But I disagree with your logical premise that because a specific procedure (injection) has been used to do harm in some cases, that it is tainted forever.
And it’s hard to believe that could be your true underlying objection. Some vaccines can be given other way, like drops in the mouth or a nasal spray. If, theoretically, all the basic vaccines could be administered without injection, would that fully allay all your concerns? I doubt it.
That certainly wasn’t the premise, and no, vaccines administered without injection wouldn’t allay my concerns because that’s not the only way people have been experimented on.
The University of Michigan deliberately infected patients with influenza virus by spraying the virus into their nasal passages, University of Iowa and Harpers Hospital and University of Nebraska College of Medicine deliberately fed infants radioactive iodine, similar radioactive iodine experiments were done on Alaska natives, and this really jumped out to me:
From the 1950s to 1972, mentally disabled children at the Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, New York, were intentionally infected with viral hepatitis, for research whose purpose was to help discover a vaccine.[49] From 1963 to 1966, Saul Krugman of New York University promised the parents of mentally disabled children that their children would be enrolled into Willowbrook in exchange for signing a consent form for procedures that he claimed were “vaccinations”. In reality, the procedures involved deliberately infecting children with viral hepatitis by feeding them an extract made from the feces of patients infected with the disease.
The underlying problem with allowing the ruling class disregard the Declaration of Helsinki to mandate medical treatment is that they will use this to advance their own class power. That’s it. It doesn’t matter if it’s injections, drops, pills, or feeding children feces. I support any AES country that pursues mandatory vaccination, but the history and the class character of the US makes me very wary of giving them the power to mandate any medical treatments.
Universal vaccination is contrary to the interests of the ruling class. It is slipping away along with various other remnants of softer social democracy since the workers power has been crushed and the USSR is no longer a countervailing force. Speaking of the USSR, since its demise and no longer enforcing vaccinations, conspiracy theories like these ones are rife and vaccine refusal has got its claws in. Capitalism brought many diseases. Now in the US where their own ruling class has freed itself from any kind of pretense that they care for anyone but themselves, we can see the culmination of their concerted, decades long project to destroy universal vaccination.
You have examples from 50 years ago of tenuously-related incidents. And there are others. In the vast majority of cases, and all the cases here, involving the abuse of institutional power to coerce vulnerable people to undergo gross or heinous procedures under the guise of research or experimentation. The fact that all the examples you use are viscerally evil feeling is not irrelevant. It can serve to smooth over the logical and factual problems in the anti-vaccine propaganda. I rebut, you respond by escalating ickiness. they made the children eat shit to give them diseases
All the examples being 50 years old isn’t because ethics have been perfect since the 1960s. the Helsinki declaration didn’t end it all. And its not because subsequent tortures have been perfectly covered up; actually lots of stuff is well known about. it’s because modern methods of experimentation, even when completely misused, do not lend themselves to this kind of emotional argumentation quite as well. Same issue as how we got into this list of horrors, the conflation of all things that can be done via injection as equivalent.
None of your examples would even be impacted one way or the other by any framework regarding mandatory vaccinations. They could happen just as easily in a context of mandatory vaccines as one where vaccines are completely unavailable, or gently encouraged. Because they are different things. It is like opposing public transport because of the association of trains with the holocaust. or all ocean travel because of innumerable horror facilitated by boats. there are some superficial similarities, right?
anyway, maybe you are not able to understand the difference between a universal, population based deployment of a few extremely safe, effective and specific interventions vs undisciplined, unscrutinized sadists operating on relatively small scale hiding their activities within institutions under the pretense of science. A less exaggerated version of your examples/arguments would have the same underlying flaw. So changing to describe less ostentatious, more pervasive, more modern examples will not address this.
I would recommend if you have not already, seek out some of the work by Harriette Washington, best known for Medical apartheid : the dark history of medical experimentation on Black Americans from colonial times to the present. That 2007 book and her prior/subsequent work all pursuing the same line of investigation, is useful to learn how to grapple with the whole long history of scientific/medical horrors. There is viler stuff in that book than anything in this thread, believe you me. And she brings it up until present day in a comprehensive picture of experience and understanding, rather than a stream of horror vignettes. So you can move past this anti-vax illogic towards a consolidation of your solidarity and desire for mutual autonomy.
makes me very wary of giving them the power to mandate any medical treatments.
I don’t know if this’ll be good news or bad news but you can stop worrying about this in the hypothetical because it is already the case. E.g.
Legally Mandated Treatment
So no more hand wringing about what might happen if a situation which is both different than what I am advocating for, and your own worries, should come to pass.
I keep saying that I support vaccine mandates in AES countries, this is not an anti-vaxx stance and I don’t know how much clearer I can make it. After the revolution we need to put anti-vaxxers in reeducation camps and their children should be moved to safer homes. What I don’t support is giving our current ruling class even more power than they already have over our bodies. They must be frustrated at every turn, because any power we give them will be used to advance their own class interests even further.
