Parents use religion to avoid vaccines

A reader forwarded a link to this article regarding exemptions to vaccines: Parents use religion to avoid vaccines. The general premise of the article is pro-vaccine, as is evident is statements such as:

But public health officials say it takes only a few people to cause an outbreak that can put large numbers of lives at risk.

"When you choose not to get a vaccine, you're not just making a choice for yourself, you're making a choice for the person sitting next to you," said Dr. Lance Rodewald, director of the CDC's Immunization Services Division.

and:

Unvaccinated children can spread diseases to others who have not gotten their shots or those for whom vaccinations provided less-than-complete protection.

In 1991, a religious group in Philadelphia that chose not to immunize its children touched off an outbreak of measles that claimed at least eight lives and sickened more than 700 people, mostly children.

And in 2005, an Indiana girl who had not been immunized picked up the measles virus at an orphanage in Romania and unknowingly brought it back to a church group. Within a month, the number of people infected had grown to 31 in what health officials said was the nation's worst outbreak of the disease in a decade.

But the details the article fails to mention are whether or not the people that were infected in both Philadelphia and in Indiana were unvaccinated. It provides the assumption that they were not vaccinated, but do we actually know that? It also fails to properly discuss the statement: "those for whom vaccinations provided less-than-complete protection." The CDC, the writer of this article, Dr. Paul Offit (who is quoted in the article), and all those that are pro-vaccine want us to believe that vaccination is safe, effective, and fool-proof; that vacccines don't also spread the diseases they are designed to prevent; that you are somehow out of harms way when you choose to vaccinate your children.

It's true that vaccination effects more than just your child. But vacccinated children can spread disease in the same way that unvaccinated children can.

And wouldn't it be interesting to read the quote from Dr. Lance Rodewald in light of the autism-spectrum epidemic and the anti-vaccine approach, then indeed when you choose to not get a vaccine you aren't just making a choice for yourself, but also for the person next to you - by choosing to work to stop an epidemic, by choosing to keep your children from being among those that need the extra attention in schools, the extra tax dollars for specialized education, the potentially life-long care for debilitating reactions.

There is a controversy out there and there are people on both sides that are nasty, that haven't done their research, and talk with an air of authority that they do not have the creditials to assume. Seek the answers for yourself. Question your sources, consider the research, and decide what is best for you and your family.