A reader sends this on vaccination:
I asked at my day care today if any children were un-immunized and the lady told me that all the current infants (18weeks-18 months) had had their shots.However, living in a hippie college town, they had previously taken unvaccinated kids in their care. When I remarked that it was pretty dangerous, she said that it was the law - they weren't allowed to discriminate against non-vaccinated kids. Does this sound right to you? As a private enterprise, I figured that they would be able to make their own rules of this sort, and what about my right not to have my kid around unvaccinated children?
In any case, this seems like a real issue to me and I was wondering if you or your readers knew anything about it.
A quick Google search shows that Minnesota allows day care centers to refuse admittance to unvaccinated kids, but it seems like this is not the case for public schools. The parents can simply sign a Personal Exemption.
P.S. A horrible story this lady told me. There was a 5 year old kid starting at the public kindergarten here who still was not potty-trained. They were not legally allowed to remove him from the public school because of this, so instead they had to send him home every day when he first soiled himself, until the parents got sick of picking him up. Welcome to Boulder - nestled between the mountains and reality!
Whatever you think of vaccination, legally requiring people to expose their children to unvaccinated playmates in order to receive day care seems nuts.
Whatever you think of vaccination, legally requiring people to expose their children to unvaccinated playmates in order to receive day care seems nuts.
Right. I think within this sentence lies the difficult we have with determining whose civil liberties, exactly, are being attacked by mandating children who go to schools be vaccinated. Don't the kids who go to school have the right to not be exposed to unvaccinated children? Don't their parents have the right not to send their kids into such an environment? This is one of those situations where you can't just say "I stand by individual rights...."
Who cares about the mumps? I don't want my kid going to school with 5 year olds who still mess themselves! Priorities, people!
I don't understand this. Vaccinated children are safe; that's the whole point of vaccination. The only ones who risk anything are the unvaccinated children themselves.
I think your reader confuses vaccination with other health measures such as hygiene.
Even if you legally mandate every person in the daycare / school is vaccinated, you cannot stop the following:
- exposure to other persons who are either not vaccinated, or their vaccination has lost its potency outside of school
- exposure to persons who were outside the country and were exposed to diseases that is considered rare here, and hence, not routinely vaccinated
- exposure to persons who are legally or illegally in country but have not been vaccinated (as it is not a requirement to enter the country, certainly not illegally!)
- then there are people who do not have active illness but are asymptomatic carriers
The answer to these problems lies in a good risk management / surveillance plan that acts at the first sign of trouble.
100% vaccination will do nothing to stop the problem --- there is a small % of those vaccinate for which the vaccine do not 'take'.
Quoth Hans B:
Perhaps you missed the other posts on this subject. Let's say it again: vaccination (like anything else) is not 100% effective, and not all children are old enough to be vaccinated. Rather, vaccination works by creating herd immunity. When most people in a community have a high level immunity to a germ, it's harder for that germ to spread. Epidemiologists agree that the trend against vaccination poses a public health risk by undermining herd immunity. When you don't vaccinate your kids, you put everyone at risk, not just your kids. The New York Times article (that Megan earlier linked) reported:
And what if I don't want my kids going to school surrounded by other children that have been injected with numerous potentially fatal illnesses?
Poor Megan. Megan should not impose her sick views
of vaccination upon us. Remember vaccines are the
WMD. Remind me of a News-week article where Megan
is finally been dealt with paranoia. Clean-dirt.
And what if I don't want my kids going to school surrounded by other children that have been injected with numerous potentially fatal illnesses?
They haven't been injected with those illnesses, they've been injected with diluted strains of those illnesses which are meticulously designed to reduce the risk of actual infection. They are also vaccinated at a period of their lives, infancy, where they are unlikely to have direct contact with other unvaccinated children, and are watched keenly by parents for symptoms following inoculation, so that any symptoms are dealt with swiftly, and more importantly, so that the child will be prevented from exposure to others and the attendant chance of infection.
And what if I don't want my kids going to school surrounded by other children that have been injected with numerous potentially fatal illnesses?
Pull them out. Ta-da! Everyone's happy.
Remember vaccines are the WMD.
You say this over and over and over. What the hell does it mean?
"And what if I don't want my kids going to school surrounded by other children that have been injected with numerous potentially fatal illnesses?"
