MODERATOR’S NOTE: OK, this thread is getting into debate territory, and that’s not allowed. Please refrain or I will close the thread.
Probably many of the elderly who are still alive now would have preferred to have the vaccines available then, rather than watch some of their siblings or friends die from from those diseases back then, or suffer from severe after-effects (e.g. paralysis from polio, birth defects from rubella during pregnancy, cancer from hepatitis B or HPV, etc.).
@Tranquilmind, that is the second time you have brought up abortion in this thread. I don’t know if you are deliberately trying to get it shut down or not. In any case, please stop it.
Wilma Rudolph had polio as a child. It was just so prevalent. Robert Macnamara too. He spoke about how incredibly painful it was in Fog of War.
A friend of ours got polio as a child, and he’s not that much older than I am! He was fortunate that he didn’t have any long-term problems afterwards.
There is a new film out about a man who was severely paralyzed by polio at the age of 28 (based on the true story of Robin Cavendish). It looks really good. It’s called Breathe. Anyone who argues against a polio vaccine should be required to see it.
Breathe has been getting positive reviews on my public health listservs. I’m adding it to my to- watch list.
One of my three doctoral reading lists is modern history of medicine in the US and western Europe. I wish anti vaxxers would read even 2 or 3 of the 100+ I have to.
Maybe history of medicine should be part of high school science curriculum.
Modern medicine is nothing short of miraculous (for lack of a better word). If I had been born literally a generation earlier, I wouldn’t make it to age 30.
But the drawback is that people become complacent and we have short historical memories. We’re also mostly insulated from the suffering of billions without access to our care. The plague is ripping through Madagascar. Mostly eradicated diseases like cholera break out during natural disasters.
We underestimate how fragile our ecosystem is.
Yeah, I wouldn’t have made it to 30 before the introduction of antibiotics. I started getting recurring UTIs when I was 18 or so. Looking back at my family’s history in the 1800s, a LOT of the kids died from diphtheria. People have no idea how horrible it was back then.
I started getting a ton of strep throat infections from age 8-10, so may not have made it to my teen years but for antibiotics. I did survive chickenpox, german measles and mumps, but it wasn’t pleasant and we were fortunate to have had mild cases.
What is the objection to vaccinations @Andi75 and others? The notion that Big Pharm and doctors are colluding in some nefarious fashion sounds ridiculous to me. I live in an area with a lot of pharmaceutical companies and many of my neighbors work there. They are HUMAN BEINGS. They do not go to work to figure out how to swindle unsuspecting patients.
DO I thnk BigPharma is too involved in medicine? Yes. Do I think they are actively trying to force harmful vaccines down our throat? No.
DO these doctors (Tennpenny et al) have journal articles that support the harm that vaccines do that outweighs the enormous advantages they present?
ETA - I hope i am not against the TOS. Not trying to start debate, but I am genuinely curious as to the suspicion around vaccines.
^Me too. The notion that all these doctors and pharmaceutical executives are knowingly giving their own children harmful vaccines in a colossal conspiracy to bilk the American public seems absolutely irrational to me.
Do vaccines even generate much profit? I honestly don’t know. I’ll look when I get back to a computer.
Nobody is objecting to antibiotics, though a bunch are mentioning this, as if it is the same thing. Antibiotics are quite important, but I’m sure that no one would recommend treating everyone with antibiotics under penalty of law just in case. Or maybe some would. Who knows.
Short article from Huffpo: Yes, they are definitely making profit hand over fist. And drug companies enjoy complete immunity for vaccine damage, thanks to the Supreme Court in 2011. Supreme Court of the United States. Russell Bruesewitz et al v. Wyeth et al. No. 09-152. Argued October 12, 2010 – Decided February 22, 2011.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/stephen-cornish/vaccine-prices-_b_6614010.html
surfcity. “What is the objection?” Do you research and you will find many people are harmed by vaccinations as were my children and my husband worked for years for a huge pharmaceutical company. I think there is a balance, but injecting a tiny baby with dozens of diseases and chemicals when they do not have fully functioning immune systems and some have genetic inability to detox is much more dangerous than fear of getting x disease. The chance of a newborn getting Hepatitis B is remote at best (usually sexually transmitted or IV drug use) but they insist they are given this shot on the FIRST DAY OF LIFE> Plenty of scientists and doctors have researched vaccinations and there are huge downsides. I was born in the late sixties and received a handful of vaccinations when it was a 160 million dollar industry. Today children are recommended to have nearly 80 vaccinations and the industry is nearly 60 billion. What some of the latest documentaries on vaccines. If you do not think there is a profit incentive, then you are blind.
Newborns may be exposed to hepatitis B during childbirth from mothers with undiagnosed chronic hepatitis B infection. Newborns and infants who are infected with hepatitis B are 90% likely to become chronically infected (versus 4% of adults infected with hepatitis B). Such chronic infection greatly increases the risk of liver cancer.
Post-exposure vaccination for hepatitis B for a newborn born to a chronically infected mother is 70+% effective at preventing infection of the newborn (higher if hepatitis B immune globulin is given as may be done when the mother is known to be infected).
http://www.immunize.org/protect-newborns/guide/chapter1/whats-needed.pdf
Blind people are quite capable of understanding data, @andi75 
I looked it up. Vaccines account for 2-3% of revenue for pharmaceutical companies. Barely a blimp. I’d wager that it’s way more profitable for people to actually get sick. Hospital stays easily cost tens of thousands of dollars.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/02/vaccines-are-profitable-so-what/385214/
Back in the 90s, my pediatrician explained that the rationale of the Hep B vaccine being given to newborns was because babies born to IV drug abusing Moms rarely made it back for a later pediatric visit. If the Moms breastfeed those babies, they are likely to get Hep B and need a liver transplant.
I’d rather solve those particular problems then give every newborn a vaccine that it’s better to wait for. But maybe those problems are too difficult to solve.
And while Hep B is transmitted like HIV, it is far more contagious.
Yes, lots of blanket recommendations are made because tracking each specific situation is difficult, while the blanket recommendation produces acceptable results generally. Another example is the HPV vaccine – physicians and parents do not know beforehand which kids will become sexually active when (and which of them may get raped and exposed to HPV involuntarily), so giving the vaccine to all before puberty covers all of the potential cases without causing uncomfortable conversations about individual kids’ sexual activity.
Though children are given more vaccines than we were given as infants and children, they are actually exposed to far less antigens than we were, due to the improved production of vaccines.