Are vaccines good or bad?

[penultimatestraw 473]

Damn doctors are talking people out of taking vaccinations? Must be a conspiracy! http://gma.yahoo.com/mom-whose-child-died-chicken-pox-advocates-vaccines-072954362--abc-news-topstories.html

Abby Peterson was just a few weeks shy of her sixth birthday in 2001 when she caught a severe case of chicken pox that made her so weak that she came down with pneumonia, her mother recalled. Her little body couldn’t fight against two infections and after ten agonizing hours in the hospital, she died in her mother’s arms.

Both chicken pox and pneumonia are preventable with vaccines, but Abby’s mom, Shannon Duffy Peterson, who lives in the rural area of Sleepy Eye, Minn., said her pediatrician steered her away from vaccinating her daughter.

“I asked for them and my doctor talked me out of it,” Duffy Peterson recalled. “He said vaccines were too new and recommended I expose my children to diseases instead because he felt they could build up their immunity naturally.”

Duffy Peterson said that she wishes she had questioned the doctor’s recommendations more forcefully. It was only discovered after an autopsy that Abby was born without a spleen, an organ that is an essential part of the immune system. This made her especially vulnerable to germs and viruses, Duffy Peterson said.

Since Abby’s death, Duffy Peterson has become a pro-vaccine crusader, speaking before the Minnesota legislature and helping to pass laws requiring childhood immunization in the state. She said that the small but vocal minority of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children for fear of adverse reactions including autism are well-intentioned but irresponsible.

“Not vaccinating is not taking full medical care of your child,” she said.

Most of the medical establishment agrees completely with Duffy Peterson. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization and dozens of other public health groups have stressed for years that vaccines are safe and necessary. They also say that the large majority of children must be immunized to protect both individuals and whole communities with so-called “herd immunity” from diseases such as measles, mumps and chicken pox.

“From a scientific point of view this is a closed question,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tenn. “Vaccines have virtually wiped out a number of diseases that used to plague this country –- and they do not cause autism.”

Some parents understand the importance of vaccines but are still fearful they may cause harm to a child’s developing immune system. In a recent essay for the Chicago Sun-Times, actress Jenny McCarthy questioned whether a delayed vaccination schedule would be advisable for some children, saying she has never been “anti-vax” but that she does believe that there is a gray area when it comes to the current vaccination schedule laid out by the CDC.

“My beautiful son, Evan, inspired this mother to question the 'one size fits all' philosophy of the recommended vaccine schedule,” McCarthy wrote in her essay. "This is an extremely important discussion and I am dumbfounded that these conversations are discounted and negated because the answers are not black or white. ... God help us all if gray is no longer an option."

But Schaffner said creating worry over the recommended immunization schedule -- up to 24 shots by the age of 2 and up to five pokes per visit -- is misleading and unfounded.

“The area is not gray. There is no injury to children getting vaccinations simultaneously. A child’s immune system is more capable, powerful and flexible than you would think it is,” Schaffner said.

Through a spokeswoman, McCarthy said had no further comment and asked that the Sun-Times piece speak for itself.

Schaffner said that altering the timing of vaccines may seem like a compromise but it still poses a serious health risk because a child remains susceptible to vaccine preventable illnesses for longer periods of time. He said it also puts others, including people with compromised immunity and even fully vaccinated individuals, at risk by exposing communities at large to preventable diseases. And, he said, delaying vaccinations is more costly and makes it more likely a child never completes the full schedule necessary for protection against disease.

“Vaccines spread out are often vaccines not received,” he said.

Duffy Peterson said she is sure all parents have their children’s best interest at heart but they have to follow the science and make educated choices when it comes to vaccines.

“Not vaccinating can kill your child,” she said. “No one wants to have a child die in their arms when it could have been prevented.”

Nearly 8 percent of parents in a 2011 national survey refused to have their children immunized for personal, religious or medical reasons. Another 25 percent delayed their child’s vaccinations, citing safety concerns.

