Some friends of ours are anti-vaccination people.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

Its very interesting to see how people are so quick to judge others for the sake of having an alternative view that is different from your own…Just because someone decided to delay vax or not vaccinate their children at all, doesn’t make them stupid, ignorant, or not-informed. It’s typically the other way around, meaning that those that have decided to not inject their child with known pathogens HAVE done extensive research, have experienced side effects, or was a witness to someone who went through it and consciously CHOSE otherwise. For example, as a teenager, I watched my babysitters son go from being a healthy and happy 1.5 yr old to an autistic one…overnight! He was vaccinated accordingly up until that point and everything was fine. Yet, the last doctors visit was very different…within hours, he had a very bad reaction that required hospitalization…And that was it!!! Mentally altered forever…That hit me hard and I questioned THEN the efficacy of man-made vaccines. I eventually went to college as a pre-med/biology student and dove into the sciences with a concentration in nutrition. Did you know that during the first year of life, your body is not able to produce anti-bodies?! Ask an Immunologist, they’ll tell you… This is also the same reason why there is a recurrent administering of the same vaccinations during the first year…have you noticed that? and then boosters every subsequent year? It’s because the first couple of rounds aren’t even effective in producing the anti-bodies, thus the need for re-injecting…Also, this is another reason why breastfeeding is very important bc it helps to boost the babies immune system during its development during the first year…Something that a vaccination can’t do.
In addition, did you know that aborted babies are used to cultivate and create certain vaccinations? On the info. packet, if it says “Diploid Cells” that means that the tissue is derived from aborted fetal tissue. Also, formaldehyde is used (most know its use for embalming), thimerosol (a proven and known neuro-toxin), aluminum (a metal that the body cannot assimilate…again neurotoxin), Cow sebum, Monkey Kidney cells…
Do you know about Titers? Titer tests? They are used in the veterinary world because they don’t want to over-vaccinate the animals. So, before administering and introducing a foreign pathogen into the bloodstream unnecessarily, they test whether or not the animal has anti-bodies present or not for each vaccination. If the dog has anti-bodies for said vax, then they dont vaccinate…why? Because they already have the anti-body and dont need the vaccination…and if they don’t, thats when they go ahead and vaccinate. Why isn’t this done for our children?! I think this is an intelligent and logical step in bridging both sides of anti/pro vax…In addition, Did you know that you can carry an anti-body without having a vaccination? And also, carry anti-bodies without the illness being expressed? Meaning that you can have the anti-body of lets say influenza, without actually appearing sick? Yes and YES! If your immune system is working at maximum capacity and you are introduced to a pathogen, your body will produce the anti-body without actually appearing sick…This is where titer tests are helpful bc by testing the blood, you can see if anti-bodies are present or not and decide if a vaccination is truly necessary…
Again, bridging the gap between anti/pro vaxers…

In addition, just to help those of you who have decided to vaccinate your children and are “afraid” of letting your child mingle with those that aren’t vaccinated: If the vaccinations are so effective, then it shouldnt and wouldnt matter if they were exposed to anyone really. If your child is protected by having the anti-bodies, then what do you have to be worried about? (newborn is different altogether…in that case, breastfeeding is the ultimate protection in first year)

So the next time you think poorly of the person next to you for choosing something different, remember: Your child has anti-bodies (if older than 1) and will be fine mingling with others that haven’t been vaccinated…And especially for someone who claims to be a church goer, you have got to be kidding to cut off good people for choosing whats best for their family… What would Jesus do!!! He was NOT Vaccinated by the way!!! Would you let your children be in His presence?! We were created with amazing immune systems but Everyone, BOTH pro and anti vaccinators should do research and be informed all of the way!! That will at least (maybe) educate the masses and help everyone become more tolerant of others that are doing whats best for them and their own family. It is they who have to live with their decisions as you do too…Lets cease useless hatred and disgust for our “friends” when they’ve made a conscious decision to choose something differently…The truth shall set you free…

thank you,
Be well

62

Ummm, yes it does.

63

There is already a significant body of research that doesn’t rely on anecdotes such as yours. This body of research definitively dismisses any link between vaccinations and autism. Period. Your other claims are equally bullshit. The bottom line is this: Vaccines save lives. They prevent human suffering. They do not cause autism. They may not be 100% perfect, but again, they save lives, prevent human suffering, and do not cause autism.

