>>>3rd world countries with generally poor sanitation and basic health care.
>>>
>>>I know you are a supporter of vaccination. I'd say that the jury is still out on the benefits of it to us as a species.
>>
>>Yeah, I sure miss the good old days of my early youth when polio was a option for all kids and we didn't have to be subjected to horrors of Salk Oral Vaccine.
>>
>>And smallpox gave my grandfather's generation such "character" in their features ...
>
>I remember standing in line in school to receive the german measles vaccine in the arm and the oral polio as well (after a couple of weeks of my parents stressing over whether it was safe or to take the risk or was the illness riskier.....)

In Thailand and Laos I saw kids die from malaria and hemorrhagic fever. It isn't pretty. And it is for the most part preventable. (though Friends of Gaia of various stripes shut down a lot of the eradication programs leading to a resurgence of both after what had been a pretty successful eradication program and so while it made people feel warm and fuzzy in Berkeley and Portland it made people feel alternately chilly and feverish in the third world c.f. T.S Elliot re half the harm in the world ... )

As far as I know the study in Lancet or whatever it was by the UK doctor that started the whole Jennie McCarthy vaccination freakout has been completely discredited and the Dr. lost his license.

Only prophylactic treatment I ever questioned was right before I was sent to very very rural Turkey/Syria etc and they gave me three in the stomach with a very big needle for rabies. I asked if that meant if I was bit I was safe, they said no, cut off the animal's head, pack it in ice and get it to Ankara and we'll give you the 13 shots that may save you while we examine it.

I guess I was comforted knowing that in that area if a donkey or something bit me and I cut off its head there was a better than even chance the owner would cut off my head and rabies ( and the 13 shots ) would be moot.