Michael Specter Quotes
There are always potential side effects for every vaccine.
Specter, Michael. "Science AMA Series: I'm Michael Specter, Staff Writer at The New Yorker." Reddit, 2014.
At the time, some parents of autistic children observed that the autism was diagnosed after the children had been vaccinated for communicable diseases. They then concluded that there was a causal relationship. Many people, hearing these anecdotes concluded the same and there was a political controversy over the safety of childhood immunization. However, many scientific studies, and analysis had shown conclusively that there was no causal relationship. None the less, many people still thought there was and the controversy persisted.
A number of Americans believe that these and other elements of our civilization are dangerous to human health. Yet all the evidence, and there has been much on each of therse, has shown that there is no causal link between these and health problems. Yet there are people who claim that they observed bad things like autism developing after childhood vaccines. Some people have been diagnozed with cancer shortly after they began to eat a genitically modified food. Some people developed migrane headaches shortly after they started using a cell phone. The rumors travel and many people are concerned. Hoever, there are a number of children who are diagnozed with autism every year, Some of those had their diagnosis shortly after they had the recomended childhood vaccines. But it woud be impossible for out of 1,000 children who contracted autism in a given year to not have had their annual vaccines within 3 months from the time they had their shots, Actually about 250 of them would have that. Of all of the people who started using a cell phone for the first time, there will always be some who also have headaches after they started with cellphones. Epidemiologists can and have actually measures most of these things and either there is no causal relationship, or it is so slight as to not be serious enough to be a threat.
Michael Specter (born 1955) is an American journalist who has been a staff writer, focusing on science and technology, and global public health at The New Yorker since September 1998. He has also written for The Washington Post and The New York Times. Since 2019, he has also been an Adjunct Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford University. From 2012-2016 Specter was a Visiting Professor of Environmental and Urban Studies at Bard College.
