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| Voice of the Environment's mission is to educate the public regarding the transfer of public trust assets into private, mostly corporate, hands. | ||
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Ukiah office: 1330 Boonville Rd Ukiah, CA 95482 707-467-0329 |
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Napa office: 391 Crystal Springs Rd St. Helena, CA 94574 707-963-8264 |
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| For two decades, Voice of the Environment has stood up for the people and our communities against the avarice of corporations and the misguided policies of the corporate-dominated state. |
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Print This Article Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006 Who Runs Colorado? The Age of Autism Dan Olmsted/UPI Denver's Rocky Mountain News says it's time to get over fears that a mercury-based preservative in flu vaccines could harm children or pregnant women. Its editorial on Sunday perfectly capsulates one side of what has become an increasingly heated debate. "We'd rather get our medical advice from doctors than from legislators, if it is all the same to you," the editorial began. "But legislators may not only offer medical advice, they may compel the entire state of Colorado to follow it, in the form of a misguided and unnecessary bill that would ban, except in emergencies, the use of vaccines containing more than a trace amount of mercury for children younger than three and pregnant women." Say what you want about putting mercury in shots for kids and pregnant moms -- and we've said before it seems like an odd choice -- there's another question surfacing as more states debate a ban on the preservative, called thimerosal. That question is simple: Who runs this joint? Explicit in the paper's position is that legislators should not be in the business of offering medical advice. Implicit is the idea that the experts are invariably right and that meddlers who question them -- the "you" in "if it's all the same to you" -- need to butt out. Know-nothing politicos are an easy target. But here's the deal: The people elect representatives to enact their will -- that's why they're called "Representative so-and-so." So "legislators" are not just some special-interest group that can be airily dismissed. When you tell legislators to put a sock in it, you're telling citizens to back off and let the experts run things. But the experts aren't in charge, friends, and every so often the people decide to remind them of it. The experts are a collection of public and private individuals and organizations who inevitably have competing interests -- interests that the editorial fails to acknowledge. The doctors, and their American Academy of Pediatrics, give and promote the shots in question. The health bureaucracies at the state and national levels have a mission -- prevent infectious disease by increasing vaccination coverage and adding more vaccines to the mandatory childhood schedule. Preventing infectious disease is a vital mission, but one that conceivably could run counter to grueling self-examination. The pharmaceutical companies have a stake; the insurance companies have a stake; the researchers have a stake, since many of them are funded by some of these same parties to the debate. Of course they're all entitled to a respectful hearing. But why are we genuflecting before them and brushing off thousands of parents who claim that thimerosal made their child autistic? Because "anecdotes" don't count, according to the experts; only their studies do. Putting that dubious view aside, it's worth noting that the studies are vulnerable to their own criticisms. And where is the data that shows giving thimerosal to pregnant women and young children is safe? SOURCE Print This Article |
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Voice of the Environment is a 501 (c-3) not-for-profit Montana-based corporation formed in 1991.
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