No.

No, what's happening is you posting incredibly bad arguments and then passive-aggressively complaining about how other posters might mislabel you as an "anti-vaxxer" even though that hasn't actually happened yet. And I get that I'm not being enormously civil about it, but hearing tales of people tinkering with their kid's healthcare because they watched a few youtubes is exasperating to the point where your feels become less important than the need to call out people who foolishly put children's health at risk.

But ok, if it's important to acknowledge, then yeah I will grant you that your friend isn't as dumb as Jenny McCarthy. We can construct a scale of bad ideas where 1 is a grandmaster chess player making a game-losing move and the "vaccines cause autism" is a 10. I'll agree that going against evidence-based medicine by adjusting vaccine schedules is less than a 10. But it's closer to a 10 than a 1.

If everyone breathes tetanus. And breathing tetanus gives you immunity to tetanus. Then everyone is immune to tetanus.

The bacteria endospores are everywhere, and you don't build an immune response to endospores. The bacteria itself is anaerobic and has a difficult time catching hold in the human body (fortunately). If the bacteria does take hold your body will go through the normal process of destroying the cells. That process also happens to release the real badass in this story.

The immunization we are talking about is to the endotoxin tetanospasmin (released by cell lysis). If you have enough of the endotoxin in your system that your immune system is producing an immune response to it, you are ****ed. Your immune system cannot naturally build a defense fast enough to this toxin to prevent it from doing massive damage (40% fatality rate once symptomatic). You are talking about a toxin that has one of the lowest lethal doses known.

Goddamn anaerobes. You little ****s lost a billion years ago, get over it.

Yes, but the science is also addressing the issues of Y and Z and is coming up empty. Also, I'm even willing to consider there's some weird variable Q out there that science isn't actually considering.

What system of knowledge is considering Q? How are we figuring out what Q is and how bad it is if not by science?

Ah, at the name calling already.

Yes, you can get it again. You can get any disease more than once, but the likelihood that you will decreases of course. But your body does naturally produce an immunity to tetanus. There's been more than one study I can think of on this topic. Here's one from a reliable source:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6...t=AbstractPlus

I fully understand that. The problem with tetanus is when it enters our blood stream. But I appreciate the post nonetheless.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6...t=AbstractPlus

But the people in the study, unlike people who have been recently vaccinated for tetanus, were not immune to tetanus. Measurable levels of tetanus antitoxin is nice and all, but being immune to tetanus seems better.

I think you have a point in that the benefits of vaccination are probably overstated and much of the devastation of prior outbreaks are either avoided due to better sanitation or mitigated due to better treatment. But, yeah, allergies are just like autism in that if you look for it, you'll find a lot more of it. Of course there are real serious allergies, but if you are around kids, you know concern out of proportion to the danger.

Talking about the money is being paranoid imo. I think money affects some things in medicine, but this is somewhat indirect and I trust that there are independent studies of vaccines.

The bottom line imo, is if you don't have the expertise yourself or very specific reasons then going with the opinion of those in the position to have the best opinion is wise.

Did you listen to that podcast? I'm curious about why this is such an important issue to you and if you aren't emotionally engaged in it for some reason other than just vaccination. Now I know that sounds like me being a jerk, but I don't mean it that way. I think it's pretty clear that for everyone emotion plays a big part in their positions on issues that are important to them.

No, they aren't. If you really believe that, then that's just a kooky as someone who believes aliens implanted us here as an experiment, or any other conspiracy theory or religion.

My father died from prescription medicine that was scientifically and medically "proven" to work and get rid of X disease. It turns out they were wrong and pulled that drug several years later. I'm not anti-science, I'm anti-belief. And it's foolish and arrogant to think we have an understanding of all the consequences when clearly there's countless amounts of evidence that we don't. It's our ego's and our arrogance that believe we live in some magical time where we have some perfect scientific understanding. But the truth is, science is always proving itself wrong. At least they are open to being wrong. Are you?

