Hacker News Reader

Comment by artursapek | Hacker News Reader

I have a toddler in NYC and our pediatrician is strongly opposed to vaccines. I've met other intelligent, well-off parents who are in the same camp.

It's not a black and white issue; there's a plethora of cases of children having bad reactions to vaccines. And what I find particularly interesting is that the people arguing against vaccines tend have calm, reasoned arguments while people who argue for them (like you) often resort to ad hominem and passionate anger.

http://vaccinechoicecanada.com/vaccine-ingredients/when-vacc...

https://www.mercola.com/article/vaccines/neurological_damage...

View on HN

You must have never heard an actual epidemiologist speak about the anti-vaccine fad because what you're describing is the opposite of my experience. The anti-vaxxers get way more emotional, often falling to the "think of the children" default while ignoring decades of progress that have all but eliminated once fatal and life debilitating diseases from the developed world.

Vaccines, like any other medicine, have side effects and no doctor dispassionate on the issue will tell you otherwise. They will tell you that the side effects from smallpox, polio, measles, tuberculosis, tetanus, yellow fever, mumps, hepatitis B, meningitis, and many other diseases are so much worse and damaging. Even if you were to take all of the side effects anti-vaxxers claim vaccines cause and combine them for all vaccines, any one of these diseases have caused far more and worse suffering just in the 20th century.

Furthermore, there is good reason to be emotional. Anyone who doesn't vaccinate is a public health risk because they can become carriers that allow the pathogen to mutate and break herd immunity, risking the lives of everyone. With measles this has already happened in the last two decades and the CDC has conclusively traced all but one of them to an unvaccinated child. In each case, people previously vaccinated were infected by contact with someone who was not.

Please, vaccinate your child. The worst possible side effects from all of the vaccines put together pale in comparison to the damage these very preventable diseases can do and have already done to our society.

What you're saying is true...the benefits of vaccination generally outweigh the risks.

But, this shouldn't lead to the complete discrediting of concern over the risk, as is often the case. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that you're doing so here.

Likewise, it shouldn't lead to a blind allegiance to a mandatory vaccine schedule, irrespective of what new vaccine pops up on it. That is, the risk-benefit equation should be evaluated per vaccine, not per the schedule as a whole.

The benefits massively outweigh the risks for common childhood vaccines.

Yes, risks should be honestly assessed, both for individual vaccines and the whole schedule. Yes, there exist vaccines which have questionable benefit, and there exist vaccines with higher risks that only make sense in certain situations.

None of this detracts from the abject denial of reality that is embodied in someone who has decided not to vaccinate their kids at all...

>None of this detracts from the abject denial of reality that is embodied in someone who has decided not to vaccinate their kids at all

I didn't suggest that it should comprise an argument for an automatic rejection of all vaccines. Quite the opposite, actually.

But, if you acknowledge that some vaccines have questionable benefit and higher risks that don't make sense for all, then it begs the question: who decides?

Seems to me parents should have discretion there. Now, it comes down to whether you agree with their tolerance for risk.

To be clear, I think vaccines are mostly wonderful. I just don't think it's my place to go around thumping people on the head about the choices they make for their own children.

Some babies aren't old enough to have been vaccinated. Some people are immunocompromised, including children. Some of these people are unable to be vaccinated. In order to avoid infection, these people depend on having enough other people be vaccinated.

If it's a question of personal discretion, shouldn't the parent of one those children have the discretion to force others to be vaccinated, in order that their own child won't die?

You asked "who decides?".

Jacobson v. Massachusetts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts ) decided "that it is within the police power of a state to provide for compulsory vaccination. That case and others had also settled that a state may, consistently with the federal Constitution, delegate to a municipality authority to determine under what conditions health regulations shall become operative. Laurel Hill Cemetery v. San Francisco, 216 U. S. 358. And still others had settled that the municipality may vest in its officials broad discretion in matters affecting the application and enforcement of a health law. Lieberman v. Van de Carr, 199 U. S. 552."

That quote comes from Zucht v. King, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/260/174/case.htm... , which settled that a city could require vaccinations in order for a child to attend school.

You may not like it, but Prince v. Massachusetts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_v._Massachusetts ) established that "the government has broad authority to regulate the actions and treatment of children. Parental authority is not absolute and can be permissibly restricted if doing so is in the interests of a child's welfare."

