3 ms·
The acrimonious and often zealous tone taken by many doesn't help matters either. What you just wrote was nuanced, and there's very little room for nuance recen
by rl3 10y ago
The acrimonious and often zealous tone taken by many doesn't help matters either. What you just wrote was nuanced, and there's very little room for nuance recently. Most of what qualifies as discourse today simply degenerates into a shouting match with each side not giving an inch.
For example: compulsory vaccination via mandate, coercion, exclusion, or otherwise. While there are compelling motivations to pursue such ends for the greater social good, doing so is a slippery slope fraught with the risk of trampling individual medical freedoms in the process, such as informed consent.
I've seen people on the latter side of that argument treated as if they were analogous to axe murderers for even suggesting anything but 100% compliance, all the while being shouted down by the angry mob.
The fact is, vaccinations carry the risk of very rare but sometimes serious adverse reactions. As long as that remains true, there can be no absolute moral high-ground when demanding compulsory vaccination.
In the current climate however, stating such a position outside of tiny civilized bubbles like HN is tantamount to heresy. I suspect when the autism link was debunked, many people conflated this to mean vaccines were completely safe, when in fact they're simply very safe.
- noir_lord 10y ago> What you just wrote was nuanced, and there's very little room for nuance recently. It certainly seems like that has become the case though I wonder if it's always been like that and modern technology just exposes it better. > "Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance" I saw a stand up comedian misquote that as "Tyranny is the absence of nuance" which I think I actually preferred. As for your point on the vaccination thing, yes there are absolutely is a debate somewhere in there about compulsory vaccinations and medical freedom, that debate should always be on-going since in such issues there are rarely absolutes, I wouldn't want them to be settled since settled issues never get revisited. This is something I've noticed with politics, people hold a position, that position comes to dominance and then they are surprised when it back tracks from their point of view, I'm not sure why they find this suprising it's not like the arrow of progress is one way and while we are talking about the 'arrow of progress' whos arrow and what is progress. Politics (and the vaccination thing runs slap bang into it) is absolutely messy and chaotic, that's just how the sausage gets made I think.
- sqeaky 10y agoI am afraid I fall into one of these extreme camps. I don't see room for a gray area on this issues like I can on other issues. I see no practical downside and lots of benefit to vaccines. Children, plural, Children have died in my home city because of this anti-scientific attitude and the "serious side-effects" are either non-existent or so rare as to not be worth discussing. There is no link with autism, and this is the main point that most anti-vaxxers use. Once you get to real side-effects you get to things that literally have around a 1 million chance for mild side effects, and much less frequent for serious. The risk of most diseases is much higher than the the risk of its vaccine, so it makes sense for that individual and it makes for the population. I really don't see any wiggle room on this one and I don't understand this recent softness towards anti-vaccination. When real deaths are on the line in much higher percentages than any real side-effects there is definitely a moral high ground. Let's revisit the vaccine issue one the diseases are gone, I don't see a need to vaccinate in North America for smallpox or polio and if we organized well we could make that the case for many other things we vaccinate for.
- coding123 10y agoHere is the gray area, for a gander: http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/feb/03/bob-sears/what-cdc-statistics-say-about-vaccine-illnesses-in/ http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/feb/03/... This article is Pro-vaccine and agrees with the reported death count in 2014, for example at 122. In the case of vaccines I live completely in the gray areas. For example, there are something like 80 vaccines automatically given to children. Why don't we limit that to the vaccines that are absolutely necessary? Also pet vaccines, totally important to not over-vaccinate. Many of them include adjuvants that have a high correlation to sarcomas that appear in the injection site, cause cancer and kills the pet. My wife worked in vet hospitals and there was a much much lower rate of pet killings in the clinics that use adjuvant free vaccines.
- tmoertel 10y agoI'd like to read more on the cancer and pet vaccines issue. Can you point me toward any good journal articles?