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rkajdi posted:Number one, putting gay in there makes no sense. There's not a lot of evidence of it being that genetic, though I have seen some stuff suggesting it could involve in utero conditions. Number two, we have amneocentesis and have people regularly aborting fetuses with Downs Syndrome-- this is much of the reason why we don't have lots more children with the condition after maternal age has increased. We also regularly do the same for piles of other congenital defects. I know, mate. What exactly is your point? Of course being gay isn't genetic, but we're talking about hypothetical in-utero tests. It doesn't matter how plausible the idea of prenatal testing for homosexuality is - it's a thought experiment. Did you somehow get the impression that I'm anything but extremely pro-abortion? The ability for a woman to terminate a pregnancy safely and cheaply is, I think, one of the greatest medical innovations ever. Like, up there with penicillin. Abortions are amazing things generally for the longevity and quality for life for women everywhere. Hell, not even just women. Access to abortion is a great thing for society as a whole. The only point I'm trying to get across is that there are reasons (implausible reasons, mostly) why a woman might choose to terminate a pregnancy that I would find pretty disgusting reasons. Like, take the standard anti-choicer notion that there are women out there who have abortions just for the fun of it. Let's imagine a purely hypothetical woman who deliberately gets pregnant as often as she can and then gets abortions because she personally believes it's murder and she just likes murdering babies. Do I think that's hosed as all hell? Yes. But the point is twofold - it's not a problem in reality because it just doesn't happen, and it's not a problem in theory either because while you can say that having a psychopathic urge to end fetuses' lives just for the thrill of it is a sick and twisted reason for getting an abortion, saying that doesn't entail a belief that this hypothetical woman should be stopped. It's still her body, and just because I think there is such a thing (hypothetically, because, as I said, this is just a thought experiment) as a stupid or monstrous reason for terminating a pregnancy doesn't mean I think anybody else should be able to veto her decision. The point I'm making is that you can say "that's hosed up that you want to terminate your pregnancy simply because you don't want a baby that'll grow up to be a homosexual and you are a hateful, nasty human being" (assuming we had some such probably impossible-in-reality test for prenatal sexuality) without also committing yourself to the idea that a woman shouldn't be allowed to terminate her pregnancy for whatever reason.
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Jun 29, 2014 09:37
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Ogmius, the ads on that picture are basically child porn. delete it. Please.  I clicked on it, thinking it was a TIMG, and it took me right there and the ads on the top.
E-Tank fucked around with this message at 09:43 on Jun 29, 2014 |
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Jun 29, 2014 09:38
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E-Tank posted:Ogmius, the ads on that picture are basically child porn. delete it. Please. Ughhh yeah sorry. First free image host google found. (Although I didn't get adds like that. Are they targeted ads  ?)
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Jun 29, 2014 13:40
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Safer to just rehost on imgur when in doubt.
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Jun 29, 2014 16:02
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Ogmius815 posted:Ughhh yeah sorry. First free image host google found. (Although I didn't get adds like that. Are they targeted ads I don't search for that stuff if that's what you're asking/implying. All I know is I clicked the image, and suddenly CP ads in my face. E-Tank fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Jun 29, 2014 |
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Jun 29, 2014 18:15
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Bel Shazar posted:I'm not claiming some separate entity. Regardless, people can still be comfortable as themselves. Claiming that someone has to change because they don't meet your level of acceptability is just bunk. Just because someone's comfortable the way they are doesn't mean they're necessarily fine without treatment. Schizophrenics sometimes stop taking their medication because, when the medication wears off, they realize that anti-psychotics are really just a lizardman Illuminati plot to destroy them by cutting off the voices of the divine aliens who guide them to greatness. Should we stop trying to treat them because, when in the grips of mental illness, they choose the illness over normal functioning? Cranappleberry posted:you seem to be under the impression that you are arguing for reproductive rights (which no one is disputing) when it seems to be tipping the scales toward advocating genocide. Do you consider abortion a socially or medically viable cure for genetic defects? Yes. Suppose a mother is carrying a child who will most likely live for no longer than twelve hours after birth, and will have zero chance of living a functional life even if they manage to live longer. Would it be wrong for the mother to abort that child? If your answer is "yes" then this absolutely is a discussion of reproductive rights, and if your answer is "no" then you've accepted that it's okay for a mother to abort a child known to have a physical or mental condition, and we can move on to the far more interesting question of where to draw the line.
