Friday, March 17, 2017

To Vaccinate or Not: The Struggle of Endeavoring to be Informed in an Age of Misinformation

Posted for Roderick Moore-
We live in a time where attempts at misinformation, either intentional or un intentional, is as common occurrences that often happens more times a day than we eat. This is partially due to the increase in social media use, where people can be exposed to a plethora others opinions and ideas regardless of the individual’s background. This can lead to individuals either drawing the wrong conclusions, or being misled by another individual’s opinion. Fortunately, Eula Bliss is aware of this phenomenon of misinformation, and has decided to conduct her own research into her deriving of her opinion on whether she should vaccinate her first child or not. Even within the first ten pages of her book On Immunity it is apparent that the different opinions of the other mothers around her illustrate the conflict that she herself is having on weighing the possible pros and cons of vaccinating her child where it is stated on page eight “One mother told us that she miscarried while she was sick with the seasonal flu…and planned to vaccinate…Another mother said that her child had screamed frighteningly all night following her first vaccination and she would not risk another vaccination of any kind…” (Bliss, 8). However, faced with this conflict of information, Mrs. Bliss proceeds to research the risk and rewards herself and ultimately goes into excruciating detail into the research, and the self-evaluation of her own upbringing, that leads to her ultimate decision, which is to vaccinate her child. Mrs. Bliss is a stunning example of how an informed individual can draw conclusions not blindly, like a sheep following the heard, but as an independent individual who is capable of rational thought and can cut through the fog of misinformation, and draw her own conclusions on the subject at hand.


ReferencesBiss, Eula. On immunity: an inoculation. London: Fitzcarraldo Ed., 2015. Print.

1 comment:

  1. It seems that misinformation spreads particularly rapidly social media. I've seen many anti-vaccination articles on Facebook, for instance.

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