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[PROVE] Respond to NYT: Public Health Risk Seen as Parents Reject Vaccines

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From: PROVE

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Sent: Friday, March 21, 2008 1:55 PM

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Subject: [PROVE] Respond to NYT: Public Health Risk Seen as

Parents Reject Vaccines

Dear Prove Members,

The New York Times has published an article entitled “Public Health Risk

Seen as Parents Reject Vaccines” (posted below and online at

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/us/21vaccine.html?hp ) that

deserves a strong response from our members. Please read this article and

send letters to the editor and post comments on the website letting the

New York Times know what you think. Please point out some of the numerous

mistakes and glaring bias. You may even want to post your responses on

the various blogs and email lists you are on encouraging others to do the

same.

In this article, the New York Times’ has demonstrated callous disregard

for the families devastated by vaccine reactions, and their willingness

to act as accomplices to propagate the ignorant and inhumane agenda of

vaccine zealots who REFUSE to acknowledge the countless studies

demonstrating vaccine risks is unacceptable in this country. Employees at

New York Times not involved in the writing and editing should be

embarrassed and ashamed of their colleagues for this article.

Intelligent and highly educated parents across the country are

questioning vaccines in increasing numbers because they have observed for

themselves the FLAWS and the HOLES in the science used to hold up

unreasonable and sometimes dangerous one-size-fits-all vaccine mandates

and they have seen for themselves previously healthy children destroyed

by vaccine reactions while top public health officials categorically deny

any association. The public health infrastructure is built on the flawed

premise that parents who are educated consumers and question vaccines are

somehow responsible for the failure of a drug to perform as promised or

advertised. Vaccines are drugs that have the ability to cause injury and

death in some people period. NO amount of glorification will change that

fact.

When you click on the link to the article

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/us/21vaccine.html?hp you can post

comments responding to the article online. Additionally, information on

sending letters to the editor can be found at

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html and

letters can be sent to letters@....

Some of you may want to refer to their self-proclaimed ethical policies

namely in section A1 - Our Duty to Our Audience, item number 17 which

states “As journalists we treat our readers, viewers, listeners and

online users as fairly and openly as possible. Whatever the medium, we

tell our audiences the complete, unvarnished truth as best we can learn

it.” More on their ethical policies can be found at

http://www.nytco.com/press/ethics.html#A1. The media has an ethical

obligation to tell people the truth. Parents aren’t wrong to question

vaccines just because some people don’t like it.

Sincerely, Dawn

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/us/21vaccine.html?hp

March 21, 2008

Public Health Risk Seen as Parents Reject Vaccines

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

SAN DIEGO ­ In a highly unusual outbreak of measles here last month, 12

children fell ill; nine of them had not been inoculated against the virus

because their parents objected, and the other three were too young to

receive vaccines.

The parents who objected to their children being inoculated are among a

small but growing number of vaccine skeptics in California and other

states who take advantage of exemptions to laws requiring vaccinations

for school-age children.

The exemptions have been growing since the early 1990s at a rate that

many epidemiologists, public health officials and physicians find

disturbing.

Children who are not vaccinated are unnecessarily susceptible to serious

illnesses, they say, but also present a danger to children who have had

their shots ­ the measles vaccine, for instance, is only 95 percent

effective ­ and to those children too young to receive certain

vaccines.

Measles, almost wholly eradicated in the United States through vaccines,

can cause pneumonia and brain swelling, which in rare cases can lead to

death. The measles outbreak here alarmed public health officials,

sickened babies and sent one child to the hospital.

Every state allows medical exemptions, and most permit exemptions based

on religious practices. But an increasing number of the vaccine skeptics

belong to a different group ­ those who object to the inoculations

because of their personal beliefs, often related to an unproven notion

that vaccines are linked to autism and other disorders.

Twenty states, including California, Ohio and Texas, allow some kind of

personal exemption, according to a tally by the s Hopkins

University.

“I refuse to sacrifice my children for the greater good,” said Sybil

Carlson, whose 6-year-old son goes to school with several of the children

hit by the measles outbreak here. The boy is immunized against some

diseases but not measles, Ms. Carlson said, while his 3-year-old brother

has had just one shot, protecting him against meningitis.

“When I began to read about vaccines and how they work,” she said, “I saw

medical studies, not given to use by the mainstream media, connecting

them with neurological disorders, asthma and immunology.”

