First things first, this is not an anti-vaccine entry in any way. I can relate that as a parent I found it very hard to find any real studies that I felt proved that vaccines play absolutely zero roll in causing autism. I am also a skeptic by nature, so just telling me that something has been proven doesn’t mean I don’t want to do my own research. And I am especially skeptical when the organizations doing the studies have a financial incentive for the results to go their way. And really most studies have this problem, because paying for studies isn’t cheap. So only those with financial motivation tend to pay for studies.
In doing my research I read over and over again that anecdotal evidence wasn’t something you could trust, and that only controlled studies could be trusted. Which is why the recent happenings with vaping caught my eye.
The Children’s Hospital in Wisconsin noticed that they were seeing multiple patients struggling with quick, shallow breaths and also experiencing chest pain and fatigue. Each patient showed no obvious signs that they were fighting any sort of infection. The doctors did notice, though, that each patient used vapes.
This led the Hospital and State Health Department to issue a public statement warning of the dangers of vaping.
Let’s contrast that with the thousands of parents who had children that seemingly regressed in various life skills shortly after receiving a vaccine. The parents noticed the regression, but they were told that it was impossible that the vaccine that were recently given had caused the regression. I can certainly imagine how I would feel as a parent if this had happened to my child.
Now let’s think about vaping vs vaccines from an economic and public health standpoint. The medical industry loses nothing by warning about the dangers of vaping, but if vaccines were proven to somehow cause autism in even a tiny subset of population it would be devastating from a public health perspective as well as a huge financial hit to the entire industry that benefits from giving vaccines.
The point of my article is that I do believe in anecdotal evidence, and so does the medical community. There have been no studies to prove that vaping causes the mysterious respiratory problems experienced by these individuals, but aren’t we glad that the medical community made the call?
So what would I do if I were in charge of the NHS and I wanted to make sure to put an end to the vaccine debate? I would undertake a study of children who follow the vaccination schedule vs. children who do not receive vaccines and then I would publish it in language that a 5th grader could understand. Until that happens I believe that people will continue to believe anecdotal evidence, which is good, because anecdotal evidence is where just about every advancement in history started.