<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>
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I strongly oppose messing with nature.
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<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>
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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).
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<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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Why else do so many people have allergies to peanut butter when a few generations ago this was unheard of?
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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>
<p>I know what social Darwinism is (survival of the richest/smartest/most successful)...I was kind of applying this laissez-faire idea to medicine.</p>
<p>There's an article in Newsweek that just came out that says we are rasing our children in bubbles, and that is leading to allergies.</p>
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There's an article in Newsweek that just came out that says we are rasing our children in bubbles, and that is leading to allergies.
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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>