In Australia, Immunize Or Lose Benefits 680
An anonymous reader writes with news of a plan from the Australian government to cut down on the number of kids who aren't vaccinated. The new scheme will deny family tax benefits to parents whose children don't pass immunization checks. Quoting:
"The FTB supplement, worth $726 per child each year, will now only be paid once a child is fully immunized at these checks. Families are already required to have their child fully immunized to receive Child Care Benefit and the Child Care Rebate. Children will also be required for the first time to be vaccinated against meningococcal C, pneumococcal and chicken pox. Children will also be immunized against measles, mumps and rubella earlier, at 18 months instead of the current four years of age."
Hurray! (Score:4, Insightful)
Rational social interest trumps irrational "self" interest, for once. The USA could learn a thing or two from Australia.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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The poor who don't want to immunize will be forced to due to financial considerations.
The rich who don't want to immunize simply won't.
This doesn't target those who already believe immunization is a smart move, because obviously they will already immunize. This only affects those who don't want to, and among them, it will only affect the poor.
The rich get to do what they want, the poor have to do what they're told.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, this will only affect the poor. So what? Make another law, like requiring these immunizations to collect mortgage tax deductions (if that exists in Australia), or some other law that affects more people.
Re:Yep, go on welfare, lose your rights (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't get it. Society believes, based on evidence, that the few dipshits that don't immunize are putting others at risk. They incentivise the smart choice, in a way of saying "those who will take measures to keep us all safer get a tax break". This is to drive all people to make the smart choice....
I bet you would be even more upset if the incentive was percentage of income based, which *would* equally motivate the rich to immunize... and because they would have breaks in the hundreds of thousands while the poor only get hundreds.
So should the break be percentage based? It would be proportional, and equally incentivising....
Re:Yep, go on welfare, lose your rights (Score:5, Informative)
The rich will immunize because its a smart move. The poor will immunize because its a smart move.
Interestingly, here in Canada, the 'poor' actually have a higher immunization rate for their children than the rich, because the poor trust their doctors and don't have the time/energy/wherewithall to spend their time with 'herbalists' and other rubbish. A note comes from school saying 'we're immunizing against rubella tomorrow' and the poor sign the permission slip because to them it sounds like a good idea. And they're right.
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. God doesn't protect you from sickness. Vaccination can.
Re:Hurray! (Score:4, Insightful)
Sometimes the good of the many outweight the good of the few, or the one. Take Spock's lesson to heart.
But the good of the many should never be used to outweigh the rights of the few, or the one. Oh, and Spock is make-believe.
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes the good of the many outweight the good of the few, or the one. Take Spock's lesson to heart.
But the good of the many should never be used to outweigh the rights of the few, or the one. Oh, and Spock is make-believe.
Yes, "life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and access to tax incentives" is right there in the constitution..
Re:Hurray! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's not. The text you are referencing, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" is in fact in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. The Constitution is supposed to be built around these principles, but the text you describe does not appear anywhere in it.
True enough. I should also point out that we're actually talking about Australia, which made no such claims upon its founding. But my basic point is that ascribing the status of a "right" to a tax deduction is ridiculous.
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Insightful)
The few still have the right not to immunize their kids.
Society isn't going to pay and reward them to exercise that right.
Re:"pay and reward" (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize that first the taxes are taken from the family, the only question is how much of THIER OWN MONEY the government decides to hand back...
I'm not sure what your point is?
Those same taxes are also taken from families with no children, and with grown up children, and whose children have died due to not being immunized too....
Everyone pays taxes, that's how government is paid for. Deal with it. Your point is at most a distraction from any rational discussion.
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Informative)
Like the right of my child to be school/raised an as risk free environment as possible? Your kid doesn't get to go to my kids school unless you prove he/she is safe. I will do likewise and will provide certificates of immunization, will you match that?
Nos, you have the right to have your kid immunized, your choice. You DON'T get the privileges and benefits that are bestowed on others that have fulfilled their social obligations.
Additionally, in Australia, one contributes to publicly available health care via a taxation levy. Those on benefits get virtually free health care. Immunization is a way to ensure that the taxpayer isn't forking out extra to treat a kid for some preventable disease. Which means more money for things such as schools, roads, etc.
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yestaerday there was a nurse on the radio who worked in fever hospitals in the 50's where whole bulildings were dedicated to caring for patients that had the diseases that MMR prevents. Literally thousands of children are not in hospital right now beacuse of vaccines. Idiots like you with your lopt theories are endagering a return to that situation. Many chidlren died and many ended up with severe disabilities, far more than any of the rare side effects of vaccine.
