Jack Stilgoe
Senior Researcher
Jack Stilgoe works on science and technology projects and specialises in issues of science, society and public engagement.
at 10:43am
on Monday, 10th March 2008
Vaccines are an interesting condensation point for debates about science, the public good, personal freedom and choice. As the UK government found a few years back with the MMR vaccine, you get in trouble if you are on the one hand telling people to choose everything to do with their healthcare and on the other coercing them into vaccination for the public good. The evidence, as we found out, won't win arguments that messy. There's a nice book co-authored by Demos friend Melissa Leach that explains in more detail...
Today (thanks to Jon Turney for the tip-off), the director of immunisation at the Department of Health puts his foot in the exact same can of banana skins. In a letter to the Guardian about the controversial HPV vaccine, he explains how government are "rolling out a public information campaign this year, so parents and young women have all the information they need to consent to this important vaccine."
One of the issues revealed by the vaccination debate is an utter inability of policymakers to imagine public ambivalence. Hopefully, this one won't go the way of MMR, but they need to be very, very careful.
Today (thanks to Jon Turney for the tip-off), the director of immunisation at the Department of Health puts his foot in the exact same can of banana skins. In a letter to the Guardian about the controversial HPV vaccine, he explains how government are "rolling out a public information campaign this year, so parents and young women have all the information they need to consent to this important vaccine."
One of the issues revealed by the vaccination debate is an utter inability of policymakers to imagine public ambivalence. Hopefully, this one won't go the way of MMR, but they need to be very, very careful.
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