Nurses In Australia Face Punishment For Promoting Anti-Vaccination Messages Via Social Media (medicalxpress.com) 656
HughPickens.com writes: Medical Express reports that nurses and midwives promoting anti-vaccination messages in Australia could face punishment including being slapped with a caution and having their ability to practice medicine restricted. Serious cases could be referred to an industry tribunal, where practitioners could face harsher penalties such as having their registration suspended or cancelled. The Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia released the vaccination standards in response to what it described as a small number of nurses and midwives promoting anti-vaccination via social media. The statement also urges members of the public to report nurses or midwives promoting anti-vaccination. Promoting false, misleading or deceptive information is an offense under national law and is prosecutable by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency. "The board will consider whether the nurse or midwife has breached their professional obligations and will treat these matters seriously," the statement said. However Dr. Hannah Dahlen, a professor of midwifery at the University of Western Sydney and the spokeswoman for the Australian College of Midwives, worries the crackdown may push people with anti-vaccination views further underground. "The worry is the confirmation bias that can occur, because people might say: 'There you go, this is proof that you can't even have an alternative opinion.' It might in fact just give people more fuel for their belief systems."
About time. (Score:5, Insightful)
Good.
Implement this in more countries please.
Re:About time. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Not jailed, but put into the same medical category as homeopaths. Believers could still patronize them, but they would no longer be part of the "real medicine" system.
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Not jailed, but put into the same medical category as homeopaths. Believers could still patronize them, but they would no longer be part of the "real medicine" system.
I think most anti-vaxers already ARE homeopaths too, so that won't offend them. They probably visit chiropractors and wonder why their back gets worse and worse, and are probably on gluten free diets despite not having celiac.
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I disagree, as do people I know who are on GF diets: there's been a lot of improvement in GF foods as far as taste and texture because of the massive increase in demand for them. I've had some myself that were quite excellent. (This doesn't mean all "GF" food tastes excellent by any means, just that the market is much larger now with far more selection.)
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Im sad you didnt die. No truly. anyone who thinks people should be jailed for their opinions or beliefs deserves to fucking die!
Good to know you only think those who think others should be jailed for their opinions should die. If you thought that those who think others should die for their opinions should die, you would appear to not have many options about what to do with your life.
Re:About time. (Score:5, Insightful)
And what about those who suffered brain damage or other serious injuries as a result of being vaccinated?
Until vaccines can be independently proven and verified to be 100% save and effective AND when the creators of these vaccines can actually be held accountable in a court of law due to damages caused by these vaccines, neither the medical industry nor government have any right to make them mandatory or force anyone to get one.
Kudos to the nurses for standing up against corporate tyranny..
Do you prefer the proven 0% safety and effectiveness of the diseases they prevent?
Re:About time. (Score:5, Insightful)
>when the creators of these vaccines can actually be held accountable in a court of law due to damages
Aaah this bullshit again.
1) This is in Australia - American systems do not apply
2) In the American system they ARE held accountable - in fact, the system as it stands is AGAINST vaccine makes. It makes them pay compensation to anybody who MAY have been harmed by a vaccine without that person even having to prove it WAS the vaccine. You say it harmed you - if the injury is on the list of things a vaccine CAN cause - even if it's a one in a billion chance you get paid and it was set up to that parents wouldn't HAVE to suffer the very difficult task of trying to sue big pharma.
Even if the claims were true, what a sad fucking person you must be if you think autism is worse than being DEAD. The whole anti-vaxx thing is seriously offensive to actual autism sufferers. Your basically telling htem that, there is something which MIGHT give your kid autism and avoiding it will probably kill your kid - you choose to let them probably die ? You are actually telling real human beings that their lives are worse than death.
If I was autistic- I would punch you in the face for saying that about me.
And all that aside. This has NOTHING to do with freedom. A licensed professional who denies facts on the topic they are trusted to provide them on is committing malpractice.
Re:About time. (Score:5, Informative)
Clearly you missed the bit about getting it *BEFORE* he was due his vaccination. However that aside the measles vaccination is not 100% effective, so even if you have had it you can still get measles. Its bloody rare but I personally had the misfortune to catch it as a young adult (literally a couple of days before my degree finals started) and I can assure you it is fucking unpleasant, and for me personally disastrous for my career prospects going forward.
Anti vaxers are the scum of society in my view.
