010, 01:18:25 PM »
Problem is, once you leave it up to the parents decide, you're left to the various degrees of informedness of them. While they are certainly within their right to endanger the life of their child as they please, they are also endangering other kids. So, in cases where the lack of vaccination can cause life-threatening infections in others, I agree to mandatory vaccination.

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Offline lordxizor

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #4 on: September 22, 2010, 01:34:56 PM »
I disagree with mandatory vaccination. I have a problem mandating preventative medicine. I can see mandating that a child be treated for a disease that they already have, but something that they may have an extremely slight chance of getting seems wrong to me. Where is the line drawn? Which vaccines are included and which aren't? Some of the vaccines kids get these days are for things like chicken pox, a pretty harmless disease. Also, who is held liable if my child has a reaction to the vaccine that the government forced him to get?

Offline j

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #5 on: September 22, 2010, 01:54:56 PM »
Like the OP, I'm kinda on the fence about this as well.  I understand the arguments entailing preventing the spread of illness, but I feel like there are a lot of analogous situations in which somebody's kid puts others in some kind of risk for whatever reason, and there's really no pressure for government involvement.

I guess I'd support limited requirements for certain vaccinations, i.e. for more dangerous communicable diseases.

-J

Offline El Barto

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #6 on: September 22, 2010, 02:06:43 PM »
I guess my issue is "why not?"  Why wouldn't somebody want to get their kids vaccinated against diseases that could kill them?  I understand that some kids will have adverse reactions, but won't those reactions be far less troublesome than the infection itself would be if it occurred randomly in an un-vaccinated kiddo?  It just seems to me that a reaction to the polio vaccine wouldn't be half as bad as FUCKING POLIO!
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Offline bosk1

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #7 on: September 22, 2010, 02:18:09 PM »
Really, really tough call, and this is something I don't talk about much on here, but have done a lot of looking into.  And the problems rumby identifies are serious ones and his points are well taken.  On one hand, the government really does have a strong interest in doing what it can to prevent out outbreak of deadly infectious disease that can be prevented.  On the other hand, medical treatment is intrusive and the choice to receive or not receive it is incredibly personal.  Couple that with the fact that there are huge and little-known risks involved in actually getting the treatment.  

Without writing a treatise on the how's and why's, here's where my wife and I have come down on the issue:  We believe vaccinations for our kids are a good thing.  BUT we also believe it is disturbing that the amount of "mandatory" vaccinations that are given in this country has increased exponentially in our lifetimes and is excessive and unnecessary (especially compared to other deveoped countries that vaccinate a lot less and do not have disease outbreak issues).  We also believe there is a lot more meat than a lot of people (including a lot of good doctors) acknowledge to the studies that have shown potentially serious adverse effects to some vaccinations and some ingredients in the vaccinations and the studies that show the bodies and nervous systems of very young children are ill equipped to handle some of these ingredients and can be damaged more by the vaccinations than the disease they seek to prevent.  So what we have decided to do is to give the vaccinations, but to delay them considerably from the recommended schedule, spread them out more, and do a few other things to mitigate the potential downsides.
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Offline Genowyn

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #8 on: September 22, 2010, 02:39:48 PM »
Maybe just posting a link to a video isn't enough, but it makes a good point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfdZTZQvuCo

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Offline bosk1

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #9 on: September 22, 2010, 02:47:06 PM »
It just seems to me that a reaction to the polio vaccine wouldn't be half as bad as FUCKING POLIO!

To play devil's advocate:  Because some of the reactions are so serious that, while they may not be as serious as the disease itself, you would never in a million years wish them on your worst enemy, and because the risk of such reaction (as high as 1 in 20) is much higher than the risk of getting the disease (about 1 in, if I recall correctly, about 3,000,000).
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Offline rumborak

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #10 on: September 22, 2010, 02:49:23 PM »
Yeah, but the point is that likelihood of contracting polio is so low because of the mandatory vaccine. And that logic seems to escape many people; they argue "why should I vaccinate my child if the likelihood of getting is so low?!", while the vaccination is the very reason that it's so low.

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Offline bosk1

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #11 on: September 22, 2010, 02:54:56 PM »
Well, it depends on which disease you are talking about.  For those that are communicable (which is what most of the vaccines cover), yes the rates are, in a sense, lower because of the vaccinations.  But the numbers don't change drastically based on whether you personally are vaccinated because those numbers are based on the likelihood of an infected carrier passing a live strain of the disease to you, which will not happen as long as most people are vaccinated because they cannot become carriers.  Of course, the numbers will change if large groups of people are not vaccinated.  But in terms of individual likelihood of contracting something based on the individual decision about whether or not to be vaccinated, the numbers to do not change (at least, not significantly).
"The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie."

