Vaccinations are more beneficial than harmful

Well, thanks for welcoming me back. Let's talk about the Illich statistic/argument. It sounds to me a bit like you are "splitting hairs." Mortality rates and incidence rate are somewhat interrelated but if deaths decline in the category of those infected by a particular disease, then that would be relevant to the discussion. So, in these instances where death is traceable specifically to a particular pathology and those deaths due to that pathology are declining before the immunizations are introduced historically, then the obvious question is as follows: Are vaccines doing any good that was not already being ameliorated beforehand? If we cannot document that or the improvement is attributable to healthy living environments, better exercise, more vitamins in food, etc., then we cannot know that the vaccines are not creating more harm than benefit. That is, after all, the resolution before us. Also, your rebuttal touched on what happened with the introduction of the measles vaccine. What about the other pathologies mentioned by Illich? Is there any evidence to show that vaccines did any better than what was occurring naturally? Just curious! Using the rabies vaccine as a counter-example to the case when the infected can become better is not quite valid since that vaccine is not recommended for the general public, unless there is specific reason to believe that rabies contamination may be imminent and it does have enough risks to the point that it is not even recommended for pregnant women. [1] I probably should have been a little clearer about why I believe the "herd immunity" theory to be flawed. Allow me to elaborate. The whole analogy gets people too focused on a "quick fix." People actually start to believe that if 80% or 90% of the population has gotten this "quick fix" then the rest of the population can become infected and they will be fine. That's just not true. It's highly misleading. The immune system is the major component in health, not what "herd" you belong to in society. Thus, people's attention is wrongly diverted away from maintaining a healthy lifestyle to getting some "quick fix" that is supposed to work if the majority of other people in the herd have also gotten this "quick fix." That's totally absurd! In fact, unless the immune system is healthy, no immunization can perform the theoretical function that it is supposed to. Therefore, a healthy, vital immune system is preconditional for the notion of a vaccine to be meaningful. Emphasizing the latter through "herd theory" is highly misleading to the general public. With regard to the problems inherent in the varicella (chicken pox) vaccine, you seemed to have missed the argument presented. Getting vaccinated to prevent natural chicken pox infection in childhood leads to greater complications, including death, in adulthood. Thus, your statement as follows: "if everybody was infected to gain lifelong immunity, many people would die instead getting the golden reward" is countermanded by the empirical evidence. I'll cite the reference again so that you can check out the sources. [2] Next, Andrew Wakefield. His study has been attacked but now it is been replicated and the ad hominem attacks including threats to terminate employment him and his colleagues are not a valid argument against his studies. Just to refresh. I'll cite that source again: "Dr. Andrew Wakefield is used as the standard scapegoat being presented as a "disgraced doctor" who supposedly got caught fabricating his study. Of course, Dr. Andrew Wakefield"s study has been replicated in at least 28 other studies, and no case has ever been won against Dr. Wakefield in a court of law. Litigation is still pending, and one of the doctors who was a co-author in the study has been completely exonerated in the U.K." [3] The MMR vaccination and autism link from the study that I cited is real and I think you dismissed it rather quickly since I did provide the data from the study. The math is right there. You can do the homework and it adds up to a greater risk for parents who choose the MMR vaccine for their infants versus those who do not, specifically within the Danish Health registry. It's a longitudinal study and it's published in a peer-reviewed medical journal called the New England Journal of Medicine (Nov. 7, 2002). Thankfully, this journal, unlike others, always publishes the financial connections between researchers and the private, pharmaceutical firms who would be funding the study so that there can be no doubt about obvious conflicts of interest. Oh, and I had already pointed out that the causal link is not the same as a probabilistic link; that's why I had indicated the following: "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." You refer to the eradication of polio through a vaccine that the U.S. Government has been forced to admit is contaminated with cancer-causing agents. Let me ask you the question: "Is it better to avoid polio infection, even if it's 100% avoidance, if you increase your chances for untold suffering through cancer?" Come to think of it, that is pretty compelling evidence against your proposition. If we are willing to subject ourselves to cancer in order to avoid polio, up to the point where we allow our government to lie to us about the risks, then, clearly, we cannot show that vaccines produce more benefit than harm!?! Your last paragraph is subject to dispute, for sure. We certainly cannot by definition know that vaccines produce more benefit than harm if the government will not be honest with people about the contaminants in vaccines. I think that you would agree with that, if you thought it through adequately. Your counter-argument is creative, I will give you that. You maintain that when we bear in mind how many lives are saved by vaccines we could know this to be true. That is a fairly bogus argument but it is creative. First, nothing justifies the government lying to its citizens; it just makes people suspicious. Second, we are now back to Ivan Illich (rather fitting that we circle back to the beginning!). Where's the evidence that these diseases were not being eradicated already before the introduction of vaccines? Now, you are face-to-face with the correlation and causation problem. You have to show that vaccines actually produced the decline in mortality rather than improved living conditions. Without that, we are left with a government who lies about what is in the vaccines and a very suspicious American public who has been lied to. Thanks! [1] http://www.nhs.uk... [2] http://www.vaccinationcouncil.org... [3] http://healthimpactnews.com...