15 ms·

One point I like to make when this topic comes up- Yes, it's unfortunate that people believe bad science linking vaccines to autism. That said, I think it is a

by techdmn 16y ago

One point I like to make when this topic comes up- Yes, it's unfortunate that people believe bad science linking vaccines to autism. That said, I think it is a symptom (at least in the U.S.) of people having very little faith in the F.D.A. or other government agencies responsible for consumer protection.

Mz 16y ago
I hang out in an anti-vax community. I do not have the impression that people generally arrive there by reading some anti-vax study, concluding it is good science and promptly deciding to jump on the band wagon. I hang out there for reasons having nothing to do with being anti-vax and I was very slow to agree with the idea that vaccines are a problem. I did eventually stop getting my annual flu vax. The reason: Every single person or good source of info that was actually helping me get healthier when doctors said it couldn't be done had very strong negative views of vaccines. My decision had nothing whatsoever to do with reading any anti-vax studies or with any personal opinions regarding the FDA or other government agencies. I was getting real world results in terms of solving "unsolvable" health issues and this gave me faith (so to speak) in the opinions of people helping me achieve that.
- MoreMoschops 16y ago
  " I was very slow to agree with the idea that vaccines are a problem." Just out of interest (and without making any statement on what these problems are), would you agree that on a societal level (i.e. I'm not talking about individual unlucky cases where someone has a bad reaction to a vaccination, but in terms of wider society) the problems of not having vaccines (i.e. the problems that would exist had vaccines never been invented) outweigh the problems of having vaccines?
  - Mz 16y ago
    I think that, unfortunately, most people aren't going to do the kinds of things I've done. I don't want vaccines to disappear. I think it should be a choice. As an analogy: I would have almost certainly died without antibiotics during the years that I lived without a diagnosis. Now I am able to combat infection without antibiotics, but I simply didn't have that knowledge for most of my life. So I am not anti-vax per se. But I do find it enormously disturbing, threatening and frustrating for people to a) make sweeping generalizations about the intelligence/thought processes of the anti-vax crowd and b) make sweeping generalizations that they should be required by law and you should have kids taken away if you don't comply. Ideally, I would prefer to make effective alternatives more widely adopted. But I am not happy with the general stance on both sides of this argument that it needs to be an all or nothing approach. The anti-vax crowd wants them outlawed. The pro-vax crowd wants them mandated for everyone. I think both positions are insane. I guess that's a form of saying "yes, I agree" but I'm not really comfortable with your framing of it.
    - nollidge 16y ago
      But what effective alternatives are there?
      - Mz 16y ago
        Some people in the anti-vax crowd believe in doing things like intentionally exposing children to chicken pox. It is much deadlier in adults than in children. (My ex husband had chicken pox in his early thirties. Our kids gave it to him. Good lord, was it much harder on him.) In my experience, lots of infections are very effectively treated with herbs, dietary changes, and so forth -- more effectively than with anti-biotics and similar. Prevention through cultural practices. Older societies frequently have practices like taking your shoes off at the front door and bowing instead of shaking hands. These are generally societies that have had to deal with relatively dense city populations for much longer than most cultures where an epidemic was a serious threat. In my experience, diet and lifestyle go a long way towards providing protection from disease. As I understand it, study after study after study (for heart disease, cancer, etc) agrees with this conclusion.
        anthonyb 16y ago
