Vaccinations

[Angry Floof]

A handy video for sharing with antivaxxers if anyone's interested. Kurzgetsagt - Vaccines.

 

[Toni]

Just a quick question. I was having a debate with an anti-vaccer the other day. She said the FDA said smoking was good for you before, even though they knew it contained stuff that was bad. She said they are doing the same with vaccines. I'm not saying that is true, but is the smoking bit right?

My mother in law claimed that when she was pregnant (60+ years ago), her doctor encouraged expectant mothers to smoke so that they wouldn't gain too much baby weight. Note: all of her children were born prematurely and my husband weighed 4.5 lbs at birth. One child died early in infancy from SIDS. My mother also smoked during her pregnancies and none of us weighed as much as 6 lbs. I also weighed 4.5 lbs at birth, 3 weeks overdue.


So, yes, there was a lot of denial for a long time because tobacco companies were extremely good at controlling studies and publishing results that did not include negative effects of smoking.

This is not what is happening with the FDA or established medical science regarding vaccinations.

When I was a child, most kids got most of the usual: measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough (pertussis.) I nearly died of pertussis; my sister was confined to her bedroom for 2 weeks with the blinds closed, wearing sunglasses for fear of what the measles would do to her vision. I remember mumps well enough to know that they were very painful and I felt quite ill while sick. My cousin's husband is infertile because of mumps. My own children had chickenpox because the vaccination was not available or widely available at the time they would have been vaccinated. My son's classmate had leukemia and could not receive vaccinations. Chickenpox nearly killed him. My friend's daughter was hospitalized with encephalitis when she contracted chickenpox.

Vaccinations are a good thing. They prevent deaths and disabilities from preventable diseases.


Also: when I was a kid, most kids were painted with mercurochrome when they got scrapes. Mercurochrome has mercury in it. At least one summer, I spent most of the time with my legs painted quite well with the stuff between my ankles and toes as I learned to ride a bike and roller skate with skates that gripped my regular sneakers and caused all kinds of gashes in my toes. We did not become autistic.

 

[4321lynx]

Anti-vaccinators hold on to their views like the religious hold onto theirs; they're almost impossible to convert. In one of the last mini epidemics of smallpox in England in the 1970's a female doctor, in Birmingham I think, who did not "believe" in vaccination died of the disease.