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by squozzer 2651 days ago
What bothers me about the ban is that anti-vaxxers - at least the ones I've read - are not Luddites.

I've never heard an anti-vaxxer say things such as "It's God's (or Gaia's) Will that Johnny died of measles."

They believe, wrongly in my opinion, that vaccines cause other medical problems serious enough to justify not using vaccines. To me, that's legitimate dissent.

Given the stakes, maybe GoFundMe did the right thing.

But what's an acceptable threshold of risk?

Because, for various reasons, anti-vaxxing has become a political problem as well as a health problem. Maybe more so.

The political aspect - i.e. GoFundMe being vulnerable to political charges of endangering the public - is probably what drove GoFundMe to institute the ban.

Which leaves other politically charged uses of GoFundMe vulnerable.

2 comments

> They believe, wrongly in my opinion, that vaccines cause other medical problems serious enough to justify not using vaccines. To me, that's legitimate dissent.

I don't get it. How is this any more legitimate than actually being a Luddite and saying "technology and modern medicine is bad"?

Would you say that racism and bigotry against minorities becomes legitimate if it's phrased as "this minority group will give you a disease if you let them near you"? Because that's actually a pretty classic feature of racist propaganda.

>that vaccines cause other medical problems serious enough to justify not using vaccines = talks about vaccines.

>this minority group will give you a disease if you let them near you = talks about people.

HN, just fucking delete my account and ban my IP address, as you obviously have a huge fucking problem with my fair-mindedness.

Both examples are about diseases. Your claim was that their argument is of a legitimate form because it makes a claim about medical risk. My rhetorical argument was of the same form.
In this interview with Dr. Richard Halvorsen, he discusses vaccination based on risk, and which vaccines are needed and which aren't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMs1ue8j9CM

But if we shut down all discussion about it, even _rational_ discussions will be censored.

Has this doctor published anything peer-reviewed?
Why not just watch the video and consider what he says?

Here's a peer reviewed article on science that is "peer-reviewed". His conclusion? It's based on "belief".

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/

Yes: A guide to acupuncture. That's it.
Well this is the problem with claiming authority of any kind has the truth. But this cuts both ways.