Simple, just don't enroll your kid in any school in the 1950s. As Freddie explains, today's vaccines do not contain any potentially fatal illnesses. They mostly contain dead or very weakened microbes that provide immunity but a very minimal risk of illness.
A little homework before posting, please.
In my time in Boulder, I noticed that there were a lot of adults who did not seem to feel any obligation to bathe. Nothing would surprise me about that crowd.
"Pull them out. Ta-da! Everyone's happy."
I have. And I was happy right up until I read that my kids need to be taken from me and forcibly injected, lest I be seen as a horrible parent and, perhaps even worse, a bad citizen. Told that I need to accept, for the good of society, that the state is clearly better at caring for my kids than I.
And I was happy right up until I read that my kids need to be taken from me and forcibly injected, lest I be seen as a horrible parent and, perhaps even worse, a bad citizen.
The forcible injection thing was a distinctly minority viewpoint around here. Our gracious hostess and most of her minions are satisfied if you isolate yourself from society so as not to pose a threat to the rest of us.
I can't do much for you on the "horrible parent/bad citizen" thing. You make your choices and other people may or may not approve.
mith writes:
And I was happy right up until I read that my kids need to be taken from me and forcibly injected, lest I be seen as a horrible parent and, perhaps even worse, a bad citizen.
I guess mith's kids won't be coming to that Chickenpox party I'm planning.
"Our gracious hostess and most of her minions are satisfied if you isolate yourself from society so as not to pose a threat to the rest of us."
Our gracious hostess had this to say:
"The only way to secure general compliance is to establish the norm that this is something you have to do even if you'd really rather not. Once you start making general exceptions, the whole system breaks down. And that system has made us all--including yes, your children--vastly better off."
Which I took issue with when it was first said, and still take issue with. Whether you like it or not, you have to do this for the good of society. Not to use the slippery slope, but that sort of rationale can be used (and has been used) to justify a lot of reprehensible actions.
For those that disagree with my comments about potentially fatal vaccinations: I will retract my comments about potentially fatal vaccinations when the vaccine inserts no longer include "death" as an adverse reaction.
Hmmm, suppose I don't want my kids exposed to dangerous ideas? Or possibly risk sexual contact with someone with defective genes? Or unsanitary habits?
I definitely don't want kids going to school with people who don't cut their hair, wear a knife, wrap their hair up in a cloth, wear a metal bracelet that can be used as a weapon, and stick a comb in their hair all their time.
Surely I should not be required to send kids to a school with these issues.
Not to use the slippery slope, but that sort of rationale can be used (and has been used) to justify a lot of reprehensible actions.
OK, two things. "Establishing a norm" doesn't have to mean "throwing people in jail," or "burn as heretics," it could just as easily mean "be rude to people" or "apply milder legal sanctions" such as exclusion from public schools. She's on record as advocating the latter, which, given that it is directly related to the threat posed by non-vaccination, seems hardly like jackbooted thuggery to me.
And yes, "for the good of society" can be used to justify all sorts of terrible things. But that doesn't mean it can only be used for terrible things. You have to pay your taxes, even though you'd rather not and it wouldn't do me much harm if your tiny contribution didn't get paid. "For the good of society" is actually a pretty good justification for that. The sanctions for tax evasion, by the way, are quite a bit worse than forced homeschooling or rude blog comments.
I understand the slippery-slope fear, but that means you need to guard the slope, not that suddenly we can't have any restrictions on liberty whatsoever.
D, when you find an outbreak of Sikh violence which is as deadly as illnesses we can vaccinate against, then maybe you'll have a point.
OK, being kind to Rob, I will only count incidents in one country outside of India:
Let's start with 329 killed when a 747 was blown up by a bomb planted by a Sikh.
* June 23, 1985 - Air India flight 182 leaving Montreal's Mirabel International Airport is blown up mid-flight to London.
* May 26, 1986 - An attempt is made in Vancouver to assassinate Malkiat Singh Sidhu, a cabinet minister in the Indian province of Punjab
* August 28, 1988 - Indo-Canadian Times editor Tara Singh Hayer is shot and partially paralyzed
* November 18, 1998 - Newspaper editor Tara Singh Hayer is assassinated for his strident opposition to Sikh militants.
Don't their parents have the right not to send their kids into such an environment? This is one of those situations where you can't just say "I stand by individual rights...."
