As Dr Carson said on Fox today, we have to balance the risk against the benefit.
The basic question is who does the balancing? Clearly Congress cannot evaluate the risk/benefit ratio of each vaccine. So do government scientists at the CDC make the decision? The same scientists who can’t protect their own shop from contamination and bogus information?
At the other extreme, can the parent make the decision for children with no consultaton of a doctor?
This is not limited to vaccines. Who makes the cost/benefit decision about seat-belts? Who makes the cost/benefit decision about forcing all cars to have ABS brakes?
I raise these examples because an analysis of ABS brake data shows conclusively that they save many lives and save much money on fender benders...most of that being savings of the deductible amount of insurance. Thus ABS brakes risk/benefit is clearly on the benefit side.
In contrast, using exactly the same type of analysis for seatbelts shows the benefit is so small it can’t be statistically measured..it is smaller than the margin of error.
And it happened that on FOX today Dr Carson used Seat Belts as his scientifically and statistically good example of government making the risk/benefit decision.
Dr Carson did not know his facts. That type of appealing to urban legends like seat belt benefit will come back to bite him when the media turns on him, which they will as soon as his 4th place presence forces the 5th and 6th place wannabes out of the race.