"Vaccines don't save lives"

[McMullen]

Also just so you know cancer rates are going because people are living longer (age is the biggest risk factor for cancer)

Life expectancy rose 1.5% between 1990 and 2000, rates of cancer rose 20% over the same period, so that's bunk.

A direct comparison between changes in life expectancy and cancer rate in the way you have done is meaningless.

Say 100 people lived past 60 from 1900 to 1950, and 5 of those got cancer. Then imagine that 1000 people lived past 60 since 1950, which wouldn't necessarily raise average life expectancy more than 1.5%. If 10 of those got cancer, then cancer rate would have risen by 100%.

 

[Callate]

Argh.

Failing to vaccinate is incredibly irresponsible. Many vaccines are only 80-90% effective, so the barrier they create against serious diseases is dependent on everyone in a community getting them. It only takes a handful of people refusing to get their children vaccinated to allow something like whooping cough or mumps to have a serious recurrence.

There are places where anti- and pseudo-science attitudes only affect the people harboring those beliefs, but this isn't one of them.

 

[McMullen]

Also just so you know cancer rates are going because people are living longer (age is the biggest risk factor for cancer)

Life expectancy rose 1.5% between 1990 and 2000, rates of cancer rose 20% over the same period, so that's bunk.

A more useful statistic would be how cancer rates among age groups has changed.

From http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/cancerstats/incidence/age/

Notice that there is very little change among groups less than 60. There is a slight upward trend for 40-59, and a more visible trend for older groups. However, the age groups here are rather large, and this still gives room for bias in the data. For example, in the 60-74 group, more people would have reached the high end of that interval in recent times, and since cancer risk goes up exponentially with age, it stands to reason that this would cause that trend to go higher.

If we could get a graph showing single-year intervals, the trend would be very small, though I wouldn't expect it to go away completely. The reason why is that there really is a slight technological increase in cancer rates simply because of the tiny amounts of additional radiation we receive, among other things. X-rays, plane flights, tanning booths, and many other sources all give us a very small additional dose of radiation. They aren't necessarily bad in and of themselves; some are less than you get from sleeping next to someone. It's just that the number of sources has increased, so the chance of one of those stray particles knocking out an important chunk of DNA has increased.

This risk is impossible to eliminate completely; as I said before, you get a higher dose just from sleeping next to someone, so even if veganism and naturopathy worked and you followed as cancer-free a lifestyle as possible, you could still get cancer from the particles emitted by your significant other, or from cosmic rays, or by the minerals in the rock you picked up on the beach. Having a genetic code means being vulnerable to corruption, and beyond a certain point, there's not much you can do about minimizing your risk.

So, are vaccines to blame? So far the research says no, which means that they either aren't, or that the increase they give is so small it's impossible to separate from other influences. Suppose they do represent an increased risk, as most things do. Are they worth it? YES. Part of the reason more people are dying of cancer in their 70s is because they're not dying of smallpox or polio in their 20s and 30s, and it's because of vaccines.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I'd like to point out after seeing World War Z this thread has become doubly funny.

 

[FamoFunk]

Anyone who think vaccines are bad, and doesn't get them (unless medical reason) is a fucking idiot. It's not just your life your're saving, but those who reply on herd immunity because they're too ill to have the jabs themselves, pregnant, old etc. I actually cannot get my head around anyone who objects to them?

Summed up: People who don't jab up, unless for medical reasons, are fucking idiots.

 

[VoidWanderer]

I think a good counter-point to the 'Vaccines don't save lives', would be 'And neither do seat belts.'

While they try and counter your point use their own arguements against them.

Unless they agree, in which case it's check and mate.

>.>

True, but then you can feel happy that their lifespan is likely to be considerably shorter than people with a functioning brain.

 

[Leg End]

So maybe... something is very wrong.

Something is wrong. Somewhere.
Just, no one knows where.
And where there is something wrong, you'll not easily prove it.

My money is on Civilization.

EDIT: Whoah, that is the last time I post before reading the whole thread.
I feel like I'm miles behind. :/

 

[The White Hunter]

I saw someone make this comment earlier and it reminded me that apparently there's a number of "anti-vaccine" people out there, people who think it's all nonsense and even causes a number of very serious illnesses.
If I remember right, Michelle Bachmann said something similar and since then a lot of people seemed to really rally against it - claiming everything from mental illness, mind control or even death as being the end result of getting these simple injections.