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Jun 29, 2014 18:42
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Nah, I was confused because a prenatal test for autism is not currently available so I found it strange that someone would advocate for abortion in the case of autism, as it is advocated for in the case of Tay-Sachs, risk factors not-withstanding. They were actually saying: women have the choice regardless and if people start saying "the child could be high-functioning even though the fetus tested positive for autism" it will be used against reproductive rights. There is another thread for this though. I would like someone to come up with a cogent explanation as to how the MMR vaccine causes autism in light of the genetic and environmental factors that have since been correlated to autism.
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Jun 29, 2014 20:04
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Typically they talk about preservatives that contain mercury. Note that these ingredients have been proven safe.
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Jun 29, 2014 20:24
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Ogmius815 posted:Typically they talk about preservatives that contain mercury. Note that these ingredients have been proven safe. I feel like this is another one of those cases where the people just flat out don't understand science or chemistry. Yeah, mercury is toxic by itself. So is chlorine. How insane will these people go when somebody informs them that salt has chlorine? A toxic element can become nontoxic if it's mixed with other crap.
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Jun 29, 2014 20:33
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edit: nm
Hedera Helix fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Jun 29, 2014 |
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Jun 29, 2014 20:35
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ToxicSlurpee posted:I feel like this is another one of those cases where the people just flat out don't understand science or chemistry. Yeah, mercury is toxic by itself. So is chlorine. How insane will these people go when somebody informs them that salt has chlorine? That and in sufficient enough doses, everything is toxic.
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Jun 29, 2014 20:35
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Cranappleberry posted:I would like someone to come up with a cogent explanation as to how the MMR vaccine causes autism in light of the genetic and environmental factors that have since been correlated to autism. A British doctor faked a research paper in order to spread fear about the MMR vaccine in hopes of getting it discontinued, because it was pretty hard for him to sell the measles vaccine he had a patent on when MMR already dominated the measles vaccine market, and he also got to make millions testifying as an "expert witness" in MMR court cases. He's since been refuted, his paper stricken from the literature, and his license to practice medicine revoked, but none of that will stop antivaxxers from believing in his fraudulent study.
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Jun 29, 2014 21:10
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Main Paineframe posted:A British doctor faked a research paper in order to spread fear about the MMR vaccine in hopes of getting it discontinued, because it was pretty hard for him to sell the measles vaccine he had a patent on when MMR already dominated the measles vaccine market, and he also got to make millions testifying as an "expert witness" in MMR court cases. He's since been refuted, his paper stricken from the literature, and his license to practice medicine revoked, but none of that will stop antivaxxers from believing in his fraudulent study. This is pretty much mustache-twirling super-villain level of evil shithead, yet people believe his dumb rear end. I'm applying this fall to go to PA school, I hope these people aren't terribly prevalent wherever I end up practicing.
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Jun 29, 2014 21:31
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I am given to understand that there is in fact mercury in those vaccines, but that it is like 1% as much Hg as there is in a can of tuna. Paracelsus all up in this bitch.
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Jun 29, 2014 21:37
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Main Paineframe posted:A British doctor faked a research paper in order to spread fear about the MMR vaccine in hopes of getting it discontinued, because it was pretty hard for him to sell the measles vaccine he had a patent on when MMR already dominated the measles vaccine market, and he also got to make millions testifying as an "expert witness" in MMR court cases. He's since been refuted, his paper stricken from the literature, and his license to practice medicine revoked, but none of that will stop antivaxxers from believing in his fraudulent study. Good writeup, but you missed the fact he inflicted medically unnecessary, unethical and invasive tests on children (including Lumbar punctures and Colonoscopies) (Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC381348/ )
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Jun 29, 2014 21:49
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Smudgie Buggler posted:The point I'm making is that you can say "that's hosed up that you want to terminate your pregnancy simply because you don't want a baby that'll grow up to be a homosexual and you are a hateful, nasty human being" (assuming we had some such probably impossible-in-reality test for prenatal sexuality) without also committing yourself to the idea that a woman shouldn't be allowed to terminate her pregnancy for whatever reason. Well an abortion doesn't kill anyone - I assume you agree with that - so your objection is only related to the reason to not want the child. But people have been making those choices for as long as there have been people. We are less inclined to want children with someone we find unattractive or are very short or of a different race or have medical conditions... Sperm banks offer you the same choices with a simple multiple choice form and I believe you have some leeway when you're adopting a child too. The only thing that's new is that we can test a fetus and make the choices after conception - but so what? The fetus is not a human. You may not like it but making those choices is part of the human condition.
