Are vaccines healthy?

Not credible.
Have you ever had smallpox? How about polio? Tetanus perhaps?

Give me a fucking break.

My adult niece got whooping cough because idiot parents refuse to vaccinate their kids. The risks of vaccines are far less than the risk of the diseases they prevent.

Shilolo has pretty much spent his entire life trying to find a cure for TB. He is no longer active here but he recently posted this on my site.

He might be known around these part for this

He has dedicated his life to vaccines and I trust him way more than a random article.

Have you read that arricle?

There is no real peer reviewed source, nor is the website very reliable.

Vaccines have over time proven again and again to help eradicate some of the worlds nastiest diseases.

(in general:)
Some vaccines come with a certain risk, but suggesting people should in general not use them exposes the whole popualtion to the risk the disease comes with.
Individuals not participating are free riders and morally questionable.

Sometimes we may wonder if commercial interests play a (risky) role… That is why we need a governmenr that we can rely on. In that sense vaccines are no different than food additives or baby formula, for instance.

This unnuanced kind of nonsense in that article is dangerous and immoral.

Polio was a huge concern around fifty years ago and now with vaccines we are all safe. We can’t say that vaccines are 100% safe or they are 100% not beneficial. As far as we know, majority have benefitted from vaccines and only a very small number of children have bad reactions to vaccines. It’s safer than contracting the diseases they prevent. Getting our children vaccinated is purely our choice and the choice we make for our children. It’s purely personal and no one can compel us.

I’ve taken mandatory and recommended vaccines all my life—and that’s a loooong time. I’ve never suffered any side effects from taking them and never gotten any disease they were created to prevent. I pity vaccine-deniers.

Of course they are. A quick check from credible sources will show the vast reductions in crippling and fatal disease Polio was virtually wiped out by 1979. Small pox – gone. Tremendous strides in other diseases. Of course there will be a very few who have a negative reaction. There will even be a few who were killed in car accidents on the way to the doctor’s office to get the vaccination! Is the vaccine the cause? . Rant type articles will jump at those kinds of cases and use them as anecdotal examples to “prove” their case.
I noticed the article included a rant about fluoride in toothpaste, one of the biggest contributors to good dental health in this century.

Nsnbc (publishers of the article in question) could do much more for public health if they endorsed exercise and proper diet. But that would not make for interesting reading.

@LuckyGuy —GA!

I wonder how many people will mistake their url for MSNBC, and assign them more credibility than they are due. Sad.

The myth that vaccines cause autism seems to have been the beginning of the anti-vaccine movement. The connection has been debunked and the doctor exposed as a fraud.

My kids were born at the height if the hysteria and I have a close friend whose son is autistic, so I have done tons of research. I had all of my kids completely vaccinated. I insisted on mercury free vaccines and got the manufacturer name, date of manufacture, and batch number for every shot they received.

All of these geniuses who believe they are saving their kids by avoiding vaccines are doing nothing but benefiting from the herd immunity that comes with my vaccinating my kids (which of course anti-vaccine activists call a myth). They just don’t realize that they are putting us all in danger because of false science.

One of my stepsons is on the anti-vaccine bandwagon (and believes that a chiropractic adjustment is the cure for a the common cold – but that’s a different story). He tried to convince me that a tetanus shot is unnecessary as long as if my kid ever steps on a rusty nail, I just let it keep bleeding. WTF? I worry for his 18 month old daughter who has not received a single shot.

The article is a crock. Where once diseases ran rampant through the population, not vaccination prevents them.

This is why I love Fluther. A population primarily made up of rational, intelligent thinkers

That article if so full of bullshit, you could use it for fertilizer. Did you read it? “decades of covering up the damaging effects of fluoride”, ” much older hoax of a deadly 1918–19 flu. It was aspirin that killed people in 1918–19, not a pandemic flu.”......it’s so ridiculous, it’s practically a joke. Except that the promulgation of this misinformation actually does harm.

The article is not credible for the reasons already stated so well above. Some additional points to keep in mind:

• The linked website is a blog masquerading as a news site. Why would they need to fake their credentials if the truth were on their side?

• The article leads with a claim about documents released by the UK, but never links to them (or else buries them so thoroughly they are impossible to find). Why would they neglect to provide the key evidence for their claim?

• Instead of providing the documents, the article links to various other sites making the same or related claims. This makes it look like the story is well documented, but in fact these links add little to the conversation. Why fake documentation if there is real evidence available?

• The main argument presented by the article is fallacious. In lieu of the supposed revelatory documents, readers are presented with the fact that the CDC has not answered a similar FOIA claim. This refusal is taken as evidence that the CDC is hiding something (which is the same “if you have nothing to hide” rationale used to justify the NSA spying program). But using the CDC’s actions as proof of wrongdoing is an argument from ignorance fallacy. Just because the CDC has not bothered to respond to some crackpot doesn’t mean the crackpot is right. I don’t engage the guy downtown who claims space aliens are stealing my organs at night, but that doesn’t mean I should guard my spleen more closely. Why argue fallaciously if there’s a good argument available?

