

Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All - tokenadult
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_waronscience

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tc
If Paul Offit just creates vaccines and publishes factual research, then all
the anger directed at him seems completely absurd. But if he or RotaTeq
advocates or lobbies for _mandatory_ vaccinations, then it is at least fair to
criticize him as a moral agent.

People often throw up absurd objections to factual research because they have
a moral stake in the debate but limited evidence (or knowledge, time, or
interest) to engage on a utilitarian front. Unfortunately, it seems to be more
politically successful to fight via convolution of facts than to engage in the
moral issue directly.

The public seems to undervalue legitimate moral arguments, so competing
interests instead engage in a proxy war of claims about benefits and harms.

~~~
sophacles
Please further explain your moral agent statement. I can see mandatory
vaccines on the one hand as a moral position (you must save your kid my way)
and on the other as a socially responsible position (not vaccinating your kid
provides disease vectors to mine.. not all vaccines provide 100% immunity so
more vaccines is better protection for all). Im interested in hearing more on
both sides of this.

~~~
tc
Sure.

If you were to publish neutral research showing that, were the US were to
draft all men 18-35, then the US armed forces would grow by X% and we could
fight Y major wars at once while occupying Z square miles of foreign
territory, then it would seem mostly senseless to direct anger or criticism at
you if your claims were factually sensible.

If on the other hand, though, you were to promote the idea that the draft was
_needed_ , that it would produce a _socially useful_ outcome, and that people
who oppose your view are being _irrational_ and _selfish_ , then you've
entered into a moral debate.

And further, if you own a large defense contracting firm, then your claims and
your moral position about the necessity of _forcing_ people to join the
military would be subjected to additional, admittedly ad hominem, scrutiny.

~~~
sophacles
OK, first, I am not convinced that socially responsible is strictly a moral
position. Disease vector analysis is just an analysis on a directed graph. In
this case there is a strong mathematical model, with scientific evidence, that
not vaccinating children can harm other children. Because of this I am
questioning your analogy, since in the case of the draft there is not a non-
opinion social component.

Instead I analogize with drunk driving -- significantly fewere drunk drivers
equates to significantly fewer 3rd party injuries and deaths as a result of
drunk drivers. Similarly in the vaccination case, there are 3rd parties who
stand to suffer from the actions of those who do not receive vaccines.

Edit: I forgot to put my second point, which is:

I agree with your analogy in that those who stand to benefit should be closely
scrutinized when advocating a position.

------
pkulak
There's always some risk with injecting anything into yourself (or your
child). With a vaccine that risk is miniscule compared to what it prevents,
but, if everyone _else_ in society takes that tiny risk, _you_ can get all the
benefits without actually taking the risk yourself. So, if I give my son his a
shot and he gets a little fever, or a sore arm, etc, you can skip it with your
kid and send him off to school where he's assured to not get the flu/pertussis
from mine. It's just downright selfish to put it on everyone else.

~~~
tc
That assumes you want the benefit.

If living a 'natural' life is higher on your value scale than preventing a
possible infection, then you wouldn't want the vaccine even if no one else was
getting it either.

Let's say your neighbors want to build a $1M lake. They want you to chip in
$50k. You're going to get the 'benefit' of the lake one way or the other. But
you don't even like lakes. In fact, you'd prefer they didn't build a lake, as
lakes attract mosquitoes, and you are (perhaps irrationally) concerned about
infections from mosquitoes. Would it be _selfish_ for you to not chip in?
Would it be _rightful_ for them to take the $50k from you by force since
you're getting the 'benefit' of the lake?

~~~
gloob
I'll give you that, with the side note that if "living a 'natural life'" is
that important to a person, it would be rather strange for them to spend all
their time surrounded by machinery and copper wires and airplanes and roads
and tall buildings and clothing.

Edit: I'm not saying people should be forced into taking the shots or
anything. Just that I'll laugh at people who use reasoning that doesn't begin
to make sense to me.

------
raintrees
Full page link: <http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_waronscience/all/1>

------
Alex3917
"Science loses ground to pseudo-science because the latter seems to offer more
comfort."

Or more likely because the U.S. government lies to its citizens about health
information all the time; I'm not getting the H1N1 vaccine for the same reason
I didn't sign up to go breathe the air at ground zero.

