I’ve been an uninvolved observer to the whole chaotic conversation about vaccinations and their safety for several years now.  The rich and the famous became involved in the diatribe against vaccinations.  While I was aware that the whole star-studded conversation was making me uncomfortable, I stayed away from the conversation because when it is emotional – as has been the case – then I know that any rebuttal becomes nonsensical and is not well received by those with strong opinions.

A public claim was made that vaccinations cause autism.  The kind of science that backs this claim up will not meet the standards of the scientific community.  However research can reflect the opinion of the author and even be re-manufactured into retrospective nonsense.

More importantly, I believe that if a vaccination has a deleterious affect on the body, that that event must be researched, we must know why that vaccine had such an affect.  We must rule out the idea that many chemicals react singularly on a body.  For example, a bee sting can be life threatening to some people, and yet, this is not so for the majority of the population.  The other rule-out that must be researched is the possibility that drug companies change the formulary for any number of reasons.  We could even ask the drug companies, were the vaccines manufactured safely with appropriate quality controls and seek answers here?

To state that vaccinations are unsafe, seems to be the very last thing that our culture would postulate.  Personally, I like vaccines.  I have a good friend who had polio as a child and she remains disabled because of the catastrophic affect that polio had on her body.  We, who were born before 1960, can recall the times and places of devastating illnesses and what that did to our families and our communities.  Epidemics of illnesses have been wiped out with vaccinations.  This is phenomena that has occurred in our life time.

So it appears to me that throwing out the vaccination – in the absence of scientific inquiry – is like throwing out the baby with the bath water.  It’s ridiculous.  There are a lot more questions to ask before we decide that vaccinations are no good.  Let me add that several of these questions have been asked.  Vaccines have been re-manufactured, renamed and reproduced, and theoretically are improved.  But vaccines still receive the blame for autism.  The Centers for Disease Control, the place in America where all health statistics are gathered and analyzed, can find no co-relationship between vaccinations and autism and yet the mindless public panic grinds on.

And now, it’s personal for me, and emotional for me, and here is why:  Whooping cough is back and it’s back in a big way, there are small epidemic outbreaks all over the country.  Now you may say that it is a disease that you can survive, and so it is not that bad…but, what if you are a 5 week-old baby?  If you are five weeks old, then it is a much more serious disease.  How would a five week old baby catch whooping cough?  Well, all of those parents who scoff at vaccinations have caused epidemics of diseases which should be extinct.  This is a strong statement and a true statement.

How about this, if you do not wish to vaccinate your child – that is your choice – but when you put your child into the public and your child spreads a disease – you now put my child in danger.  That is why I say that vaccinations are a public health concern, because an un-vaccinated child spreads disease as surely as typhoid Mary did.  For my five-week-old grandson, who is not OLD enough to be vaccinated, that almost became deadly.  That, I say, is unfair.