Maggie's Farm

The vaccine issue is complicated. Some diseases are very well controlled with vaccines and others less well controlled. But 100 years ago half of the children born in this country would die, most before age 5, because of diseases we now prevent with vaccines. Would we prefer to have smallpox back because of some wish to be free to not vaccinate your own children? The scientists will tell you that some diseases that we control with vaccines require a very large percentage of the population actually have the vaccination in order to prevent an epidemic. This "herd immunity" is dependent on almost everyone getting vaccinated. Should the government allow a disease to run rampant so that some people can excercise their right to be foolish?

My mother was terrified of polio because she had polio as a young girl. In the 40's and early 50's no one really knew how we got polio. Yes we knew it was a communicable virus but there was misinformation and lack of information such that some thought it was a result of warm summer weather or swimming in ponds or humidity. My mother would keep her children in the house on really hot days with the curtains drawn an the windows closed. (no air conditioning) She did this out of fear and ignorance of how polio was contracted. I was in grade school when the vaccine became available and I was immunized in school as all American children were. I cannot tell you the relief my parents had and the parents of other children that polio was beaten. My uncle (or second uncle) had polio and was in a iron lung. I went to visit him with my mother at the hospital and can still see it in my memory's eye. Scary, the machine made a lot of noise and the only thing you could see was his head. I was probably 6 years old. That's gone in the U.S. because of vaccines. Almost all the worst communicable diseases are gone in the first world because of vaccines. That wouldn't be true if only 50% of the people got vaccinated. So which is the wiser decision: to require vaccination with few exemptions or to allow people to do whatever they want to?