Worldwide, measles and many other dangerous diseases, like small pox, have been eradicated and just about wiped out.
By science.
Then religious people in the United States arose and started objecting to having their children vaccinated. Our society is succumbing to this insane trend, and now diseases that were all but gone are on the rise again.
Look at what happened to measles:
The year is not even over yet and we already have more than 600 cases in the United States.
We have schools in California where the percent of children who exercise the personal belief exemption is well above 50%. That’s going to be a challenge for any disease that is vaccine preventable.
— LA Times – Dr. Gil Chavez, deputy director of the California Department of Public Health’s Center for Infectious Diseases
Children don’t exercise this “exemption.” Parents do. And by doing it, they are killing their own children.
In the name of God.
I don’t think it’s just the religious parents not vaccinating. It’s also some liberals who believe in the all natural life, and they don’t trust vaccines. There’s also the people who still believe vaccines cause Autism. There’s a whole slew of articles on NPR about it.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/07/25/138672535/vaccine-mistrust-spreading-to-the-developing-world
Agreed on your points. My focus, however, is on the religious and “belief” exemptions many parents choose – often propagated by churches who just don’t know what they are talking about. Thanks for your input, though.
The craziness isn’t new. When I was a kid in the xxties, a neighbor’s child died of whooping cough because they didn’t believe in doctors. Also, in my undergraduate speech class in the xx+10ties, my first speech was inspired by a news article about parents who didn’t believe in vaccination. I can still remember how I grabbed my classmates’ attention with my first sentence, in the hokiest, okiest voice I could muster: “I ain’t gonna let no kid of mine get vaks-nated.” (And I could really do Okie back then.)