The specific points your relative is making are very tired old anti-vaxxer arguments, not even interesting. I would guess that the confusion stems from this person being a true believer arguing with passion and convincing you. It is pretty simple, you don't need to win this argument with them. Trust the entire scientific community and your intellectual role models and move on. You are not going to win here. For each specific point you chase down the truth to, they will throw three more out when to talk to them again and if they can't think of any more, they will cycle back to points already covered. Or move on to talking about chemtrails. Of course if this issue interests you for its own sake, well
Thimerosal - Phased out of vaccines (except seasonal flu) around 2001, contained ethylmercury which is not a neurotoxins like methylmercury https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Thiomersal
Aluminum - Extremely common element present in almost all our food, the dosage in a vaccine is comparatively tiny. https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/health/should-we-worry-about-metals-vaccines
How about a nice article from 2008 at science based medicine. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/toxic-myths-about-vaccines/
Is the vaccination schedule to quick? Hmm... science based medicine again. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/too-many-too-soon-no/
Vaccine requirements to attend public school is an affront to freedom? The irrational choices of anti-vaxxers can kill babies to young to get vaccinated, kill the immune compromised, spread disease in the general population. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/11/29/why-small-groups-vaccine-refusers-can-make-large-groups-people-sick/
As far as the nephew story goes, I assume you understand the value of anecdotal evidence.
ok, thanks. This makes sense. Thanks for the help.
I need help. Pretty much the entire scientific community and everyone I trust as an intellectual role model has said that vaccines are an almost entirely good thing, yet a close member of my family has made a somewhat convincing argument they are dangerous, and I’m terribly confused. I’ve been trying to figure this issue out for months now, and I just can’t. I’ve seen some (a lot of) dark side epistemology used by the more… out there antivaxers (i.e. homeopathy and essential oil people), but although I have a creeping sense some of what my family member is saying is bullshit, I’m still really confused overall, and some of the stuff they are saying seems reasonable, like family history screening.
They also say some stuff I’m pretty sure is total bullshit, like thimerosal levels in vaccines being a problem, or aluminum content.
I don’t think vaccines are linked to autism, and I don’t think the relative in question does either.
In addition, a very young nephew of mine (with a medium degree of confidence as to whether this story was overinflated by the family member) fell ill with severe seizures and almost died less than 24 hours after vaccination.
Can anyone help me sort out this problem?
I’m honestly confused and I think I might be being programmed by my relative.
Edit: Thanks to everyone here. I now realize that what my relative was saying (not my uncle lol) is total bullshit, not just mostly bullshit. They've been hit by a bad belief, and while I don't think I'll be able to talk them out of it, I'll ignore their rants about it in the future.
Thanks again,
-Golden.