This is just one of the enormous number of instances where libertarians are forced to agree that collective action is best.
Like, say, the existence of a real property cadastre.
Which can only exist following the systematic, violent coercive occupation of land previously occupied by usufructers.
And is extraordinarily intrusive, putting all power into the hands of the ultimate owners of the property, the government that paid for the army that took the land, coercively and by force, from the usufructers.
Sorry. The profound incoherence of libertarian philosophy sometimes overcomes my usual sense of restraint.
What I meant to say is that I can't board my dog without proof of a rabies inoculation and a recent kennel cough shot.
The distinction escapes me.
I see, D. And how many of these incidents were caused by turbans and/or the Sikh requirement that males carry knives (including boys at school), as referenced in your original comment?
In other words, can you produce examples that actually support your argument, or are you just blowing smoke?
D:
Did I miss something? Do you have something against Sikhs?
I am ashamed to admit that I don't, I just needed a straw man.... I could have just as easily used any other target like.... (fill in the blank of whatever you like).
But then, come to think of it, I have something against tiddy wink players....
We use the "good of society" to justify all kinds of things... like burn bans and water use restrictions during droughts, prisons, jury duty, safety regulations at manufacturing facilities, etc...
It's not a question of whether or not the "good of society" can justify restrictions on liberty, it's a question of how the good of society weighs against the restriction on liberty for the given case.
So you are in favor that Sikhs should be exempt from the 'no weapons' ban that is the rule in most schools?
Whether or not any violence actually occur is beside the point. Common knowledge that Sikhs carry knives is itself an intimidating and unlawful conduct that normally cause a student to be expelled.
Would you allow a Sikh to go past security and board a commercial airline with a knife?
You wanted examples of Sikh violence. You got it.
The issue is whether the power of the state should be used in heavy handed manners to compel vaccination.
Denial of equal access to public services when there is a way to make reasonable accommodations is something I take a dim view of.
There is a way for the public health system to handle a small percentage of vaccinated children. That discussion need to be done.
It was not that long ago that the public school system cannot accommodate cripples, the blind, and what have you nots.... but when they had to... they found a way.
Without prejudicing what such a discussion might lead, there may be some ailments for which there is no way out beyond mandatory vaccination, but lets do it on a case-by-case basis.
MM can start a different thread about Sikh terrorists if she want. I need my straw man back out in the fields doing deterrence.
Just so you know, Megan did explicitly say in her first post on this topic (or first recent one anyway) that she is against forcible inoculation, as I am. We also both agree, though, that if you choose not to be immunized or not to immunize your children, society is well within its rights to restrict your access to areas where you risk infecting those around you, such as public schools, mass transit, public buildings, etc. No one is talking about taking away choice; we're talking about insisting on certain tradeoffs for the choices you're making.
Since people are so hung up on risk of catching diseases, the single biggest risk out there right now is Avian Flu (aka SARS) making its way to the USA.
In nearly all Asia-Pacific countries, travelers are screened on entry for fevers by IR monitors and intercepted and quarantined if they have a fever.
The United States, Canada, etc. do not have such a screening program.
There is no known vaccine for SARS and no known cure other than to let the disease burn itself out.
If you are going to worry about plugging leaks, how about plug the biggest ones first?
We need to weigh risks rationally.
Mith says:
OK, let's not use the slippery slope then. When you give the government any type of power, you always run the risk that it will be used to commit reprehensible actions. We have to weigh that risk against the good that can be achieved with that power. This is a tightrope all free societies have to walk.I think we've made a very good case, using reason and science, that the government should be able to use mild legal sanctions to encourage vaccination.
Are vaccines potentially fatal? Sure. But so is driving to the doctor's office to get a vaccine. So is walking across the street.I think the evidence clearly shows that the benefits of widespread vaccination, by conferring herd immunity, outweigh the possible risk of side-effects from vaccination.
Freddie--
That's very funny. Forcible immunization is wrong.
Confining your family to house arrest doesn't amount to forcible immunization.
Look, the system in place is fine. Public school attendance requires immunization. That gets us up to the safe high nineties. Making a fuss about is silly. Letting people who can't do arithmetic claim that kids get autism from vaccinations alter that policy is silly. It's obviously good public health policy, like making restaurant workers wash their hands,or, FTM, requiring them to have running water and working toilets.