Your post is 100% bullshit I promise you.
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Insightful)
But the good of the many should never be used to outweigh the rights of the few, or the one.
Oh yes it should, and does.
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There are many examples of society doing what is best for many. It's isn't a binary question of "right" or "wrong". Vaccines aren't in the league of genocides... To say that the needs of the many should *never* outweigh the needs of the few is just as extreme as saying th
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Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Insightful)
What are we regarding as "potentially harmful" here? Immunization from killer diseases, or side effects from immunization? Why do I get the impression that y'all think vaccines are wrong?
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Insightful)
And therein lies the theory that government knows better than parents how to raise their children. While it does so happen from time to time that you get incompetent parents and the bureaucracy does in fact to a better job, I cannot buy into the theory that this is always true. My kids are my responsibility, and I will do the best I can for them (which, of course, does not mean giving in to their every demand or catering to tantrums just because we're out in public). I do not want the government interfering in that.
For the record: my kids have had every scheduled vaccination as appropriate for their age according to the local health department, plus H1N1 when it was going around. They have not had any flu vaccination (other than H1N1). The regular vaccinations' only criticisms I've ever seen have been relating to autism, and that seems full of bunk. The flu vaccinations' primary criticism I've received from our general physicians (both our previous one, who is now retired, and our new GP): the vaccination is for the correct strain less than 50% of the time (I think the now-retired GP said somewhere around 25% of the time), your chances of a significant reaction to the vaccine is higher than getting that year's flu and getting a significant issue from that. And, without any other risk factor, the likelihood of anything worse than a week off work was already slim-to-none. And that's where H1N1 was different: our then-infant was deemed at risk for severe issues from H1N1 in the unlikely scenario of getting it, i.e., death, so we considered it very differently. My mother was concerned that he'd get autism from it. Of course, I paid that all the attention it deserved (we got the vaccinations and told her over a week later).
Oh, and I received all my childhood vaccinations, too - my mother wasn't so sucked in to medical bunkumism at the time.
Just because I advocate most of the vaccinations doesn't mean I think the government should be interfering.
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hurray! (Score:4, Insightful)
I actually went ahead and started reading the link, but it fails right from the get go:
"Jenner’s idea was based solely upon a dairymaid’s superstition. He sought to give it a scientific air by calling cowpox (a disease which bears no analogy to smallpox) variolae vaccinae—i.e., smallpox of the cow. "
Wikipedia:
"Vaccinia virus is closely related to the virus that causes Cowpox; historically the two were often considered to be one and the same. The precise origin of Vaccinia virus is unknown, however, due to the lack of record-keeping as the virus was repeatedly cultivated and passaged in research laboratories for many decades. The most common notion is that Vaccinia virus, Cowpox virus, and Variola virus (the causative agent of smallpox), were all derived from a common ancestral virus. "
Anything else you want to enlighten us about - say, debunk evolution, or GTR?
Seems fair... (Score:4, Insightful)
...considering that they have socialized medicine. To libertarians this probably looks like a communist nightmare, I'll admit that to me it only seems OK because I don't believe in the Right to Put Everyone In Danger By Being a Total Moron.
Re:Seems fair... (Score:5, Interesting)
How can it look communist? They're using money to incentivise desired behavior. What could be more capitalistic than that? :-p
Re:Seems fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because in modern society, the right-wing fascists have changed the definition of "communist" to "anything we don't like". It's a very effective means by which to control the large segment of the public who were brought up fearing nuclear war with an actual communist country.
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pot calling the kettle black - are you sure you haven't misused the word 'fascist'?
Re:Seems fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see...
Ultra-nationalist, check!
Idolize the military, check!
Desire to purge "degenerative effects on culture" (e.g. gay marriage, non-English speakers, political correctness), check!
Promote political violence (i.e. "second amendment solutions"), check!
Support single party rule (putting a return to power over policy goals), check!
The only criterion they don't meet is that they sell out to the wealthy capitalists too often, but if they continue to embrace the Tea Party, they'll end up meeting that criterion as well.
The Republicans weren't always this way. Just five years ago, I'd never have accused them of being fascists. But today? Hell yes they are.
Re:Seems fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
Australia as a semi public/private system that is light-years ahead of the USA on multiple measures. The total cost is way less than half what the US pays per capita, and the health outcomes are better. Furthermore, if you're rich, you can get your weekly anal flush, or whatever you want.