I don’t understand why the anti-vaxxers are so reluctant to accept these simple truths.

64

Oh yes, the “overnight” transformation.

They’ll tell you to take an immunology course.

Nope, it’s to heighten the immune response to a protective level.

Too bad maternally derived antibodies are relatively short-lived and don’t protect against serious pathogens that can kill infants.

I just got done refuting this antivax garbage in another forum. Decades ago, a couple of cell lines used for growing virus used in making certain vaccines (like rubella vaccine) were developed from legal abortions done for other purposes. That’s a lot different from “aborted babies are used” in making vaccines. It might be of interest to you to know that a Vatican position statement on this, while disapproving of the early source of the cells, regards using these vaccines as a moral act, and holds non-vaccinators responsible morally for development of congenital rubella syndrome

You forgot antifreeze and monkey pus. Never forget the antifreeze and monkey pus. By the way, your own body makes a lot more formaldehyde through normal metabolism than would ever be found as a trace vaccine component. Thimerosal has been out of vaccines for close to a decade. Better concentrate on the “cow sebum” (Do cows really get acne? :dubious:)

Separate issue, but no, vets don’t check titers before each round of pet vaccinations.

Not interested in building a bridge to lunacy.

Google “herd immunity” for starters.

And we all aspire to have our children live as long as they did in Jesus’ time.

And to think I checked in here to reproduce another classic post I just saw in an antivax thread, from someone who’s connected all the dots:

“The chemtrails and genetically modified foods, etc., make this all much worse - we are inhumanely bombarded with toxins on a daily basis!..I’m sorry that America lives in a lying bubble of stupidity, but many who live in this bubble are far from stupid and those of us awake have a big pin that’s gonna pop this bubble soon. So bring it on federal government and American lying media - We’re done with you! Wake up enough people and watch the illegal racket of the federal government collapse! If you are pro vaccination, then you are also pro-eugenics Period! How do I get away with saying this? Because all disease is created or cultivated by man in one way or the other. If we change our behavior, there’ll be no need for vaccines anyway. Get rid of all the planetary hierarchy lunatics who make all these nasty little arrangements for us and we’ll flourish! Peace”

To the OP - the moment your antivax friends start sounding like this, run. Do not walk, run.

65

And this is what it really boils down to, fundamentally, in this community. It’s the Calvinist Reformation in another package. It’s the religious notion that we humans suck and are bad and bring disaster on ourselves because we’re so filthy and polluted, and if we were just good and virtuous and clean human beings, suffering would disappear. If we took the right herb or parented the right way or did the right meditation or found the perfect cleanse, we’d never get sick. So when we’re sick, it’s because we’ve been bad and filthy and lazy.

The amount of hidden self-loathing if you follow the logic and language of “self-empowerment” within these movements is very disturbing. And I say that as someone who spent over a decade there.

66

Or have “bad immune systems”. There’s a blatant sense of superiority on the part of antivaxers who pride themselves on their supposedly superior immune systems, how their kids never got vaccinated and never are ill blah blah blah - the fact that their kids are protected through herd immunity thanks to the parents who do vaccinate their kids never penetrates their bubble of ignorance.

More disturbing though, is the undertone suggesting that getting these diseases is a mark of inferiority. I quoted a poster mentioning eugenics - well, some of these people actually seem to think that it’s good to weed out the weak and inferior through disease, rather than subjecting their precious offspring to vaccines (though why their own kids are supposedly so weak that vaccines pose a deadly threat, poses another ironic question).

67

One on my best - actually, the best - Facebook friend, a lady I went to junior high and high school with, just outed herself as a vehement anti-vaxer, and has started posting links to all sorts of anti-vax and “mommies ALWAYS trump those evul scientists!” websites.

It made me…well, sad. So sad I sort of skim over her postings. I haven’t dared argue with her, as I’ve found the anti-vax people I know are fundamentalists who will never change their minds, and they also are so scientifically ignorant you can’t even explain the cause-effect to them. It’s most unfortunate.

68

If only! The only anti-vaxer I know personally (AFAIK) has a bachelor’s degree in biology, and does professional ecology work.

