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Title
Whooping-cough vaccination: historical, social and political controversies.
AuthorDyson S
Source
J Clin Nurs,
4:
2, 1995 Mar,
125-31
AbstractNew acellular whooping cough vaccines may have the effect of leading us to forget that infectious
diseases such as whooping cough have declined in the context of particular historical, social conditions
and persist in the context of particular types of social inequalities. The debates over the existence
of damage from whole-cell whooping cough vaccine, and the respective risks of the vaccine and the disease
are still unresolved owing to methodological limitations of studies on both sides of the argument. One-sided
health 'education' campaigns on whooping cough vaccine have questionable ethics, and suppression
of dissenting views is counterproductive. Health professionals and parents have a right to know the political
context of the debate.