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Re:Seems fair... (Score:5, Funny)
Could also repel child labor laws. That would also be more capitalistic.
Re:Seems fair... (Score:5, Funny)
Could also repel child labor laws.
I just got this image of some ultra-conservative party in a legislature somewhere organizing itself like a navy, and announcing,
"Warning, warning, lefties attempting to board new legislation. Stand by to repel child labor laws!"
Re:Seems fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Seems fair... (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit.
Re:Seems fair... (Score:4, Interesting)
If Obama is the greatest threat to the nation, you'd think these knuckleheads could at least run one serious candidate against him.
Re:Seems fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
How does this have to do with capitalism, which is an economic model? Please don't pretend that Libertarianism and Capitalism are one and the same.
Requiring immunization is fundamentally no different than requiring people not dump their raw sewage on the curb. In both cases, they represent reasonable restrictions on behavior in the interest of public health. About the only people I know that disagree with it are either Libertarians, who, let's face it, are either morons or sociopaths, or anti-vaxxers, who are pretty much at the intellectual level of Creationists and Flat-Earthers.
But this does not require immunization (Score:3)
It only cuts off benefits for not getting it. If you don't need the benefits, then you effectively are not required to get immunization.
The basic message is "Poor people need to be immunized, not rich people."
Fuck you (Score:3, Insightful)
"Libertarians, who, let's face it, are either morons or sociopaths"
Right, because the government's will trumps any sort of idea that you can make choices for you or your children.
Seriously fuck you just because you claim anybody who disagrees with your viewpoint is a moron or a sociopath.
I won't call you names, but you're exactly the kind of person who should never be in charge of anything for any reason.
Re:Fuck you (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, because the government's will trumps any sort of idea that you can make choices for you or your children.
How about this instead:
Right, because the public's health trumps any sort of idea that you can make choices for you or your children.
Public Health is one of the few places where the government should and does step on the rights of the people.
Otherwise the people end up getting sick and dying off in large numbers.
Ask your parents or grandparents about the [strike]good old[/strike] days before mass vaccinations.
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Even if vaccines give autism, its fucking better than small pox and polio. Any parent who would rather subject their child to polio instead of autism needs to be killed, publicly.
Re:Seems fair... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Seems fair... (Score:4, Insightful)
See how long it takes before you can get them to admit they directly profit from "alternative medicine" (quackery.)
Exactly. One of my favorite quotes is, "What do you call 'alternative medicine' that actually works?" "Medicine."
Re:Seems fair... (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, a tyranny when children aren't forced to die of childhood ailments that are easily preventable because their parents are either misguided or outright ignorant.
I understand the slippery slope argument, but there has to be a line somewhere; we can't just let people do whatever they fuck they want to their children in the name of liberty. What about the liberty of the child? Using that logic, children are slaves to the whims of their parents, no matter what; their property to do with as they please. Clearly that's not the case; children have rights, too, and of those rights, the right to a safe and healthy childhood is paramount. Just as the state will not allow parents to beat their children, they will not allow their ignorance to be used as a legitimate reason to deny medical care. There is plenty of case law here in the United States that specifically reinforces these issues, and I expect Australia is no different.
The real question is whether the courts view denying vaccinations to be equivalent to denying proper medical care. This is a gray area, just like many aspects of raising a child. Most of the time the state takes the hands off approach you espouse. For instance, nutrition. Judging by the sheer number of morbidly obese children I see every day, and the growing obesity epidemic here in America, you tell me: Is it appropriate to allow a parent to let their child overeat to the point where they are extremely unhealthy? [youtube.com] A child can't make this decision for themselves, and even if they could, there's nothing a child can do if their parents are morbidly obese themselves and refuse to change their own lifestyle. I see 8-year-old's in McDonald's that must weigh 100 pounds shoveling Big Macs in their mouths right alongside their 300 pound mothers and fathers and it kills me. What about religion? Is it right that a parent is allowed to raise a child like these kids in the Westboro Baptist Church? [youtube.com]
While it bothers me that this shit goes on, I understand that personal liberty is important, and I agree that it's best that the government mind it's business as it were unless the cases are severe (although obviously severity is up to personal interpretation; the two linked videos fit my criteria for severe), vaccination is not just for the individual, it is for the group. Every parent that decides they don't want to vaccinate their child not only risks the life of their child but everyone they potentially come into contact with. There are people with compromised immune systems or other illnesses that would, but aren't able to, take certain vaccines, and because you just "don't trust it" for whatever random reason you have, your child could potentially facilitate their death. Measles, which has 60-70 cases a year typically, has 214 cases currently, due largely to unvaccinated children that could have otherwise been vaccinated. [usatoday.com]
Re:Seems fair... (Score:5, Funny)
NOOOO!!! I demand to be able to risk my children's lives due to my personal ignorance and FUD over retardation inducing vaccinations!!!
