Comment Re:Litigious society (Score 5, Informative) 416
Have you ever stopped to wonder why polio is so uncommon in the US? Yep, vaccines.
We are currently seeing a resurgent of measles cases in kids BECAUSE parents are not vaccinating their children due to concerns for vaccines causing autism. This will happen with polio as well. You assume a steady state of population in the US (or other country) without influx of unvaccinated, exposed people.
You fail to realize that not every vaccine works as a post-exposure prophylaxis. There are some that do and some that don't. I don't recall if polio is one of them, but a quick pubmed search could probably find out.
Modern medicine is a field of balanced risks. Every medication I prescribe for a patient has a potential to cause harm. I and the patient have to balance this risk versus the risk of not treating the disease. Absolutely no treatment in medicine is "safe". For most, the benefit outweighs the risk. Even supplemental oxygen can be disastrous in a patient with lung disease.