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Jun 29, 2014 21:54
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mdemone posted:I am given to understand that there is in fact mercury in those vaccines, but that it is like 1% as much Hg as there is in a can of tuna. Paracelsus all up in this bitch. Not any more (save in batch vaccines like the flu shot); I don't think mercury-based preservatives have been used since like the mid-late 90s. And yes, even then it was very small amounts, in non-reactive compounds, and mercury poisoning doesn't cause autism anyway.
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Jun 29, 2014 22:24
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ToxicSlurpee posted:I feel like this is another one of those cases where the people just flat out don't understand science or chemistry. Yeah, mercury is toxic by itself. So is chlorine. How insane will these people go when somebody informs them that salt has chlorine? Elemental mercury is relatively nontoxic by the iv route or ingestion (people have survived suicide attempts where they had injected large quantities of mercury). Inhalation of vapour is the big danger. Mercury salts or methyl mercury are much more dangerous. Thimerosal metabolises to ethyl mercury, which is still fairly toxic, but much less toxic than methyl mercury and is excreted faster. And of course the dose is tiny anyway. Edit: doh Adenoid Dan fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Jun 29, 2014 |
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Jun 29, 2014 22:35
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There's also the fact that vaccines can actually kill you. That doesn't mean you shouldn't get them though. All kinds of stuff can kill you. The most common prescription drug in the country is probably Lexapro, and that stuff can definitely kill you. Basically people are panicky and don't weigh risk well.
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Jun 30, 2014 00:02
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Icon Of Sin posted:This is pretty much mustache-twirling super-villain level of evil shithead, yet people believe his dumb rear end. I'm applying this fall to go to PA school, I hope these people aren't terribly prevalent wherever I end up practicing. Oh, but don't you get it? Big corporations conspired against him so they can sell vaccines! Please ignore that this guy faked a research paper so he could sell vaccines!
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Jun 30, 2014 00:07
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Ogmius815 posted:Basically people are panicky and don't weigh risk well. That's basically the center of it. Perception > reality and unfortunately for vaccines the horrifying diseases they prevent aren't killing anybody anymore. You're more likely to die of vaccination than you are of smallpox today so it's obvious that vaccines are deadly, terrible things that must be banned.
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Jun 30, 2014 00:08
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Vaccines - killing more people than smallpox since 1978.
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Jun 30, 2014 00:16
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ToxicSlurpee posted:That's basically the center of it. Perception > reality and unfortunately for vaccines the horrifying diseases they prevent aren't killing anybody anymore. You're more likely to die of vaccination than you are of smallpox today so it's obvious that vaccines are deadly, terrible things that must be banned. I feel like it bears repeating that you have no chance of getting smallpox today because smallpox has been eradicated. There hasn't been a case of smallpox in decades. A lot of people actually seem not to know that. Vaccines are basically magic; if we can get them to everyone the diseases they immunize against can sometimes be wiped out completely.
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Jun 30, 2014 00:17
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Ogmius815 posted:I feel like it bears repeating that you have no chance of getting smallpox today because smallpox has been eradicated. There hasn't been a case of smallpox in decades. A lot of people actually seem not to know that. Vaccines are basically magic; if we can get them to everyone the diseases they immunize against can sometimes be wiped out completely. It really is an amazing advancment of medical science to fundamentally eliminate an infection. Smallpox simply doesn't exist in the wild anymore. And that was a disease that ended cultures. There really isn't even a comprable analogy since it is so huge. People simply do not care. Anti-intelluctalisim is partly to blame. Science grows ever more complicated and funding in science is constant slashed. So unless you are in the field or make it a point to learn, people really don't know how disease or a vaccine works. As a result, we are seeing a resurgance of snake oil salesman. While it is not quite as blatant as selling a jug that irradiates water and kills you, you have people like Dr. Oz pushing supplements that functionally do nothing and waste your money at best to causing you major health problems at worst. Without adequate scientific literacy, it is easy to believe diseases are cured with a cream or some special supplement 'they don't want you to know about'. Why risk a vaccine when vitamins or this special flower in a pill can cure a disease with no side effects? Or you can just avoid disease if you pray hard enough? They are all magical thinking with different flavors. Education works, but you also need to stress the dangers. All too often fact is presented as opinion. This is not a shade of gray debate, there is right and wrong. Not vaccinating yourself or your child is wrong and is a public health hazard. Period loving end. Dapper Dan fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Jun 30, 2014 |