        Diet and lifestyle are not going to protect you from measles, whooping cough, chickenpox or polio. And why deliberately make your kids sick, when you could just get them vaccinated, with far lower risk of death and injury? http://www.immunizationinfo.org/science/decline-chickenpox-deaths http://www.immunizationinfo.org/science/decline-chickenpox-d...
        Mz 16y ago
        Vaccination is a form of making them sick to protect them. It gives basically limited case of the disease so the body recognizes it and creates anti-bodies. I stopped getting annual flu vaccines as an adult. Frequent vaccines are very common for people with cystic fibrosis (which is what I have). People with CF get sicker and sicker until they die. It is a slow, torturous gruesome thing. For me, it became apparent that drugs and vaccines were causing me harm and contributing to my decline. I worked hard to get off the drugs and I stopped getting vaccines. I am drug free. The hole in my lung has closed. I am getting my life back. Doctors told me "People like you don't get well. Symptom management is the name of the game." For me, there came a point where I had a clear choice between the certain path of doom and the risky path of maybe getting better. I was so miserable, death would have been a welcome alternative to the future ahead of me. I felt it was win/win: Either do something really stupid and die quickly or gradually get better. Both options held more appeal for me than what doctors and all the world were promising me. I can't recall the last time I had a cold. And I routinely nip infection in the bud when exposed to a sick person at work, without having to rely on antibiotics and other conventional drugs. So while I understand your skepticism and don't really expect to win you over, I'm not going to be won over by your view either.
MoreMoschops 16y ago
Which is in itself bizarre. It's as if theses government agencies have been too successful for their own good, and now people have stopped believing in the dangers. Smallpox - eradicated from the face of the earth (barring lab samples). Polio - only 50 years ago, there were tens of thousands of cases in the U.S. Ten years later, after a serious vaccination push, it was down to a bit over a hundred cases. 1979 - last indigenous Polio transmission in the U.S. (globally, it just won't die, in large part thanks to the efforts of religious fruit-loops convincing people it's a plot by the U.S. to sterilise them; we pushed it more or less down to a single country, and now heart-breakingly it's spreading from there again). Whooping cough - beaten down from tens of thousands of deaths to dozens in the U.S., and then cases started rising again when people stopped having their children vaccinated at the start of the 21st century. The list of diseases that no longer present a real daily threat to people goes on and on. Let's have someone big from the relevant government agency on the news telling people that they're killing children by dodging vaccinations.
- tzs 16y ago
  On the other hand, the government agencies have had a tendency in some areas to ignore science when it conflicts with industry interests. For instance, food regulation often puts industry profits ahead of sound nutritional and health concerns, and government climate scientists have had a hard time publishing research that confirms global warming. Given that, I don't think it is that bizarre that people might have developed a general mistrust of these agencies.
  - Mz 16y ago
    You remind me of the incident where President Reagan asked some statistician to work up numbers on how much money could be saved (or some such) if more lead were put into gasoline. He did as he was told but then also looked at the converse: How much it would cost in terms of increased healthcare. Contrary to what Reagan wanted, lead was taken out of gasoline. The statistician basically had to leave the government job he had. I believe he got some kind of award (can't recall if it was a Nobel Prize) that helped him buy a house so he could work as a professor and continue doing research too controversial for government bureaucrats.

