Vaccines: opinions are not facts

[SheilaT]

11. I keep on looking at the title of this thread

and I want to say, WHAT??? My opinion isn't as good as a fact??

Anyway, in response to something someone else has posted, to me one of the most amazing things about our immune system is that we are born with some huge number of built-in immune responses to all sorts of things, which is why those born without those built-in immune responses (boy in the bubble anyone?) aren't going to live very long. Also, it's why we are for the most part naturally resistant to all sorts of things.

Which leads me to speculate on such ideas as, absent the development of vaccines, would humans many centuries in the future have been born immune to things like small pox, polio, and so on? Just a speculation, and not intended to suggest that vaccines against these diseases aren't A Very Good Idea.

I'm also led to think and speculate about auto-immune disorders, which are generally though of as the immune system Behaving Very Badly. (My two sons both have alopecia areata, an auto-immune disorder which causes hair loss, so I know a little about such things.) I really wish there were some way to find out about auto-immune disorders in the distant past. I wonder if a different incidence of them would give us clues about modern immune systems.