I cant understand why people would not vaccinate their kids. Doesn't anyone look up the diseases that they no longer live with thanks to vaccines???? Look up Diptheria. Deliberately letting your kid die of that for some New Age fufu-ism should get you locked up for life. They must enjoy letting their kids (or other people's kids) suffocate as REAL toxins flood their body and a mucous membrane grows over their throat to slowly strangle them to death over several days. So terrible was the disease that Disney made a movie about the heroes who raced to save people from it in Nome, Alaska (Balto). Nobel Prizes were given just for treatments. So I'll say it: Even if there was (AND THERE ISNT) a .00001% or 10% or 30% or 50% chance of my kid really, truly, actually developing autism from vaccines, I'd still vaccinate them. The consequences of not doing so are simply too horrible to contemplate. People just don't remember times where half or more of your family would die, horribly, from vaccine-preventable diseases. Those were facts of life. People had so many kids in part because so many would inevitably die. But I'm just yelling in the wind. People confuse correlation with causation and quacks, snake oil salesmen, celebs, and politicians pander to them--probably because the average IQ of people in this country is like 93...which means at least 100 million people are dumb as rocks. So take it from the History major, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Maybe when enough people die...nope....nuts...not event then...when enough people die we'll just kill the heretics and pray to God like we always do.

NWSkibum:

Even if there was (AND THERE ISNT) a .00001% or 10% or 30% or 50% chance of my kid really, truly, actually developing autism from vaccines, I'd still vaccinate them.

Yeah, I was thinking that exact thing.

Here's what I think the problems are in a nutshell:

A. The authorities (FDA, Big Pharma, Congress, Public Schools, Legal System...) have abused the public trust to the point that people don't belive in the good faith of the establishments and in many cases, see them as an force to be fought against.

B. Parents are inundated with dire warnings about improbable accidents and illnesses and intrusive safety measures until many can't seem to tell the real risks from the hype.

C. The public schools apparently aren't teaching people the Scientific Method and Critical Thinking skills.

D. When bad things happen, people want to find a cause they can blame. Then they want the government to step in and change the perceived problem with laws or exceptions. They also want to face no consequences for the results of their actions. Society seems to be encouraging all these mentalities in all kinds of ways right now. It's about to lead us to a big debacle in socialized medicine.

Alldenwall wrote:

"A. The authorities (FDA, Big Pharma, Congress, Public Schools, Legal System...) have abused the public trust to the point that people don't belive in the good faith of the establishments and in many cases, see them as an force to be fought against."

I would rephrase that: A. The Republicans have convinced the public that the authorities (FDA, Big Pharma, Congress, Public Schools, Legal System...) have abused the public trust . . .

These authorities have, of course, abused the public trust somewhat. But no more now than they did in the past, when people trusted them. No institution is perfect. No group of people are without fault. Generally speaking institutions such as the FDA and Public Schools do a good job. (I am less satisfied with Big Pharma and Congress.) In my opinion the Republicans are doing a grave disservice to the nation by creating unwarranted doubts about our government. All leaders should diligently expose real problems such as corruption & inefficiency in government. There will always be such problems. But, to say that because there are some problems we should not trust any part of any government agency is grossly irresponsible. This is like saying that because many large banks have recently failed, we should not trust any bank anywhere and we should all pull our money out of banks put it under the mattress.

As for socialized medicine, it works quite well in Europe and Japan, and it costs half as much as what we have, so I am in favor of it. I am a pragmatist. I do not care about ideology. I don't care whether a particular subset of our system is is capitalist or socialist as long as it is the best method. Our highways and police forces are socialistic and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Perhaps in the future a capitalist-based healthcare system will evolve and become more effective. It that happens we should go back to that system. Things change as technology and expectations change. Institutions that worked well in 1900 no longer work today, and no doubt some of our institutions will not work in 2100. We need to solve our present problems and reduce healthcare costs in this generation. Our great-grandchildren may need to fix it again, but that will be their problem.

I have Asperger. I would still be vaccinated again. I wish I could have had the chicken pox vaccine in 1970. I had it in 1989 at 18 and it wasn't fun.

I have several friends with kids who have varying degrees of autism. It can range from a minor inconvenience to a major life long problem. But in no cases is autism fatal. Diptheria, polio, measles, and mumps can be.

If people are forgoing vaccines because of allergies or other health reasons, I have no problem. But people have latched onto the faulty 'vaccines cause autism' study, which has been thoroughly disproved, and will not let go. No, it can't be my genes, or the fact that my kids were preemie quadruplets because I did IVF, or because I waited until age 48 to have kids. No, it's easier to blame those nasty vaccines. Sure, bad reactions happen on rare occasions. Bad reactions also occur to antibiotics, foods, and other things. But forgoing vaccines because some people have rare bad reactions would be like everyone skipping wheat for their entire lives because some people have celiac.