Who talked about ostracism? Oh, that was you.
I also don't quite get it how you can mix up "screening for a disease" with "deny it's existence", isn't that the complete opposite?
So who is talking about denying Ebola's existence - or if not that not doing anything about it? Oh, you again.

100 years ago, screening for diseases was normal procedure for immigration in pretty much every country - especially if that disease was contagious.

Yes that was before political correctness.

Today we screen only for those "dangerous" soda bottles and creams that people like you think can be used to hijack a plane.
But AIDS, Ebola, Thyphus? No problem, who cares that thousands or even millions will die of it?

... let all ebola-infected people into Western countries, do not - ever - screen anybody for it (that would be racist), create a ribbon campaign for feeling good and kill the jobs of everybody who dares to disagree on that.

It worked great with AIDS, why shouldn't it work with Ebola?

The difference is that the Soyus does not have nearly as much launch delays as the Space Shuttle. The weather could delay a Space Shuttle start for months. That is also part of reliability - a launcher is worthless if you can't use it because the weather is not perfect.

Only SOME men have multiple partners. Quite a lot Africans (arguably most of them) can never afford a woman or even a prostitute.

And yes, studies have already confirmed that the AIDS rates are higher for high-income African males than poor ones.

Forever, because terraforming Mars makes no sense.

Just think about it: Here on Earth, we put more and more plants under greenhouse because greenhouses are simply better for plant growth than the natural environment.

Any terraforming of Mars would not only take almost forever but would result in an Antarctica-like climate were you would still need greenhouses anyway. It just makes much more sense to skip the terraforming-part altogether and just use greenhouses without any terraforming.

So a vaccine that failed the test stops being a vaccine? That is news for me. Also we do not live in a static world - yesteryear's vaccine might be ineffective to today's viruses. Also what about vaccines that have been approved in some countries and rejected in others?

Also this does not distinguish between the "no-brainer" vaccines where the benefits clearly outweigh the risks and costs and the vaccines that are just barely beneficial.

So basically the question is completely wrong and should instead be: "Do you believe that the testing procedures of vaccines are safe and effective."

In that case I would also say that this is doubtful.

That is a nonsense argument and you know it.

If the human body is influenced by evolution, then so is the human brain, simply because the brain is part of the body.

When you propose that for some reason all brains are functionally the same and are not influenced by genes, then the burden on proof is on you.

In other words you agree with your TV-set that the human body is formed by evolution (= genes), but the human brain is not influenced by evolution?

That kind of proves benzapp's point completely.

Interesting question. The TV tells that evolution exists but race differences (especially in morality, behaviour and intelligence) don't exist. But evolution requires race differences - what now?

Also the TV admits that race differences exists for things that are too obvious to deny (like appearance, body size, blood pressure, testosterone levels, etc.) but deny any differences for things that may have been tested and confirmed countless times but are touching on the subject of what makes us human and what distinguishes us from animals (intelligence, behavior, morality, etc.). Essentially the TV claims that evolution works on the human body, but not on the human brain.

People who are raised by the TV (and there are a lot of those) actually believe these contradictions, it is what Orwell called "doublethink".

This "let's throw all vaccines into one giant pot and treat them as if they were the same thing" - opinion is the main reason why I am increasingly sceptic.

Just because SOME vaccines are safe and effective, how does this make them ALL safe? It is a fact of life that some diseases can be treated well with vaccines and some not at all.

The question about safety has to be answered for each vaccine individually (and also btw for each surgery).

To proclaim that "vaccines are safer than surgeries" - what complete and utter nonsense is that? What vaccine can cure a broken leg? What surgery can cure an infection?

"Only about half of the people accepted that vaccines are safe and effective, with 15 percent doubting."

Well that is kind of a loaded question, because every vaccine is different.

SOME vaccines are safe and effective, SOME are safe and not effective (i.e. a placebo, the drug companies most favorite kind of drug), SOME come with a greater risk than the disease itself.

To give the pharmaceutical industry a blank cheque by believing that ALL vaccines are safe and effective is just as stupid as proclaiming that "all drugs are safe and effective".

Every vaccine is different and the safeness and effectiveness is completely undefined for vaccines in general.

I had a similar problem (although in my case they fixed it remarkably fast - in a few days) and that's exactly why I like to have both the stable and slow moving OpenOffice along with the fast moving LibreOffice.

Yeah right, there also were too many PC-makers out there...

It is a great thing that I can have both LibreOffice and OpenOffice installed on my PC without them knowing from each other so that when LO crashes on a document (which did happen here) I can still use OO as a backup.

Wrong, both have their place:

OpenOffice is the more stable "enterprise-ready" version that won't change too much.

LibreOffice is the bleeding-edge version that incorporates new features (SVG-support, yay!) but sometimes also introduces new bugs. They also seem to think that users should update every couple of months.

And the best feature of them all:

You cannot easily install two versions of either OpenOffice or LibreOffice, you can however install OpenOffice along LibreOffice, so you can have the best of both worlds.

Yeah, but Russia is not burdened by affirmative action, so that makes it about even.