Recent news: “An nurse pretended to make vaccines: 7 thousand children to be re -thereie”.
Can we consider the conduct of the nurse the fruit of a sick mind or the cultural product of a new Middle Ages? Not knowing the protagonist of the story any answer would be currently risky. Meanwhile, regardless of the news, cases of measles in Italy have increased by 5 times compared to 2016 and the United States warn their citizens who go to Italy regarding “health risks”.
It can be said that scientific evolution concerning public health is often not in tune, public opinion.
The reasons? Scientists who communicate approximately (sometimes the frustration of non -excellence is compensated – also present among the researchers – looking for contact with the press); Disculgating journalists who disclose aiming for the media resonance of the news rather than the real content; Ignorant audience on the subject, always willing to move in acritic masses.
Very approximate synthesis of studies – distorted diffusion through the media – public with poor specific culture to understand how much disclosed: this is the circuit that removes medicine from public opinion.
When a news is disclosed, it will have its own course in public opinion, released and different from what she undertakes in the scientific field. Since Galileo’s time, science has not dealt with finding truth and if we do it we are not talking about science. Scientific thought, incessantly, formulates hypotheses, implements checks and later confirms the initial hypothesis or not. Don’t discover “truth”. This is ignored by many. It is probably the ignoring this procedure that pushes a part of the population to consider the contradictory and not very reliable medical thought precisely because it “changes opinion”.
For vaccines, something still different has happened. In 1998 an article published in Lancet suggested a connection between vaccinations and autism. The news immediately had a remarkable media resonance.
The article has not only shown itself to be a scientific false, disavowed by all the following studies (the most important published on the British Medical Journal in 2011), but it was also discovered that the author of the false and fraudulent article, such Wakefield, had received money to publish false news with the aim of giving support to judicial cases started by a lawyer against some pharmaceutical companies that produced vaccines. He also discovered that Wakefield had patented vaccines that would have yielded big earnings to him, replacing those he had indicated as the cause of autism. If I am not bad informed, I think he has been withdrawn his degree in medicine following this criminal act.
Despite the total groundlessness of the false thesis, in conjunction with the dissemination of the fraudulent article, there was a reduction in vaccinations in the United States and Great Britain, with an increase in measles cases associated with encephalitis and death. And while scientific thought continued to formulate and remitted hypotheses, public opinion made its course of thought fueled by distrust and search for confirmation to this, supporting the principle of freedom of the individual not to vaccinate and not vaccinated the children and forgetting to place at the top of the ethical principles also that of beneficiary and justice towards third parties.
And returning to our nurse? Mental diseases exist in nature, neither more nor less than diseases concerning other organs; The feeling of a cultural Middle Ages is widespread. Certainly the two aspects influence each other. They are both expressions of being in the world that we must accept, certainly not to satisfy, with the awareness that nothing is lasting.
