YouTube Breeding Harmful Scientific Misinformation 816
Invisible Pink Unicorn writes "University of Toronto researchers have uncovered widespread misinformation in videos on YouTube related to vaccination and immunization. In the first-ever study of its kind, they found that over half of the 153 videos analyzed portrayed childhood, HPV, flu and other vaccinations negatively or ambiguously. They also found that videos highly skeptical of vaccinations received more views and better ratings by users than those videos that portray immunizations in a positive light. According to the lead researcher, 'YouTube is increasingly a resource people consult for health information, including vaccination. Our study shows that a significant amount of immunization content on YouTube contradicts the best scientific evidence at large. From a public health perspective, this is very concerning.' An extract from the Journal of the American Medical Association is available online."
Big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
Natural Selection (Score:5, Insightful)
Not just Vaccination, also Evolution (Score:2, Insightful)
They make YouTube videos as well.
Just because they can use tech doesn't mean they grok tech.
You've got it coming... (Score:5, Insightful)
You are simply never going to protect all the stupid people from themselves, and making the effort often only punishes the smart people who didn't make those mistakes. That's the unfortunate realization I've come to in my adulthood.
I can't help but think... (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't help but think that it could only help the gene pool if the type of people who would think "hey, let's go look up important medical information on YouTube!" were given bad medical advice. Darwinism and all that.
(Except, of course, that this is more about misinformed parents harming their children. But still - I can't imagine why anyone would think "hey, I wanna find out more about immunization on YouTube!" I suppose they could be starting on a search engine and winding up at YouTube. But that ruins the joke.)
Vaccinations (Score:1, Insightful)
Do you trust Pharmaceutical Companies to give you all the information you need to make an intelligent decision?
Personally, I don't trust any of them.
Re:Big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the blind leading the blind out there. And not only that, they distrust the sighted.
Re:You've got it coming... (Score:2, Insightful)
Except these people are harming thier children, not themselves.
Maybe so.... or not (Score:2, Insightful)
I think this isn't so much proof of ignorance, but rather evidence that the "average" American actually has doubts about what we're being told and injected with.
And I can't blame anyone one bit for feeling that way.
Mainstream medicine and paywalls (Score:5, Insightful)
If mainstream MDs and researchers care about getting their point of view out to patients, so that people who find out they have a disease don't have to learn about it from YouTube, spam, and pharmaceutical company sites, they're going to have to start using more Open Access journals or get their existing journals to go Open Access.
Holy 8mm cameras batman.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm willing to bet that at least one of these concerned researchers went to a school where he was told that masturbation will make him crosseyed or make him go blind. Misinformation has been around since the advent of spoken language, and possibly before. It was only relatively recently that we all agreed (well most of us) that the earth is round.
It is not medical information that needs to be filterd, or the fscking Internet... we need to teach people how to get through life without falling prey to every scam and rumor that falls into their world. I remember recently the many people who recommended Chantix to me to help me stop smoking... Guess what Mr smart research scientists.. they were doctors and experts, and I had no reason to not believe them till people started having psychotic episodes and killing themselves.
Lets all just sing in 3 part harmony about the evils of not educating your kids, the public, your friends, and the world in general. The problem is not that there is misleading information out there, the problem is that people are so willing to be mislead.
While we are on subject... ehh, people who are willing to be mislead are also willing to believe that the government's "need" to encroach on their rights is necessary. An EDUCATED public is a strong one, but that is hardly what big business and big government want.
Educate people in general, not on just one little danger. Teach a man to fish..... nuff said
Re:Vaccinations (Score:2, Insightful)
Especially when they continue to use mercury based preservatives in any vaccine, let alone one given to babies and small children. There have been studies that have shown the rise in autism directly linked to the rise in the use of mercury in vaccines in 3rd world countries. The reason why JAMA is technically right is because the pharmaceutical companies sure as hell aren't going to fund research that takes their product off the market.
While pharmaceutical companies do make life sustaining drugs, trusting a corporation to protect anything but its bottom line is fool hearty at best.
Article makes a HUGE assumption (Score:5, Insightful)
It's one thing to simply count hits. It's quite another to infer the reason(s) behind them.
Re:You've got it coming... (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's something else I'd like to point out: Youtube merely puts out in the open what people think at home. Stupidity that used to be restricted to friends and family is now out in the open for all to see.
