So, fortunately, according to Huffington Post, Chili’s has canceled it’s fundraiser for an anti-vaccination autism group. As much as I love the idea of raising money for autism, the thought of perpetuating, even a little bit, the idea that people shouldn’t take vaccinations makes the bile rise in my throat.
To be honest, I thought anti-vaccination shiznit was only part of the deepest recesses of the conspiracy gloom, until certain family members have brought to light that it may be bigger than it should be.
The ‘dangers’ of vaccinations (yes, I’m clever) was first brought to light by a certain family member, who I thought was joking at the time. This person sent me to a website called Dherbs, which sells ‘organic’ or ‘natural’ products for problems that are ailing you. Upon reading the page against vaccinations, I (condescendingly, I must admit) told this person it wasn’t true. When I brought up this topic to close relative of the relative who showed me (relative 2 and 1, respectively), relative 2 told me they believed it, too.
We eventually had a longer talk about it, and relative 1 said vaccinations caused them cancer, relative 2 said they might have caused their stroke, they said it causes autism
This can’t be happening! I thought feverishly. What stupidity was this? Sure Dherbs is science-y and has a lot of black people, and they are ‘spiritual’, but I can be right a lot of the time, but then try to swindle you something by telling you some gross terrible dangerous lies; I don’t trust anyone’s science unless they are a scientist, not even if they are black; and, although trying to maintain a fairy-and-crystal image, Dherbs is really all about Christianity (What is with this horoscope and Jesus cohabitation? You can’t accept both! And my opinion is you shouldn’t bother with either)
Recent contact with more of this anti-vaccination nonsense has gotten to me. I don’t have the best immune system and I have a soft spot in my heart for children, so people like me and children (and old people and people who truly aren’t able to get vaccinated) are at the most risk if this idiocy gets any bigger. I went through a rough fall and winter of getting sick over and over again. I don’t know how big the anti-vax community is here, nor was I thinking of an overall cause. I thought that me being in quick-weather-changes Tennessee caused me to get sick so often, when I had lived the last four years of fall-winter in more temperate Baltimore. I can only imagine it being worse if many weren’t taking vaccinations (which I did).
You probably already know all the crap against vaccinations, but in case you thought it might be a good idea here’s some science here.
But I want to touch on that last topic:
As much as I don’t want anyone to deal with the debilitating effects of autism, do the rare effects of vaccinations, even the most outrageous (like cancer), do they truly compare to getting polio, measles, and smallpox back on its grand scale?
Would you rather your child live with the effects of polio or the effects of autism? The effects of measles to asthma? Smallpox to mental retardation? These are some of the effects of vaccinations Dherb reports.
I don’t find the idea of living in an age where a third of our children, sickly and elders will be wiped out by preventable diseases, so that someone can avoid the near-zero chance of getting cancer from a vaccination. Since there is no science behind the causal effects, or even enough anecdotal evidence of such things happening, I think people should just get freakin’ vaccinated.
The World Ends With Me 