Since I wrote a post titled “Autism: An urgent public “health challenge” or just another smoke screen?” I have spoken with an MD, a scientist and a pediatrician about it and suffice to say I feel a bit misunderstood. But one thing is sure: it is definitely difficult to write about the topic of vaccination without running the risk of being put into either the pro or the anti vaccination category. I would never take a radical position like the one of Jim Carrey and his girl friend Jenny McCarthy unless science achieves one of the two: 1) prove the vaccination risk outweighs its safety benefits and 2) demonstrate that another method of preventing contagious illnesses achieve a better outcome than vaccination. And as of today, none of the above has been achieved or proven. So let me again say this: vaccines are saving lives. And preventable illnesses are killing people. And over and continued exposures to toxic chemicals have harmed people as well.

But here is a point I feel very strongly about: the vaccination issue is not black or white, and again – and that is the part I am guilty for not being clear enough – as we’re debating our healthcare system, we are failing to recognize what is broken and what is working. What I am questioning is the bullet proof discourse of both manufacturers and regulatory agencies that everything that received clearance is safe. I do not believe my dithyramb has contributed in weakening the safety message here. But before I continue let me address a few things brought up by two of the professionals I mentioned above, whose opinion I respect deeply.

-         Mentioning David Kirby does not mean I endorse neither his views nor the ones of the people he is affiliated with. I came across his article on the huffingtonpost web site, and what he wrote can be summed up as governmental agencies are very concerned with the rise in ASD cases, and have announced measures to develop more services to Americans with ASD, but are yet to implement or fund research that would help us better understand what may cause ASD. Here is the thing: research the news about the recent ASD report and you’ll find out that credible experts that have commented on it can pretty much be counted on one hand. However, everyone seemed to have wakened up after the anti-vaccine activists took on those numbers and screamed louder than the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department that vaccines were guilty unless proven innocents, threatening the vaccination campaign against the H1N1 flu. Here is where I am a bit confused: if these activists are “bashing” the medical community’s safety and health programs and messages, gaining more and more traction to the extent they become a liability in protecting our health and safety, why is their arguments so often ignored and/ or not properly addressed?

-         The rational behind putting health and safety on an even ground and using one to promote the other one is a puzzling one when you think of it. We catch a cold, we use cold medicine. We’re afraid of germs, we use rubbing alcohol, chlorine, triclosan, ammonium, (…) to kill them before they invade our body. We want to decrease the occurrence of household fire death, we use halogen flame retardants. We want to eradicate an infectious disease, we vaccinate newborn babies. We want to feed the world, we manipulate genes and create GMOs and we subsidize industrial farming over smaller local farms, etc …In every one of these instances, we act indiscriminately on the name of safety – food access is today regarded as a safety concern, not an health issue – regardless of the consequences on human health and the environment. However, on that list, the only one that actually makes sense is … vaccination, but not how it is actually proposed and implemented. All these topics are worrisome and prompted me to point to over and prolonged exposure to invasive toxic chemicals as a potential link to ASD and/or any other biochemical and psychological disorder.

-         Finally the number of 673,000 children believed to be affected by this disorder is staggering enough to pause and ask, what is being done to uncover the cause(s) of ASD, and when one realizes that very little is being done – or very little has been communicated on what is being done, which in this age of blogging and goggling amounts to the same – should incite any sane person to start questioning our healthcare system – including the regulatroy folks – that fails to deliver on its very basic mission. Add to this the increasing number of kids with other conditions (asthma, allergies, cancer, ADHD, immune deficiencies, …) and not asking questions seems like an unreasonable behavior. The HHS mission is very explicit: “The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is the United States government’s principal agency for protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services, especially for those who are least able to help themselves.”

Why do we vaccinate?

Before smallpox was eradicated with a vaccine, it had killed an estimated 500 million people. And just 60 years ago, polio paralyzed 16,000 Americans every year, while rubella caused birth defects and mental retardation in as many as 20,000 newborns. Measles infected 4 million children, killing 3,000 annually, and a bacterium called Haemophilus influenzae type b caused Hib meningitis in more than 15,000 children, leaving many with permanent brain damage. Infant mortality and abbreviated life spans — now regarded as a third world problem — were a first world reality. (wired magazine http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_waronscience/)

Harriet Hall, MD : “When the rate of immunization reaches a certain level, the population is protected by what we call herd immunity. It means there are not enough susceptible people for the disease to keep spreading through a community. In many places the herd immunity has already been lost. It is only a matter of time before diseases break out again. One traveler from a country with polio could reintroduce the disease into the U.S. Lowered vaccination rates endanger even those who have been vaccinated, because the protection is not 100%. People who are immunosuppressed, chronically ill, or too young to have been vaccinated are also put at risk. Parents who choose to delay vaccination are prolonging their children’s period of risk. And they are endangering everyone else’s public health”.

Can’t argue with that. But because we have nearly eradicated Polio thanks to a mass scale global vaccination program does not mean we need to vaccinate everyone against every germ that can eventually cause the death of someone.

I feel this post does not address everything, especially in a much needed dialogue between the public and the scientific community …  “Specter says that Americans have come to mistrust institutions, especially science, more today than ever before. For centuries, the general view had been that science is neither good nor bad, that it merely supplies information and that new information is always beneficial. Now, science is often viewed as a political constituency that isn’t always in our best interest.”

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