All anybody ever wants is a healthy family; to be able to feel safe with the knowledge that children, and their children, will grow up disease free.
Luckily, due to the explosion of technology in the last 100 years, people have had access to better medicine to treat, and prevent, many horrible diseases that have harmed humanity in the past.
Recently, perhaps the most important medical breakthrough of these last 100 years is being questioned.
This is due to a combination of “junk” science, people’s lack of knowledge, and their willingness to believe anything that will help them feel slightly better about the bad things happening in their lives.
In 1998, Andrew Wakefield published an article in a leading medical journal, The Lancet, describing a possible association between the MMR Measles Vaccine and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
Later on, investigative journalist, Brian Deer, discovered direct conflict of interest involving Wakefield and a law firm, which was attempting to bring together a class action lawsuit against the makers of the MMR Measles Vaccine.
Beyond this, other members of the scientific community reviewing the studies and conducting their own, have found the information in the original article published in The Lancet to be false and without importance.
Unfortunately, the damage had already been done.
Due to this corrupt action and the eager willingness of uninformed parents to believe in what can only be considered holistic medicine, vaccination rates in the United Kingdom, and many parts of Europe, dropped considerably after the publication of Wakefield’s article.
From 1998 to 2006, there was almost a 700-per-cent increase in the incidences of measles and other related childhood diseases.
This related entirely to parents neglecting to vaccinate their children due to fears of autism.
In the time since the publication of Wakefield’s article, the incidents of children becoming permanently scarred, and even killed, because of childhood diseases has increased in some areas of the UK and Europe by as much as 500 per cent.
In North America, this trend in stupidity has also begun to catch on.
Celebrities, such as former porn star, Jenny McCarthy, and the father of her child, Jim Carrey, have chosen to take a stand against vaccination because of their belief that vaccinations will cause their child to become autistic.
Although all of the anti-vaccination arguments have been scientifically proven wrong, the best way to view the subject is to think that even if a person believes the study is factual, they still need to take a look at the numbers.
Wakefield said in his medical study the rates of autism were somewhere in the range of one and every 100 vaccinations.
Even assuming these numbers are correct, it is a relatively small number in comparison with all the lives vaccinations save.
Before vaccinations were a common practise, rates of child mortality could be as high as 60 per cent.
With the trend the world is experiencing; leaning towards organic foods and holistic medicines, it should not be forgotten that sometimes people have to remember to use common sense when facing off against hysteria.
People have to look for evidence that supports the claims made by others.
If not, preventative measures will quite often lead to worse results than those in which they were planning to prevent.
If a person does believe vaccinations are a cause of autism, which they aren’t, then just do the math.
It is much better to have a healthy living child, with autism, than to have no child at all.