MORE THOUGHTS ON HEALTH, VACCINATION
You are in a doctor’s office. Some of your clothing is removed. Your armor, your protection. We all are vulnerable as human beings, but more so when we are ill. And especially, when we are ill and are not sure what is wrong. It’s almost as if we have thrown off some of our armor by mistake and now what??
FEAR AND OUR HEALTH
Being ill or thinking about being ill is always accompanied by fear. It might be low-lying, like way in the back of the mind. But it’s there. Because fear is always part of life. And as we grow and learn, we realize that there are no guarantees. Some of us learn sooner than others. Those of us who have lost a parent early on. Those of us who have had to face surgery or broken legs or arms, went through a series of medical appointments for some condition—it comes home to us that it’s so much better to get out and ride a bike, read a book, sit around with a friend than going to see a doctor.
FEAR AND VACCINATION: ANDREW WAKEFIELD
Fear can be contagious, which is something I have written about before, related to the anti-vaxxer movement, the people who have decided that after reading a report from Dr. Andrew Wakefield.* That report proved to be false. Wakefield was paid to create the false research, write the report by a lawyer preparing a lawsuit against a vaccine manufacturer. The journalist that discovered the deceit was Brian Deer. The lawyer was Richard Barr who paid Wakefield $800,000 for his phony research. This same law firm gave ten million to doctors and scientists asking them to find a link between vaccination and autism. One million dollars went to Unigenetics Limited, the company that tested Wakefield’s samples. A pathologist, Kenneth Aitken, was paid $400,000 to argue that Great Britain should change its vaccination policy based on Wakefield’s research. And Dr. Marcel Kinsbourne, a neurologist, was paid $800,000 to support Wakefield’s hypothesis. (this information from researched footnotes in the text ON VACCINATION by Eula Biss)
AND WAKEFIELD’S IDEAS SPREAD...
This is all scary stuff that in the end has harmed many children. For anti-vaxxers believe Wakefield’s research: that there is a conspiracy behind vaccination, that the government is too powerful, that their children will get autism. They are having none of what many in my generation and beyond took as a matter of fact. Something that was part of childhood, and later part of having a child.
Anti-vaxxers have ripped off the medical protective shield of vaccination early on. They believe that some super-power can keep them and their children safe from serious childhood diseases like chicken pox, measles, mumps, rubella, HPV etc etc. And when they are up against the power of the government, they sometimes reveal that radical ideas and unsupported fears can go haywire.
TAKING THEIR BELIEFS TOO FAR…AND TO VIOLENCE
An anti-vaxxer physically confronted and shoved California State Senator Dr. Richard Pan who has authored bills tightening laws and school immunization requirements. In a video the attacker stated the Pan would be: “…hanged for treason, for assaulting children, for misrepresenting the truth” if he got what he deserved.
How does the initiation of violence ever protect anyone? It’s such an odd development in our modern world of medicine, that these parents have decided to avoid research and science, at the risk of harming their children and others, and in this case, possibly going to jail for assault. The word “crazy” comes to mind.
THE TWO-SIDED FEAR of HEALTH and HARM
In her well-researched book, On Immunity, Eula Biss traces our human fears concerning the care of the human body back to midwives. After reading Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English’s book, Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, Biss quotes from their introduction by historian John Demos. He observed that a quarter to a third of the women tried for witchcraft in colonial New England were known for their abilities as healers or midwives. Demos writes: “The underlying linkage here is obvious enough. The ability to heal and the ability to harm seemed intimately related.” AND AS BISS WRITES, they still do.
The irony of a doctor creating fear in medicine is not new. We all know that doctors are as good as how they practice, how they honor their oath to do no harm. There are those among their group that are not saints.
AN INTERVIEW WITH EULA BISS
In a recent NPR interview, Biss talked about research and reflected on it. When asked about splitting the difference between information and misinformation, Biss answered: On this great blog, Science-Based Medicine, one of the writers…pointed out that when you split the difference between information and misinformation, you still end up with misinformation. So I think there are situations where a middle ground is not desirable. Though I’m the kind of thinker who’s very drawn to compromises and to nuances, …the position that is sometimes seen as extreme — which is vaccinating a child fully and on time — I’ve come to believe is not an extreme position. I think that protecting children at the age where they’re most vulnerable against diseases that are highly contagious is prudent.
When asked if the medical community has done enough to counter misinformation, Biss answered: I think they’re working very hard and I think there are some great minds going at it. But I think that sometimes what the medical community is doing is too limited. And I don’t think that’s necessarily their fault. They’re often addressing medical questions. And I don’t think that this debate is always a medical debate — I think it’s actually often not a medical debate. I think it’s often a social debate. And I think that people’s resistance to vaccination isn’t going to disappear until we address some of the nonmedical reasons for that resistance and people’s discomfort and distrust of the government. That’s bigger than what most medical professionals can handle.
When asked about how distrust of government affects the way parents view vaccination, Biss replied: This isn’t the only country where you see that causing a problem. There are countries where it’s a much bigger problem, and those tend to be countries where the political situation is much worse than it is here. Nigeria and Pakistan are two countries that have had a lot of trouble with polio. And part of the reason is that there’s a lot of political unrest and people really distrust what the government is doing. That has an effect on people’s health and it has an effect on the health of children. And so, this is one more reason for us to be invested in good political systems, because it’s a public health concern.
When asked how to understand our current anti-vaccination movement, Biss replied: There are so many different reasons people don’t vaccinate that I’m not even sure it can be looked at as a cohesive movement. Some people have concerns that are really health-based, and some people are resisting capitalism when they resist vaccination. Some people are resisting what they feel is the corrupt pharmaceutical system and corrupt medical system. So there are all kinds of different angles here, and I do think I came to understand all of them better through this research. And I also came to understand my own reservations better.
FINALLY, when asked about making her own choices for her son, Biss said: I would prefer for my son to have as little medical care as possible, as little contact with the medical system as possible. I think vaccination is actually one way to try to help ensure that — making sure that he doesn’t get something like pneumonia that might mean a hospital stay, where things will be done to him that will make me uncomfortable or that he will be treated in a way that might feel excessive to me. I think the best way for me to keep him out of that system is to engage in this highly effective preventative medicine, vaccination.
*Dr. Andrew Jeremy Wakefield is a discredited former British doctor who became an anti-vaccine activist. He was a gastroenterologist until he was struck off the UK medical register for unethical behavior, misconduct, and dishonesty for authoring a fraudulent research paper that claimed a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism and bowel disease
Thanks to NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-s...
