vaccines

see the excerpt of an article below. i'm not condemning anyone for delaying vaccines...i'm just highlighting a different voice from the ones currently being heard. people say that researchers have financial interest in the vaccines that are "causing" autism. what about all of the people who have million-dollar lawsuits in the system right now pending evidence of a link between autism and vaccines? all i'm saying is that it is really easy to think "why do we even need vaccines?" because we have never lived in a society plagued by any of these epidemics. i'm certainly not excited about seeing any kids "go blind from measles, or deaf from mumps." everyone's got to make their own decision...i'm just not basing my decision on what jenny mcarthy says. (for all who don't know...she is one of the most vocal in this debate because her son has autism and she sent out a letter from the autism community to parents encouraging them to challenge the government on this issue)

taken from the washingtonpost.com
"People who don't vaccinate their children are putting them at risk, as well as kids who can't be vaccinated" because they have cancer or other medical problems, Wexler said. "This is about protecting yourself and protecting your community."

Once accepted without question as a parental responsibility, immunization has lost the urgency that used to propel it, Wexler and others say, in part because mass vaccination has been so successful.

Most parents have never seen or heard of children who went blind from measles, deaf from mumps or suffered overwhelming infection from other childhood diseases such as haemophilus influenza.

Some of the skepticism about the need to vaccinate is attributable to what many health officials say are persistent unsubstantiated myths about childhood vaccines that circulate on the Internet: that the dangers of vaccines outweigh their benefits, that they cause autism and other serious ailments or that they encourage promiscuity.

Much of the controversy has swirled around mercury, which was once used as a preservative for the vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella known as the MMR.

"The MMR controversy did a lot of damage and made people scared of vaccines," Wexler said.

A study by public health researchers from Johns Hopkins, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in October, found that states that permitted personal belief exemptions had significantly higher rates of pertussis infection than those that did not allow them.