o advocates of the use of standard scientific procedures to judge whether exposure A causes disease B, or whether treatment X is effective in disease Y, there may be no more discouraging problem than the indifference, or even hostility, of some lay people both to our conclusions and to our approach to drawing them. Scientific and medical authorities will insist that they have examined the records of thousands of vaccinated and unvaccinated children from several parts of the world and have found no hint of any difference in the incidence of autism in the two groups, but they will be trumped by a celebrity asserting that her child was vaccinated and later got autism, and she knows better. The consequence is a decline in vaccination rates, and a rise in unnecessary deaths from measles and whooping cough. The scientific and medical world will take as established fact that HIV is a necessary cause of AIDS, and devise effective treatments, but their views do not matter when a politician embraces AIDS denialism. The consequence is failure to undertake effective HIV prevention and treatment and the tragic loss of many lives.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 00:09:34 +0000
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