As someone who has always understood that vaccines are safe and necessary, who vaccinates his children, I’m asking you to hear me out.
I don’t think that you are either stupid, uneducated, crazy, or that questioning vaccine safety is always associated with believing in conspiracy theories.
I understand and appreciate that you do care about your children, that you care about their health, and that you want what’s best for your family.
I actually do get that. I really do.
But I know that while you believe that you have done years of research and investigation to help you decide that the potential benefits of vaccines don’t outweigh their risks, going out of your way to find information to support your decision and ignoring all of the rest that says you are wrong, isn’t really doing research.
Whether you have never set foot on a college campus, you have a PhD in immunology, or you are a toxicologist, I know that you are still vulnerable to the same cognitive biases, heuristics, and logical fallacies as everyone else, and those can keep you from coming to a truly informed decision.
And I know that you are mostly motivated by fear, anger, and mistaken ideas of vaccine injury, vaccine induced disease, and unexplained illness and sudden deaths.
We all care about our children and families. The difference between us is that you still believe that there are two sides to the vaccination debate.
There isn’t.
Vaccines are safe, necessary, and they work well to protect our kids from life-threatening vaccine-preventable diseases.
No, vaccines are not 100% safe and they don’t work 100% of the time, but neither are they responsible for all of the things you see in vaccine scare stories or all of the so-called vaccine induced diseases we hear about.
“What if doctors never actually learn about vaccines, their ingredients, or adverse events, in medical school? What if the medical textbooks are written with an enormous amount of funding from the pharmaceutical industry? What if the CDC owns patents on vaccines? What if the pharmaceutical industry is corrupt and funds studies which conveniently stop monitoring test subjects before adverse effects begin to manifest? What if vaccines contain toxic substances at levels which can cause chronic illness when children are repeatedly injected with them? What if we are trading temporary illness for the development of autoimmune and neurological disease later in life? What if the threat and danger of these “preventable” diseases has been inflated to push more vaccines? What if these vaccines are not even truly effective as we have been led to believe and we will always need more booster shots to try to make up for that fact? What if there is evidence for all of the above, you just haven’t seen it yet?”
Ashley Everly Cates
Listen.
If you don’t want to vaccinate your kids, then don’t.
But don’t be influenced by folks who say they have done their research and don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but use a book by Neil Z Miller as a reference and push every major anti-vaccine conspiracy theory.
And don’t expect that your vaccine choice will be consequence free, including that your child will be at increased risk to get a vaccine-preventable disease, you will be putting others at risk to get a vaccine-preventable disease if your intentionally unvaccinated child gets sick, and you may be kept out of daycare or school if you live in a state that doesn’t allow non-medical exemptions.
I hope that you will keep an open mind and genuinely take time to look into this for yourself, beyond the myths and claims of anti-vaccine heroes who ignore or are unaware of the massive amount of evidence that contradict their claims.
Please take caution and know that I don’t do this to be popular. I don’t do this to make friends, get likes on my Facebook page, or sell vitamins and supplements in an online store.
Truly. The only reason I speak out is to protect my children and your children from unnecessary harm.
After all, is it really so hard to believe that the great majority of pediatricians, infectious disease specialists, immunologists, toxicologists, and public health experts in the world and throughout history are right about vaccines?
More for Anti-Vaxxers
- I used to be a vaccine skeptic. Now I’m a believer.
- Why I wish my daughter had been vaccinated
- I Used To Be Anti-Vaccine
- I was Duped by the Anti-Vaccine Movement
- Learning the Hard Way: My Journey from #AntiVaxx to Science
- I Didn’t Vaccinate My Child—And I Regret It
- Some Parents Fall for Vaccination Scare Stories, with Deadly Results
- Psychological Biases Play A Part In Vaccination Decisions
- The media’s MMR hoax
- The MMR story that wasn’t
- WHO – Impact of rumours and crises
- Evaluating Vaccines Requires Critical Thinking
- Letting go of the Paradigm of Fear
- Why are we so afraid of vaccines?
- Vaccines: Separating Fact from Fear
- Public Health Takes on Anti-Vaccine Propaganda: Damage done, Challenges Ahead
- How the Media Fed the Anti-Vaccine Movement
- WHO – Risk Perception
- Study – Epidemiology of vaccine hesitancy in the United StatesEpidemiology of vaccine hesitancy in the United States
- Vaccination: The Anatomy of Fear (incl. Soundtrack)
- Cognitive Biases in Health Care Decision Making
- Genotypes, Serotypes and the MMR: Cognitive Dissonance in Action
- Fear of Vaccines Goes Viral
- The Psychology of Anti-Vaxers: How Story Trumps Science
- Study – Free-Riding Behavior in Vaccination Decisions: An Experimental Study
- Study – The Roles of Altruism, Free Riding, and Bandwagoning in Vaccination Decisions
- Study – Vaccine Hesitancy: Causes, Consequences, and a Call to Action.
