Oh god, last time and off to bed we go.
"looktowindward - you tried using that argument before.
it didn't make snese then, and it still doesn't now.
peole who react to penicillin are not expected to take penicillin. same with antibiotics."
It makes perfect sense. More people die of an adverse reaction to penicillin every year than have a significant reaction to a vaccination.
Both vaccination and antibiotics grant a huge benefit to society but do carry a tiny risk to individuals. No one suggests we don't use antibiotics so why the issue with vaccinations?
"yet time and again when posters have said why they are cautios wrt jabs, you dismiss their views, and make out that they should vaccinate regardless."
No I haven't. If you go back a few pages I specifically said that if in conjunction with a health professional cognisant with the vaccination at hand it was deemed that the individual should not be vaccinated as the vaccination carries too great a risk then of course that should be followed - indeed thats the very point I'm arguing, part of the aims of the vaccination is to protect those in society who cannot have the vaccination.
However I believe that most people cannot come to an informed decision on their own. As amply demonstrated by this thread most people simply don't understand what vaccinations are and how they work. Most people don't understand risk.
Most "anti vaccination" bods tend to be people like Appletrees (who's sole contribution seems to be shouting rubbish occaisonally) with no understanding of the principals or science involved but they've read a nice web page with a pretty graph and now they know for sure that by giving their child this vaccination they're going to kill them as surely as shooting them.
"I ahve said that more research should be done to find out which children may be susceptible to being damaged, and that my children will not be offered up as sacrifices to the cause of herd immunity."
As a society we "sacrifice" thousands of people a year due to the number of cars on our roads. We could eliminate that overnight if we really wanted but the benefit to society is deemed too much for that to happen. So instead we research and develop new safety technologies and traffic management techniques, just as we research and develop new vaccines.
And I'll never object to anyone thinking more research is a good thing.