No sarcasm I think you have a slight edge on me.

"Are they? This is what I am questioning. Are vaccinations alone responsible for ending the spreading of a disease?

The evidence suggests that it is not"

When's the last time you caught Smallpox?

The evidence suggests that vaccinations are effective. From your own quote:

"One of the most compelling facts is this..."According to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, childhood diseases decreased 90% between 1850 and 1940, paralleling improved sanitation and hygienic practices, well before mandatory vaccination programs."

Which begs the question: how much have childhood diseases decrease between 1940 and today?

Mumps
http://virology-online.com/viruses/MUMPS.htm
An inactivated vaccine was first used in the 1940s successfully. This has now been replaced by a live attenuated vaccine. The protection rate is over 95% and no adverse reactions are associated with the vaccine. ... In a cohort of 1 million people, the vaccine would prevent over 74,000 cases of mumps and 3 deaths.

Measles
http://virology-online.com/viruses/MEASLES.htm
Live vaccines are now usually used. The seroconversion rate is 95% and the immunity lasts for at least 10 years or more, possibly lifelong. The virulence of the attenuated strain now in use is so low that encephalitis has only been noted in 1 in 1 million recipients.

vs

In the third world, malnutrition aggravates measles infection and there are 900,000 measles related deaths per year.

(Granted this isn't apples to apples, but to claim that viral infections are a minor issue is massively disingenuous)

***

I'm not going to go through every single freaking virus and show how the math works. You'll believe what you want to believe, and continue to count on herd immunity. I hope you get a freaking clue if you ever have kids - or if you do choose not to protect them, that you're not one of the unlucky few who gets to watch their child die needlessly.

Frankly, I'm not surprised that you call conspiracy; what I *am* surprised is that you didn't use this as a cautionary tale about medical ethics and how someone who is ringing an alarm bell might have a conflict of interest - and that it pays to look at the results of multiple studies rather than simply quoting a single data source.

Well that's what Darwyn does, he finds the single data source that disagrees with everyone else, and because it says something different assumes it must be the lone voice fighting against a vast conspiracy, because he thinks that's a much more interesting narrative than, most people are right, and one or two people out there are just wrong.

Many virual diseases like measles and mumps are airborn and/or by casual contact, as are some bacterial diseases like meningococcal meningitis which are also controled by vaccination. Sanitation has had minimal impact in the general population in these type of diseases.

+1 Mafialligator for calling Darwyn out on his hypocrisy re: always liking to question things and not just accept answers blindly. He's accepting a medically unsound opinion blindly, and it's even provably false to boot.

In theory, Darwyn isn't wrong in the desire to question the official line.

However, he goes massively wrong when he allows an unequal burden of proof for each side. If you are going to make fantastic claims, you require fantastic evidence to back said claims up.

However, it seems his burden of proof for his position is incredibly low, while the burden of proof for his opponents is extremely high(If not outright unreachable)

It doesn't take an expert in rhetoric to realize how hollow his methodology is.

If Darwyn wants to argue that moonmen live in the moon, his methodogy is just irritating. However when he and others do it with issues such as this, and convince the less critcal or the gullible than there can be tragic results.

Stating that vaccines are dangerous because a miniscule number of people develop the rarely fatal Guillain Barre Syndrome is ridiculous. Guillain Barre is an incompletely understood disease that has a myriad of causes.

@ Darwyn - As for your 'sources', which one could easily debunk in turn if one had the patience... what reasons do you have to believe that your should believe your sensationalist sources instead of evidence to the contrary?

You make your arguments because of your conclusions....rather than the other way around.

lol...ok look, perhaps my loose arguments haven't been presented to your standards. But, nowadays, I really only have the time to pop in and out of this site. It's unfortunate that I don't have the time to construct a cohesive argument, so instead, I state my peace as well as I can and follow it up with some cursory investigation.

The research that suggests vaccines are not as effective or safe as we think they are is out there...I've stated some of it here.

If I care enough to construct something worthy of your bashing of me, perhaps I will.

“The research that suggests vaccines are not as effective or safe as we think they are is out there...I've stated some of it here.” I’ve checked in detail on a little of your “evidence”. In your reference to the 1870-71 Small Pox pandemic, at first your numbers sound scary but if you do some simple number crunching, and fact checking the truth is anything but what is claimed. First the numbers for the UK, the est. pop in 1870 27.5 mil with a death rate of 45,000. That is only 00.16% of the population. This is well below the est of pop of 2% unvaccinated given. That is even when later reviews showed that there had been poor vaccination and revaccination procedures used. The German est. pop in 1871 41.1 mil with 125,000 dead from small pox, that’s only 0.30%. Again well below the claimed 4% of unvaccinated. This brings up another issue, only the southern states of Germany and the military had any mandatory vaccination, so the claim of 96% is false, and brings into question the rate of vaccination stated for the UK. Other interesting points also found. The pandemic was started by the Franco-Prussian War in France which did not have mandatory vaccination, even the French Army had poor coverage. There was a major disparity in death rates between countries with mandatory vaccination compared to those who did not. Deaths are per million. Those who had mandatory vaccination: 1870-75. England 361, Scotland 314, Bavaria 346, Sweden 333. Those who did not have mandatory vaccination: Prussia 953, Austria 1,360, Belgium 1,293, Holland 958. There is also no evidence that sanitary conditions played any part in these different rates. These are just a few of the points on just this pandemic. You can find the info at this site. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2204618/