Mandatory Vaccinations

The notion that newborns cannot handle vaccines is a completely wrong one, and is often peddled by anti-vaccinationists. Their immune systems are already handling a massive load starting at birth. First, its the mother's faecal bacteria and fungi, the vaginal flora, the bacteria and fungi on the mother's skin, everything in the hospital/birthing centre. The antigenic dose of the whole environment is MASSIVE compared to the tiny antigen dose of vaccinations. If newborns could not handle the tiny dose of vaccines, they wouldn't survive being born, let alone being born in an environment less clean than a hospital. There's a reason paediatric vaccines exist, too. The doses are adjusted for infants, and the small doses are repeated to give protection, in many cases very similar to natural immunity through exposure, but without all the risk. Not all vaccines last forever - the pertussis/whooping cough vaccine needs to be boosted about every ten years, for example. Natural immunity from pertussis lasts about as long. That's right, just because you've had pertussis, that doesn't mean you're immune. This disease is a baby killer, and it kills in a really awful, painful way. Adults usually escape without too much trouble other than serious discomfort, but my girlfriend contracted the disease when she was 18 and coughed for five months straight, and her lungs took a hard hit. She's now asthmatic and will remain so for the rest of her life.

Also, on the topic of thiomersal. The Resident Conspiracy Theorist is wrong here, again. A lot of vaccines have never contained thiomersal at all. No live-virus vaccines ever had thiomersal, for example, because that'd kill the virus and it wouldn't work. The MMR shot, targeted by Wakefield the fraudster, is one of those. The reason thiomersal was added in vaccines in the first place was because back in the day single-dose vials were rare and expensive. With a multi-dose vial, the potential for contamination is huge, and one such incident resulted in several children dying of a serious bacterial infection. Thiomersal would kill off the bacteria and make the vaccines safe to use. Nowadays, pretty much every vaccine except a few flu vaccines are made in single-dose vials, and therefore the companies don't spend money on unnecessary preservatives. (Vaccines actually don't make much money, contrary to what a lot of conspiracy theorists claim. Medical companies would make a lot more money if people got sick and had to be treated.) The trace amounts of thiomersal found in some vaccines is because some of the ingredients in production may be preserved. Thiomersal is also quite safe (it has gotten an undeservedly bad rep), and used to be used in contact lens solutions until it was discovered that some people are allergic and would get very red, itchy eyes, so now most companies have switched to other preservatives.

The amount of mercury, and note that this is NOT elemental mercury or methyl mercury which is the danger of fish, in thiomersal-preserved products is tiny. Babies absolutely can process these tiny amounts, and thank goodness for that, because they are exposed to a lot more mercury just from living in a city with medium levels of pollution (especially if you live in the vicinity of a crematorium), and even more if they ever should eat some fish. Have you ever heard of a kid got killed because the poor thing ate a fish? Eh. Even teething powders used to contain a Pineappleload of mercury. Not that it was good for the children who got a lot, but we're talking drastically different orders of magnitude here.

TL;DR:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert...paul-offit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86Iw0qrRa...ture=feedu
What is this I don't even.