Penn and Teller on Vaccinations

There are a lot of comments here about the issue of how to communicate risk of different personal medical choices to patients who do not themselves have medical training. It is a tough problem. Professional stage magicians, and avid skeptics, Penn and Teller had an episode of their cable television series Bullshit report on the issue of risks and benefits of vaccination. Maybe a clip from their TV show (with language that many families would find inappropriate for viewing with their children) will help communicate the risk and benefit ratio of vaccination more clearly than documents written in a more clinical tone. [this video] (short clip above, long clip below) [link]

The problem might very well be that our level of scientific education isn't in step with the realities of the world we live in. If someone wants to get a good grasp for the entire "story" of vaccination they have to have a basic understanding of evolution by natural selection. Fully 42% of the US population does not "believe" in evolution, which is further proof of the level of ignorance we are dealing with. I put "believe" in quotes because evolution by natural selection is not something one believes, that's nonsense. It is something one accepts or rejects based on over 150 years of evidence across a range of scientific disciplines. Perhaps this might help: [this video]

In Sweden, almost everyone was vaccinated with Pandemrix [link] I think this is not the same exact drug as Tamiflu, but the parallels - mass vaccination etc - are worth drawing. The scary thing about Pandemrix is that some people - mostly children and young adults - immediately got narcolepsy [link] Now the various investigations have all said they can find no link between narcolepsy and Pandemrix, and yet they don't really explain the suddenness of it all. Seems a hell of a coincidence. Narcolepsy is not some silly little "sleep disorder". This was really brought home to me - literally - by knowing someone who's child got it hours after their Pandemrix jab =( The micro-problem here is the Swedish state trying to avoid paying for care (its untreatable, as I understand it) and all that wrangling about taking responsibility. I think most parents of suffers are really out to share around the burden of responsibility, rather than caring so much about the costs of care. The macro-problem is convincing people that the next time we are told to go get a jab, we should :( Here's Penn & Teller talking about Vaccines: [this video] Science isn't going to win over my wife as easily as all that. And I am very divided myself, however rational I try and be.