Let’s get a few things straight.
It is extremely dangerous and destructive to withhold vaccinations from children. Vaccines have changed the landscape of childhood by preventing many horrible diseases that killed or severely sickened children in the past. And while some parents and celebrities continue to argue about a connection — there is absolutely no link between autism and vaccines.
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Infectious disease physician Dr. Amesh Adalja, of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and an affiliated scholar at the John Hopkins University Center for Health Security, feels strongly about each of the statements above. Especially as science unequivocally supports every one of those points.
“Vaccines are one of the most important tools used to prevent infectious diseases. They are technological marvels that have prevented hundreds of millions of infections. The opposition to vaccines is a nihilistic worship of the primitive,” Adalja told LifeZette.
To show it takes the science seriously as well, a Boston area news station recently let go a reporter on its science beat because of her anti-vaccine stance.
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WGBH, a PBS affiliate, had only recently brought former meteorologist Mish Michaels on board to be its science writer. Michaels appeared to be excited about the job based on a social media post that is now deleted, according to the Boston Globe.
But knowing she was vocal about her controversial belief that vaccines cause autism, the host of the show she was to report for raised concerns. Together, Jim Braude and station management made a decision that Michaels was not a good fit — and let her go before she ever hit the air.
“The station has its own personnel policies that may have been applicable in this case,” said Adalja. “It is not surprising, however, that a television news station would want to have those covering scientific issues to actually accept the findings of science.”
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He added, “Vaccines have incontrovertibly changed the world for the better and are an example of how the human mind can solve problems on a massive scale. There is no smallpox anymore and polio has been nearly vanquished thanks to vaccines — that is apparent to everyone. It takes a remarkably high degree of evasion to deny the efficacy of vaccines and there hasn’t been, strictly speaking, any legitimate ‘debate’ on this issue since the time of Jenner and Pasteur (more than a century ago).”
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