Mmr

O K, since you have asked me to set out my view - which is a pretty conventional one - I will. Feel free to disagree with any part of it.

First, of course vaccination has virtually eliminated many infectious diseases with great success and saved many lives. We all owe Edward Jenner a debt of gratitude. It is highly efficacious, a fact which is common ground - there is no-one who says otherwise. It is setting up a straw man to suggest that anyone does not accept the efficacy of vaccination. That is not the matter under discussion here.

Second, vaccine damage is real. A very small percentage of patients are and have been actually damaged in various ways by the effects of various vaccines. That effect is not a fiction, or an invention of Dr Wakefield, Melanie Phillips, or anyone else. The extent of the risk is a matter of legitimate debate and scientific enquiry. It is no more than an assertion to say the risk is "negligible".

Third, the particular Wakefield study alleging that the MMR vaccine was causative of autism has been proved false and unscientific. That does not mean that many other studies into many other types of damage by many types of vaccine are also false or unscientific. Possible types of damage may or may not be demonstrable.

Fourth, the real issue which I raised in post #1 is that the best interests of each person are served by everybody else except him getting vaccinated. The impossibility of following that policy for society as a whole raises a paradox, to which I see no solution. I was hoping somebody would suggest one, but unfortunately we have become mired into arguments about side-issues which I had expected to be taken as read.

 

@ Shadow - Glad we have finally agreed on something !

 

Yes most parents are too stupid to make an informed choice. You only have to look at the way many kids are brought up to see that. Compulsory sterilisation for anyone under 120 IQ or from lower classes is the way forward