My brother was allergic to the vaccine and it did him great harm. (This was a long time ago and it’s improved.) She still bitterly hates the specialist who demanded that she give my brother the vaccine.

My point is that some children are affected by the vaccine and very little is done for them. I can understand why people are scared to give their children the vaccine and they’re certainly not all mad. I’ve met one who was extremely well-educated.

Especially against the criminally stupid anti-vaccine campaign.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/nick-minchin-was-a-sceptic-on-tobacco/story-e6frgczf-1225805535960

Wow. I wonder if he bends spoons too?

“There will come a time – I pray to God that it will happen in my lifetime – when those who have pushed vaccines upon innocent, helpless babies – doctors, pharmaceutical companies, government officials – will be proven to have lied and cheated these instruments of death into our children’s bloodstream. When that occurs, the outcry will be heard around the world and there will not be enough hiding places on the globe for these murderers to hide or enough money to pay for compensation. Of course, it will be too late for the babies, like this poor child, to be saved. But we will be able to take satisfaction from the fact that never again will anyone have to be pushed to poison their child because for once and for all, it will be known as poison and we will all wonder how it was we fell for the vaccine lie for as long as we did.”
———
Meryl Dorey, President, Australian Vaccination Network
AVN Yahoo! group, 17 Dec 2008, message #36449
———–
Recent antics include “saving” neonates from the brutal horror of life saving Hepatitis B surface antigens. This is a repeat of Aug. 2008 in which the AVN hid a family from DoCS and police to ensure “informed choice”.

In Dorey’s own words:

“This young woman was ready to go into hiding should that be required – as the family last year did when they were also being forced to decide between their child’s health and their freedom to reject the Hep B vaccination.”

Source: Meryl Dorey AVN Yahoo! Message #41001, entitled “A Great Victory For Informed Choice”.

In my experience Drug Free is Evidence Free and the AVN have parallels in the morally conservative world. Harm Minimisation also protects our community yet remains under constant criticism from lobbyists.

And yes, my comment was 75% jest, 75% anger, 100% frustration. I look on anti-vaccination stances, without a very good medical reason, as darn close to a failure of proper care – and a big state should possibly have the right to intervene (herd immunity considerations might cause some internal conflict in the minds of a libertarian). My qualifier about keeping non-vaxed families out of state schools/child-care centres was for the same reasons as yours, although mainly for those kids who have a genuine disorder that prevents them having a vaccine and should be allowed into state schools because they are such a small minority it won’t affect herd immunity.

It’s worth noting that pertussis (whooping cough) rates in Vic/NSW have got bad enough over the last couple of years for the US Center for Disease Control to issue travel warnings… and the pertussis vaccine has been around for years. (Hmmm… woo affecting tourist dollar inflow…).

btw: Some vaccines I’m NOT a fan of… such as the Helicobacter pylori vaccines Big Pharma are pushing, except for those with problems already caused by H.pylori.

And (as you would have guessed) loved the Herculaneum data. I’m not surprised McCullogh got and presented what she did, with a lab background and owning a complete set of red and green Loebs (lucky sod), she probably didn’t have much of a choice.

Also note to punters: one of those lawyers is currently pursuing a DPhil in law and economics, so knows a bit about this.

I wonder if climate-change skepticism correlates with immunization skepticism?

From the material that lands in the Skeptics’ in-tray, the opposite appears to be the case. There also seems to be a correlation between anti-vax, uber-pro climate change silliness and fluffwicca (like Hives, only more so).

The problem with your earlier suggestion (which I sincerely hope was in jest) is the loss of herd immunity impacts most strongly on children too young to be vaccinated, as M-H points out. This is one case where the only appropriate response is compulsion; the positive externalities thereby generated are simply too large to be ignored.

On Cuba: even if it is in the CIA factbook, I wouldn’t believe a damn thing said by the Cuban government… up to and including something uncontroversial like ‘the sky is blue’. Having worked on a couple of Cuban refugee matters over here, I’ve learnt that they (the govt, not the refugees) are bigger liars than the Chinese (which is actually hard to do). When the system shits itself (as it eventually will), all those people who held Cuba up as some sort of ‘model’ will be forced to admit (as they were with the previous lot of alternatives to capitalism) that the Readers’ Digest was right.