<p>Again, sorry guys. Should’ve kept my mouth shut…I just get a little afraid every time a new “groundbreaking” innovation comes out like this. Maybe it’s the shock.</p>
<p>If you’re working with the elderly/vulnerable, it’s a moral obligation to get vaccinated so you don’t get anyone else ill. Otherwise, I think that vaccines are eventually going to hurt our immune systems…it’s messing with evolution (I know all this sounds a little social darwinist). Why else do so many people have allergies to peanut butter when a few generations ago this was unheard of?</p>
<p>What?!? You strongly oppose tool-making, agriculture, healing disease, control of fire, and everything else that makes human beings human? (For that matter, animals other than human beings interact with, that is “mess with” their environments, so I guess you want to obliterate all living things.)</p>
<p>You use this phrase (Social Darwinist)…I do not think it means what you think it means. Social Darwinism is the idea that social competition between individuals leads to societal evolution. It’s a basis for anti-welfare state thought.</p>
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<p>The current popular hypothesis is that it’s a combination of increased diagnosis/awareness, and increased early exposure to peanuts.</p>
But this is due to children not being exposed to any antigens. Vaccines do expose the immune system to foreign antigens, and the immune system’s response after being vaccinated is the same as the response would be if you were exposed to the disease. Vaccines, then, actually exercise the immune system.</p>
<p>Of course, the very existence of epidemic diseases that we need to vaccinate against is a result of high population density and proximity to domesticated animals. We could easily give up vaccines, if we’re also willing to give up agriculture and go back to a low population density, hunter-gatherer lifestyle.</p>