Re:About time. (Score:4, Informative)
the measles vaccination is not 100% effective, so even if you have had it you can still get measles. Its bloody rare but I personally had the misfortune to catch it as a young adult
99.7% of vaccinated individuals are immune if they went through the full treatment. If you only received one vax shot then it's somewhere between 80-95% of individuals are immune.
Re:About time. (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you insane? Apparentley there is no more freedom in opinion in Australia, and also no more freedom of speech. And you appear quite content with that. Not a country where I would want to settle down, you can have it all for yourself, thank you.
They are free to hold whatever opinon they wish. They just can't necessarily continue to be registered nurses. That's completely fine, regardless of what you may think, because spreading anti-vax is antithetical to being an effective nurse.
So yeah, not a freedom of speech issue, unless of course you're incapable of nuaced thought.
Anti-science censorship (Score:2, Insightful)
So confident in your opinion that you can't "risk" someone having a different opinion? Are you afraid you might not be able to defend your position against them? Because that is the main reason for censorship.
Look up SV40 polio vaccine from years ago. They bring that up and suddenly your viewpoint begins to crack. There are other more recent ones that have had problems as well, but you don't think people have the right to discuss them because you are anti-science and can't defend your position. Funny t
Re:Anti-science censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm actually getting sick of these anti-science whackos like you that think scientific discussion should only be what YOU approve. If you can't defend your position with scientific proof, you don't have a valid scientific position and are a fraud depending on censorship and name calling instead.
I think the idea is what the organization licensing and paying for said nurses to be licensed approves of. They can say whatever they want, just not as a representative of the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia. Free speech changes quite a bit when you are representing more than your self.
Re:McCarthism (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you or have you ever been an anti-vaxxer? If yes, you are blacklisted.
Sounds like you think resorting to McCarthism is ok as long as you agree with the reasons for it.
Its "McCarthyism", and such an interesting term since the head of the anti-vaxxer movement is one Jenny McCarthy, a woman who isn't a doctor, and her main claim to fame is that she has photos taken of her while not wearing clothing.
You mistake politics for science. "McCarthyism" was a modern day witch hunt, using early cold-war paranoia about communism to advance a political carreer. It destryed the lives of a number of people, including it's perpetrator.
Anti-vaxxing is an unscientific plan to take advantage of the emotional aspects of children with disabilities by blaming it on an unrelated activity. Oddly enough, it ignores that unvaccinated children sometimes die as a result of its adherents.
It isn't politics - its science.
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You get to have an opinion, however you dont get to make up your own facts.
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Well, I clearly won't be able to defend my position. There's a lot of scientific studies about the near-impossibility of convincing conspiracy theorists (or anyone with strongly held counter-factual beliefs) Pointing out conflicting evidence makes them double down. Beyond using logical fallacies to justify their position, the number of biases humans can employ to avoid thinking is huge.
A ma
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Re:About time. (Score:5, Informative)
Actually the are EVEN allowed to spread their opinion - they just can't identify themselves while doing so. When you're representing others, those others DO get a LEGITIMATE stake in what you say as people perceive them as speaking for you. If they say things you don't agree with, you have every right to revoke their privilege to speak for you.
Re:About time. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:About time. (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently you don't understand the difference between holding an opinion and promoting false, misleading or deceptive information. Would you be as quick to defend Samsung if they had put out full page ads claiming that all the Note 7 fires were just scammers trying to get money? After all, it's just an opinion and it doesn't hurt anyone, right?
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Are you insane?
Apparentley there is no more freedom in opinion in Australia, and also no more freedom of speech.
If I were hired to be a pastor in a Baptist church and on my first day in charge told the congregation:
Jesus hates you, let's drink goat blood and pray to Satan instead
I think that most people would expect me to get fired. I'm free to say those words- and I'm free to get fired for saying those words. Nurses are free to speak about quack beliefs and promote dangerous practices- and they're free to get fired for being idiots.
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What would you do to an astronaut who tweets that the Earth is flat, or to a biologist who doesn't believe in DNA, or to a surgeon who doesn't believe in sterilizing instruments?
Freedom of speech does not apply (Score:3)
Apparentley there is no more freedom in opinion in Australia, and also no more freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech does not apply here. Conscious misrepresentation of known and proven facts by medical practitioners who should know better is called malpractice. It's a crime with real consequences for good reason. They are literally harming patients by spreading provably false and dangerous information. People who do that should at minimum lose their license to practice medicine and if anyone is demonstrably harmed they should go to jail for their actions.
