Why not engage in debate? If all the evidence supports vaccination, a debate might seem like an ideal opportunity to make the case for vaccinating and to demolish the arguments of the critics. However, there are several reasons not to debate. One is that very few proponents — health department officials, doctors and scientists — are on top of the evidence and arguments. They know that vaccination is a good thing but, because it is the dominant view and promoted through government policy, have not taken the time and effort to prepare the case in favour. In contrast, quite a few critics, because they are constantly confronted by proponents in daily conversations, have taken the trouble to acquire information to defend their views, and have practised countering proponent arguments.
There is another important reason why few proponents are willing to debate: unless they can win hands down, it will give more credibility to the critics. Proponents prefer to say that there is no debate, by which they mean that there is no credible reason for opposing vaccination. In this way, they stigmatise critics as irrational, unreasonable and indeed crazy — and who would want to debate someone who’s crazy? To engage in a debate is to accept that there is something worthy of debating, and this means giving some recognition to the critics as having a point of view that might be taken seriously.
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The fluoridation debate has a number of similarities to the vaccination debate, one of them being that, in countries like Australia and the US, nearly all dental, medical and scientific authorities support fluoridation, just as medical and scientific authorities support vaccination. In the US, fluoridation obtained endorsement in the 1950s by the US Public Health Service and dozens of dental, medical and other bodies. However, citizen opposition soon developed. (There were a few dentists, doctors and scientists opposed as well.) Fluoridation proponents in the 1960s and 1970s pondered whether to engage in debates with opponents, and some of them wrote about the dilemma involved.
– Vaccination Panic in Australia (2018), pp. 179-180