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Comment by Alex3917 | Hacker News Reader

I'm saying that I don't trust what the government says about health, because they lie about health all the time. That has nothing to do with pseudo-science, that's just being an intelligent and rational person.

For example, after September 11th the EPA and NYC government said that the air at ground zero was perfectly safe to breathe. What's more, no one is being held accountable even though dozens or hundreds are dying horrible deaths because of these lies. This is just one example, there are literally hundreds of cases like this that we can point to in the last fifty years.

Therefor, it's

A) Reasonable to assume that the government may be lying about the safety of this vaccine.

B) Reasonable to assume that if they are lying about the safety, no one will be held accountable.

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Honestly, you don't sound that reasonable. EPA, NYC, HSS are not "The Government", they are different entities with different roles and goals. Perhaps someone lied about the air at ground zero (I don't know the facts, is that even proven?), but how is that related to the decisions made by the HSS? You're claiming that there's a pattern, but it doesn't make any sense. The US government lied about the Tonkin incident, therefore the Nasa never landed on the moon?

"The US government lied about the Tonkin incident, therefore the Nasa never landed on the moon?"

I believe NASA landed on the moon because I've thought about it for myself. I don't automatically believe it because the government said it happened.

If the data says the the H1N1 vaccine is safe and effective then I'll get it, but I'm not going to put something into my body just because Donald Rumsfeld or whoever says its a good idea.

All I'm saying is that you shouldn't abdicate your thinking to someone else, especially when they may have an incentive to mislead you.

If the data says the the H1N1 vaccine is safe and effective then I'll get it

Well, the data do say the H1N1 vaccine is safe and effective. Discussing anything else is a red herring.

What about discussing whether the data is real or fraudulent (Like the EPA data on mercury)?

Well, go ahead and make your specific, reasoned, and well-evidenced accusations. That's still a discussion about the data.

Or did you just want to throw up FUDdy innuendo?

FUD is exactly the right way to approach this issue.

Have you ever read RFK's article about the autism vaccine link in Rolling Stone?

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/7395411/deadly_im...

I've seen a lot of evidence since then saying the autism-vaccine link isn't true, but I've seen zero evidence saying that the cover up that RFK wrote about didn't actually occur. How are you supposed to make an educated decision when the head of the CDC goes on record saying they are hiding safety information from the public.

Few things.

1) This has everything to do with pseudo-science. There are no credible studies pointing to ill health effects outside of extremely rare cases in which a person is allergic to some part of the vaccine or has some other pre-existing condition. And there are numerous studies indicating that you're more likely to get struck by lightning than to have any reaction to a vaccine, outside of a sore arm.

2) "The government" is hardly a single entity. You're displaying conspiratorial thinking here, which is pretty tough to take seriously. You're discussing the EPA and NY city government, which is not the same as the NIH and CDC. Additionally, it's not only the U.S. government which is strongly recommending these vaccines. If you'd like to continue that line of argument, you'll have to take it up with probably every single first-world government.

3) Being an intelligent and rational person means evaluating claims individually, regardless of the source. Starting from the position that the government is lying to you is just as stupid as assuming they're always telling the truth. Of course there are fuck-ups and cover-ups, but that doesn't mean everything is.

"Starting from the position that the government is lying to you is just as stupid as assuming they're always telling the truth."

If this is true, then the rational position would be to assume that the government may or may not be lying to you. Which is what I believe.

"'The government' is hardly a single entity."

The people are different, but if the Milgram experiments (and sociology in general) have taught us anything, it's that a person's social influences are as important to their decision making as their intrinsic character. And the laws, rewards, and punishments are largely the same across departments.

I realize the EPA is different from the FDA. However, the reasons why the EPA buried studies about the amount of mercury in freshwater the day before issuing new guidelines on acceptable mercury levels are largely the same as the reasons why the FDA approved OTC plan-B only for women 18+.

The takeaway is that bad things don't (usually) happen because of bad people. They happen because organizational behavior, psychology, and sociology allow us to make an educated guess that if an organization looks like X, then what tends to happen will be Y.

Now if I see patterns across organizations that you don't see, maybe that makes me a conspiracy theorist and maybe I'm seeing patterns that aren't there. Or maybe I just see patterns that you don't see.

I agree that at the end of the day you have to think about these problems individually for yourself. I don't actually believe the vaccines are all that dangerous, but at the same time I'm not going to take them just because the CDC or NIH or whatever say they are safe. The reason is that the people running these departments are operating under largely the same structures and incentives as the people running every other government department, and history as a whole shows that these sets of structures and incentives tend to produce unsavory behavior.

Pardon me, but none of those nuances were clear in your original statement that you weren't going to get the vaccine simply because it was recommended by the government.

Sounds like you're saying "don't trust all your decisions to the government", which is trivially true and apropos of nothing.

You're conclusions are reasonable for the assumption that the government acted from malice. You miss, or dismiss with no mention, the following possibilities:

The cause of the illness was a substance not then known to be toxic.

The toxin did not remain airborne long enough for EPA samples to gather it.

The EPA tests were not capable of detecting the problem.

General incompetence.

A bad batch of test kits.

The toxin may have come from dust stirred up during work which quickly settled.

Any of the above being true would invalidate your conclusions. As someone totally ignorant of the illnesses you are talking about, I have only your statement to go on, which addresses none of the above, so these may be known.

As for government lies, many many cases of government lies can be equally attributed to ignorance as they can to malice, so I am challenging your basic proposition.

"Any of the above being true would invalidate your conclusions. "

My argument more generally though is that I don't trust the government to make my health decisions for me. You may well be right that in this case the government was just incompetent and not malicious, but how is that supposed to convince me that I should trust them to make my health decisions for me?

Thanks. From that perspective, what you said makes sense.

That said, I'm taking the opposite position. My story is roughly as follows: I'm a twenty year old Canadian who has had open heart surgery twice, maybe half a dozen day surgeries of various natures, and gotten the government-distributed flu vaccine every year for as long as I can remember. All of this was organized and (mostly) paid for by the government, since that's the way the health care system works up here. I haven't died a horrible death yet. Why would this particular case be any different?

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