500 years from now, this is all going to all look as kooky as witch doctoring. That doesn't mean that we don't use what we've learned and continue to improve our understanding. But if we don't do that without continuing to question what we hold as true, we all fail. Do you want the long or short list of what the medical community held as absolute truth?

Do vaccines work for what they are intended? Yes. Can there be more issues caused than issues resolved from vaccination? My answer is, more than likely yes. I'm not sure why that's so hard to comprehend.

Also any decent breeder (which she probably wasn't using) 1) wouldn't have parvo in their kennel 2) would not sell a puppy to someone who would not get the animal fixed and vaccinated and 3) would not risk their puppy getting their other puppies sick.

Anyway, none of that really matters.

Ok, I will after this.

You continue to conflate "not every single vaccine and every single detail of vaccination is perfect" with "taking vaccines is dumb." You even do that in your last little "I have granted that" where you are referring to "The possibility that vaccines are needless."

You don't read posts that you are arguing with. You're way too humorless, intense and uncompromising to deal with. I doubt you mind being called that, so it shouldn't count as a personal attack.

He's on the Great Crusade Against Woo; these people are everywhere. But spend too long fighting dragons, and you become the dragon yourself...

Nice quote...

In some thing science is going to be proven wrong. Some things like evolution and earth revolved around the sun are a lock. Prescription medicines (and vaccines) can be complicated an imperfectly understood. No, they aren't laws of physics which can be so perfectly calculated that spacecraft can be sent looping around various planets and end up just where we want them passing by moons of Jupiter or something. But, they go with the preponderance of the evidence at the time. Isn't it better to generally assume they are right than wrong?

This is just a fallacy. There are counter examples, but in general, there has been steady progress in understanding. Ripping your chest open to unblock a valve would be horrible now, but it's still not witch doctoring. In 500 years, a balloon angioplasty would probably be terrible medicine, but to people looking back at us it will still look like a rational decision.


My question is why you think it's more than likely rather than just a possibility. I'm really not interested in what you think of whatever studies though, more like why you think you are in a good position to make that judgement.

Saying yes to both of these is fine.

Its the "more than likely" part that gets me. If scientific evidence can't explain why a vaccine's negative issues outweigh the positive ones, what type of evidence possibly could? What non-scientific method does one employ to figure out that a vaccination is unwarranted?

This is all I need to know to understand where you're coming from.

People with these experiences, or the anti-vax parents whose kids have autism, are forming judgments based on emotion; logic and reason aren't gonna get you very far.

I wish I was aware of the shingles vaccine years ago. I got shingles in November 2010 IN MY ****ING EYE. It spread across the right side of my face and head and was the worst thing I have ever experienced. It was the one time in my life I was able to understand why someone would rather die than live with severe pain (not that I wanted to die).

Now, years later, I have a scar on my cornea that has slowly grown to the point where it's messing up my vision. I have started taking four steroid drops per day to stop the growth (goal is to kill blood vessels in the scar), but because the drops can increase the risk of a recurrence of shingles, I have to take an antiviral medication twice a day (herpes medication!). That medication increases the risk of kidney disease. The scar will never go away unless I have a cornea transplant, though if it stays as is (you can actually see it easily), I just need a stronger glasses prescription. I might have to be on the drops and pills the rest of my life.

Seeing the doctor again this week, hope the drops have done the trick.

**** SHINGLES

But hey, you did it the natural way so grats!

damn

dlk,

Yikes, that sucks. GL. My FIL had shingles and it was extremely painful. I didn't know there was a vaccine. How old are you dlk? Apparently it's recommended for people over 60.

Forced vaccinations are "un-American". If I believed in "civil rights", I think I would have to side with pro-choice on the matter.

What are the odds of contracting polio? Like being hit by lighting? Driving your car to work in the rain and suffering a fatal accident? Less? Meh...

One of those things is easily prevented from happening tho.

I mean...it would be nice to have a kid that could crush blackjack... lol jk