 

[drobeski 3,061]

You seem angry lately, try some zannax and a steak

[smashmouths@blf 33]

I thought you were a doctor?

[penultimatestraw 473]

I thought you were a doctor?

Just pointing out doctors get blamed whether they encourage or withhold treatment.

[penultimatestraw 473]

You seem angry lately, try some zannax and a steak

Xanax doesn't treat anger; though not being conservative does.

[jerryskids 5,206]

Nearly 8 percent of parents in a 2011 national survey refused to have their children immunized for personal, religious or medical reasons. Another 25 percent delayed their child’s vaccinations, citing safety concerns.

 

I'm fascinated by these numbers. I've been on record for questioning some scientific positions, particularly around carbs and diet, but immunizations are arguably the greatest scientific achievement ever. Who the fock is taking medical advice from Jenny McCarthy.

[IGotWorms 3,315]

Xanax doesn't treat anger; though not being conservative does.

If you're going to prescribe treatment for drobeski, might I suggest starting with a gastric bypass?

[IGotWorms 3,315]

I'm fascinated by these numbers. I've been on record for questioning some scientific positions, particularly around carbs and diet, but immunizations are arguably the greatest scientific achievement ever. Who the fock is taking medical advice from Jenny McCarthy.

Only people even dumber than her, like Mrs. Jay Cutler

[gocolts 300]

I'm fascinated by these numbers. I've been on record for questioning some scientific positions, particularly around carbs and diet, but immunizations are arguably the greatest scientific achievement ever. Who the fock is taking medical advice from Jenny McCarthy.

Vaccine truthers, AKA Autism moms. These women are focking nuts and NOTHING will change their mind.

[jerryskids 5,206]

Xanax doesn't treat anger; though not being conservative does.

Wrong.

 

Conservatism makes you happy Conservatives enjoy life more than liberals. Why left-leaning people should take the "happiness gap" seriously

In general, political conservatives haven’t been very pleased with a slew of scientific attempts — sometimes dating back well over a decade — to psychoanalyze their beliefs and behavior. Indeed, some on the right wrongly interpret these analyses as implying that conservatives have “bad brains” or a “mental defect.” Yet if psychology-of-politics research is really a veiled attack on the right, then why does it contain so many findings that cast conservatives in a positive light?

Chief among these, perhaps, is the discovery that conservatives, across countries, tend to be just plain happier people than liberals are. That’s not bad news for the right — it’s seriously bad news for the left.

Indeed, the left-right “happiness gap” is no small matter. In a 2006 Pew Survey, for instance, 47 percent of conservative Republicans said they were “very happy,” compared with just 28 percent of liberal Democrats. Furthermore, the Pew Survey found that this result could not simply be attributed to the seemingly obvious cause: differences in income levels between the left and the right. Rather, for every income group in the study, conservative Republicans were happier than Democrats.

The fascinating question is why this is the case. The left-right happiness research was recently singled out in a New York Times op-ed by Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, who suggested that conservatives’ subjectively greater sense of personal happiness may be attributable to factors like marriage and religious faith. In other words, married and religious people tend to be happier, and conservatives are more likely to be both. That seems to make a lot of sense … or does it?

In truth, this analysis fails to peer very far beneath the surface. There is every reason to suspect that there may be something deeper, inherent to political conservatives, that makes them more likely to be married, religious, happy and a great deal of other things besides.

What might it be? Well, let’s start with the body of well-documented personality differences between people who opt for the political left, and people who opt for the political right. Using the well-established “Big Five” personality scale, conservatives and liberals differ on at least three out of five major personality traits that have implications for their personal happiness.

First, one striking finding is that conservatives tend to be less neurotic — or, more emotionally stable — than liberals. It is part of the inherent definition of neuroticism that one is less happy — more fretful, more depressed. Liberals, then, don’t just worry about the poor, and the rights of those different from themselves — it appears that they worry more, period, than conservatives do.