Safety and evidence (Score:5, Informative)
Have you ever seen scientific study of the full schedule of vaccines in a double blind?
No and you haven't either. Conducting such a study would be hugely unethical because it would involve exposing large numbers of people to preventable diseases with known means of prevention. Double blind studies are ideal when possible but there are plenty of other valid means of studying diseases without resorting to double blind studies.
A vaccine may be safe, but the full schedule of vaccines has NEVER been studied.
Not true at all [cdc.gov]. It has been studied extensively [google.com]. Furthermore there is substantial empirical evidence than any safety concerns about the full schedule of vaccines is a very small effect if it exists at all.
Now, tell me. where is the actual science on the full schedule of vaccines?
In the clinical studies for each and every vaccine and diseases that could conceivably be related to their administration. I suggest you go speak to an epidemiologist since you are in need of a clue about this. I'm sure they'll be happy to fill you in.
In other words, do you have scientific proof that a full vaccine schedule is safe. Until then, you're just sciency not scientific.
Yes we do have proof that a full vaccine schedule is safe. Scientific proof in the form of a measurably healthier populace and hugely reduced incidence of disease with barely any measurable side effects despite copious studies about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.
Re:About time. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:About time. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Currently 1 in 25 American children (yes: American, because that's the only place with an insane inoculation frequency) falls prey to an autism spectrum disorder.
Now don't tell me that this is all 'genetic', because then why are those parents not autistic?
You really need to understand genetics. We don't yet know exactly what is causing autism but for a second, let's assume it's a recessive gene. If it's a recessive gene then both parents would be perfectly normal. Now a recessive gene is actually relatively simple to test. There are bound to be at least a few cases of autistic people marrying each other and having kids. What percentage of their children are also autistic? My guess is that it's a very high percentage.
Along those same lines, based on my
Re:About time. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm all for freedom of expression and the right to an opinion but when people spread bad advice that isn't backed by science and it hurts other people thats where I draw the line. The worst part about these anti vaxxers is they put those that really can't get vaccinations like the old and sick at risk.
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Re:About time. (Score:4, Insightful)
However we do have mountains of evidence showing that vaccines do prevent the occurrence of a disease in a population of people. Ever wonder why there hasn't been a case of smallpox, arguably the deadliest disease humanity has ever known, since 1977 despite it plaguing our civilization for thousands of years? Its got nothing do with with eating more natural food or people getting exercise. The same goes for polio here in the states, and measles, and a bunch of other things that used to kill and cripple people all the time. Did you know that it was common practice not to name kids until they were about 5 as recently as the early 1900's? It was to try to avoid getting to attached to them while they were young because so many kids didn't make it to that age until the advent of vaccines against common childhood diseases.
Your flagrant disregard for ethical considerations and clearly established historical data that gets in the way of your world view sounds an awful lot like religion to me.
Re:About time. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:About time. (Score:5, Insightful)
>Everybody has the right to his own opinion and has the freedom to express the same
You have a right to your own opinion, not your own facts.
>Including nurses.
Allow me to introduce you to the concept of professional liability. When you, as a trained professional in a field, give false or misleading information - you're employer can be held liable for any harm that results. As such your employer has every right to restrict what you may say in public as it relates to your field. Now as it happens, Australia is a single payer healthcare system, so the nurse's employer is the government, but that's no different from any other civil servant which, in turn, is no different from any other employee.
If a doctor gives you bad medical advice you don't JUST have a potential claim against that doctor but also against the hospital he works for. If an Engineer designs a bridge which collapses he is not solely accountable for the disaster - his employers are also accountable EVEN if he did it in his spare time outside of office hours (so most civil, electrical and mechanical engineers are contractually prohibited from taking side jobs as their primary employers could be held liable).
The exact details, of course, vary by country - but the core principle stands: when you're speaking as a licensed professional on the subject of your professional expertise you have no right to a personal 'opinion' since you are trust to provide facts you are only ALLOWED to provide FACTS. If it's your opinion that the facts are wrong, there are legitimate ways to act on that - publicly declaring your opinion as if it IS fact, is not one f them.
