Viruses Don’t Care About Your View: Why ABC Shouldn’t Have Hired Jenny McCarthy

[longship]

28. Aw! Come on! A straw man argument?

Nobody said that vaccines are 100% safe and never harm people. That is a straw man argument because nobody claims that. NOBODY!

Like all medical procedures they have risks. But this has been also studied ad nauseum as well it should be.

Also, citing individual studies that support a preconceived point of view is yet another anti-vaxxer technique. That's called cherry picking. Not all research is equally important or valid.

The only way to responsibly evaluate a scientific hypothesis -- E.G., Vaccines cause autism? -- is to look at the entire body of research on the subject not cherry pick those that agree with ones specific bias.

Again, check out the SBM site which lists a whole plethora of studies. Vaccines and Autism (Introduction at the top, followed by Blog entries, followed by a large list of peer reviewed papers in the scientific literature.)

I list this site because they take the time to clearly describe the research and provide links to the original papers. They also have a very responsible science-based approach, which is what one desires with such questions.

And no! They do not ever claim that vaccines never harm people either. Regardless, the harm is very, very low. The risks from vaccines is minimal. Their benefit is huge!

For Christ sakes! Nobody will ever again die from smallpox. Thank you Edward Jenner.