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What the Papers Don't Say About Vaccines
jamie tips an article in The Guardian's "Bad Science" column which highlights recent media coverage of the MMR vaccine. A story circulated in the past week about the death of a young child, which the parents blamed on the vaccine. When the coroner later found that it had nothing to do with the child's death, there was a followup in only one of the six papers who had covered the story.
"Does it stop there? No. Amateur physicians have long enjoyed speculating that MMR and other vaccinations are somehow 'harmful to the immune system' and responsible for the rise in conditions such as asthma and hay fever. Doubtless they must have been waiting some time for evidence to appear. ... Measles cases are rising. Middle class parents are not to blame, even if they do lack rhetorical panache when you try to have a discussion with them about it. They have been systematically and vigorously misled by the media, the people with access to all the information, who still choose, collectively, between themselves, so robustly that it might almost be a conspiracy, to give you only half the facts."
And I can reference several studies that conclude smoking has no negative side effects.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
If you blindly followed the vaccination recommendations that existed when my first son was born, and the doctors happened to use vaccinations that were preserved with compounds containing mercury (which was common as it saved the doctor money to buy in bulk), you would have give your child unsafe levels of mercury. The same people that defined the levels of mercury considered unsafe were telling you to give your kids the vaccinations that resulted in this unsafe level. Once this was discovered the government quickly discouraged the use of this preservative agent, but it is still completely legal. Most doctors were then made aware of the problem and asked to dispose of the vaccinations, but they didn't have to. They didn't want to admit to fault, but at the same time they created a government fund to help alleviate the medical complications of people who's children were affected. As a parent, I take umbrage to the attitudes that some have for parents that choose not to blindly follow the counsel of those whose motives might be suspect. As others have pointed out, your local doctor is most likely not a specialist and can only pass along his education, which he has received from the drug companies. Japan, after much research decided to not give infants vaccinations until the age of 2. They subsequently became the nation with the lowest infant mortality in the world. After continuing their research, they changed their policy recently to start administering vaccination earlier in life, but still none at birth. This is just an example of some of the information that a parent might me able to obtain on the internet. My family has decided that we will do vaccinations, but not on the schedule recommended to us by our physicians. My wife is blessed to be able to stay at home, so we don't have our kids exposed to daycare etc. Our chance for exposure is greatly reduced during their first few years of life so we wait until they are a little older to receive the vaccinations. Everyone's situation is different. If it ain't broke, don't fix it (and prevention should always be measured in terms of risk). It scares me when people (like John Edwards on his campaign trail) start talking about putting parents in jail that don't vaccinate their children when told to do so.