So yes, the parents have some discretion. It isn't absolute.

We have a government in part so we can collectively make hard decisions like this one.

>Some of these people are unable to be vaccinated

I don't know how the count of these "unvaccinatable" people compares to those who suffer adverse reactions from vaccines, but it grows even stranger to demand that everyone assume risk for even smaller segments of the population; especially if the primary argument is a common welfare numbers game.

BTW, FWIW, some pretty heinous activities have been conducted in the name of the common welfare, including human experimentation. I'm obviously not saying this is happening here; only that "because common welfare" is not an ipso facto rationale. We've all benefitted from experiments, etc. at the expense of others. But, we later acknowledged that some of these things were completely unethical because, at some point, the rights of the individual trump even the common welfare.

Anyway, clearly the government has decided. My question was who should decide?

More specifically, I was speaking to the parent comment's acknowledgement that some discrimination among vaccines is prudent. At the same time, the commenter expressed anger over parents opting out of vaccines. Well, if discrimination is warranted but the commenter is angry about someone else's manner of discrimination, then that boils down to the commenter believing he/she should be the one who decides.

Again, I believe vaccines are generally beneficial, however, I also believe it's wrong to berate parents who don't blindly follow the vaccine schedule. The relatively low percentages of serious adverse reactions are little comfort when you're the one who is impacted. I'm just not prepared to demand that someone else do anything to their bodies for my sake, at any risk to him/her.

Parents have also done pretty heinous activities in the name of parental discretion. Simply pointing out that heinous activities have occurred is therefore meaningless.

Government policies also agree "that some discrimination among vaccines is prudent". That why some are mandatory and some are voluntary. That's why the polio vaccine switched from using attenuated live viruses to dead ones, even though the latter isn't as effective.

There is no requirement that everyone follow a vaccination schedule. As I pointed out, there are good medical reasons for why someone might not be vaccinated.

The question is, should non-medical reasons be enough to justify a variance? Should a general sense of malaise be enough? Or, if someone expresses a concern that their child might get ill as a result of a vaccine, and that concern - based on knowing the counts rather than expressed by people who don't - has already been factored into the decision to require vaccination, then should the opinion of one non-expert parent overweigh the opinions of thousands of experts made as the result of decades of study, with open publications and public participation, and repeated in scores of countries?

Any absolute statement like yours, which says the parent's discretion comes first, means there is no way to keep a parent from heinous activities, nor for that matter can children be required to go to school.

We see this tension already for Jehovah's Witnesses, where doctrine prohibits the use of blood transfusions. If a 2 year old needs surgery which requires a blood transfusion, should the JW parent have a right to let the child die in order to follow the faith? The US says (as do other countries) the doctor has the right to overrule the parent's wishes in that case.

Do you want otherwise?

>Parents have also done pretty heinous activities in the name of parental discretion

Actually, it's that counter-argument that's meaningless. The (rather obvious and enormous) difference is that no one is demanding that everyone else do something according to those parents' discretion. It's actually the point here.

>Government policies also agree "that some discrimination among vaccines is prudent".

It's odd that people are so trusting of "the government" in this one area. The mandatory vaccine schedule most certainly features vaccines for illnesses that are generally self-limiting, and for which the benefits are arguable, even for "experts" (gasp!).

>There is no requirement that everyone follow a vaccination schedule.

Huh? Your previous comment stated that I might not like it, but the government decides; then it painstakingly laid out supporting case law. Don't know what you're trying to say.

>The question is...

That whole paragraph progresses into a slippery-slope of increasingly discretionary rationale that highlights why people should have ultimate control over their own bodies. Yes, we could keep listing rationales until, eventually, even you might find a reason for pause.

And, your trust in the purity of the process is interesting.

>and repeated in scores of countries?

The schedule is not uniform and countries disagree over specific vaccines. Kind of blows your whole theory. Now, which "experts" do you trust to decide what you must pump into your kids?

>*We see this tension already for Jehovah's Witnesses...Do you want otherwise?

False equivalence.

All you've done so far is spread FUD, and repeat issues were first visited 100+ years ago, and which have constantly been revisited over that century. Looking now, there was a set of articles about public health and constitutional issues for the centenary, like https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449224/ and the topics on the sidebar. You'll note that it goes into the changing understanding, in part to avoid new atrocities.

