The why and how of public distrust of vaccines…Surely, questions worth asking

One of the biggest changes in healthcare in recent times is the emphasis on decision-making. Patients and doctors now work with big menus. It’s mostly a good thing, but a certainty with increased choice is increased conflict. As a doctor who works in a field–electrophysiology–that is almost exclusively preference-sensitive, I’ve grown increasingly interested in why and how humans choose things. After twenty years of bearing witness to medicine’s wins and loses, I’ve come to realize how little I know about this central theme of doctoring. The list of mysteries I think about is a long one: Why do doctors beat the drum about drugs that have absolute benefits of less than 1%? How did we collectively (patients, doctors, society) come to ignore the tragedy of death-by-ICU? Why do we assume an 85-year-old benefits from a treatment studied in 50-year-olds? How does a great and proud nation allow itself to spend so much on healthcare and get so little health? You get the picture. Yet, none of these mysteries are in the same category with the conflict surrounding vaccines. The why and how of where we are with vaccines boggles my mind. So bad is this place that one can hardly write about the topic. Just the word vaccine stirs controversy. Let’s step back for a moment and look at the issue of public distrust of vaccines. On the one hand is this seemingly unassailable statement from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences: Vvaccines represent a ...
Source: Dr John M - Category: Cardiology Authors: Source Type: blogs