I recently got into a bit of a disagreement with a friend and two acquaintances of hers who happened to be morons. She chose to share the following article about measles-related deaths... no problem, other than most of it seeming to be locked behind a pay wall. “Tragedy” of 35 deaths from measles in Europe last year is unacceptable, says WHO But she also had a strong statement to add. http://icons.webpatashala.com/Icons/Face-Avatars-Icons/Png/Female-Face-FI-2-icon-2013103.PNG Source "Please cut the crap and the pseudo science. Vaccinate your kids." It seems that the article had a message to send - that holding off from vaccinations results in deaths to otherwise preventable diseases. And you know what? Its not wrong. Vaccinations are supposed to prevent those diseases. However - as some of us are aware - there is another side to this story. And, judging from the responses that this friend's article received - I felt the need to interject. ![Me-Thinking-128.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmRrSxhUQmY9FG2YxBApHmjH3rNH8rEjUkZZcxR92wzAdG/Me-Thinking-128.png) James: "Perhaps there would be less crap and suspicion surrounding the resistance to vaccinations if people were treated more humanely in being made aware of what goes into them. After all - its not like vaccination injuries and fatalities are a product of myth.They are certainly less well documented but they do exist." It seemed like a reasonable response.... and yet... https://stopthesethings.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/angry-mob.jpg Source OK that is a bit of an exaggeration - however morons do exist in this World. One of them felt that the following was an appropriate immediate response. https://image.flaticon.com/icons/png/128/213/213351.png A Moron: "Please stop sharing pseudo science. There is only one paper about issues with vaccines which has been discredited by several other papers and even by the authors who wrote it themselves. If you want to share this crap you're responsible for these deaths too." Hmmm? Apparently I'd been sharing "pseudo-science". ![Me-Smug-128.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmZRBdxbU29cadGXfoTtTXDN6LF4ByXoWke9C3R1uLDMo4/Me-Smug-128.png) James: Really now... I have very deliberately 'NOT' been flexing my ability to inundate with a multitude of sources of varying credibility (including claims of sustained vaccine injuries). So no, I'm not "sharing pseudo science". What you 'TRULY' are saying is that you don't appreciate persons who have a differing perspective from you making it known that not everybody takes 'your' standpoint as spoken gospel. So much so that you use the very typical {rubbish} non-argument that my doing so entails responsibility for "these deaths". Balderdash! Just as it would equally be balderdash for me to small-mindedly claim that anybody sharing information about how a failure to vaccinate resulted in 35 deaths is actually contributing to whatever vaccine-related injuries and deaths have been occurring. Its just not on, do you not agree?" https://image.flaticon.com/icons/png/128/213/213351.png Same Moron: "No can't agree with you. Comments like yours have allowed for the reappearance of once eradicated diseases and also easily prevented deaths. Also you're saying that the World Health Organization is passing misinformation." ![Me-Thinking-128.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmRrSxhUQmY9FG2YxBApHmjH3rNH8rEjUkZZcxR92wzAdG/Me-Thinking-128.png) James: " I do not ask you to agree with me... just as I don't ask anybody to. However I would certainly like you to explain how 'Comments like {mine} have allowed for the reappearance of once eradicated diseases and also easily prevented deaths' You appear to know something that I do not. Please do enlighten us..." Quite conveniently the moron was not inclined to do so. ![Me-Smug-128.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmZRBdxbU29cadGXfoTtTXDN6LF4ByXoWke9C3R1uLDMo4/Me-Smug-128.png) James: "Would it really shock you to learn that a massive multinational organization in the pockets of big pharmaceutical companies might filter the information that they deliver about 'this and that' to the tastes and interests of their big-time benefactors? Remember... the aim of the money behind medicine is to make money... It is more profitable to treat a disease than to cure a disease. It is more profitable to cause a disease than both combined." https://image.flaticon.com/icons/png/128/213/213351.png Same Moron: "Ever since people have started questioning vaccines diseases have started reappearing. Also your statement about pharmaceutical companies is misleading. Of course they make money however it's negligible to costs the diseases prevented would cause. So you're saying pharmaceutical companies make you ill. Just how do they do it?" ![Me-Confused-128.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmRbiy6rMJ1Ar1m4hJZhjXLtog9vb1ztNJmjHk3eETvXfm/Me-Confused-128.png) James: "Personally? I think that the most efficient and undetectable way to install and spread disease is to disperse it over populations. That enters 'chemtrails' territory. Of course - its not an impossibility for certain "back doors" being installed into humans through the influenza vaccine... but thats probably a little too brazen for them. They are more likely to infect a batch of mosquitoes and release them (undetected). ![Me-Thinking-128.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmRrSxhUQmY9FG2YxBApHmjH3rNH8rEjUkZZcxR92wzAdG/Me-Thinking-128.png) All speculation, of course. You are entitled to your views and I do not begrudge you for them. However, again, there is always another side to any given story, no matter how sure you think that you are of your own." https://image.flaticon.com/icons/png/128/213/213351.png Same Moron: "Good god so your a conspiracy theorist. Believe whatever you want as I can't possibly change you're mind." ![Me-Confused-128.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmRbiy6rMJ1Ar1m4hJZhjXLtog9vb1ztNJmjHk3eETvXfm/Me-Confused-128.png) James: " I do believe that your views are even more immovable and static than my own. :c) Good god indeed..." https://d1u5p3l4wpay3k.cloudfront.net/dota2_gamepedia/a/ae/Last_Word_icon.png?version=f7fa83d61229bf124b9d9f2cac7235cb Another Moron: "What qualifies you to be able to talk about vaccines like this? Do you have a background in biology, chemistry or pharmacy? If not you have no right to pass on misinformation on a topic you might enjoy reading about but clearly do not understand." ![Me-Smug-128.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmZRBdxbU29cadGXfoTtTXDN6LF4ByXoWke9C3R1uLDMo4/Me-Smug-128.png) James: "Let us deconstruct your two fallacies: Firstly that one needs to be "qualified" to have a view. Balderdash. The medical field posits itself as an unassailable empirical establishment of "science" - while very barefacedly being unworthy of its self-assigned pedestal of unapproachability. I require certification to practice medicine, not to have a view about it. If you hold a differing view then perhaps you ought to gain the assistance of a "competent" lawyer. Secondly - your blatant disregard of consistency. Did it not occur to you, before you placed finger-to-key, that what you claim is necessary for one to "have {a} right" to differ from a medical view also equally applies for one to have such right to 'support' such same medical view? Consistency... Please... Now... if you are done attempting to use low-level arguments of dismissal, might I propose a more meaningful argument which actually delves into the fors and againsts of the matter? You know... that which actually counts... the meat upon the bones... 'if' you feel competent to take on the challenge. ![Me-Confused-128.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmRbiy6rMJ1Ar1m4hJZhjXLtog9vb1ztNJmjHk3eETvXfm/Me-Confused-128.png) Of course... I would rather not turn this into a battle ground of arguments. Might I suggest that you set up a thread upon your own profile so that you may indulge in your desire to engage in argumentation without further dragging this one down the path of discord?"