That this question would even need to be asked…

Speechless…..

@SecondHandStoke I agree completely. Now you know why I weep for humanity.

How credible it is depends on how well it fits with your preconceived notions. And given that there isn’t any real science behind it (peer review and such), it really cannot be considered as more than an opinion… though possibly a dangerous one as it may lead to people doing things that may put vast numbers of people in grave physical danger.

Thanks for the clarification. I read this late last night and did make see MSNBC instead.

As to my personal views on vaccines. I am concerned by what is in them. I also doubt the efficacy of gaurdasil etc.

I agree with everyone saying vaccines have saved us from horrible crippling diseases.

@Judi One comment about your adult niece. She got pertussis because she did not keep up with her vaccinations. I agree children not being vaccinated is decreasing herd immunity for whooping cough, but with more and more adults catching it, it suggests to me adults are not getting boosters. There are more adults in our population than children, and my guess, again guess, is a higher percentage of children are immune than adults. Most adults I know have not had their tetanus/pertussis in more than ten years.

Doctors have never recommended boosters for adults before. I’m assuming it’s because if the children are vaccinated it’s not necessary.

@Judi The tetanus shot is recommended every ten years and often doctors give the tetanus pertussis combination vaccination. Even if pertussis isn’t recommended every ten years (I don’t know) tetanus is, and most people I know don’t have doctors suggesting that either.

@JLeslie is right.

Some like rabies, hepatitis, tetanus, etc., require boosters. I had all mine, since i travel a lot.

Tetanus can also be given after contracting the wound…

My doctors have always recommended tetanus boosters.

@Judi:So have mine.

@Judi Maybe you were given the combination. You might want to check. I have never had a doctor suggest a tetanus shot, except following an accident and when I have asked about vaccinations for international travel.

I’ll add that there is a failure rate for the pertussis vaccine. For whatever reason immunity seems to be a little more difficult with that vaccine, I don’t know why. Still, the vast majority of people are immune if they follow the protocol, it is definitely worth vaccinating children and for adults to get boosters if needed.

Since tetanus can be given after the wound, typically you go for a tetanus shot after being cut (assuming your last shot was too long ago to be effective), instead of getting regular boosters. I’ve never heard of anyone getting a tetanus booster (or of their doctor recommending one) until I came to Fluther. ;)

@glacial

Traveling people get a lot more vaccines advised to them.

It also depends. I didn’t take rabies, but gave it to my kids. I cannot rely on them to report honestly on every animal bite or scratch. Rabies from the moment symptoms come up only has one ending.

We did encephalitis and hepatitis, etc. Mainly because these are relatively common in the population here.

Tetanus because I cannot rely on effective vaccines to be available everywhere I go. (Cool chain is not reliable in all countries.)

I think I have had enough tetanus shots to cover many people. For some reason as an early adult anytime I had an incident that involved medium level punctures, given my active careless lifestyle I had quite a few, I seemed to think I needed another one. What a silly idea.

I mentioned all of these concerns to my doctor a couple of weeks ago. He didn’t seem all that worried.

They are as healthy as ambulance cars. More than 99.99% of them reach the hospital safely. Nothing is 100% safe.

related: measles cases spiked in 2013

Also relevant: what if vaccines were advertised like other prescription drugs? (a parody).

I think it’s too bad they stressed religion at the beginning, because I don’t think that’s why parents are choosing not to vaccinate. They could have made that point hit home with a different target. But it’s still pretty good.

All of the people I know personally who don’t vaccinate are very religious and mistrustful of the government.

@Dutchess_III The people I know who delayed or skipped some vaccinations happen to be religious, but it is irrelavent because they do not decide much of anything medical according to their religion. Did the people you know actually not vaccinate for religious reasons? Or, used it as an excuse to get out of vaccinating, because that is acceptable to the state as a reason.

They are conspiracy nuts. I think the religion thing comes in because extremely religious people seem to be quite paranoid in general. They get in big groups and all come around to the same way of thinking. I mean, that’s kind of what religion is, anyway. Everyone thinking the same way.

I don’t think the state needs an acceptable reason. The parents can just chose not to vaccinate.

@Dutchess_III I see. LOL. A friend of mine worked with prison inmates, most of whom were black, and they did not trust doctors big time. It goes back to the Tuskegee experiment; seems that legacy lives on in some communities. But, I would bet they are all vaccinated, I don’t know.

I do remember some right wing mess about how the vaccines being given out are actually shots to make people infertile. I think it was in regards to the polio vaccines the Bill Gates foundation is giving out around the world. The foundation has a mission to eradicate polio.