measles

It would be a bad doctor who said, “So what?” we shouldn’t vaccinate. It needs thinking about carefully in context It appears that deaths from measles are falling rapidly. That’s cause for celebration. Measles is pretty deadly, never forget that. For sure, part of this decline is misdiagnosing the real cause of death. But I accept a genuine decline. The researchers found measles deaths worldwide fell from more than 535,000 in 2000 to around 139,000 in 2010. That’s a pretty big fall off (75% drop). We can’t put everything down to faking results. The big question is: how much of the fall is due to the measles vaccination program? How much of it would happen anyway? It is idle (and stupid) to simply dismiss any benefits, just because the measles vaccine seems very likely implicated in toxic nerve inflammations afterwards. If there is good and there is harm, the question is: do they balance? No deaths is good. Would you rather have no deaths and autism? Or would you rather have the deaths than risk that any medical interference might trigger autism? If you think the answer is easy, you either don’t understand the question, or you are ignorant and prejudiced, in my view. It’s a very difficult epidemiological question and it polarizes even holistic doctors.

It would be a bad doctor who said, “So what?” we shouldn’t vaccinate. It needs thinking about carefully in context It appears that deaths from measles are falling rapidly. That’s cause for celebration. Measles is pretty deadly, never forget that. For sure, part of this decline is misdiagnosing the real cause of death. But I accept a genuine decline. The researchers found measles deaths worldwide fell from more than 535,000 in 2000 to around 139,000 in 2010. That’s a pretty big fall off (75% drop). We can’t put everything down to faking results. The big question is: how much of the fall is due to the measles vaccination program? How much of it would happen anyway? It is idle (and stupid) to simply dismiss any benefits, just because the measles vaccine seems very likely implicated in toxic nerve inflammations afterwards. If there is good and there is harm, the question is: do they balance? No deaths is good. Would you rather have no deaths and autism? Or would you rather have the deaths than risk that any medical interference might trigger autism? If you think the answer is easy, you either don’t understand the question, or you are ignorant and prejudiced, in my view. It’s a very difficult epidemiological question and it polarizes even holistic doctors.