I know that’s just one data point, but I suspect the strange blind spots of the scientifically trained are more common than you might guess. This was a favorite topic of the late Stephen Jay Gould’s. (And he wasn’t afraid to put the spotlight on himself as also being fallible and subject to the trends of his time and culture.)

69

There are a disheartening number of nurses who get their panties bunched over mandatory vaccines for healthcare workers.

I was and remain very soft mandatory anti-vax. By which I mean, I don’t like “mandatory” anything in health care, I prefer informed consent, but that’s a philosophical/political stance, not a medical one. I also wish there were more studies done on subcategories of kids, like micropreemies or kids with immune disorders/autoimmune disorders, who could reasonably be expected to have a different immune response than the general population, and may need a different vaccination schedule.

But I’ve been over and over the research on normal, healthy kids and the now-thoroughly discredited autism “link”, and the science is overwhelmingly in support of the current vaccination recommendations. Overwhelmingly. Will some kids have adverse reactions? Sadly, yes, and it’s cold comfort to a parent to hear that their kid was the only one in 100,000 that had a bad reaction. But there are bad reactions to Tylenol, to motherwort, even to essential oils. We don’t withhold benefits for all because of bad things that happen to some. The risks clearly outweigh the benefits on a society wide as well as individual basis…well, clearly to me. I wish I knew how to make it clearer to others.

70

Furthermore, the entire association between vaccines and autism was created in the public mind by the work of one person, and that work has been thoroughly discredited. This wasn’t something “lots of people observed,” this was one guy who lied for money. And it’s been proved.

So at best your position would have to be: “Isn’t it amazing that, despite the fact that the original idea was a lie concocted for money by one guy, and there’s no scientific evidence for it, it still turns out that I observe x…”

71

What really pisses me off about anti-vaxxers is this: Regardless of whether the studies linking vaccines to autism are true (and they aren’t), if you buy into them, and choose not to vaccinate your child because of it, you are implying that life on the autistic spectrum is a fate worse than death.

I happen to be on the autistic spectrum myself, but even if I weren’t, I’d find that pretty fucking offensive.

72

That’s a really, *really *good point. Thank you for making it! There are certainly fates worse than autism, like, y’know, death by cardiac infection (chicken pox), respiratory failure (pertussis), sepsis (measles, mumps), etc…

Especially nowadays, with early identification and intervention, autism can be a challenging but manageable condition, rather than the sky is falling.

73

Yes, that is a very strange phenomenon. My anti vaxxers are also both college-educated. She in art and he in law. Uneducated people, in contrast, tend to just follow the advice of their GP.
My dad, an engineer, bought into the South African: “Aids is not a virus”-bogus. Blind spots indeed. And if they had a real vested interest in discrediting the science there, but they don’t. I wonder what the psychological reason is to hang on to such beliefs.

74

Ignorance is not a “view.”

75

For another milestone in looniness, check out the 2012 AutismOne/Generation Rescue conference in Chicago (going on right now).

This bunch (one of their major heroines is Jenny McCarthy) combines strident antivaccination views with ridiculous “treatments” for autistic kids supposedly harmed by vaccines.

The latest wrinkle is giving kids MMS (Miracle Mineral Solution) by mouth and enemas, to remove “toxins”.

MMS is sodium chlorite, an industrial bleach.

“When citric acid or other food acid is used to “activate” MMS as described in its instructions, the mixture produces chlorine dioxide, a potent oxidizing agent used in water treatment and in bleaching. The director of the New South Wales Poisons Information Centre has stated that using the product is “a bit like drinking concentrated bleach” and that users have displayed symptoms consistent with corrosive injuries, such as vomiting, stomach pains, and diarrhea.”

Bleach enemas for kids.

And these are the same people who go on ad nauseum about “toxins” in vaccines.

Even for antivaxers, this is a new low.

76

I think they’re implying that their healthy, Raised in the Right Way kids wouldn’t ever have a crappy Modern Medicine-Inflicted immune system that would let them get those diseases, and if they did, it would just be some spots or swelling or coughing and then they’d be just fine. :rolleyes:

77

I don’t like to bring up Wakefield because he’s a martyr to the cause. Despite all of the evidence of his douchebaggery, the anti-vaxxers still treat him as though he was a victim of Big Pharma and a system that was stacked up against him.