Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Research: Influential or Irritating?

The medical world feeds off of research. Studies with results about disease epidemics are constantly being released to the media. Society is constantly being bombarded with new studies and warnings about new illnesses to worry about. However, it is very important to not always believe what you hear...

And as quoted from the Global Research article, "now as the flu season gets ready to kick off amidst much fanfare and predictions of doom due to a new H1N1 influenza virus, there is emerging sufficient information to raise very serious doubts whether our nation’s health authorities are truly serving the public health instead of commercial interests." One can't help but wonder if all the "fanfare" is actually of concern, or if it is being blown out of proportion.

In that same article, it is interesting to read that "European polls indicate that [Europeans] are less nervous about the H1N1 strain’s severity and far more suspicious towards health officials’ rationale for hyping dire warnings of swine flu’s dangers." I wonder why this is true? Perhaps they are choosing to ignore the bombardment of 'research' being thrown in their faces daily by multiple media sources. In France, Le Figaro conducted a poll of 12,050 people showing 69 percent will refuse the vaccination. In a separate French survey, one third of 4,752 doctors, nurses and healthcare workers surveyed would not be inoculated.

This information is especially interesting. Considering that when this poll was conducted in Europe, France in particular, the majority of nurses planned on refusing the vaccine. They chose to ignore the research about the dangers of H1N1 and it's side effects, and instead were suspicious of the "hype."

The numbers from France contrast drastically to the numbers in the U.S. When I asked just my close friends, 8 out of 12 (66%) of them say they get vaccinated every year. That means that only 33% of my friends do not get vaccinated. It looks like my friends are influenced by all of the research (though some may say propaganda) in favor of the vaccine.

This shows the influence that research can have on a society, be it positive or negative.

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