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diabolical globalist
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Am I wrong?
Vaccines: how do I talk to my anti-vac wife about it?
- Thread starter jamesbuhls
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- autism vaccinations vaccines
Am I wrong?
truethat
Banned
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Dude, she was correct..............so wouldn't that normally take some of the wind out of your indignant sails?? LOL
Travis
Misanthrope of the Mountains
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I wonder because it is always prudent to be vaccinated unless you have a proven allergy or other extenuating condition.
SezMe
post-pre-born
Irrelevant to my point.Dude, she was correct..............so wouldn't that normally take some of the wind out of your indignant sails?? LOL
Lukraak_Sisser
Philosopher
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Anyway, maybe some summarizes for the OP
Natural immunity is not good enough to protect a child. If it was noone would ever get sick.
Modern medicine did not make us weaker, otherwise child mortality in western countries would have gone up, not down since we started immunization
The diseases inoculated against are diseases that have extremely high mortality rates, cause severe mental or physical handicaps or cause severe to fatal sympthons in adults that did not get inoculated or sick as a child.
These diseases have evolved to specifically target humans and thus bypass, overwhelm or fool the immune system. This happened centuries to millennia ago, it is not due to modern medicine.
Herd immunity offers some protection, provided you are lucky in the same way that russian roulette gives a 5 in 6 chance of winning. If you are unlucky the effects are extremely bad and there is nothing YOU can do about it anymore. (ie, if your older child does get infected he/she will at best be extremely ill, at worst die and that is a pretty hefty chance even with hospital treatment)
There is a chance of vaccines having side effects, but these are extremely small. The problem is that this is hard to overcome. Even though the chances are very small, people will assume that it will happen to them. A way to possibly counter this is to start researching the amount of children that die in car accidents in your area, run the statistics and point out that this is far more likely than vaccine side effects. Would this mean she never allows a child in or near a car?
While I agree with truehat that calling this child abuse is on the extreme side, it might be wise to point out to her that it is taking a lot of risks with not her life, but that your children that can easily be avoided. If two professional basketballers were to start tossing a child to each other because they are sure they'll always catch it, I assume your wife would intervene, even if the child is not dropped and thus the basketballers were not actively hurting the child.
Not vaccinating your children for the known and still present child diseases imo is in the same category. Not tossing a child around is safer than always tossing a child even IF you catch it.
And lastly, the childhood diseases vaccinated against are still active and present in every country in the world and modern society is too open and too widely travelled to assume you won't get into contact with it. Even if you live in a small community, someone is bringing in your food, gasoline and other stuff.
Natural immunity is not good enough to protect a child. If it was noone would ever get sick.
Modern medicine did not make us weaker, otherwise child mortality in western countries would have gone up, not down since we started immunization
The diseases inoculated against are diseases that have extremely high mortality rates, cause severe mental or physical handicaps or cause severe to fatal sympthons in adults that did not get inoculated or sick as a child.
These diseases have evolved to specifically target humans and thus bypass, overwhelm or fool the immune system. This happened centuries to millennia ago, it is not due to modern medicine.
Herd immunity offers some protection, provided you are lucky in the same way that russian roulette gives a 5 in 6 chance of winning. If you are unlucky the effects are extremely bad and there is nothing YOU can do about it anymore. (ie, if your older child does get infected he/she will at best be extremely ill, at worst die and that is a pretty hefty chance even with hospital treatment)
There is a chance of vaccines having side effects, but these are extremely small. The problem is that this is hard to overcome. Even though the chances are very small, people will assume that it will happen to them. A way to possibly counter this is to start researching the amount of children that die in car accidents in your area, run the statistics and point out that this is far more likely than vaccine side effects. Would this mean she never allows a child in or near a car?
While I agree with truehat that calling this child abuse is on the extreme side, it might be wise to point out to her that it is taking a lot of risks with not her life, but that your children that can easily be avoided. If two professional basketballers were to start tossing a child to each other because they are sure they'll always catch it, I assume your wife would intervene, even if the child is not dropped and thus the basketballers were not actively hurting the child.
Not vaccinating your children for the known and still present child diseases imo is in the same category. Not tossing a child around is safer than always tossing a child even IF you catch it.
