Review Article
Year: 2023 | Month: February | Volume: 10 | Issue: 2 | Pages: 394-411
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52403/ijrr.20230250
Conjoint Citizen Participation of Pro-vaxxers and Vaccine Deniers to Eradicate Vaccination Conflicts: Illuminating a Novel Win-Win Pathway
R. Vinodh Rajkumar
Medical Anthropologist, Physiotherapist & Gerontologist, Director - Prabhanjeet Vitalityarium. Rajapalayam – 626117, Tamilnadu
ABSTRACT
Conflicts among pro-vaxxers and vaccine deniers will remain endless if both these groups fail to view vaccination through an unusual lens agreeable to both. Citizen participation encourages people to get involved in decision-making processes to build a better society or nation. Pro-vaxxers and vaccine deniers might be correct from their health activism and citizen participation standpoint but lack effective basis towards scientific precision. Under such circumstances, it is important to scrutinize if any aspect of the science remains neglected to facilitate resolving persistent conflicts. Lack of immunological tests to objectively measure the natural and adaptive immunity could have been instrumental in vaccination disputes. Epidemiological findings and publications should not be solely trusted to devise public health strategies. Affordable and precise immunological tests to prove the necessity and efficacy of vaccination on an individual level should be discovered to equally benefit pro-vaxxers and vaccine deniers. Perhaps, such immunological tests should be made disease-specific and vaccine-specific, and also enable development of an immunological classification system with gradations for immunocompetent and immunodeficient individuals. If disease-specific immunological tests are unavailable or cannot be discovered, tests based on homeostasis could be the best alternative but the relationship between homeostasis and immunity is surprisingly neither well established nor widely discussed, thus, immunity may be often seen as an ‘isolated’, ‘vaccine-dependent’ department in the human body. Any prophylactic intervention or treatment should upbring measurable changes in homeostasis of an individual to prove its scientific credibility. Ideally, both pro-vaxxers and vaccine deniers should be labeled as ‘defeated’ in their meaningless tug-of-war for being ignorant about “objective immunoassays”. As citizens, the pro-vaxxers and vaccine deniers have important onus to eradicate vaccination disputes by exploring what is equally relevant and beneficial to both of them to evaluate and regulate their immunity to ensure satisfactory personal health and community health, without any obligation to be sacrificial to justify the authenticity of their citizen participation. A scope for pro-vaxxers and vaccine deniers to work together (conjoint citizen participation) to eradicate vaccination conflicts is possible only based on ‘affordable and reliable immunological test’ to clinically examine themselves and clearly interpret if they are genuinely contributing to herd immunity or sabotaging herd immunity through their personal immune status. Even a single individual could contribute to massive scientific transformations through his or her discoveries, or just through critically questioning established scientific practices, and this is how naturally science evolves as a marvelous product of intellectual humility. Pseudoscience evolves as a malevolent product of intellectual arrogance.
Keywords: Citizen Participation, Vaccination, Immunology, Pro-vaxxers, Vaccine deniers, Herd immunity, Antibodies, Innate immunity, Adaptive immunity, Immunological memory
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