Offline rumborak

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #12 on: September 22, 2010, 03:16:49 PM »
Yeah, but the thing with herd immunity is that there is a tipping point over which the disease becomes self-sustaining in the population. Which is not what you want.

rumborak
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Offline bosk1

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #13 on: September 22, 2010, 03:31:11 PM »
No, I know.  I get that.  Like I said in my first post in the thread, I think it's a tough decision and there are a lot of good arguments on both sides.  The approach we have chosen seems to us to be the best and takes both our interests and the interests of others into account, but I don't necessarily expect others to agree with it either.
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Offline William Wallace

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #14 on: September 22, 2010, 06:46:56 PM »
Where is the line drawn? Which vaccines are included and which aren't? Some of the vaccines kids get these days are for things like chicken pox, a pretty harmless disease. Also, who is held liable if my child has a reaction to the vaccine that the government forced him to get?
Good questions. Anybody care to take a stab at them?

Offline bosk1

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #15 on: September 22, 2010, 06:57:55 PM »
I'll take a quick stab as I'm heading out the door:

As far a which vaccines, that's a REALLY difficult question to answer.  Here is a good starting point for resources and information for drawing your own conclusions:  https://www.generationrescue.org/science/14studies   
https://www.generationrescue.org/vaccines/vaccines

As for "who is held liable if my child has a reaction to the vaccine that the government forced him to get?" - Short answer you will unfortunately get if you are unfortunate enough to find yoursef in that situation:  "Nobody is liable because (1) the government didn't really force you to do anything; it only recommended.  (2) We don't really know that the vaccine caused whatever the problem is, and you can't prove otherwise."  But if you fight long enough and hard enough, you may be referred to a government fund that has been set aside for just this particular issue, but be prepared for a difficult fight.  (yes, there is an actual fund)
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Offline William Wallace

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #16 on: September 22, 2010, 08:31:03 PM »
I'm definitely skeptical of any information that comes from Generation rescue or any similar advocacy group. They're highly critical of vaccination in general and proponents of bogus autism treatments like chelation therapy. I wouldn't discount everything they say because of that, but I'd be curious to see what research they're basing their claims on, and who is making the claims. For example, is it someone suing a pharmaceutical company over a vaccine? That's a serious conflict of interest and should raise eyebrows.

Here's some of the research I've been looking at regarding the autism-vaccine link. So far I'm underwhelmed by the idea that I should be fearful of vaccination. None of the epidemiological studies I've looked at can even find an association between the two.

This is a case control study conducted in Poland which found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism, and even found that the vaccine may provide a slight protective effect against autism:
 
Mrozek-Budzyn D; Kieltyka A; Majewska R Lack of Association Between Measles-Mumps-Rubella Vaccination and Autism in Children: A Case-Control Study. The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal: 1 December 2009. doi: 10.1097/INF.0b013e3181c40a8a

This one's from England, similar study methodology, also found no association between autism and the MMR vaccine.

Taylor B; Miller E; Farrington CP; Petropoulos MC; Favot-Mayaud I; Li J; Waight PA Autism and measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine: no epidemiological evidence for a causal association. Lancet. 1999;353:2026-9.

Here's another: Thompson et al. N Engl J Med 2007; 357:1281-1292

And another, this one's from Denmark: Madsen et al. Pediatrics Vol. 112 No. 3 September 2003, pp. 604-606

I also found one clinical trial in which the researchers failed to detect any adverse reaction after administering the hepatitis b vaccine to children between four and eight years old.

Diez-Domingo et al. A Randomized, Multicenter, Open-Label Clinical Trial To Assess the Anamnestic Immune Response 4 To 8 Years After A Primary Hepatitis B Vaccination Series The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal: 18 August 2010. doi: 10.1097/INF.0b013e3181f1b3b6

Offline Genowyn

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #17 on: September 22, 2010, 10:07:46 PM »
There's also the fact that the study which initially found a link between vaccinations and autism was admitted to be falsified by the researcher, and he was charged for it.