Or any number of intrusive public health measures. There are tricky ones, like public smoking, where the public health benefit is not to the general population, but to the dumbass who is smoking, as well as associated aesthetic considerations. (I discounted those, incorrectly, BTW. The NYC smoking regs, which I thought were wrong have turned out to be right. Everybody prefers restaurants and bars without smokers.)
So you are in favor that Sikhs should be exempt from the 'no weapons' ban that is the rule in most schools?
No, I'm not, but on egalitarian grounds, not precautionary ones. It's stupid to say "that kid has a knife, stop him!!!" if you can't manage to scrape up a single example of knives carried as part of a religious practice used for crime.
It was not that long ago that the public school system cannot accommodate cripples, the blind, and what have you nots.... but when they had to... they found a way.
These people, of course, are not imposing the costs of their accomodations on the rest of us by choice, but rather through no fault of their own.
"These people, of course, are not imposing the costs of their accomodations(sic) on the rest of us by choice, but rather through no fault of their own."
They can choose to be educated in specialized facilities rather than to impose themselves on the regular school system by choice and sticking the school board with these ridiculous bills to accommodate a handful.
On that subject, I am going to tell Osama and his bunch to say they are Sikhs the next time they need to board a plane with knives.
On that subject, I am going to tell Osama and his bunch to say they are Sikhs the next time they need to board a plane with knives.
You have a real knack for making strange logical leaps and irrelevant arguments.
In my time in Boulder, I noticed that there were a lot of adults who did not seem to feel any obligation to bathe.
Sniff again. Many of them do, in fact, bathe in MJ.
.... and instead of dealing with my substantive arguments, you love the tangents!
D it's very difficult to make blanket rules about what government can and cannot do, as far as imposing on personal liberty for the better good goes. That's a big part of why our politics are so fractured and democracy is such a messy business. I don't think you can make a leap from saying "Some school districts permit Sikh students a special exemption to carry knives to school" to "We therefore must allow students who aren't immunized into our schools."
Personally I think there needs to be a very clear and powerful public harm for the government to impose on its people. And, again, I'm not advocating strapping people to gurneys and inoculating them. But going unvaccinated risks the health of everyone around you, and I do think it is not unreasonable to insist that people who do so take certain precautions-- especially because the risks of vaccination are so ill-explained and vaguely defined by the anti-vaxx side. Yes, it's true, telling people they can't attend public school or ride a city bus are indeed extreme measures. But your choices have consequences, just as they do for the Amish, or those who have extreme views about the use of animal products, etc. And the right to go to school or ride the bus are positive rights, and those, I think, are less intrinsic and more open to government manipulation.
I believe this is a great argument for a sensible general policy that no one should be exempted from public health or safety measures on the basis of a superstition. Unfortunately for you it's an own goal.
.... and instead of dealing with my substantive arguments, you love the tangents!
I would love to deal with your substantive arguments. Feel free to make one, and we'll see where things go from there.
I am sorry, but your credit score do not entitle you to them.
Sorry mouse, go find a cat.
"Told that I need to accept, for the good of society, that the state is clearly better at caring for my kids than I."
If not vaccinating only affected your kids then you'd have a point. However, not vaccinating your kids is a threat to PUBLIC health if they attend public schools/day cares. If you keep your kids at home and they don't attend public schools and day cares then it's your right to not vaccinate them. Personal liberty doesn't mean you get to risk the health of everyone else.
Freddie...
Completely agree that there need to be a public debate and discussion and see if the best available science support any alternative to compulsory vaccination.
If so, should it be for all diseases or just some particularly dangerous ones.
I can see a sliding scale where there is a level of compulsion (with denial of school services) where there is no way otherwise to make a reasonable accommodation.
I can also see many more shades of grey, and where there is some grey, it is imperative to preserve the people's right to refuse medical treatment.
But in order to have this discussion, we got to get away from the "all or nothing" stance that poisons the well here.
Rulial, thank you for your explanation. I did know about herd immunity, which provides protection to unvaccinated children (if enough kids are vaccinated, the disease doesn't spread). But I hadn't thought of the possibility that it also increases the protection of vaccinated children. Still, it seems to me that the risk for the latter is tiny and, in the case of an ordinary disease like measles, does not warrant the exclusion of an entire minority group. (It would be different if we were talking about polio or smallpox.) I certainly would not want my children's school to filter out the hippies.
