Preventable disease a choice?

Sue Lani Madsen’s March 9 column on compulsory vaccination (“Benefits, risks and vaccine mandates”) is a puzzling, flip-floppy mess.

She begins with a misfit analogy. She compares government censoring of news about the flu in 1918 to Facebook downplaying its vast catalog of vaccine misinformation. Here’s the puzzler: the 1918 effort suppressed the truth, causing disease and death, while the current effort is aimed at suppressing hoaxes to prevent disease and death.

To Madsen this suggests a free-speech conspiracy against “all vaccine-questioning sources.” So much for honest debate and focus on the issues. That’s a cheap-shot smoke screen that obscures the core issues by slinging mud at the opponent’s alleged behavior. The net effect is to give credence to the anti-vaccine skeptics by feeding their suspicions and reinforcing fraudulent “science” that, among other fallacies, connects vaccines to autism.

Then, mystifyingly, much of Madsen’s column offers compelling arguments for compulsory vaccination: “miraculous benefits for public health,” herd immunity, an acknowledgement of misinformation about vaccines, the need to distinguish bias from the science, how vaccine-hesitant parents should talk to their pediatricians about contraindications. She even cites a catastrophic example of a non-vaccinated whooping cough victim who now suffers “a lifetime of lung problems.” Compelling stuff.

But in the end, after loading up the judgment scales with heavy pro-vaccine arguments, she makes a head-spinning U-turn to the conclusion that “there must be choice.” And of course, “it’s not an easy one.” But apparently epidemics of deadly disease are an okay option. Huh? Where did that come from?

Steve McNutt

Spokane