So eugenics by forced vaccination is ok then?

With a partner who has an auto immune disease and grandparents who both have cancer I find myself getting the flu vaccination, when I used to choose not to. So far so good. It is easy to say that something is bad when there isn’t enough studies and it is easy to link something like autism to vaccines because the correlation between them; however a correlation does not label something as the cause.

We have to remember we live in a more informed and advanced medical society these days (hence more vaccinations) and while we may be more informed it doesn’t mean we know all. In my opinion it is up to the personal judgement of the individual to do what they think is best, whether any of us agree with them or not. People are going to make the choices we make. If they don’t want to be more informed so be it, we can only keep up the good fight

I see the lines of reasoning where ‘evolution’ or ‘weak immune systems’ are brought up are more examples of blaming the victim than anything else. And it’s an empowering thing to do for the person doing the blaming, so long as they’ve convinced themselves that they are ‘evolved’ or that they have a ‘strong’ immune system. It lets them believe the risks of infection, which we have almost no control over, are controllable and not another one of nature’s unfeeling dice rolls.

What the . . . ?

Did you read anything I wrote about evolution as it pertains to immunity?

My point was that, because the aetiologic agents are typically fast-evolving species, our immunity is rarely life-long because of the evolution of the pathogen. You seem to be railing at me (I think I was the first one to mention evolution in this discussion) for making an argument I did not make, and then using more or less the argument I did make to rebut the argument I didn’t make.

It’s almost as if you didn’t read my posts at all, and only read those posted by db26 in response to my posts . . .

Huh? If that were true, wouldn’t the Earth be populated by prokaryotes(and lesser virus), only?

Well, either by mass, by number or by number of species they are most common lifeforms on this planet.

Fortunately for us, more complex lifeforms evolved in coexistence with bacteria – so there is place in ecosystem for all kinds. There are more survival strategies than just straight-on competing.

Evolution has very little to do with it and, frankly, viruses and bacteria will always win the ‘evolution war’ faster than humans. Shorter lives = more generations = faster response to evolutionary pressures & more opportunity for favorable mutations to pan out. Not to mention things like horizontal gene transfer in bacteria.

Huh? If that were true, wouldn’t the Earth be populated by prokaryotes(and lesser virus), only?

You must be 12 years old. Wait, maybe 13. Yeah 13 sounds about right. Or a creationist. Hard to tell.

To pin it on a ‘weak’ or ‘inferior’ immune system is generally false as well, and for a lot of reasons. A strong immune response can actually kill you, the symptoms from some diseases are actually caused by the immune system more-so than the infection. Being in shape, having a good diet, these things can help you when you get sick but they don’t keep you from getting sick. And once you’re sick with something like the measles it’s pretty much chance, not your immune system, that determines if you will get encephalitis. Even today, in the first world with good nutrition and medicine, if you get measles encephalitis you are in a world of trouble.

I see the lines of reasoning where ‘evolution’ or ‘weak immune systems’ are brought up are more examples of blaming the victim than anything else. And it’s an empowering thing to do for the person doing the blaming, so long as they’ve convinced themselves that they are ‘evolved’ or that they have a ‘strong’ immune system. It lets them believe the risks of infection, which we have almost no control over, are controllable and not another one of nature’s unfeeling dice rolls.