And lastly, the childhood diseases vaccinated against are still active and present in every country in the world and modern society is too open and too widely travelled to assume you won't get into contact with it. Even if you live in a small community, someone is bringing in your food, gasoline and other stuff.
Explorer
Graduate Poster
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I have no agenda! I am only speaking from the heart. I have two grown up children and they have had everything that medical science can offer during their lifetimes.
The point I am making, and this is an important one, is that you have to consider the guilt that you could feel if one of your kids suffered as a consequence of a "belief" or a gut feeling motivating you into an erroneous action.
We live in a world today where we take for granted that good health is the normal state. Go back one hundred years and things were completely different. Medical science has made the difference, and it has been so successful that people like the OPs wife can sit back in a deluded comfort, and have the luxury to actually consider that her kids should be kept outside the sphere of the latest advances in vaccine technology.
I for one was very glad that the governments of the world tackled the prospect of a Swine flu pandemic in the way that they did. To say that it was all scare mongering, I suggest that you read up on the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918, and that should put the whole thing in perspective.
Here it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic
The most interesting element of this flu, and certainly the most relevant for you, is that those healthy young adults that had the strongest natural immune system were the ones that the virus mainly killed. This is not scare mongering it is a fact that you are searching for.
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Which is completely irrelevant to the point that Skeptic Ginger was replying to. You said "Especially because your body is designed to defend itself against infection.". She replied that the viruses and micro-organisms that your body is fighting are equally "designed" to fight your immune system.
Which suggests that relying on that immune system isn't necessarily a good idea. And the evidence from the era when we did rely on our immune systems is, well, that she's right.
It is clearly you who is "bringing up an irrelevant point", at least in relation to the post you were responding to.
Yep. For instance, there were a few posts that suggested that the OP not cave in to pressure from his wife and recognise that he has as much right to determine their medical care as she. They also point out that her "either we don't vaccinate, or you leave, I keep the kids, and we still don't vaccinate" is simply wrong, because in court, he would win.
While we can agree or disagree with that advice, clearly it is a response to the OP.
SezMe
post-pre-born
This may be OT, but the two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, one could argue that those who "speak from the heart" are much more likely to have an agenda than those who speak from the brain ... so to speak.
jamesbuhls
New Blood
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- Sep 28, 2011
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For the curious
I don't spend my time doing a Google search on every one of you so that I can qualify your statements, so I had foolishly hoped you wouldn't do the same for me. But, since you brought it up, I'll tell you what I tell all my clients: I'm an atheist, I don't believe in an afterlife, and I think the most important thing is to focus on what you have in this life, what you can do for the people you love, and to the greatest extent practical living in peace with others. There's a lot of suffering in life and what we choose to do about it (and how we choose to respond to it) are the true test of our humanity.
When I read cards, I tell people: I'm not a psychic, I'm a card reader - there's a difference. Obviously if I was psychic I'd be out catching criminals, finding missing children, preparing for natural disasters, preventing terrorist attacks, playing the stock market, winning the lottery, and claiming the $1,000,000 prize offered by JREF. I've said as much in the introduction to both books I've written on cartomancy - if my students can't accept that, they need to study with somebody else.
When I read cards, it's the same as reading a book - the cards of a deck are pages from a book and they say something different every time I read them. I'm very clear with my clients that I cannot predict the future and I explain in no uncertain terms that my readings are only to look at yourself in a new perspective, and are absolutely no replacement for professional help or services. Truth told, it's not even an angle that sells very well because despite my efforts to educate my clients to the non-existence of psychic phenomena and the extreme importance of taking responsibility for themselves, they continue to want to be entertained and simply told what to do.
When I practice Reiki, I make it clear in no uncertain terms that the practice is only for stress reduction and relaxation. There are quite a number of irresponsible Reiki practitioners who will say that nearly anything can be literally healed with Reiki but - like my card readings - services as a Reiki practitioner don't sell very well either because despite my efforts to educate my clients about the known benefits of relaxation and learning to manage stress and give healthy responses to stressors (as opposed to "unlocking their Atlantean DNA," or connecting with their spirit guides, or communicating with "ascended masters"), they continue to believe that there is some mystical practice to a fountain of eternal youth (or else if they're escapists, some sort of magic doorway into the transcendent beyond.)
