Thanks for your humble and well thought out reply - it is a refreshing thing on BCT when users respond in an intelligent, rational manner (when so many users on here revert to fallacies and personal attacks).
There is a lot in your post which I will need some time to process, but it does seem as we are venturing into the philosophical/epistemological realms of evidence and its strengths and weaknesses.
I also don't spend much time on the "metaphysical hypotheses", my example was just to demonstrate the problems when we claim "the evidence is hard/impossible to obtain, therefore the hypothesis may have scientific merit". I realize the real life implications of that claim are far more complex, when we are discussing effects which are relatively well documented and follow the general laws of established physics, such as the effects of vaccines.
I just wish we could escape some of the pseudoscience related to the more controversial aspects of vaccines, eg the misinformation that Andrew Wakefield perpetuated and still is popular today among certain groups. I do think that Big Pharma should be more transparent in their research/deployment of drugs and vaccines, because they are certainly corrupt in many ways and making money is very high on their priority list.
A serious problem that should be addressed is certain pharmaceutical companies suppressing studies that claim their drug is ineffective: Case in point - studies that showed that Tamiflu was fairly inneffective were suppressed by Roche Pharmaceuticals, and governments around the world spent millions stockpiling a drug which in most cases is nearly useless! But I see that as a company being corrupt for monetary gain, dissimilar to a company planning to market a dnagerous drug/vaccine to depopulate/control the masses through physiological means.
However this doesn't mean that every drug or vaccine produced is necessarily dangerous or ineffective. We just need to be careful and attempt to find as much unbiased research as possible on drugs and vaccines (unbiased being the tricky one haha).
I'd differ with you on Wakefield. His defenses seem to hold up as best I can see. In particular his co-author had half-a-million to spend in court. His case was nearly identical and the court overturned the panels decisions, restored the guy's medical credentials, and lambasted the panel for gross negligence. Long story short, it looks to me a lot more like a case of trying to ruin a doctor/scientist who threatened the public health system's plans and/or the pharma industries profits. Most of the other authors of the infamous study ducked out and continued on to normal careers in the medical/industrial complex as I read things. That Wakefield's career trajectory differed is, if anything, a testament to his credibility as I see it.
I'm in complete agreement with the importance of making things transparent and removing the mechanisms which can lead to unscientific pressures. I, and I think most 'anti-vaxers' are not against vaccines at all. As long as they are not abused, and especially for profit motives, I don't have all that much against them. I simply want this problem to be resolved BEFORE they are forced upon the population. I don't see terrible epidemics in nations which use fewer vaccines than we do (which is nearly all of them) so I don't think there is an overriding need to vaccinate everyone for everything on public health grounds. Let's just get it right on the oversight front first.
One argument which is at least logically sustainable is that we (the government) needs the private sector to maintain a large capacity in order to meet surprise demand (epidemic, biological warfare, etc.) Because we are a supposedly 'capitalist democracy', we have to rely on the private sector, and in order to do that we need to give them product liability immunity and a lot of orders. I call bullshit. If it is that great a need, then the government itself should build and maintain the facilities in mothball state. I would much rather see my tax dollars go to this than funding jihadist to destabilize the Middle East.
As for corporate greed vs. genocidal depopulation (or modification), we could easily have both simultaneously. Or one which could be flipped to the other. Although it is arguable to some looking at the general state of health here stateside, we've not seen a genocidal program yet. My point of concern is that I don't trust some of these people (and very bad things could be accomplished with 99% of the _insiders_ not knowing what is going on) and I want there to be circuit breakers. Transparency and good fail-safe oversight which keeps up with the technology would be sufficient for me. Mandating a state-dictated vaccine regime is going the opposite direction.
Further, 'depopulation' is not the only threat, and this is particularly true as the pace of technology increases. CRISPR technology, nano-technology, etc, are bound to continue forward. I don't want some corp/gov bureaucrat deciding that it is best for the humanity under their charge to have their DNA be altered even if they have, or think they have a good and ethical reason to do so. Especially with the likes of Elon Musk gingerly floating the idea that people maybe should be fitted with a neural lace in order to interface with the hive mind more efficiently (and thus beat back the evil AI in some nebulous way or some weirdo shit like that.)
(The neural lace idea reminds me of yet another (weak) hypothesis about metallic compounds injected, ingested, etc. This one is not my own. The idea is that they could be used as building blocks for structures such as a neural lace.)