by techdmn 16y ago

Mz 16y ago

I hang out in an anti-vax community. I do not have the impression that people generally arrive there by reading some anti-vax study, concluding it is good science and promptly deciding to jump on the band wagon. I hang out there for reasons having nothing to do with being anti-vax and I was very slow to agree with the idea that vaccines are a problem. I did eventually stop getting my annual flu vax. The reason: Every single person or good source of info that was actually helping me get healthier when doctors said it couldn't be done had very strong negative views of vaccines. My decision had nothing whatsoever to do with reading any anti-vax studies or with any personal opinions regarding the FDA or other government agencies. I was getting real world results in terms of solving "unsolvable" health issues and this gave me faith (so to speak) in the opinions of people helping me achieve that.

MoreMoschops 16y ago
" I was very slow to agree with the idea that vaccines are a problem." Just out of interest (and without making any statement on what these problems are), would you agree that on a societal level (i.e. I'm not talking about individual unlucky cases where someone has a bad reaction to a vaccination, but in terms of wider society) the problems of not having vaccines (i.e. the problems that would exist had vaccines never been invented) outweigh the problems of having vaccines?
- Mz 16y ago
  I think that, unfortunately, most people aren't going to do the kinds of things I've done. I don't want vaccines to disappear. I think it should be a choice. As an analogy: I would have almost certainly died without antibiotics during the years that I lived without a diagnosis. Now I am able to combat infection without antibiotics, but I simply didn't have that knowledge for most of my life. So I am not anti-vax per se. But I do find it enormously disturbing, threatening and frustrating for people to a) make sweeping generalizations about the intelligence/thought processes of the anti-vax crowd and b) make sweeping generalizations that they should be required by law and you should have kids taken away if you don't comply. Ideally, I would prefer to make effective alternatives more widely adopted. But I am not happy with the general stance on both sides of this argument that it needs to be an all or nothing approach. The anti-vax crowd wants them outlawed. The pro-vax crowd wants them mandated for everyone. I think both positions are insane. I guess that's a form of saying "yes, I agree" but I'm not really comfortable with your framing of it.
  - nollidge 16y ago
    But what effective alternatives are there?
    - Mz 16y ago
      Some people in the anti-vax crowd believe in doing things like intentionally exposing children to chicken pox. It is much deadlier in adults than in children. (My ex husband had chicken pox in his early thirties. Our kids gave it to him. Good lord, was it much harder on him.) In my experience, lots of infections are very effectively treated with herbs, dietary changes, and so forth -- more effectively than with anti-biotics and similar. Prevention through cultural practices. Older societies frequently have practices like taking your shoes off at the front door and bowing instead of shaking hands. These are generally societies that have had to deal with relatively dense city populations for much longer than most cultures where an epidemic was a serious threat. In my experience, diet and lifestyle go a long way towards providing protection from disease. As I understand it, study after study after study (for heart disease, cancer, etc) agrees with this conclusion.
      - anthonyb 16y ago
        Diet and lifestyle are not going to protect you from measles, whooping cough, chickenpox or polio. And why deliberately make your kids sick, when you could just get them vaccinated, with far lower risk of death and injury? http://www.immunizationinfo.org/science/decline-chickenpox-deaths http://www.immunizationinfo.org/science/decline-chickenpox-d...
        Mz 16y ago
        Vaccination is a form of making them sick to protect them. It gives basically limited case of the disease so the body recognizes it and creates anti-bodies. I stopped getting annual flu vaccines as an adult. Frequent vaccines are very common for people with cystic fibrosis (which is what I have). People with CF get sicker and sicker until they die. It is a slow, torturous gruesome thing. For me, it became apparent that drugs and vaccines were causing me harm and contributing to my decline. I worked hard to get off the drugs and I stopped getting vaccines. I am drug free. The hole in my lung has closed. I am getting my life back. Doctors told me "People like you don't get well. Symptom management is the name of the game." For me, there came a point where I had a clear choice between the certain path of doom and the risky path of maybe getting better. I was so miserable, death would have been a welcome alternative to the future ahead of me. I felt it was win/win: Either do something really stupid and die quickly or gradually get better. Both options held more appeal for me than what doctors and all the world were promising me. I can't recall the last time I had a cold. And I routinely nip infection in the bud when exposed to a sick person at work, without having to rely on antibiotics and other conventional drugs. So while I understand your skepticism and don't really expect to win you over, I'm not going to be won over by your view either.

MoreMoschops 16y ago

Which is in itself bizarre. It's as if theses government agencies have been too successful for their own good, and now people have stopped believing in the dangers. Smallpox - eradicated from the face of the earth (barring lab samples). Polio - only 50 years ago, there were tens of thousands of cases in the U.S. Ten years later, after a serious vaccination push, it was down to a bit over a hundred cases. 1979 - last indigenous Polio transmission in the U.S. (globally, it just won't die, in large part thanks to the efforts of religious fruit-loops convincing people it's a plot by the U.S. to sterilise them; we pushed it more or less down to a single country, and now heart-breakingly it's spreading from there again). Whooping cough - beaten down from tens of thousands of deaths to dozens in the U.S., and then cases started rising again when people stopped having their children vaccinated at the start of the 21st century. The list of diseases that no longer present a real daily threat to people goes on and on. Let's have someone big from the relevant government agency on the news telling people that they're killing children by dodging vaccinations.

tzs 16y ago
On the other hand, the government agencies have had a tendency in some areas to ignore science when it conflicts with industry interests. For instance, food regulation often puts industry profits ahead of sound nutritional and health concerns, and government climate scientists have had a hard time publishing research that confirms global warming. Given that, I don't think it is that bizarre that people might have developed a general mistrust of these agencies.
- Mz 16y ago
  You remind me of the incident where President Reagan asked some statistician to work up numbers on how much money could be saved (or some such) if more lead were put into gasoline. He did as he was told but then also looked at the converse: How much it would cost in terms of increased healthcare. Contrary to what Reagan wanted, lead was taken out of gasoline. The statistician basically had to leave the government job he had. I believe he got some kind of award (can't recall if it was a Nobel Prize) that helped him buy a house so he could work as a professor and continue doing research too controversial for government bureaucrats.