It Took Two Months and Nearly a Million Dollars to Save an Unvaccinated 6-Year-Old From Tetanus

[Hekate]

33. That's been the missing link: education that includes pictures and videos...

Every damn time my local station covers anything to do with vaccination, you can bet there will be half a dozen pictures of a baby getting stabbed with a long sharp needle and none at all of a kid sick with a preventable disease.

When I go to my dermatologist's office, he has a rack of pamphlets describing various gruesome skin ailments, including untreated skin cancer. In living color.

Decades ago I went to a community clinic for gyn care, and there was a similar rack of informational pamphlets. What I learned about VD while innocently waiting for my Pap smear was eye-opening, to say the least.

I keep imagining (hoping) that pediatricians' offices do the same.

But I'm a reader, and I just pick things up and read them. I think most people need videos.

In the 20th century Science succeeded in vanquishing so many terrible diseases that it was like a dream come true. Where we failed was by not teaching the next generation about what came before them. It needs to be part of the middle school/high school curriculum. With videos of really sick people -- not just plump happy babies getting stuck with big needles and bawling from the temporary owie.