If it were people arguing against evolution or something then I wouldn't really care. I mean, you're ignoring a massive pile of evidence but nobody is getting hurt if you think everything just popped into existence. But with vaccines, peoples lives are actually at stake. I can't imagine how many children might have died because of these nut-jobs.

I just don't understand what goes through peoples head sometimes.

We could solve the whole problem quite simply:

If you refuse a vaccine for say, TB, then are admitted to hospital with TB, you should be turned away and posthumously awarded a darwin award participation medal.

 

[xDarc]

Suppose they do represent an increased risk, as most things do. Are they worth it? YES.

Well at least you admit it. Thanks for that.

Cancer causing vaccines would be as big a concern as NSA spying, they're only doing it to keep you safe, to save lives, so who cares.

But yeah, I took a look at a lot of numbers, mostly in America, and cancer rates are up for everyone. Breast cancer in women under 50 was at a record recently. For middle aged men, it's testicular or GI cancers, bowel/colon/stomach, etc. It has nothing to do with longevity as a risk factor and more people living longer when the people getting more cancer are middle aged, young adults and children as well.

Even the title of this thread is misleading. I don't think there's anyone who really believes vaccines don't work, but there have been recalls, there have been deaths, they are not 100% safe; nothing is. But how safe are they? To even to call that into question, it's just a dog pile of people attacking. I'm not going to deal with that.

I will probably vaccinate my kids, but I won't follow the recommended schedule which has them taking so many shots at once. I will spread them out so their immune system has time to recover after each. So there it is, now tell me my kids deserve to die or I deserve to be put in jail for not doing what a doctor says, for not believing in big pharma, or any other institutions that people today act like is the new religion.

 

[zefiris]

but you never used to hear shit about peanut allergies or gluten intolerance either.

My grandfather genuinely died of peanut allergies fourty years ago, allergies have been around forever. Gluten intolerance has been known for way over a century, we only figured out the exact reasons way later.

You being ignorant of something doesn't mean it didn't exist. Or that somehow vaccines are magically to blame somehow, and not the TONS of unneeded, untested chemicals that you get in your cheap food so it's cheaper to produce for food companies.

Odd how you nutters never consider THAT particular issue. You only get a few vaccine shots, and vaccines are carefully monitored.
You eat every day, and nobody actually monitors it properly.

Case in point, I can think of several different, but legal, food indrigents (usually coloring or artificial flavoring) that actually do raise your cancer rate. But no peep from the anti-vaccine folks about this. I really wonder why that is.

 

[Quaxar]

Suppose they do represent an increased risk, as most things do. Are they worth it? YES.

Well at least you admit it. Thanks for that.

Cancer causing vaccines would be as big a concern as NSA spying, they're only doing it to keep you safe, to save lives, so who cares.

But yeah, I took a look at a lot of numbers, mostly in America, and cancer rates are up for everyone. Breast cancer in women under 50 was at a record recently. For middle aged men, it's testicular or GI cancers, bowel/colon/stomach, etc. It has nothing to do with longevity as a risk factor and more people living longer when the people getting more cancer are middle aged, young adults and children as well.

Say, do you ever notice that you make a lot of claims while at the same time giving no actual sources for them?
And to set a good example I can source that claim by reminding you of the recent GMO thread in R&P where you didn't even know what the papers you were referring to actually said.

Even the title of this thread is misleading. I don't think there's anyone who really believes vaccines don't work, but there have been recalls, there have been deaths, they are not 100% safe; nothing is. But how safe are they? To even to call that into question, it's just a dog pile of people attacking. I'm not going to deal with that.

I agree... it's a shame people trust decades of working vaccination and no evidence whatsoever of them standing in relation to Autism, cancer or any other kind of serious or permanent decease over your claims and one youtube video.

I will probably vaccinate my kids, but I won't follow the recommended schedule which has them taking so many shots at once. I will spread them out so their immune system has time to recover after each. So there it is, now tell me my kids deserve to die or I deserve to be put in jail for not doing what a doctor says, for not believing in big pharma, or any other institutions that people today act like is the new religion.

religion" <url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/is-football-the-new-religion/12605.html>these days [http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/global-warming-religion-5912388]. So that's basically become a meaningless sentence.

