as small as a world and as large as alone

3:42am July 6, 2013

medicalstate:

Vaccine Infographic by Leon Farrant.

I often speak with patients who tell me that they do not wish to be vaccinated because they do not see the point, that it is a farce, that it can cause autism (it does not), despite educating and informing them of the reasons behind it. 

In the same way that people who did not grow up during the great wars of the mid-twentieth century have little frame of reference as to what the toll of total war can be, neither can a newer generation of people who have never seen the effects of polio, smallpox, and measles ravage humanity. For many people in the developed world, these are just distant, faded memories captured in the pages of medical textbooks. 

I sincerely hope that the understanding of why we vaccinate does not become lost over time, that people need not fall victim to these preventable diseases; otherwise, the suffering, the challenges, and the research that went into developing these vaccines were all for nothing.

Not only that.

But even if vaccines really did cause autism.

Which they don’t. Not even close.

It would be a really small price to pay for protection against dangerous and often fatal diseases.

(I’m autistic. And I have bronchiectasis, which is far more common in places that don’t have vaccines than in places that do. Guess which one I’d rather have? Yeah, the one with no risk of killing me – autism.)

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