Are vaccines in the best interests of the child being vaccinated?
Uncertain. The ACIP, CDC, and AAP conspicuously avoid addressing this question. In some cases, it is hard to see how it possibly could be. For example, Polio has been declared eradicated from the western hemisphere. The last case “in the wild” was in Peru in 1991. Yet, a live oral polio vaccine was still being recommended until June 1999, and some people still get polio from the vaccine. (See medical article on oral polio vaccine tradeoffs. See also this map. of progress towards the WHO goal of eliminating polio worldwide by the year 2000.) Measles has now also been declared exterminated from the indigenous US population, but the measles vaccine is still recommended.