And your kids don't deserve to die, that's why they should be vaccinated...

 

[Something Amyss]

True, but then you can feel happy that their lifespan is likely to be considerably shorter than people with a functioning brain.

I don't know. The non-seatbelt wearers I know tend to beat the odds.

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

But yeah, I took a look at a lot of numbers, mostly in America, and cancer rates are up for everyone. Breast cancer in women under 50 was at a record recently. For middle aged men, it's testicular or GI cancers, bowel/colon/stomach, etc. It has nothing to do with longevity as a risk factor and more people living longer when the people getting more cancer are middle aged, young adults and children as well.

Thats weird because the UK graph clearly shows cancer rate only up for the elderly, which we expect with higher age.

Heres the science behind it that DOES explain why a higher life expectancy will see more incidences of cancer, possibly much higher than the increase in life expectancy:

Spoiler

The "Natural life span" of all creatures tends to related to the decrease in telomere length over time as that organisms cells divide. Every division shortens them somewhat. The shorter they get the higher the chance of an error,with such errors causing cancer. Even if a person is killed by nothing else cancer is 100% inevitable if they are kept alive by other means because telomeres shorten to the point where cells cannot divide successfully if at all. The rate of error increase exponentially from the point where the telomere is short enough to start causing problems in division, so an increase in 2 years of our life span from other factors being removed will funnel more people into dying from the single inevitable death relating to their hardwired telomere length, exponentially so because these people will have very short telomeres. Some organisms such as Turritopsis Nutricula, a jellyfish, can lengthen their telomeres again using telomerase and are biologically immortal. Sadly we cannot meaning that you can be 100% sure that if nothing else gets to you first cancer definitely biologically will. The longer our life expectancy the more of us are claimed by our genetics. Its basically the stop gap for anyone who survives the other things trying to kill you on our planet. Which is why id expect to see MASSIVE increases of cancer if those other things are reduced.

So since the UK and the US both vaccinate, but we see the expected increase and you dont surely that shows vaccines are not to blame. Or if it is vaccines its ONLY your vaccines. No matter what its something youre specifically doing and we are not. So it cant be vaccines in general since our nation demonstrates we use them without an increase in cancer.

Or, and this is a little far fetched, vaccines DO cause cancer but here in the UK we have been preventing cancer by removing factors at the same rate its increasing from vaccines meaning we cant pick it up. Thats a bit of a reach though.

As a future (hopefully) doctor i dont trust pharmaceutical companies as far as i can throw them. I reccomend Ben Goldacres bad pharma. It really opened my eyes to the depths companies go to save their asses. I cannot praise Ben Goldacre high enough. He is my hero as a physician. He mixes real skepticism with research and doesnt decend into tin foil hatness at all. With that said in the UK at least the stats show vaccines are pretty damn safe since our cancer is fairly level. At least what we are using. Cant speak for the US of A. Maybe you should start using our vaccines. And if you are using them you should fix whatever else is causing the problem.

 

[xDarc]

Say, do you ever notice that you make a lot of claims while at the same time giving no actual sources for them?

Do you ever notice how many people blindly attack any time I say anything? I'm 31 years old, I have better things to do than to provide sources for someone who would argue with me if I said the grass is green.

 

[Lieju]

My sister (who is a psychologist) works with autistic kids and she has to deal with parents blaming vaccines all the time.
I guess it's a relief to have something to blame and fight against, to believe that the reason their kids are the way they are is because of the doctors and Big Pharma being negligent or downright evil.

 

[Quaxar]

Say, do you ever notice that you make a lot of claims while at the same time giving no actual sources for them?

Do you ever notice how many people blindly attack any time I say anything? I'm 31 years old, I have better things to do than to provide sources for someone who would argue with me if I said the grass is green.

I do, but just maybe could that be because you already start off with faulty arguments like in this thread? Or because more often than not your opinion is a minority in this forum so you're naturally a target for quotes?