~~~
gloob
_I'm not getting the H1N1 vaccine for the same reason I didn't sign up to go
breathe the air at ground zero._

Apologies, but I'm not very good at guessing what people mean when they
construct sentences of this general form. Could you say explicitly what your
reason is?

~~~
Alex3917
I'm saying that I don't trust what the government says about health, because
they lie about health all the time. That has nothing to do with pseudo-
science, that's just being an intelligent and rational person.

For example, after September 11th the EPA and NYC government said that the air
at ground zero was perfectly safe to breathe. What's more, no one is being
held accountable even though dozens or hundreds are dying horrible deaths
because of these lies. This is just one example, there are literally hundreds
of cases like this that we can point to in the last fifty years.

Therefor, it's

A) Reasonable to assume that the government may be lying about the safety of
this vaccine.

B) Reasonable to assume that if they are lying about the safety, no one will
be held accountable.

~~~
nollidge
Few things.

1) This has everything to do with pseudo-science. There are no credible
studies pointing to ill health effects outside of extremely rare cases in
which a person is allergic to some part of the vaccine or has some other pre-
existing condition. And there are numerous studies indicating that you're more
likely to get struck by lightning than to have any reaction to a vaccine,
outside of a sore arm.

2) "The government" is hardly a single entity. You're displaying
conspiratorial thinking here, which is pretty tough to take seriously. You're
discussing the EPA and NY city government, which is not the same as the NIH
and CDC. Additionally, it's not only the U.S. government which is strongly
recommending these vaccines. If you'd like to continue that line of argument,
you'll have to take it up with probably every single first-world government.

3) Being an intelligent and rational person means evaluating claims
individually, regardless of the source. Starting from the position that the
government is lying to you is just as stupid as assuming they're always
telling the truth. Of course there are fuck-ups and cover-ups, but that
doesn't mean everything is.

~~~
Alex3917
"Starting from the position that the government is lying to you is just as
stupid as assuming they're always telling the truth."

If this is true, then the rational position would be to assume that the
government may or may not be lying to you. Which is what I believe.

"'The government' is hardly a single entity."

The people are different, but if the Milgram experiments (and sociology in
general) have taught us anything, it's that a person's social influences are
as important to their decision making as their intrinsic character. And the
laws, rewards, and punishments are largely the same across departments.

I realize the EPA is different from the FDA. However, the reasons why the EPA
buried studies about the amount of mercury in freshwater the day before
issuing new guidelines on acceptable mercury levels are largely the same as
the reasons why the FDA approved OTC plan-B only for women 18+.

The takeaway is that bad things don't (usually) happen because of bad people.
They happen because organizational behavior, psychology, and sociology allow
us to make an educated guess that if an organization looks like X, then what
tends to happen will be Y.

Now if I see patterns across organizations that you don't see, maybe that
makes me a conspiracy theorist and maybe I'm seeing patterns that aren't
there. Or maybe I just see patterns that you don't see.

I agree that at the end of the day you have to think about these problems
individually for yourself. I don't actually believe the vaccines are all that
dangerous, but at the same time I'm not going to take them just because the
CDC or NIH or whatever say they are safe. The reason is that the people
running these departments are operating under largely the same structures and
incentives as the people running every other government department, and
history as a whole shows that these sets of structures and incentives tend to
produce unsavory behavior.

------
iterationx
maybe we don't want to end up like this chick
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvtnS8wXBi8&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvtnS8wXBi8&feature=player_embedded)

and we're tired of propagandists

~~~
aarongough
Out of all the people that received the flu vaccine, how many had reactions
this severe? I'll guarantee you that it was less than would have otherwise had
severe reactions to the flu virus itself...

Everything comes with a risk. If there is a problem here then it's the the
average person does not make the effort to make that they are aware of the
risks that they are taking.

~~~
iterationx
yeah how are you going to guarantee that?

~~~
aarongough
By abasing myself before the community if I am proved to be incorrect. Would
that be deemed sufficient? Bring the evidence.

