Do not think about, write about or deal with human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.
Current vaccination programs were developed before penicillin and other antibiotics which could allay the effects of many diseases such as smallpox, the incidence of which was in decline before the smallpox vaccination program began. Vaccination programs have increased markedly over the years and the question is: Is a specific vaccination program necessary based on prevalence and seriousness? Damage done by “side effects” is weighed against the value of immunization of the majority. That the benefits far outdistance the costs is assumptive knowledge, not actual knowledge.
The second consideration is that few data are available to analyze individual susceptibility to immunological agents. Some people are much more susceptible, obviously, than others because of the dramatic effects of vaccine on some.
Paradigms, as Thomas Kuhn has pointed out, are slow to shift and never cover all the facts. Rather than being viewed as an unalloyed good, the paradigm of vaccination programs should be looked at empirically and rationally from a cost-benefit point of view and from that of individual susceptibility.
“Once you offend the system, the system has a way of taking its revenge.” Dr. Andrew Wakefield on the witch hunt (my phrase, not his) unleashed by the pharmaceutical industry on his dissenting views about vaccines.
Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies
