Let's start simply:
If you do not vaccinate your children with all vaccines currently recommended by national health authorities, you are a fool or a villain.[1]
In America, the diseases protected against include: Hepatitis A, hepatitis B, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), Haeomophilus influenzae type b (one form of meningitis), polio, measles, mumps, rubella (German measles), varicella (chicken pox), pneumococcus, and influenza (various strains).
If you don't vaccinate, and enough other people don't, too, children get sick and die. Maybe your children, maybe somebody else's, does it matter?
Children die, motherfucker. Children die.
Oh, I'm keen to know if that's not enough to convince you. Let's talk some more.
1. Some children experience adverse reactions to vaccines. These include fevers and inflammations all the way up to, very rarely, full-blown infectious disease. Oh, my, I don't want to run the risk that little Timmy will get sick! Well, guess what, jackass. The risk that little Timmy will get sick from his vaccination is so much less than the risk that he'll catch what he's not vaccinated for and get really sick that it shouldn't even register on your consciousness.
2. Vaccines don't cause autism. Thanks. There's not really anything more to discuss about that.
3. Here's the thing. In order to believe that vaccines are somehow bad, that vaccine proliferation is the result of pharmaceutical companies wanting to make more money without any real medical backing, you have to believe that:
A. Pharmaceutical companies are willing to hurt kids in order to make money. OK, I'll give you that one.
B. Government health officials are willing to hurt kids in order to make money for pharmaceutical companies. Probably not, but depending on your state of paranoia about government agencies and regulatory capture, at least vaguely conceivable.
C. Pediatricians, pediatric nurses, and research doctors specializing in childhood diseases are willing to hurt kids in order to make money for pharmaceutical companies. No, absolutely not, no chance in hell! (Note: Most government health officials are themselves pediatricians and researchers.)
4. If enough of the population is vaccinated, the unvaccinated people are safe due to a phenomenon called "herd immunity". Don't count on it. Herd immunity is for those people who can't get vaccinated, or for who get vaccinated but for whom the vaccination doesn't take, and in any case it only works if more than 9 out of 10 people are vaccinated. Protecting your child from vaccination side effects and counting on herd immunity to keep her safe from disease is selfish and immoral.
Thank you for your attention to this. You are now free to be less evil, less of a moron, or less of an evil moron, as you see fit.
[1] Exception: Immunocompromised children should not be vaccinated.
Posted by Greg at January 9, 2007 4:36 PM