The Center for American Progress reports
A federal judge has ruled in favor of a New York City policy that allows schools to ban unvaccinated kids from attending classes when another child has come down with a vaccine preventable illness, the New York Times reports(paywalled).
[...]
Nicole Phillips, the mother of two[...], explained when she sued back in 2012. "We'd rather rely on our natural immune system and our faith in God. This is about my children's rights."
Judge William F. Kuntz II of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn disagreed with that argument, determining that the Supreme Court has "strongly suggested that religious objectors are not constitutionally exempt from vaccinations" and concluding that the city's strict vaccine guidelines are in place to safeguard its residents' well being.
[...]
the judge cited a 1905 Supreme Court ruling upholding a fine for a Massachusetts man who refused to get vaccinated during a smallpox outbreak
(Score: 4, Insightful) by AnonTechie on Tuesday June 24 2014, @01:03PM
I think our European friends could confirm this. I understand that many European countries ban kids from school if not vaccinated. One child's right to not be vaccinated should not infringe upon rights of hundreds of kids to be free from preventable diseases. In any case, it is the parents who are claiming the right that their children not be vaccinated. Do you think child's rights are violated if the government enforces vaccination ??
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Tuesday June 24 2014, @03:14PM
Yes, you could argue it that way. However, you could also argue it the other way, that the child's rights are violated if the parent refuses to allow them to be vaccinated. Then it comes down to a question of who's right, the government or the parents?
So far, all evidence appears to point towards the government. These diseases used to run rampant 100+ years ago, before vaccinations were invented. These days, smallpox is basically extinct, and most others are extremely uncommon in developed countries.
Of course, people do have a right to be stupid and to refuse things that are good for them. That's why people are allowed to smoke, for instance (something which, for some odd reason, still seems to be somewhat popular in Europe, much more so than here in the US where smokers have turned into pariahs in the past few decades, except maybe for some idiotic young hipsters). But children aren't adults; so do parents get to make stupid choices on behalf of their kids? Frequently, the answer is no. Parents who molest their children, for instance, are imprisoned and their kids taken away, so apparently it's been decided that making bad sexual decisions on behalf of your children is forbidden. Parents who starve their children get the same treatment, so apparently it's been decided that making extremely bad nutritional decisions on behalf of your children is forbidden. Parents who don't provide decent sleeping arrangements, allow them to become lice-infested, etc. usually face having their kids taken away, so here again, making poor care decisions on behalf of your children is not tolerated well. But somehow, throw religion into it and suddenly it's sometimes OK: parents who refuse to allow their kids to have life-saving blood transfusions aren't usually prosecuted (though I think this is changing), because they claim they're part of some screwball religious group that doesn't believe in medical treatment. Same goes for vaccinations, only it's worse, as AFAICT it's completely allowed, the penalty is just that in some places they're not allowed to attend school.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24 2014, @05:54PM
People should not be forced to inject things into their body regardless of their argument why they do not want it. Vaccinations, for the most part, have been tested with time. Although effective, they are not surefire. I think injecting microscopic things from an unknown origin should be deniable though. I do not think that arguing that the child's rights are violated when a parent refuses to allow them to take a vaccine is as strong as the opposite argument. When parents molest their children for instance, they are forcing something onto someone ( who by law does not have the legal ability to decide if they want that or not). The starving and lice examples are neglect, and are examples of government arguing that something needs to be done, which I am ok with. but I think there is an actual line drawn when it comes to vaccines because of what it could be, it could be a disease aimed at a group of people, the vaccine could have originated from an incompetent employee, the NSA could have hijacked all vaccinations and inserted nanomicrophones to have a closer watch on the populace(jk), the point I am making is that the government should not have the ability to ban people from something like education because of a refusal to participate in a vaccination, if everyone else is vaccinated anyways and it is that popular, those people don't have as much to worry about. It should be opt-in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24 2014, @09:32PM
People should not be forced to inject things into their body regardless of their argument why they do not want it.
So lets ask the baby whether or not he/she wants those vaccination shots? What's that now? goo goo ga ga? I guess that means no.... or maybe yes? Mom dad what say you? Its the parents that make the decision for the child. So a kid gets some debilitating side effect from a disease after not being vaccinated. No big deal right? Im sure they are cool with that decision mom and dad made all those years ago. Then they get around to thinking and hold up, why the fuck did you assholes NOT vaccinate me way back when! Then they can happily tell mom and dad fuck you for making a shitty decision and ruining my life. Yea that sounds fair for the child.
Vaccinations, for the most part, have been tested with time. Although effective, they are not surefire.
Oh so its not 100% effective? Fuck it then right? So you are telling me since a vaccine might not be 100% effective, you simply reject them? By that logic seatbelts should be optional in cars then? Or just about any preventative measure as nothing is a 100% guarantee (except death).
I think injecting microscopic things from an unknown origin should be deniable though.
Now you have gone full retard and make baseless claims with this one. That right there is some tin foil hat bullshit. Oh noes what's in dat vial, mind control drugs! Fuck you doctor death heads government CIA spy agent. Im not letting my kid fall under your nazi commie control. Yea, you keep telling yourself lies.
but I think there is an actual line drawn when it comes to vaccines because of what it could be, it could be a disease aimed at a group of people, the vaccine could have originated from an incompetent employee, the NSA could have hijacked all vaccinations and inserted nanomicrophones to have a closer watch on the populace(jk)
I like the (jk) at the end. That certainly contradicts a statement you made earlier in your post: "I think injecting microscopic things from an unknown origin should be deniable though." Seriously I think you are the one who needs some vaccinations. Stupid vaccination... oh wait too late. Sorry.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday June 25 2014, @07:31AM
It's completely devoid of tin foil hate. He has a point. The claims are irrelevant. "injecting microscopic things from an unknown origin". It's a right not to trust somebody or something, which I know is arguable. What is not arguable, is that people have rights over their body.
By your logic, anti-abortion laws are okay. Women don't get to control their bodies. Not completely. After all, the government already came in and said you must take in these compounds or materials, and screw you and your freedom to make a choice about it.
