One of my wife's friends is a crack-pot anti-vaxxer. And one of her arguments was that the measles vaccine has killed 100 people over the past 10 years, while measles has killed 0.
Seriously.
One of my wife's friends is a crack-pot anti-vaxxer. And one of her arguments was that the measles vaccine has killed 100 people over the past 10 years, while measles has killed 0.
Seriously.
I've seen that claim before and I looked into it and it seems that yes, ~100 or so children who received the vaccine died not long after but few can be definitively linked to a reaction to the vaccine. The ones that could, appear to have mostly been due to having too many vaccinations too close together. Vaccines work your immune system and so it's best to spread them out so your body isn't overwhelmed. Dealing with a reaction to one can be bad. Dealing with a reaction to several at the same time can be fatal. There are also allergy tests for some vaccines that should probably be more widely used.
Of course, there's just the basic statistical problem that measles used to kill hundreds per year before the vaccine and still would do so if it weren't for decades of vaccination. She doesn't realize why it isn't killing anymore. There haven't been enough cases in the last 10 years for that to be a high statistical probability. I think mortality rates were around 0.1% just before the vaccine. 50 years earlier, it had been over 2%. That doesn't account for long term health problems for the survivors. A friend of mine's mom has been nearly deaf for most of her life due to the fever caused by measles, which she had in the 1950's as a child.
Last edited by overpowered; February 4th, 2015 at 10:01 PM.
A+ would read again.
You gots to get some copyrites, y0!
Interesting!
I must note that I didn't post it on that blog, but a quick reverse image search shows it to have been uploaded by you here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_br...enge_Brake.JPG
And it shows up eeeeeverywhere here:
https://www.google.com/search?tbs=sb...1P4uX2sksIIdfo
So uh yeah...
At least this guy seems to have used the correct CC license.