Your parents giving you a lolipop? Time to send them to jail

[the amativeness]

Unrelated: Rocket, your avatar has been busted for a while, and it's messing with me. I've been staring at it so long to see if it actually said photoRocket to mess with me.

Like this?

[JackSlack]

The better question here, and I'm not saying I have the answer, is whether the cost of subsidising vaccinations is higher than the cost of treating an outbreak of disease. If so, then yeah, the government/health insurers/person footing the bill at the end of the day, whomever it may be has it in their best interest to subsidise vaccinations.

[TheRocket]

Pretty much. But that's why they offer super cheap vaccinations for most yearly flus and such at places like cvs and walmart. I mean flu shots and such weren't available in Alberta for free... I'm pretty sure the HPV one costs a pretty penny as well.

[Metcarfre]

The better question here, and I'm not saying I have the answer, is whether the cost of subsidising vaccinations is higher than the cost of treating an outbreak of disease. If so, then yeah, the government/health insurers/person footing the bill at the end of the day, whomever it may be has it in their best interest to subsidise vaccinations.

It's way, way, way, way, way cheaper. Vaccines cost pennies. They are by far the most cost-effective health care intervention out there.

[Smeghead]

I was not actually aware that vaccinating kids wasn't free in the US. That seems rather cruel towards kids who have the "misfortune" not to be born rich. Although I've been told that most big cities should have free vaccination programs for kids.

That seems like a great idea for a political party to pick up on; offer free vaccinations for kids, at least against the basic stuff. You know, something that is a right in the rest of the western world and not a privilege. You know, playing to the dreaded "Think of the children" crowd.

But knowing how these things use to go; I bet someone has already done it, been informed of what the costs would be to the government and how much money it would cost the hospitals and pharmaceutical companies (who are both really poor!), then been accused of being a "socialist".

[Dutch guy]

Well, most hospitals (as far as I've been told) are not rich. They need to cut a lot of costs to keep going. The Pharmaceutical companies in the US on the other hand... Don't get me started.

[Vigafre]

Well, you don't have to be rich. You just need to have money. There's a difference.

[Duckay]

I'm pretty sure the HPV one costs a pretty penny as well.

Yeah, there was a local push to get free HPV vaccines for people in the most at-risk age groups a little while ago, and had I not gotten mine then, I probably wouldn't have been able to afford it. They were expensive. Probably partly because they're new and partly because it's a three-shot course.

[Psyclone]

That seems like a great idea for a political party to pick up on; offer free vaccinations for kids, at least against the basic stuff. You know, something that is a right in the rest of the western world and not a privilege. You know, playing to the dreaded "Think of the children" crowd.

But vaccines give people autism. Do you want to give our children autism?

[Fezzul]

Not a problem for me... see I was vaccinated against autism.

[Master Gunner]

That seems like a great idea for a political party to pick up on; offer free vaccinations for kids, at least against the basic stuff. You know, something that is a right in the rest of the western world and not a privilege. You know, playing to the dreaded "Think of the children" crowd.

But vaccines give people autism. Do you want to give our children autism?

Don't worry though, you can cure autism by getting injections of your own urine.

[The Jester]

Well.. I suppose, technically, being dead would preclude developing autism.

[Smeghead]

No government mindcontroll theories regarding vaccination or DNA catalogue?

[taza]

And more importantly vaccines don't have a thing to do with autism.

Also, being dead would stop autism but not prevent it. It's present from birth.

[Smeghead]

And more importantly vaccines don't have a thing to do with autism.

Also, being dead would stop autism but not prevent it. It's present from birth.

Yeah but "people" don't think so. because "people" are stupid

[Lisra]

By a proxy, this is the prime reason why there has got to be mandatory, state-provided education. or why why some things have to be decided by a higher authority.

Oh *terribly* socialistic Germany, I am grateful for my free vaccs and all the other things.

[Master Gunner]

America does have mandatory state-provided education. It just also happens to have things like Fox News (and all of their textbooks are controlled by Texas).

[Dibria]

A large amount of the 'Vaccines cause X' argument (and autism isn't the only X they claim) is that people don't understand the difference between Correlation and Causation.

There is a database used by Doctors, I forget its name, in which they list medical data in order to try and find links, so a medical researcher can go onto it and look at, for example, all cases of Cancer in City Y from 2002-2004 and see if there were any common factors.

The issue is that the database can be accessed by people with an agenda, they can distort truth by saying 'we looked at 400 people with autism and 95% of them had Vaccine Z'. This is correlation, congratulations, you have found that a lot of people with Autism in the specific group you chose had a specific vaccine.

People with Autism had received a particular vaccine therefore it caused the Autism - cum hoc ergo propter hoc.

Congratulations, you have committed a logical fallacy, what they need to do in that case is look at all the people who received that vaccine in that period and... 0.01% were later found to have Autism.

The real trouble comes in when people just believe this because they are told so by experts, they have not seen the evidence but the expert has so they're obviously right.

[Metcarfre]

Well, mostly, in the case of autism, it's that one paper that was in the BMJ (British Medical Journal), that has since been retracted, that claimed a link. But, you know, he faked the data, so... whatever.

[Dibria]

My point was just a general one about how those papers get through in the first place, in order to be published they have to be Peer Reviewed so they cannot use false information therefore they do as I said above, which falsifies the result you want with real data.

[Metcarfre]

Actually, he did use false data, which was the whole point.

[Lisra]

America does have mandatory state-provided education. It just also happens to have things like Fox News (and all of their textbooks are controlled by Texas).

True. But it also has homeschooling, which is banned in Germany.

People in all countries believe really stupid stuff, all the countries I have lived in are no exception at all (indeed, BILD, Telegraaf and VG are among the worst newspapers in Europe and have devoted readerships), but it can't just be our twisted view from over the pond that there are things, yknow, where you can say only in america. And apart from the education failling in this sprawling mass (and indeed how do you go on educating everyone in such a large country with so many remote spots and a history of sponging up sects and other interesting folk) - how can that be explained? US-Americans can't be dumber than other people. So something must have gone wrong somewhere, and this is the only thing I can think of. Fail to teach basic facts about.. most things. Fail to nurture critical thinking and basic analytical skills.

It would just be horrible if there was a deeper reason.

[Dibria]

@metacarfre - again *general* point, while the odd paper can get through with modified medical histories such as the one you are highlighting, the peer review system exists for a reason and *generally* does a good job of catching outright fraudulent data.


@lisra yes people in all countries believe all sorts of things, ask people in the UK about the Daily Mail and you will here of a wondrous example of thinly veiled racism and bigotry in mainstream press. Each country also has people who believe in auras, palm reading and star signs - I agree that America as a hole is not dumber, it just has a lot of loud minorities.

That said stating that the size of a country effects quality of education strikes me as more than a little odd, ok I'm from England and my whole country is only about 4 times the size of Vancouver island - but you *are* posting on the message board of a canadian website, a much larger country with a better education reputation than the US.

[Metcarfre]

That's... not the point I was making at all.

[Dibria]

No, I gather the point you were trying to make was that the belief that Vaccines, or the MMR vaccine in particular, causes Autism all stems from a single paper that was published in the BMJ.

My *original* point was about how we end up seeing these every few years, flu jab x causes SARS, vaccination y causes Swine flu etc. I happened to chose Autism as the condition in question because it had been mentioned previously I was not trying to say that you were wrong and that the Autism link is due to the specific outline I gave. It is a general pattern that can be found in a lot of medical scare stories, not just vaccinations.