As it appears, people who do not want to vaccinate their children are anti-vaxxers.
Ok. First, let's give the anti-vaxxers the benefit of the doubt, and celebrate them where it's due.
It's great for a child to have parents who care for their wellbeing, and know enough of history to know that governments or their supporting institutes can't always be trusted, nor pharmaceutical companies that are legally bound to conform to their shareholders dictate.
Of course vaccines should be objectively tested with the highest diligence, to determine their risks over benefits. And of course governments and commercial operations should be forever treated with a level of wise suspicion. Bias and corruption are facts of life, and most likely always will be.
Indeed, if any class should be laughed at, it's those who think the label 'anti-vaxxer' (which is code for: "backwards idiot conspiracy theorist") is good enough to close the debate. 'Anti-vaxxer' is a smear that's over-used, and a smear that brings question to professionals who too casually use it. A smear is not an argument. Period.
Ok. So how do we break down the game? How do we convince people who don't trust vaccines and for whatever reason?
First, if you want them to listen you then try to be nice. No matter how wrong they may be, their concerns are at base founded. Anything injected circumvents your body's defenses and is therefore, potentially, extremely toxic or even lethal. No one's a fool to be concerned about that much.
Second, you spend a little bit of money properly proving that the vaccines are safe. This is done by studying people who were and were not vaccinated over their lifetimes, using thousands of subjects. This is how you identify long-range effects (that control for secondary correlates) that are otherwise hard to link back to the vaccine.
If vaccines don't contribute to autism, for example, then it should be easy enough to prove. Autism rates in vaccinated groups should be about the same as those in unvaccinated groups - if the vaccines are all good.
A comprehensive tax-payer funded study, conducted by those without bias, should put the [otherwise] anti-vaxxers minds at rest.
(And note we must be careful here. If vaccines really are causing problems like autism, then there will be interests wanting to be sure we don't find out about it, especially if corruption or blatant failure of due process is identified).
Yet this is the problem. Penetrating, broad-scale studies are not being done, as it seems. According to Robert F Kennedy Jr. they've never been done (in America, at least). If he's right, then that alone should induce some vaccine resistance, should it not? Frankly it would spook me, as well. Without comparative long-range studies, true vaccine safety is simply not known.
Of all the things that so many billions of research dollars could be poured into, you would think the definitive proof for 'vaccine virtue'--where the pros are empirically proven to outweigh the cons--would be amongst the highest objectives on the list, for public research.
And maybe this is the problem. We're not going out of our way to prove the suspicions of the anti-vaxxers wrong. Yet, we obviously should. And until we do it, I say 'we' are the ones who are at fault.
We can also put fluoride, EMF radiation, food additives, and funny chemicals alround, etc, on the to-do list for broad research. Why not? Indeed, as I'm sure the reader can gather, not doing this kind of research is a concern on its own. Pertinent research not being done becomes suspicious by its absence.
So please, let's get on with it.
-Andrew Atkin
Update: 21 - 4 - 24.
An very good documentary, directly relating to my article.
https://rumble.com/v4pkvsf-do-vaccines-make-us-healthier-2024-update.html