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Christ, the kooks do come out when the topic of vaccination comes around.
As with all fucking morons, they seem to believe that just because they have some opinion, no matter how retarded that opinion is and no matter how much it proves them to be worthless contemptible creatures, they think that opinion is enough to create a "controversy".
They are indeed the most disgusting worthless vile things that have ever existed.There are simple worms with barely any kind of gut at all who have more right to live, and
Re:About time. (Score:5, Insightful)
1-Vaccinated
2-Can't be vaccinated
3-Won't be vaccinated.
The can'ts are protected by the vaxxed. The won'ts put the can'ts in jeopardy because they can carry the disease in and transfer infection, regardless of if they are actually sick themselves or just a carrier. The can'ts usually can't because they are immunosupressed for whatever reason, making catching whatever worse than it would otherwise be. Neither group threaten the vaxxed because they are vaxxed. It's mainly about protecting the can'ts with herd immunity. Won'ts do nothing but weaken that effort while still benefiting from it. So take the won'ts, put them all together somewhere where there is no herd immunity then see how long they last before they start thinking this whole vaccination schtick might not be the worst idea ever. A nice epidemic of polio or smallpox ought to do it.
The won't threaten the can'ts through their own (or usually their parents) sheer willful ignorance. The can'ts threaten the won'ts because they have no choice, but the won'ts could easily avoid danger by getting vaccinated. That's why people don't like the won'ts but give the can'ts a free pass.
Re:About time. (Score:4, Informative)
Slapping time (Score:5, Insightful)
There was actual harm done because of the sticky stupid of antivaccine activists, so of course their Board will purge in response. People who make themselves allies of the first Horseman of the Apocalypse (Pestilence/plague) do not belong in the healthcare business.
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You should go back to your shaman and pray more, that will help your children. It is exactly this nonsense that one is trying to combat here.
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Measles and whooping cough are infectious diseases that can be dealt with quite well by the current medical system.
And in many cases by the burial system.
Is that all (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's inevitable that a certain fraction of people go off the deep edge. People are irrational, even (or perhaps mostly) people who are convinced they are entirely rational. Rationality is a fragile thing because emotion and confirmation bias are deeply woven into everyone's thinking.
For normal people are few more powerful emotional impulses than the urge to protect children. It should hardly be surprising that children come to harm from it.
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WTF is the point of spending years training to become a nurse / midwife if they just decide to ignore evidence of the efficacy of vaccination and promote woo? Anyone pushing antivax nonsense should be barred from practicing as a nurse or midwife. It should be that simple.
Especially since the person who started all this vaccination = autism malarkey admitted years ago he made it all up.
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rather than believe their childrens' autism is inherited and that it might be their fault
Having a bad gene is not someone's fault, the best that you can say is 'bad luck'. If it is severe and you know that you have it, then maybe you should think hard before you have children. Some people with genetic problems do do that, or have the foetus tested and aborted if it has the problem. This is not something done (AFIK) for autism.
I don't want to spark a debate on abortion or eugenics, that is not my point.
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I do not know if autism is inherited; you assert that it is not. This is may be why genetic testing is not done for autism.
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I do not know if autism is inherited; you assert that it is not. This is may be why genetic testing is not done for autism.
Autism can and does run in families but I don't know if there is a gene or genes you can check for it. There is a spectrum of conditions, you're not autistic or not autistic, there are shades in-between. It's very likely there is no one cause for autism.
Syndromes = we don't know much about it (Score:2)
Autism can and does run in families but I don't know if there is a gene or genes you can check for it.
We don't because autism isn't a single thing as far as we can tell and we don't even have a clear definition of what it is. Any time you hear the word "syndrome" what that really means is that we have a collection of symptoms that we have observed seem to run together but we don't know much about the cause or pathology of them. Autism is clearly a real thing but we don't understand it terribly well and we certainly don't know the cause(s). Genetics seems to play a role but the nature of that role is stil
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Because the leading class in the west prefers an extrovert personality, many people who would otherwise just be called introvert are now labeled autistic. If that process starts to really take off the term looses most of its meaning (see the ADHD case). If the way society values character traits changes it might even stop to become a problem (homosexuality in civilised countries).
