Quick question: How does one pray “Hard?” This begs the question: Can one pray “soft” or “easy?” Why would anybody pray easy? Actually, why would anyone pray at all, with no substantial results always the result? 
/Hijak/
There was no vaccination against mumps at that time. Most kids got them. I suppose the male children could have pursued vaccinations as adults, but I don’t know of anyone who’s done that if they didn’t get infected as kids. Anyone?
That sounds like something a Muslim would say, minus the rollseyes. I don’t think any have chimed in this thread yet, although I could be mistaken.
Wow, I had no idea such rumors were going around about American products. I look at this in the same way as I look at the controversy over the HPV vaccine – lots of fundamentalist Christians don’t want their girls to get a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer because they’re afraid it will turn them into little sluts, or something. It’s very sad. We’re talking about human health here.
I disagree. Most people do get their kids vaccinated today. There are some who were avoiding a particular vaccine due to the autism scares, but for the most part, people vaccinate their children. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25628-2004Jul29.html
The OP is talking about Britain, where enough have been scared off to cause overall levels to fall dangerously low: BBC NEWS | Health | Ratings show 'worrying levels' for MMR and BBC NEWS | UK | England | First measles death for 14 years for example.
Right. Because people in this thread are simply falling all over themselves trying to explain or excuse the “doctor’s” reasoning.
You fucking retard.
Gotchya.
Christian martyr cleanup in aisle 5.
Historically, having a few children exempted from vaccination requirements on the basis of the parents’ beliefs has not affected public health in a major way - because the immunity of the greater “herd” protected everyone, even the unvaccinated kids.
Increasingly these days, both extreme religious views and false propaganda about vaccine risks are threatening to significantly increase the number of children who go unvaccinated. In Britain, if larger numbers of Muslim children go without vaccination, both their health and the health of non-Muslim children will be affected. More on “herd immunity” here.
“In any resulting epidemic, (researchers and public health authorities) point out, not only children who are unvaccinated because of parental objections may fall ill, but also children who could not be immunized for medical reasons and the small number of vaccinated children in any population whose immunizations don’t give them full protection.”
I don’t know how feasible (scientifically and economically) it is to gear up a subset of halal vaccine production. But I think it’s stupid and criminal to put kids at risk, because you and some of your co-religionists think that the prohibition against “consuming” products from animals who haven’t been ritually killed, extends to vaccines.
At least one Islamic doctor quoted in the link in the OP doesn’t consider vaccines unacceptable, though it’s unclear how influential he is.
Oh, and since I pitted psychiatrist Dr. Abdul Katme, that glowing example of mental health, I should name the other vaccine villain - Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who collected enormous sums from a lawyers’ group and whose flawed study in the journal Lancet scared many British parents away from vaccination and caused a spike in measles cases.
Or how effective that would be. The OP also mentions that Muslims in Nigeria, Pakistan, and a few other places have refused vaccines because they think they’ve been deliberatly altered to induce infertility. I suspect that assurances from Western doctors that the vaccines are halal would be met with a lot of skepticism in some parte parts of the world.
Uhhh … I’m Jewish.
And … yeah, not vaccinating your kids is stupid.
Well, that just makes your last post to this thread twice as stupid, then.
How about assurances from Muslim doctors? I suspect it wouldn’t be hard to find some sane docs willing to support a halal vaccine - and religious leaders prepared to evaluate any vaccine as conforming to halal.
If polio rates start going up in those countries, I’m sure somebody will blame the West or the Jews. Religious ignorance is bad enough, but when you start compromising other peoples’ lives out of your stupidity it’s unforgiveable.
Hmm. There’s the Muslim Doctors and Dentists Association, whose latest newsletter focuses on the devout Muslim’s ecological obligations and on mental health issues facing British Muslim children and adolescents. They hold regular health clinics. They look like a real organization.
The Islamic Medical Association of the UK appears to consist of a Word document on someone else’s webpage. They don’t have numbers about their members, but the only concrete accomplishment they list in this Word document is, “We established before an Islamic health clinic in Ankpa/Nigeria, which offered a good medical service to a large number of patients there for many years.” In other words, something that they did many years ago and is now defunct.
All the rest of their accomplishments consist of going to meetings or giving interviews or issuing position statements.
Is there any reason to believe that the IMA of the UK consists of more than one crackpot who’s very good at getting in the news?
Daniel
I don’t know about Muslims, but as for Jews, no. This has been gone over many times before: in a choice between saving your life and keeping kosher, Jewish law says essentially, “don’t be a schmuck, save your life.”
Dr. Katme is listed as spokesman on the subject of halal meat and food for the Muslim Council of Britain, which looks like more than a “crackpot” group.
It’d be nice if his fellow Muslims dismissed his views on the vaccine issue. Unfortunately I can think of more than a few spokesmen for various religious and ethnic groups who regularly issue crackpotoid statements but have substantial followings in their communities.
If it should suit the political and cultural aims of a religious group for 1000 angels to fit on the head of a pin, then that is how many they will declare fit. If it should suit them for only 10 to fit, then that is how many they will declare fit.
So with this particular sort of moslem, so with halal. You’re asking the wrong question.
In fact, if you’re in a situation where consuming a medicine derived from non-kosher animals will save your life, you’re required by Jewish law to set aside the kosher issue and take the medicine. Same thing applies if you’re starving and the only food available is something non-kosher like shellfish.
The Muslim halal rules seem to have a similar exception:
That sounds like a re-hash of the old Tropical Fantasy urban legend- a soft drink supposedly contained some ingredient that would cause sterility in black men.
Don’t the people who believe these rumors ever think? Sterilization is one of the world’s most popular methods of birth control- if there really were a way to permanently sterilize people using just a shot or a drink (or a pill), adult men and women who don’t want any more children would be lined up to get it the world over. The Indian and Chinese governments, among other governments of countries where population growth is a problem, would have huge campaigns to encourage people to get it. Some drug company could probably make billions of dollars off of it. It’s not the sort of thing that could or would be kept secret.
This rumor is even sillier than the rumor that the US government is suppressing a super-high-mileage carburetor.