Vaccine Debate

Like most issues in America, this one will have many people on both sides of the debate, but here is one where compromise is possible even though neither side is going to be entirely happy. I can still remember as a very young child, my parents with my two older sisters walking over to our local school to stand in a very long line in order to each take that little sugar cube with the pink dot on top. It was one of the first polio vaccine’s. I also remember the little girl in a wheelchair. Her arms and legs were so tiny and my mom told me to hush when I ask why she was so small. Her parents were crying so much because the nurse told them that sugar cube was not a cure for polio and would not do anything for their daughter. I also remember that later that year my father telling me that little girl had died.

Most young parents these days have no idea what it is like to be so desperately afraid of an invisible bug that could strike their children down, rob them of their every bit of energy, and eventually kill them … and there is nothing that can be done, no amount of money that can buy back their health. They simply do not know until maybe now. I remember having measles. I was seven years old and it was terrible. Mine seemed to itch and scratch terribly. I remember my mom sitting with me all day long and telling me not to scratch or it would leave me full of scars. She put calamine lotion on me, soaked me in cool baths, just anything she could think of to keep me from digging at my skin.

I know my parents insisted I get every vaccine as a child as I did for my own kids as they were growing up. It was just common sense because we knew the diseases were something to be genuinely afraid of and we were absolutely afraid of that. There was no mention of downs syndrome or anything like that.

Over the years, especially in recent history, there have been a lot of allegations about vaccine’s, about aluminum in antiperspirants and a great many similar things. Often the claims have been incredible boarding on paranoia with each story more sensational than the next. The press is all too happy to publish all of this mess and play devils advocate with so many “what if they are right” stories. Sadly, as each of these claims has been proven to be nothing more than groundless claims, the press seems to forget the importance of publishing those facts. All for the sake of selling more newspapers, more advertising, the never ending chase for the almighty dollar, and in the end it is the public that is fooled and poorly served.

Adding to the hysteria is a government that has so completely lost the trust of the American people, that nobody is likely to believe any information coming from it. The CDC can’t keep up with their own deadly pathogens so how could they possibly know anything about vaccines? One bit of ill will begets another and in the long run it will be we, the citizens, that lose out.

Perhaps this outbreak is a hidden blessing. Perhaps it will take hundreds of children dying in order to wake up so many poorly informed parents and maybe in the long run it will make more parents actually do their own research rather than believe that over opinionated idiot next door that has only opinions and no sound advice. Unfortunately it will be the innocents, the children that will pay the price. And what a price to pay, all for the purpose of waking up parents that were not prepared for parenthood and all that comes with it.