I acknowledge that the improvements to our water supplies had a more important effect than immunisation for some diseases - polio is enteric so that would make perfect sense. Though as far as my home town is concerned, nothing happened to the water supply over the 1950s, so it is immunisation or a statistical blip. I'm not sure why improvements in the water supply should affect smallpox, but then we've had smallpox vaccination for much longer than the others.
Some of these diseases may have dropped off in frequency and virulence all by themselves, as well - scarlet fever, for instance, was a killer in my mother's childhood, had become much milder by mine (a close friend had it and was not that seriously ill, though he went pink and peeled like a snake) and is both rare and mild now.
Actually, most people would consider that my family add weight to *your* argument, because my younger son has Asperger's Syndrome. However, we noticed that he was different from his older brother literally right from birth, and we detected no change at all after his immunisations. He's mildly enough affected that twenty years ago he would just have been looked upon as a little odd - I can spot the characters with Asperger's all the way through popular children's literature.
I too had the standard diseases - measles, mumps, chicken-pox and rubella, with no long-term ill effects, though I wouldn't wish measles on anyone - I can still remember the days of grinding earache. A friend of mine, however, lost his hearing (he has since married someone who lost hers because of meningitis - they have a hearing daughter who also fluent in BSL and is extremely naughty, but that's another thing). Rubella was great - two weeks off school in May when I felt fine!
However, in the words (incorrectly, I think) attributed to Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
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Some of these diseases may have dropped off in frequency and virulence all by themselves, as well - scarlet fever, for instance, was a killer in my mother's childhood, had become much milder by mine (a close friend had it and was not that seriously ill, though he went pink and peeled like a snake) and is both rare and mild now.
Actually, most people would consider that my family add weight to *your* argument, because my younger son has Asperger's Syndrome. However, we noticed that he was different from his older brother literally right from birth, and we detected no change at all after his immunisations. He's mildly enough affected that twenty years ago he would just have been looked upon as a little odd - I can spot the characters with Asperger's all the way through popular children's literature.
I too had the standard diseases - measles, mumps, chicken-pox and rubella, with no long-term ill effects, though I wouldn't wish measles on anyone - I can still remember the days of grinding earache. A friend of mine, however, lost his hearing (he has since married someone who lost hers because of meningitis - they have a hearing daughter who also fluent in BSL and is extremely naughty, but that's another thing). Rubella was great - two weeks off school in May when I felt fine!
However, in the words (incorrectly, I think) attributed to Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."