Re:Big deal (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Big deal (Score:4, Insightful)
What we've got to do is get past the assertion that we can automatically delegate thought to other people based upon criteria such as age, office, net worth, attractiveness, eloquence, etc.
This will keep hapening (Score:5, Insightful)
And things like youtube are perfect for the type of disinfo that these theories represent. The question now is how do we counter these claims? I would highly suggest listening to the Skepticality podcast ( http://www.skepticality.com/p_listentopast.php [skepticality.com] )ablout the documentary Flock of Dodos. The main theme is a discussion about how real science needs to learn to present its information and findings in a far more entertaining and easily digestible format. Just throwing facts and numbers at people, while it makes me happy, turns off the majority.
This is kind of like the whole 9/11 truth issue. People who have seen the conspiracy videos on youtube can be almost immune to evidence about physics, metallurgy, demolitions, and such. Their eyes just glaze over when you try to use facts and numbers and evidence. But if you point them towards a source like http://www.youtube.com/user/RKOwens4 [youtube.com] which is comprised of simple arguments against the 9/11 truth theories, in easy to understand 3 minute chapters, then you start to make headway.
This is the course science must take with the public. Like it or not. The alternative is far to dangerous.
Re:Big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
Before the printing press it was harder for the uneducated or misinformed to get an audience.
Before the television it was harder for the uneducated or misinformed to get an audience.
Before websites it was harder for the uneducated or misinformed to get an audience.
Before blogs it was harder for the uneducated or misinformed to get an audience.
Now its before youtube...
You know, maybe we should go back to the old system, where the only form of written/tangible communication was bible scriptures copied in monasteries. That way the "sighted" could keep leading all of us poor little blind folks in their infinite wisdom.
As for your "Insightful" cynicism about NIH videos being disregarded, I doubt that would have anything to do with their "the man" factor. I wonder why you can't find any medical information from "the man" in a google search, oh wait, you can. You can also find information (and misinformation) from independent sources! Not only can you search out a source you trust, you can compare what you find with the opinions, research and facts presented by other sources.
Once people actually start thinking "oh, I'm feeling sick, I'm going to see if I can find something about my condition on youtube, instead of an easily searchable forum like the web" I'm sure there will be more accurate health related videos on youtube to balance it out.
Misinformation is not the problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
We'll take a parallel into Hollywood. The fact that there's entertainment based off of lies or misinformation is no big deal. I don't know of too many people who think their car will randomly transform into a robot or their body is being used as a battery to power a giant ai network. The problem the article is hinting at is many of these videos are supposed to be informative and we break into the realm of documentaries or informational movies (i.e. Fahrenheit 9/11, An Inconvenient Truth, etc.) Now I don't want this debate to get political (although I think it may) but we'll further examine Fahrenheit 9/11. I personally am a democrat and when I saw this movie, I believed much more than I should of to be the absolute truth. Later on a fair portion of the movie was debunked, but because it was a compelling story in line with my own viewpoint, it was easy to believe.
To add to this, I have heard many people tell urban legends to me (which I knew to be untrue) as the absolute truth. The point is that humans tend to believe what makes a good story and not necessarily the truth, which in many cases is too bad.
I don't think it's unlikely or unheard of that there's misinformation on the net and I really don't feel that's what this article is getting at. Instead the article is pointing a blame-ful finger at the gullibility of human kind.
Sometimes lies may be fun, but take them only at face value.
Re:Big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, hell, I thought most people knew that wikipedia, while indeed a nice place to start looking up topics, is hardly an authoritative source to be trusted as the gospel truth?!?!
On the other hand...I didn't realize YouTube had any real content other than kids doing stunts, bootleg videos, guitar lessons, and the like. I didn't know there was anything the purported to be 'serious' on there.
Re:Not Quite (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Getting what you deserve... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
I trust the government more than I trust the web site that brought us "Leave Britney alone!"
Medical advice from YouTube... what the fuck? Who on earth would go there for definitive advice on anything (except maybe old TV shows).
Re:Big deal (Score:3, Insightful)
We now have the technology to eliminate one of the most common forms of cancer through mandatory vaccination, but there are people actively fighting this due their own ignorance! If we all lived on separate islands and never interacted with eachother, the philosophical argument could be made against mandatory vaccination. But we don't. We live in a society where every decision we make affects other people, so we must be pragmatic instead of idealistic when it comes to contagious disease.
Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
Going back to the first quote, let's just say for sake of argument you're right, about being a single person in the population who does not get immunized. Let's just say at that point you run a higher risk of getting the disease from the vaccine than from another source.
How do you know when you're in that situation? How do you know, you're the ONE person, of all the people you may come in contact with, the one lone person who has system beat? (And of course that the only vector by which the disease will spread to you is through another unimmunized person.)
Oh, that's right, you don't. So you've set up some fantastical situation that will never occur, even if your conclusion is correct.
Re:Vaccinations (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not just Vaccination, also Evolution (Score:2, Insightful)
"We have to remember there is a large sub-culture in the US/Canada and Europe who still think that evolution is a myth, and the world was created 6,000 years ago."
What the HELL does this have to do with Vaccinations? I know plenty of Atheist who don't like vaccinations either, because they don't trust the science that is performed for profit. This has NOTHING to do with Evolution or Bible believers, but is a snide comment. Hope you're happy in your smugness.
The audience for both are the same, the under educated masses of America. Who also believe vaccines are government mind control along with fluoride and that secretly a Cabal of jewish businessmen run the nation in conjunction with aliens they keep at area 51 etc...
Re:Article makes a HUGE assumption (Score:2, Insightful)
So they did the research to see what the public believes, and what kinda attitudes the public has (like how the negative ones got more comments, etc).
Anyways, the problem here is also that other idiots not getting vaccines actually affects even the people who do, because the people who get sick can end up spreading an epidemic/pandemic around the world. Plus, new strains that your vaccine doesn't protect against can also mutate inside those people and then end up making the vaccine worthless, etc. Point is, less sick people is better for everyone.
Plus, kids don't really deserve to have uneducated idiots make bad decisions for them.
Re:Big deal (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Big deal (Score:3, Insightful)
Doesn't particularly trouble me. Seriously, think about it, who goes to YouTube for medical information? Paranoid loons who already harbor conspiracy theories about vaccinations and are looking for confirmation. Take away YouTube, and they'll just confirm their biases elsewhere.
Re:Not just Vaccination, also Evolution (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Big deal (Score:2, Insightful)
This is slightly offtopic but I hate this perception. We the people give the government its power. They are not our rulers and we are not mere property of the state. Granted the precedent set by government telling us what is good, and unconstitutional actions such as outlawing ecstasy, have eroded both public perception of governments role in human health and our personal responsibility.
Cattle...? Thanks! (Score:3, Insightful)
Thanks for the comparison... I think we're all flattered to be considered livestock.
And no, I don't think governments in general always are interested in the health of their citizens. I believe the GGPP was talking about the Canadian government specifically, and I don't know much about that government. I do know that ours in the US seems all too eager to sell us all down the river for short-term commercial interests. I don't trust pharmaceutical companies developing immunizations more than I have to. I still believe in immunizing my kids, but I don't believe we should be doing it at the rate they're telling us to. And I don't believe that combining 3 or more immunizations into a single shot is always such a great idea.
I do think that immunizations are important, though.
Re:Vaccinations (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not surprising at all. (Score:3, Insightful)
Or maybe it was nuclear power. Or computers. Or the proliferation of color T.V. Or NASA bringing back moon-rocks. While my theories are sillier than yours, they do have something in common with it.....they're all unsupported by current available evidence.
Nope, it's not glaring too hard, but still......Sure, you should be cautious about anything that someone wants to inject into your (or your child's) body. But the fact is, the vaccines we have today make you *less* likely to become ill, not more. The reason for compulsive vaccines isn't to further some dark plot, but to make sure you aren't a vector for disease that could affect the rest of us.
I don't get a flu shot since I'm not in a particularly high-risk group for a bad bout with it, but I know, and so does everyone else who pays attention to their doctor, the nightly news, or any of a thousand other sources that the projected strain may not be the one that actually hits. That's why it's a projected strain, and not a guaranteed strain.
They distrust them because they don't understand them very well. This is a combination of the medical field not explaining it well enough to them, and their own lack of motivation to learn about them.
Get of your lawn? I'm not coming within a thousand yards of your house! The only things I'm relatively sure I'm not going to catch from you are Polio and Tetanus!
Re:Cattle...? Thanks! (Score:4, Insightful)
And is there any actual evidence to support these beliefs, or is it more like a creationism thing?
