Anti-Vaxxer Sympathy

[Bob Kelso]

I suppose people will have to forget, or forgive, me if I have only bitter vitriol and sickening contempt for the people that knowingly refuse to give their children or themselves necessary treatment to the detriment of us all. 

Fuck your fears, fuck your "sources" and fuck you.*
 

*To antivaxxers only of course.

[brewer]

You have a completely romanticised view of medications and vaccines.

Actually I have not. But thank you for skewed insight. It's quite telling.

Notice that you still have not provided your qualifications. Is there something that you need to hide?

Your inability to accept others positions (and I've accepted part of yours) and continued insistence that your position is correct, damn all others, has turned this into an Aractus monologue.

My participation in this thread is over.

[Cato]

I love it. The argument has devolved to "anti-vaccination is okay because...colonialism".

[Aractus]

By the way the Wakefield et al. 1998 (ret.) paper doesn't tie MMR to autism anyway. All it does is discuss a correlation and a hypothesis that requires further investigation (according to the authors). The only "false" part of the paper is some of the evidence that the authors used which was clearly fraudulent - which is why the authors are now disgraced and distrusted by everyone - especially Wakefield. Autism does have a proven correlation with autoimmune disease, and many researchers do believe that autism is triggered by the onset of one of these diseases. The same is true for diabetes - it's long been known that diabetes is a an autoimmune disease, however as yet no one has definitively identified how it is caused and which disease in particular causes it. In the future it could be possible to prevent autoimmune diabetes (aka type 1 or previously juvenile-onset) in at-risk patients. The same is true for autism if it is indeed triggered by an autoimmune problem.

So the fact that we know that autism may well be triggered by an autoimmune disease means of course vaccinations should be studied for their possible effect in triggering an autoimmune disease in an at-risk patient. So I hope that clears up the Wakefield (ret.) paper - there was nothing wrong with his hypothesis, but the data has vetted the MMR vaccine from being involved in triggering an autoimmune disease causing autism. Had the data the was used in the paper been valid and not falsified then it would have shown the hypothesis should be rejected - and that would have been that.

So now I've gone through that you can see why people could have a justified fear that a vaccination could be involved in triggering non-communicable autoimmune diseases. Once we know exactly how type-1 diabetes is triggered it would probably be easy to design a vaccination that would trigger it!

My point isn't that people who fear vaccinations have a strong reason not to vaccinate due to fear of autoimmune disease. My point is that the science is on their side if they decide their side is "vaccinations have the potential to cause autoimmune diseases". If 100% of the population is receiving a vaccination imagine how difficult it would be for researchers to ever definitively prove or disprove a causation-link. Now the other side of the argument is that "everyone who is genetically predisposed to having an autoimmune disease will eventually get it - that's why hardly any adults get type-1 diabetes - and therefore it doesn't matter if a vaccination triggers it instead of an environmental infection". The issue with that argument is that it doesn't give people the opportunity to live more of their life free from the burden of that disease. There is evidence that Alzheimer's disease is an autoimmune disease - do you really want to be giving Alzheimer's to people much earlier than they would naturally get if from the environment (if it is an autoimmune disease)?

The argument is much more complicated than you guys seem to think. And I think I've provided in this post a valid reason why we don't necessarily want more than 95% of the population vaccinated - how are we going to research potentially long-term adverse effects if 100% of people are vaccinated?

Personally I think it's healthy to have a debate. The empirical data show overwhelmingly that vaccinations do far more good than harm. Some vaccinations are certainly more needed in terms of risk of childhood mortality than others. It's very unlikely for example that in a first world country that measles will kill a child (and assuming they receive proper medical care it's virtually impossible that someone would die from measles alone). However they could get another disease at the same time and that could increase the risk of death. Whooping cough - also not a great risk of death, but significantly higher than measles.

By the way I see no one tacked the question of why do only 55% of at-risk women have annual breast-cancer screenings? If you are diagnosed with breast cancer you have at least a 10% risk of death from that cancer - that's something like 100 times the risk of death from measles. It's clearly a far more important and needed health service than the measles vaccine. So explain to me why we have a 93% vaccination rate, but only a 55% breast screening rate?

[Thumpalumpacus]

No one answered it because it's a poor comparison, given that breast cancer is not contagious.

[Aractus]

It's not at all a poor comparison PT as they are both preventative measures. And as I pointed out earlier, preventative and curative measures are seen differently by people.

Do you disagree that breast cancer carries at least 100x the risk of death than measles?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Of course. But that is not the point in this thread, and someone as smart as yourself had ought to be able to see the point, which is not about preventative medicine in and of itself, but rather, how the willful refusal of some to engage in it endangers others.

Breast cancer lacking communicability, arguments based on attitudes towards mammograms aren't pertinent, because the woman who prefers to avoid them endanfers only herself.

You still haven't answered my question, either.

[Aroura]

OMg, I have had the worst  experiences with modern medicine.  That does not mean I don't all modern medicine ever again, or start joining conspiracy theorists who think the government is intentionally poisoning us with them, or whatever batshit thing.

I've had doctors get me hooked on meds, take me off said meds without tapering, treat me like subhuman shit, accuse me of drug seekin, and other highly questiable behaviors.  My Sis-in-law had appendicits not too long ago, and after they took it out, they gave her a drug that collapsed her lungs and she nearly died.

A healthy distrust in medicine is is not the same as rejecting it all out of hand because of one bad experience.  Vaccines work.  There are mountains of evidence.  I fell fear (trust me,, I feel fear a lot), but you have to do what you have to do.  If you are unwilling to wear a seat belt (even tough onl YOU would die) the governement still makes you, or the fine you.  If individual health affects the welfare of everyone, your personal beliefs in that area are not longer acceptable.

[Cato]

The only thing that makes sense to me at this point is that Aractus is using this thread as some sort of online mating call; whereby, Jenny McCarthy suddenly jumps his bones. Fucking hell.

[Aractus]

Breast cancer lacking communicability, arguments based on attitudes towards mammograms aren't pertinent, because the woman who prefers to avoid them endanfers only herself.

Well Parkers, the current predominant view of healthcare consumers in first world countries is one of an individualistic view. I can prove this using academic material easily. So knowing that why is there a lower rate of breast cancer screening?