Nov 01, 2009
The One True Medicine
This season of flu pandemic has taken the always heated vaccine argument and intensified it several-fold. Any online article for or against vaccination typically engenders dozens if not hundreds of comments. I’ve engaged in many such conversations — taking the anti-vax position — and have come to conclude that arguing with proponents of vaccination (and the whole “better living through pharmaceuticals” crowd) is like arguing with religious fundamentalists.
Their chief point is that mainstream American medicine is “science-based,” while the anti-vaxers are a rabble of anti-scientific fools, hysterical housewives, and idiot celebrities seeking publicity. They thrust all dissenters into the same camp as global warming deniers and anti-evolution creationists. The science is in, they say, the evidence indisputable, and anyone who disagrees or merely questions should be rounded up and shot full of the latest miracle medicine before they spread their vile condition to others.
No disagreement permitted. No thinking required, except by certified authorities, and no dissension among them from the One True Medicine. Those who express doubts are social pariahs guilty of the most horrible sins.
Medical Heresy
I do not dispute that vaccines have saved lives and played a role in eliminating certain infectious diseases. Vaccines are especially efficacious, even miraculous, in poverty-ridden, over-crowded communities facing epidemics. But they are not the only way to deal with infectious disease, and they are clearly not the best solution in more well-off communities that enjoy the benefits of modern hygiene and adequate nutrition.
In 20th century America, each of the major infectious diseases was in decline (as measured by mortality rates) before a vaccine for said disease was invented. (Go here and scroll down for US mortality charts.) Measles, for instance, killed nearly 12,000 Americans in 1901, a mortality rate that fell to a hundred or so by the 1960s when the measles vaccine was introduced. Diptheria killed 48,000 in 1901, down to less than 500 in the 1940s when its vaccine was introduced. Pertussis dropped from 33,000 in 1901 to less than 2,000 in 1946, the first use of its vaccine.
What was happening? First, as America grew in prosperity its people had access to more than adequate food, clean water, and good sanitation practices. This eliminated major disease vectors, both reducing the growth of infectious microbes and restricting their spread. This will always be the best defense against infectious disease, though lifting populations out of poverty is not as easy as sending them vaccines.
Second, since each of these diseases had been endemic in America for several generations, people had developed natural resistance, passed from mother to child. While such children were not immune to the illness, they were less at risk for serious complications and death. So, they got the measles or mumps or whooping cough, had a rough patch, got better, and then had full immunity for life, no boosters required. And the next generation had even stronger resistance.
Developing Real Immunity
If we had continued in this way without the intervention of vaccines, few people would be dying from any of these diseases, though they would linger as annoying childhood illnesses. Even better, if we had expended our medical genius and resources on how to best live through each disease, rather than trying to kill it, we would now be a much stronger, healthier nation.
Instead, we undermined the individual’s innate healing process by introducing a chemical crutch. Now children have reduced resistance to the disease – because their parents didn’t live through it — and they are at greater risk from complications if they catch it. Which raises the clamor for vaccination even higher, and places an anti-social onus on those who would prefer to deal with the infectious disease in other ways.
It is true that in the “living through” process I’ve described people were still dying in tragic numbers, which more than justifies the impetus to develop vaccines. But while they may have provided a quicker fix in the short term — a miracle for every life saved — as vaccinations became mandatory they eliminated the possibility of more natural healing. Even worse, the advent of widespread vaccinations was followed by a number of modern illnesses, including childhood cancers, neurological dysfunctions, and auto-immune disease; America is both the most vaccinated and the least healthy among developed nations.
The current H1N1 epidemic provides a textbook example of wrong-headed vaccination policy. From the outset of the disease it has been apparent that for the vast majority of people it can bring a bad, even very bad, flu. Live through it, get over it, and enjoy lifelong immunity. (In this case Nietzsche got it exactly right: if it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger.)
For a small percentage of people the disease threatened serious complications, including death.
The medical establishment decided that the best and only solution was to spend a few $billion developing and administering a vaccine to most everyone. Setting aside the fact that they failed to adequately test the vaccine, and that they further failed to provide it in time — leaving millions of people extra vulnerable because they thought (were taught) that they were defenseless without vaccination — the far simpler, better, and cheaper solution was to teach people how to avoid it and, should they get it, how to live through it.
This would involve some basic lifestyle and nutritional education, neither of which are strong suits for the medical fundamentalists who are in charge in America. Like all fundamentalists, their chief mistake is thinking that their way is the only way.
Millions of healthy, rarely-if-ever vaccinated individuals say otherwise.
Michael Sky | CommonHealth
The whole model for preparing for the H1N1 was created from what has happened in south and central America. These are basically 3rd world countries that don’t have clean water, good healthcare resources, and their level of hygiene is totally different then ours. It was a bad model sold to a lot of people that had no information by a government that is intent on controlling our every move. Natural immunities and how we approach them would always be better.
Exactly. But medical fundamentalists, like their religious brothers, can’t stand the idea of people solving their problems without expert intervention.
And, they much prefer their expensive techno-fixes over lifting disease-ridden populations out of poverty.