I’m on a few mailing lists to do with education, parenting and the like. Occasionally my opinions on those matters diverge with my fellow participants. Healthy diversity of opinion. All in favour of that. Every now and then, though, I receive an email telling me not to immunise my child – and I kick.
The message I received was entitled Fw: No 1051. VACCINE MAKER ADMITS NZ MENINGOCCAL VACCINE MAY NOT WORK AND COULD BE DANGEROUS. Capitals were all included in the title, and the message came with a ringing personal endorsement of the message and its originating website. It also came with the following quote:
The medical authorities keep lying. Vaccination has been a disaster on the immune system. It actually causes a lot of illnesses. We are actually changing our genetic code through vaccination…100 years from now we will know that the biggest crime against humanity was vaccines.
To which my response was as follows:
You mean, apart from the whole 6 million Jews thing…? Or Rwanda? Some sense of proportion, please.
I’m sorry – but I just don’t buy it. I do not believe that it would have been better for humanity as a whole to refuse vaccination of all kinds. To discover a method of disease prevention, and then decide not to administer it. It just doesn’t sound like sense to me.
You know what happens when you withhold medical treatment? Millions of people die. Not some. Not perhaps. They die. I can’t see preventing that as a crime against humanity.
Causing it, perhaps, could be seen as one. My vote for a crime against humanity would be the sanctions against Iraq between 1990 and 2003, which were responsible for the deaths of 2 million Iraqi children. This was partly due to starvation, but also largely because diseases that had all but been eradicated elsewhere on the planet were not inoculated against. Medical treatment and immunisation was not widely available and many, many children died (I’m not trying to advocate a political position here, just pointing out that withholding immunisation carries far worse consequences than those that MAY occur as a result of those immunisations).
While it’s true that there has been a tendency to overmedicate in the West in recent years – especially in the area of antibiotics (a tendency that is thankfully on the decline), general scaremongering and moral panic about vaccinations have now reached an absurd level and run counter to simple logic and historical evidence.
This line of logic would also have us not wear seatbelts because they have been known to cause bruising. It plays on the natural fears and concerns of parents who wish the best for their children. It depends on the ignoring of numerous obvious and demonstrable facts.
Vaccines regularly prevent disease. Far more disease, in fact, than they have ever contributed to. Polio seems far less widespread now than it did, say, fifty years ago. So does diptheria. And whooping cough. And tetanus. And tuberculosis.
Successful vaccinations depend on a critical mass of children being immunised so that there is little or no chance for the illness to take hold and spread. A reasonably small percentage of children without protection from the diseases is enough to make the exercise more or less futile, and the disease is left to proliferate. Three children refusing the vaccines in a class of 30 means that the disease is virtually guaranteed to continue in that community. One child refusing means it more than likely gets eradicated.
The incidence of whooping cough and other preventable diseases in poorer socio-economic areas of South Auckland are directly attributable to lower immunisation numbers. I just don’t think that’s the right approach.
We may not be 100% certain that a particular vaccine will be 100% successful at preventing meningitis. We can be 100% certain that NOT immunising will offer exactly NO protection.
We can also be 100% certain that meningitis kills kids. I’m far more frightened of a proven killer than a suspected side effect.
I believe that the drug companies are pretty much the embodiment of all that is evil, greedy and manipulative in the world. However, I also believe that every medical professional I have ever met wishes to do the most good for my child that they can possibly do. I have had issues with one or two of them, but not because of their intentions. I have found a doctor I am comfortable with, and one whose medical opinion I value over my own, and over anything I happen to receive in my email.
By all means take the caution about immunisation seriously – but please, unless you happen to be a doctor, also ask the advice of someone you trust who knows more about medicine and the immune system than you do.
No disrespect intended, (name of list member). Just disagreeing.
Cheers,
Dubber