Although it has a smaller effect, conservatives also tend toward more extraversion in some personality studies. That means they probably make more friends and feel more comfortable in groups and communities. They’re more sociable. Once again, this probably helps confer a subjective sense of greater happiness.

But perhaps most significant, personality research shows that conservatives tend to be less open, exploratory people than liberals are. Indeed, based on a large body of research by University of Maryland social psychologist Arie Kruglanski, conservatives tend to have a higher “need for cognitive closure,” meaning that they are uncomfortable with ambiguity and prefer to seize on and hold fixed beliefs and views. And if you think being more closed-minded makes you less happy … well, think again. Instead, it appears that the relationship runs in the opposite direction.

The need for closure is often interpreted very negatively — understandably so. But if it has an upside, it may well be the happiness and peace of mind that it confers. Conservatives tend to be more assured in their views and confident in them; thus, they have less need to agonizingly question them. They know their place in the world and aren’t troubled over it. “It’s kind of a peaceful bliss, cognitively speaking,” explains Kruglanski.

Furthermore, the need for closure — for certainty, fixity — may underlie much else about the right. Kruglanski notes, for instance, that there’s a known relationship between closure and religiosity. “Religion or any comprehensive belief system is one that provides you answers to everything — and therefore belief and happiness,” he explains.

Finally, there is the related argument that the conservative tendency to rationalize politically or economically unequal social systems — to overlook how the other half is forced to live, either through simple dismissiveness, or affirmation of the fairness of free markets and meritocracies — also confers happiness. In his New York Times op-ed, Brooks dismissed this argument, associated with New York University social psychologist John Jost, but that’s not so easy to do. In a 2008 study in the journal Psychological Science, Jost and Jaime Napier showed that conservatives were happier than liberals in nine countries beyond the United States (including Germany, Spain and Sweden) — and further demonstrated, through statistical analyses, that the rationalization of inequality was a key part of the explanation. “Meritocratic beliefs account for the association between political orientation and subjective well-being to a significant degree,” wrote Napier and Jost.

The upshot of this research, to my mind, is that it provides a huge wake-up call to liberals who would dismiss conservatism, and their conservative brethren, without understanding this ideology’s appeal or what its adherents are getting out of it. Overall, the happiness research suggests that conservatism is giving something to people that liberalism is not — community, stability, certainty, and perhaps, in Jost’s words, an “emotional buffer” against all the unfairness in the world.

Knowing this, one still may not want the type of somnambulant happiness that conservatism conveys (I certainly don’t). But it would be foolhardy to mistake its appeal. The world is hard and cruel and perhaps, as predominantly liberal atheists suspect, ultimately meaningless. In this context, it appears, political conservatism is doing much more than political liberalism to get people through the day.

 

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/16/conservatism_makes_you_happy/

[Reality 2,710]

Wrong.

 

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/16/conservatism_makes_you_happy/

 

[Voltaire 4,559]

The silver lining of when unvaccinated children die is their parents are the ones who most richly deserve having it happen to them.

[jerryskids 5,206]

Only people even dumber than her, like Mrs. Jay Cutler

Fun fact: Jay Cutler is a Type 1 Diabetic. I only know that because of my daughter. Knowing how hard it is to manage and how it can make you irritable when your sugar is out of whack (which is basically always for such a person) makes me hella respect him for achieving what he has, and give him a big hall pass for his perception as being moody.

 

Anyway, Type 1 is fundamentally an autoimmune disease. As such I find it odd that his wife opposes vaccines which can help strengthen the immune system.

[kilroy69 994]

Cutlers wife and Jenny McCarthy are both dumb b!tches that need to be punched in their piehole.

[Voltaire 4,559]

Fun fact: Jay Cutler is a Type 1 Diabetic. I only know that because of my daughter. Knowing how hard it is to manage and how it can make you irritable when your sugar is out of whack (which is basically always for such a person) makes me hella respect him for achieving what he has, and give him a big hall pass for his perception as being moody.

