The 2nd century, AD was a tumultuous one. The Five Good Emperors ruled the Roman Empire, the Jews were removed from Jerusalem after Bar Kokhba’s revolt, the Han dynasty trembled in China. The seismometer and paper were invented and Ptolemy compiled a catalogue of all stars visible to the naked eye. And there were roughly 190 million people living on the planet, a little more than today’s Bangladesh, but less than Brazil. Life expectancy was about 35 years of age, but at age 1 reached 47 years for the 72% surviving the first year.
1650. Baroque, Spanish and Dutch Golden Ages, Louis XIV, The Dutch East India Company, logarithms, electricity, calculus, microscope, Newton’s Laws, Galileo, the colonization of the Americas, Thirty Years War, The Austro-Hungarian Empire is born and yet we’re still only at 500 million. Male life expectancy is 32, female expectation of remaining years at age 15 is a shopping 33.
We hit 1 billion in 1804, when New Jersey abolished slavery (the last of the Northern states), Louisiana Purchase, Napoleonic Code, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat, Thomas Jefferson becomes president. No country has a life expectancy longer than 40, averaging at 29. Oh, yes, it declined. We discovered the planet and along with it, new diseases.
Won’t bore you further, you know where this is going. With the discovery of vaccinations and penicillin, you’d expect a sudden spike, but that only happened after 1950 – then it was still 45.7 years (60 in Western Europe). Now it’s averaging 73 for all the 8 billion plus people, with industrialized agriculture and mass food production. But we couldn’t have done it without the vaccinations against preventable diseases.
I’m all for slowing population growth, as there are simply too many of us, so the less kids the better. But I would never suggest killing anybody. That is – as some argue – a decision of the individual. That’s why vaccinations are not mandated. Before the introduction of measles vaccine in 1963 and widespread vaccination, major epidemics occurred approximately every two to three years and caused an estimated 2.6 million deaths each year. Measles can affect anyone but is most common in children. You might not die, of course. It also has blindness, encephalitis and pneumonia as complications.
We’ve all heard of the autism argument. Autism is a developmental disability that can cause significant social, communication, and behavioral challenges. A report published in 1998, but subsequently retracted by the journal, suggested that measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism. However, autism is a neurodevelopmental condition that has a strong genetic component with genesis before one year of age, when MMR vaccine is typically administered. Several epidemiological studies have not found an association between MMR vaccination and autism, including a study that found that MMR vaccine was not associated with an increased risk of autism even among high-risk children whose older siblings had autism. Despite strong evidence of its safety, some parents are still hesitant to accept MMR vaccination of their children. Decreasing acceptance of MMR vaccination has led to outbreaks or resurgence of measles.
Insofar as causing your own child’s death, you’re on your own. Tragic and devastating, but if that’s a risk you’re willing to take in spite of where science got you – life expectancy and iPhone inclusive – then may God have mercy on your soul (putting that here, because if you don’t believe in science, chances are you do believe in God). But what you don’t realize is that vaccinated children may also contract a disease, perhaps just be more lucky and survive it more easily. Still, that is gross negligence and I, for one, would not allow my child to go near yours.
I get it: it’s a family values thing. But is it though, when you’re endangering others, too? Also, on the same principle you reject vaccinations based on false claims of potential side effects, please also reject the use of smart phones (radiation), electricity (can kill you), penicillin (also can kill you when taken in excess), cars (oh, definitely can kill you), planes (dah!) and the Internet (extremely prone to giving you lethal ideas, like not vaccinating your children).
On this note, now go and celebrate a Jewish carpenter, who has risen from the dead, the believability of which is on par with MMR vaccines causing autism.