The fact that there is already a framework where the government can mandate medical treatment for prisoners is bad, and expanding it to everyone isn’t really better. Any framework that disregards the Helsinki declaration will inevitably lead to more and more exceptions, because medical ethics restrain a predatory ruling class that salivates at the chance to pump our bodies with whatever they want. Even now, those exemptions you list are the prelude to what will be done to the rest of us soon enough.
Vaccines are extremely safe, but they wouldn’t stop at vaccines. They never did before.
That certainly wasn’t the premise, and no, vaccines administered without injection wouldn’t allay my concerns because that’s not the only way people have been experimented on.
The University of Michigan deliberately infected patients with influenza virus by spraying the virus into their nasal passages, University of Iowa and Harpers Hospital and University of Nebraska College of Medicine deliberately fed infants radioactive iodine, similar radioactive iodine experiments were done on Alaska natives, and this really jumped out to me:
The underlying problem with allowing the ruling class disregard the Declaration of Helsinki to mandate medical treatment is that they will use this to advance their own class power. That’s it. It doesn’t matter if it’s injections, drops, pills, or feeding children feces. I support any AES country that pursues mandatory vaccination, but the history and the class character of the US makes me very wary of giving them the power to mandate any medical treatments.
Universal vaccination is contrary to the interests of the ruling class. It is slipping away along with various other remnants of softer social democracy since the workers power has been crushed and the USSR is no longer a countervailing force. Speaking of the USSR, since its demise and no longer enforcing vaccinations, conspiracy theories like these ones are rife and vaccine refusal has got its claws in. Capitalism brought many diseases. Now in the US where their own ruling class has freed itself from any kind of pretense that they care for anyone but themselves, we can see the culmination of their concerted, decades long project to destroy universal vaccination.
You have examples from 50 years ago of tenuously-related incidents. And there are others. In the vast majority of cases, and all the cases here, involving the abuse of institutional power to coerce vulnerable people to undergo gross or heinous procedures under the guise of research or experimentation. The fact that all the examples you use are viscerally evil feeling is not irrelevant. It can serve to smooth over the logical and factual problems in the anti-vaccine propaganda. I rebut, you respond by escalating ickiness. they made the children eat shit to give them diseases
All the examples being 50 years old isn’t because ethics have been perfect since the 1960s. the Helsinki declaration didn’t end it all. And its not because subsequent tortures have been perfectly covered up; actually lots of stuff is well known about. it’s because modern methods of experimentation, even when completely misused, do not lend themselves to this kind of emotional argumentation quite as well. Same issue as how we got into this list of horrors, the conflation of all things that can be done via injection as equivalent.
None of your examples would even be impacted one way or the other by any framework regarding mandatory vaccinations. They could happen just as easily in a context of mandatory vaccines as one where vaccines are completely unavailable, or gently encouraged. Because they are different things. It is like opposing public transport because of the association of trains with the holocaust. or all ocean travel because of innumerable horror facilitated by boats. there are some superficial similarities, right?
anyway, maybe you are not able to understand the difference between a universal, population based deployment of a few extremely safe, effective and specific interventions vs undisciplined, unscrutinized sadists operating on relatively small scale hiding their activities within institutions under the pretense of science. A less exaggerated version of your examples/arguments would have the same underlying flaw. So changing to describe less ostentatious, more pervasive, more modern examples will not address this.
I would recommend if you have not already, seek out some of the work by Harriette Washington, best known for Medical apartheid : the dark history of medical experimentation on Black Americans from colonial times to the present. That 2007 book and her prior/subsequent work all pursuing the same line of investigation, is useful to learn how to grapple with the whole long history of scientific/medical horrors. There is viler stuff in that book than anything in this thread, believe you me. And she brings it up until present day in a comprehensive picture of experience and understanding, rather than a stream of horror vignettes. So you can move past this anti-vax illogic towards a consolidation of your solidarity and desire for mutual autonomy.
I don’t know if this’ll be good news or bad news but you can stop worrying about this in the hypothetical because it is already the case. E.g. Legally Mandated Treatment
So no more hand wringing about what might happen if a situation which is both different than what I am advocating for, and your own worries, should come to pass.
I keep saying that I support vaccine mandates in AES countries, this is not an anti-vaxx stance and I don’t know how much clearer I can make it. After the revolution we need to put anti-vaxxers in reeducation camps and their children should be moved to safer homes. What I don’t support is giving our current ruling class even more power than they already have over our bodies. They must be frustrated at every turn, because any power we give them will be used to advance their own class interests even further.
The fact that there is already a framework where the government can mandate medical treatment for prisoners is bad, and expanding it to everyone isn’t really better. Any framework that disregards the Helsinki declaration will inevitably lead to more and more exceptions, because medical ethics restrain a predatory ruling class that salivates at the chance to pump our bodies with whatever they want. Even now, those exemptions you list are the prelude to what will be done to the rest of us soon enough.
Vaccines are extremely safe, but they wouldn’t stop at vaccines. They never did before.