User talk:Ferrierd

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[edit] Thanks

Thanks for catching my punctuation errors and helping me out.

--Mike Searson 17:40, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] vaccine

The source of a word (etymology) does not determine that word's definition. Meanings of words change over time. Your understanding of the word "vaccine" is incorrect. WAS 4.250 10:58, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] vaccination vs inoculation

TO WAS 4.250 FROM David F 18:58, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

...Err, I understand the meaning of "vaccine," and while editing the article, I was careful not to change the word "vaccine."

I changed "vaccination" to "inoculation" and made a few wording changes to improve clarity and readability.

Vaccination properly means "to confer an immunity to smallpox by puncturing the skin," and its meaning has not changed since the coining of the term. In the article, "vaccination" was used only once per this current OED primary definition, in a reference to smallpox. I did not change that reference.

I changed almost all other occurrences of "vaccination" to "inoculation," except where "vaccination" was a link or part of a link to another Wiki article.

The correct term for the medical procedure sometimes incorrectly called "vaccination" is "inoculation." The correct use of "vaccination" as a medical term of art relates only to a specific medical procedure that bears no resemblance to inoculation. At http://www.bt.cdc.gov/training/smallpoxvaccine/reactions/vac_method.html you can see photos of how a vaccination is done. Compare what you see there with what you have experienced when getting an inoculation.

When doing the edit to replace vaccination with innoculation, I made some minor grammar and readability changes. The following well-meant attempt to revert "inoculation" to "vaccination" also removed all those improvements to the text. To see the grammar and readability changes, please see the change logs for the version I worked on, the previous (original) version, or the next (reverted) version.

It took me a long time to "fix" this article. Even if the correct word for "inoculation" is "vaccination" (with which I don't agree or I wouldn't have made the change), a suggestion on Wiki Help:Reverting is to discuss a matter of concern before reverting: "A nice thing to do is to drop the note on the Talk page first, and then revert, rather than the other way round."

Even if we two agree on inoculation/vaccination changes, mass reverting is not called for. A person who believes this article should be worded differently needs to change each occurrence of inoculation/vaccination separately.

[edit] OED

Some of these changes do improve the article, however this archaic use of the term vaccination is not a good reason to change this throughout an article on vaccines. I checked the OED and it gives two meanings of this term, the more modern one is:

Vaccination - The inoculation of an individual with any vaccine in order to induce or increase immunity. link

To see the modern use of this term, search for "vaccination" in PubMed, it returns over 75,000 papers that use this word. I'll revert the "vaccination" changes, but the others are a definite improvement. Thank you. TimVickers 21:50, 7 June 2007 (UTC)