Now that Malta has finally received its swine flu vaccines after months of anticipation and now that next month the injections are to begin being dispensed to the wider public after health care workers and other particularly susceptible segments of society, the public at large would be well advised to consider very carefully whether they and their families should take it.

To avoid the risk of being misconstrued and misinterpreted, we will say from the outset that we are by no means suggesting that anyone refrains from being vaccinated.

Far from it; what we are saying is that the public, to the best of its ability, needs to make a well-educated decision. That means not swallowing hook, line and sinker the government’s persuasive advertising campaign. It also means that before queuing up for injections they should most certainly seek the advice of their family doctor, and after that, we would advise, seek a second and perhaps even a third opinion on the matter.

The fact that the medical community, both in Malta and abroad, is far from reaching any sort of consensus on the vaccine should be enough cause in its own right to warrant a good, hard look at the advisability of the vaccine.

By all accounts, the risks of the vaccine, if any, are far outweighed by the risks of the swine flu itself. Nevertheless, one would be well advised to seek as much counsel as possible, and to not, at any cost, take a leap of blind faith.

We are living in an age of conspiracy theories and a distrust of authority, and even something as seemingly self-evident as the need to be inoculated against a possible widespread outbreak of swine flu is being dismissed by many in Malta and other parts of Europe.

But to follow such rationale strictly for the sake of distrust in the authorities would, of course, be seriously misguided. There is also a wider risk that those refusing to be vaccinated could very well contribute to a wider outbreak of the pandemic in Malta should it sweep over the islands.

Conspiracy theories aside, is a mere handful of months’ research enough to declare the vaccine safe for practically all and sundry? One would also do well to heed the lessons of the Thalidomide scandal, for which the British government has apologised recently, 50 years later, after babies were born with birth defects after mothers took the morning sickness pill.

No doubt, in Malta and in other parts of the world, there has been a great deal of ‘overselling’ of the vaccine by the authorities.

The same, at least according to the head of health at the Council of Europe, can be said of pharmaceutical companies, who were accused of influencing the World Health Organisation’s decision to declare the swine flu a pandemic.

This, Dr Wolfgang Wodarg said, ensured enormous gains for pharmaceutical companies while some countries, he said, “squandered” portions of their health budgets on what he described as a relatively mild illness.

Adding weight to his argumentation, the Council of Europe, far from throwing the reasoning out the window, passed his resolution calling for an investigation into the role that leading pharmaceutical companies played in having the swine flu declared a pandemic by the WHO. The CoE is expected to convene an emergency debate on the matter later this month.

Then there is the case of Poland, as reported in today’s issue (see page 14).

The Polish government refused to import swine flu vaccines, despite the dire warnings of a spreading epidemic. Poland was, in fact, the only country known to have rejected the vaccine – over safety fears and distrust in the pharmaceutical companies that produces them.

But now that the current outbreak appears to have reached an apex in much of Europe, much of Poland feels justified by its government’s decision, in that countries with large stocks of the vaccine, such as France, often saw poor public interest the vaccinations and now face financial losses with unused doses about to reach their best before date.

The Polish example, of course, should not have been imitated in Malta and the government was quite right in securing stockpiles of the vaccine for the population. The government, after all, is duty-bound to offer the vaccine to those wishing to have it.

So when it comes down to decision time, the best advice that could be dispensed is to do your homework, consult as widely as possible, make the most informed decision possible but, by no means, simply take a shot in the dark.