There are few topics more controversial in health care as the topic of vaccinations. However, little discussion is had around the true nature of the benefits and risks of this practice. After examination, I found the idea that vaccinations and their widespread use being responsible for a dramatic improvement in our health to be as much myth as fact.
A preconceived idea can shape your vision of reality. Psychologists have understood for many years that what you already believe to be true will blind you to any new information to the contrary. They know that what we believe in our minds will cause us to literally ignore what we see and disregard evidence that contradicts what we believe. This phenomenon cements myths into our minds and our culture.
The graph above is on page 23 of a prominent textbook1 used by health professionals across the country. A peculiar point is made here: that these three inventions – water chlorination, antibiotics, and vaccinations – have made a drastic improvement in the health status of our country. As part of a prominent textbook, it is very easy to believe the implied notion: that these three inventions made a real and demonstrated difference in our health. But did they?
Look at the chart above. Both chlorination, and then the discovery of antibiotics (in the midst of WWII), saw a measurable decrease in the rates of death due to infectious disease. The beginning of the twentieth century saw over five decades of decrease in death due to infectious disease. No perceptible change in disease happens for the subsequent four decades. Looking at this broad overview, even a merely casual glance would lead to the conclusion that they actually made no impact – that any effective changes had been made prior to the vaccine ever being introduced. What could possibly create a belief so strong as to interpret it any other way? Years of stories of heroic change that vaccinations had brought to the fight against disease?
My common response is that major changes began happening when we started separating drinking water from sewer water. Dr. Clarence Gonstead, a pioneering chiropractor said “vaccines didn’t clean up the country. Clean living did.” Having adjusted over one million patients in his heroic lifetime, he had formed his own opinion. Again, take a look above and consider how you formed yours.
1. McGuire, M., and Beerman, K. Nutritional Sciences: From Fundamentals to Food. Wadsworth-Thompson 2007.
