We had an appointment with the pediatrician just the other day. We were there for a vaccination. We started chatting about the whole vaccine/measles scare and she said she completely sees why parents are in the position they're in. It's not just a friend giving them bad advice, it's the first 20 results that come up on a Google search. Scientific research is just that, scientific. To most people, it's just not sexy. The doctors and scientists aren't out there screaming at the top of their lungs and they don't have a spokesperson that seems to grab attention. Anyone can present statistics in a way that makes their research look legitimate. She also said something that made a lot of sense. Vaccinations can never be 100% safe. No medical procedure is. Not a single one. The reason is our own biology. What is fine on 99.999% of the population can kill 0.001%. Something as simple as a Tylenol or Advil.
As a parent who has read a million things in doing research, I have to say that a lot of it made no sense to me. And, I'm not an uneducated idiot (at least I don't think I am). I'm just not a scientist. I can't believe that the majority of people that read the ingredients or the inserts that are included in the vaccinations can really understand everything. Especially the molecular breakdownI decided to listen to the doctors that I was entrusting with the care of my daughter and the handful of actual doctors and scientists in my family. I vaccinated on the delayed schedule.
The misinformation is what was scary to me. If the MMR never contained thimerosal, then why are people saying it used to contain the additive? Or they're saying they've "heard" that some MMR's still contain thimerosal and that some no longer have it so you have to find the one's that no longer have the ingredient. It reminds me of the friends episode with the phelange on the plane. When Phoebe calls Rachel and tells her to get off the plane because she has a feeling there is something wrong with the left phelange, people start to panic. They're told the plane doesn't even have a phelange, at which point they panic because the plane is missing it's phelange. Eventually, everyone is herded back on the plane, after being assured that the phelange is fixed and in place![]()
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