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Those who rely on vaccination for their child's health demonstrate poor values
Some people may feel that vaccines are contrary to their moral stance. Vaccines may be perceived as promoting immoral behaviour or as having been developed using immoral means.
Moral concerns differ from religious concerns because even though morality may stem from religious beliefs, faith is not a necessary condition for developing certain moral positions. For example, people may oppose abortion for moral reasons without appealing to religious beliefs.
Moral concerns about vaccines often arise in the context of sexuality. For example the vaccine against human papilloma virus (HPV) which is sexually transmitted may be seen to encourage sexual activity.
Moral concerns may also arise around the use of foetal cell lines in vaccine production or the alleged mistreatment of animals during vaccine development processes.
This theme encompasses a number of subthemes about perceived harm allegedly caused by vaccines. This includes autism and other developmental or behavioural conditions, particularly attributed to MMR vaccination in children. Other conditions such as cancers, autoimmune diseases and infertility may also be attributed to vaccination.
It is normal to have questions and doubts about medical treatments and how they might affect us. The world can sometimes feel like a dangerous place, and we don’t fully know why some medical conditions occur. It is understandable to want to know what caused a problem so we can try to avoid it or solve it.
Dialogue between patients and healthcare professionals is most productive if it is guided by empathy, and an opportunity for the patient to affirm the reasons underlying their attitudes and to express understanding for that. That’s why it is important to understand the attitude roots behind people’s overt opinions. To affirm a person’s underlying attitude root does not mean we need to agree with the specifics of their argument. For example, we can acknowledge that:
It is normal to have questions and doubts about medical treatments and how they might affect us. The world can sometimes feel like a dangerous place, and we don’t fully know why some medical conditions occur. It is understandable to want to know what caused a problem so we can try to avoid it or solve it.
Fear and uncertainty can lead us to see connections that do not exist. Indeed, those with vested interests in finding false links often go to great lengths to public false information. For example, in 1998, a doctor who was paid by personal injury lawyers published an article that falsely claimed a link between MMR and autism. The article was retracted after his scientific misconduct was revealed, and extensive research has found that vaccines do not cause autism.
We need to distinguish between events that simply occur at random close together, and those that are actually causally linked. Not everything that happens just after we have a vaccine is caused by the vaccine. Sometimes unrelated medical conditions occur right after a vaccination, but so do other accidents.
If we had an accident in the hospital carpark after getting a vaccine, that would be tragic, but it would not be because of the vaccine.
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