5 ms·

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.
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
    - bryanlarsen 16y ago
      I hope you realize that it's possible you've killed someone. Perhaps a 6 month old or a 90 year old who's immune system is too weak to respond appropriately to a flu vaccine, and who die by the thousands every year from the flu. Because even though you aren't symptomatic from the flu due to a strong immune system, you are still likely a carrier.
      - Robin_Message 16y ago
        That is uncivil and inappropriate. You can't just push that on someone you don't even know, who obviously has a serious medical condition that they have had a lot of trouble dealing with. Walk in their shoes before you casually call them a killer.
        burgerbrain 16y ago
        Sometimes the truth sucks. You don't do anybody and favors by ignoring it though.
        Mz 16y ago
        The truth can suck -- and also sets you free. I embrace it. It's a big part of how I am getting well. But I am much less of a danger to others these days because I am so much healthier. And other people are still more of a danger to me than I am to them. I still have a compromised immune system. We are all crawling with millions if not billions of microbes. You cannot even digest your food without them. Some microbes that are relatively benign in some populations are very dangerous to others. There are germs that create deadly infections in people with CF that are deemed benign for most normal people. Peace.
- mootothemax 16y ago
  Some people in the anti-vax crowd believe in doing things like intentionally exposing children to chicken pox Sorry, maybe I'm missing something here, but what's the precise difference between that and vaccination?
  - Mz 16y ago
    It is a form of vaccination but many people who are anti-vax are mostly concerned with things like thimersol. That isn't universal. Like any group, there are a wide variety of views within the anti-vax crowd. Some people think that spacing them out is important. Some people think that vaccines are okay as long as they don't have certain additives. Some people think it's not just the additives but the vaccines themselves.
    - ceejayoz 16y ago
      > It is a form of vaccination but many people who are anti-vax are mostly concerned with things like thimersol. http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Concerns/thimerosal/thimerosal_faqs.html http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Concerns/thimerosal/thimero... > No, measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccines do not and never did contain thimerosal. Varicella (chickenpox), inactivated polio (IPV), and pneumococcal conjugate vaccines have also never contained thimerosal. Additionally, you get more mercury from breathing in pollution from coal burning power plants than you ever will from vaccinations.
      - Mz 16y ago
        Folks who are concerned about things like thimersol are typically also very concerned about other sources of metal poisoning. And that's a whole other ball of wax that's quite controversial.
        ceejayoz 16y ago
        Avoiding vaccinations due to scientifically unsupported fears (and often blatantly wrong information, like that MMR ever had thimerosal) about mercury and other preservatives is like avoiding breathing to prevent pollution poisoning. Neither one makes much sense.
- nollidge 16y ago
  Why on earth should I care about your experience? I'm not trying to be rude - really, how can you expect your subjective experience to be of any use to me or anyone else? Human cognition and memory are fraught with a multitude of common fallacies and biases. Such as post hoc ergo propter hoc - just because a symptom went away when you did treatment A, doesn't mean treatment A caused anything to happen. This all being the case, we have with scientific methods in order to overcome these annoying biases. None of which are perfect, of course, but they are vastly preferable to, "trust me! it seemed to work for me!" All of which is to say: show me the evidence. "I got better!" is not convincing. Cultural practices: Which cultures? When? Was there any evidence that certain diseases were present but did not spread as quickly as in other societies? Also: let's not move the goalposts. You're absolutely correct that diet and lifestyle have an effect on heart disease risk, and to a lesser extent on cancer (besides the obvious, like smoking), but those are not infectious diseases. And I'm sure there's a protective effect to diet and lifestyle on the capacity of the immune system, but is it anywhere near as effective as vaccination?
