I do give DPT polio and MMR vaccines to most people. I have seen 2 deaths from diphtheria, 5 from polio and 2 from tetanus (all in 1950, 1951).
Public health engineering has saved more lives than private physicians, with sewer and water systems preventing typhoid, mosquito abatement and malaria, etc.
However, the compusory rotovirus vaccine killed many infants before withdrawn and hepatitis B use is subject to the same arguments as condom instruction, which I prefer to individualize.
Your reduction of radiation risk in transport, I would rate right up there with other utility safety - a good feeling most HPs deserve.
Howard Long
RuthWeiner@AOL.COM wrote:
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