My wife and both practice Reiki, but there are no delusions between us on this matter: Reiki is a meditative practice with a spiritual component which helps practitioners manage stress and learn habits conducive to non-reactive, harmonious interactions with others. I'm quite a bit more educated on the history of Reiki and passionate about it than my wife is, but otherwise we share the same beliefs in this matter.
I think that I'm being the more mature, responsible person by not jumping to conclusions, not making ultimatums, and persisting in my efforts to communicate with her - I think that's a pretty good example of living my values.
Anybody else care to Google me?
I don't spend my time doing a Google search on every one of you so that I can qualify your statements, so I had foolishly hoped you wouldn't do the same for me. But, since you brought it up, I'll tell you what I tell all my clients: I'm an atheist, I don't believe in an afterlife, and I think the most important thing is to focus on what you have in this life, what you can do for the people you love, and to the greatest extent practical living in peace with others. There's a lot of suffering in life and what we choose to do about it (and how we choose to respond to it) are the true test of our humanity.
When I read cards, I tell people: I'm not a psychic, I'm a card reader - there's a difference. Obviously if I was psychic I'd be out catching criminals, finding missing children, preparing for natural disasters, preventing terrorist attacks, playing the stock market, winning the lottery, and claiming the $1,000,000 prize offered by JREF. I've said as much in the introduction to both books I've written on cartomancy - if my students can't accept that, they need to study with somebody else.
When I read cards, it's the same as reading a book - the cards of a deck are pages from a book and they say something different every time I read them. I'm very clear with my clients that I cannot predict the future and I explain in no uncertain terms that my readings are only to look at yourself in a new perspective, and are absolutely no replacement for professional help or services. Truth told, it's not even an angle that sells very well because despite my efforts to educate my clients to the non-existence of psychic phenomena and the extreme importance of taking responsibility for themselves, they continue to want to be entertained and simply told what to do.
When I practice Reiki, I make it clear in no uncertain terms that the practice is only for stress reduction and relaxation. There are quite a number of irresponsible Reiki practitioners who will say that nearly anything can be literally healed with Reiki but - like my card readings - services as a Reiki practitioner don't sell very well either because despite my efforts to educate my clients about the known benefits of relaxation and learning to manage stress and give healthy responses to stressors (as opposed to "unlocking their Atlantean DNA," or connecting with their spirit guides, or communicating with "ascended masters"), they continue to believe that there is some mystical practice to a fountain of eternal youth (or else if they're escapists, some sort of magic doorway into the transcendent beyond.)
My wife and both practice Reiki, but there are no delusions between us on this matter: Reiki is a meditative practice with a spiritual component which helps practitioners manage stress and learn habits conducive to non-reactive, harmonious interactions with others. I'm quite a bit more educated on the history of Reiki and passionate about it than my wife is, but otherwise we share the same beliefs in this matter.
I think that I'm being the more mature, responsible person by not jumping to conclusions, not making ultimatums, and persisting in my efforts to communicate with her - I think that's a pretty good example of living my values.
Anybody else care to Google me?
jamesbuhls
New Blood
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2011
- Messages
- 7
Thanks for the help
To those of you who shared links, gave me advice, and made a genuine effort to answer my question, I'm very thankful for your support. You know who you are. To quote Popeye, "I am who I am and that's all that I am." If you don't like my beliefs, that's fine - you don't have to accept them, I'm not asking you to - but I came to the forum at JREF because I respect the work James Randi does and I knew that the skeptic community (who spends a lot of time educating people about the dangers of not vaccinating) would probably be able to help me get started.
From what I can see this thread has taken on a life of its own and is dominated by off-topic replies; if anybody in the skeptic community wonders why outsiders think you have a reputation as rude and insensitive, read the previous posts. I'm unsubscribing from this thread now, but if there's anybody else out there who feels like offering any genuine help, you know how to use the private messaging system.
EDIT
And just to pre-empt anybody who's going to bring up these questions:
1) I moved from North Carolina to Ontario to marry and live with my wife - this isn't a fictitious place of residence.
2) My legal name is Buhls, but the original spelling, Bulls, comes from some really distant Cherokee ancestry. My legal name is on my passport, immigration paperwork, marriage certificate, and a billion other documents that would be nearly impossible to change. I use both names, but use Bulls more frequently because that is the true spelling and also because it prevents people from calling me Beuller, Beull, or Buhols (I don't even know how they come up with that last one.)