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While there is thought that certain aspects of 'nurture' may be at play, it doesn't rule out nature. The rise in cancer diagnosis over the past century is due in part to discovery and awareness. Kids in the 50's that were mildly autistic were just looked at as 'weird' and managed coping mechanisms, where the extreme cases were sent to asylums. Those mild cases are a case of misdiagnosis and lack of awareness, and if they were born today would be targeted as ASD.
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If autism were inherited in those increasing numbers, then where are those millions of parents suffering from the same disease that they are supposed to be passing on to their children?
Oh, wait, the fact that they attribute the autism of their children to the vaccines is proof of their autistic condition, no?
I think the one that is mentally impaired here is you. How dare you! Blaming the parents for the autism of their kids, you insensitive toad.
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If autism were inherited in those increasing numbers, then where are those millions of parents suffering from the same disease that they are supposed to be passing on to their children?
I suggest you look up recessive genes and inheritance for your answer to that. You can inherit genes from your parents that are not directly expressed by your parents. Autism has been linked to being more prevalent in certain families, it's very likely there is a genetic predisposition for it. It's also likely there are environmental conditions that help trigger it in people that are predisposed.
One link that has been shown to exist is that, obese fathers tend to have a disproportionate number of autisti
Re:Is that all (Score:4, Interesting)
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A person in working in medicine has a professional obligation to "do no harm". In the case of nurses and midwives in Australia that means abiding by the codes of ethics, standards, duty of care that make up their profession. The very first line of the nurse's standards for practice [nursingmid...ard.gov.au] says "Registered nurse (RN) practice is person-centred and evidence-based with preventative, curative, formative, supportive, restorative and palliative elements". Later sections emphasize critical thinking i
Ignorance is not an opinion (Score:2)
Suppression of freedom of opinion and expression thereof is never 'very welcome'.
Conscious misrepresentation of known facts by individuals who should know better because of their professional training is not expressing an opinion. Ignorance (willful or otherwise) of a fact does not make an "opinion" about those facts valid when the expression of that "opinion" demonstrably results in illness and death of others.
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Instead of trying to prove a negative where are all the double blind studies to prove the ineffectiveness
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As for why there are no randomized, double blind trials, let's work through the ethics of that particular question. Split a village of children in two halves, administer a dummy vaccine to one half and an active vaccine to the other. Observe how many children from each group die as a result of disease. Oh....
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: worse than the anti-vaxxers (Score:2)
Unfortunately I can't mod you up without deleting my previous comments, so I won't.
But that was very well said indeed!
Ban them from the profession (Score:4, Insightful)
If what they are promoting goes against the evidence and leads to harming patient then they should be barred.
Having an opinion is one thing. Holding a position on a verifiable matter, that leads to putting patients at increase risk is at odds with the goal of your profession is a completely different matter.
They want to push some thoroughly debunked agenda? feel free but don't pretend you're a medical professional
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Since when is Australia a fascist state?
It's like... (Score:2)
Ever know someone who walks into the bar and tells you a story along the lines of "... and she comes home from work early and I'm in the sack with her sister - and now she wants a divorce!" in the expectation of sympathy and all he gets is crickets chirping?
Alternative opinion ?!? (Score:2)
Authoritarian rule (Score:2, Troll)
The great thing about authoritarian rule is it is efficient and forces compliance.
The bad thing is when it enforces a wrong policy and causes more harm.
And the trouble is, in life we can never really know whether an idea is correct. So there is always a risk.
Which is why flexibility is needed to some extent, and you always have to step back and say, ok, how can we be so sure?
Right now for example, Australia has been banning a surgeon who has been saying that maybe it isn't such a good idea that diabetics ea
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Not a matter of opinion (Score:3)
"The worry is the confirmation bias that can occur, because people might say: 'There you go, this is proof that you can't even have an alternative opinion.' It might in fact just give people more fuel for their belief systems."
That's right. On this matter there is no room for an alternative opinion because it isn't a question of opinion. Vaccines work and they are safe and are critical to keeping the population healthy. That is a proven and indisputable fact. You have the right to elect to not get a vaccine but you should not be allowed under any circumstances to spread misinformation or discourage others from vaccination. If you want to decline to be vaccinated that is your prerogative but there should be some quarantine consequences to your actions. Nurses who should know better discouraging others from getting vaccinations is particularly odious and to my mind criminal. Such people have no business being in the field of medicine.
Do no harm? (Score:3)
Well, seeing as how they aren't practicing "medicine" in the first place, this doesn't seem much of a punishment.