For the same reasons anti-abortion makes no ethical sense, it makes no ethical sense to force anyone to take an injection. The death penalty being a notable exception as the intent is to deprive somebody of all their freedom permanently.
It's the strongest argument yet against laws practically forcing and mandating vaccinations of children. It's not so easy to just dismiss it like that.
While I wouldn't accept the argument on grounds to force other children to come into contact with the child, neither would I force the parents to do it. Let the child be home schooled. Then the parents can decide just how dedicated they are to anti-vaccination movements or their religion.
I hate vaccinations myself. Don't trust those bastards, and my mistrust of corporations and the medical community runs very very deep. I can so terribly easily believe that some company was cutting corners, testing was inadequate, the science backing it up was wrong (injections too early in development or risky), and all for the love of money. The FDA is powerless and too corrupt to actually be in the business of regulation. The fines and consequences are just little slaps on the wrist.
I would still give them to my child, but I would not be happy about it. Turning it into a black and white anti-science movement and advocating forcing people isn't exactly beaming with the ideals of freedom either.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 25 2014, @05:40PM
By your logic, anti-abortion laws are okay. Women don't get to control their bodies. Not completely. After all, the government already came in and said you must take in these compounds or materials, and screw you and your freedom to make a choice about it.
Straw man. This isn't about abortion. This is about safeguarding the population against disease. Abortion has NOTHING to do with vaccination. Please, if you are going to argue a point, at least stay on topic.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday June 26 2014, @07:29PM
It's not a straw man AT ALL. Not event remotely close.
Anti-abortion is the exact same thing as forcible injections into a human body via vaccination programs. It's completely unarguable, that in both cases, the person is being denied rights over their body in favor of the State.
That rather simple fact may be inconvenient for some, but it would be intellectually disingenuous to the argument to ignore this fact.
So what remains are two discussion points:
1) Do parents have the full rights to decide for their kids what is injected into their bodies?
2) Do parents have the full rights to decide for themselves what is injected into their bodies?
Vaccinations by their very nature are optimally performed as young as possible. Young children cannot be expected to make their own decisions, which is irrelevant, as society has decided they are not legally able to do so until 18.
That reduces the scope down to the parents only again. Who gets to decide? The state? The parents?
It's very much an issue of personal freedom, and personal freedom is at the very heart of the abortion debate. To say vaccinations (forcible) and abortions have nothing in common is a willful disregard of inconvenient facts. To do so in a discussion about ethics is sheer stupidity.
The primary difference in both discussions is what fuels it. Abortion is fueled by religion wishing to enforce doctrine with loose arguments about ethics regarding the sanctity of life, and the ethics regarding personal freedom and choice. Vaccinations are fueled only in part by religion on one side, and science on the other with arguments about herd immunity and clinical trials. Vaccinations are also, legitimately, and correctly, fueled by deep cynicism about the science involved, as it's been wholly corrupted by money across all fields that it endeavors to explain . Science needs to stand up and own their problems. It's not perfect, and it's integrity has been put in shambles. Not just for science either. Practically all areas of life is tainted with questions regarding corruption.
Regardless of ANY scientific claims that support vaccinations, you still need to address the very real ethical issue of forcing somebody to do something against their will. Especially, when it's to have a needle put in their arm and deliberately take in a plethora of chemicals, organic compounds, tissues, etc.
It's very much an issue about freedom being balanced against the common good. Ignoring critical aspects about it because they are inconvenient makes you no better than those wishing to enforce religious doctrine on the masses. You are no better than a Creationist forcing their beliefs to be taught in schools.
The question of whether or not somebody has an inviolable right to a sovereign status of their own body is one we always need to be asking. As such, forcing people to get injections must meet very high ethical standards. To do anything less is a disservice to one's self and humanity.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Funny) by meisterister on Tuesday June 24 2014, @03:31PM
But.... the vaccines are a commie plot to corrupt our precious body fluids!
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by pe1rxq on Tuesday June 24 2014, @01:12PM
The state can not force you or your children to get vaccinated, but it should protect others from being harmed by your decision.
It protects the other kids in school, especially since some do not have the choices you have. (e.g. when there is a genuine medical reason why you can not be vaccinated like an allergy).
But it also protects your children from being infected while attending.
Just because a parent does not protect his/her child, that does not mean a school doesn't have a moral obligation to keep the child safely away from a disease.
It is not just the constitutional rights of the one parent/child. In these cases the rights of everyone attending the school are in conflict. In such cases a middle ground has to be found where everybody gets the most of his rights as possible.
I think the judge made a good decision in this case and everybody wins a little. (but some might not feel like they won)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Tuesday June 24 2014, @03:17PM
>The state can not force you or your children to get vaccinated,
The question here is: why not?
If you train your kids to be sexual servants for you or others (usually called "molestation"), the state will throw you in prison and seize your children.
If you starve your kids, the state will throw you in prison and seize your children.
If you don't take care of them and they become lice-infested and obviously neglected, the state may throw you in prison, and will seize your children.
CPS seizes kids all the time (or threatens to) for all kinds of offenses, in the interests of the children. Parents do not have an absolute right to treat their kids however they want; this is firmly established in law. So why is there an exemption for vaccination?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24 2014, @04:50PM
- So why is there an exemption for vaccination?
Religious nonsense. That lets you get away with quite a lot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24 2014, @06:24PM
That doesn't answer the OP's question. Religious nonsense has been attempted to justify neglect, molestation, etc., and it is rejected. So why not for vaccines?
(Score: 1) by compro01 on Tuesday June 24 2014, @08:08PM
Actually, it gets accepted for that to a depressing extent. See the "Christian Scientist" nuts killing their children by refusing to take them to doctors and basically getting off scot-free. The most recent case I heard about (a couple in Pennsylvania), the "parents" only faced significant penalties after the second child died.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by clone141166 on Wednesday June 25 2014, @12:32AM
I don't agree with forced vaccinations - I think vaccinations are a unique case for a couple of reasons.
