it means that in the long run the disease would have disappeared anyway.

I think there is some truth to that. The Europeans brought diseases to the new world that were previously unknown. Up to 90% of the natives died. The 10% that didn't die reproduced and now have natural resistance to things like mumps, measles and smallpox. Sometime in the 1980s the native population again reached its pre-conquest peak, not because of vaccination but because of natural selection. The black plagues is another example: 75% population collapse and the disease fell back to manageable levels long before any sort of vaccine was available. Vaccination may give the appearance of accelerating disease elimination but in fact it allows people who would have died to reproduce and pass on those genes. If there ever comes a time when vaccinations are not available, the ensuing plague will be just as bad or worse than the plagues of the past.

On the other side of the equation is the fact that antibiotics, vaccinations and fossil fuel resources have given us a gigantic population boost in just the last 30 years: many more mouths to feed, bodies to clothe in need of places to live. In biology any untoward population bloom always re-balances with a population crash. This is unprecedented with humanity and we might possibly be able to stabilize it without too much misery, but the reality of the situation is that we cannot continue overpopulating at the present rate without disastrous results.

The ego can certainly hijack the altruistic brain circuits and I think that exalting altruism too much can lead people to stop thinking clearly, to do stupid things because they feel to do otherwise would be too cruel instead of appropriate. One must look at long-term consequences rather than short term solutions. In everything, there needs to be balance.

I'm not trying to be mean but harshness comes with the territory. I'm trying to look at this from an anylitical stance. It seems true to me and quite often truth hurts.

I've said this before. Pain is not something to be avoided but something to investigate because it's an indication that something is amiss. I had a toothache one time in Mexico. I didn't want to deal with it until I got home so I went to the pharmacy and bought codeine. Every time that tooth started hurting I'd pop a pill. One morning I woke up and discovered a big hole in my mouth next to the painful tooth. At that point I went to a Mexican dentist. He said that the tooth had abscessed and rotted through the bone into my mouth. He shook his head and told me I was very lucky, that it just as easily could have formed that path into my cranial vault and infected my brain, killing me. It's not good to ignore pain.