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I have two healthy daughters neither of which have been vaccinated. I suppose Joslin came to the same conclusion as my wife and I did...
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I remember being a middle school student and learning about poor ass people in undeveloped countries that did not believe doctors about nutrition, vaccinations, or medical science in general. Instead they relied on mysticism, superstition, tradition, and religion to ignore simple solutions and rationalize their dangerous behaviors. I remember thinking to myself "Holy fuck, I'm so glad I don't live in a place like this." But, about 2 decades later, here I am. Despite living in a wealthy country, I feel like I might as well live in a village where everyone consults the witch doctor for medical advice.
First, I understand the fear of synthetics, but the hyper-belief in natural or organic and disdain for science is absurd. Polio is an organic substance, Anthrax is a organic substance, but I'd rather not come into contact with either one.
Second, doctor's cannot cure all the diseases you come into contact with. For example, there is no cure for polio, it can only be prevented.
Third, "It is true that vaccination has enabled us to reduce most vaccine-preventable diseases to very low levels in many countries. However, some of them are still quite prevalent — even epidemic — in other parts of the world. Travelers can unknowingly bring these diseases into any country, and if the community were not protected by vaccinations, these diseases could quickly spread throughout the population, causing epidemics there." It is irresponsible and poor citizenship to increase your chance of playing a role in an outbreak. Moreover, I'm glad my mom never had to worry about me when there were outbreaks of the measles or some other preventable disease.
Fourth, your appeal to good intentions is absurd. All sorts of people have good intentions and use those intentions to accidentally or purposefully fuck up a lot of people's lives. In some cases, like our health, results are all that matter. I don't really care if the woman at the bar just wanted me to feel good when she was sucking my dick, if I walk away with a case of herpes. If your child infects another kid with a life threatening disease, your good intentions do
nothing to help the parents or the child. They won't cure the disease, they won't pay for medical treatment, and they won't take away that child's pain.
Fifth, yes, the fact that use "anti-vaxxer" is your anti-mainstream anti-authority identity marker is an amazing aspect of our times. I never saw this shit coming. You can easily go to the library and look up the peer-reviewed studies that show the effectiveness of various medicines. You can read about where the idea came from, the methods the researchers used to figure out if their idea was right, and go over their results. Anti-vaxx is an amazing position to hold in an era where science is open to anyone with a library card. Critical thinking is not simply doubting, critical thinking is gaining the tools and then using them to examine the world. (Note: Facebook is not an educational resource.) Moreover, you can easily look up the number of polio cases 60 years ago and compare them to cases today. Obviously, vaccinations work.
Sixth, everything you've said comes together when you conflate an unhealthy eating habit with vaccinations, epidemics, and disease. Your regular trips to McDonalds have nothing to do with vaccinations. Both may impact your health (i.e. burgers = fat, vaccinations = prevent disease), but they are very different aspects of your health and should not be conflated. I'm sorry that you have mixed them up.
"You can flame me and Joslin all you want but the fact is no one really knows whats best, they make the best judgement they can based off their experience. Just as every kid that is vaccinated does not become autistic, unvaccinated kids don't instantly get polio. Those are simply the extremes on both sides."
This drives me insane. Your experience, Joslin's experience, and my experiences mean absolutely nothing. People are terrible at "naturally" understanding their world. We are subject to all sorts of issues that cloud our understandings. Such as inaccurate observations (witnesses often remember shit wrong), overgeneralization (I saw x so x must explain everything), selective observation (well I only saw y once, so I can ignore it, x is still everywhere), illogical reasoning (burgers made me fat so vaccinations are bad), and so on. Without systematically and scientifically observing the world, people are pretty terrible at interpreting it.
Science is never 100% but it is a hell of a lot better than your arrogant and reckless guesses. Science is a process that leads us to the closer to the truth. You seem confused on how science works. It starts off with researchers studying experiments that have already been done, and then retesting those experiments or saying, "What is next? What new idea can we make from these previous findings?" Then the medical scientists start their own experiments (often a series of experiments), which include a random sample of participants, which are put into double-blind control and experimental groups (i.e. the neither the researchers nor the participants know which group has gotten the placebo and which one has gotten the stimulus that is hypothesized to create some effect). Then the shit is checked and double checked by other people who have spent their lives developing the skills to properly assess the researchers' methods and results.
The notion that you (without having done any real work) are smarter than people who have dedicated their lives to a particular task is absurd. This is same as me saying, "Oh well, I bet I could build a house. I mean it just takes a hammer and nails and some pipes."
Finally, I hope with all of your anti-pharmaceutical beliefs spent the time to tell your senator to vote no on the recent "right to life bill," which allows the corporations to more easily skip past the FDA (an important verifier for public safety) and sell experimental drugs to the public.