BackTalk said:
I agree that "most" schools do not teach against vaccination. My school did not. It's possible that some of the more straight chiropractic schools do this. I really do not know as I did not attend. Personally, I feel the parent has the right to choose if they want their kids immunized. I feel that vaccinations have saved more lives than they probably have harmed. Even with that said lets still not forget that they can and do cause serious disorders and even deaths. They are definitely not without risk. I think most doctors agree the benefit outweighs the risk. Then again, I wouldn't want to be the one to tell our troops with GWS that.
BT and I generally agree on most issues, but I have to comment on a couple of things in this post.
In terms of the parents right to choose: I certainly respect the notion of freedom of choice, but I have equal respect for the greater good. Keep in mind that the avoidance of epidemics requires high levels of vaccinations. It's easy to frighten parents with long lists of potential adverse effects of vaccines, and the parent may say, "well, I've never even heard of these diseases, so the vaccine must pose more danger than the diseases! No vaccines for my child, please!". The obvious problem is that if too many parents refuse vaccinations for their kids, we can expect to see epidemics that haven't been seen here in many years.
Here's an anolgy that I think is valid. For the purpose of the analogy, let's ignore that drunk driving is illegal and pretend that it's legal. Let's say that me and my friends have no qualms about driving drunk. The fact is, it's unlikely that I'm going to do any damage the vast majority of the time that I drive drunk. However, if thousands and thousands of us are out there driving drunk frequently, perhaps nightly, then the risk of causing damage to ourselves increases. Moreover, the risk of us doing damage to innocent bystanders and sober drivers increases as well. But, hey, I should be free to choose to drive drunk because I'm comfortable with it and I'm prepared to take the risks, right? Not quite. Me and my drunk driving cohort put ourselves and others at risk, and therein lies the problem.
The unvaccinated kids are like the drunk drivers (well, it's more like the parents are telling the kids to drive drunk). Put more of them out there, expose them to the whole population, and the risk of adverse events increases exponentially. The risk to the population trumps the choice of the individual in some instances.
You mention the serious disorders that vaccines can cause. This is true, but you have to recognize that based on the best available data the number of adverse events related to vaccines absolutely pales in comparison to the number of serious adverse events they prevent. We're talking about several orders of magnitude. It is the tremendous success of vaccines that has resulted in our focus on their small risks, i.e., the serious conditions that they prevent are now so uncommon that they are less common than the adverse events of vaccines. Vaccines are generally considered, and with good reason, to be on of the greatest public health triumphs of the last century. That's why I have a problem with thre ACA's statement. They've basically chosen to cop-out so as not to alienate their anti-vaccination members. The staement from the ACA, quoted in a post on a concurrent thread, is absolutely irresponsible and reflects a lack of willingness to critically evaluate the available evidence. The ACA's statement should be making it absolutely clear that the weight of the scientific evidence heavily favors vaccination (or , at least , a group of childhood vaccinations) as an effective public health measure.
You mention GWS. From what I can gather, this is thought to be related to one of the adjuvants (squalene) in the anthrax vaccine. As far as I know, no such syndrome has been demonstratred in relation to childhood vaccines, and the anthrax vaccine is only given to individuals who are placed in harms way regarding anthrax. If your point is that some vaccines can have unacceptably high rates of side effects, then the point is well-taken, but the weight of the evidence favours the risk-benefit ratio of the childhood immunisation schedule.