My (unsolicited) views on vaccination

Anyone who knows me well will know my very strong views on vaccination. 

I don't believe vaccination should be compulsory or state-mandated. I value personal choice and I think people should be left alone to live their lives how they see fit for the most part. However when people make choices that are known to have a negative affect on the health and wellbeing of others around them, I find my beliefs are balancing on much less solid ground.

So, when I read of an increasing number of parents refuse to vaccinate their children, I find myself feeling very uncomfortable indeed. I believe in their right to conscientiously object to vaccination in a general sense, however I also believe every parent who is able to do so has the moral obligation to vaccinate their children, not only to protect their own children's lives, but the lives of others around them who are too young or too sick to be inoculated, and who therefore rely on herd immunity for their protection from potentially deadly, yet preventable diseases.

I realise vaccination has become a very emotive issue, mostly as a result of the emergence of a variety of predominantly internet-led conspiracy theories that have linked some vaccines, erroneously, with autism and other serious conditions. From the perspective of a mother who has lost her child for reasons that I only wish had been preventable, I cannot fathom how a parent fortunate enough to have a living child could take such a real risk to their children's lives in choosing not to vaccinate against preventable diseases. I do understand that most people who object to vaccination are doing so for the exact same reasons - to protect their children from what they see as perceived harms, however it is an established scientific and medically-accepted fact that vaccination saves lives. Of course, as with any medical procedure, there are associated risks, however minute. Those small risks are outweighed very easily when you consider the alternative that we are facing, though: the re-introduction of dangerous childhood diseases that we'd previously successfully eradicated.

The anti-vaccine movement is a predominantly Western, middle-class phenomenon. Such parents are only able to convince themselves their children are better off protected from the 'evils' of vaccines precisely because they are privileged and fortunate enough never to have seen first hand the devastation caused by polio or to have ever been touched by a child's death from diphtheria or whooping cough. You don't have to go too far from Australian shores, and sometimes within Australia itself, to find communities still devastated by the outbreak of vaccine-preventable diseases because they lack the funds and public health programs to exercise the very choice that many anti-vaccinators so vehemently oppose.

I am one of those privileged parents. Perhaps I'm even more privileged in that I am a highly-educated woman with multiple degrees and a consequent ability to conduct reliable research, assess information, and to draw conclusions from what I find. Though I have had much opportunity to practice those higher-order thinking skills, and am probably more experienced than the average person in using them, I don't for a minute, however, profess to know or understand more about topics as complex as infectious diseases and public health than experts who have devoted their entire careers to such matters. The thing that bothers me so much about anti-vaccinators is the arrogance many of them profess when they say 'I know best'. If you're going to take a stand against widely-established and credible facts (and you're entitled to do so) you really need to be able to reference more than a series of discredited studies and a bunch of usually anecdotal, instead of empirical, evidence.

As fast as passionate anti-vaccinators can search the internet for yet another anecdotal story that 'proves' vaccines are dangerous, science is busting the shit out of each and every one of their assertions. For a very layman's explanation of how it is doing so, you could begin by reading this. I can see the anti-vaccinator's point of view, and I can see their fear, but I am able to recognise that the evidence shows those fears are predominantly misdirected. Personal experience of an adverse event after vaccination, which underpins much anti-vaccine rhetoric, does not stand as a valid argument against otherwise compelling, established evidence. There are two so-called 'logical fallacies' at play here. The first is that anecdotal evidence can never be a true measure of proven statistical realities, for reasons that are explained very simply here.

The second is making an argument based on false cause. This is the type of thinking which posits a 'definite' causal connection between two different events (i.e. my child was vaccinated, and later developed autism, therefore vaccination caused my child's autism) can be intensely problematic, and is also often deeply flawed, although very common amongst objectors to immunisation.

The evidence shows that the odds your child will suffer an adverse reaction to immunisation are very, very slim. The statistics are explained very clearly here, in a handy graphic, and the same website has a lot of really interesting information about the actual facts in question.

At any rate, it's all very well for us to sit around and argue about it, or for me to try and intellectualise how I feel about it,  but these things have been been discussed much more eloquently in so many other places. But while we argue, because of falling vaccination rates, babies and other people with vulnerable immune systems, are experiencing the very real consequences of anti-vaccinators' actions, or as the case may be, inactions. This baby's death from pertussis (whooping cough) is just one of many that are needlessly occurring. Newborns can't be vaccinated for pertussis until they are a couple of months old. This baby relied upon those around her having immunity to the disease for her survival from it. She died.

This particular case also highlights the need for parents, grandparents, and others who spend their time around young babies to ensure that their immunity from infectious diseases has not waned over time. Just yesterday I received the pertussis/diphtheria/tetanus booster in recognition of the fact that we hope, soon, to be able to try for another baby. Knowing what it is like for a child to die, we could not knowingly put an otherwise healthy child at risk of dying from something we had the means to be able to wholly prevent. For the record, the vaccination really bloody hurt. My arm is very sore and tender today and I couldn't sleep on my side last night. But it's a hell of a lot less painful than the alternative: the potential serious or fatal illness of a child you know or love.

Though I'm able to understand where anti-vaccinators' points of view come from, even whilst disagreeing with them, I know I'd find it hard to maintain the same level of understanding for their cause when I am holding my own vulnerable baby in my arms and am desperate to have it live. I know that there's no way I could let my newborn baby within spitting distance of a knowingly unvaccinated person and be able to sleep at night. I'm also aware that this is likely to cause some problems in the future for our family as Leslie has a few of these erroneous vaccine myths circulating amongst his own family members, who, as a result, have chosen not to vaccinate their young children. That story is one to be, unfortunately, continued.