Interestingly, the notorious David Geier started off his career in that sort of legitimate vaccine-effects research before going off the rails in spectacular fashion with all sorts of gibberish about mercury-testosterone crystals* (?!) to justify chemically castrating autistic kids.

*(This idea seems to have originally come about from the fairly new "premature masculinisation" ideas about autism which have as much of a scientific footing as panspermia. I doff my hat to his ad-hoc binding of that to the mercury-toxicity hypothesis. I have a fantasy about eventually getting a grad student to come up with a definitive study into how awful his idea is, but it's so ill-defined there's no sensible way to come at it.)

My comment was based on how difficult it is to read the recounting of this tumor board conference and not feel great empathy for the Medical Oncologist leading the tumor board who said "...she would have viewed the failure to persuade her to see reason as a personal failure."

I see this as one of the very worst potential outcome of this patients choice of certain death over treatment for her quite curable (by a cancer standpoint) disease because it has hurt the ability of the people whose lives are dedicated to curing these diseases (or at least managing them). If the physician sees enough of these hopeless cases which they had a chance to help ("if only I could reach them!") and they are unable to do anything, the psychological toll can be devastating. I cannot imagine being able to continue for long in such a climate and not break down or lose my connection with humanity in the patient. Either way, any subsequent patient is hurt by this one's acts; certainly not killed outright, but had some small measure of goodness taken from them.

In this way, even this seemingly single-victim crime is worse still in the toll it extracts from the society that allows it. I can only hope that someone brighter than I can come up with a magic pill to cure the cargo-cultistic psuedo-scientific bullshit woven woo that erodes at the foundation of the modern world so hard fought for by the great scientific collectives come before. If not, I may take solace in having lived in what was the greatest time humanity may ever know.

I recovered, but my parents were unsure whether the vaccine has caused the seizures or whether I was just unlucky (West's syndrome generally occurs at about the same time, regardless of whether you're immunised or not. )

When I had children, we thought long and hard about getting them immunised. I did a lot of research about potential issues with vaccines; as far as I can see there's no conclusive evidence of any correlation between vaccinations, and potential side effects.
The triple antigen is a lot milder than it was when I had it, so we went ahead with it.

In any case, my first son ended up with the same condition, West's syndrome, recovered, just like me, had a somewhat delayed development, and now has been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome.

Do I think the vaccinations caused the seizures in me and my son? I guess it's possible, but I'm not convinced that's the cause. My son and I have participated in a study to see whether there's a genetic link between father and son for west's syndrome; currently the jury's out on that (ie they haven't found a specific marker / gene yet).

To be on the safe side, when we had our second son we delayed the "known risks" part of the triple antigen shot - rubella, I think - (which caused delays as we needed a special version manufactured for him specifically) - he's been fine. He's since had the rubella shot he missed with no effects.

My two beautiful boys are doing fine.

Personally I think it's very important to get immunise against known viruses / diseases, both for my family and the community at large. Sure, there's a perceived, unproven risk, and plenty of anecdotal evidence like my experience but I think the impact of your child getting TB, Measles, etc is much, much greater than the potential risk of immunisation. I couldn't imagine having my child die of a treatable disease because I didn't immunise, or being responsible for introducing a disease like TB or measles into a school because I was dumb enough to not get my kid vaccinated. Parents always want total security that their kid will be 100% fine after the immunisation shot - the scientific process just doesn't work that way.

That's my 3c anyway.

Now what about vaccination? Given that the vaccine will do harm, can either side say that vaccination is beneficial? What is the difference? Simply this, vaccination includes as part of its equation the value of the recipients optimistic expectation of positive outcome

This is a disease that is 100% fatal if you don't seek treatment, and very nearly 100% non-fatal if you get treatment early. These statistics are borne out over tens of thousands of deaths every year. The denialist nutjobs point out that only a couple people a year die in the US due to rabies, conveniently ignoring the tens of thousands who die in third world countries. The main reason that fatality rates are so low in the US because we vaccinate our pets. Rabid dogs are frequent in India but extremely rare in the US. The few infections we get are mostly from wild bats.

The claim that PEP rabies treatment is placebo is obviously a complete load of shit. Most of the rabies fatalities in the first world nations (and many in the third world) are due to people not seeking treatment because they didn't know they were infected. A small, nearly invisible scratch from a bat is enough to kill you. The treatment (to a million to one approximation) is only effective before symptoms appear. Treatment after the appearance of symptoms has only cured about 6 people in all of recorded history. Those survivors went through terrible trauma, and suffered long term neurological damage. So

If events proceed to an individual developing rabies, ONLY THEN does a high mortality rate become common but still there is treatment.

Is a lethal lie.

Jock, if anyone is dumb enough to listen to him on this issue, will a guilty of murder or negligent homicide at the least. Not to mention dispensing medical advice without a license.

I'd give Jock a counter-challenge to go demonstrate the harmlessness of rabies, but I suppose telling the mentally ill to kill themselves is not appropriate. So instead, I'll just urge him to seek psychiatric help as soon as possible, and to stop spreading his murderous nonsense.

Vaccine denial isn't just anti-rational nonsense. It's murder.

/rant

Pregnant women who might have a very damn good reason for not being immunized, and who are now unable to visit say... schools or daycare centres because of the irresponsible people who choose not to have their boys (or girls) vaccinated for rubella, "because of the risk".

Oh my! Thimerisol has mercury in it? We all know that mercury is bad!

Questioning things is good, but would it help if kids were taught critical thinking in school or something? Or is it indicative of how pampered our society is that we now have the luxury of risking disease?

(Possibly, if your kid's REALLY lucky, via the path of subacute sclerosing panencephalitis!)

(In 2005, only about three hundred and forty-five thousand children died of measles, at least according to those murderous conspiratorial liars at the World Health Organization and UNICEF.)