Sunday, April 02, 2006

It's Not About The Science

Devil’s Kitchen takes the words right out of my mouth when it comes to medics who proclaim themselves shocked – shocked! – by the coming measles epidemic. It really is more than flesh and blood can stand hearing these folks taking out an onion for all those crippled kids while they themselves had blocked one of the primary means of preventing the epidemic.

Sure, there are some anti-vaccination kooks who just plain don’t like the whole scheme, but there are a hell of a lot more parents who were/are worried about the MMR vaccine in particular. Not only did the government not give these parents the option of single jabs, they actually went out of their way to nobble those clinics which did offer these jabs – and yes, the scientific establishment was 100% behind them. See, that’s the problem right there. Measles is that bad, so surely almost any counter-measure must be justifiable ? But no, they theytell us that the single jabs are expensive, have lower efficacy, take up more medical time…..

Hang on a minute. These people just got through telling us how awful measles was – against that background, surely their reasons for refusing to deploy the single vaccine seem distinctly anorexic ?

The real reason why these people will not countenance deployment of the single vaccines is given away by one of DK’s commentors when he claims that ‘The media stoked a frenzy for their own dubious interests, the job then fell on the NHS to crush it, not pander to it.’ Huh ? Ever since Wakefield’s report came out the scientific establishment has been trying to ‘crush’ this issue. Less crushing and more science might have saved us all a lot of trouble.

The clue is that, as ever, when these people say ‘media’ they mean ‘public’. This debate was about who runs science. Almost from day one, this issue was perceived as the Dien Bien Phu of the science wars. This was the issue the scientists would use to crush those interlopers and their talk of ‘oversight’, ‘accountability’ and the like.

Having kids die or be crippled by measles is one thing, but public scrutiny ? Now that’s terrifying. Even now, the scientific establishment could yet save lives, if only they would demand deployment of the single vaccine, but they won’t. More than that, having stood aside and let it happen, they’ll wave the bloody shirt to ‘prove’ the dangers of public accountability. That’s how utterly detached these people are from reality. They’ll exploit a hideous disease and the death and mutilation of children to try and prove that we should…. trust them ?

What have they been injecting ?

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