The CDC didn't admit to mandating the polio vaccine. People can, and some few do, refuse to take the polio vaccine or have it administered to their children. The fact that the CDC recorded SV40 contamination (which, by the way, is still harmless, distrusting the CDC doesn't change that) does not make them responsible for it, and it doesn't showcase any coercion on their part to force families to take it.

I have had to stand by helpless as a patient refuses a vaccine for their child that I know they need. It is not a good feeling to know that that kid is at risk for a serious disease now. One my child and I will never get because we got vaccinated.

My central points haven't changed here. Vaccines are not the toxic swill they are made out to be, refusing them is dangerous and irresponsible, and their demonstrable safety and medical value shouldn't be ignored just because we don't like pharmaceutical companies.

I don't like pharmaceutical companies. This is not a defense of big pharma. It's a defense of the very real and palpable fact that vaccines prevent all manner of communicable diseases and are ultimately good for individual and public health. It is therefore my opinion that the anti-vax movement creates victims, and causes harm.

So no. The thrust of my argument isn't to maintain policies that profit big pharma (or even little pharma). I've not really concerned myself in this discourse with the fairness of the system that rewards these drug manufacturers with subsidies and astronomical profit from drugs that are cheap to produce.

What I've concerned myself with is the very, very poor logic, poor science, and willful ignorance of fact that leads people to refuse to vaccinate themselves and their families on the grounds that it causes autism, or 100+ food allergies, and many other dubious claims.

I get that this isn't a black and white issue. For profit companies will get money every time I vaccinate someone. They benefit from that. The patient also benefits, by never getting polio. I guess I'm just a little more comfortable than some with sitting in that place of conflict, of knowing that there are good and less good societal consequences that come with being a healthcare professional. In any case, I'm not willing to tell my kid it was worth it for him to get smallpox just so I could take a stand against pharmaceutical companies and regulators.

Also, dude. Come on. There is too such a thing as proof in science.