“Most people say that driving nails into babies’ skulls is a bad thing but I’ve seen something on the internet that says it’s good for them so clearly the matter isn’t settled science. Please explain to me why driving nails into babies’ skulls is bad, but don’t do it in a way that insults people who do it or fails to treat them with respect or I will blame you for my failure to accept the non-baby-nailing side of the argument.”
#teachthecontroversy
So that’s what the fontanel is for?
I didn’t even know I should be driving nails into my babies’ heads!
Thank you, random person in the internet! I will continue to look to you for good advice, and not to MSM. And I will go get some nails and a hammer today!
Don’t listen to Gyrate, he doesn’t know what he is talking about. All the studies he points to are flawed or fraudulent. Nails in babies’ heads is not good medical science.
Use screws.
I listened to the so-called scientists, I refrained from nailing my baby’s head, and the next month my baby caught autism! More research is needed urgently!
Oh god. Ohgodohgodohgod someone is going to end up nailing a baby and it’s going to be all my fault.
I’m so, so sorry…
So, I should take the screws out, and put the nails back in?
Don’t fail me now, random internet person.
Use these, just to be safe.
My baby crawls into everything. Is it okay to use a hook in his head instead of a nail or a screw to hang him to the wall and keep him out of harm’s way? Or is it a vast conspiracy by Big Hardware?
My daughter lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, a nest of anti-vaxxers and she makes damned sure her son gets every vaccination possible. My DIL, a family physician, will not allow in her practice children who have not been vaccinated; she doesn’t want them in her office. She will bend this far: if a mother is convinced that DTAP or other combos will overwhelm a child’s immune system (there is no evidence of this, BTW) she will vaccinate them on a reduced schedule. Of course, this increases the number of times they are stuck, since she insists they get all the vaccines available.
Do I hate anti-vaxxers? Or just feel sorry for the poor misguided souls. I feel about them the way I feel about the Trump voters who are convinced he is going to bring all those manufacturing jobs back. Poor misguided fools.
However, I would prosecute Jenny McCarthy for child abuse, maybe for murder, considering how many deaths she has contributed to.
First, I’m going to take a stand and say I don’t support nails or screws in babies’ heads. A hook is fine as long as you use a padded flange to anchor it in the ear or mouth hole.
Second, anti-vaxxers deserve all the scorn being heaped their way. But there’s no need to rank them against climate change deniers. These are both terrible stances worthy of scorn, but with very different risks and uncertainty. Anti-vaxxers put their own kids and other people at risk, with immediate and measurable effects.
Climate change deniers potentially put all of humanity and other species at risk, but the effects are impossible to measure in the short term. Fifty years from now, maybe we’ll have massive crop failures and water shortages across the globe, and we’ll look back and think if the public had supported action on climate change starting in the 90s, we’d be in better shape (and anti-vax concerns will seem trivial). Or maybe that won’t happen.
My point being, I think we can effectively argue against the OP by stating that yes, anti-vaxxers are on the same level as climate change deniers because both prioritize their own desires against others needs, and think their opinion is more valid than established science. No need to rank them beyond that.
Sort of like comparing drunk drivers to industrial polluters. Both are damned harmful, but on really different scales of time and harm per capita.
Yes. Antivaxxers kill kids.
134,200 died from measles last year alone, worldwide.
Almost 10,000 dead in the USA:
http://www.jennymccarthybodycount.com/
I hope some zealous DA brings 9028 charges of Manslaughter vs McCarthy.
It’s like asking “why do people hate Hitler”?
Actually antivaxxers have perhaps killed more kids, worldwide, that Hitler did.
Yep, my best Scouting friend at that time was one of the very last kids with Polio. We all fought for who got to carry his pack on long hikes- but he made it.
If I had no care or empathy…
I could still talk about how, because ignorant parents have horrifically mishandled their children’s well being…
Because the cascade failure of their children’s health could have been so easily avoided for what amounts to a dollar or so a shot…
Because those parents have neither the money nor the ability nor the character to care for their now permanently crippled children…
I and everyone else who pays taxes will now have to support this needlessly crippled child for as long as it lives it painful and tortured little life.
Better that the reproductive organs of anti vaxxers be Dug Out With Spoons than even One child on this earth be crippled for their willful ignorance.
(…not sure that’s hate though…)
Hate is a strong word. In theory, more education should solve this. In practice, this works as well as one would expect.
I already Godwinized the thread, but I guess you have the better username for it.
You left out “believing in homeopathic medicine”.
On the other hand, if the anti-vaxxers have their way, in 50 years’ time the population will have been so drastically reduced by disease that the food and water shortages caused by climate change won’t affect humanity so severely. Winning!
I’m basically allergic to this type of argument because 1) a high percentage of victims are children who don’t have a choice in the matter, and 2) while morbidity from widespread preventable infectious diseases would cause considerable suffering, long-term complications and societal expense, the death rate (given current critical care standards) wouldn’t expand all that much.