 

Anyway, Type 1 is fundamentally an autoimmune disease. As such I find it odd that his wife opposes vaccines which can help strengthen the immune system.

Ah, athletes with medical conditions reminds me of one of my favorite stories.

 

Before the 1986 NBA draft the only person on Earth who knew Dennis Rodman had severe asthma was the Pistons' team doctor who told the GM. Even Rodman himself and his agent didn't know he had anything more serious than allergies.

 

"Can you treat him?"

 

"Oh sure, No Problem"

 

So they scooped up John Salley in the first round while Rodman slid and slid and was sitting there when Detroit's 2nd rounder came up. Meanwhile Boston had flushed the #2 overall pick they got from Seattle on Len Bias who promptly died of a crack cocaine overdose the next day. Thus the torch was passed.

[IGotWorms 3,315]

Len Bias was murdered.

[kilroy69 994]

Murdered byyyyyyyy crack?

[Voltaire 4,559]

Len Bias was murdered.

Whatever works. And to think, I've kept his crack dealer on my Christmas Card list all these years.

 

You've no idea how much hatred we had for the '80s Celtics. Can you imagine how great it was the next day to be a 15 y/o Pistons fan discussing the news at lunch with your High School friends?

Oh the jokes were flowing.

 

We were already super-stoked. We did this without a clue of what a massive coup we had just pulled in landing Salley and Rodman.

 

Hands down, Best Detroit draft ever.

[Gepetto 987]

CDC has been calling me for weeks and I finally answered. It was questions about immunizations and if children live in the house. Since I have no kids, it was easy enough to answer none and none.

[IGotWorms 3,315]

CDC has been calling me for weeks and I finally answered. It was questions about immunizations and if children live in the house. Since I have no kids, it was easy enough to answer none and none.

Would you immunize them if some woman actually accepted your seed and had your children?

[Gepetto 987]

Would you immunize them if some woman actually accepted your seed and had your children?

 

yes

[Voltaire 4,559]

Apologies to pen and I request you guys grant me one more GFIAFPesque thread hijacking post.

 

The '80s Pistons did not have a rivalry with the Bulls. Bullsh*t. We hated the Celitcs but the Bulls didn't matter and were hardly more than a footnote. That's just revisionist history. At the time it didn't occur to anyone that we were supposed to give a sh*t about the Bulls. We didn't. We won, they lost, the games weren't close. May as well be the Bucks or Cavaliers for all I cared/noticed.

 

You don't have a rivalry with the bug on your windshield, but I'm sure the bug is pretty p*ssed off with you. They were -at best- one of the other playoff teams you beat before you played the Celtics. Maybe. I'd have to look it up, but since they royally hated us and claim a rivalry with us, I'll take their word for it.What I remember was that Jordan was really good, but Chuck Daly had a game plan to stop them and both Dumars and Rodman were capable of carrying it out. With Jordan neutralized the Bulls were never a threat that Detroit took seriously.

 

When Chicago finally broke through against Detroit, I missed it. I was running around Iraq next to a tank and got any news from the occasional week old newspaper or the last guy who got to phone home. I knew the Bulls won at some point a few days after they did but any basketball hype of 1991 Pistons/Bulls I missed out on and the next year Chicago repeated but I was in Germany so didn't get a dose either.

 

Then sometime years later I heard some crap about Chicago had a rivalry with the Pistons in the 80s and I couldn't beleive it. What cr@p. Nobody told Detroit fans we had a rivalry with them, that was all on them. I hadn't even recollected taking them seriously or playing them in any competitive series. It was all Detroit/Boston for Pistons fans, the Bulls hadn't registered a blip of worry/rivalry. I didn't even know they didn't like us (any more than the rest of the NBA at any rate).

[Voltaire 4,559]

Len Bias was murdered.

