Vaccinations − and Politics? Stick with science! Vaccination saves lives. I earlier posted on this site two essays on the importance of vaccinations in preventing, or attenuating, serious diseases. My first essay focused on Benjamin Franklin’s bitter regret that he had not “inoculated” his four-year-old son who died of small pox. (See that post here.)
My second post on vaccination compared the early lethal effects of Covid-19 in those vaccinated versus those who had not been vaccinated. The results favoring the vaccine were irrefutable. (See that post here.) Anyone who is aware of those convincing numbers and still refuses to be vaccinated, lives in a different world than I do.
I mention my two earlier posts because just yesterday the Journal of the American Medical Association, in its May 7, 2024 issue, published an article titled, Could “Empathetic Refutation” Help Clinicians Sway Vaccine Skeptics?
That article once more shifted my attention to vaccination.
But this time my mind wandered into unexpected territory, the sad field of politics. As I’ve lamented in this space a number of times, our two “major” candidates running for the highest office in the land are, in my opinion, incompetents of the highest order. But there is also a third presidential candidate, a man with a famous family name that I can’t recall at the moment. Sadly, this man also seems to be a bit loony. From what I’ve read, and heard, this man with the famous family name has expressed strong anti-vaccination views (I’m told he is making efforts to wiggle out of that mess).
The evidence for the superiority of vaccines over non-vaccination is overwhelming, yet surprisingly a significant fraction of our population seems convinced that vaccines are more dangerous than helpful. Where did this skepticism of vaccines come from?
This dangerous skepticism can be traced to a thoroughly discredited report that appeared in the British medical journal, Lancet, in 1998. Written by Andrew Wakefield and 12 others, that report has been called “perhaps the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years” (see here). The paper’s scientific limitations were clear when it appeared. Nonetheless, that fraudulent report set off a vaccine scare, even panic, that has not totally subsided even now. Pockets of fear remain even though Wakefield was found guilty of serious professional misconduct in 2010 and banned from practicing as a doctor in the UK.
Another factor inflaming fear of vaccines was the sensational reporting of Wakefield’s dishonest work by much of the media. (Does that surprise you?) To come back to that current JAMA article mentioned above, the one about helping clinicians sway vaccine skeptics by using “emphatic refutation,” if the above narrative doesn’t convince a skeptic, I can’t think of anything that will.