In the end the vaccination question boils down to, how much power does society have over children, and how much do parents have. As a parent, I should be in favor of a hands-off approach, but I'm not: I think many children need the protection of government-imposed minimum standards. And although I understand the distrust some may feel towards vaccines, I also think no one has the right to expose his/her child to serious risk. Children are under our care, that doesn't mean they belong to us. So I'm all for obligatory vaccination. But I do understand the opposite point of view.
Hans,
And all it takes is for those who see both sides to find a way for both to co-exist without resorting to all or nothing measures.
I, for one, do not want to live in a Meganic Republic where public services are denied purely because the children have not been vaccinated and where there is no recourse against the state.
A reasonable accommodation will be to give parents of children vouchers that can be used to pay for schooling in facilities where many of the children are not vaccinated.
Personal liberty doesn't mean you get to risk the health of everyone else.
Very much? There's a very slippery slope here. Make HPV vaccinations required for 8 year olds? Tattoo HIV positive people? Lock up TB patients until they've finished their antibiotics course?
Vaccinations against childhood diseases are a no-brainer because, in the end, it's not a public health argument. That's a shuck. The public health argument is just a finesse for the state making parents protect their children from deadly, or even dangerous, diseases.
Again, it's weird writing about this where the lead poster claims to be a libertarian, but the state routinely claims interest in the welfare of children, in violation of the parents' rights to control children's decision-making. (It seems to me that thoughtful, Boaz reading libertarians should regard children as chattel until they exhibit the capability of filing a lawsuit against the abusive fellow citizens they share a domicile with.)
The no vaccination, no public school rule is just as coercive, and intentionally so, as the "you don't have to be searched or show id, but if you don't you can't get on the airplane" rule. The latter makes sense, the former doesn't, but that's neither here nor there.
It has nothing to do with protecting other children. If this is what it were really about, then there would some kind of lottery system for the crazy parents who don't want to protect their kids from deadly diseases so that the number vaccinated stayed at the public health safe 95 percent or so.
A reasonable accommodation will be to give parents of children vouchers that can be used to pay for schooling in facilities where many of the children are not vaccinated.
I eagerly await the reintroduction of polio and smallpox as we purposefully create concentrated populations that would sustain them.
A reasonable accommodation will be to give parents of children vouchers that can be used to pay for schooling in facilities where many of the children are not vaccinated.
I eagerly await the reintroduction of polio and smallpox as we purposefully create concentrated populations that would sustain them.
So be it. The parents have chosen.
Got my "latter" and "former" backwards up there. The airline rules are stupid security theatre. The no vaccination, no registration for school rules make sense.
And D and Ben R make the point for me. This is not about protecting other kids. It's about protecting the kids of irrational parents.
Vaccination requirements for public schools:
Eliminate government schools, eliminate the problem.
Ta-da!
As for day care, end antidiscrimination laws, end the problem.
Ta-da!
Eliminate the County Mapper, and end all the problems.
It's worth mentioning here that in every day care center you already have to leave your kid at home if they have pink-eye, a.k.a. conjunctivitis, or meet other sickness standards (vomiting...etc.).
Chris,
How much additional work and money is it going to take to set up a more sophisticated monitoring regime for detection of onset of other communicable diseases?
Not a heck of a lot. It is a solvable problem.
Back in the coal and industrial age, there was no means, so blunt instrument rules make a lot of sense.
In the information age, there are ways to monitor things much more tightly, and it need to be deployed to revolutionize public health.
D, I'm all for spending money to improve public health, but I don't understand why we need "more sophisticated monitoring regimes" for things like polio and pertussis when there are perfectly serviceable vaccines that serve the same purpose.
Would you throw money at SARS?
Rabies?
Lyme Disease?
MRSA?
The system need a major overhaul anyways to handle emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases regardless of what is done.
The incremental cost to include everything rather than to leave something out is your issue.
Subject to some hard numbers from detailed studies, my guess is that the incremental cost is small.
Seems to me there are two possible scenarios to consider:
1. A parent fails to immunize a child for disease X. The child gets disease X and ends up blind, deaf, paralyzed, or dead.
2. A parent immunizes a child for disease X. As a side effect of the vaccine, the child ends up blind, deaf, paralyzed, or dead.