On that fateful day

I wish McHale had inhaled

That it was Bird who flew high

Or Parrish who perished

But they were Celtics for longer

So I'm Biased

[MedStudent 56]

Wrong.

 

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/16/conservatism_makes_you_happy/

Ignorance is bliss

[penultimatestraw 473]

Wrong.

 

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/16/conservatism_makes_you_happy/

It was a joke, but I knew that was coming as it's been posted before.

[wiffleball 4,640]

its not a health issue, the known fact they pass RFID chips through vaccinations.

[NorthernVike 2,080]

The only one I passed on was the one they rushed for the bird flu or some stupid shiot like that a few years ago.

[wiffleball 4,640]

true story the CIA set up an NGO to help vaccinate people in Afghanistan. It was actually their way of collecting DNA from the local populace try and find bin laden. think that can't happen here?

[Frank M 181]

Your kid is not autistic because of vaccines, your kid is autistic because of high voltage power lines near your house.

 

HTH

[drobeski 3,061]

Your kid is not autistic because of vaccines, your kid is autistic because of high voltage power lines near your house.

 

HTH

ban high voltage power lines

[wiffleball 4,640]

ban high voltage power lines

Ban autistic kids

[DankNuggs 305]

Your kid is not autistic because of vaccines, your kid is autistic because of high voltage power lines near your house.

 

HTH

Jeff Johnson, the name you know!

[KSB2424 3,083]

I'm fascinated by these numbers. I've been on record for questioning some scientific positions, particularly around carbs and diet, but immunizations are arguably the greatest scientific achievement ever. Who the fock is taking medical advice from Jenny McCarthy.

 

This is the correct answer.

 

And normally I wouldn't care IF vaccinating your kid only effected your kid. If that was the case I'd chalk it up to personal choice. However that is not the case. When a parent chooses to not vaccinate they are essentially putting the whole community at a greater risk. Unvaccinated kid goes on vacation with parent to Cabo and comes back bringing dieseases with him/her that normally would not, which then spreads to God knows who. Maybe some elderly grandma or someone with poor health where said disease can be dangerous.

 

I'm very concious of what my kids eat, and what goes in their bodies. However everything I've read from credible medical professionals as well as my pediatrician (whom I trust) tells me vaccinating my kids is the overwhelming correct move.

[parrot 789]

http://howdovaccinescauseautism.com/

[Phurfur 70]

The silver lining of when unvaccinated children die is their parents are the ones who most richly deserve having it happen to them.

What percentage of unvaccinated children die?

 

What percentage of vaccinated children die?

[penultimatestraw 473]

I'm fascinated by these numbers. I've been on record for questioning some scientific positions, particularly around carbs and diet, but immunizations are arguably the greatest scientific achievement ever. Who the fock is taking medical advice from Jenny McCarthy.

People don't understand science. They'd rather believe all those prevented infections are a conspiracy perpetuated by the vaccine industry. Until someone they care about gets sick, at which point they seek medical help...

[penultimatestraw 473]

What percentage of unvaccinated children die?

 

What percentage of vaccinated children die?

Trick question. They all do, eventually.

[penultimatestraw 473]

Wrong.

 

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/16/conservatism_makes_you_happy/

And I wasn't comparing them to liberals BTW.

[penultimatestraw 473]

Fun fact: Jay Cutler is a Type 1 Diabetic. I only know that because of my daughter. Knowing how hard it is to manage and how it can make you irritable when your sugar is out of whack (which is basically always for such a person) makes me hella respect him for achieving what he has, and give him a big hall pass for his perception as being moody.

 

Anyway, Type 1 is fundamentally an autoimmune disease. As such I find it odd that his wife opposes vaccines which can help strengthen the immune system.

Not defending Cutler's wife, but if one's own immune system is capable of destroying itself, why prod it with vaccines? You want to strengthen the thing that is overactive in the first place?

[penultimatestraw 473]

Ignorance is bliss

Which is why I prefer ignoring politics altogether.