Information's right at our fingertips, but so is what you want to believe. It's the classic thing of someone Googling 'autism vaccines' - they'll find what they're looking for, depending on what they think. You'll find lots of people who are just bolstering what they already think, bolstering their cultural attitude.
Vaccines are safe, effective, and lifesaving.
Vaccines don't cause autism. Vaccines, instead, prevent disease. Vaccines have wiped out a score of formerly deadly childhood diseases. Vaccine skepticism has helped to bring some of those diseases back from near extinction.
When I was a child, there were not that many vaccines. I was vaccinated for polio. I actually got measles as a child. I got pertussis, whooping cough. I remember that very well.
There are a number of candidate vaccines that are in development for HIV/AIDS.
Testing two vaccines against different H1N1s at the same time has never been done.
Vaccines have played a fundamental role in eradicating terrible illnesses such as polio, diphtheria, and hepatitis. However, they bring a risk associated with side-effects that are usually temporary and surmountable... but, in very rare cases, can be as severe as getting the same disease you're trying to be immune to.
In poor countries, we still need better ways to measure the effectiveness of the many government workers providing health services. They are the crucial link bringing tools such as vaccines and education to the people who need them most. How well trained are they? Are they showing up to work?
Everybody who's a physician, who makes vaccines, who wants to find the cure for cancer. Everybody who wants to do any medical good for humankind got the passion for that before he or she was 10.
You have the right to kill me, but you don't have the right to judge me. That's life. There's nobility in that. There's focus. It's genuine. It's crystal and it's pure and it's available to everybody, so just shut your traps and put down your McDonalds, your vaccines, your Us Weekly, your TMZ and the rest of it.
