I'm not wholly rational. But, I do put a distinction between my friend's wife that refused to vaccinate their kid due to fears of vaccines, and Jenny McCarthy who worked hard to spread her irrational belief. Of course Jenny didn't kill those kids. But she did urge people to do something that leads to more kids getting sick and dying. Right or wrong, justified or not, that is a fact. If you don't vaccinate kids, they die at a higher rate. And Jenny urged people not to vaccinate. It's disturbing stuff. But, perhaps more than Jenny, I blame the news outlets that give her equal time and an appearance of validity in the discussion. And, most of all, I blame Andrew Wakefield, who made up numbers and submitted it to Lancet as actual data indicating a link between vaccination and autism when there isn't one.

I wholeheartedly agree that the #1 issue here is faith in the FDA. Unfortunately this country is in a love affair with profit-driven everything, including determination of federal safety regulations.

I am in biomedical research, and friends and family have asked me about vaccines. I never mock them. Basically, I tell them that I am not completely trustful of the FDA, or some western medical practices, particularly the over-prescription of pharmaceuticals. However, there are some vaccines that have a long track record of safety, and are critical to prevent some deadly and debilitating diseases. I tell them that I think it would be dangerous to skip those vaccines.

I am not very familiar with the schedule, but I have been told that it has gotten more aggressive. I'm going to consider spacing it out as much as possible with our kid. It seems common sense that stacking immune stimulants could be worse than spreading them out. But, I might be wrong on that, and I'm going to look into it. Let me know if you or your wife knows anything about this.

I know that taking the time to understand people's fears, and educating them is a more effective way to deal with the issue than mocking and debating them. However, although people have certain rights even when based in irrational belief, those rights diminish when it hurts other people. My willingness to be understanding of irrational belief is going to drop pretty quick when someone is risking the health of my child.

But absolutely, we need to steer the entire conversation onto greater scrutiny of the FDA, and getting the fuck tons of money that influence the FDA out. In fact, I think our #1 problem in this country is corporate influence of policy. So many of our problems spin out of that.