If any country forces parents to vaccinate their children, my personal freedom is violated!!! How can Obama allow this to happen in any country?! Why did we vote for him?!
I need people to know my child's retardation is inherited and not forced by a doctor's vaccines!!!!! AAAAERGGGGG!!! :P
Re:Seems fair... (Score:5, Funny)
I need people to know my child's retardation is inherited and not forced by a doctor's vaccines!!!!!
Not a problem, amigo.
Re:Seems fair... (Score:4, Informative)
I clicked through to that.
You can take your "naturopath" website and interstitial "can't even close it without an email address" ad and shove it squarely up your ass.
Furthermore,
Fuck you, you nutjob anti-vaxxer.
--
BMO
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You would also be risking their lives vaccinating them. There _are_ risks involved.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/05/19/us-government-concedes-hep-b-vaccine-causes-systemic-lupus-erythematosus.aspx [mercola.com]
Great! More ammo for syphilitic brains to justify risking their children to medieval health risks!!!
Re:Seems fair... (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, sure, because Mercola is such a reliable source. Oh wait ... [google.com]
Re:Seems fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
To libertarians this probably looks like a communist nightmare,
What doesn't look like a communist nightmare to them?
Half the people fear mongering about communism don't even know what the fuck it is outside of "HURR DURR CHINA AND NORTH KOREA." The sheer numbers of those same people that equate it with fascism alone is a good indicator that they have no fucking clue what they're talking about.
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True. Maybe it would be more capitalistic to require them to pay into an Epidemic Insurance Fund rather than to deny them a tax benefit. We do it for cars right?
Re:Seems fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
2. About 1:1 000 000 people who got the 1976 H1N1 vaccine got Guillain Barre (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=20797646), and influenza itself is more likely to cause Guillain Barre than the vaccine.
3. The flu kills between about 3 000 and 49 000 people each year in the United States (http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/us_flu-related_deaths.htm).
4. Your statements that "everyone who gets them [flu vaccines]" gets sick and "some people die... from said vaccine" each year demonstrates why schools would be better off teaching statistics and critical thinking than trigonometry.
5. I'd happy to have you take your chances if only to allow evolution to exert selective pressure on your ilk, except for the risk you present to those around you at high risk of dying from the flu (kids under 5, adults over 65).
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Nice link but no were in it does it state any of these deaths did or did not get the vaccine, or even if the strain they died of could have been prevented.
So you point to missing data, which the site readily admits is difficult to determine, and then ignore everything else?
The problem with statistics they have and always will be complete bull shit.
What are you, afraid of numbers?
Re:Seems fair... (Score:4, Funny)
What are you, afraid of numbers?
:( a little
Re:Seems fair... (Score:5, Informative)
Some people (immune compromized) *can't* get vaccinated, so rely on the 'herd immunity'. Infants 'not yet vaccinated' rely on herd immunity. Also some people who do get immunized simply don't 'take', and thus are unknowingly still at risk.
The higher the number of non-immunized people, the higher the risk of collateral damage.
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They aren't taking coverage away. You just made that up.
The "freedom" to "choose" (Score:5, Insightful)
that which puts me and my children in danger- not getting vaccinated, is not a natural freedom.
The problem with the definition of freedom, as defined by teenagers (not chronological teenagers, but psychological teenagers) is that it does not take into account how some "freedoms" naturally and automatically impinge on the freedoms of others.
For example: your freedom to play your music as loud as you want, my freedom to get a good night's sleep. Your freedom to consume nicotine, my freedom to breathe clean air when I walk down the sidewalk. You freedom to talk on your cellphone, my freedom to enjoy a movie. Etc.
If you claim as a right or freedom that which impinges on someone else's rights or freedoms, without even considering the possibility, you aren't selfish. You're just stupid: you don't know what freedom really is. To you, it is "let me do whatever I want without consideration of effects or consequences." That is "freedom" as defined by an ignorant teenager (again, not a chronological teenager, a psychological one, who could be of any age), and has absolutely nothing to do with the real fight for freedom in this world by real freedom fighters, who are often quoted by people who don't even know what freedom really is.