Failing to feed, clothe, etc. your children is a failure to provide for the *basic* needs that every child requires to survive. Directly abusing your children is also wrong. But vaccinations are neither a basic need or a way of preventing abuse. The are more of a fringe benefit - something that children could *generally* survive without, but are *generally* better off as a result of being vaccinated.
While I think we as a society should be strongly encouraging people to have their children immunised, I question whether we should be *forcing* them to do so. The religious argument is pure nonsense, I couldn't agree more with that. And I don't have a problem with unvaccinated children being refused entry to a school or other public facilities to prevent the spread of disease - quarantine precautions are a fairly common and sensible way of preventing outbreaks.
However, forcing people to inject biological or chemical matter into their bodies is a dangerous path to be strolling down. While most vaccinations are *probably* safe and beneficial, often it isn't until decades later that substances are found to be harmful (asbestos anyone?). I feel people should have the right to choose what does and does not get injected/ingested/inserted into their bodies.
Maybe instead we should consider ancillary laws that impose a much higher healthcare charge on people who refuse a vaccination for disease X and then later are infected by and require healthcare to treat/manage disease X. In this way people are held accountable for their choice, the cost to society is minimised, but the freedom to choose is still maintained.
(Score: 1) by mgcarley on Thursday June 26 2014, @04:53PM
I dunno, non-vaccinated kids seem to have a significantly higher chance of death or severe problems from easily preventable diseases.
I'm not sure that really qualifies as "generally could survive without" because it's really the whole "herd immunity" concept that's got us where we are (largely free of easily preventable diseases) and, in order to continue to strength of the species, sounds a bit like a basic need until such time as we and our immune systems evolve sufficiently.
The problem seems to be that some of these people are all "me, me, me!!!" - while conveniently forgetting that the rest of us have rights too.
I'd be fine with a non-vaccinated kid being allowed in my kid's classroom... so long as non-vaccinated kid's parents waived their rights to be sued or otherwise punished if their kid was the cause of an outbreak (or, like you said, if healthcare and whatnot was sufficiently more expensive and had to cover the expenses of everyone else... kind of an "idiot fee").
Founder & COO, Hayai. We're in India (hayai.in) & the USA (hayaibroadband.com) // Twitter: @mgcarley
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24 2014, @04:50PM
The government may not be able to make someone get a vaccination yet, but that is the direction they wish to take this in the end. Big Pharma and the alphabet soup of agencies do too. The trick is to get the people to demand it and from the looks of many of the comments here they are succeeding. While proper vaccinations are generally quite safe and beneficial, they can and have been used for other things in this world and potentially will be used for more horrible things in the future, especially if legally required and/or blindly given/taken.
(Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Wednesday June 25 2014, @02:03AM
Here in VA, your kids have to have current vaccination records in order to get admitted to public school. If you don't want to vaccinate them, you have to home school them or find a private school which allows unvaccinated kids to enroll. I completely agree. While there are rare cases where people have a bad reaction to a vaccine, the shit it prevents is a lot worse. Before vaccines, lots of people died or were permanently scarred from mumps, measles and smallpox. That shit is nasty.
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24 2014, @01:16PM
Here's a novel idea: send all anti-vaxers to one place. They can work there, have their own schools and their own government. We could probably give them a part of Montana. It's not a concentration camp, it's just a place you can't leave unless you get all the vaccines and boosters the rest of the world requires. Then we can settle this retarded debate on whether societies are better off with or without vaccines.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday June 24 2014, @02:03PM
My personal opinion on this is that if the anti vax people want to claim it is their right then they need to own up to the responsibilities. Meaning we should have laws that hold them responsible for any and all costs associated with treating illnesses for which their children are not vaccinated against in schools their children attend. If someone dies they need to be charged with negligent homicide. Of course you would need an exemption for those medically unable to be vaccinated but that would be a very small portion of the population. Additionally this would only apply to the mandatory schedule of vaccinations. Of all the solutions this would seem to be the best since there is just too much stupid and right now there really aren't any real repercussions for putting the general population at risk. This way there are consequences for things that are currently happening.
As you pointed out the other solution is isolation but that seems to lead to a rather bad place.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday June 24 2014, @04:52PM
The trouble with that approach is that it is near impossible to figure out who precisely infected you with an airborne disease. And proving it in a court of law? Fuggedaboutit!
If an anti-vaxer was just harming themselves or their kids, that would be their business. But they aren't, so the decision to bar kids from school if they aren't being vaccinated is completely reasonable.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Alfred on Tuesday June 24 2014, @02:12PM
It would probably be easier, especially in bigger cities, to send the unvaccinated students all to the same school. That way you could avoid the moving expenses and some of the concentration camp appearance.
As far as the actual Montana idea. Will they be allowed to spray with DDT to keep the bugs at bay?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 25 2014, @07:31PM
Easier parhaps, but I think it would be better to move the vaccinated kids out of the city, so if there is an outbreak of some disease it can more easily be contained. Though it needn't be to a another state, just far enough outside the city that they won't want to travel into the city on a regular basis.
(Score: 1) by compro01 on Tuesday June 24 2014, @02:39PM
I hear North Brother Island is currently unoccupied.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24 2014, @07:07PM
North Brother Island
I had to look that one up.
It combines the thoughts of alternatives I was formulating upon starting to read the comments here (permanent quarantine) with the leper colony aspect of the GGP.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday June 25 2014, @12:14PM
As a Montanan who is not stupid and who does vaccinate, I say this scheme unfairly burdens Montana with stupid people. Instead send them to California, where a few more stupid people will probably bring up the state's net IQ.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1) by mgcarley on Thursday June 26 2014, @04:56PM
That just reminded me... I seem to remember going to a country a few years ago that required me to carry a card issued by the WHO (stating that I had been vaccinated against some stuff - non-standard vaccinations I think but still, I guess they didn't want me getting sick in their country)
Founder & COO, Hayai. We're in India (hayai.in) & the USA (hayaibroadband.com) // Twitter: @mgcarley
(Score: -1, Redundant) by slartibartfastatp on Tuesday June 24 2014, @01:31PM
If a vaccinated person is immune to a certain disease, shouldn't mean that it wouldn't get this disease from an unvaccinated person?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24 2014, @01:37PM
OMG this again?