You haven't added anything new. Even your complaints about 'trusting of "the government"' are older than my parents. By "added nothing new", I mean that the existing policies have long since tried to respect people with viewpoints similar to yours.

You haven't proposed anything better than what we have now. All you seem to want to do is throw away a framework which has seemed to mostly work for generations.

You also malign me and the system with your statement "trust in the purity of the process". No system is pure, including whatever alternative you might propose. But yes, the vaccine system we have is a lot more transparent and externally verifiable than most of what goes on in government. What angels do you think will run things for us?

Of course different countries have different vaccine policies. The world isn't in lock-step, different countries have different levels of wealth and medical care, and many diseases are only regional. Most people in the US don't need the typhoid vaccine or yellow fever viral vaccine, even if they are required in places where those diseases are common.

The case law says that children with contraindications and adults are not required to follow a vaccination schedule. That's what I mean when I say that children with a medical reason do not need to follow the schedule.

FUD? Anything but blind allegiance to the schedule is raging FUD, huh? The real problem here is the zero-tolerance approach that people like you take to the meekest expression of any concern, even while you acknowledge that the system is imperfect. What is that, exactly?

"It's the best we got, so sit still while I ram it down your throat" seems to be your argument.

I'm not "anti-vaccine", but you seem to feel a need to lump me into that group in order to trot out the same tired lambasting of anyone who even raises his hand with a question. Calm down.

>different countries have different levels of wealth and medical care, and many diseases are only regional

I'm not talking about developing countries and I'm not talking about yellow fever. Look up the history of the varicella vaccine in Britain, for example. So, the set of vaccines you'd demand of others would be different based on the opinions of experts in your locale. And, you see nothing wrong with continuing to make those demands? No room for questions? OK.

I won't even refute the statement about maligning you, etc. I don't have the energy to continue pointing out the contradictions.

> "the government" .... "experts"

Have you been living under an anti-intellectual rock for over two centuries? Modern representative republics and bureaucracies were invented for this exact reason. We elect people we trust to implement bureaucracies in the best interest of the people so that we can receive guidance from real experts that we can trust. This democratic system of electing representatives and appointing experts to regulatory agencies has eliminated polio and smallpox, improved automobile safety a hundred fold, improved air and water quality across the country by a thousand fold, made safe air travel possible, all but eliminated industrial scale food poisoning, led the country to several moon landings, and countless other achievements. This system has also decided that vaccination is critically important to public health based on decades, if not centuries, of hard evidence and that no one has absolute freedom over themselves or their children because there exist life altering consequences for everyone in the case of vaccines.

If you don't like that social contract, you are free to elect different representatives or move to the autonomous regions of Somalia (you'll really want to get vaccinated though).

I am vaccinated.

Thanks for the Great Rant of Obvious Facts, none of which were being disputed.

Not sure why it's all or nothing.

> Not sure why it's all or nothing.

Because biology. Because anyone who isn't vaccinated is a potential carrier for the disease, which allows it to mutate and defeat the immune system protections created by the vaccine in everyone else. Because those who refuses to vaccinate, especially the mandatory schedules, are selfishly avoiding a tiny risk and instead putting everyone else at much greater risk.

They're making a choice that endangers their own kids and other people.

They should be thumped, when airing their views in public, so their ignorance doesn't spread.

It is your place when your life or the life of your children or family is dependent on "the choices [other people] make for their own children,"

No, it's actually not. You are not required to assume any risk for my sake; nor I for yours.

> Please, vaccinate your child. The worst possible side effects from all of the vaccines put together pale in comparison to the damage these very preventable diseases can do and have already done to our society.

Between my wife and I, I have been the one more open minded to doing it or not. We may end up vaccinating him. But for now we're exercising a lot of caution because it's not something that can be undone, and there are reasons to be skeptical about the quality of vaccines and the honesty of the industry that pushes them.

Edit: are people getting pleasure out of downvoting me? Am I not contributing to the discussion, whether or not you disagree with me?

> Edit: are people getting pleasure out of downvoting me? Am I not contributing to the discussion, whether or not you disagree with me?

