As a nearing-retirement-age pediatrician, I want to congratulate Victoria Hugo-Vidal for her great Maine Millennial column about vaccines in the Nov. 25 Maine Sunday Telegram. Her column is forceful without being nasty. Good work!
I had polio at age 7, measles at 6 and chicken pox, rubella and scarlet fever. I survived all of that, but some friends and relatives did not. I now have “well-educated” nephews and nieces who get their news from Facebook and their vaccine opinions from conspiracy theorists.
I think there are two situations in which good preventive medicine can be doubted: in a land so poor that everyone seems to die despite best efforts (not us), or when disease is so well prevented that the need for prevention or danger of disease is forgotten or overlooked (us).
I thank her for such a calm, rational approach to this subject. A copy of her column should be exhibited in every office offering health care to children.
James Ross MacMahon, M.D.
Scarborough
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