(Score: 1) by sjwt on Tuesday June 24 2014, @01:49PM
OMG not another person too busy crying, and not willing to impart some useful knowledge onto someone who in this case may end up in the horrid court of the anti vaxers. Well done...
(before others jump in, yes I have already posted a response to the OP)
(Score: 3, Informative) by mattie_p on Tuesday June 24 2014, @01:39PM
This is mostly correct, except that the ban on them attending school is to prevent the spread of disease to those who for medical reasons cannot be vaccinated. Children who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons should not be exposed to a preventable disease by a child whose parents are, in my opinion, whacked-out goofballs.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday June 24 2014, @07:35PM
In the event that a student comes down with a disease we vaccinate against, all kids not vaccinated for any reason should be excused from class until they are certain that the danger has passed. It should be done for their own well being.
Otherwise they should be permitted to attend normally.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday June 25 2014, @12:24PM
For diseases where the contagious stage arrives before the symptoms, how do you propose to determine that the disease risk is present?
For diseases where there are silent permanent carriers, this means excusing those unvaccinated kids forever. Or I suppose you could excuse the carriers, but for some diseases, that's a lot of carriers.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday June 25 2014, @08:28PM
I don't know of cases where people are silent permanent carriers of diseases we vaccinate against.
For the rest, it's not a 100% solution (nor is vaccination), but it breaks the chain early. Sure, the person was contagious for a day or two already by the time you know, but you then send the unvaccinated kids home to prevent further risk to them and for those who already caught it, they can go tyhrough the incubation and contagious stages in their own space.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday June 25 2014, @08:49PM
When I was in grade school, anyone who evinced illness was immediately sent home. This didn't do a great deal to prevent contagion since in most cases one is infectious for some time before developing symptoms. Which is why I wouldn't put a lot of faith in such methods.
The vaccines that became available in the 1960s did a great deal more toward preventing the spread of disease (it could be reasonably assumed that unvaccinated kids would be affected in a similar proportion to pre-vaccine kids). This chart is very telling:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Measles_US_1944-2007_inset.png [wikipedia.org]
Remember, the prevention method prior to vaccines WAS sending them home immediately.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday June 25 2014, @09:28PM
When you were in grade school, the equivalent measure would be dismissing ALL of the kids for the incubation period + a couple days if any kid came down with a dangerous disease (in the case of measles, 2 weeks). That isn't what happened, so it didn't work well.
By dismissing the entire vulnerable population, the chain reaction is broken early. The one or two vulnerable kids that caught the disease from the sick kid are kept from the population before they infect a few more each while asymptomatic.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday June 25 2014, @09:48PM
This is pretty much what animal shelters do with an outbreak -- and it doesn't work. They typically wind up putting down the entire susceptible (unvaccinated or too-recently vaccinated) and infected populations. The root problem is that a school (or shelter) is not isolated from the world, let alone from each other.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday June 25 2014, @09:55PM
Likely because dogs and cats are really bad about not telling you when they're sick and shelters tend to have a constantly changing population of mal-nourished strays.
That and there is no home to send the animals to.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday June 25 2014, @10:59PM
Actually, an experienced person (which you generally =don't= find running shelters) can tell an animal is sick before it has any symptoms you can point at. (I speak from 45 years experience as a canine professional.)
I've noticed some very observant humans can do the same with children.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday June 28 2014, @01:43AM
Meanwhile, some dogs are very good at detecting when their person is ill.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday June 28 2014, @03:02AM
That too. Illness causes changes in body chemistry, and a dog with a good nose (which not every dog has) can detect as few as a dozen molecules (exhaled, sweated, or whatever). Dogs with good sensory equipment are generally very sensitive to any change, and can be taught to notice it (or may learn on their own -- a friend's dog did that -- and now she'll pick up on when he's having a diabetic attack before the test will).
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by iwoloschin on Tuesday June 24 2014, @01:41PM
Vaccines are not 100% effective. Just more effective than not.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday June 24 2014, @02:50PM
To be more precise, the long term average death rate from vaccines has historically been lower than the long term average death rate from the diseases they try to prevent. So far. Inevitably, the same "what could go wrong with a mere tranquilizer" crowd WILL successfully implement a thalidomide solution sooner or later, just hasn't happened yet.
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Tuesday June 24 2014, @03:11PM
If I recall correctly, the polio vaccine is no longer recommended for the general US population because polio is now so rare that the vaccine is a comparable risk to the disease itself. Just to be clear, I don't want to be misconstrued as an anti-vaxer. The polio vaccine was a huge success, and the indicator of its success is that it's no longer needed.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 2, Informative) by compro01 on Tuesday June 24 2014, @03:45PM
No, the inactivated polio vaccine is still on the routine schedule [cdc.gov], given at 2 months, 4 months, 6-18 months, and 4-6 years.
You may be confusing it with the live-virus oral polio vaccine (OPV), which the USA discontinued use of in 2000, in favour of the injected inactivated polio vaccine (IPV).
The oral vaccine is no longer used in most countries that have eliminated polio, as it has a small chance (1 in 100,000 or so) of causing polio, whereas the inactivated vaccine doesn't. The oral vaccine is still used in some countries at higher risk of polio outbreaks as it produces a stronger immunity and is easier to administer in areas lacking infrastructure.
(Score: 4, Informative) by pe1rxq on Tuesday June 24 2014, @01:41PM
Vaccines don't work as well for everybody, they are not 100% guaranteed to work. (although pretty close)
Also some can't get vaccinated for medical reasons. (real ones, not the made up autism kind)
And schools are places where different age groups mingle, and not all might have been vaccinated for everything yet.
