Vaccines and the failure of doing research on the internet

Reality trumps any number of fallacious arguments made to support a preconceived position based on one or more lies. This is why I am a hard-core empiricist and reject the philosophical school of rationalism, which claims that human reason alone can produce truth. Instead, it has only produced conflict.

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The “Health Ranger” attacks vaccines

Imagine the horror of giving a baby a vaccination to protect his health, only to have him become violently ill. Sadly, such things may happen if the vaccines are defective. But when a product is defective, the logical response is to stop using the product for a short time, do an investigation to determine what went wrong with the product, and then replace it with an improved version of the product, NOT ban the product completely and tell people to never use it! But that is exactly what anti-vaxxer loons in Australia are doing!

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First Andrew Wakefield, now Peter Duesberg should be next!

It’s no big secret that I despise AIDS denialists who claim scientific credentials. They are the most damnable frauds or idiots on Earth, even worse than global warming denialists or anti-vaccination nuts.

Andrew Wakefield, the one who started the anti-vaccination crusade by attempting to link vaccinations with autism, has been discredited and will no longer be allowed to do any medical work.

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EVERYONE should be vaccinated!

Many people are opposed to vaccinating children, fearing that they might be prone to autism as a result. But there is no clear scientific evidence that autism is a cause of vaccinations. People merely ASSUME that because their children’s autism starts soon after their vaccines are administered, but most children who are vaccinated do NOT get autism. If vaccinations caused autism, then nearly all children vaccinated would be autistic, and we would probably have discovered the agent in vaccinations that cause autism by now. Coincidences often happen, but unless the scientific method confirms the existence of an actual cause for something like autism, a coincidence is all it is. Assuming that a coincidence and the hypothesis resulting from it must be the same as a FACT without confirmation is actually magical thinking that is anti-scientific.

While the cause of autism may be questionable, the danger of viral diseases spreading because of children being left unvaccinated is not. Viruses can only reproduce when they have hosts that they can attack. And every time viruses reproduce, they have a chance of mutation. And when they mutate, they are likely to become more deadly, eventually making the vaccinations obsolete. That will never happen if all children are vaccinated, but it might happen eventually if only some are. Of course, once vaccinations become ineffective because of viral mutations, anti-vaccination nuts will claim they were proven right. Thus, their insane claims are irrefutable.

Even if vaccinations DID cause autism in a few cases, it is better for a child to be autistic than to be DEAD! If people like Jenny McCarthy think otherwise, then as far as I am concerned they can rot in hell!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_McCarthy#Activism_and_autism_controversy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_controversy