Parents who don't vaccinate are weighing risks, not being irresponsible

11/5/2008 - staff

Anti-vaccine Kool-Aid drinkers. Conspiracy theorists. Pseudo-scientific idiots. Parents who decide not to get their children vaccinated are bludgeoned with attacks like these from doctors, family, friends, and now in growing numbers from the media. "More problematic," Mike King recently editorialized in The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, "are the parents who willfully ignore the requirement, substituting their judgment for that of experts who must guard the public health." How dare parents use their own judgment? Vaccines have revolutionized public health. That point is pointless to argue, and very few people, even those opposed to vaccines, do so. But vaccinations have also been proven to create health problems (beyond the unproven autism-vaccine link), and a growing number of American parents feel the risks of vaccines outweigh the risk of diseases like polio. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a “post-marketing safety surveillance program” for the CDC and FDA receives approximately 10,000 complaints per year regarding vaccines. The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program was set up by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 1988 in order to, among other things, "...establish and maintain an accessible and efficient forum for individuals found to be injured by certain vaccines," according to their website. What's more, an excise tax of 75 cents is tacked on to every single vaccine dose and put into a trust to fund the millions of dollars this program has handed out to people who have convinced their ruling body, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, of a link between vaccines and their post-inoculation health problems or those of a loved one. Since 1988 there have been 12,476 filings with the program. Of those, 2,266 petitioners were awarded an average of about $800,000 each. The trust fund now has a balance of over $2.5 billion. True 2,266 awards in two decades is not a significant number, but it does show that even the Department of Health admits vaccines cause problems ranging from asthma to high fever to encephalitis. Some members of the anti-vaccine movement even feel that SIDS may be linked to vaccines. Choosing not to vaccinate is not an easy choice for those who make it. Some doctors actually refuse to see children of these parents, citing flagrant poor judgment on the parents’ part and refusal to take sound medical advice. Not to mention finger-shaking grandparents who talk about seeing polio first hand, parents with school-aged children who feel like an un-vaccinated child is a health threat, and disapproving bad-parent looks from the family pediatrician and office staff. We are so fortunate to live in a country where we have regular access to bathtubs, refrigerators, jelly-like hand sanitizer and autoclaves. A parent who chooses not to vaccinate here (where being squeaky clean is only as far away as a trip to the shower) may not - probably would not - make the same decision if he or she lived in a less developed country like Pakistan where polio still poses a threat. Parents who don't vaccinate their children struggle with their choice on a daily basis but are often times making far more informed decisions than the droves of people who don't give their child's inoculations a second thought. Those who condemn parents who don’t vaccinate as know-nothing know-it-alls may want to rethink their knee-jerk criticism and realize that the anti-vaccine-ers care about their children just as much as the other 95 percent of the country. When it comes right down to it, are those who choose to vaccinate really doing it to strengthen the herd immunity? Are they thinking, "Yes, I will put my child's health on the line, because I know it’s better for the country?" Or are they just thinking about their own child's health like most parents? If you're a pro-vaccine parent, how about giving those parents opposed to them a little more respect. And if you are thinking about refusing vaccinations, you had better get out your boxing gloves, because you're gonna' need 'em.