But also the the unvaccinated kid itself is in danger. It might get something from other unvaccinated kids.
It is thus also to protect the unvaccinated. Just because the parents don't bother that doesn't excuse a school to facilitate a disease.
(Score: 5, Informative) by physicsmajor on Tuesday June 24 2014, @02:31PM
It's actually worse than you think.
Vaccines are created with herd immunity in mind, and with the express desire of protecting society. Not every individual. This is particularly relevant for live attenuated vaccines. They actually ship a very weak form, to minimize the amount who experience any side effects. They could package and ship a nastier strain, which would ensure a higher amount of patients develop functional immune responses.
In such cases the expected percent of the population which develops functional immunity is - by design - close to the herd immunity percentage. The important fact here is near 100% compliance was assumed in the design.
Surprise! When misinformed people decide to opt out, there may be nearly two generations of people now at risk. This is why we get outbreaks of disease, including supposedly vaccinated individuals, instead of just isolated cases. The fault for these is 100% on the shoulders of those who opted out of vaccines.
They harm others, not just themselves.
(Score: 2) by physicsmajor on Tuesday June 24 2014, @03:58PM
Guess the anti-vax crowd is out in force with mod points.
Everything I said in the prior post is accurate and can be backed up with evidence. Dare to actually engage me, instead of trying to stifle points you don't agree with using the Troll button?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday June 25 2014, @12:36PM
That's an interesting point. There's been a lot of debate about canine vaccines, as to whether high passage or low passage is more desirable, but the fact is in Real Life the high passage vaccines experience a relatively high rate of 'breaks', while possibly the lowest rate of adverse reactions (rare as those are in any case) occurs with a low-passage, very high titer vaccine (titer 4x the norm).
And we get the same idiots opting out, preferring a death rate of up to 50% from parvo or distemper to a one in a million or so chance of a bad reaction.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24 2014, @07:40PM
some can't get vaccinated for medical reasons. (real ones, not the made up autism kind)
There are other things in the serum besides dead/weakened pathogens.
Vaccines are cultured (grown) in a nutrient medium.
Often, that is an animal-based solution (eggs; blood of cows, pigs, horses; etc.). [naturallyraisedmastiffs.com]
Some ingredients of some vaccines cause allergic reactions in some people.
Proper procedure has the medical staff asking if you're allergic to those things.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by sjwt on Tuesday June 24 2014, @01:43PM
The immunity provided by a vaccine is not 100%,it lies between 90-99.99999% good enough for general causal exposure.
your own immune system could be weakened from fighting another issue at the time or by just being generally compromised to begin with, the virus could have evolved to get around the immunity or you could be living in a cluster where a lot of ppl are not immunized, and as such your body could be overwhelmed by others around you giving you a massive espouse that you can not hope to fight.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Tuesday June 24 2014, @01:54PM
depends on the disease. depends on the person. communicable diseases passing around by microbes, generally the inoculation is a "dead" version of the pathogen. i.e. something your immune system can recognise.
However, some pathogens mutate very rapidly, an it is possible to be inoculated and still get the disease, since it is a moving target - hence flu vaccines are seasonal.
Finally, there is the issue of carriers - someone infected but asymptomatic - this was common with Typhoid and Tuberculosis, where the immune system of the individual was sufficient to prevent the disease but not sufficient to prevent its propagation.
Any disease specialists want to cut in?
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Tuesday June 24 2014, @01:56PM
oh and just to highlight the issue above there is *always* risk to get injected with *anything* no matter how benign!!! Billions of years of evolution gave us closed systems for a reason....!
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Tuesday June 24 2014, @02:18PM
An anecdotal example of people who don't vaccinate, and people who can't be vaccinated:
My brother brought his kids to see my newborn son. Three days later I found out that my niece and nephew had whooping cough and they had never been vaccinated.
I wanted to kill him.
My son never caught it, his kids eventually got vaccinated, but a whole lot of stress could have most likely been avoided.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24 2014, @02:22PM
afford to live in one of the most expensive regions of the US? What kind of jobs can one get in the most multi-cultural city of the US, with a medieval kind of faith in religion?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday June 24 2014, @02:50PM
Fortunately it's illegal to discriminate against people based on religion.
And before you say, "but what about scientists who are religious," religion and science are not fucking mutually exclusive. Stop propagating this falsehood.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by hoochiecoochieman on Tuesday June 24 2014, @03:02PM
He didn't propagate any falsehood. You are putting words in his mouth. Talk about overreaction!
What puzzles him, and me too, is how is it possible for people with such a degree of ignorance survive in one of the most competitive cities in the world.
If such a woman opens a company, will she skip insurance, hoping that God (or whatever) keeps her company safe? Or what does she do when her balances don't match? Pray?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24 2014, @06:32PM
Yes, many people do exactly this, unless the law mandates they must carry insurance. You might argue these insurance laws further prevent these folks from being confronted with the consequences of having hope in God instead of actuarial tables. I don't know of any study that's looked at the efficacy of forgoing various types of insurance, but I don't think its results are as dramatic as you might expect (i.e., sometimes forgoing insurance is good and saves money in both the short and long terms, even when disaster strikes. How often? No clue).
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday June 24 2014, @06:36PM
Being religious doesn't mean you also have to be a complete idiot (although I'm sure most of SN readers disagree). The Puritans used to say, "God helps those who help themselves." They were all about hard work and responsibility and stuff.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 25 2014, @04:15AM
>Being religious doesn't mean you also have to be a complete idiot
true, but if you're not it does mean you have to maintain a staggering
level of cognitive dissonance no? i mean how do you know when to apply
your "scientific" brain as opposed to your religious one?
(Score: 2) by hoochiecoochieman on Wednesday June 25 2014, @09:39AM
It's a fallacy to keep this anti-vax discussion being about religion. It has shit to do about religion, it's all about stupidity.
