I did sign the online petition urging additional funding for research into the Zika virus, including a possible vaccine. It will keep a number of smart, capable, people out of mischief, allowing them to continue to sharpen their research skills.

Those skills would be eminently transferable to indisputably useful projects, like the development of vaccines for HIV/AIDS or cancer.

There’s no doubt, however, that vaccines in general, and the MMR shot in particular, are under a cloud of suspicion over side effects. It’s clear these suspicions are not entirely unfounded, or the proverbial “they” would not have set up a special federal court to deal with damage claims.

Advocates of a no-questions-asked approach to vaccine recommendations are mistaken in presuming that: shots are totally innocuous, that they confer consistent immunity, and that the diseases being prevented are more or less deadly.

As a 2015 measles outbreak demonstrates, none of these things is actually true. Children who were documented as up-to-date on measles shots made up about 30 percent of active cases. There’s not been a measles death in our great nation in over a decade. We’re learning that, presuming almost certain recovery, “childhood diseases” are likely a net positive in development and growth.

Blood donations are also a net positive in terms of health, but we would not do multiple donations on the same day. Similarly, inoculations are significant proceedures, comparable to blood donations or dental cleanings, and administering three or four of these on the same doctor visit is contraindicated.

I’m old enough to remember when smallpox vaccines were given by skin scratch. Although it left a small scar for a few years, it apparently conferred better immunity than today’s SC and IM injections.

Maybe that’s why amallpox has actually been eradicated, while polio continues to present new cases, and evolve in the wild.

James Silin

Whitefield