Dr Virus on wonderful vaccines

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http://www.babycenter.com/bbs/3353/thread354/message3.html

Message From: drvirus Date: 04/19/00

Dear mebethel,

God bless you. It is great to talk to a real person

above all of the shrill din! We have grown to be such a

" me first " society that it is truly scary. The great

influx of alleged " vaccine reactions " is utterly

predictable in our overly suspicious, underinformed and

litigious world. Take the underlying facts:

1. Bad things happen to " normal " kids. This things

can be terribly tragic but if you have enough kids,

some

are going to get febrile seizures, some will become

autistic, some will die of SIDS. These problems have

been going on forever, and sadly some of them will

probably never be completely solved. Autism, for

example, is rare and extremely mysterious. The only

case

I ever saw was in a kid who had not been vaccinated!

This was back at s Hopkins when I was a medical

student.

2. Just about every kid gets vaccinated, at multiple

times in infancy and childhood. This is an

" intervention " that can be traumatic- a needlestick! It

creates a target that can easily be linked by temporal

association to just about anything bad that happens to

children. Even if they fall and break their arm a month

after a vaccine, some will blame the vaccine! Everyone

" knows " that their child was destined to be completely

normal forever, so it must be the vaccine.

3. If you are disposed to do so, you can see conspiracy

and evil everywhere. Irresponsible people in the media

and politicians have played this to no end. People who

don't understand how disease associations are

scientifically established, using populations,

statistics, and controlled trials, are easily swayed by

sad stories. Plaintiffs have used such emotional plays

to sway well-meaning juries to award big dollars to

people who spilled coffee on themselves, people who

rolled over their cars at high speed, people who had

breast implants and years later got sick.

Unfortunately,

the same technique has been used to convince people

about spurious associations: " my child died 2 months

after getting a vaccine " !

I see massive good done by vaccines in the past and

present, and a world full of people who never saw

smallpox sweep through towns and kill 20% of the kids.

The smallpox vaccine was not as safe as what we have

now, but almost nothing could match smallpox disease

for

sheer devastation. While I am generally a positive

person, it concerns me when people gamble with their

children. I believe that an adult can drive without a

seatbelt. I get mad when they take the seatbelt off

their kid and create smokescreen arguments like " my

friend had a big accident and would have died had he

been wearing a seatbelt. " Darwin's selection can and

does act on adults who choose to smoke, drive fast, or

bungee jump. But where do they get off using their kids

to prove some political point? To convince other

parents

to gamble with their childrens' lives?

Despite the hatred, suspicion, egocentricity, and

constant stream of negativity spewing forth from the

vocal few on this list, people with AIDS, people at

risk

for AIDS, are dying for something that will fight their

disease or prevent new infections. Subsaharan Africa,

India, Thailand would kill for an effective HIV vaccine.

In my work I have traveled throughout the world in some

of the most devastatingly poor countries. Despite what

the paternalistic Americans on this group say, I have

never been to a place, no matter how poor, where people

are stupid and would willingly turn down something that

would stop the ravages of measles. They just lack the

resources to get the vaccine to the people. Parents

around the world know what they want- effective

vaccines

so they can stop watching their children die. It is in

our egocentric, " my child was destined to be perfect

forever " society that people seize on spurious

association and try to use them to convince themselves

and others to put their children at risk. This is

sickening.

We will, and must be positive and work to keep children

as healthy and happy as possible. We must develop a

vaccine for HIV, for HCV, and for tuberculosis. We must

make a better influenza A vaccine. We will use the

powers of science to tell what is real and what is

chance. Nothing less than the best science will do.

Emotional rants, of the kind that sway juries, must not

take the place of scientific evidence. And last but by

no means least, science education must no longer be a

tool for the elite, it must go to everyone. We must

support science education in our public schools.

drvirus

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Sheri Nakken, R.N., MA wwithin@...

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