I agree with Amanda Peet. What people forget is how devastating these diseases can be.

Diphtheria killed children. Helen Keller was blinded and made deaf when she got the measles.

Antibiotics don't necessarily work to cure or moderate these illnesses because they are viral infections, and as we know viruses are not affected by antibiotics.

Here in Australia we have a system of vaccination that is completely stupid.

Girls are being vaccinated against Human Papillo Virus, the one that causes genital warts and is linked with cancer of the cervix.

Since most of the spreading of HPV is done by males, it makes sense that boys also should be vaccinated.

With only at the very best 50% of the population age cohort being vaccinated there is no way herd immunity will be achieved because 50% is unvaccinated.

"and I'm not sure it's incumbent upon me to read all your posts to know your points..."

It most certainly is when you accuse someone of typing without thinking.

At the very least, you could read my several post on the current thread.

Thanks, Amanda Peet's publicist!

Last one for me for the day:

I appreciate all your past work on this...and perhaps this is another aspect of this medium--I don't know you or your past "work" here...and I'm not sure it's incumbent upon me to read all your posts to know your points...

In any event, it is important on all points to understand the massive interdependencies involved in any action and event and choice. We in the USA are not as healthy as we like to think and there might be any number of reasons vaccines are as necessary for the well-fed as the malnourished and perhaps our quality of living even though seemingly quite good has been undercut by our industrial processes (boxed food anyone? Corn syrup, etc...please tear into me on this one too...) We are heavier and less nourished...but as usual, this is a digression and I'm sorry. But the point is that we are little able to really understand the way life works...we think we do in many cases, but often we are proven quite wrong (this is all I meant by hubris...many a cancer researcher has cured this disease in mice and rats and thought they were on their way to the miracle we all dream of...)

I think we often miss the motivations behind many of our decisions and especially of those decisions that are made for us...we are all a mass of conflicted interests, and no one can be free of that. When it comes to public health choices we should be very aware of why certain choices are made and then foisted upon us.

Again, be sure I never stated that vaccines were bad, not once.

And don't imagine I stated that all we need to do in Africa is clean the water and the world will be fine...but this is about as basic as health gets.

And on to your final example about "cleanliness"--bleach is not necessarily "hygienic" and a real case can be made against its overuse (or use at all)--as killing all bacteria does not make something safe, rather it clears the way for the next opportunistic bacteria.

For that fella that loves synergy...I give you one more "new age-ism" that is simply as old an idea as there is...and you learned it on the germ-filled playground of your youth...the teeter totter teaches us balance, grasshopper.

All you need do is click on my name. You can see my many posts on this topic and others.

Sometimes I'm wrong (sooo sorry Tom Brady!) but I'm hardly ever "knee-jerk."

If you'd read any of my posts, you'd quickly figure out that I have 2 kids. I did quite a bit of vac research when I was pg with #1. Aside from talking with my chosen pedi, reading the pamphlets from the CDC and surfing the web, I also spoke to my husband (BA Chem Engineering and several years' experience in a small non-publicly-traded pharma R&D - no, he never made or sold vaccines); my sister-in-law (RN, PhD in Nursing, and several years' experience with a state dept of health, where one of her jobs was to track disease outbreaks, and another was to plan for a hypothetical flu pandemic); my mother (RN with 25+ years' experience in pediatric nursing); a friend (wrote her PhD on Golgi bodies, and at the time doing her post-doc work at Yale in microbiology: yeah, she used small words with me, but I was thrilled to pick her brain); a chat group on parenting (with 1500+ moms' perspectives on a whole range of issues, including vaccines); and my chapter of La Leche League.

And. I decided to vaccinate my kids.

In an earlier post, I talked about a friend who's kiddo has JRA. She does not vaccinate, as vaccinations cause the JRA to flare up. I don't consider her "stupid" or "ill-informed."

I don't come to my convictions lightly.

I don't think "better living through pharmaceuticals" is always the answer: I stay away from antibiotics overuse, I breast-fed my kids, I buy organic food, blah blah blah.

The argument of "all we need to do is ...x" to an entire continent blows my mind. The only thing all Africans have in common with each other is the continent on which they stand.

Yes. Better hygiene via better access to clean water and plumbing would solve a lot of problems. But they wouldn't eliminate the need for vaccines. (Here in the overly-sanitized west, measles is on the rise in places where vaccination has fallen off. The disease still has teeth. Sadly, a few dozen children will probably have to die in a very publicly covered mini-epidemic, before certain people come to their senses.) As long as people breathe, sneeze, cough, have runny noses, and hands, diseases will still spread, even in "hygienic conditions." How many times were the cruise ships bleached from top to bottom, and dozens upon dozens still came down with Norwalk virus?