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Jun 30, 2014 01:04
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Ogmius815 posted:I feel like it bears repeating that you have no chance of getting smallpox today because smallpox has been eradicated. There hasn't been a case of smallpox in decades. A lot of people actually seem not to know that. Vaccines are basically magic; if we can get them to everyone the diseases they immunize against can sometimes be wiped out completely. Which is basically my point. The last confirmed case of somebody getting smallpox in the wild was 1977. That's ancient history to a lot of people. Meanwhile polio is slowly but surely being eradicated in exactly the same way. Polio just flat out no longer exists in certain parts of the world but you can't tell people that because "well nobody I know is getting these diseases but MY CHILD MIGHT BECOME AUTISTIC!!!!!" A lot of it is very individualistic nonsense too. If you tell some people "we are doing this thing so nobody will die of this horrifying disease, but there is a tiny chance your child will die because of this thing we are doing" the only thing they hear is "THIS WILL loving KILL YOUR CHILD DO NOT LET THEM DO IT!" Maybe I'm crazy but I'd certainly take a tiny chance of my child dying of a vaccine over a much larger chance that they'll die of some terrifying disease. Hell I'd also say "hell yeah keep vaccinating everything" despite the tiny chance of death if that means more diseases will go the way of smallpox.
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Jun 30, 2014 01:16
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Which is basically my point. The last confirmed case of somebody getting smallpox in the wild was 1977. That's ancient history to a lot of people. Meanwhile polio is slowly but surely being eradicated in exactly the same way. Polio just flat out no longer exists in certain parts of the world but you can't tell people that because "well nobody I know is getting these diseases but MY CHILD MIGHT BECOME AUTISTIC!!!!!" As an aside, why do people in the military get the smallpox vaccine if it was eradicated in the late 70s? I've got the little dime-sized scar from the vaccine (deployed to Afghanistan in late 2011) and wonder why they do it if the disease isn't in circulation in any population on this planet. Did we/the Russians/anyone else have a stock of it somewhere they couldn't account for at some point? 
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Jun 30, 2014 02:37
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Icon Of Sin posted:As an aside, why do people in the military get the smallpox vaccine if it was eradicated in the late 70s? I've got the little dime-sized scar from the vaccine (deployed to Afghanistan in late 2011) and wonder why they do it if the disease isn't in circulation in any population on this planet. Did we/the Russians/anyone else have a stock of it somewhere they couldn't account for at some point? Because poo poo happens and 'confirmed case' doesn't mean literally only. The disease is FUNCTIONALLY wiped out, but if you're in Afghanistan and some random dude who's never been to a doctor in his life and lives a bit aways from town gets you sick that's not great.
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Jun 30, 2014 02:42
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Icon Of Sin posted:As an aside, why do people in the military get the smallpox vaccine if it was eradicated in the late 70s? I've got the little dime-sized scar from the vaccine (deployed to Afghanistan in late 2011) and wonder why they do it if the disease isn't in circulation in any population on this planet. Did we/the Russians/anyone else have a stock of it somewhere they couldn't account for at some point? There are stocks of it all over the world in research labs and government institutions. It is for the (very very remote) chance of it ever being weaponized and used as a biological weapon.
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Jun 30, 2014 02:44
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Cool, thanks. Still sounds along the lines of the unique kind of stupid that the military is capable of, but at least there's a remote chance of it being functional/life-saving.
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Jun 30, 2014 02:48
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Even if you were 99.9999....% sure Smallpox was completely eradicated you'd still want vaccinations for it. It's really, really not something we want to deal with again if it turns out we were wrong.
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Jun 30, 2014 02:54
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Dapper Dan posted:There are stocks of it all over the world in research labs and government institutions. It is for the (very very remote) chance of it ever being weaponized and used as a biological weapon. If it were weaponized and used, it wouldn't matter. We would all be dead. What exactly does that have to do with vaccines?
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Jun 30, 2014 03:00
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Pohl posted:If it were weaponized and used, it wouldn't matter. We would all be dead. No we would not, because for one thing a significant amount of the population got smallpox vaccinations while they were still routine, and a whole bunch of other people have rotated through military or other positions where they had to get smallpox vaccinations in recent years.
