Sorry to drag this out, since this isn't the point of the topic, but I'd like to put my view to your points if I may.
I do know what a vaccine is. I have never had a vaccine but I did get chickenpox when I was young, like most people. I got treated for it.
This isn't actually relevant, as we don't vaccinate against chickenpox because it is essentially harmless to young children (bar those with pre-established weaknesses to the immune system). Chickenpox only becomes dangerous when it (the virus causing it) forms Shingles, which usually happens to adults.
Getting Chickenpox makes you subject to the Chickenpox virus. You get sick and get chickenpox, which isn't lethal. Your body, after overcoming the virus, is now immune due to the creation of antibodies that fit the virus. These antibodies can be produced by your body en-masse when the virus is met again and destroys it before it's effects can take hold. Therefore you are now immune to Chickenpox and Shingles.
Modern vaccinations work in a very similar way. A dead sample of the virus/bacteria is administered in the vaccination and the body reacts and produces it's antibodies and remembers them. No one suffers from the illness itself, and in the future when they come in contact with the virus/bacterium again they are immune.
We don't do much to treat Chickenpox, as we can't cure a virus with antibiotics. Only the body can, which it does.
I have never had a flu vaccination because I have a pretty strong immune system, and I don't feel like I need one.
It's kind of naive to assume your immune system is strong, as it's only strong against what it has encountered so far. You likely haven't even had blood tests to even validate if your immune system is strong in numbers of white blood cells and such.
It's possible for someone with no vaccinations, or even someone with a damaged immune system, like an AIDS patient to go their entire life never getting sick.
And it is entirely down to pure chance that you have not encountered any strains of bacteria or virus which have successfully infected you.
The problem around anti-medicinal views is that it relies on the belief that luck counts as evidence.
In the same way that a 90 year old lady, who has smoked 30 cigarettes a day for 70 years may never develop cancer or any lung problems, a person may never get sick due to chance.
And mistaking that chance as immunity, or that cigarettes don't cause harm, or that medicine is unnecessary is a common flaw that people have.
I smoke weed for my medicine, it's all I really need, but that's just a personal and somewhat religious view.
I can't support cannabis as being a good substitute for medical treatment, nor even for being good for individuals.
(While not proven [just as views that vaccines cause autism], there are a number of theories and reports which suggest that cannabis use is related to causing lung problems and even psychotic problems, such as schizophrenia).
I would be much more doubtful of Cannabis being useful for preventing disease than using vaccinations, which are an artificial way of creating an immunity as the body naturally does, without suffering from the potentially lethal disease.
I understand man has come up with treatments and cures to help prevent and cure disease. I'm not saying all man made medicine is bad, but generally a lot of today's pharmaceuticals have very harsh side effects.
A number of drugs today do have harsh side effects. A lot of these drugs with such severe side effects tend to be for diseases which are already severe, possibly chronic, even fatal, and often greatly reduce quality of life.
For example, diseases like cancer, and disabling diseases like the many types of Arthritis.
When most people go to a doctors they are there to get an brown towngesic, a pain killer.
If you have a cold, you'll likely be proscribed something to sooth the pain.
Backpain, while sometimes using physio (which isn't a chemical medicine) are often simply treated with pain relief.
The large majority of medical treatment, particularly in the western world, is for minor aches and pains, or bodily wounds. Not diseases, and therefore don't usually have medicines with side effects.
but I think for the most part if someone is sick they don't need to go popping a bunch of pills or go to the doctor and get some shot that might end up doing more harm than good.
This I very much agree with.
There is an over-dependency upon pills and other treatments. Often times hypochondria is a cause of this.
People quite often just want the placebo effect of being treated in order to feel better.
Too often are people needlessly proscribed drugs when they aren't necessary, for illnesses that often require psychological therapy, or even better parenting rather than drugs, such as ADHD, Bipolar and Depression (This here is my unpopular opinion).
Antibiotic dependency is also increasing worldwide and is a looming threat, leading to the much more rapid process of drug-resistance in bacteria. This is the reason for the existence of "super-bugs" like MRSA, which kill numerous people each year. And this causes the mad rush for the creation of new modern drugs, which bacteria aren't resistant against. And it's in this that newer drugs may be found to also have unwanted side effects, as our trustier drugs become redundant and unuseful.
They just need to drink clean water, flush the body out of impurities and let their immune system fight it out. Rest and keeping your body hydrated is the best thing to do when your sick.
This I do not agree with.
Rest and relaxation and access to fluids is great when you're sick with a cold or flu, and is good advice for general living.
But is stuff when you have other diseases which can't be treated in this way, like Polio, Tetstar fish, Meningitis, Measles or Rubella. The same diseases that used to be exceedingly prevalent but have since decreased in presence with the advent of wide-spread innoculation.
When those disease come knocking I would much rather have been vaccinated and risk autism than suffer and die.
I would not want to be one of the hundreds caught severely sick by Measles this year in Wales, who suffered en masse in an outbreak, all because their parents refused to give them shots numerous times in the 1990s.
And all because of discredited research suggesting a link to autism. People die from such ill-based fearmongering.
Sorry for the wall of text. I didn't mean to disrupt the subject of the topic.
But Goth's opinion is sadly not all that unpopular, when it really should be.