Re:The "freedom" to "choose" (Score:4, Insightful)
i agree 100%
so the lesson is, all of your freedoms, every single one, exist in natural tension with everyone else's
but too many people who speak loudly and vehemently about freedom talk about their freedoms as if what they do has no consequences or effects on anyone else's
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still your choice (Score:4)
if you want the free benefits from society then you have to live up to expectations. It's your choice as to immunisation or not, but you are making a decision for your child, not for yourself, and so it is reasonable to want to protect your child from potentially fatal diseases, and teach them to swim, and to look before crossing the road. As many of these diseases can be passed on to others, it's also a community issue.
Meryl Dorey (Score:3)
wont that article doesn't mention (Score:3)
Is that if you have a medical exception, or conscientious objector that needs a Dr to sign, you will still get your benefits.
From:
http://immunise.health.gov.au/internet/immunise/publishing.nsf/Content/faq-related-payments#immunised [health.gov.au]
"What exemptions will be available for the new immunisation conditions linked to the Family Tax Benefit Part A supplement?
While the Government considers that immunisation is an important health measure for children and families, existing exemptions will continue to be available.
A child may have a temporary or permanent exemption if a recognised immunisation provider determines that receiving the vaccine is medically contraindicated. A child may also receive an exemption from the immunisation requirements if a recognised immunisation provider indicates that the parent has a conscientious objection to immunising their child.
These exemptions will also continue for Child Care Benefit. "
They also do not mention any additional ingredients of these vaccines. But that is another story.
So this is unusual? (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in France, where you can't get kids into kindergarten or school without vaccination certificates. And they cut child benefit too. The result is a very high vaccination rate, and that protects those who cannot be vaccinated such as very young children.
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think you understand how immunization is supposed to work.
Re:So (Score:5, Funny)
We are actively changing the fitness function for diseases to include "must be resistant to antibiotics, must be resistant to antivirals, must be able to infect even immunised people, etc", this will inevitably lead to bugs that fulfil these criteria... eventually.
By this logic, we should be expecting bullet-proof cattle and thresher-proof wheat any day now, not to mention hook-resistant fish and armored potatoes...
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By this logic, we should be expecting bullet-proof cattle and thresher-proof wheat any day now, not to mention hook-resistant fish and armored potatoes...
Cattle, wheat and potatoes are selected for being easily harvestable, among other things. Fish, now, well that there could be the beginning of a very nice disaster movie plot! :D
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sure... but evolution takes longer in species that reproduce at much lower rates and exist in much smaller numbers.
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You raise a good point actually.
Bacteria have to actually survive to pass on their genes.
I think the problem is that antibiotics, with their often one track chemical minds, don't do a thorough job.
But speaking of cattle, I bet spiking their feed with antibiotics doesn't help us humans much.
Re:So (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the known mechanisms by which pathogenic bacteria get resistance to antibiotics is by horizontal gene transfer from our own gut flora. Gut flora becomes resistant to antibiotics because the levels in our gastrointestinal tract is lower than in our bloodstream. Viruses and bacteriophages (which infect bacteria) then transfer plasmids between different species.
Re:So (Score:5, Informative)
No such thing as vaccine resistant. The vaccine actually attacks the body stimulating it to produce anti-bodies, you might argue that this produces anti-body resistant bacteria but that has always been the case, if a bacteria could attack faster than the body reacted it survived, also if the body could not produce effective anti-bodies the bacteria lived. This has been going on since bacteria attacked other living things, not just since humans were around. If the anti-body to bacteria battle could produce a super-germ we would have seen one by now.
Re:Yes there is (Score:5, Informative)
Too many people don't understand how antibiotic resistance works: there's no problem with using antibiotics if you use them as a full-course and thoroughly eradicate an infection. However, since you can't always do this, every time we use them (and in the idiotic ways they've been used previously) what we've done is not wipe-out whole infections, but only kill off say, 99% of them, leaving a harbor of 1%.
The 1% that survive, then end up restarting the infection - but now, it's the 1% that were, for whatever reason ever so slightly more resistant to the antibiotic used then the entire population. They don't have to be completely resistant - just a little. But now, the next time you use the antibiotics it's just that little bit slower to kill off the population - and if you again leave a harbor, well, now you've just selected for even more resistance.
Vaccines are very different, because the immune system itself is designed to be able to vary it's response to target mutants. The immune system has a built in evolutionary system to permute through antibody combinations, so it's very good at wiping out not just the things it's seen, but any subtle variants it hasn't. Only a very few organisms can elude the immune system, and they do so by expressing a similar behavior - having a library of proteins they can rapidly shuffle.
