Pity the folks at the Illinois State Board of Health.
Last week the board’s panel of expert advisers voted, by a near-unanimous margin, in favor of having every child in the state vaccinated against chickenpox before he or she can start school. Now the board will hold a public hearing or two before deciding whether to embrace that recommendation, which also is endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
In other words, the board will post a public summons for spiritualists, home schoolers, libertarians and right-wingers of all sorts to come downtown and give the government (usually pronounced “gumnt”) a piece of their mind. No doubt the health board also will hear from a few qualified virologists and epidemiologists. (Like the ones who made the chickenpox recommendation in the first place.) But by the end of the day, after the last TV reporter is done interviewing the last Concerned Citizen, the general public is likely to have more doubts than ever about immunizing for chickenpox.
Welcome to the age of democratized science.
You probably thought these were watershed times for science and technology, what with the cloning of sheep and the almost-landing on Mars. Turns out we’re actually embarking on another kind of era.
This is a time when everyone’s opinion on matters scientific is not only welcome, but is held as valid as everyone else’s opinion. It is also a time of suspicion–suspicion about technology, suspicion about government, and most of all, suspicion about government-sponsored technology. Just when real science is unraveling the infinite intricacies of the human genome, letters to the editor, of a kind not seen since the ’50s, are making dark accusations about the fluoridation of tap water.
In the X-Files era of democratized science there is no need for tiresome doctoral degrees in biochemistry or medicine. If you think your kid shouldn’t be forced to get a chickenpox shot–maybe because of something you heard on talk radio or what your neighbor said about a niece who had a bad reaction–then you, too, can stand up and be heard. If enough angry people join in and catch the ear of elected officials the eggheads in lab coats won’t stand a chance.
It’s also an era of profound selfishness. Immunization programs don’t work unless the vast majority of people participate. That’s how scourges like poliomyelitis were eradicated in this country. Virtually everyone cooperated and the crippling virus ran out of places to hide. People did so knowing there was a slight risk that inoculation could lead to an adverse reaction, sometimes even hospitalization, and, in rare cases, death.
Now this is a problem. For among the disciples of Ayn Rand and the flat income tax, there are many who refuse to make any sacrifice, or take any risk, for the benefit of the whole. Their logic is chillingly flawless: Let others get inoculated so as to protect me and mine from infection while we sidestep the risk of adverse reaction.
Not even today’s armed forces are immune from “me first.” Some 400 members of our modern, nobody-gets-hurt military have refused to take injections against anthrax, the biological weapon most likely to be used by our would-be enemies. There is no hard science to support such fears, just scuttlebutt and barracks talk about vague adverse reactions. Don’t be surprised if Congress intervenes so immunization-resisters can be discharged with benefits and without prejudice.
And so it goes.
Non-science-based opposition to genetically enhanced foods is causing U.S. agribusiness to shelve some of the most promising nutritional advances in the history of mankind. The politically fine-tuned Clinton administration, rather than defend food science, has embarked on an “organic food” certification program that likely will become the gold standard for consumers. Fool’s gold, that is, because there’s nothing unhealthful about using radiation to kill bacteria or using genetic engineering to grow vegetables that are more resistant to pests and more rich in essential vitamins.
Thanks to junk science, enviro-mysticism and irresponsible media coverage, millions of Americans now are more worried about asbestos than obesity; about synthetics in teething rings than child restraints in cars; about lawn chemicals than tobacco smoke.
None of this makes scientific sense. The public-health data–the morbidity and mortality tables–do not lie.
You and I may trust the science-vetted recommendations of the Illinois State Board of Health or the U.S. Center for Disease Control (www.cdc.gov) For a growing number of Americans, they’re just more lies from the gumnt.
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E-mail: jmccarron@tribune.com
