I'm a retired Family Medicine physician living in Shepherdstown. I have advanced degrees in Medicine and in Public Health. Over my long career I saw the value of immunizations which are usually required for attendance at public schools in West Virginia. During my overseas career in many underdeveloped countries I saw what happens when these safe and effective immunizations are not required (or even available) to the public.
The required vaccinations here in the United States (and especially in West Virginia) are so effective that many physicians have never even seen rubella, mumps, measles, polio, whooping cough, diphtheria, and chicken pox. I have seen all of these infections in the overseas communities where I worked, and there was little that I and my local medical colleagues could do to significantly alter the outcome of the infections since "treatment" of these infections is too often ineffective. Prevention with vaccines is the only solution.
We cannot go there. The illnesses being prevented by "routine" vaccinations are horrific and completely unnecessary in our country. "Religious" or "philosophical" or "political" exemptions to the vaccines are meaningless when the child (or adult) is lying in front of you dying. Don't ask medical personnel in West Virginia to pick up the pieces of the lives shattered by these infections in unvaccinated children and adults.
John W. Aldis, MD
AAFP, MPH & Tropical Medicine
Mobile:(304) 283-0041
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