Opinion: Pharma’s tarnished reputation helps fuel the anti-vaccine movement
Let me start by getting this out of the way: Vaccines are one of humankind’s greatest health care achievements, along with antibiotics, clean water, and good sanitation. There should be no argument about this at all.
Vaccines save millions of lives each year — children and adults — and prevent tremendous personal misery caused by infectious diseases. Some vaccines, such as the one against human papillomavirus (HPV), even prevent some types of cancer from developing in adult women and men.
Despite these enormous successes, vaccines are being aggressively attacked by a number of groups, many of which are well-organized and financed. Some of them have suggested that vaccines are more harmful than the diseases they prevent, which is nonsense.
Why do people oppose vaccinations? There are lots of reasons. The most frequently given one, the raison d’etre of the, though I’m still waiting to see a single piece of creditable evidence to support this. One other theme featured prominently in their messaging is that pharmaceutical companies can’t be trusted.