Those who don't vaccinate their children are child mollesters. Taking the argument to the territory of religion is giving them too much credit. In a civilised country, you're not allowed to commit a felony on grounds of religion. Please go to the government and tell them you want to be exempt of paying taxes because your religion forbids it. Or tell them you have to kill all the infidels because your God told you to. You'll be laughed at all the way to prison.
This is NOT a religious issue, it's a public health issue. Don't give the nuts that advantage.
(Score: 1) by Hawkwind on Wednesday June 25 2014, @06:24PM
This review of the piece [newstimes.com] includes the full video.
(Score: 2) by hoochiecoochieman on Thursday June 26 2014, @09:38AM
With the economic crisis, there has been a resurgence of left-wing idealists. These are young, urban, highly-educated, and usually unemployed or sub-employed. They steer away from both the Socialist Party, who is too entrenched in the capitalist system, and the Communist Party, which they perceive as too disciplined, and also a part of the system.
These people are exploring all kinds of "alternative" society models, resurrecting some crazy ideas from the past. The whole idea is that the current society based in production and growth is wrong, and a new society has to be created.
Most of the time, I get into arguments with these people, because they propose things which don't make sense, mostly economically. The myth of the "good savage" is coming up again, with many of them dreaming about a happy society where people will turn to hunters-gatherers, like that would be sustainable for 7.5 billion people.
These people are very suspicious of science. They claim that science has failed to elevate Mankind because "all the scientists are in the pockets of capitalist corporations". They often give me the meme "modern medicine doesn't work". And they refuse to vaccinate their children because "vaccines are poisons, we should let the body create immunity by itself". All so stupid it's hard to believe educated people could babble it.
Of course, these people take homeopatic and "natural" medicines which, of course, aren't sold by for-profit capitalist corporations. Let me laugh!
These are not religious people, however their ideas are as much crazy and dangerous as the ones from religious nuts.
So, again, this is not a religious issue. It's a growing reactionary tendency towards obscurantism and ignorance, shared by both extremes of the political spectrum. Among the multiple reactions to the current state of societey (which isn't great), people tend to seek alternatives. Lots of people are taking this reactionary, anti-science one.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Tuesday June 24 2014, @03:09PM
They're not mutually exclusive but they're conflicting to the point that they might as well be. If one can truly buy into a religion (except for buddhism maybe, from what I've gathered from friends who are and actually claim it isn't even a religion rather than lifestyle) it requires more than enough willful ignorance to compromise their objectivity and critical thinking. Which are rather important things in science. Even MDs know this and I've seen them say to other doctors in this southwestern bible thumping shithole "How can you believe in a god?! You're a man of science!". So yeah, they're not mutually exclusive but they might as well be.
But I digress, this anti-vaccine nonsense (again, they always seem to be religious. Do you see a pattern?) just might result in the one single instance of valid segregation in the history of the world. Way to go asshats.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 3, Interesting) by etherscythe on Tuesday June 24 2014, @04:58PM
Many orthodoxies conflict with science, but this is a failing of backwards-thinking men with hubris who believed (or didn't care if) the world did not move forward and would never find them wrong. There remain big gaping holes in science - what happened before the Big Bang? And what is the nature of consciousness? What happens below the Heisenberg limit of reality? There is more than enough room for both ethereal human souls and God in those gaps for the foreseeable future, and these are the essential underpinnings of religion.
There is a curious trend in modern religious organizations failing to adapt to modern reality. In times past, religions borrowed from preceding religions and, when spreading to new lands, taking on many characteristics and traditions of the incumbent faiths (see: Easter egg hunts on Christian church grounds as one of the most obvious examples). It seems like there are many people who prefer to live in "yesterday's reality" rather than adapting to demonstrable facts, and they often correlate to people with religious backgrounds. I agree that these people have no business in science-based or medical careers, but to condemn religion entirely is to miss an individual faith potential that can be internally consistent.
A fun debate I like to have is to ask my friends what they believe, and make them defend it - I don't care what they believe as long as they have good reason to, and I prod them with all manner of academic arguments. It's difficult to do, though, since some people take offense at questioning their fundamental assumptions. Fortunately I have not pushed anyone away I didn't mind losing ;-)
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Tuesday June 24 2014, @05:30PM
Those big holes are what science tries to close. It's just as much a mistake to justify religion by saying "but science hasn't solved X" as it is dismissing religious types because they're stupid and calling it a day. The fact that those holes exist merely means we need to test and observe more, not that magical sky daddies exist. Also, I do hope your friends that are proponents of science respond to your question of what they believe with "Nothing". Because that's the only correct answer. Belief is for religion, empirical evidence is for science. Faith is poison, rerunnable tests are solutions.
That's the biggest problem with these people. They always try to defend their faith with "but you believe in science". Nope, science requires no belief in anything. That's the point of it. It's also the biggest problem with the "science is a religion" idiots. It's also why there is such a gigantic split between the two sides. One side just can't grasp the fact that belief is unnecessary and harmful, the other one can't grasp that there are people who think belief is acceptable.
I know this because I used to be a bible thumper before escaping the brainwashing. Religion is literally a cancer and is causing real harm as proven by these anti-vaccination types. So let's stay on topic with that.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Tuesday June 24 2014, @07:04PM
Well, technically you have to believe in empiricism. I think that's the unspoken problem with most atheist arguments; there is room in religion for empiricism. Religion says there is God, science describes how his creation works, and the two are in harmony. Trouble comes from, as I like to put it, "telling God how to do his own work," rather than informing oneself from the obvious pure source - the universe itself.
I've read that there are ways to nudge quantum particles without fully "observing" them and thus negating their underlying state, so there's a possibility of that particular gap closing in our lifetimes. However, it's not likely we will solve the other riddles I mentioned anytime soon, and so one has to come up with a personal concept for living one's own life based only on the facts at hand, as best we can understand them. I don't begrudge anyone their philosophical comforts, as long as they're not falling into a dangerous logic trap. Empiricism is self-evidently useful; rejection of it causes real crises as you mention, but despite the correlation, it is not the belief in God which is at fault here. Let us not waste our efforts attempting to prove what cannot be proved in any realistic timeframe (the null hypothesis).
