Vaccinations are more beneficial than harmful

Hello, SK! I apologize for skipping that last round. I committed to a new job project and spent too much time putting together most of the material for this debate. Are vaccines worth the risk of infection from contaminants that could intentionally or unintentionally be found within the vaccines? We do need to be able to answer that question before we can answer the question about whether vaccines provide more benefit than harm or vice-versa. Historians of medicine have noticed that diseases began declining well before vaccines became widespread in society. So, is it possible that vaccines are just attempting to maintain a certain degree of immunity after the immunity was already conferred through some other agent? Perhaps, some other mechanism is helping to confer immunity, such as better hygiene and living conditions. As Ivan Illich demonstrates in his treatise on the inefficacy of modern medicine: "The combined death rate from scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough, and measles among children up to fifteen shows that nearly 90 percent of the total decline in mortality between 1860 and 1965 had occurred before the introduction of antibiotics and widespread immunization." [1] Thus, vaccines did not cause diseases to go away. The diseases were already going away by the body's natural ability to fight off invaders and through improved living conditions. One school of thought that is pro-vaccine holds to the "herd-immunity" theory. This is an attempt to rescue belief in vaccines because it is acknowledged that vaccines do not really accomplish anything except to keep the same number of people uninfected in society. If the number of uninfected were to decline, then disease might spread contagiously to others and cause an epidemic. Only vaccines will keep this number of uninfected statistically high. On this view, vaccines historically did not eliminate any diseases but people who were already healthy were enabled to remain healthy by hanging around other people who were healthy and (presumably) vaccinated. people recognize that vaccines did not accomplish anything historically in terms of the prevention of disease. These folks argue that somehow "herd immunity" might provide continuing justification for subjecting people to infection by vaccine chemicals since it is believed that if a greater number of individuals have immune protection against a disease, then it may confer benefit on others in the "herd." [2] In a great number of cases, it has been determined that not vaccinating may be better for people, particularly in case of the chicken pox vaccination where there are greater risks to adults who had been vaccinated as children than it would have been had they never been vaccinated at all. [3] Moving onto that dreaded connection between the Mumps-Measles-Rubella vaccine and autistic manifestations, medical journals do like to dismiss very quickly the connection. There has been much controversy swirling around the figure of Andrew Wakefield. [4] A great deal of concern surrounds whether the possible side effects from neurotoxins added into vaccines, such as Thimerosol, are worth the supposed benefits of vaccination. [6] One study which claims that there is not a causal link between the MMR vaccine and the onset of autism does show some interesting figures when you look at the actual data in the study which examines children vaccinated and non-vaccinated in a Danish Health Registry. [7] When you scroll down to page 1480, you get the raw results of the study. Out of 1,647,504 who do receive the MMR vaccination, the number who develop autism is 263. Compare that ratio to the ratio that emerges from the control group of 482,360 non-vaccinated children, of whom 53 develop autism. That is not a very proportionate ratio. If we multiply the 53 cases times the 3.42 (ratio between the total unvaccinated and total vaccinated), we arrive at a figure much below the 263. Thus, there is a connection between the MMR vaccination and the autism disorder. To be fair, they could have very conservatively worded the conclusion of the empirical study by stating that there is a somewhat or slightly greater chance of developing autism after an MMR vaccination. Admittedly, if science were perfect and not influenced by the profits of the pharmaceutical industry, there might not be as big as concern as otherwise. But science is not perfect. The polio vaccine has been produced in rhesus monkeys and after researchers realized that this vaccine cultured within the monkey flesh was generating cancer in other animals injected with the vaccine, they still refused to pull the vaccines from the market. [8] Therefore, if we cannot guarantee that the the link between the M-M-R vaccine and the onset of autistic disorders is merely coincidental and if we cannot guarantee that the government and other scientists who are being driven by pharmaceutical profits are not removing tainted vaccines such as those cultured in monkeys with the SV40 virus, then, in all honesty, we cannot maintain that more benefit is being done by vaccines than harm. Again, thanks for the opportunity to engage on this topic. [1] Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health (New York: Pantheon, 1976) p. 16. http://www.ratical.org... [2] http://www.christianitytoday.com... [3] http://www.vaccinationcouncil.org... [4] http://www.ageofautism.com... [6] http://healthimpactnews.com... [7] Kreesten Meldgaard Madsen, et al., "A Population-Based Study of Measles, Mumps and Rubella Vaccination and Autism," New England Journal of Medicine 347 no. 19 (Nov. 7, 2002): 1477-1482. [8] http://www.nvic.org...