Re: free speech -Medical parallels to radiation dose

[RuthWeiner@aol.com]

In a message dated 5/1/02 10:47:04 PM Mountain Daylight Time, hflong@postoffice.pacbell.net writes:



> , I believe whooping cough vaccine fear is often justified. 


My father and both of my grandfathers were physicians.  I had whooping cough when I was 5 -- before sulfa drugs (remember those?) were readily available, before DPT shots, before antibiotics.  It was a terrible disease and lasted for weeks.  My children were spared because they were vaccinated.  Similarly, polio was the scourge of my childhood.  I need not remind everyone how dramatically its incidence decreased because of the vaccine.  Diphtheria was a routine killer of children until the DPT vaccine.   


Clearly a good doctor (and there are plenty around) treats the individual, and will make advise the choice about vaccination that benefits his or her patient.    What I object to is the rampant hysteria about vaccination side effects or adverse effects that one now reads about in some "environmental" literature.


As to your comment about public health practice: your choice is clearly your choice, but don't slam all public health practice into the bargain.  AIDS was elucidated largely by public health practitioners.


Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.

ruthweiner@aol.com