If you have better things to do than back up claims you're making then why bother making them at all? You know damn well that you're not gonna incite a reasonable discussion when you start off saying cancer and vaccination rates are correlated or provide a greatly exaggerated summary that hugely favores your side of a paper without ever showing the actual source to anyone. I don't dispute that some people like to just attack your posts for the unsourced theories they sometimes are but when you start off (and continue) like that no wonder your inbox gets heavy.

Surely you'd have a much better discussion if you provided more to your posts that could actually convince others of your points... either that or you could be proven wrong more easily and wouldn't that be the best outcome anyway? Because if you want to tell me you don't want to be proven wrong that vaccines lead to cancer you should seriously rethink your position. Basically, if you source your statements you can not lose!

This is getting way off topic though.

 

[f1r2a3n4k5]

Even the title of this thread is misleading. I don't think there's anyone who really believes vaccines don't work, but there have been recalls, there have been deaths, they are not 100% safe; nothing is. But how safe are they? To even to call that into question, it's just a dog pile of people attacking. I'm not going to deal with that.

It's because people are sick of the attack.

One side has facts. The other side has.... well, I'm not sure.

I'd be ENTIRELY willing to read a study which demonstrated that vaccines could be significantly linked to some illness. ENTIRELY. That would be breaking news. See what it did for that Lancet writer's fame (until it was debunked).

One can't just take two variables and say they are linked. As global temperature increases, there are less pirates! Common sense tells us that's nonsense.

Now, if there was a study which suggested that there was a statistically significant difference in... say, the testicular tissue in vaccinated and non-vaccinated individuals. I'd look into it. Other researchers would look into it. It would open up a new field of study.

Maybe we'll find something like that someday. But for the time being, we have to make the best decisions we can with the information we have. And as of now, the information we have is that vaccines are very safe and the trade-off is so overwhemingly valuable, that we should strongly encourage everyone to get vaccines.

 

[Shodan1980]

The people most to blame for the MMR vaccine scare are the UK media. Bad doctor wrote a badly researched, badly written, very biased paper that should have died in obscurity (there are dozens like it every month). The media picked it up, every credible doctor told them it was bull, they ignored them and ran with the story. Other countries started reporting the controversy, idiots reacted, and now we have small outbreaks of fatal diseases in the UK where before there were none.

As for the cancer thing. Life is a fatal condition, we all die from something. The mortality rate is still 100%. We're getting better and better at curing and stopping dozens of causes of death, cancer is just taking up the slack and we're getting better at quantifying those "died of old age" deaths as cancers or heart failures or whatever as we're simply staying alive long enough for one of them to kill us. Its that simple. The other factors just influence which of those causes get us. Cancer is just becoming a slightly more likely option as cell replication gets more error filled anyway as we age and our immune system gets worse at catching and killing the cancerous cells. So small changes in the environment affect the elderly more than the young.

 

[bullet_sandw1ch]

The vaccines kids get today are not the ones I got in 1982-86. It's obvious that vaccines prevent disease, but it's also obvious that kids today are increasingly defective- not just with autism, but you never used to hear shit about peanut allergies or gluten intolerance either. Then you have have cancer being up 20% from 1990-2000 and expected to be up another 50% by 2020.

So maybe... something is very wrong.

We're also getting more efficient at detecting illness though so it's natural to see a spike.

Cancer is going up though but that's what makes it a mystery, nobody really knows for certain why it's happening. I tend to think it's because of all that packaged food nonsense, the fact that we keep getting less 'food' in our food and more chemicals with longer names that I can count, just because it makes production cheaper.
But who can say for sure.

is it possible that the spike in cancer diagnosis' could be because we detect it more easily now than we did 20 or 30 years ago?

 

[Jacco]

I think the increase in cancer rates may have more to do with vaccines than people may claim, bit for completely different reasons. Because of Vaccines, people are no longer dying of tuberculosis, tetanus, small pox, and all the other things we are being vaccinated against. We're basically running out of things to die of.

I think that's a huge part of it. Cancer, as much as it sucks, is kind of nature's "final solution" to life. Without cell defectiveness, we would basically be able to live forever barring other disease, accident, etc. Our modern society is stable enough that keeping such natural dangers at bay is a very real possibility. Whenever you hear of a historical figure dying of "natural causes" or "old age" it is almost always attributed to cancer.

I honestly believe that in the next 50 years or so, we will have the technology to keep people alive for 200+ years.