  - Mz 16y ago
    "Cite your sources or speak from firsthand experience" is a standard I have long been accustomed to in certain online forums. Since I do not know anyone who has gotten well like I have after being so very sick, I frequently speak from first hand experience. I am well aware that my experience flies in the face of what most people understand to be true. In some circles, my experience as someone who has had steady forward progress for 10 years straight is viewed as a credential. I am well aware not everyone views it that way. Cultural practices: In Africa, for I believe ebola (see the book "The Hot Zone"), tribal elders barricaded the roads into and out of the area, told their people "do not go to the white man's hospital (because you would go with a broken leg and die of infection) and quarantined sick people to their huts. They would leave food outside the door. If the food stayed there too many days, they burned the hut to the ground without going in to check if anyone was still alive. This finally contained the problem when modern/western/conventional medicine was failing to do so. Historically in the US, it was common practice to contain the spread of venereal disease by getting the names of all your prior sexual contacts and contacting them to make sure they got treatment if necessary. This went out of fashion with the advent of AIDS, probably because it was in America primarily a disease of gays and IV drug users who had good reason to not want to give up those names. My understanding is this is part of what fueled the search for a vaccine for AIDS. During the plague in Europe, flea markets were born of a desire to keep traveling sales people and their fleas out of the city to try to prevent the spread of the plague. Farmers would leave their goods by the side of the road and leave a dish filled with vinegar. Buyers would take food and leave coins in the vinegar, to try to kill the infection so the farmers wouldn't catch it. Cooking is so widespread it is not really viewed as specifically intended to prevent the spread of disease. But undercooked or raw meat is well known to spread infection. Similarly, monogamy is a very widespread cultural value, in part because it helps reduce the spread of disease. The name "malaria" basically means "bad air". They did not know what caused it but did understand that you got it from visiting the swamps. One practice was to live in the mountains to try to not be exposed to "bad air". Since mosquitoes don't typically go up to higher altitudes, this was somewhat effective in protecting people. A "gin and tonic" was developed as a means to protect against malaria. Europeans who were living in Africa would drink a gin and tonic nightly in hopes of killing the infection before it was too developed to effectively treat. Similarly, in Europe during the middle ages, it was standard practice to drink alcohol with dinner instead of water because the well water was usually not safe to drink. It was too filled with bacteria. There are many ways in which cultures prevent the spread of disease using cultural or lifestyle practices in place of drugs and vaccines. Diseases like AIDS have proven so far to be much harder to treat than to avoid getting by just not engaging in certain practices. As for goalposts, sorry, but my mental model is different from yours. For example, I believe cancer is most likely viral and is thus infectious, though it doesn't spread rapidly like a cold. Human papilloma virus is known to cause cervical cancer and this is why women get annual pap smears -- to test for it. Women who have had more than X number of partners (IIRC, 20 partners) are at increased risk of getting cervical cancer because it is caused by a virus which is hard to catch but is apparently sexually transmissible. Warts and cold sores are also caused by virii and cause "growths" on the body, similar to the way cancer causes tumors. Mulloskum (sp?) is a viral infection which causes growths on the skin similar to skin tags. These growths are described in the literature as "benign tumors". Diet, certain herbs and supplements, and an eye towards body chemistry can prevent viral infection and/or effectively treat it, something modern medicine generally does a poor job of. So, yes, I believe these things can be not only as effective but more effective than vaccines, antibiotics and other modern drugs.
- rue 16y ago
  > Some people in the anti-vax crowd believe in doing things like intentionally exposing children to chicken pox. Up here in the northern EU, where there's really no discernible anti-vaccination movement, chicken pox isn't usually vaccinated against, since it's a very harmless disease when undergone at the correct age (2-13 or so?). The vaccination obviously exists, and I think it's sometimes recommended for people – particularly women – who have not had the pox in their childhood. I recall having intentionally been sent to play at a friend's house when he had it, and then ensuring my brother also contracted it. The idea isn't particularly revolutionary. I'm not sure whether your cultural examples really derive from disease avoidance (for example, I don't wear shoes indoors because it's simply not necessary for foot protection), but I suppose they could be – at least in that societies with such customs could have been more likely to make it through epidemics. I'd also worry about the youngish trend of ultrahygiene. Trying to disinfect everything and using antibiotics willy-nilly is counterproductive, especially for children who can't exercise their immunity by eating dirt every now and then. The best protection against disease is a good immune system.
  - Mz 16y ago
    The idea isn't particularly revolutionary. I realize it's not. It's quite old fashioned. Just trying my best to answer the question someone asked me. I'm about to get offline as I need my rest. Later.
- helmut_hed 16y ago
  It's my understanding that there is no vaccine against chicken pox, and the greater severity of it in adulthood (and consequent wisdom of deliberately exposing children) is understood by many in the, ah, "pro-vax" community. So it's not really an anti-vaccine argument that people do this.