The point I'm trying to make is that there's a happy medium - live and let live, essentially. Belittling religion as completely useless is just as counterproductive to peaceful progress of society as fundamentalist bigotry, because it unfairly paints the other side as having no valid argument; in spite of the fact that most religious arguments are on the level of straw men, there are good points to be made. Such denouncements might be entertaining on "reality TV" or Youtube for the drama that gets viewers, but it's not good for actual resolution.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 25 2014, @04:25AM
>except for buddhism maybe, from what I've gathered from friends who are and
>actually claim it isn't even a religion rather than lifestyle
buddhist propaganda.
list the common attributes of a religion. i think you'll find buddhism ticks them all.
something that functions like a church? tick
priest caste? tick
idols that are preyed to? tick
holy texts? tick
salavation if you do thing X? tick
and so on. this whole "buddhism aint a religion" thing is pure uppaya, translated
as "skillful means" aka "being sneaky so as to get the masses through the font door".
(Score: 1) by karmawhore on Tuesday June 24 2014, @03:20PM
What in the world? That's not even a straw man; it's a total non sequitur.
=kw= lurkin' to please
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday June 24 2014, @06:31PM
I was rejecting his premise that being religious makes people unfit for jobs and anticipating that someone would promptly come back with, "scientists can't be religious" (Darwin in fact was quite religious). I have a tendency to try to anticipate the stupidest arguments and head them off preemptively that apparently confuses people.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 25 2014, @08:06PM
Not in his later life he wasn't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Charles_Darwin [wikipedia.org]
If you don't want to read it all skip to the posthumous biography section.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday June 24 2014, @02:56PM
"What kind of jobs can one get in the most multi-cultural city of the US, with a medieval kind of faith in religion?"
Neocon politician? Pays pretty good, especially when you count bribes.
Aside from the blindingly obvious ones like "leadership positions in medieval era religious faiths"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24 2014, @06:34PM
You mean "Pays pretty bad". HA, sorry couldn't resist, what with the neocon jab (maybe you meant "Pays pretty well").
(Score: 2, Funny) by JNCF on Tuesday June 24 2014, @04:28PM
I didn't used to be opposed to getting vaccinations, but for the last three years I've been completely against them. If I had a child today, I would not get them vaccinated. Let me explain. I don't have religious objections or nutty ideas about autism, I just don't want to the CIA stealing my DNA.
It turns out that the CIA uses vaccination drives as a way to steal DNA from people en masse so that they can sort through it looking for folks they want to find. The only example I know of where they used this technique was in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden,* but the nature of these sorts of operations is that we (the public) are lucky if we hear about a single instance of a technique like this being used. If the CIA does their job correctly, we don't. Knowing that this is a tool the CIA has in their box, I can no longer get vaccines. If they want my DNA they'll get it anyway, I know that, but I'm not gonna hand it over wrapped in a ribbon. If they want it, they can come and get it. A lot of Muslims feel the same way, and the CIA stealing DNA using this vaccination program was a contributing factor to the polio scare a while back (another factor being that many Muslims believe vaccines are being used to sterilize them). I would even still be willing to get vaccines if they let me take the needle home, but with the war on drugs still raging hospitals aren't going to be handing out hypodermic needles anytime soon. If there is a public health threat created by me and others like me refusing to let the CIA steal our DNA, the responsibility for that threat should be on the CIA, not on us. I wouldn't send a child to a public school anyway, but if I saw that as something that would enrich a child's life I'd think it terribly unfair to restrict their ability to attend just because their parents' don't want the CIA stealing their DNA.
Vaccination is a matter of privacy now, thanks to the CIA. It's sad that so many of soylentils fail to see this, and instead blame the victims.
* http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccinations-osama-bin-ladens-dna [theguardian.com]
(Score: 2) by hoochiecoochieman on Tuesday June 24 2014, @04:38PM
Yeah, they did that in Pakistan and, because of that, now the Talibans are killing vaccination teams. It was an incredibly stupid decision from the very beginning, but two stupids don't make one smart.
Go get your fucking vaccines. While you're at it, get some anti-psychotics, too.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday June 24 2014, @07:31PM
Back when the CIA and NSA confined themselves to foreign spying (or at least we thought they did) it would be a paranoid rant. Now that we know for a fact that they carry out the same spying operations on U.S. citizens living in the U.S. we cannot discount the possibility that the program we found out about in Pakistan is also running in the U.S.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by JNCF on Tuesday June 24 2014, @11:34PM
Go learn some fucking manners. That's not how you talk to someone you don't know. Didn't your mom ever teach you that, or is this something else I have to do for her?
And I like my mind just fine the way it is, thankyouverymuch.
(Score: 2) by hoochiecoochieman on Wednesday June 25 2014, @09:31AM
OK, my fault. I'm sorry for being rude. It's too easy to be a dick online. I should have thought twice before writing that last paragraph.
Still think you're dead wrong, though.
(Score: 1) by JNCF on Wednesday June 25 2014, @02:12PM
Cool man, no worries. I've been a dick before too. You have a nice day :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24 2014, @06:45PM
How about every state in the union, save perhaps Texas? If you had children in the US, you'd know the government takes, without permission, blood from your child at birth, to screen for diseases and then hands it over to pharmaceutical companies (in some states) regardless of parental objection. At the time, the only state in the union that allowed parents to object was Texas. My wife and I were furious, not because we wouldn't have our children tested anyway at our private doctor whom we trusted, but because we had no choice except move to Texas (law makes it clear parental objections are moot, except in Texas), and we had zero control over the blood of our child. Some state laws (like ours at the time, not sure about now) even explicitly stated these forced blood donations, after screening for disease, would be provided to pharmaceutical companies for research. What that meant was never defined, and nobody could explain. Some laws stated the donor information would be "anonymized". We have no faith in our state to truly make the donor info anonymous, no reason to believe they would really try. There were zero avenues to find out this information: one lawyer we went to said getting the state to prove how it went about these procedures was almost guaranteed to fail, and whatever procedures they handed over would likely never resemble the procedures they actually used. There were no options to allow the screening for disease, but disallow our child's blood from being provided to pharmaceutical companies.