In this case, YES I DO BELIEVE IT (Score:3, Insightful)
I do. I guess that's because I'm smart enough to realize, as would be the "politicians", that we're not talking about your health, or my health, we're talking about PREVENTING A FUCKING PANDEMIC.
Not individual infections. Not a small outbreak. A worldwide, humanity crushing pandemic.
Let that sink into your tiny little brain for a second. Hopefully, you'll realize why your post is so ridiculous.
Forgive me for being so confrontational, but when your idiot ass decides to put me at risk because you're afraid of vaccines, you deserve to be called to task on it.
Re:Big deal (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Big deal (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, by that time it will be too late, because the fluoride powered transmitter in your tooth will have alerted the authorities to your plans, and the black helicopters will already be on their way to pick you up.
You can be skeptical of the motives of drug companies, the media, or whomever, but you should not abandon reason or the scientific method, which is where a lot of the critics of "mainstream medicine" go off the deep end. You still should realize that the human body is a complex system and, thus, doing medicine requires significant education and expertise and learning anything about a system requires systematic, controlled experiments done on a large sample with rigorous data analysis. What the amounts to is that you have to be fairly selective in whose advice you take, and, even if it isn't the NIH, logic dictates that it should probably be some other relatively large organization that has people with enough expertise and resources for the necessary testing.
The other key point is that however skeptical you are of the medical establishment you should be equally skeptical of anyone else who steps up to offer you an alternative. Sadly, such skepticism seems to be seldom applied to "alternative medicine".
I can see using YouTube... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:YouTube is irrelevant (Score:1, Insightful)
It's called the law of large numbers. In any large population, extremely suspicious coincidences will occur with startling regularity. You will have entire families who fall victim to weird, debilitating illnesses shortly after each one receives a vaccine, simply by coincidence. Because the general population doesn't understand probability or statistics, these people then become "proof" that there is more going on than what the official line claims.
And then people like you come along and make vague references to these cases, and infer without providing any references or data that there is no scientific proof of vaccine effectiveness, and make scary references to mercury while ignoring the well known effects and symptoms of heavy-metal poisoning.
I know I probably won't convince you because you conspiracy-theory types generally can't be convinced, but maybe I'll convince some people reading your story. You tell a good tale but you're unable to back it up with facts. Get a clue.
"Affect the entire society" (Score:5, Insightful)
People getting fat? Health care costs go up. Ban pizza. Mandate vegetable consumption.
Auto accidents? Ban private cars. Mandate public transportation use.
I've got two children, and I've had them both vaccinated. But lets not pretend that there are no dangers with vaccines. Our doctors were, to their credit, very upfront with us about that. You're essentially taking a chance, playing the numbers when you take a vaccine, as a percentage of people will always have adverse reactions. Those numbers of adverse reactions are statistically low, and your chances are pretty good, but I do have a friend whose daughter lost the use of her legs from a vaccination. It does happen. And as for the HPV vaccine, you can't call all those parents nutjobs when Gardisil has had some unexpected side-effects [news.com.au]. And should a vaccine for a sexually transmitted disease be mandatory anyway?
Non-vaccinated people are a danger to no one but themselves. If everyone else is vaccinated, they're safe. And far from under-vaccinating, the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that we may be over-vaccinating [sciencedaily.com]. Increasing disease resistance to drugs and immunizations is a far greater threat to the populace than any parent withholding a vaccine.
Re:Cattle...? Thanks! (Score:1, Insightful)
My little sister had a seizure the day she received the MMR as a young child. Later on, she was discovered to be autistic. My wife's little sister had a seizure after receiving either the MMR or the DPT, I don't remember which. She was later on discovered to be severely mentally handicapped, and eventually died at the age of 6. I'm not saying that the shot was "The Cause" of these problems. In my sister-in-law's case, I'm sure there was a lot of other things going wrong in her brain and/or body, and it is very possible that the shot and the seizure weren't the direct cause, or even that they didn't have anything to do with her handicap in any way. As for my sister, there are plenty of cases of seizures after the MMR that seem to lead to autism. The studies that I am aware of have tested one factor or another in the immunizations (such as thimerosal), and found no direct link to that individual factor. I still believe that there is some kind of more complicated link between autism and vaccinations. I also believe that any autism that may be related to vaccinations probably also has other very significant factors, such as environment or genes, and that the vaccinations are not the sole cause of the autism.
