Vaccinations are more beneficial than harmful

Thank you again SK for proposing this topic for debate. And here we are in the final round already! First, a response to the video which you cited on some of the common biases involved in what the author called the "anti-vaccination" movement. Lest we use too many fancy terms, it would probably be more proper to say "parents question the efficacy of vaccination." Sometimes, these parents might organize themselves and become a movement; other times, they may be simply making a personal, family decision. It was interesting to note that the speaker argued that parents are more likely to not vaccinate after they researched vaccinations. Why is that? Well, he certainly provided some biases which could possibly be involved in evaluating risks of vaccinating children. However, he did not note that these biases could well be involved by scientists themselves in promoting vaccines as effective. Also, a significant omission from the video was the lack of interacting with the history of decline of diseases and death due to disease before the advent of widespread vaccination use. Interacting with that history might have helped the speaker correcting his own biases. Regarding the correlation between deaths due to disease and better sanitation/living conditions/diet, I agree with you that death and incidence rates are not the same phenomenon. But death due to disease is more fundamental in terms of what medical science is trying to eradicate. Medical science would seek to answer questions like: "Why is the U.S. the most child-vaccinated country in the world with such a high infant and pediatric mortality rate vis-a-vis other developed countries?" [1] But the real point of Illich's argument is that when various diseases were debilitating, even to the point of death, this condition was improved historically by better hygiene and living conditions, not the introduction of vaccines. Of course, you are correct that this is correlation, not necessarily causation, but that would certainly be true of vaccines and incidence rates of diseases as well. Correlation, not causation, is the order of the day. Another confounding variable would be whether the incidence rate is diagnostically subjective. That, of course, depends upon accuracy of diagnosis. Analysis of diagnostic data of a condition such as measles show that it has been highly misdiagnosed and over-diagnosed, even up to 74 times. [2] Obviously, it would be misleading to cite that sort of statistic in a debate like this. By the way, thank you for finding those other mortality tables and reproducing them here in this debate. I am awe-struck by how little vaccines had to do with the big picture of declining mortality from disease. I will concede your point on the bat vaccine. However, I think that you might find that doctors do promote this sometimes as a "preventative" cure rather than just ameliorative of symptoms. Perhaps better communication between doctors and patients would be recommended in this regard. That segues nicely into our larger dispute over the "herd immunity" metaphor which doctors can and do misuse to salvage pro-vaccination theory. You seem to concede my point that the "herd immunity" metaphor can be misleading. The fact is that one must have a healthy immune system in order for the body to fend off any diseased organisms which you don't deny. Thus, focusing on the "quick fix" of a vaccination misleads the person into thinking that this "shot" is more important than their overall immune system strength which is conferred by both genetic and environmental variables, as your YouTube video rightly points out. You misquoted my statement of incredulity, i.e., "that's totally absurd." That was in the context of my statement that being in the right herd is sometimes touted as a better solution than maintaining a healthy lifestyle. I don't know of a single doctor who would actually defend that notion, given the fact that our bodies are fighting against micro-organisms all the time that have nothing whatsoever to do with any real or imagined "herd immunity." That is what is so amazing about the "herd immunity" metaphor. Regarding your argument on chicken pox, I think that we may be overlooking one factor. Wouldn't the deaths in later adulthood have more to due with Shingles complications than Chicken Pox? So, no, it would not logically follow that greater exposure to children with the live chicken pox vaccination virus in their bodies would engender a correspondingly greater number of older adults who are sensitive to that virus to experience death from chicken-pox. It would register as death due to any number of diseases to which people are subject when their immune systems are compromised. [3] Regarding the Danish health registry study, I think that you may be not reading the fine print. Out of curiosity, where did you arrive at that figure of .00005? As I pointed out, we would expect the ratio of 3.42 times 53 to be the number of autistic children in the experimental group which would be around 181, not 253! The difference between the numbers 181 and 263 is certainly not .00005. That's a greater risk for parents, no matter how you slice it. As to how or whether we can know that vaccines present greater harm than benefits to recipients and government deception, it is fair to deduce that, if vaccines did not present some substantial injury, the government would not need to cover up the presence of carcinogenic agents in vaccines. While it is possible to exaggerate the risks of vaccination, it is also very difficult to demonstrate as reasonably true that their benefit outweighs their risk. Thanks again, SK, for taking the time to debate this topic. [1] http://healthimpactnews.com... [2] http://vaxtruth.org... [3] http://www.webmd.com...