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Offline XJDenton

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #18 on: September 23, 2010, 03:01:28 AM »
Yeah, but the point is that likelihood of contracting polio is so low because of the mandatory vaccine. And that logic seems to escape many people; they argue "why should I vaccinate my child if the likelihood of getting is so low?!", while the vaccination is the very reason that it's so low.

rumborak


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Offline lordxizor

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #19 on: September 23, 2010, 06:40:49 AM »
Without writing a treatise on the how's and why's, here's where my wife and I have come down on the issue:  We believe vaccinations for our kids are a good thing.  BUT we also believe it is disturbing that the amount of "mandatory" vaccinations that are given in this country has increased exponentially in our lifetimes and is excessive and unnecessary (especially compared to other deveoped countries that vaccinate a lot less and do not have disease outbreak issues).  We also believe there is a lot more meat than a lot of people (including a lot of good doctors) acknowledge to the studies that have shown potentially serious adverse effects to some vaccinations and some ingredients in the vaccinations and the studies that show the bodies and nervous systems of very young children are ill equipped to handle some of these ingredients and can be damaged more by the vaccinations than the disease they seek to prevent.  So what we have decided to do is to give the vaccinations, but to delay them considerably from the recommended schedule, spread them out more, and do a few other things to mitigate the potential downsides.
Pretty much exactly how I feel. We're waiting to vaccinate until our son is a little older and are then going to spread them out a bit so that he's not getting pumped full of chemicals that his tiny body isn't really able to handle all that well.

One of my big issues with getting information is that I feel it's all pretty biased. The anti-vaccine people use a fair amount of skewed data or pseudo-science, yet there's a good deal of fairly convincing data that I've seen. Both the government and the vaccine makers have a pretty big motivation to not admit that a vaccine is dangerous or inneffective since they could get sued or lose a lot of revenue.

Offline AwakeFromOctavarium

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #20 on: September 23, 2010, 07:22:07 AM »
Yeah, I think they put microscopic tracking-chip in the vaccine fluid to control the entire humanity or something.

Well, if not, I'm not really against it.
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Offline bosk1

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #21 on: September 23, 2010, 08:14:41 AM »
One of my big issues with getting information is that I feel it's all pretty biased. The anti-vaccine people use a fair amount of skewed data or pseudo-science, yet there's a good deal of fairly convincing data that I've seen. Both the government and the vaccine makers have a pretty big motivation to not admit that a vaccine is dangerous or inneffective since they could get sued or lose a lot of revenue.

Yeah, as WW pointed out, there is a lot of bad information and bias on both sides.  I think the best people can do is do what research they can and make the best decisions they can make.
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Offline rumborak

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #22 on: September 23, 2010, 08:40:32 AM »
From anything I could gather over the years, there is very little evidence for the anti-vaccination craze that is sweeping the US. It's also essentially only the US from what I understand, and the US has a knack for getting caught up in crazes.

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Offline bosk1

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #23 on: September 23, 2010, 08:50:28 AM »
It's also essentially only the US from what I understand, and the US has a knack for getting caught up in crazes.

rumborak


You are right.  But in this particular case, part of the reason is that if you compare both the amount of vaccinations and the schedule for vaccinations in the U.S. to that of other industrialized nations, we are far and away more aggressive in the U.S. about vaccinating.  If the U.S. government pushes twice as many vaccinations at twice the rate of Germany, for example, there is a lot less for Germans to get riled up about than Americans.
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Offline lordxizor

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #24 on: September 23, 2010, 08:52:39 AM »
From anything I could gather over the years, there is very little evidence for the anti-vaccination craze that is sweeping the US. It's also essentially only the US from what I understand, and the US has a knack for getting caught up in crazes.

rumborak

One of the anti-vaccination things I've heard is that other countries don't vaccinate as young of babies as we do here and don't have the sheer number of vaccines given. And don't have as many of the same issues (autism, ADHD, behavioral disorders, etc) that some have tried to link to chemicals in vaccines. Not sure what the truth is behind that though.

Offline William Wallace

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #25 on: September 23, 2010, 09:54:39 AM »
Can either of you point me to the research that makes you think you shouldn't vaccinate your kids according to the CDC's recommendations?

Offline bosk1

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #26 on: September 23, 2010, 10:06:04 AM »
In addition to what I posted above, this is a good starting point:  https://www.14studies.org/studies.html 

Again, that site itself has some readily-apparent biases, but the actual studies are linked on that page.
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Offline William Wallace

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #27 on: September 23, 2010, 10:23:45 AM »
In addition to what I posted above, this is a good starting point:  https://www.14studies.org/studies.html 

Again, that site itself has some readily-apparent biases, but the actual studies are linked on that page.
So what about the studies authored by people who have no vested interest in vaccination?