They are doing more harm than good by discouraging vaccination.
Creationists and flat-earthers (Score:5, Insightful)
We have this idea in free society that people are entitled to their own opinions and the government should not force people to believe one thing or another. And it’s not like we lack precedents where totalitarian governments actively suppress ideas that might disrupt their regime. So we do need to keep in mind that indvidual people should be free to be wrong and be assholes. That kid in the gorilla costume at Tennessee State was an asshole, but should he be brought up on criminial charges? We need to ensure that “assholes” are not summarily suppressed. Richard Dawkins acts like an asshole but he’s still right about evolution.
Now, when it comes to these nurses, the situation is entirely different. They are entitled to their *personal* opinion. But this is a matter of professional activity. In their capacities as nurses (even on their own time), they represent their employers. As a CS professor, I could be dismissed for a wide range of inappropriate behaviors in my “personal life,” including hooking up with an undergrad and making offensive and racist statements on social media. I can maintain my right to express an opinion, and my employer can exercise their right to not be associated with someone who does not represent their core values. (Although, I will say that I’ve heard that BYU won’t grant tenure to anyone who they see as not sufficiently “Mormon,” and I think that’s reprehensible, so there is some room for debate on this, which is why we have courts.)
There’s also not much room on this subject for “personal opinion.” Science doesn’t have answers for everything, but all attempts to show a solid link between vaccines and autism have failed, and those attempts have been numerous. This isn’t based on a single publication with no replication studies. This topic has been beaten to death. It be shown that their statements are factually wrong. They are also not researchers in this area. If they were, then they would be in a position to conduct further studies to see if they could prove a link. Instead, they are just talking out their arses.
Even more important, they are putting people in danger. And that’s what this is all about. The benefits of vaccines are not in dispute, and the risks are minimal and nebulous. When your scientific illiteracy puts people in danger, you need to be stopped.
No, you cannot have an "alternative opinion" (Score:3)
At least if you are a professional in a field.
Because I would expect my professional to be at the level of current science and technology. I do expect my mechanic to think that sand isn't the best lubricant for my gear box, I do expect my doctor to know that it's not a good idea to sprinkle holy water that he got from the holy pond in his garden into my open chest wound and I do expect my IT security guy to know that it's not a good idea to let the new server sit on the ley line in front of our HQ for a night to absorb the good energies.
If you want to believe that, great. But get out of your field of work before you do. If you want to offer "alternative" stuff, move into that profession instead. I am sure there is a market for that too, else people would not have invented that snake oil. But if you are my nurse and responsible for working on my child, I do fucking EXPECT you to give him or her that MMR shots and not avoid it because you "don't believe in it".
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Donald Trump had his kids vaccinated: https://www.quora.com/Has-Dona... [quora.com]
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Shh, this could be a great way to deal with a whole mess of stupid people.
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If not vaccinating only affected the stupid people who didn't vaccinate, I'd agree with you. However, not vaccinating puts people at risk who either can't be vaccinated (due to age or illness) or whose vaccines didn't "take" (vaccines are 99% effective but there's 1% who get vaccinated and aren't protected). Usually, those who can't be vaccinated or whose vaccines didn't prove effective are protected by everyone whose vaccines are working. This is called herd immunity. But if more and more people choose no
Re: Is there any truth to what they're saying? (Score:2)
There can be bad side effects but it is better for everybody that nearly everybody else are vaccinated. It might be better for each person not to be vaccinated, when most everybody else are though (the probaility to get any of these diseases is quite low right now because of the vaccines). Not getting vaccinated without a good reason (such as very weak immune system), ensures that most people aint vaccinated however, so I think this is one of the examples where we need goverments to enforce a non-stable out
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What if we'd prosecute you for your opinion?
Words are the means to meaning (Score:2)
You are just stating your opinion, not more than that. What if we'd prosecute you for your opinion?
When the expression of your opinion directly results in people becoming ill and dying then you are effectively an accessory to manslaughter, particularly if your "opinion" is actually a misrepresentation of the known facts.
Re:Is there any truth to what they're saying? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Thanks for also listing the depth in metric. This imperial measurement system really ties me in knots.
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Thanks for also listing the depth in metric. This imperial measurement system really ties me in knots.
It proves he is a scientist and we should listen to him.