Imagine, for the sake of understanding the downvotes you're getting, that your post could be read as "well, science might mostly be right, but we're exercising a lot of caution before relying on the germ theory of disease, because washing our hands could be dangerous; one person we talked to said that, so it might be true, and there are reasons to be skeptical about the quality of soap and the honest of the industry that pushes it". And, not only that, but imagine that comment was posted in the middle of a thread containing many links explaining the problem, and links debunking material that started the anti-soap conspiracy theories.

That post would get downvoted into oblivion, just like yours.

There's a giant pile of anti-science conspiracy theories and "think of the children!" paranoia, started around a single falsified paper, and your comment plays into that. There are already numerous comments in this thread explaining that, including links to articles about the falsified paper.

You're getting downvoted because, in the midst of all that, your posts suggest that your immediate reaction wasn't "we might have some deadly misinformation here that will hurt ourselves and others, we should learn more about this issue, figure out how badly we've been misled, and solve the problem"; instead, your reaction seems to be "eh, changing our minds would be hard, we're 'exercising a lot of caution' instead [and probably won't end up doing anything, because that's how hesitation like that works]".

Changing your mind, really changing your mind, is hard. Finding out that an expert you should have been able to trust was dead wrong is hard. Accepting, as an otherwise educated and intelligent person, that you were wrong about a question of fact is hard. The mind has non-trivial defense mechanisms that make it easy to avoid doing any of those things; people use those defense mechanisms every day, in lieu of feeling uncomfortable or incorporating new information.

As others have pointed out, the question isn't "health of my child with or without vaccines", it's "health of all children with or without vaccines". If your child doesn't get vaccinated, that puts other children at risk.

Further, you're implicitly relying on other children to be vaccinated to protect your child from debilitating diseases; were their parents to reach the same conclusion as you, your community would likely suffer a measles outbreak (as some such communities already have).

To choose not to vaccinate your child but to rely on the protection of others – while simultaneously putting others at greater risk – is a quite privileged and selfish decision.

> There are reasons to be skeptical about the quality of vaccines and the honesty of the industry that pushes them.

When you make a vague statement like this with no evidence in the face of decades of successful vaccinations that has led to huge elimination of permanent life crippling diseases such as polio, your post doesn't seem that substantive.

Add to that the "think of my child" mentality being demonstrated at the expense of your own life and every other vaccinated human's life, it signals to me (what I get out of it) that your family is being irrationally selfish in a way that is dangerous to greater humanity as a whole.

>Am I not contributing to the discussion, whether or not you disagree with me?

Spreading lost discounted vague FUD about vaccines while admittedly taking part in gravely endangering public health are not constructive.

Because of the population density of NYC your son of all people needs to be vaccinated. As long as he is healthy enough to be vaccinated.

> Edit: are people getting pleasure out of downvoting me? Am I not contributing to the discussion, whether or not you disagree with me?

You are spreading dangerous misinformation that leads directly to the spread of disease and death.

Do you have any friends with babies? Because babies can get sick from diseases before they can be vaccinated. If your kid gets measles or whatever and gives it to an unvaccinated baby, your "caution" is not going to be any comfort to the baby's parents.

Similarly, immune-compromised people who might not be able to get vaccinated or, if they are, are vulnerable anyway.

Vaccination isn't just for you, it's for everyone around you.

You might as well be "contributing to the discussion" of whether the world is round or not. You'r not a scientist nor a doctor, so you don't have any firsthand knowledge.

No I am not - but our pediatrician is.

Clearly not. It's utterly unacceptable that a pediatrician would recommend against routine vaccinations. Yes, some children end up having reactions (not autism). No, the risks of those reactions are not worse than the risks of the diseases the vaccinations prevent.

Then have him contribute rather than play a game of telephone.

basically this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

combined with a wobbly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

edit: sooo, why the downvotes? You see that this is exactly what he did, right?

That topic seems so boiled up, reasonable, therefore non-faulty discussion doesn't even appear to be a goal.

There's nothing wrong with an argument from authority - the problem with such an argument is when the expert is being cited from outside their sphere of expertise, for example. In this case the experts in the field are in agreement with a very strong scientific consensus based on a very solid body of data.

>Edit: Am I not contributing to the discussion, whether or not you disagree with me?

No, you're not.