The whole point of a vaccine is that since the immune system is initially primed to the disease, it wipes out most of it before an infection can be established, and natural immunity then quickly destroys variants. No resistance can be formed, because the organism never gets a chance to create off-spring with mutations before the immune system has annihilated it from the body.
Re:So (Score:5, Informative)
What happens here is antiviral, antibiotic, or vaccination doesn't kill off 100% of the virus. Some cells tend to survive. If some of the cells are resistant to the 'cure', then the survivors tend to be those particular cells that live to continue manufacturing virions that are less susceptible to the vaccine.
You may not have a vaccine-resistant virus today, but vaccination creates selective pressures that tend to make ones that are vaccine-resistant survive and reproduce more.... resulting that in the future newer viruses that occur are more likely to resemble the more vaccine-resistant ones, and eventually, as the trend repeats with enough iterations, the resistance becomes stronger and stronger......
That is not how vaccines work. Vaccines don't kill anything. They train your body to recognize and respond effectively to the infection.
Some very basic info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine [wikipedia.org]
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
which doesn't necessarily make them all that important. A virus/bacteria/etc that is resistant to all of those things but only gives you a runny nose for 2 days isn't really a big problem.
And of course we know that doing nothing killed people. A lot of them. For centuries. Or have we all forgotten that infant mortality rates used to be over 10%, and deaths by what are now preventable diseases killed millions at a young age?
Ok, so maybe we create diseases that are immune to whatever we're doing, that's why we keep doing drug research. It might be a cat and mouse game, but I prefer being on the side of people who have very fortunately lived through all of these things. And I'm sure so do you, even if you don't realize it.
Re:So (Score:5, Informative)
We are seeing anti-biotic resistant bacteria because anti-biotics dont kill all the bacteria, some survive the treatment, and very occasionally then take hold elsewhere to become resistant strains.
We don't see this problem in our immunological response, because our white cells don't exactly leave bacteria and viruses half dead, or survivors for that matter. Once those antibodies attach, your done. No passing go, no collecting 200$, no passing on your genes so that the next generation can evolve to fight back. That white cell there is going to annihilate you.
Re:So (Score:5, Informative)
Once those antibodies attach, your done. No passing go, no collecting 200$, no passing on your genes so that the next generation can evolve to fight back.
Once they attach – the next generation evolves from the few that survive because the antibodies didn't attach ;)
No they don't.
Look, your immune system is keyed to murder every non-self thing in your body. It's why implants and organ transplants are so hard to do.
Infections depend on overwhelming the immune system - infecting enough cells that by the time the immune response is mounted (i.e. by the time an antibody which can attach to the pathogen is generated via our natural mechanism for permutating them) that there is an enormous number of virus or bacteria to deal with (i.e. you're sick). Usually, the immune system wins under these conditions (if it doesn't you die and game over).
Vaccination shortcuts the process - exposes the immune system to the pathogen so that the antibody type needed is already known and remembered (i.e. some base amount of it is always in your blood). When the first pathogen hits, an antibody finds it, binds to it, and the immune system almost immediately produces a huge amount of the exact right antibody - the infection never takes hold.
But that isn't all that happens: because the infection can't take hold, the infection never gets a chance to mutate from reproducing. And any mutations present are unlikely to be dramatic - that is to say, while surviving 1% longer might be the start of an evolutionary path way to resisting the antibodies (say, taking slightly longer to bind, or producing a weaker binding) - if that mutation never gets a chance to become an established infection then it simply doesn't matter - it's just as dead. And because the immune system is also permutating around the core motif, any minor variation is incredibly likely to be just as easily destroyed.
Most viruses and bacteria simply can't rapidly change their structure - there's a big energy cost to it, or it's too great an evolutionary gap to jump (i.e. there's no pathway which lets them have 100% resistance immediately - which means that, without becoming established infections, they might as well be completely non-resistant).
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Re:So (Score:5, Informative)
Not necessarily. For example smallpox was completely eradicated through vaccination, and polio is well on it's way out.
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Polio was well on its way out ... now it is on it's way back in due to conspiracy theories - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poliomyelitis#Eradication [wikipedia.org]
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a failure of vaccines, but a failure due to ignorance and superstition.
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
First: You are mixing up bacteria and viruses. Bacteria evolve resistance to antibiotics. Viruses do not, because they do not react to antibiotics in the first place.
