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" 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), woul

" 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.
        ceejayoz 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. Hardly. Many vaccines are made up of dead virus particles. A dead virus cannot cause disease. It causes an immune response, but immune responses are not diseases. Tree pollen triggers an immune response in me, but that doesn't mean I'm getting a disease every spring.
- MoreMoschops 16y ago
  I really, really don't want to start a flame war here, and I'm trying very hard not to make any statements about any individuals or even groups of individuals. I thought my framing of it was pretty even-handed, but fair enough. I wasn't aware that there were any serious effective alternatives to vaccination (besides living in a sterile bubble) and I just did a quick search. Obviously it has been only the most superficial look, but I'm seeing things like homeopathy and acupuncture recommended (as well as changes in diet, which I think is very optimistic indeed when confronted with the horrors of Polio), and at risk of offending, I'm still not convinced there are any effective alternatives. Of course, it was only a brief search, so I'm by no means stating that there aren't any; just that they're not in the top of the google list :) However, this is at risk of turning into an off-topic digression and, even worse, one of those vaccer vs. anti-vaccer flame wars. Back on topic, go go Bill Gates. If he decides to spend his fortune killing a disease, I for one will consider the years of putting up with MS Windows an extremely good deal. I bet I wasn't careful enough and I've sparked a war now. :(
  - Mz 16y ago
    No, you've been very polite and I am not inclined towards flame wars. It's just obvious you are coming from an assumption that skipping vaccines is a bad idea. I've replied to another poster regarding alternatives. I see no reason to repeat that here. (FWIW: If anyone gets downvoted into hell, it will be me. HN has a long history of being very strongly pro-vaccine. That is unlikely to change any time soon.)
    - shadowsun7 16y ago
      HN has a long history of being very strongly pro-vaccine. No. HN has a long history of being pro-evidence. (As opposed to being pro-vaccine). If you give us strong, irrefutable evidence that vaccines cause harm, and you give us an alternative that is - again - proven to be comparable, there is a high probability that we would all turn on a dime.
      - Mz 16y ago
        I've participated in threads like this before. I can't find the quote, but someone once said something to me along the lines of "They disagree with you because it is an insanely stupid position." It got lots of upvotes. So I believe the view here is biased in a pro-vaccine way. Most of the conversations here concerning vaccines don't dispassionately discuss the facts. Instead, they routinely make sweeping negative characterizations of the anti-vax crowd. It's always a pleasure when someone here asks genuinely interested questions concerning my views. But a lot of the replies (to me and to others who are not anti-vax) are basically attacking and dismissive.
- lukeschlather 16y ago
  > 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. That's completely the opposite of a vaccine. Antibiotics are heavy-handed cures that quickly make a problem go away while potentially causing more problems for you and everyone else down the line. Fighting infections without antibiotics is backed by sound science.

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.
      - ceejayoz 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. Hardly. Many vaccines are made up of dead virus particles. A dead virus cannot cause disease. It causes an immune response, but immune responses are not diseases. Tree pollen triggers an immune response in me, but that doesn't mean I'm getting a disease every spring.
MoreMoschops 16y ago
I really, really don't want to start a flame war here, and I'm trying very hard not to make any statements about any individuals or even groups of individuals. I thought my framing of it was pretty even-handed, but fair enough. I wasn't aware that there were any serious effective alternatives to vaccination (besides living in a sterile bubble) and I just did a quick search. Obviously it has been only the most superficial look, but I'm seeing things like homeopathy and acupuncture recommended (as well as changes in diet, which I think is very optimistic indeed when confronted with the horrors of Polio), and at risk of offending, I'm still not convinced there are any effective alternatives. Of course, it was only a brief search, so I'm by no means stating that there aren't any; just that they're not in the top of the google list :) However, this is at risk of turning into an off-topic digression and, even worse, one of those vaccer vs. anti-vaccer flame wars. Back on topic, go go Bill Gates. If he decides to spend his fortune killing a disease, I for one will consider the years of putting up with MS Windows an extremely good deal. I bet I wasn't careful enough and I've sparked a war now. :(
- Mz 16y ago
  No, you've been very polite and I am not inclined towards flame wars. It's just obvious you are coming from an assumption that skipping vaccines is a bad idea. I've replied to another poster regarding alternatives. I see no reason to repeat that here. (FWIW: If anyone gets downvoted into hell, it will be me. HN has a long history of being very strongly pro-vaccine. That is unlikely to change any time soon.)
  - shadowsun7 16y ago
    HN has a long history of being very strongly pro-vaccine. No. HN has a long history of being pro-evidence. (As opposed to being pro-vaccine). If you give us strong, irrefutable evidence that vaccines cause harm, and you give us an alternative that is - again - proven to be comparable, there is a high probability that we would all turn on a dime.
    - Mz 16y ago
      I've participated in threads like this before. I can't find the quote, but someone once said something to me along the lines of "They disagree with you because it is an insanely stupid position." It got lots of upvotes. So I believe the view here is biased in a pro-vaccine way. Most of the conversations here concerning vaccines don't dispassionately discuss the facts. Instead, they routinely make sweeping negative characterizations of the anti-vax crowd. It's always a pleasure when someone here asks genuinely interested questions concerning my views. But a lot of the replies (to me and to others who are not anti-vax) are basically attacking and dismissive.
lukeschlather 16y ago
> 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. That's completely the opposite of a vaccine. Antibiotics are heavy-handed cures that quickly make a problem go away while potentially causing more problems for you and everyone else down the line. Fighting infections without antibiotics is backed by sound science.