There is an interesting societal element to this whole anti-vax movement that center around mostly white, mostly rich parents in NYC and Marin County. Which begs the question, why there? Why them?

I think it comes down to how anti-vaxxers receive and interpret information, as well as approaching things from the perspective of "I am smart and can see what is real better than most." This applies to medical dignoses of any kind, politics, culture. And it gets amped up when you have kids: what toys are best for my kid, what's the best diaper, which sunblock is safest, etc.

I live in SF and have a son and see this mindset everywhere. Everybody with the Honest diapers. Everybody with the Uppababy stroller. Everyone is doing all their own research online and asking friends who do the same, and it becomes a tight feedback loop where there is one right answer to everything about how to raise their kids. And the tricky thing is, everyone feels like they did the "research" themselves, so they can trust it.

The anti-vax movement is fundamentally anti-intellectual and promoted by people who should know better (and who pride themselves on knowing better). And to answer your question, people get angry because each anti-vaxxer increases their own children's risk for dying needlessly from a terrible disease.

There is no question that the antivax movement was started by an idiot fraud report and was pushed forward by Jennie McCarthy (who did her own research). She has since reversed her stance, but to support their established belief people keep drumming up new reasons vaccinations are bad, but it all boils down to a bunch of ZOMG TOXINS fearmongering.

I boil it down like this: your child is thousands of times more likely to die from catching the measles in Marin than having a terrible reaction from getting a vaccine. And vaccines are a tiny risk that is spread out amongst the community to protect us all. It is a civic duty to get vaccinated. It is the tiny price of living in a civilzation and to reject it is to say "A .0001 risk to MY child is not worth protecting everyone else's child." It is fundamentally selfish and fundamentally anti-intellectual which is why people are mad at you.

A .0001 risk to MY child is not worth protecting everyone else's child.

THIS. Totally insightful.

It is a black and white issue, the potential harms from vaccines are utterly dwarfed by the harms of not vaccinating your child.

Those intelligent an well off parents are not as intelligent as they think, and are probably suffering from the illusion that their comparative expertise in one field maps easily to their biases in others. The pediatrician is simply irresponsible.

The problem with judging arguments by the tone you perceive to come across is that you are likely to assign negative tone to arguments you are already biased against.

And if you use mercola.com as a source, you are already lost to sense.

This post is a great example.

First claiming absolute authority over other peoples risk tolerance, then degrading the opponents as stupid and after that claiming that a critique on this behaviour is likely caused by bias. Brilliant.

But I'm right.

I mean, I'd say similar things to flat earthers or chemtrails advocates, and these are absolutely on a level. How else do you respond to something that is blatantly and harmfully dumb?

I'm talking in the abstract here. Forget the subject matter of vaccines, what is the appropriate reaction to someone advocating harmful actions based on conspiracy theories?

>what is the appropriate reaction to someone advocating harmful actions based on conspiracy theories?

Ridicule.

I think there needs to be a distinction between people who oppose forced/obligated vaccination and people who don't trust current vaccine combinates.

Both are probably motivated very different. For example not believing in giving a government enough power to make universal health decisions for toddlers is not exactly comparable to someone insisting that the world is flat. I struggle finding a way to describe the difference, but I'm certain that there is a sphere of moral/political/psychological deviation that needs to be tolerated in a society.

But: In general I'd guess that no human is ever convinced by being belittled. Spraying hate (not you personally) and incomprehension only helps the own moral compass, not the cause nor the conversation.

edit: words

edit: Sorry to those who replied. Hn tells me, I'm "too fast". May take a short while until I can reply again. :(

> "not believing in giving a government enough power to make universal health decisions for toddlers is not exactly comparable to someone insisting that the world is flat"

You're correct about them not being comparable - people who insist the world is flat won't have any effect on the physical health those around them. As opposed to children who are not vaccinated, who pose a major health risk to all those around them.

I hope that my reply doesn't come across as belittling - but there's no safe way to not vaccinate a child. There are, as you've pointed out in other replies, potential risks involved. This is part of life. Trying to shield someone from all risk would be impossible. Vaccines are a necessary risk right alongside letting your children out of your sight.

Parents are the sole stewards of their children - and they have every right and reason to be concerned for their safety. But arguing against vaccination because of the side effects which are proven to exist when weighed against the effects of the diseases we vaccinate for seems like you'd have to be drawing an incorrect conclusion.