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.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
  - bryanlarsen 16y ago
    I hope you realize that it's possible you've killed someone. Perhaps a 6 month old or a 90 year old who's immune system is too weak to respond appropriately to a flu vaccine, and who die by the thousands every year from the flu. Because even though you aren't symptomatic from the flu due to a strong immune system, you are still likely a carrier.
    - Robin_Message 16y ago
      That is uncivil and inappropriate. You can't just push that on someone you don't even know, who obviously has a serious medical condition that they have had a lot of trouble dealing with. Walk in their shoes before you casually call them a killer.
      - burgerbrain 16y ago
        Sometimes the truth sucks. You don't do anybody and favors by ignoring it though.
        Mz 16y ago
        The truth can suck -- and also sets you free. I embrace it. It's a big part of how I am getting well. But I am much less of a danger to others these days because I am so much healthier. And other people are still more of a danger to me than I am to them. I still have a compromised immune system. We are all crawling with millions if not billions of microbes. You cannot even digest your food without them. Some microbes that are relatively benign in some populations are very dangerous to others. There are germs that create deadly infections in people with CF that are deemed benign for most normal people. Peace.
mootothemax 16y ago
Some people in the anti-vax crowd believe in doing things like intentionally exposing children to chicken pox Sorry, maybe I'm missing something here, but what's the precise difference between that and vaccination?
- Mz 16y ago
  It is a form of vaccination but many people who are anti-vax are mostly concerned with things like thimersol. That isn't universal. Like any group, there are a wide variety of views within the anti-vax crowd. Some people think that spacing them out is important. Some people think that vaccines are okay as long as they don't have certain additives. Some people think it's not just the additives but the vaccines themselves.
  - ceejayoz 16y ago
    > It is a form of vaccination but many people who are anti-vax are mostly concerned with things like thimersol. http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Concerns/thimerosal/thimerosal_faqs.html http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Concerns/thimerosal/thimero... > No, measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccines do not and never did contain thimerosal. Varicella (chickenpox), inactivated polio (IPV), and pneumococcal conjugate vaccines have also never contained thimerosal. Additionally, you get more mercury from breathing in pollution from coal burning power plants than you ever will from vaccinations.
    - Mz 16y ago
      Folks who are concerned about things like thimersol are typically also very concerned about other sources of metal poisoning. And that's a whole other ball of wax that's quite controversial.
      - ceejayoz 16y ago
        Avoiding vaccinations due to scientifically unsupported fears (and often blatantly wrong information, like that MMR ever had thimerosal) about mercury and other preservatives is like avoiding breathing to prevent pollution poisoning. Neither one makes much sense.
nollidge 16y ago
Why on earth should I care about your experience? I'm not trying to be rude - really, how can you expect your subjective experience to be of any use to me or anyone else? Human cognition and memory are fraught with a multitude of common fallacies and biases. Such as post hoc ergo propter hoc - just because a symptom went away when you did treatment A, doesn't mean treatment A caused anything to happen. This all being the case, we have with scientific methods in order to overcome these annoying biases. None of which are perfect, of course, but they are vastly preferable to, "trust me! it seemed to work for me!" All of which is to say: show me the evidence. "I got better!" is not convincing. Cultural practices: Which cultures? When? Was there any evidence that certain diseases were present but did not spread as quickly as in other societies? Also: let's not move the goalposts. You're absolutely correct that diet and lifestyle have an effect on heart disease risk, and to a lesser extent on cancer (besides the obvious, like smoking), but those are not infectious diseases. And I'm sure there's a protective effect to diet and lifestyle on the capacity of the immune system, but is it anywhere near as effective as vaccination?