Second: Evolution in biology does not work like in poorly researched science fiction. While you can throw any factor you want into a fitness function, there are limits on what can be replicated in a cell. The viral capsid has to consist of protein and be of a certain shape, and the immune system can be trained to recognize it.
Third: Even if it worked, you're running the small risk of the spontaneous appearance of a disease that could overcome vaccinations and infect everyone, as opposed to not vaccinating and definitely allowing ordinary diseases to infect everyone. Unlike the antibiotic, the vaccine is preventive, long-term and specific to a disease. The danger of antibiotic abuse (ie. irregular or uncompleted treatments, or regular small doses) is that it exposes bacteria just enough to allow resistance to evolve, rather than killing off the infection completely. Vaccination doesn't do that because the immune system will kill the infection before it can take hold.
Re:So (Score:5, Informative)
anti-bacterial hand gel. That is one of the worst ideas (at a consumer level) ever. Anything it doesnt kill is now immune to the damn gel and has no competition in its enviornment
I'm presuming you are referring to triclosan containing soaps, not hand sanitizer gels. The latter typically contain 60-70% alcohol, and you're not going to be developing resistance to that.
Say what? (Score:3)
Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
Things aren't looking good for you sir... their > there
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
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At the end of the day the parent that doesn't vaccinate has made a bad choice for their child and their child suffers because of it.
Not necessarily. If vaccination rates are low then it is probably in everyone's self-interest to be vaccinated. If rates are high then the risk of infection should go down, in which case the risk of vaccination (which is unlikely to be zero) may become greater at some point on the curve.
You can argue that this is a selfish choice, and that the risk of vaccination has been greatly exaggerated by some commentators, but let's not try to pretend that there is only one rational outcome here.
Actually, there is. (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, there is only one rational outcome here. And the basis for that is in your previous statement.
Which means that in order for child A to avoid the vaccination "safely", someone must guarantee that children B - Z are vaccinated.
While it may be a correct mathematical statement reflecting the spread of infection, it is not a "rational" approach to immunization. If everyone followed that, then none of the children would be immunized. If 50% of the population followed that then the diseases would still be a problem. And so forth.
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While it may be a correct mathematical statement reflecting the spread of infection, it is not a "rational" approach to immunization. If everyone followed that, then none of the children would be immunized. If 50% of the population followed that then the diseases would still be a problem. And so forth.
That's not what 'rational' means: you can be rational without being altruistic or wanting to maximise the common good.
I don't disagree with the rest of your analysis, but you won't win this if you have fundamentally misunderstood what the objections are.
Re:Poor != Stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Bachmann certainly isn't poor.
But she's definitely very willing to lie; and possible dumber than a box of rocks as well.
Re:Kinda Risky.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you realize intersection between the 'hygiene hypothesis' (exposure to many different infectious vectors helps prime the immune system in useful ways) and immunizations (attempting to decrease the incidence of a few, serious infections) is very, very, very small?
Basically it's a non sequitor.
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Do you realize intersection between the 'hygiene hypothesis' (exposure to many different infectious vectors helps prime the immune system in useful ways) and immunizations (attempting to decrease the incidence of a few, serious infections) is very, very, very small?
Even if I accept your certain statement, with absolutely no evidence behind it, you've missed the point. You either didn't read my entire post or you didn't read the article and look into which vaccines the Australians are giving. My point is that Australia doesn't appear to be "decreasing the incidence of a few, serious infections"; they seem to be vaccinating against every single thing they possibly can. If a vaccine exists and there's more than a one in a hundred thousand chance of a child getting the d
Re:Kinda Risky.... (Score:4, Informative)
I think his point was that your idea was backwards. If you get attenuated vaccines (which I assume most of these are), you're effectively exposing yourself to several extra things - not less things. If the idea was priming immune systems through exposure, then attenuated vaccines would almost certainly be a positive. If these vaccines didn't do that, then they wouldn't work. And they do.
healthy from an evolutionary standpoint
I assume you're not suggesting that we should let people die (or be sterilized, as by mumps) by exposure to serious illness - thus to improve humans through evolutionary processes? I'm guessing you mean (and are saying in a roundabout way) something like "humans evolved with viruses around, so it's natural for people to get sick sometimes and something, something" (ie. you're making a general health argument, and you're couching it on some vague "evolutionary status quo" thing).
