Who in their right mind thinks it is okay to bring back a disease that is also called the “100 day cough”?
Look at the table at the top of this page! If we stopped vaccinating for pertussis, then those few deaths will turn back to thousands of deaths. What part of that equation are you missing?

Oh, by the way, being a fan of eugenics is not a good thing. It tarnished the reputation of Henry Ford. Yours is completely rusted through.

It is the National Inpatient Sample that is used to generalize to the entire population, using population weights. It is what is used to create the mortality tables by cause.

I see you are a fan of eugenics. Good for you. Perhaps you will be glad and lucky meet the same fate as Henry David Thoreau’s brother, John.

VAERS is a passive reporting system and does not reflect reality (see http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/?p=342 ). It is a collection of anecdotes, and the plural of anecdotes is not data. By ignoring this basic bit of science, plus dragging in every other idiotic anti-vax argument (simian virus, etc, etc) in a Gish Gallop ( http://www.theskepticsguide.org/sgublog/?p=295 ) shows you have an agenda, and it has nothing to do with science.

You really should have stopped.

“You claim you study medicine, but you have shown that you only have a superficial knowledge you gather from oddball websites.”

A calm discussion cannot continue with these continued ad hominem attacks. Stick to the argument. Otherwise, there is no point in attempting to continue a discussion. I have said that I have spent 20 years in health outcomes research. You have no real reason to call me a liar.

27 deaths (as read from the chart at the top) in a year from pertussis is not a lot of deaths, which I attempted to put into context. More children die from drowning and car accidents, but we do not ban swimming pools and high speeds to prevent them. 27 deaths from pertussis is not enough to take any additional steps to eliminate them. More children die from asthma and allergies than from pertussis. Especially since the 27 deaths may have (and probably did have) co-morbidities that aggravated the condition and these co-morbidities are confounding factors. Historical controls (comparing the past to the present) also add a confounding measure. It is not something to panic about since the risk that it will happen to your child is virtually nil, and decreases exponentially after the child’s second birthday.

Now, VAERS is getting many reports about death from Gardasil. It certainly gives pause before deciding to immunize a daughter. However, some states already went ahead and mandated it for school attendance. Now what? Risk of death, or banning from school, or using state laws to refuse the vaccine?

What should the penalty be for not vaccinating your children, if you do it within the limits of the state laws? Some states have no exemption, some have religious exemptions only, and some have philosophical exemptions. These requirements are for school attendance, and home schoolers are exempt from vaccine laws.

Philosophically, to what extent should person A be controlled for the benefit of person B? Why don’t we mandate the flu shot and the pneumonia shot for school attendance? Now, if one person in an entire school (or airplane) has a peanut allergy (cause of more deaths than pertussis), then peanut butter is completely forbidden. Should we remove it from the grocery shelves and restaurants because a few people have allergies? Should a child be given Ritalin for the benefit of his teacher? Should I be compelled to give my child vaccines for the benefit of your child? If the answer to that question is yes, at what point does this mandated control stop? Should the government be allowed to restrict my caloric intake? Should it be allowed to ban smoking (which it has pretty much done)? Should it mandate so much time on a treadmill? Or should we have some freedom to decide health matters for ourselves?

What is also not known and can never be known are the long-term risks of vaccines. As an example, the early oral polio vaccines were contaminated with the Simian-40 monkey virus. Is there a health risk to that contamination? We can’t know. It is impossible to study (or nearly impossible). That contamination certainly impacts me since I was in the time range of occurrence. No clinical trial will ever be conducted to find out.

What is the long term impact of 40 vaccines before the immune system is fully developed? Again, we can’t know and there will be no clinical trials to find out. Therefore, any statement that the vaccines are 100% safe is bogus. First of all, no treatment is ever 100% safe. Second, since it is impossible to know the long term effects, there is too much uncertainty to ever declare something 100% safe. Therefore, we can weigh the risk of the disease to the risk of the treatment to make a decision. Unfortunately, the expert physicians continue to assume that every patient has uniform risk. That is never the case, especially with vaccines for sexually transmitted diseases. Those who abstain outside of marriage and are monogamous within marriage have no risk of the disease that is worth the risk of the vaccine. Those who have high risk behaviors or exposure will have benefit from the vaccine that outweighs the risk.

I still want to know if breast feeding is so great why do so many infants in the USA die from pertussis.
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It would seem that breast-feeding has served humanity well for thousands of years, you’re here aren’t you?

Do you know how many infants die? – Nature is a cruel m’fer.

It doesn’t really matter to them what evidence shows, they get some sort of weird secondary gain thinking THEY did something SPECIAL for their children that those conformist ignorami who vaccinated did not.

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You do know that the 80% prevention nonsense is a slogan right? The very inventor of the flu vaccine said himself that ‘it’s better than nothing’ but ‘I would not put too much hope on it’.

“I am also capable of realizing that every expert is not always correct.”

It’s fortunate that at least some people still can think and do not blindly accept anything that is put forward as ‘expert advice’.

Some examples of “Expert Advice” gone wrong.

1. Thalidomide.
2. Mercury baths for the cold.
3. Oil, orally, for the cold.
4. Mercury as fillings.

And the list could go on and on..

“Experts” are always wrong 50% of the time.

You might say “Well that’s because you probably lead a healthy, moderated life!” but that’s not the case, I smoke — and I smoke heavily [at least a pack a day and sometimes more] again, for rougly 13-14 years; started when I was 14 and I am now 27.

Perhaps I am blessed with good genes – or perhaps not having a ton of heavy metals in my system has kept my immunity high.

P.S my friends get the vaccine (flu) yearly and come down with the flu yearly… What’s the point?

Did you know that the inventor of the flu vaccine has said it doesn’t even work? He said you’re lucky if it does anything at all.

*This is not to say that I am against all vaccination programs – I think some of them have benefitted humanity greatly, key word *some*.