Which of these is the more probable outcome in any individual case? If vaccines have a higher risk of bad outcomes than you get from the combined risk of getting the disease and having one of the bad outcomes associated with it, then no sensible person would vaccinate. If the risk of the vaccine is lower than the risks in scenarion 1, then no sensible person would NOT vaccinate.
The numbers should be available, because a lot of the diseases in question were common until the 60s. What IS the risk of ending up blind from the measles, or deaf from the mumps? Has the rate of blindness or deafness in the population gone down since mass immunization?
I suspect that the anti-vaccine crowd obsesses about scenario 2 but forgets about scenario 1 entirely. Maybe it's natural for a certain percent of the population to end up blind because of childhood illnesses, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.
It's worth mentioning here that in every day care center you already have to leave your kid at home if they have pink-eye, a.k.a. conjunctivitis, or meet other sickness standards (vomiting...etc.).
Which is why such illnesses are almost never spread through day care or school environments...right?
Parents ignore those sickness standards like mad, both deliberately and not realizing the kid is sick. Moreover, most illnesses are contagious for a few days before the child becomes symptomatic.
I wouldn't trust a day care to do a better job at preventing measles or pertussis outbreaks than they currently do at preventing pink-eye or flu outbreaks.
"If vaccines have a higher risk of bad outcomes than you get from the combined risk of getting the disease and having one of the bad outcomes associated with it, then no sensible person would vaccinate."
You can't use today's numbers and apply them going forward because as soon as people stop vaccinating then the disease will likely come roaring back.
"It has nothing to do with protecting other children."
Yes it does, it has everything to do with it. It's also about protecting those with weakened immune systems (elderly, the immunocompromised) and those too young to be immunized against the disease. It's a free rider problem, which is why there needs to be some sort of mandate. If only your kid doesn't get vaccinated then it really doesn't matter, however if 20% of children don't receive the vaccine it becomes a problem. The least obtrusive way to deal with this is to make the vaccines required to attend public school. It gives the option to parents to not vaccinate, but with consequences.
Which of these is the more probable outcome in any individual case? If vaccines have a higher risk of bad outcomes than you get from the combined risk of getting the disease and having one of the bad outcomes associated with it, then no sensible person would vaccinate. If the risk of the vaccine is lower than the risks in scenarion 1, then no sensible person would NOT vaccinate.
MC, I'm stunned here-- those numbers aren't even close. I mean we're talking vanishingly small numbers of people who get sick from inoculation, here. It barely registers.
Freddie, I think we agree here. I was posing a thought experiment -- I think the no-vaccine crowd is bonkers when it comes to most of the main diseases, like measles and polio. Vaccination is clearly the way to go there.
As for chickenpox, I'm willing to listen to arguments. It just doesn't seem to be as severe an illness, at least not in childhood. And I'm strongly opposed to making the HPV vaccine mandatory for school enrollment, because genital warts aren't contagious in the classroom. (I wouldn't argue with anyone who got the vaccine for individual health reasons, but the public health case is weaker when the disease is a lot harder to spread.)
Jordan T -- no, not today's numbers. I would try to get numbers from before innoculation was commonplace, which isn't that long ago. That would make a realistic comparison. Looking at the only unimmunized person in a place where everyone else is immunized is obviously not the way to compare the effects.
M.C.— I'm also fine with people not vaccinating for, say, chicken pox or HPV as children. That's their choice. Frankly, I had chicken pox at the age of five (from the second go-round of one brother) and I'm going to vaccinate for that. But the big ones— polio, measles (my father had a younger sister die from that), mumps, rubella— oh, yes. My husband caught whooping cough as a child even though he'd been vaccinated; he was on a trip near an area known to have large numbers of unvaccinated children. He's asthmatic, so it must have been nightmarish.
Incidentally, your health professional can test your blood for adult immunity to diseases you were vaccinated against as a child. You don't have to take a booster if you're still immune. They already do this for certain diseases such as rubella when you get pregnant.
I think it's ridiculous that our public school is required to send home a letter every year advising parents that they can come to school and view a report of which pesticides and cleaning agents have been used in and around the school, but is forbidden to disclose the identities of children whose parents have deliberately put them at elevated risk of being carriers of potentially deadly diseases.
It should be an unquestioned right of parents to know this and take measures as they see fit.
Autism and Vaccines:
Ask CDC:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/the-next-big-autism-bomb_b_93627.html