Safety and correctnessIt is hardly a model demonstration of the scientific method to extrapolate from what is known about those other vaccine components and pronounce that all is therefore well if the safety of administering human DNA fragments through otherwise vindicated vaccines has to this day simply not been definitively determined. This would be like pronouncing BLT sandwiches are just fine after properly determining that the bacon, lettuce and tomatoes are all fine while shying away from looking into the mayonnaise, made with a new recipe, which many perceive to be routinely inclined to spoiling.
The repetitiveness of such imprecise assurances seems intended in part to discredit a legitimate line of inquiry – to label those who clamour for any further, properly thorough investigation as irrational reactionaries. But acknowledging on the one hand that there have been historical episodes of unfounded anti-vaccine hysteria is not incompatible with deeming this particular issue to be eminently worthy of investigation. In fact, what properly disinterested scientist would not be interested in actually examining it?
As it stands now, a real scare – whether justified or not – has led to downturns in vaccination coverage; resurgences of epidemics such as measles in the UK and whooping cough in California have been the unfortunate result. If compliance rates were to dip too low, the desired effect of vaccination programs – population-level or “herd†immunity – would be compromised. To insist on an honest and rigorous scientific investigation of this specific and unresolved question, far from being anti-vaccine, is fundamentally consistent with valuing their enormous contribution to public health.
We lionize scientists who supposedly leave no rock unturned in the search for truth and for the benefit of their fellow man. Nothing – and especially nothing with any religious overtones – will deter them from this noble pursuit.
But this is too touchy.
Scarce are the funds made available to investigate this matter; rare and easily ignored are the studies, such as a thorough 2011 review in the Journal of Immunotoxicology, which concluded that this matter is a legitimate concern. Apparently there are indeed limits to what the scientific establishment will pursue, and these limits happen to correspond to certain ideological standpoints (not moral precepts or religious injunctions) which are not to be questioned much less contradicted in polite society.
Safety today passes as a synonym for correctness or permissibility. Safety serves as an indispensible ally if not an outright justification for the modern project of absolute freedom. Rectitude or objective morality is, to many modern minds (particularly in the fields of science), a thing of the past; that which can be done safely or legally can’t be wrong. The flip side of this form of rationalization, of course, is that any evidence of a given practice’s harm jeopardizes its claim to legitimacy.
This is why any hint of such harm must be kept under wraps. To take but one example, we already know – strike that: most people do not know – that abortion is a major risk factor for breast cancer, even if scientific and governmental bodies have gone to great lengths to deny it. Or who can fail to see that this same type of ideological undercurrent accounted for the enormous disparity between our approaches to human embryonic stem cell research and adult stem cell research. The former received the lion’s share of funding and favourable media reporting – even as evidence mounted that the latter was proving safer and more effective. Yet deep down we still know that giving cover, either by commission or omission, to any side of an ethical debate is not what we typically associate with the job description of scientists.
We also know that stem-cell treatments derived from human embryos have led to tumours or were at times otherwise not well tolerated by the patients taking them. Is it utterly inconceivable that vaccines containing residual human DNA from aborted human foetal cells might have some adverse consequences, even if only as a trigger to those with a genetic predisposition for autism?
It appears that many in positions of influence and authority, particularly within the scientific establishment, need there to be no link between the aborted human foetal matter in vaccines and autism for reasons having nothing to do with science. Pro-lifers, on the other hand, do not need to establish such a linkage or indeed any other type of linkage in order to validate their position on the sanctity, dignity, and inviolability of human life; their arguments are moral and philosophical and do not depend on utilitarian reasoning – that is, on the various potential consequences of abortion. (Having an induced abortion, it is known but not widely broadcast, leads to premature deliveries in subsequent pregnancies, and pre-term babies are at greater risk for autism as well as cerebral palsy and other conditions).
They will always prefer vaccines that have not utilized human foetal cell lines – even if from a pragmatic perspective those vaccines that have used them end up proving to have no adverse consequences. Only those whose ethical stances depend on consequences could be threatened by getting to the bottom of this – not counting, of course, the unscrupulous driven strictly by financial incentives.
The real question, then, is: do the scientific establishment and their funders have such little regard for the suffering of their fellow man – the devastation endured by children and families with autism – that they simply refrain from investigating this specific question head on, with the urgency it deserves, just because it relates to abortion, even if remotely, and therefore might undermine it?
It is possible that there is another explanation for the meteoric rise in autism rates – that human DNA fragments in these vaccines are not the culprit – or is even likely that a diverse combination of factors is to blame. We can only hope that science will uncover and bring to light (for those are different things) whatever is behind this tragic epidemic. But those presently framing and perpetuating the narrative that the case is closed – the verdict of safety is safely in – seem not so much to be purely pro-vaccine as they are anti anti-abortion.
Predetermined politicized positions are precisely what science supposedly repudiates.
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