The vaccination issue is a hot topic of debate these days and rightly so. The health and wellbeing of ourselves and our loved ones is at stake. Lots of information and hyperbole are being flung back and forth but are we getting information upon which one can base a reasoned decision or are there other motives in play?
With so much being written and spoken about, is it even possible to find the facts amongst the chafe?
The answers you seek are out there but you’re going to have to work for them.
Truth exists in the mind of the beholder, so our best efforts need to go towards educating ourselves in this complex issue.
Vaccines have a long history of theoretical success. Dating back to Edward Jenner, causal relationships between vaccination and the decline of disease have been tenuous because the introduction of a vaccine coincided with other improvements in the environment. Sanitation and other modern advances in technology can also share credit with disease declines.
The problem is that we have never gone back to figure out which one or both brought about the disease reduction. Reason being that to properly study, some people would receive the treatment and others would be denied. This moral dilemma means that we have to extrapolate theories from events without really proving them.
Vaccines, as the drugs they are, produce a certain percentage of side effects. All drugs do this. Medical science generally adjusts the drug administration such that side effects are minimized. So the drug consuming public become experimental subjects in the fine-tuning of a drug’s testing.
In the debate over vaccination, the two sides have become so polarized in recent years that a meaningful dialogue is being stopped by both sides. Both are employing emotionally charged arguments, supported by a lot of questionable scientific evidence, in an attempt to win this argument.
There is no winning this argument. What we is need reliable information to critically evaluate and make our informed decision.
Vaccines are a tool that society uses to benefit the greatest number of its members. Unfortunately financially powerful interests have hijacked the conversation. As lawyers have been introduced to further the claims of the participants, the arguments have changed to “us or them”. Prior to this legal influence, vaccination was a personal matter that individuals took up with their physicians.
So if one group used legal representation, the other side decided to use the same tool. So now we have this glorious legal debate over what was once a personal decision.
As mentioned before, there is faulty reasoning and poor supporting evidence on both sides. Those in support of vaccines are now representing unvaccinated children as vectors of disease and those against say that all vaccines are bad. Both are wrong.
What doesn’t seem to be examined in all of this is the vaccine performance in all of this.
The CDC has dramatically changed the vaccinations schedule in recent years so that more vaccines are given ever earlier in life. Could it be the timing and number of vaccines that produce the undesired side effects?
In the much publicized outbreaks of disease (Measles, Pertussis, and Influenza), should we not be looking at the efficacy of the vaccine, since vaccinated individuals are developing the disease when exposed, rather than attacking unvaccinated individuals?
Instead of using scientific research only to support an agenda, how about Science that gives us impartial evidence without regard to which side its data supports?
If we keep damning the other guy for holding an opposing view, we have no middle ground upon which to meet. The legal combatants want a “victory” but what the rest of us need is some levelheaded thinking. Step back from the fearmongering and evaluate what works best.
When you hold in mind the good of all involved during decision-making, the group cannot help but benefit from your intent.
“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
― Marie Curie
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