Again, I believe that immunizations are important and necessary. I just don't think we should be throwing so many of them at our tiny undeveloped children all at once. Autism is a serious thing, and if you haven't lived with someone who is autistic, then maybe you don't understand, but if there is a possibility that the risk can be reduced by spacing vaccinations, separating the compound vaccinations out, and eliminating/reducing unnecessary vaccinations, then I'm going to take those steps to try to reduce the risk to my children.
The number of recommended vaccinations has increased dramatically over the last 30 years (have you seen the list?). Do you have any actual evidence to support the belief that this is 100% safe, or is it more like a creationism thing?
Re:Big deal (Score:3, Insightful)
Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)
But now I've got my doctor telling me I have to get my infant kid vaccinated quick quick right now! He could get hep at any second!!! What a crock of crap. It's even less likely now than it was when I was a kid, because the infection rates are still dropping.
Likewise the chicken pox vaccine. The mortality from chicken pox is off the bottom of the chart, but none the less, unless I wanna home school my kid, I have to get them the shot.
I'm sure by next year, they're going to be calling for all infant girls to go ahead and get the hpv shot, because you can never be too careful about protecting your infant from STDs.
I think a lot of people are getting leery of having their kids turned into pincushions to meet an arbitrary timetable attached to low risk infections. I think it's 15 vaccinations before 1 year? Out of those, easily half could be pushed back a year or two or three (or 18 in the case or the 3 course goddamn hep vaccination), so why subject your kid to that kinda crap?
Re:Cattle...? Thanks! (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, how about all the drugs the FDA has recalled over the past 40 years. Or the fact the scientific community STILL cannot make up their minds about the cholesterol in Eggs (good or bad).
The point is, having a gut instinct vs. blindly trusting somebody you don't know is a legitimate, built-in evolutionary response.
How many Botched surgeries have you seen online?? What about the doctor who killed Kanye West's mother??
A medical degree does NOT make you omniscient and all powerful.
Re:Cattle...? Thanks! (Score:4, Insightful)
.I'm calling BS. (Score:2, Insightful)
A stupid premise is no less stupid simply because a researcher from the the University of Toronto says it.
Re:Cattle...? Thanks! (Score:3, Insightful)
Is having the vaccinations 100% safe? No. Is it safer than NOT having all the vaccinations? Yes. FDA testing is rigorous, and its mistakes are famous precisely because they are rare.
I am sorry to hear about your sister and sister-in-law. It is predictable and perhaps even understandable that you would distrust pharmaceuticals after two such coincidences. Superstition is predictable and often understandable. It is not, however, rational.
Usually we put up with superstition because it is quirky and harmless. In this case, though, it sounds to me like you may be compromising the safety of your children because of it, and I'd say that's a good candidate for the point where harmless superstition crosses the line into something more malignant.
If another study comes out and vindicates your suspicion that there is indeed a significant risk of autism from vaccination, then you will have my sincerest apology. I would offer the same to a conspiracy theorist or a creationist if their beliefs were vindicated. But to value your own suspicions, supported as they are by two isolated anecdotes, above the conclusions of many studies designed to test precisely this possible connection between vaccination and autism, none of which (to my knowledge) have found any significant evidence of a link, seems like dangerous superstition.
Re:Meh. (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Chicken pox is communicable, often before symptoms appear, so it puts everyone else at risk (including those who have been vaccinated, since the vaccination is not 100% effective).
2) Chicken pox increases the risk that you will contract shingles later in life, which is a serious health risk.
3) Chicken pox can cause serious scarring.
4) Chicken pox, like other diseases, compromises your immune system until you fight it off.
5) Chicken pox is extremely unpleasant.
"I'm sure by next year, they're going to be calling for all infant girls to go ahead and get the hpv shot, because you can never be too careful about protecting your infant from STDs."
As well they should. There are no side-effects, and HPV causes most cases of cervical cancer. It's also extremely common and completely asymptomatic in most cases. It can spread despite the use of a condom, so only people who remain completely abstinent for their entire lives can be confident they won't catch it.
Now you can argue that it should be given at the start of adulthood rather than in infancy, and I guess that works as well (if there are no differences in administrability), but it seems to me that at best there's no reason why it should be one as opposed to the other and it's more of a "why not" question. (It also seems possible to me that the vaccine is more effective if given in teenage years, in which case this argument is of course moot.)