>who don't trust current vaccine combinates.

These are not so different, though. There's no reason to not trust the current schedule and combinations, other than as a reactionary position to be so utterly wrong and shut down about the risks of vaccines. It's precisely the same stupidity, based on nebulous distrust and ignorance.

> But: In general I'd guess that no human is ever convinced by being belittled. Spraying hate (not you personally) and incomprehension only helps the own moral compass, not the cause nor the conversation.

In public discussions, there are many people to convince, not just the person advocating a viewpoint. If somebody has argued themselves into being anti-vax, changing their minds is not usually possible. They are 99% of the time a lost cause. I say this as somebody who has tried, tried so hard, on many approaches.

In my experience, the ridicule is borne from two directions: 1) fatigue of dealing with people that should be reasonable but are being fundamentally dishonest and tribalistic, and 2) preventing others from thinking that anti-vaxxers' "arguments" are worth anything except belittlement.

If a person doesn't like vaccines, I may try to convince them, but it's far more important to stop the lies from being perpetuated to more people than it is to convince just that single person. One of these goals is possible. Public discussion counts tremendously in these matters. I don't have to accept racist views without calling them out with force, and I certainly don't need to accept anti-vaxxer views without calling them out with force. There are times to convince and gently guide an individual, and a time to prevent them from poisoning the world. The way I talk about racism on a public forum is going to be different when dealing with a racist Uncle; different audiences and different approaches.

The person I'm replying to was not opposing forced vaccination, it is clear they have neither been forced nor gone voluntarily.

I'm not sure someone who has gone so far in rejecting medical knowledge can be convinced by reason - the facts and good arguments are already out there within easy reach and have presumably been discounted.

FYI my comments on tone and bias were drawn from years of seeing people interpret tone to suit themselves online, either knowingly through tone-trolling or simply through bias.

These responses came fast and furious, as I expected. It's a good thing I didn't mention that we had a home birth, and breastfed our child!

Breastfeeding is recommended by every medical body for most populations. (Obviously there are some populations where the risks outweigh the benefits) it's about the least controversial thing ever.

Home birth only puts your own family's health at risk so very few people will care.

Your choice to not vaccinate is a grave danger to the population as a whole so yeah people are gonna get pissed off as hell.

Your attitude of "everyone is out to get me" isn't healthy or constructive.

Why? There's nothing wrong with either of those things....

I have a toddler in NYC too and if there is a pediatrician who is strongly against it then it's probably the one who is making a lot of money on people like you.

This is not about being a well-off parent it's about being an informed parent and I can guarantee you that most parents in NYC are anything but scientifically well informed.

Antivaxxers are calm because they believe they are making the healthiest choice for their kids. Vaxxers are upset because they feel antivaxxers are just relying on the success of vaccinations to diminish disease prevalence and don't really have to worry about their kids running into the disease.

If I knew everyone else in the world was vaccinated, I might choose not to vaccinate my kid. It's a mostly unnecessary risk for my kid since they would be unlikely to encounter it in a completely vaccinated world. But that sort of thinking is horrible for public health.

>It's not a black and white issue; there's a plethora of cases of children having bad reactions to vaccines.

You don't understand how medicine works then. ALL medical interventions have the potential for adverse outcomes. That doesn't mean all medical interventions are to be avoided though or are bad. We do a cost–benefit analysis. That is we weigh the potential benefits of each intervention against the potential risks for each individual patient.

This topic has been studied extensively. The numbers have been run and rerun. The facts are for most patients the benefits to both the individual and public health VASTLY outweigh the risks of the recommended routine vaccinations.

As far as medical interventions go it's as black and white as it gets.

Your stupidity is actively harming innocent people, so please excuse my "passion". Reasoned arguments? All I see is "anecdata" backed up with sources that all link back to the anti-vax echo chamber. It is black and white and if your pediatrician is actually strongly opposed to vaccines... then they should have their license removed.

If one was to ask you to cite a peer reviewed paper regarding any of this, would it come across as ad hominem and passionate anger?

Such a doctor needs to have his medical license taken away. Also by refusing vaccination you are putting your child and others in harm's way which to my mind is almost criminal.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com