If the government behaved well and openly published their methods for handling these things it might be different. If blood were screened without then being passed to private corporations, it might be different. But as it stands it's an affront to liberty of one's own body from being stolen at birth for unknown purposes.
(Score: 1) by JNCF on Tuesday June 24 2014, @10:53PM
This assumes that your child is born in a hospital. If I had children, they would not be. But yeah, that's totally fucked up. Fuck hospitals.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Tuesday June 24 2014, @07:21PM
You know, I could be accused of being paranoid on some subjects, but I'm pretty sure those programs were targeted specifically to areas where they suspected bin Laden to actually be present. If you're not on the international Most Wanted list, that particular kind of intrigue is probably not what you need to worry about. DNA analysis is expensive. In fact, dying of preventable disease is a real consideration if you're one of us mere mortals. Personally, I think you made the wrong decision.
Now, if you were worried about insurance companies collecting DNA for their own purposes, we might find more agreement.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24 2014, @07:36PM
Or put another way, if you've got nothing to hide...
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Tuesday June 24 2014, @08:00PM
No, that's completely missing the point. Everybody has something to hide, even if they don't realize it. Not everybody is a fugitive for acts of violent terrorism. See, I even gave the insurance example as the "but that could still be something to worry about" angle.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 1) by JNCF on Tuesday June 24 2014, @11:19PM
Right, this specific program targeted Bin Laden. It was also a secret. You and I have no way of knowing how many such programs have been run, or if any are currently active. The cost of running them is obviously large (though it would be significantly cheaper per capita if they were just interested in building a back-catalog of DNA for future reference). The chances of me falling under the umbrella of one are probably incredibly small. But then, I thought that about the surveillance program too. I was wrong. I wasn't paranoid enough. It turns out they're watching all of us.
At the end of the day, it's my DNA and I get to decide what risks I want to take to (potentially) keep all the grubby little G-man paws off of it. A hastening of my own mortality is a scenario I've considered and accepted. I can respect that you've made a different decision than I have, I just don't people ostracizing those in my camp. It's unfortunate that my decision could theoretically impact your mortality, but as I stated in my original post I think the responsibility for this falls on the DNA thieves, not the people hiding their DNA. This is what happens when you militarize medicine. Lesson: don't militarize medicine.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Wednesday June 25 2014, @12:03AM
Perhaps I said it in a misleading way. Honestly, I'm not so far off from your position. I don't trust most people in the medical field (don't tell my girlfriend!) for reasons of competence and my own relatively unusual biological reactions. Not my tetanus shot, nor any other, has been updated since I reached the age of majority. I'm on the fence about getting it done for reasons similar to yours, except I think worrying about the CIA is entirely the wrong way to be viewing the problem.
The difference is that if you want to fix the problem politically, you have to attack from the right angle. CIA doesn't care about your DNA. Even with their ginormous new data center, they don't have nearly enough storage for that information generally. What I'm worried about are insurance companies and pharmaceuticals. Particularly, I don't want anybody being able to patent MY DNA and make money off of it without getting a good cut of the pie, as well as a choice in the matter whether to participate, as well as the usual dystopian-future warnings many of us have heard about risk factors and insurance premiums/policy cancellation.
So, long story short, when you write to your politician or whatever, ask for better medical privacy rules, rather than clamping down on black ops that probably don't target you anyway. The more in tune with reality you are, the harder it is for your reps to discount your message as psychobabble.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 1) by JNCF on Wednesday June 25 2014, @10:31PM
Quite frankly, I don't know WHAT the CIA has and you probably don't either. They've got a huge black budget, and quite possibly off-the-books income as well.
The last time I wrote to a congresscritter was when the Snowden shit dropped. I emailed Claire McCaskill, who I'd actually campaigned for in multiple elections. I asked her what she planned to do to stop the NSA from unconstitutionally spying on me. She (or rather, her lackeys) basically said that she fully supported the NSA spying every single American citizen, and that she had no intention of changing this position.
I'm never voting for a Republican or a Democrat again, and I don't really even see the point of writing to them. They're not going to listen unless you pay them to, even when you're asking them to uphold an oath they already swore. I'm probably not writing to any more congresscritters, and should they happen to browse the comments of SoylentNews they can discount my mad ravings as psychobabble all they want.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24 2014, @05:31PM
The religious kook job who refuses the vax or the naive sheeple who believe anything Big Pharma tells him? [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_industry#Controversies [wikipedia.org]
(I find both positions very bad. There should be a rational middle ground.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24 2014, @06:03PM
For me what I have seen it is not 'religious nut jobs' who skip vaccinations. But the health nuts. The ones who are afraid of every chemical out there. Somehow people have attached it to 'religious nut jobs' because it makes them feel safer in their world view. My seriously informal poll of 'very religious' people I know and vaccinations has been pretty much the opposite reaction. They look at me like 'what kind of doofus would not do that'?
These people are afraid but if it makes you feel better to belittle them. That will *really* help the problem. /sarc
There should be a rational middle ground
Your words actually polarize people and do not help the situation.
The only rational argument I have seen from the anti-vaxers is 'perhaps we should look a bit more into what we are injecting ourselves with'. That is rational. Not doing it at all because of a maybe it might do something you dont know of is silly.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday June 25 2014, @12:21PM
An AC says,
"For me what I have seen it is not 'religious nut jobs' who skip vaccinations. But the health nuts. The ones who are afraid of every chemical out there. Somehow people have attached it to 'religious nut jobs' because it makes them feel safer in their world view. My seriously informal poll of 'very religious' people I know and vaccinations has been pretty much the opposite reaction. They look at me like 'what kind of doofus would not do that'?"
This is my experience as well. In fact most of the anti-vaxxers I've encountered were at the far left of secular liberal. YMMV.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.