Now the truth was that I lacked much of the hard data that I'd need to refer to so as to hold my own in an anti-vaxxer corner... but I was frankly triggered by the escallations and nonsensical dismissals of the above-mentioned morons. There are far more driven individuals with an interest in making such a case (and I do admit that I'd have likely fallen back upon materials sourced from Steemit to construct a case (I'm stubborn like that). However - what both the above morons failed to see was that my views were actually relatively balanced. I acknowledge the potential for good in vaccines. I just hold doubts about the motives of those entrusted with the task of researching, producing and profiting upon such vaccines. One doesn't need to have hard data to know that something isn't quite right - and the truth is that it is worrying that it is potentially a lot more profitable for privately owned interests to taint us with diseases than to cure us of such. Its just business... https://www.naturalnews.com/cartoons/RaceForTheCure_600.jpg Source

On the Right to Express a Viewpoint

On a slightly different note, I would especially like to highlight that it is disturbingly common for some individual to pipe up and suggest that one does not have the right to speak about a subject due to a lack in qualifications. Yes, it would be 'ideal' to be officially qualified - but to suggest that one needs to be so in order to get anything said or done (short of practice) is an intellectually dishonest notion designed to attempt to "win" an argument not through a demonstration of superiority in position but by mere walkover - by default. There is no honour in such a "victory" and neither is the discourse furthered in any way. https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/a1/f8/c0/a1f8c032c7e2bb73942be57cabc36a97.jpg Source

On Cheap Attempts to Attribute a Responsibility Not Our Own

Note also how earlier on there was an attempt made to suggest that my speaking any way other than favorably of vaccines is for me to take on "responsibility" for those who died of measles. Such was a cheap attempt to rebuke that which I said without properly addressing that which was said. The expectation in anybody using such a tactic is that the recipient is to bow his or her head and lap up the poison of shame prescribed to them. It was important to rubbish the claim - and so I did. https://i2.wp.com/www.campuschristians.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/changing-thoughts-001.jpg?resize=300%2C267 Source

On being a "Conspiracy Theorist"

Similarly, when faced with information that he could not effectively rubbish (funny how common sense is somewhat difficult to rubbish), the entirety of the argument was swept to one side with the equally cheap declaration that I am a 'label used to derogatory effect' (i.e. a conspiracy theorist). Of course, again the intent of he who perused of it was to absolve the self of any intellectual effort in rebuking the arguments themselves. So instead he directed his cheap slight at me as an individual. Labels are extremely effective 'intellectual shortcuts'. They can be used for good and for evil. One of the more unfortunate uses of labels is the fabrication of a particularly nasty set of traits to be associated with the label in question - and then to attribute that label to individuals. https://sospression.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/which-kingdom-are-you-in.jpeg?w=468 Source "Don't listen to Rupert. He is a {label}!" So... eff-ing... what? So Rupert is: - a communist - a witch - a liberal - a "conspiracy theorist" Now imagine that Rupert had just opined that steak goes well with a pepper sauce. So what if he were any of those labels? Labels are merely abused as a means of taking intellectual shortcuts - particularly in saving 'other people' the time to use their god-given senses to come to a natural conclusion over persons and what they say. Labels are hard to counter - which is why the next best option available is to call a label-user out, preferably while in a position to prove him or her mistaken. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9VGZjBQHr0s/Sg_fSEregVI/AAAAAAAADTw/trNrE178gZg/s400/5-11-09witchRGB20090511071121.jpg Source

Well thank you for following through with this discussion-in-passing. Did you feel that I was, in truth, the moron? Perhaps I was! I look forward to hearing your views. If you have any comments that you would like to share then I will join you down in the comments section below. Sincerely, https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https://steemitimages.com/DQmdNbme7r2VydtaS4ynau29qqsWdeDULEpNPz8P2jLf8Qb/PF-Signoff-01.jpg Previous Post: The Future of Democracy