Trade huge odds of infection for tiny odds of side effects.
Published on February 28, 2007 By greywar In Health & Medicine

     When you read webpages about a topic you have to consider the ties of the people who write them. If you look up "Dangers of vaccinations" on Google yoou will fin a host of innocuous looking sites claiming that vaccinations are uneccessary and that all you need to do is allow yourself to eliminate toxins from the body by allowing diseases to run their course through vomiting and diarrhea. Chiropractors and osteopaths will tell you that all you need is a back adjustment and your problems will disappear like magic. Of course if you look a bit deeper into these sites you will find them linking to complete nut-job conspiracy sites. Site's like Alex Jones' infowars.com or places that urge you to "Blast the sludge out of your colon!" and then lin to a hundred sites selling you overpriced herbs. Great source of medical advice... no really.

     They cloak themselves with links to articles in medical journals that detail cases of side-effects from vaccines (mostly adults). Of course the back-asswards implication is that if some people have side effects then you shouldn't take the vaccine for fear of the rare side effect. Can your child get meningitis after a mumps inoculation? Possibly, but I would rather run that tiny risk than the massive risk that they will be rendered sterile after getting mumps because I didn't get them a goddamn shot!

"Sorry kid, I know you may have wanted to remain whole and functional but my chiropractor and hundreds of people selling herbal supplements on lunatic websites said that vaccinations are bad. Tough break for you."

     Since there is virtually no smallpox in the USA today there must never have been right? Surely, all that vaccination was just a plot by the government to tag you with a DNA strand in order to track your every move right? No one needs vacines. This is the position of many conspiracy whackos on these websites and it is fucking dangerous.

     The reason we don't have a smallpox problem today is because we killed it. Killed it dead by vaccinating virtually everyone in the nation for decades until the disease died out. We didn't get rid of it by vomiting more freely or allowing ourselves to have diarrhea to "get rid of toxins" as proponents of the anti-vaccination crowd would like you to believe today. We got rid of it by ensuring that no one around you could get it and spread it. As a result today's children don't have to have a smallpox vaccination unless they go to areas of the world that don't vaccinate, like the Middle East and Africa.

    Of course according to the "research" done by anti-medicine folks like chiropractors smallpox and other diseases should be less common in nations who have no immunization and vaccination. After all those people vomit and crap freely unfettered by "evil medicine" when they are hit with disease and so they should be healthier and live longer than we do here in the USA with our dozens to hundreds of lifetime vaccinations. Unfortunately for them it is the opposite. Logic has no place in these people's mythology.

     I have been to the third world and it sucks. Your kids die there at a rate unheard of inside the comfy, clean, and vaccinated borders of the US of A. All the vomiting and shitting in the world doesn't do them a damn bit of good. Back adjustments won't cure rubella, influenza, or malaria either. You will just die at a young age with a comfy back.

     Do some vaccinations carry the risk of side effects (especially for adults who should have gotten them as kids)? Yes, small risks. You live in Africa and you can take the risk that the rubella vaccine might make 1 child in 10,000 go deaf or 1 adult in 5,000 or you can take the huge chance that you will contract the disease and fucking die. The lesson here is don't put off vaccines until you are an adult. Adults don't deal with them as well as kids do.

     There is a reason that propoenents of these "theories" don't get into the Journal of American Medicine (the research is done on side effects and the JAMA never recommends against vaccinations but that doesn't stop these loons from citing these articles as "proof")  : Their research techniques can't stand up to peer review. This is why no one is getting Nobel prizes for curing disease via the relief of "subluxions". Simply put, chiropractors can't produce any results beyond the beneficial effects of a back massage under controlled conditions. Of course this doesn't stop them from posing as epidemiologists and recommending that their patients don't vaccinate their kids. Want a back rub and a nice back cracking? Go to a chiropractor, they have good hands. Want advice on disease an vaccines? Go to epidemiologists and immunologists, not the masseuse.

     By all means go ahead and ignore doctors and just take Alex friggin Jones' health advice instead! I would also recommend taking out stock in infant caskets at the same time : it's a win-win! Also let me know when you see a thousand chiropractors heading off to Africa to cure the pandemics there with a backrub.

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Comments (Page 1)
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on Feb 28, 2007
There is a big difference between Small Pox and the latest Vacine craze.  I understand your outrage, and share your concern about a total abstinance from vacines.  However, I think that both extremes - vacinate for everything and vacinate for nothing - are equally whacky.
on Feb 28, 2007

However, I think that both extremes - vacinate for everything and vacinate for nothing - are equally whacky.

