Okay I will bite

I haven't been very ranty lately - quite mellow actually.  The thing is at heart I'm a scientist, in particular I am a Microbiologist.  I am also a parent of a teenage girl.  Several headlines and news articles caught my attention this week and annoyed the bejesus enough out of me that I am going to rant.   This rant is pretty much about Immunisation and the media's role in demonizing common good sense science.  Here goes:

Once upon a time a doctor and his colleagues thought that they would publish an article on a study they had carried out.  This study had no real scientific basis, had a small co-hort of 12 individuals amongst other later revealed disturbing unethical bits and pieces going on, but came to the conclusion that the MMR vaccine causes autism.  This piece of research was held up by the media in general, autism conspiracists and general wackaloon's as stone cold solid evidence that the MMR vaccine was mad, bad and dangerous to give your beautiful babies.  Pity of it was that almost as soon as it was published it was called into question and it's findings refuted - did the media want to know? Nope - they ignored the majority of scientists and went with the one study that was the proverbial "whistleblower".   

The result of the media's ability to cause calamity where there was none is that a large number of reasonable, otherwise smart parents were conned into believing that the MMR vaccine could put their child at harm.  Whereas, in reality the truth is that the MMR vaccine is necessary to protect your child from some potentially nasty diseases.  Much like the meningitis jab - had a great conversation with someone last week who said cause the epidemic had "gone away" it wasn't necessary to vaccinate her child.  WTF?? Are you serious?? I mean really - what did you think caused the decrease in cases??  What happens when the now vaccinated cohort grows up and the kids who are being born now aren't vaccinated?  Quite possibly another epidemic - just because we controlled (note I say control not eliminate) this one doesn't mean it wont happen again.  Bacteria and viruses survive because they change and try to dodge the immune system - if you don't give the immune system a heads up - your child has a higher chance of becoming seriously sick and possibly dying.   Am I scaremongering?  I dont think so - I think that is it almost criminally negligent of parents not to vaccinate their children.  We as parents have a responsibility to provide kids with proper care and attention - part of that is ensuring they are healthy and have access to proper medical care.

The other current vaccination scaremongering is concerning Gardisil - the HPV vaccine or rather a HPV vaccine which has been associated (via the media not scientific publications) with nasty side effects like death.   HPV causes cervical cancer - it does.  Part of the problem is that there are many different genotypes of HPV - this vaccination protects against the most commonly associated strains.   So while it is conceivable you may get one of the rarer ones - you will be covered for the most common ones.  You can only do so much.

Am saving the other part of the rant for another time.

Suffice to say vaccinate your child - herd immunity will only take you so far.

S.