First, a full disclosure: I have been vaccinated against measles, mumps, diphtheria, rubella, whooping cough, smallpox, and shingles and have had none of these maladies. At one time or another, my wife received all of these same vaccinations. Our kids were both immunized, and they have chosen to have their kids immunized. None of us has ever had an adverse reaction to a vaccination.
The vaccination controversy currently raging in the USA demonstrates that it is possible to be intelligent, sane, and irrational all at the same time. For example, I recently received an online article written by an obviously intelligent person who was ranting about the imminent possibility, as he sees it, that the government will mandate vaccinations. He refers to America as a “fascist state” and calls doctors who push for the vaccination of children “medical Satanists” who are “assaulting” children with “poisons.” His high school English teachers obviously never told him that name-calling and hyperbole obscure one’s point. (By the way, this brouhaha can be traced back to a fraudulent 1998 research paper whose author eventually lost his medical license.)
On the other side of this debate are some equally irrational rants. The author of a recent opinion piece in USA Today asserted that (a) parents who refuse to vaccinate should go to jail and (b) vaccines are “safe and effective.” No, these parents should not go to jail. Last time I checked, America is not a fascist state. Parents have and should continue to have the right to refuse to vaccinate their children. Likewise, schools, being a public trust, should have the right to refuse admission to those kids. Furthermore, it is not true that vaccines are safe, unless one is speaking only relatively. As is the case with any drug or medical procedure, vaccines involve risks, even very serious ones.
It is clear (to anyone who approaches this issue objectively), however, that the benefits of vaccination far outweigh the risks. The diseases that I was vaccinated for as a child once caused a good amount of suffering and death. And indeed, there are confirmed tales of suffering and death associated with childhood vaccines, but they are few and far between and researchers have been unable to confirm cause-and-effect. Furthermore, nearly everything involves risk of some sort and degree. There is risk associated with swallowing food, but I highly recommend it nonetheless.
In 2012 (the last year for which statistics are available) the leading causes of death in children ages 1 – 4 were unintentional injury, congenital anomalies, malignant and benign neoplasms, homicide, heart disease, influenza, septicemia, cerebro-vascular problems, and respiratory disease. The only reason measles, whooping cough, diphtheria, and other childhood illnesses from years past are not on the list is vaccines.
Many if not most of the injuries that are the leading cause of death in children ages 1 – 4 are sustained in automobile crashes. How would parents who don’t allow vaccinations yet transport their kids in cars explain the inconsistency? Per year, a lot more kids drown than die of vaccination. I doubt there is anything approaching one-to-one correspondence between being anti-vaccine and anti-water-play.
Parents who don’t allow vaccinations are well-intentioned, which proves that being well-intentioned and not thinking straight are not mutually exclusive. But then, people who suggest that doctors who advocate vaccinations are Satanists or that jail is the right place for anti-vaccination parents aren’t thinking straight either.
These folks obviously deserve one another.
