Sorry for the misunderstanding, but I get your point now. What I’m saying is: If I, as an expectant parent, am researching the various options for childbirth, and checking the costs, my research may lead me to any number of pages about Vitamin K shots, benefits, contraindications, etc. Yes, if I’m uninsured, I will have to pay for this shot out of pocket. However, in the course of my research, I’ll probably go to a lot of websites. It begins to become obvious to me that Mercola et al seem to want to sell me something instead of that shot.
Given the high overall cost of pre- and perinatal care*, though? Caviling over the cost of this shot is just stupid, in my opinion.
I’m not saying I believe many people refuse the shot because they don’t want to pay its cost. It’s like colloidal silver–I’m not not taking it because I am trying to save money. I don’t take it because I believe it to be harmful and that it has no benefit. I assume anyone simultaneously touting its benefits and trying to sell it to me is a lying quack looking to profit, but that’s because I already believe it is junk.
Other than not being junk, how is the Vitamin K shot different? Non-quacky medicine both promotes and profits from it. How is a dummy supposed to know the difference?
I’m as hardcore anti-quack as they come, but I think this is an excellent point. Given the sheer volume of shameless hucksters on the net, there are relatively few good science writers out there, and even fewer free resources. Anti-vaccinationists present their case using brightly coloured, user-friendly, interactive, professionally designed websites that address the readers directly and use every rhetorical trick under the sun to convince them their irrational fears are justified. Pro-science websites, by contrast, are often either dry and academic or outright condescending, and either way they have a marked tendency to preach to the converted. As educational resources for anti-quack keyboard warriors like me, they’re great. For convincing frightened parents that, say, vaccines are safe and effective they’re about as much use as Anne Frank’s drum kit.
Of course, scientists have the tougher job, even with the weight of evidence on their side. The people we need to convince are already mistrustful of vaccines to begin with, and it’s far, far easier to convince someone that their gut instinct is right than to convince them to take a chance on the one thing they’re worried about, regardless of how groundless their worries are. Nonetheless, it seems like few scientists are even trying in the first place. Of course, there are exceptions (Paul Offitt and Ben Goldacre spring to mind), but even then you have to actually buy their books, and what worried parent would do that when scumfucks like Mike Adams and Joe Mercola are already telling them what they want to hear for free?
The facts are out there and they’re fairly easy to understand, even for the layman. This isn’t an information problem, it’s an image problem. I don’t know how to fix it, but I have some ideas:
1). Start a free blog and put the facts out there yourself. The more Google-able, jargon-free resources out there, the better (I’m putting something like this together myself). Do it, even if you’re just repeating what you’ve read on other pages. Parents need to hear this stuff from regular people as well as scientists.
2). Complain, loudly and repeatedly, whenever you see instances of false balance in the mainstream media. The vaccine controversy is not a “debate”, and shouldn’t be treated as such. Conversely, when you see a mainstream media organisation treating the issue properly, fire off an e-mail to congratulate them
3). When all else fails, offer pie. Seriously, everyone loves pie.
I disagree. There are plenty of good free online resources, both “official” and unofficial (blogs*, news articles and analyses) that have user-friendly formats and can be readily understood by any sentient human.
The big problem is that a sizable minority of people have been sucked into a resentful anti-expert, anti-education, anti-“establishment” frame of mind where useful knowledge is automatically discounted and paranoid mindsets celebrated. The only real solution is to use all available tools to keep that minority from having undue influence over the rational and approachable majority.
One practical suggestion that is increasingly being implemented is to supplement straightforward factual presentations with personal testimonies. The latter tactic has been successful for alt loons, so why not make more use of it in the service of evidence-based medicine? One example (in the service of promoting immunization) can be found at pkids.org.
I envy you. You apparently encounter a far more sentient set of humans out and about than I do. I am sad to say that most people are not nearly as capable as you think, and would not be able to effectively follow along with your example blog post. In fact, I fear that post could backfire, as it does quote extensively from a moron, and could even drive traffic TO her site.
If you think the majority are “rational and approachable,” I again am envious. Alas, it is not logic and reason that drives most parents to accept the shot, but an unquestioning nature, sheepish obedience, and in many cases, complete ignorance of anything going on around them at any given moment–many will have no idea post-facto whether their child has received the shot or not, nor will any flicker of recognition pass across their faces when questioned. In this case, their ignorance serves them well, but to describe them as “rational” is optimistic hubris.
Silver Nitrate was used to prevent blindness caused by maternal gonorrhea or chlamydia. Infants still get treatment but erythromycin ointment is often used nowadays.
My dear friend Karen Ernst co-founded it. They do great work!
Also a huge list of pro-vaccine links here:
Another friend, Michael Simpson, has a blog called Skeptical Raptor. He writes a lot on this issue. Then there’s the History of Vaccines, a website run by the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
You can also check out my book’s Facebook (Your Baby’s Best Shot: Why Vaccines are Safe and Save Lives) page. We frequently run updated and relevant articles about this issue. Both Kolga and I would be happy to answer any questions people have. If we don’t know the answer, we can draw on an incredible body of resources for help in finding one.
If you are offering pie, I am in for sweet potato.
This is some kind of Darwin Award one generation removed. Society wasn’t lucky enough for these idiots to off themselves before procreation, but if they end up killing their own offspring it hardly matters – genetically speaking, of course.
Oh, yeah, except for the poor suffering babies and all that …
You know, my mother and her generation actually remember a time when “routine” childhood illnesses maimed and killed. My grandparents remember(ed) life before antibiotics, with all of those attendant risks. How is it that, within two or three generations, we’ve lost our cultural memory of the days when pertussis killed babies and polio was a terrifying fact of life? When childbirth was truly risky business, with complications that frequently killed mothers and babies? I dare some of these twatwaffles to go talk to an 80- or 90-year-old retired doctor or nurse, and ask about these advances in medicine, and whether the medical pros would advocate a return to “natural” treatment! (Hint: The only time I ever heard my late grandmother-in-law get all “het up” about a subject was when we discussed vaccinations for her yet-to-be-born great-granddaughter. Doctor Katherine asked whether I intended to vaccinate. I gave a resounding yes, and Dr. K went to town on the pure idiocy of those who advocated the crunchy granola version of medical treatment. She began practicing medicine in a poor, rural area just before WWII. In 2009, when this conversation took place, she was still haunted by those mothers and babies she couldn’t save, and the children who suffered from diseases that we are now able to prevent. And she was absolutely furious at the notion that parents would dismiss these medical interventions based on propaganda and junk science.)
I know it’s a cliche, but there’s that thing about those who ignore history being doomed to repeat it… (Or, better yet, this quote: “If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.” George Bernard Shaw)
