The New York Post ran a story yesterday about the confusion concerning the safety of childhood vaccinations. According to the article:
"The Sunday Times in London reported last week on confidential medical documents and interviews establishing that British researcher Andrew Wakefield had manipulated his data linking vaccines to episodes of autism. His original research on this issue was already controversial - 10 of the 13 authors retracted some of the findings in 2004, but Wakefield, its lead author, has not. The Times reported that he allegedly altered clinical findings on eight of 12 children in the study - a charge he denies.
Why do concerns about vaccines persist despite so much scientific evidence to the contrary? We seem to harbor a cultural bent toward believing random theories on how science - and medicine - will somehow be the source of our own unraveling. Witness all the movies of recent years that blame science (and vaccines especially) for everything from ending the human race ("I Am Legend") to curtailing our ability to reproduce ("Children of Men").
As for Wakefield's alleged fraud, the damage is already done. After the publication of his research, rates of inoculation in Britain fell from 92 percent to below 80 percent."
The effectiveness of a vaccine is ralated to the percentage of the population that receives it--the more people who are vaccinated, the less chance a disease has to spread. Even small numbers of people refusing a vaccine can have severe negative consequences. For example, in 1998, there were 56 cases of measles in England and Wales. Because of increased fear over the measles vaccines, last year there were 1,348 confirmed cases of measles in England and Wales - and two deaths. That's two children we didn't need to lose.
We need to get back to scientists doing science, politicians doing politics, and celebrities simply being celebrities.
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