Yeah, nice skeptical thinking there. If you’re going to be skeptical then question everything, not just things that go against what you want to believe. I love the people in here referring to “studies” that I betting they just read about and took at face value without researching at all the facts of the study.

Skeptics. Yeah. Most of you wouldn’t know a skeptical thought if you tripped over it. There’s bad information on both sides of vaccines. You can’t just believe the stuff that supports your view and discount the stuff that doesn’t. There’s people with agendas on both sides. Take anything at face value at your own risk.

Be a real skeptic and question everything and everyone. You might just learn something for yourself instead and something you didn’t even plan on finding.

Good for you! Human Papilloma Virus can cause cervical cancer (alliteration accidental).

http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Skinner/Pigeon/

Any time there is an event and a proximal event it could reasonably be assumed that one causes the other, until you actually test it by withholding the supposed cause. If vaccinations were the cause, autism rates should have shot up at the advent of vaccination. If mercury was the cause, autism should have declined at the inception of the FDA and been rampant before this. Every hatter should have had autistic children.

Mounting evidence, however, suggests that brain changes in autism occur before birth at stages of development involving migration of brain cells and affected by maternal hormone balance, and even more interestingly that inflammatory cytokinines alleviate some of the social symptoms of autism in mild to moderate cases. If inflammation or injury were a cause, wouldn’t further stress exacerbate symptoms? The summary is that symptoms appear around age two, which just so happens to be when children are in the middle of vaccination. The brain changes are already there.

Think for yourself. Don’t be a pigeon.

And for the purposes of full disclosure: I have a seven year old autistic son who has been vaccinated.

It is indeed curious that anti-vacciners argue that both vaccine failure rate V and vaccine reaction rate R are high, which by my thinking is still a contentious configuration for the prisoner’s dilemma matrix.

You’re approaching the question as though the anti-vaccine crowd holds their position rationally. By and large, this is a group strongly convinced that vaccines cause autism (see Hydro’s comment earlier in the thread), in spite of (a) no evidence for that claim and (b) copious amounts of evidence against it. I’ve spent some time following their antics online, and it’s clear these folks are impervious to evidence.

Show me a vaccination advocate who holds that low V actually diminishes the case for intrusive public policy…

What do you mean by “low”? How low should it be before we make vaccination optional?

The folks I’ve met in public health are well aware of the strengths and limitations of vaccines, and are primarily concerned with maintaining herd immunity and keeping the general population healthy. Why should they also have the responsibility to push for a libertarian agenda? And how do you ensure that the vaccination rate is sufficient to maintain herd immunity if vaccination is optional? Last I checked, getting immunizations isn’t even all that intrusive (and requiring them forces insurances companies to cover them; it’s usually not too difficult to dodge that requirement if you really care to do so).

Perhaps they are not as selfish as you think. Perhaps they are arguing their convictions for the greater good, just as vaccine advocates are.

It is indeed curious that anti-vacciners argue that both vaccine failure rate V and vaccine reaction rate R are high, which by my thinking is still a contentious configuration for the prisoner’s dilemma matrix. Similarly, vaccine advocates typically contend that vaccines are safe and effective — that V and R are low — which should militate towards a public policy of individual self-determination.

Show me a vaccination advocate who holds that low V actually diminishes the case for intrusive public policy and respects the wishes of those who opt out not to be included in the statistical case for compulsory measures. (I don’t count.) Then maybe we’ll have found the two people who won’t talk past each other.