{"id":642,"date":"2010-07-25T12:34:09","date_gmt":"2010-07-25T12:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/apagansblog\/2010\/07\/vaccines-war-and-remembrance.html"},"modified":"2010-07-25T12:34:09","modified_gmt":"2010-07-25T12:34:09","slug":"vaccines-war-and-remembrance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/07\/vaccines-war-and-remembrance.html","title":{"rendered":"Vaccines, War and Remembrance"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Daily Kos has a
\nfascinating story on the rapid increase in whooping cough cases<\/a> in California
\nin 2004, a spike apparently correlated county by county with the number of
\nchildren whose parents chose not to have them vaccinated.  This increase  <\/span>in whooping cough
\ncases has been accompanied by a increasing infant deaths.  <\/span>The falsehood that vaccines are correlated with autism has
\ntaken lives. 
\n<\/span>But I have another point to make, sparked by this article.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n<\/p>\n

Childhood disease
\nused to kill an enormous number of infants and children.  <\/span>For example, all the male children of
\nour Founders died except for John Quincy Adams.  <\/span>But today childhood death by disease is rare, almost
\nentirely due to increases in sanitation and vaccines.  <\/span><\/p>\n

As a child I
\nremember standing in line to get the first polio vaccine.  <\/span>When I was a child polio was a source
\nof constant fear for parents everywhere. Ironically, polio, which hit in its
\nfirst American epidemic in 1916, was a scourge of the modern world.  <\/span>The sanitation that ended deadly
\ndiseases such as typhoid also prevented infants from contracting a usually
\nunnoticeable disease that gets dramatically worse with the age of the person
\ncontracting it.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Those who were
\nsymptom free were still contagious, and 1% of those contracting it were
\nparalyzed.  <\/span>Sometimes fatally.  <\/span>It had become a childhood scourge
\noften afflicting 13,000 to 20,000 Americans annually, sometimes over 40,000,
\nand with an alarming tendency to increase in numbers of victims over time.  <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span>In one of the most remarkable and little
\nremembered acts of generosity by an American, Dr. Jonas Salk, who discovered
\nthe vaccine, gave it away<\/a> as a gift to humanity.  As he put it<\/font><\/font><\/a> when asked about a patent, “Well, the people, I would say.  There is
\nno patent.  Could you patent the sun?”<\/font><\/font><\/span> <\/font><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Polio ceased to be a childhood threat – or a threat at all.  Today most children worldwide are vaccinated.<\/p>\n

But today people are also turning down vaccines because of bogus and retracted claims<\/a>  about their relation to autism.  <\/span>(For a far more rigorous
\nanalysis<\/a> of this issue, see Orac in Science Blogs.)  There is no memory of life before vaccines and great fear of the rise in
\nautism.  <\/span>It is far easier to blame
\na vaccine than to wonder whether there may be something fundamentally amiss
\nwith modern society.  <\/span>Taking the
\neasy way out, children die.<\/p>\n

Similarly, after
\nthe Vietnam War many Americans, myself included, thought we had learned a
\nlesson.  <\/span>Avoid wars of choice,
\navoid imposing governments on people, and distrust government propaganda
\nbecause it is rarely truthful, and never truthful because of respect for truth.  <\/span>Starting with Bush II, those lessons
\nwere forgotten instantaneously in a national case of collective Alzheimers. <\/p>\n

The 60s were
\nreinterpreted, as World War One was for Germans afterwards, during the Weimar
\nRepublic, as teaching us that we must always support government, and by so
\ndoing, “our troops.”  <\/span>Then victory
\nis inevitable.  <\/span>Defeat occurred for
\nGermany because she was “stabbed in the back<\/a>” by leftist and Jews at home.  <\/span>Too many Americans applied the same
\nself-congratulatory reasoning<\/a> to Vietnam. The problem was other people.   <\/span><\/p>\n

Taking the easy
\nway out, people die.<\/p>\n

Societies do
\nlearn lessons, good and bad alike, but it seems they have to enter its
\nfolklore.  <\/span>Unfortunately for
\nreasons I do not understand the falsehoods seem to get a better hold in many
\ncultures than do the truths. 
\n<\/span>Perhaps George Lakoff is righ<\/a>t,  and societies with conservative hierarchical cultures choose to interpret
\neverything in those terms, which makes them blind to the downside of their
\nguiding ethos.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Or perhaps, as I
\nheard Ram Dass say years ago, when he answered a question as to whether the
\nworld was getting better.  <\/span><\/p>\n

“The world is a
\nlot like the Fourth Grade.  <\/span>People
\nenter the Fourth Grade, and people graduate from the Forth Grade, but there’s
\nalways a Fourth Grade.”<\/p>\n

If he’s right I
\nhope I get at least a “Gentleman’s C.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daily Kos has a fascinating story on the rapid increase in whooping cough cases in California in 2004, a spike apparently correlated county by county with the number of children whose parents chose not to have them vaccinated.  This increase  in whooping cough cases has been accompanied by a increasing infant deaths.  The falsehood that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-and-technology","category-social-and-political-theory"],"yoast_head":"\nVaccines, War and Remembrance - A Pagan's Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/07\/vaccines-war-and-remembrance.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Vaccines, War and Remembrance - 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