Quoting Richard Rhodes in 2010, “Now, for the first time in human history, infectious diseases no longer rank first among causes of death worldwide. Public health, a discipline that organizes science-based systems of prevention, was primarily responsible for that millennial change in human mortality.

“Half of all increases in life expectancy in recorded history occurred within the twentieth century. The worldwide increase was almost entirely the result not of medical intervention but of public health measures directed to primary prevention. Not surgeons cutting or doctors dispensing pills but better nutrition, sewage treatment, water purification, the pasteurization of milk and the immunization of children extended human life.

“Half of all Americans alive today are alive because of public health improvements. Without such improvements, 69 million of us would have died before reproducing; another 69 million would never have been born. The number alive because of public health improvements in the United States alone – 138 million – is larger than the total number of man-made deaths worldwide in the 20th Century caused directly or indirectly by war. Public health is medicine’s greatest success story.”

You are alive to read this because your parents and grandparents did not die too young to have children. The reasons that they survived all the horrible things that killed most people over history are clearly stated above.

Please give science its due and understand the damage you can do by spreading conspiracy theories. Get your shots, spread the truth, save a life. It might even be the life of someone you love.