NPR: Fresh Air with Terry Gross - Vaccines - Aired 4/5/2011

NPR: Fresh Air with Terry Gross - Vaccines - Aired 4/5/2011

I understand that Terry Gross is merely interviewing people and not necessarily passing judgment on her guests. Her opinion on her guest’s closing argument is not given. I won’t name him for he literally states that we should join the herd. Respecting him, I will treat him as a nameless nobody, a member of the herd.

The guest closes the show with the idea that everyone should get vaccinated. Terry Gross’ guest mentions that we Americans especially don’t seem to like the herd instinct, but yet this is the reason we should get vaccinated. I strongly disagree.

I have some questions for the guest: Isn’t the herd instinct, peer pressure that leads some to do drugs? Isn’t the herd instinct what leads girls to watch MTV and dress like whores? Isn’t it herd instinct that leads to genocides, such as in Rwanda and Nazi Germany?

Simply to follow the herd is not a good reason to get vaccinated.

I once read a story about how their child’s choosing to eat kosher would hopefully give them the strength to say, “No,” based upon principles of belief, such that they choose their Jewish identity over that of the herd. The person that had offered the child the candy got angry at the parenting, but the parent was proud. The herd would have said, kosher is bull shit, as if the child was harmed in some way, but the parent was proud. Even if eating kosher has no medical advantage, the decision to act not as a result of peer pressure, but as a matter of one’s own convictions is often what separates a nobody from a somebody.

transcript available here: http://www.npr.org/transcripts/ (may be previous day's Fresh Air transcript either 4/5 or 4/4)