"Young" doctors and vaccines
Vaccines these days can't catch a break. Back in the day when people were dying from polio and measles, everyone (including physicians) could see the benefits of vaccines first hand. Now, with the success of vaccines in the bag, the ground has shifted against vaccines from "seeing is believing" to "what have you done for me lately." There is an abstract at IDSA that reports that young physicians are less supportive of vaccines. Sara Kliff at the Washington Post reports that Michelle Mergler (Emory) and Saad B. Omer (Johns Hopkins) found that recent medical school graduates were “more likely to believe immunizations do more harm than good" and were 15 percent less likely to believe vaccines work. Bummer.
see also: Shari Roan, LA Times 10/20/2011
Pfft. Sounds like those med school grads got their varicella vaccine instead of gaining immunity the old-fashioned way: getting chicken pox from your preschool buddies (nothing like a dose of itchy spots to make you appreciate a little prevention)
ReplyDeleteI remember whining about getting a second MMR when it was recommended after the measles outbreaks in the early 1990s. My mom said a thirty-second shot was nothing compared to lying in a dark room for a week feeling like death because you caught measles (she and her brother both caught the measles, the two younger sisters didn't because they had got that newfangled vaccine).