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On the other hand it's very dangerous to pretend that all vaccines are equally safe and well tested.
Link me a vaccine in widespread use that doesn't have evidence of safety and efficacy.
Thanks
Re:Cult-like (Score:4, Informative)
My niece got a full blown case of the measles form the vaccine. The doctor was a bit shocked. But law measle cases have to be reported to the CDC, which the doctor did. But CDC stats never recorded the case. Getting the measles from the vaccine doesn't count. See how that works?
Measles vaccines are attenuated -- which means it contains a live strain. If just a fraction of a fraction of this attenuated strain gets transmitted, some will ultimately mutate into alternate forms and reappear. Giving such a large breeding ground to these viruses might eventually lead to a strain even worse than any known natural strain.
Things are rarely black-and-white, though most people seem to see it that way. It's dangerous when our leaders loose color vision, but it is easy to understand why. Just follow the green.
Re: ...sufficiently tested by now (Score:2, Troll)
When the brilliant and promising Dr. Andrew Wakefield pointed out that he is not against measles vaccination and merely suggested to separate the measles vaccine
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You're a troll who already knows about herd immunity and is hoping someone writes and angry post to you about it. Spotted. Sorry bud. Try harder.
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The vaccinations do not give immunity to everyone that gets them. Also, some people are unable to get them for medical reasons.
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The vaccinations do not give immunity to everyone that gets them. Also, some people are unable to get them for medical reasons.
And based on what I've read, those who are unable to get immunizations typically constitute a low enough % to keep the disease effectively eradicated. When people choose to become potential disease carriers by voluntarily not being immunized, that % gets high enough that outbreaks can occur among those who choose and those who are forced to not be immunized, and those who are immunized but not effectively enough. Each person voluntarily not being immunized affects many more people than themselves.
Re:If vaccination worked (Score:4, Informative)
The vaccinations do not give immunity to everyone that gets them. Also, some people are unable to get them for medical reasons.
That's even more reason why everyone who CAN get a vaccine SHOULD.
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Herd immunity is the concept that with a sufficiently high enough level of vaccination a disease is unable to move effectively from one host to another due to a lack of hosts. Via this mechanism, individuals who are unable to receive the vaccine (due to a negative reaction or not being old enough) or individuals in which the vaccine does not take (it happens) are still protected from the disease. This threshold varies based on the disease in question but here's some common ones. Influenza (33-44%), Ebola (3
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They will be, yes but there is also the need for herd immunity. Some people will fall through the net, some may not tolerate the vaccine, some may find it didn't work (they are outliers but it does happen). If the 99.9% are vaccinated, chances are A) they'll be fine and ideally B) The disease will disappear.
Meanwhile, feel free to mess it up for the rest of the population because evidence means nothing to you.
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What is the evidence that this was thanks to vaccines and not improvements in hygiene and nutrition?
I thought most anti vaccine people also felt we would be better off eating more natural and raw foods. So our current nutrition should be making us less healthy.
Last I checked, serious viruses like smallpox don't really care how healthy you are when exposed. Some of the worst kill a disproportionately high percentage of the healthiest people by turning our own immune system against us.
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Let it be sufficient to say that you are a stupid idiot.
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Re: evidence backed science (Score:3)
And of course it's ok to call bullshit on any opinion that you're in disagreement with, but let's not act like a bunch of brown-shirt fascists and persecute people for their opinion and dissent, because in that case their might soon be a reason to persecute you for an
Re:What is the point of view? (Score:4, Informative)
Well, think of it this way.
A housing development has a rash (pun intended) of break-ins.
They get together and decide to institute mandatory installation of alarm systems.
The number of break-ins goes down in direct proportion to the number of houses have alarm systems installed, until all the houses have them installed, and the number of break-ins is almost, but not quite, zero per year.
After a while, people start to think 'we don't have a break-in problem, why are we mandating these alarm systems?'
New houses under construction start to be built without alarm systems. What do you suppose happens to the break-in rate?
The price of freedom (from preventable disease) is eternal vigilance (of vaccination rates.)
It's real easy to say 'we don't need vaccines' when you've never seen a playmate in polio braces, or when pictures of a wall full of children in iron lungs is a quaint historical anachronism. When you don't have an Uncle Bob who's sterile from a bout of mumps. When having a dead sibling is unusual, and probably the result of accident or something, and not 'measles.'