How to Unmask the Anti-vaccination 'Experts'

“Talk to the mothers of ill children, look at the suffering in their faces, there are very many cases that science ignores”. When you hear words like that, you had better start to worry; they are typical of those who, having recourse to the instrumental use of the emotions and supposed limits of the scientific method, advocate alternative therapeutic treatments to traditional medicine. Concern ought to start from the observation that these treatments are ineffective because something like “alternative medicine”, as opposed to “traditional medicine”, does not exist. Rather, medicine exists, with its data, its evidence, standard protocols and its rules of validation for drugs and therapies which even includes the use of experimental protocols for innovative therapies, the efficacy of which, partially shown, requires further proof. Outside this form of medicine there is no other medicine, simply there is nothing. This is why the expression “alternative treatments” is used, to clarify the fact that they have nothing to do with confirmed or experimental clinical therapies. The advocates of alternative treatments, in general, refuse these arguments, accusing doctors and scientists of being without a “mental openness” but this is another false argument: mental openness consists not of accepting opinions only because they are alternative to consolidated theories but remaining open to all the hypotheses or criticisms possible, on condition that they are based on data that can be proven. Mental openness is measured on facts, never on personal opinions—otherwise the risk is that of returning to magic or to witchcraft. Let’s look at the reasons why.