This is why we don't vaccinate for smallpox anymore. No need unless you leave our clean shores. Doesn't mean that vaccinating against it when it was here was bad though.

on Feb 28, 2007
Wow! Nice read. Sometimes, I get a laugh thinking of you surfing the net looking for something to seet you off. HAHA! Or did you recently visit a chiropractor and get a talking to for having a smallpox scar on your arm? HAHA!
on Feb 28, 2007
having a smallpox scar on your arm?
My smallpox site (which I had to have doen twice) didn't scar actually. I could see the site if I looked carefully for about 6 months and now it is just gone. The impetus for the article was from a loved one getting this ridiculous "advice" from a chiropractor abusing their perceived authority as a health care professional. It scares the hell out of me that a family member is being cared for by someone with these beliefs.
on Feb 28, 2007
My smallpox site (which I had to have doen twice) didn't scar actually.


Mine either. I wonder why it does not scar some?
on Feb 28, 2007
Vaccines are great, in my opinion. Relatively little risk to prevent a not so nice disease. I don't see how people could think there's a conspiracy in vaccinations unless the government is putting mind control drugs and/or electronic chips in us...but they don't work as long as you keep your tinfoil hats on. Silly government.

~Zoo
on Feb 28, 2007
don't hold back so much, there, Grey. Tell us how you really feel...
on Feb 28, 2007
I just checked in, LW. And I have no comment. Greywar has the right to his beliefs, I have the right to mine.

I know of NOONE who has buried their children because they didn't vaccinate. But according to greywar, I'm killing my kids. Nice.

I don't follow "Alex friggin' Jones", there are a whole lot of others out there. But it's useless to argue with someone whose mind is made up. It would be nice if greywar wasn't so slanderous about his opinion, though.
on Feb 28, 2007

But it's useless to argue with someone whose mind is made up.

 

Yup my mind was made up largely by going to places that don't vaccinate. Funny how that works. Damn closed minded of me to regard useless deaths of children as something of a non-option.

on Feb 28, 2007

For the record though, I don't have a problem with individual parents weighing their options and making their choice for the most part (I draw the line as parents who won't allow medical treatment of acute diseases already contracted).

 

The bit that really gets me worked up are the chiropractors who are a major force in the anti-vaccine movement. They abuse their perceived equality with doctors by giving this sort of stuff out as "medical advice".

on Feb 28, 2007
For the record though, I don't have a problem with individual parents weighing their options and making their choice for the most part (I draw the line as parents who won't allow medical treatment of acute diseases already contracted).

The bit that really gets me worked up are the chiropractors who are a major force in the anti-vaccine movement. They abuse their perceived equality with doctors by giving this sort of stuff out as "medical advice".


OK, I'll go with you on this one. It had my dander up because of the similar topic on a related thread...

I do agree with you about the chiropractors, though. There is the difference in an educated decision made by someone who has studied the issues, and one put upon them by someone who skews the facts. I love chiropractic care, and honestly, it's done me a LOT of good. But I agree, it would be foolish to assume that it could cure ALL ills.

Incidentally, one point I raise for those who point out the disease rates in Third World countries...there's another key difference (besides vaccinations), in their disease rates and ours...HYGIENE! The number one way to prevent the spread of disease is proper handwashing. But in many of those areas, the water's not even clean enough to make that as beneficial...and I agree with you...if I lived in those areas, I would certainly consider the risks of vaccination to be a lesser risk than risk of death through those diseases.
on Feb 28, 2007
in their disease rates and ours...HYGIENE!
I utterly agree on this one as well. Poor hygeine provides the worst sort of synergy in these areas. Fact is that I agree with gideon's politics about 90% of the time. It simply would be unhealthy for me to agree with him on everything and as is typical on my blog my disagreements tend to be vociferous and offensive. Equal opportunity slander should probably be my slogan.
on Feb 28, 2007
Your timing is impeccable. We just got our go to war shots day before yesterday. Anthrax sucks balls.
on Mar 01, 2007
Personally, I tend to side with Dr. Guy's position on this. I certainly agree with vaccinations in general. There are times, however, when it seems that people are too quick to make certain vaccines mandatory.

Incidentally, I heard an interesting discussion about vaccines a couple days ago. If you guys are interested, you might want to check it out.
Link

on Mar 01, 2007
The impetus for the article was from a loved one getting this ridiculous "advice" from a chiropractor abusing their perceived authority as a health care professional. It scares the hell out of me that a family member is being cared for by someone with these beliefs.


That was actually my first guess. But the visual of you sitting hunched over a computer, mumbling under your breath as you tried google search upon google search, feverishly searching for something to really set you off was too funny not to bring up!
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