I am sick of "science based medicine" and its failure to get people to use measles vaccines. What they do is say "It is science. We are scientists. Obey!" This is more and more the approach of our "science" community, as our intellectual culture degenerates. And of course there is backlash.
Measles vaccine can be explained by COMMON SENSE. But only if you understand natural selection, which our "science" hashtaggers usually do not. They think it works like evolution in STTNG.
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Fortunately evolving into "energy beings" as in Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey is an extremely stupid idea. And it has nothing to do with natural selection. Science fiction, including "hard" SF such as Ben Bova, usually rejects Darwin. Life comes about merely because there is a space for it to fill. That is, for a "final cause" (Aristotle's "telos"). Science fiction writers are unwitting contributors to measles misinformation.
Natural selection is easy to understand.
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The first thing, though, to point out about measles, is something oddly not widely mentioned. MEASLES DESTROYS A KID'S IMMUNE SYSTEM. So, instead of strengthening your kid's immune system by letting them catch measles, you are setting them back to square one.
It is not an ongoing destruction, like AIDS. But it is not what you thought was going on. You are NOT strengthening your kid's immune system.
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Contrary to common myth, the MMR vaccine is not a cocktail of three viruses. It is a cocktail of no viruses. The viruses are inactivated. Thus, the child or adult receiving the vaccine will catch none of the diseases. They will merely, hopefully, become immune to them. Their immune systems will be strengthened—perhaps that's why the site of the shot gets sore, etc. It is an immune reaction.
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Also, the safety testing was done with the three inactivated viruses mixed, so it is immaterial that they are mixed and not separate.
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Now, as to whether it is better to let your kid catch a disease in general, say mumps or chickenpox, or to avoid antibiotics and fever reducers for, say, scarlet fever.
This is where we bring up natural selection.
It may be your understanding—fueled by science fiction writers—that evolution has created an immune system able to battle all diseases, if given the chance and exercised sufficiently. But this is NOT how Nature works. It works by NATURAL SELECTION.
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The way Nature works is that only 1/4 of every American Robin chicks lives to 1 year old. And to me that is a surprisingly large number.
The fact is that Nature is perfectly happy to kill human children or render them disabled. My own mother had extensive cerebral cortex scarring from chickenpox encephalitis, which she survived only thanks to the hospital. My father wasn't paralyzed by polio only thanks to Sister Kenny treatments. Both would have died, in Nature.
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Some diseases are so virulent they simply wipe out masses of individuals, if we leave them to Nature. They don't wipe out a few. They kill potentially millions.
To Nature this is fine. It never ends. It goes on like this forever.
Measles is one of these. It is the most contagious disease known. It kills, it renders deaf, it makes children susceptible to diseases they previously were immune to, etc. The only good thing about it is immunity is lasting once you have gotten an MMR shot.
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There is no "evolution" towards a "telos" of immunity to measles. It doesn't work like in science fiction. Nature would be perfectly happy if EVERY human were killed. But we have immune systems, so in fact many survive, BUT NOT ALL.
THAT is what an immune system achieves. That SOME children survive. But is that what you want for YOUR children? That SOME of them MIGHT survive?
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Now as for fevers and fever reducers, and antibiotics. When I was six I had scarlet fever. I also had tonsillitis a lot. (And I had mumps at age four.) They gave me penicillin and aspirin. They also wrapped me in cold, wet towels, and don't ask what that was like. It was awful. I got a lot of that treatment for high fevers.
But there are people who think you shouldn't use antibiotics or reduce a fever.
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Well, I think it IS true that you should let a LOW fever alone. My understanding is that a fever is a sort of jury rigged method by which the body activates certain immune mechanism. It is the high temperature that gets them going. If the temperature is not too high, no harm is done.
It is like if you were doing a strenuous activity.
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But if the temperature gets really high, due to a very virulent illness, we are getting into the territory of the system breaking down. This is your child in the process of dying, or making it through, but perhaps with brain damage.
Always remember: NATURE IS PERFECTLY HAPPY IF YOUR CHILD DIES.
If it is happy killing robin fledglings, it is just as happy killing human kiddies.
So use that acetaminophen/paracetamol. And use those antibiotics.▫️
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