Re:Meh. (Score:3, Insightful)
No censorship! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cattle...? Thanks! (Score:4, Insightful)
That was "progress".
But you know, having any distrust of the medical establishment, or any desire to have more than a few years of tests determine if some new concoction is ok enough to INJECT INTO A FUCKING CHILD, and you're obviously a raving lunatic.
Certainly, accept the authority of others. without question! Otherwise, you're a luddite. right?
To the others, let me put the plainly. The burden on proof is on the legitimacy of whatever you are trying to sell me and put in my child. Not on my skepticism of it. Ok? And that burden of proof is both high and onerous, because we were born with most of what we need to survive, and augementations to that I want evaluated very heavily before just assuming we've figured out something better than a few million years of evolution.
Science is awesome, I love it to death, and I cheer on discoveries like mad. But have some perspective people. Until we have a damn good answer for what causes fibro myalgia, rising cancer rates, etc, then a dose of skepticism is a potential survival trait.
"new" is not ALWAYS "improved".
Re:Big deal (Score:2, Insightful)
I read a humourous article a few years ago talking about surprising survey results. Apparently over 1/3rd of Americans surveyed did not know that the Sun is a star. No offense Americans, but with that sort of quality education, well, you can understand why the rest of the world considers you to be a bit intellectually lacking.
Even back in WW2 days, my grandfather remembers being struck by how utterly daft some of the American troops were he encountered while in the Australian Army. A guy I know who was in the SAS until a couple of years ago has told me about how easy it was to defeat the US forces in wargames, due to their arrogance and reliance on their technology.
Now, I don't mean to be US-bashing, and I suspect the average American Slashdot reader will be a bit more intelligent and educated than the average American. But I think, as a populace, the American people need to get over their excessive patriotism, stop thinking they are automatically the greatest nation on Earth just because they are America, and realise that the rest of the world DOESN'T look up to them anymore, and that the whole country is kind of just a big joke now.
Re:In this case, YES I DO BELIEVE IT (Score:3, Insightful)
Unvaccinated people act as a reservoir for virus in a population, which allows people who have been immunized to be repeatedly exposed to live virus. This repeated exposure increases the likelihood that a resistant virus strain will develop which would put everyone at risk, including those who have been immunized.
Re:Meh. (Score:3, Insightful)
Perspective needed (Score:3, Insightful)
I get your point, which is that it is up to scientists to prove that the things we inject into our bodies are as safe as possible. And scientists and doctors take that responsibility very very seriously. There may indeed be as-yet-unknown negative side effects to vaccination, and scientists acknowledge that possibility and try their best to study and look for it. But so far, they have not found a connection to things like autism or asthma.
Maybe they will find problems in the future. But at worst that will create a tough question of trade off, because there is simply no question that the vaccines are very effective at fighting their respective diseases. If your child has a 0.0001% chance of developing a debilitating disease FROM a vaccine, or a 1% chance of dying from a different disease WITHOUT the vaccine, that is not such a clear-cut decision.
Consider this tradeoff:
a) We know for a fact that vaccines are extremely effective at preventing many nasty, often deadly diseases in children. Numerous studies have demonstrated clear evidence, as has our common experience with the dramatic decline of deaths due to diseases like polio, smallpox, measles, hepatitis, tetanus, etc.
vs.
b) Some people think some vaccines might be factors in the development of certain diseases, but numerous studies have failed to find a linkage--either it does not exist, or is such a weak connection that it is easily missed in the data.
Please vaccinate your children.
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)
Who the hell goes to any single source for information when their health is what's at risk? I look for lots of authoritative sources. I've learnt from bitter experience to even check multiple drug safety sites before taking any prescription meds. You may think that's paranoid but I've personally seen well respected doctors prescribe meds that caused new problems or exacerbated existing ones. (I firmly believe my wife would be dead today if I hadn't stepped in and brought some information to a specialist's attention). When you have the best facts available, only then do you choose what to do with your health. Health can't be replaced, so it isn't something you risk.
Re:Big deal (Score:4, Insightful)
And that's just Joe Public opting out of vaccination for no reason. The election of governments is basically a popularity contest, and if a government starts following the factually unsound requests of a misinformed population, well then you start doing things like swapping MRIs for X-rays or exploratory surgery because an MRI has magnetic fields and soon you're utterly screwed.
Re:Not with immunization (Score:3, Insightful)