- Mz 16y ago
  "Cite your sources or speak from firsthand experience" is a standard I have long been accustomed to in certain online forums. Since I do not know anyone who has gotten well like I have after being so very sick, I frequently speak from first hand experience. I am well aware that my experience flies in the face of what most people understand to be true. In some circles, my experience as someone who has had steady forward progress for 10 years straight is viewed as a credential. I am well aware not everyone views it that way. Cultural practices: In Africa, for I believe ebola (see the book "The Hot Zone"), tribal elders barricaded the roads into and out of the area, told their people "do not go to the white man's hospital (because you would go with a broken leg and die of infection) and quarantined sick people to their huts. They would leave food outside the door. If the food stayed there too many days, they burned the hut to the ground without going in to check if anyone was still alive. This finally contained the problem when modern/western/conventional medicine was failing to do so. Historically in the US, it was common practice to contain the spread of venereal disease by getting the names of all your prior sexual contacts and contacting them to make sure they got treatment if necessary. This went out of fashion with the advent of AIDS, probably because it was in America primarily a disease of gays and IV drug users who had good reason to not want to give up those names. My understanding is this is part of what fueled the search for a vaccine for AIDS. During the plague in Europe, flea markets were born of a desire to keep traveling sales people and their fleas out of the city to try to prevent the spread of the plague. Farmers would leave their goods by the side of the road and leave a dish filled with vinegar. Buyers would take food and leave coins in the vinegar, to try to kill the infection so the farmers wouldn't catch it. Cooking is so widespread it is not really viewed as specifically intended to prevent the spread of disease. But undercooked or raw meat is well known to spread infection. Similarly, monogamy is a very widespread cultural value, in part because it helps reduce the spread of disease. The name "malaria" basically means "bad air". They did not know what caused it but did understand that you got it from visiting the swamps. One practice was to live in the mountains to try to not be exposed to "bad air". Since mosquitoes don't typically go up to higher altitudes, this was somewhat effective in protecting people. A "gin and tonic" was developed as a means to protect against malaria. Europeans who were living in Africa would drink a gin and tonic nightly in hopes of killing the infection before it was too developed to effectively treat. Similarly, in Europe during the middle ages, it was standard practice to drink alcohol with dinner instead of water because the well water was usually not safe to drink. It was too filled with bacteria. There are many ways in which cultures prevent the spread of disease using cultural or lifestyle practices in place of drugs and vaccines. Diseases like AIDS have proven so far to be much harder to treat than to avoid getting by just not engaging in certain practices. As for goalposts, sorry, but my mental model is different from yours. For example, I believe cancer is most likely viral and is thus infectious, though it doesn't spread rapidly like a cold. Human papilloma virus is known to cause cervical cancer and this is why women get annual pap smears -- to test for it. Women who have had more than X number of partners (IIRC, 20 partners) are at increased risk of getting cervical cancer because it is caused by a virus which is hard to catch but is apparently sexually transmissible. Warts and cold sores are also caused by virii and cause "growths" on the body, similar to the way cancer causes tumors. Mulloskum (sp?) is a viral infection which causes growths on the skin similar to skin tags. These growths are described in the literature as "benign tumors". Diet, certain herbs and supplements, and an eye towards body chemistry can prevent viral infection and/or effectively treat it, something modern medicine generally does a poor job of. So, yes, I believe these things can be not only as effective but more effective than vaccines, antibiotics and other modern drugs.
rue 16y ago
> Some people in the anti-vax crowd believe in doing things like intentionally exposing children to chicken pox. Up here in the northern EU, where there's really no discernible anti-vaccination movement, chicken pox isn't usually vaccinated against, since it's a very harmless disease when undergone at the correct age (2-13 or so?). The vaccination obviously exists, and I think it's sometimes recommended for people – particularly women – who have not had the pox in their childhood. I recall having intentionally been sent to play at a friend's house when he had it, and then ensuring my brother also contracted it. The idea isn't particularly revolutionary. I'm not sure whether your cultural examples really derive from disease avoidance (for example, I don't wear shoes indoors because it's simply not necessary for foot protection), but I suppose they could be – at least in that societies with such customs could have been more likely to make it through epidemics. I'd also worry about the youngish trend of ultrahygiene. Trying to disinfect everything and using antibiotics willy-nilly is counterproductive, especially for children who can't exercise their immunity by eating dirt every now and then. The best protection against disease is a good immune system.
- Mz 16y ago
  The idea isn't particularly revolutionary. I realize it's not. It's quite old fashioned. Just trying my best to answer the question someone asked me. I'm about to get offline as I need my rest. Later.
helmut_hed 16y ago
It's my understanding that there is no vaccine against chicken pox, and the greater severity of it in adulthood (and consequent wisdom of deliberately exposing children) is understood by many in the, ah, "pro-vax" community. So it's not really an anti-vaccine argument that people do this.