But, again, I'd say exactly the opposite: for most of primate history, we didn't have nearly the varied social contact and mobility that humans have now. All the mechanics of epidemiology have changed in a nano-second of evolutionary time. If we think of "priming the pump through exposure to a variety of viruses", I'd say that - vaccinations and hygiene or not - we are exposed to way more different strains than our ancestors would have been (because our social groups are vastly larger, more interconnected, and varied).
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Since the development of civilization some 5000 years ago there hasn't been an evolutionary process for homo sapiens. The fact that man has pretty much controlled his environment since then has put an end to normal selection processes, as is evidenced by the explosion in population levels.
I don't think you understand evolution in a properly broad sense.
Evolution isn't only about selection pressure, for one thing. For every gene that becomes common because everyone without it died or didn't fuck enough (or the converse), there's another one that became common out of sheer randomness. Neutral drift, duplication events, etc. cause a lot of evolution, and occasionally lead to traits with massive selection coefficients, without those processes themselves or their intermediary products ever bei
Re:Kinda Risky.... (Score:4, Informative)
Couple the heavy vaccination schedule with advances in food safety and constant household cleaning; these kids might have little besides flu and rhinovirus to train their immune systems
The vaccine trains the immune system. That it's job.
Tell me why it doesn't make sense to build resistance to diseases like bacterial pneumonia under controlled conditions.
Re:Kinda Risky.... (Score:5, Interesting)
The studies done so far don't show any correlation between vaccination and the hygiene effect.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/03/030304072832.htm [sciencedaily.com]
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I'm not stupid; I understand that vaccines train the immune system. My point is that the kind of 'training' vaccines introduce is military in style: a strict vaccination schedule trains every single immune system on the same precise schedule, with identical doses of genetically identical antigens.
Training every single person against precisely the same threats in precisely the same way will work fine against the known
For The Common Good (Score:5, Insightful)
What "government"? Are you even Australian?
At least here in Scandinavia, the government is not the enemy, it represents us and our shared interests. Many Americans seem to think their negative view is the "universal" truth. It is most certainly not.
On the other hand we allow individuals to choose what immunizations they want their children to get. It just happens that most people actually trust our government, universal health care system and science; the majority of people choose to get all immunizations offered.
Re:Foced Immunization vs Darwin (Score:5, Insightful)
1. No vaccine is 100% effective. You can be immunized and still get sick. Less likely, and it's likely to be milder, but it could still be fatal.
2. Not being immunized raises the chance you will get sick, and expose those around you to the disease.
For many of these major diseases, if less than a certain percentage of the population gets immunized, the disease still runs fairly rampant through the population - including the immunized population. You need basically everybody to be immunized so that when the disease strikes one person, it doesn't have any convenient vectors to other people, and stays contained.
Besides, we have a certain hesitancy to allow survival of the fittest to take it's course where humans are concerned. Partly out of fellow-feeling, and partly because we've found that 'fittest' can have multiple meanings, and that someone who can barely talk and can't get out of their wheelchair can still give humanity as a whole great value in understanding the how the universe works. (Through their own work.)
Re:Foced Immunization vs Darwin (Score:5, Insightful)
Immunization doesn't take for everyone. Immunizations can't be used on everyone due to things like allergies. Immunization can wear off and become ineffective over time, or in between booster shots. When everyone is vaccinated according to schedule, you only have a small percentage of the population that is at risk to those diseases. Since there are only a couple percent that will become infected when exposed, the likelihood of the virus being passed between two of these people is very low. It is a condition called "herd immunity" that makes unchecked spread of the virus unlikely.
When people are willingly forgoing vaccinations, you aren't just putting yourself at risk, you are dropping the total percent of the population that is at risk. As that number drops further and further, the easier it is for the virus to spread into an outbreak. The more a virus spreads, the higher likelihood it will have a chance to mutate into a form the existing vaccine does not protect against. In other words, when they chose not to get vaccinated, they are putting all the rest of us at risk out of their own stupidity.
Re:Foced Immunization vs Darwin (Score:4, Informative)
You see those flu vaccines, how they are good for a couple different strains, and there are tons of others they don't protect against? Viruses mutate, and do so very rapidly. Give them something to survive in, and eventually they will mutate into something that no longer resembles the vaccine sufficiently closely for the vaccine to be effective. At such time, a new one must be developed.
If you inoculate the entire population, or a sufficiently large percentage, you effectively eradicate the virus. If instead, you let those periodic outbreaks flush though the unvaccinated, your probability of a mutation continues to grow.
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You must be part of the "alternative knowledge system", where facts are whatever confirms your paranoia.