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Jun 30, 2014 03:11
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Pohl posted:If it were weaponized and used, it wouldn't matter. We would all be dead. Small pox isn't a world ending plague, if that were the case we would have been wiped out by it a long time ago. The fear is that it'd be used as a terror weapon. It'd make sense that military and government personnel could still operate in case of a biological attack without being hampered, wouldn't it? I didn't think I'd have to actually have to look it up, but here, right from the DoD: Why get vaccinated? Authorities are concerned that terrorists or governments hostile to the United States may have some of the variola virus that causes smallpox disease. If so, they could use it as a biological weapon in bombs or sprays or by other methods. People exposed to variola virus, or those at risk of being exposed, can be protected by vaccinia (smallpox) vaccine. http://www.vaccines.mil/documents/Smallpox_QA.pdf
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Jun 30, 2014 03:29
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Nintendo Kid posted:No we would not, because for one thing a significant amount of the population got smallpox vaccinations while they were still routine, and a whole bunch of other people have rotated through military or other positions where they had to get smallpox vaccinations in recent years. I'm pretty sure weaponizing would include mutating it so that current vaccines were no longer effective.
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Jun 30, 2014 03:35
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Who What Now posted:I'm pretty sure weaponizing would include mutating it so that current vaccines were no longer effective. I should point out that weaponizing a biological agent such as a virus or bacteria doesn't mean genetic alteration to increase its virulence or mortality. This alone is an incredibly complicated task requiring a lot of knowledge that is usually out of the hands of people who want to carry out a biological attack. What it means is producing an aerosol to disperse the biological agent over an area to sufficiently infect a population. Even this is not easy. You have to find the right agents to use and make sure that: Your agent survives inside of the chemical aerosol, the chemicals can be used to disperse it over a wide area and virulence and mortality remain unaffected. If you alter your agent genetically, you unleash a whole other set of variables. You might not even be able to aerosolize it or it might be too fragile outside of specific circumstances. Unrelated Note: The United States clandestinely tested the spread of Bio warfare agents in NYC by dropping light bulbs filled with bacteria over train tracks and the US Navy spraying weaponized (allegedly harmless) bacteria over San Francisco. This was done by the CIA in coordination with the DoD. A fun read: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/weapon-secret-testing/ Dapper Dan fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Jun 30, 2014 |
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Jun 30, 2014 03:49
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Who What Now posted:I'm pretty sure weaponizing would include mutating it so that current vaccines were no longer effective. That's literally not what it means at all. It's not even in the ballpark of what weaponizing is. And futzing around in the genes to try to make it not immune system recognized would require destroying much of what allows it to be so deadly in the first place.
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Jun 30, 2014 03:55
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Biological warfare can be as simple as "we are sieging a city, find every dead plague victim you can and chuck their bodies over the walls." One of the horrifying possibilities is that one of the samples of smallpox gets lost/stolen, somebody deliberately breeds a poo poo load of it, and unleashes it. It's also nice to know that there are people that would be immune to it and can wade in and clean up the mess if that happens. The other snag is that people might still, in some remote places, carry the disease but still be immune to it. If one of those people manages to infect a few other people it can spread. We're pretty sure smallpox is totally gone in the wild but, well, Earth is pretty loving big and we can't be absolutely certain.
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Jun 30, 2014 04:08
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Seems like we've succeeded in eradicating another disease alongside smallpox, though this one is in cows (called Rinderpest): http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/health/28rinderpest.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 Same principle though, vaccinate every-goddamn-body and keep doing it until it just can't spread anymore and dies off. At least smallpox wasn't (seemingly) a fluke success 
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Jun 30, 2014 04:20
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Icon Of Sin posted:Cool, thanks. Still sounds along the lines of the unique kind of stupid that the military is capable of, but at least there's a remote chance of it being functional/life-saving. I don't understand how this is stupid. The vaccine is cheap and easy to distribute, we only stopped doing it because civilians in the US are almost certainly never going to encounter it, but giving it personnel going abroad is certainly within the budget. I was only in the Peace Corps and they gave me a laundry list of vaccines that most people will never need to get, because seriously why risk it?
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Jun 30, 2014 18:36
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RagnarokAngel posted:I don't understand how this is stupid. The vaccine is cheap and easy to distribute, we only stopped doing it because civilians in the US are almost certainly never going to encounter it, but giving it personnel going abroad is certainly within the budget. I was only in the Peace Corps and they gave me a laundry list of vaccines that most people will never need to get, because seriously why risk it? That and the fact that it's widely known to be vaccinated against in the military serves as a deterrent to try and weaponize it in the first place.
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