Paranoia about Vaccines
The public’s underlying fear of vaccines goes much deeper than a single paper. Until officials realize that, and learn how to counter such deep-seated concerns, the paranoia — and the public-health risk it poses — will remain…
In America, popular opposition peaked during the smallpox epidemic at the turn of the 20th century. Health officials ordered vaccinations in public schools, in factories and on the nation’s railroads; club-wielding New York City policemen enforced vaccinations in crowded immigrant tenements, while Texas Rangers and the United States Cavalry provided muscle for vaccinators along the Mexican border.
Public resistance was immediate, from riots and school strikes to lobbying and a groundswell of litigation that eventually reached the Supreme Court. Newspapers, notably this one, dismissed antivaccinationists as “benighted and deranged” and “hopeless cranks.”
Full article on why Americans fear vaccines.
Parents were so terrified of polio, they willingly let authorities use what amounted to experimental vaccines on their kids in hopes their kids would be spared the dreaded polio virus. Many caught polio from the vaccines and many died. Yet, millions did not die and polio has been mostly wiped out in the U.S. In the early days of the polio vaccine discovery process, there was immense competition between two different researchers. One wanted to go slow and deliberate; the other (Sulk) wanted to move fast and experiment. It was later discovered the slow and deliberate approach produced a safer vaccine; but Sulk got his to market years earlier and saved millions of kids from polio (while infecting a few with polio).
There are a lot of reasons people don’t want immunizations, and a (very) few of them make sense.
Public health officials have responded to public resistance with brute force attempts to make people do what they say. Their efforts have included statewide data tracking systems, legislative attempts to remove religious exemptions, threatened refusal to enroll kids in public schools, and P4P requirements on physician practices that have resulted in some people being denied medical care.
To make things worse, officials simultaneously support the anti-chemical/natural foods agenda. It runs contrary to the notion of injecting people with some chemical mix. Couple this with the “physicians will harm you for the money” mantra and you have a recipe for making the population rationally distrust authority.
Gee, maybe officials should abandon the use of force and try convincing people that modern medicine is good rather than something to be avoided?
You got it right in the headline. Americans are paranoid.
I think it is because people found out mercury was used in vaccines. I remember as a kid whenever a mercury thermometer broke everyone was terrified to clean it up.