- Study – ‘Hesitant compliers’: Qualitative analysis of concerned fully-vaccinating parents
- Study – Bounded rationality alters the dynamics of paediatric immunization acceptance
- Study – Cognitive processes and the decisions of some parents to forego pertussis vaccination for their children.
- Study – Examining Sentiments and Popularity of Pro- and Anti-Vaccination Videos on YouTube
- Study – Understanding those who do not understand: a brief review of the anti-vaccine movement.
- Study – Public fear of vaccination: separating fact from fiction.
- Book – The Panic Virus
- Book – Deadly Choices
- Book – Autism’s False Prophets
Stop the hate and don’t vaccinate.
So basically your idea of addressing vaccine hesitancy is to repeat the same mantra for the millionth time, providing absolutely no data to back up your point other than “I’m a doctor and I get you,” and beyond that, include absolutely no solid research studies in your resources for “anti-vaxxers”? I feel compelled to mention that you too, sir, have a cognitive bias. Being a doctor doesn’t make you immune. I was hoping for an article that provided facts, data and tangible information, rather than the same old rhetoric, condescension, and dismissiveness that we “anti-vaxxers” see repeated over and over. You have failed to make a compelling case for the safety of vaccines. So I will continue to look for someone who can.
So you’re basically saying:
“ALL ‘anti-vaxxers’ are biased and uneducated simpletons – who haven’t a leg to stand on – in their defiance of official orthodoxy – and do NOT do ‘proper research’ by YOUR standard definition of research”? ? ?
THIS is exactly the kind of hubris, condescension, selective-quoting, and selective ‘fact-checking’ “I-know-it-all” attitude that continues to breed resentment against the “establishment narrative” on the word of “vaccines”!
It is such attitudes, by the “professionals”, which continue to ignore the unflattering facts and evidence that perhaps “vaccination” is NOT really the best and ONLY way to treat “diseases”.
It is also this level of hubris that dominates much of what we have called “medical science” for the better part of 17 to 80 years, where “man” claims to do better than Nature (which has had probably many millions of years’ development and refinement of the living examples of Biology). This is also to include the FACT that much of our “medical education” centers largely upon the failed science of “allopathy” – whereas – chemical drugs and other unnatural treatment methodologies are employed first, before ANY such assessment of other probable/possible causes of a patient’s problems – such as diet, nutrition, toxins in the body, and other environmental conditions are ever done!
In today’s medicine,
It has become far more commonplace to treat the “disease” for its symptoms, only – rather than do actual investigation of the root causes of “disease”. It is also no wonder that from the research done by such folks as Dr. Barbara Starfield, for example, have collected large amounts of data during the time of research conducted – that clearly – our “national healthcare” system may NOT necessarily be the best in the world – being that – many people actually die BECAUSE of problems in our system of medicine! – In point alone, “prescribed medications”, even when taken AS DIRECTED BY A PHYSICIAN/MEDICAL-DOCTOR has resulted in an average of 106,000 needless deaths a year in these united states! ! !
Yet,
We don’t ever hear about much of that in the “media”, nor discussed within the halls of academia. This problem, alone, should be cause for concern – especially when there is much effort into keeping this damning statistic completely out of the public spotlight!
So WHERE and HOW do we even begin to base what “trust” is expected of us, in a medical system that picks and chooses what the public is allowed to learn from which statistics – and who are most vulnerable? ? ?
This entire website, “VaxOPedia”, seems to be nothing more than another “echo-parrot” of the establishment-favored line on what constitutes “good medicine”, and what is to be considered misinformation/disinformation!
As far as the “anti-vaxx” folks being “biased” and “selective” on what data, studies, research papers they obtain their research information from – I have news for ya (as if you didn’t already know), the biggest LIARS and misinformation/disinformation sources out there – are the very “alphabet agencies”, the “media”, and much of the “social media networks” that folks, like you, trust – and even “echo” the very “one-sided” view of medicine – especially when it comes to discussions about the role and importance of “vaccines” – to the exclusion of ANY and ALL other information which may call into to question – the veracity of all of these “pro-” claims which are championed, ad nauseum, by ALL of the establishment organs!
Name-calling, ad hominem attacks, mis-characterizations, “false conflations”, “appeals to authority”, and various other devices devices of argument – instead of real, honest debate and cross-examination – and using such argumentativeness and condescension tactics against your ideological adversaries does NOT win any respect, but only results in more scorn – towards you and those programs you support.
This is a fact of life. Get over it, or find some other avenue to occupy your time. Science thrives on, and even DEMANDS open-debate and a look at ALL OF THE FACTS AND DATA – regardless what direction they show the current understanding leads to.
Just because one has a “degree” and/or other “official credentials” – does NOT guarantee that they also are infallible! ! !
And YES –
I am an ARCH-ANTI-VAXXER, but not an ignorant one either!