And even if these researchers are financially involved somehow, is that enough to ignore their research? Did they fudge their data somehow? You have to actually look at the methodology of the studies. Furthermore, most science research is funded by some government health institute or science foundation. That doesn't necessarily mean a conflict of interest exists because the government also recommends vaccines. There's a lot of bureaucracy separating the guys in the lab and the administrators in Washington.

Offline AcidLameLTE

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #28 on: September 23, 2010, 10:26:46 AM »
There's also the fact that the study which initially found a link between vaccinations and autism was admitted to be falsified by the researcher, and he was charged for it.
Yep.

Here's some interesting links on the guy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine_controversy#Conflict_of_interest_allegations

https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8700611.stm

Offline bosk1

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #29 on: September 23, 2010, 10:31:57 AM »
In addition to what I posted above, this is a good starting point:  https://www.14studies.org/studies.html 

Again, that site itself has some readily-apparent biases, but the actual studies are linked on that page.
So what about the studies authored by people who have no vested interest in vaccination?

And even if these researchers are financially involved somehow, is that enough to ignore their research? Did they fudge their data somehow? You have to actually look at the methodology of the studies. Furthermore, most science research is funded by some government health institute or science foundation. That doesn't necessarily mean a conflict of interest exists because the government also recommends vaccines. There's a lot of bureaucracy separating the guys in the lab and the administrators in Washington.

Yes, that is indeed the problem.  There is at least some evidence that there may be serious problems.  As the articles on both sites I've linked to point out, what they are really advocating for is more thorough, unbiased studies because the evidence is inconclusive and the studies incomplete.
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Offline Sir GuitarCozmo

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #30 on: September 23, 2010, 11:59:01 AM »

Offline bosk1

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #31 on: September 23, 2010, 12:17:30 PM »
The Jenny McCarthy Body Count

Link is SFW

Dude, we're actually trying to eliminate emotionally charged rhetoric and have a decent discussion.  Sites like that don't help.  Not to mention is has some of its facts just plain wrong.  For example, it says thimerosal has not been used in vaccines since 1999.  Flat out wrong.  Problem is, there is one and only one way to know what is in the actual vaccines.  You have to request the ingredient cards directly from the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture them, and it's a fight to get the ingredient cards.  But for anyone who wants to argue what is or isn't in a particular vaccine, get the card and do your research before you spout off about what supposedly is or isn't in there.
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Offline Sir GuitarCozmo

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #32 on: September 23, 2010, 12:29:12 PM »
I believe it could be argued that her seemingly less-than-fully-informed anti-vaccination crusade could very likely be to blame for a lot of kids getting sicknesses and diseases they may not have gotten otherwise.  Not saying YES 100% certain, because I don't have the proof.  Is it her fault, not directly (as mentioned), but I thought it was interesting.  My apologies.

Offline bosk1

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #33 on: September 23, 2010, 12:57:48 PM »
I know, and the argument is fair.  And, perhaps unfortunately, to many, she is the most visible spokesperson for anti-vaccination.  But I've tried to be very careful and disclaim the crap out of everything I've posted and acknowledge (1) that the stuff is incredibly biased; (2) there there is more unknown than known; and (3) that I am not per se against vaccination, but that the information out there is scary enough that I have instead just taken a middle ground to have it done, but on a different schedule than what is being pushed by the government/pharm companies.  Just coming in and just dropping something like that and running without any sort of careful discussion is frustrating.  And I realize that that is unfortunately the norm for P/R oftentimes, this thread was, IMO, a good example of one that had not gone too far to extremes or overgeneralizations in the discussion.
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Offline XJDenton

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Re: Mandated Vaccination?
« Reply #34 on: September 23, 2010, 02:47:56 PM »
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/596476

Thats a moderately decent read. This bit in particular stood out:

Quote
Vaccines do not overwhelm the immune system. Although the infant immune system is relatively naive, it is immediately capable of generating a vast array of protective responses; even conservative estimates predict the capacity to respond to thousands of vaccines simultaneously [30]. Consistent with this theoretical exercise, combinations of vaccines induce immune responses comparable to those given individually [31]. Also, although the number of
recommended childhood vaccines has increased during the past 30 years, with advances in protein chemistry and recombinant DNA technology, the immunologic load has actually decreased. The 14 vaccines given today contain < 200 bacterial and viral proteins or polysaccharides, compared with >3000 of these immunological components in the 7 vaccines administered in 1980 [30]. Further, vaccines represent a minute fraction of what a child’s immune
system routinely navigates; the average child is infected with 4–6 viruses per year [32]. The immune response elicited from the vast antigen exposure of unattenuated viral replication supersedes that of even multiple, simultaneous vaccines.
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