A groundless debate has been created over vaccination, and it’s flared up with the recent tragic news from The Happiest Place On Earth. One hundred people, not just those vaccinated against measles, have been infected. Those opposed to vaccines would have you believe that vaccines cause autism, but they’re incorrect.

Andrew Wakefield, formerly a doctor in the United Kingdom, was heavily tied to a law firm wishing to create a lawsuit, and he concocted a heavily flawed study linking vaccines to autism. Even though absolutely zero other studies have repeated his claim, it still created an undercurrent of distrust which has sadly persisted. The link to the law firm was found, and Wakefield was censured in the strongest possible way, stripped of his degree, barred from practicing medicine and his paper retracted by the journal. A mountain of studies show no correlation between vaccines and autism.

If you still do not vaccinate, you are putting everyone around you at risk. Vaccines are not 100 percent effective, but if everyone around you has a 99.9 percent effective vaccine barrier against a disease, it won’t get a foothold to spread. Some children have immune system disorders, or strong cancers, or any of a variety of legitimate medical conditions which make vaccines impossible to take. You’re putting their life at risk again.

It’s your duty as a parent to vaccinate, and if you don’t you are at best being selfish and at worst being criminally negligent.

 

Mark McGivern

Albert Lea