Cross posted from OC Progressive
According to the LA Times, schools in California with students entering without vaccinations has "more than doubled" in the last 12 years.
Their conclusion, "Parents seem to fear shots more than mumps or measles".
The rise in unvaccinated children appears to be driven by affluent parents choosing not to immunize. Many do so because they fear the shots could trigger autism, a concern widely discredited in medical research.
Widely discredited is right, it's something that's been covered by many a blogger. But it's something that is confusing because the risk they take is more than just their own child's wellbeing, it threatens an entire generations of kids. It could be a major set back for such diseases as mumps and measles making a comeback in the age of modern medicine.
"The more children we have in our communities that are not immunized, the more likely we are going to have massive outbreaks," said Dr. Gil Chavez, deputy director of the California Department of Public Health’s Center for Infectious Diseases.
Massive outbreaks which puts kids at risk for complications from the actual diseases and though they are rare, why take the chance when the overwhelming evidence has disproved that there is any link between autism and these vaccinations.
At Ocean Charter School in Del Rey, near Marina del Rey, 40% of kindergartners entering school last fall and 58% entering the previous year were exempted from vaccines, the highest rates in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Administrators at the school said the numbers did not surprise them. The nontraditional curriculum, they said, draws well-educated parents who tend to be skeptical of mainstream beliefs.
"They question traditional knowledge and feel empowered to make their own decisions for their families, not deferring to traditional wisdom," said Assistant Director Kristy Mack-Fett.
"Well-educated parents who tend to be skeptical of mainstream beliefs"? I hate to break it to these people but regardless of your education, if you aren't a doctor who specializes in immunizations, I highly doubt you know more than the people who advise vaccinations for our kids.
This is the worst part of parenting to me, when parents think that a little bit of information means they are truly well informed. There are so many studies that to say you know it all would be absurd. And to risk that these once vanished childhood diseases could make a comeback is mind boggling to me.
And of course it's confusing, all you have to do is Google vaccinations and you get tons of results from the CDC to blogs that say "vaccines warning, are they really safe and effective?" And then you have battling ad campaigns with a famous spokesperson for each side. Ultimately though, who do you trust?
I do understand why people are skeptical but I also don't know how anyone who calls themselves "well educated" would ignore mounting evidence that there is no connection to vaccines and autism and that much of the hype on the anti-vaccine side is more anecdotal than anything else.
Sure, we should all be able to chose for our kids but at the same time, this is about a larger picture, you put our whole society at risk and to me that's not a very educated decision.