[lumberjim]

Originally Posted by Tiki

You didn't click on the links, did you?

Originally Posted by Tiki

I don't have anything further to add to this discussion because I can't intelligently discuss any topic with people who refuse to do any additional reading because they think they already know all the available material, have made up their minds, closed them, and thrown away the key.

"There is no need for me to click on the links or read the studies, or the withdrawals, because I already know everything".

I heartily recommend reading actual medical studies and not third-party interpretations of those studies wherever possible, because when you read the interpretations you're absorbing someone else's opinion, not forming your own.

Originally Posted by Tiki

With the withdrawal of 10 of the 13 original supporters from the original Lancet paper that kicked off the anti-vaccination craze (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9500320) and the revelation that Andrew Wakefield falsified his results linking vaccination to autism, it would seem as if the anti-vaccination lunatics (http://www.generationrescue.org/) would back off at least a little on their dangerous allegations that vaccines harm more than they save. Instead, it seems as if they've redoubled their efforts.

In discussing the vaccination issue with people who have chosen not to vaccinate their children, I find that a typical reaction to my pro-vaccination opinion is to assume that I simply haven't read enough. Naturally, given my specific interests in the fields of biochemistry and epidemiology, the opposite is true; if anything, I've read too much. I have watched my children, worried, after each vaccination, and breathed a sigh of relief when none of the many well-documented complications arose. None of those well-documented complications happen to be long-term mental deficiency or autism, but that's not stopping the anti-vaccination ignorant from promoting their potentially disastrous propaganda, nor is it stopping the resurgence of formerly eradicated and dangerous diseases like mumps, measles, and rubella. Even tuburculosis and the horrible crippling disease of polio, formerly considered extinct, is on the rise.

Why, in this day of new and increasingly dangerous epidemics such as AIDS and SARS, are we allowing idiots to disarm our bottom-line defenses against diseases we defeated decades ago? This is sheer insanity.

I think both clodfobble and jinx have clearly demonstrated that people make the choices that they make based on the information they have or can acquire. your initial post insults and lumps all non vaccinators together under the label 'lunatics' and 'idiots'. ...and goes on to note that these non vaccinating lunatics typically do you the injustice of assuming that you're undereducated about them. And here you are doing that exact thing. as usual, you're talking out of your ass. you're an inflamatory hypocrite troll. Of course, I'm probably just picking on you because I'm mean.

but hey...you're very creative and artsy and independant....so maybe you're just ahead of your time and misunderstood?