To those of you who shared links, gave me advice, and made a genuine effort to answer my question, I'm very thankful for your support. You know who you are. To quote Popeye, "I am who I am and that's all that I am." If you don't like my beliefs, that's fine - you don't have to accept them, I'm not asking you to - but I came to the forum at JREF because I respect the work James Randi does and I knew that the skeptic community (who spends a lot of time educating people about the dangers of not vaccinating) would probably be able to help me get started.
From what I can see this thread has taken on a life of its own and is dominated by off-topic replies; if anybody in the skeptic community wonders why outsiders think you have a reputation as rude and insensitive, read the previous posts. I'm unsubscribing from this thread now, but if there's anybody else out there who feels like offering any genuine help, you know how to use the private messaging system.
EDIT
And just to pre-empt anybody who's going to bring up these questions:
1) I moved from North Carolina to Ontario to marry and live with my wife - this isn't a fictitious place of residence.
2) My legal name is Buhls, but the original spelling, Bulls, comes from some really distant Cherokee ancestry. My legal name is on my passport, immigration paperwork, marriage certificate, and a billion other documents that would be nearly impossible to change. I use both names, but use Bulls more frequently because that is the true spelling and also because it prevents people from calling me Beuller, Beull, or Buhols (I don't even know how they come up with that last one.)
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pakeha
Penultimate Amazing
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- Jul 11, 2009
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- 12,331
I read throught the thread before answering and I hope you haven't left for good!
I wanted to ask you to post up the sources your wife is actually reading on the subject.
Cheers and good luck.
Explorer
Graduate Poster
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- Jun 22, 2003
- Messages
- 1,516
I repeat, I have no agenda, and just because truthat thought that I did, does not make it true.
I shall rewrite the sentence for you and anyone else who wishes to be pedantic with my choice of words.
I have no agenda!
Another hijack here: Do you have anything you'd like to say to an American who from time to time contemplates moving to Canada? My impression is that authorization to immigrate, accept employment etc. is based on a point system that grants points for specific skills, education etc., and that many well-educated, gainfully employed Americans wouldn't qualify. I've looked at the Canadian government website, and it looks like the requirements are pretty tough. Any tips?
And getting back to your original post, are the Canadians for any reason more likely to be suspicious of vaccination than the average American? Does your wife know a lot of people who support her views? What are the vaccination rates for Canadian children vs. Americans? What are the legal requirements for school admission etc.? What are the parents' legal obligations in terms of providing appropriate medical care to their children? It'll be harder to change her mind if a lot of people are telling her she's right.
Tomblvd
Muse
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- Aug 26, 2007
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- 821
Perhaps bring your wife into this online discussion and have her points answered one by one.
And as a response to the "improvements in sanitation have caused a reduction in disease" argument, I like to point to the Hib vaccine. It was only released around 92 or 93. The year prior to its introduction, there were around 20000 cases of the disease, afterward it virtually disappeared. There is absolutely no way to explain this other than the vaccine. (The dates and numbers are off the top of my head, if someone has a correction, please post it).
Good luck.
Tomblvd
Muse
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Other that avoiding antibiotics, can you tell us what this "natural approach" is?
What if you don't have a strong immune system?
How can you tell if you do or don't have this "strong immune system"?
If strong immune systems do such a great job of fighting disease, why did smallpox kill of entire communities of native americans? Or why did the black death kill off so many completely different types of people?
SezMe
post-pre-born
That's a good idea.
Not necessarily: participating in an online discussion might just as likely put her on the defensive and make her more adamant in her position.
SezMe
post-pre-born
Of course, not necessarily. But at least we're emotionally neutral so that might make it easier for her to listen. Of course, as a bunch of skeptics she might be inclined to dismiss us as being closed minded.
Would she come here?
If she did, would she change her mind?
But it is still a good idea.
Would she come here?
If she did, would she change her mind? But it is still a good idea.
Would she come here?
Oh yeah, it would be great if she got to experience the gentle and caring atmosphere here that would kindly and patiently persuade her to reconsider her position.
That was sarcasm, btw. There are perhaps a couple posters that could handle it, but the vast majority would make things worse.