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No matter which side of the debate you're on, I think we can agree giving a child nine vaccines at once is probably not the best idea. We've spread out my sons
by kreek 16y ago
No matter which side of the debate you're on, I think we can agree giving a child nine vaccines at once is probably not the best idea. We've spread out my sons vaccines so he receives all the recommended ones but a few weeks apart.
- carbocation 16y agoHmm, I don't agree prima fascie, that giving multiple vaccinations at once is a bad idea. Empirical evidence is almost always necessary when dealing with clinical questions such as this. (Occasionally, overwhelming logic will suffice. E.g., sure, I agree that there is no need for a clinical trial on parachutes for those jumping out of airplanes.)
- OpieCunningham 16y agoIsn't there overwhelming logic that bombarding a child's immune system with 10 or so strains of disease at one time is not ideal?
- carbocation 16y agoYou can't just prepend "Isn't there overwhelming logic that..." to your opinion and expect me to agree. My exception for "overwhelming logic" was intended to stave off the trivial responses like, "Oh, so you think we should have clinical trials for parachutes."
- OpieCunningham 16y agoIt's not necessary for you to agree. It's just necessary for me to point out that there is overwhelming logic to the concept that injecting large numbers of diseases into a child at one time is not ideal. That is the logical starting position. Perhaps there will be evidence that it poses zero risk or less risk than progressive vaccination. Or perhaps that evidence will never exist.
- carbocation 16y agoObviously medical experts disagree with you, so I cannot say that it is "overwhelmingly logical," at least not to those best equipped to understand this issue. Surely, if enough agree with you, however, then we will consider there to be "clinical equipoise" and trials will be done.
- OpieCunningham 16y agoSo your starting position is that "medical experts", lacking trials, are de-facto correct. That's not logical in and of itself. There are countless examples throughout history of "medical experts" majority opinions being revised down to the level of barbaric - yet at the time they were considered by most people, similar to you, to be de-facto correct.
- carbocation 16y agoWell, yes. In a disagreement, it is much more likely that domain experts are correct than that you are correct. Whenever you find this not to be the case, I would highly encourage you to take full advantage of the substantial opportunity. With regards to "barbaric" medical practice, you seem to be conflating pre-scientific medicine with scientific medicine. "Experts" in ritualistic pre-scientific medicine probably knew no more about disease than did the completely uninformed. They were not "experts" in any meaningful sense. And, indeed, had someone been around practicing evidence-based medicine at that time, they could have completely changed the world. As much fun as it is to talk philosophically about this, there are actually plenty of people who have wondered about vaccine administration. From my reading of the articles, the evidence does not show meaningful adverse effects from the practice of multiple vaccination. I'd encourage you to do your own reading on the topic.
- OpieCunningham 16y ago> With regards to "barbaric" medical practice, you seem to be conflating pre-scientific medicine with scientific medicine. Firstly, no I'm not. Secondly, you seem to believe scientific medicine is effectively infallible. Nearly every day a new study indicates studies performed just a year or two or ten ago are inaccurate. Indeed, that is the very nature of science. What we're discussing here is logic. It is not logical to accept the opinion of a medical expert, particularly without trials. This is precisely why most people will undertake the logical next step and seek a second opinion. Ultimately, certainty is impossible but blind acceptance is rarely ever wise and always illogical.
- istari 16y agoIsn't there overwhelming logic that heavier objects fall faster? After all, force = mass * acceleration, and if there's more mass, there's more force. Isn't it LOGICAL that the immune system will react more rigorously when presented with more strains of diseases, increasing immunity to each of them? You don't answer questions like this based on common sense!
- araneae 16y agoI don't have any empirical evidence about this. However, I do know that activation of the immune system is costly to an individual organism. It uses energy, and this can lead to sub-optimal functioning of other systems. I do not know if giving multiple vaccines at once means that activation of the immune system is greater, but it would seem logical that a larger number of foreign particles in the bloodstream would do that.
- twir 16y agoI don't think we can agree. I'm neither a pediatrician nor a viral pathologist, so I can't lend an opinion to whether spacing out vaccines is good or bad. Unless you're a medical expert, your opinion probably doesn't hold too much value either.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- pavel_lishin 16y agoNot without consulting some experts and doing some actual research.