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Comment by setquk | Hacker News Reader

We shouldn’t censor them because that has side effects when any sort of mechanism is introduced.

However two laws should be made:

1. Not vaccinating your kids should be classified as a child protection offence (unless there is medical basis from a panel, not one quack). Kids are confiscated, vaccinated and put into state care after one warning.

2. Promoting non NHS / FDA etc approved medical advice should be a criminal offence and ends up with the publisher, author, owners being chucked in jail.

The latter covers bullshit like homeopathy and Chinese herbal medicine as well.

There’s no place for any of this in 2019. We should actively shame anyone partaking in this.

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Re: #2

I think you'll have trouble regulating speech criticizing a federal agency, even if it is pure quackery. And I hope it stays that way.

The NHS and FDA are not infallible. They’ve perpetuated the myth that fat is unhealthy at massive public cost over decades. So it’d be illegal to promote the ketogenic diet, since the FDA sources encourage eating a low fat diet?

My kids are vaccinated, but doing this is just going to make suspicious people more suspicious. They’ll try even harder to avoid vaccinating by avoiding all daycares and home schooling. It’s turning into a rallying cry against the government.

These children would not be much better off in foster care, where their risk of being abused would be much higher. These law changes would go from a private company shutting down speech to the government suddenly enforcing limits on the second amendment. Bad ideas need to be argued against, not brutally silenced. People will keep thinking the taboo thought, there will just no longer be a way of reaching them.

Hmm. First heading in the NHS fat guidance is "Why we need some fat", then a breakdown of what and why https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/different-fats-nutriti... . A very balanced and well written document. As for a keto diet, it has a number of well documented and researched side effects the proponents forget to mention such as cognitive issues. On diets, most people are looking for ideologies rather than facts and those are easy to sell.

Fuck suspicious people. They're idiots. And you should point at them and make it known. Not only are they idiots but they are actively harming someone and that's a prime violation of the ethic of reciprocity. To allow harm to continue is as bad. Seriously bad. I know someone who's parents skipped the MMR vaccine, they got measles, lost their hearing permanently. That was totally avoidable and physical harm came to someone. Actual life-long disability. And there are LOTS of people who go through this.

If you put your arrogant self-interest in front of logic, data and research then the child will come to harm one day.

Throwing people in jail is more censorious than a large company just declining to stock the book.

Hurting people is worse than all of those things.

I'm not sure what hurt you are referring to.

> Not vaccinating your kids should be classified as a child protection offence (unless there is medical basis from a panel, not one quack). Kids are confiscated, vaccinated and put into state care after one warning

Great, once you pass that law you'll have drug companies lobbying to get their vaccine listed on your "must inject by age X or get your kids taken away" list. Imagine the revenue for every kid in the country being mandated to inject your vaccine.

Usually, our attempt to bring risk to 0 brings tyranny close to 100.

The scenes of the government dragging a kid out of their parent's grasp and injecting a needle into their arms is straight out of any stereotypical dystopian novel.

Yes, it can be frustrating fighting disinformation, but patience and kindness is almost always better in the long run IMO than force and punishment.

I understand the desire to eliminate unnecessary risk, but getting everyone vaccinated and respecting individual freedom is not an easy task. Our country is more vaccinated than it's ever been, but the last few % might take longer than most people would like.

And I ask you this question: is it morally acceptable to allow someone to harm someone else?

That by itself is a complex question. Most people consider violent self defense to be OK.

People's ability to buy alcohol is a safety risk. Many crimes and fatal accidents involve alcohol. Do we force everyone to stop drinking alcohol?

I can't think of a government policy that has implemented 100% adoption without tyranny. I'm all for as close to 100% as we can get, but I don't want to lose our values of freedom and respect to get there.

People who set their kids up to be plague carriers are treading perilously close negligent abuse of a child. There are medical reasons not to vaccinate some kids, and there are evidentiary standards to determine whether those reasons apply.

Yes, it can be frustrating fighting disinformation, but patience and kindness is almost always better in the long run IMO than force and punishment.

There are disease outbreaks taking place right now and people making anti-vaccination speeches to rallies of supporters in the middle of the area where the disease outbreak is taking place. I'm really all out of patience and kindness when people are deliberately incubating highly communicable diseases.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_hYgFWehDY < PBS newshour report from a week ago including footage from one such rally.

I view these people with the same enthusiasm that I would view someone pouring gasoline on the walls of a building structure.

I understand the desire to eliminate unnecessary risk

Disease outbreaks are real. You are describing vaccination as equivalent to a scene from a dystopian novel, asking us to get upset about an imaginary ill.

The anti vaxxers would love vaccines mandated by law. It would be the quickest route to an entire population turning anti-vax and setting back humanity by 100 years.

But I am all for banning bullshit claims made by ineffectual remedies.

I call bullshit.

In my country child vaccination is mandated by law (parent may be cited if they don't do it, citations are handed very reluctantly, sometimes not at all).

What recently happened (Nov 2018) was small measles outbreak - MMR vaccine sold out so fast extra emergency shipments were made to pharmacies.

If that happens, it'll be the greatest evolutionary step we have made for hundreds of years.

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