I am not someone who gets into vehement arguments about vaccines, either pro or anti. However, I have something important in common with the people who do: I possess literally no objective or accurate information about vaccines.
The vaccine controversy is real and it is the fault of the medical establishment as much as it is the fault of a few flawed studies. Because of the stakes involved in public health, nobody ever gives a straight answer to questions about vaccinations. Moreover, you can believe that the doctors, the government and big pharma are acting totally l’sheim shamayim (they are not, BTW) and still believe they are lying. Their job is to support the public health. If vaccines caused any ill effects, their job would be to weigh the public benefit against the public costs, and make a decision whether to be open about the costs if it may result in fewer vaccinations. But an individual should care about the individual costs and make a decision based on his or her personal circumstances.
Here are some examples that support what I wrote above:
1. We are nagged endlessly every year to get the flu shot. Few doctors will tell you the objective fact that the flu shot is directed only at a few strains of the flu, and that it has side effects. They will tell you that the flu kills 35-50000 Americans every year. Assume the number itself is true (it isn’t); they don’t tell you that the overwhelming majority of the victims are elderly or infants, and that the flu vaccine is only designed l’chat’chila to address about 50% of anticipated flu cases in the first place. So you’re taking a vaccine with a high chance of side effects, to protect against a disease that would be incredibly unlikely to harm you at all, and the protection is only 50% better! NONE of what I wrote is remotely controversial. It happens because ten thousand people getting minor side effects is nothing to the government, while 20 lives of elderly people and infants that are saved is something to them. So forgive me if I am skeptical generally of the government’s claims about vaccines.
2. A similar situation is true of the chicken pox vaccine. I am old enough (and I’m not that old) to remember doctors directing parents to seek out chicken pox for their children. Now there is a vaccine that provides dramatically less protection against chicken pox than the old practice. The vaccine needs to be renewed every fifteen years or so, and therefore makes it more likely that people will get chicken pox as adults, when it is serious, rather than as children, when it’s not. Oh, and shortly after the vaccine was approved, we started to learn that chicken pox in children is often fatal and our doctors started to tell us that only negligent parents would question whether to vaccinate against chicken pox.
3. The HPV vaccine. Enough said.
In short, I can’t claim to have knowledge about the “important” vaccines. Because I do believe that of all the terrible sources of information we have, the government is the least-worst, I vaccinate my children. But you have to be completely credulous to think that just because the government supports it or just because the guy who initially published the study was “discredited”, vaccines are an unmitigated blessing.