Of course to demonize anyone with questions about vaccine safety seems fair game for you. You're not alone, there are plenty of you out there who are uninformed, or I should say, less informed than some of the parents of children diagnosed with a regressive form of autism.
First of all disease is spread by people carrying the disease, those receiving vaccines can shed the disease and infect others with the same disease they are vaccinated to prevent. Many times vaccines create a mutant version that will need new approaches to protect against.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/health/11iht-polio.1.7847606.html?_r=1
The good doctor Offitt was afraid that even his vaccine RotaTeq would harm children. http://i46.tinypic.com/24lt1y1.jpg Of course now that he is being paid by Merck for it, he claims someone could inject him with 10,000 vaccines without injury.
Unfortunately vaccines do cause injury, and even death.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3336455/Secret-report-reveals-18-child-deaths-following-vaccinations.html
Maybe those of us that have children who were injured by vaccines, those of us who caution other parents, have a better idea about the cost of herd immunity. We know the cost, and to us it's isn't worth it.
Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine researcher (winner of the Jonas Salk Medal for his work on RotaTeq) has finally launched a media tour for his 2008 book “Autism’s False Prophets,” calling on the silent majority of parents to reject fear and vaccinate their kids so they won’t get sick.
Offit was unable to tour when his book came out in hardback in 2008 because, at the time, his conclusions were so controversial.
Now, since the retraction of a controversial anti-vaccine study by Andrew Wakefield by The Lancet, he’s coming out swinging, on CBS and elsewhere.
Why is he angry? For the same reason I am.
Scientists are increasingly finding outbreaks of diseases like whooping cough, which had been in check for years, because parents are refusing vaccinations. Kids who aren’t vaccinated can spread disease to kids who were, because no vaccine is 100% effective.
Kids are getting sick and some are dying because of a political movement that rejects science in favor of ignorance.
Critics have called Dr. Offit Dr. Profit because he made money from his discoveries. Then what do you call someone like Sherri Tenpenny, an osteopath who makes her living campaigning against vaccinations?
She was spinning like mad after The Lancet retraction, selling the idea that people are “rightly” suspicious of government, the CDC, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Rightly? Why?
Who is making them suspicious, “doctor” Tennpenny? People like you, and medical “authorities” like actress Jenny McCarthy, who is now offering Dr. Wakefield financial support from her anti-vaccine group Generation Rescue in Austin.
Given a choice between a respected scientist and someone who follows a man who rejected the germ theory of disease, Dr. Tenpenny, the choice should be easy.
Only it’s not, unfortunately.
The anti-vaccine mob, like the anti-science mobs and the anti-government mobs, are well-funded, they are politically well-connected, and they have had an immense influence on public policy over the last decade.
Maybe it is time for the silent majority to stand up. The child whose life you save may be your own.
These diseases we vaccinate for are mild in developed nations like the US and deadly in nations with other conditions affecting outcome of disease (poor hygiene, sanitation and nutrition). The vaccine implementation strategies in developing nations has failed so horribly that now the studies used to "prove" how much they work are relying on false data like "annualized mortality averages" and "natural history models" and give no actual information on specific vaccine implementation strategies in the regions they actually went to. Recently UNICEF's total failure with the measles vaccine in 11 west african countries to reduce morbidity was something of notice and a good example... vaccinations have never eradicated any diseases but they sure are permanently disabling and killing a lot of American infants and children.