Ms. Carlson said she understood what was at stake. “I cannot deny that my

child can put someone else at risk,” she said.

In 1991, less than 1 percent of children in the states with

personal-belief exemptions went without vaccines based on the exemption;

by 2004, the most recent year for which data are available, the

percentage had increased to 2.54 percent, said Saad B. Omer, an assistant

scientist at the s Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

While nationwide over 90 percent of children old enough to receive

vaccines get them, the number of exemptions worries many health officials

and experts. They say that vaccines have saved countless lives, and that

personal-belief exemptions are potentially dangerous and bad public

policy because they are not based on sound science.

“If you have clusters of exemptions, you increase the risk of exposing

everyone in the community,” said Dr. Omer, who has extensively studied

disease outbreaks and vaccines.

It is the absence, or close to it, of some illnesses in the United States

that keep some parents from opting for the shots. Worldwide, 242,000

children a year die from measles, but it used to be near one million. The

deaths have dropped because of vaccination, a 68 percent decrease from

2000 to 2006.

“The very success of immunizations has turned out to be an Achilles’

heel,” said Dr. Mark Sawyer, a pediatrician and infectious disease

specialist at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego. “Most of these

parents have never seen measles, and don’t realize it could be a bad

disease so they turn their concerns to unfounded risks. They do not

perceive risk of the disease but perceive risk of the vaccine.”

Dr. Sawyer and the vast majority of pediatricians believe strongly that

vaccinations are the cornerstone of sound public health. Many doctors

view the so-called exempters as parasites, of a sort, benefiting from the

otherwise inoculated majority.

Most children get immunized to measles from a combined measles, mumps and

rubella vaccine, a live virus.

While the picture of an unvaccinated child was once that of the offspring

of poor and uneducated parents, “exempters” are often well educated and

financially stable, and hold a host of like-minded child-rearing

beliefs.

Vaccine skeptics provide differing explanations for their belief that

vaccines may cause various illnesses and disorders, including autism.

Recent news that a federal vaccine court agreed to pay the family of an

autistic child in Georgia who had an underlying mitochondrial disorder

has led some skeptics to speculate that vaccines may worsen such

conditions. Again, researchers say there is no evidence to support this

thesis.

andra , director of the Epidemiology of U.S. Immunization Law

project at Washington University, said many of these parents are

influenced by misinformation obtained from Web sites that oppose

vaccination.

“The autism debate has convinced these parents to refuse vaccines to the

detriment of their own children as well as the community,” Ms.

said.

While many parents meet deep resistance and even hostility from

pediatricians when they choose to delay, space or reject vaccines, they

are often able to find doctors who support their choice.

“I do think vaccines help with the public health and helping prevent the

occasional fatality,” said Dr. Bob Sears, the son of the well-known

child-care author by the same name, who practices pediatrics in San

Clemente. Roughly 20 percent of his patients do not vaccinate, Dr. Sears

said, and another 20 percent partially vaccinate.

“I don’t think it is such a critical public health issue that we should

force parents into it,” Dr. Sears said. “I don’t lecture the parents or

try to change their mind; if they flat out tell me they understand the

risks I feel that I should be very respectful of their

decision.”

Some parents of unvaccinated children go to great lengths to expose their

children to childhood diseases to help them build natural immunities.

In the wake of last month’s outbreak, Palmer considered sending her

son to a measles party to contract the virus. Several years ago, the boy,

now 12, contracted chicken pox when Ms. Palmer had him attend a gathering

of children with that virus.

“It is a very common thing in the natural-health oriented world,” Ms.

Palmer said of the parties.

She ultimately decided against the measles party for fear of having her

son ostracized if he became ill.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, measles outbreaks in Alaska and California

triggered strong enforcement of vaccine mandates by states, and exemption

laws followed.

While the laws vary from state to state, most allow children to attend

school if their parents agree to keep them home during any outbreak of

illnesses prevented by vaccines. The easier it is to get an exemption ­

some states require barely any paperwork ­ the more people opt for them,

according to Dr. Omer’s research, supported by other vaccine

experts.

There are differences within states, too. There tend to be geographic

clusters of “exempters” in certain counties or even neighborhoods or

schools. According to a 2006 article in The Journal of The American

Medical Association, exemption rates of 15 percent to 18 percent have

been found in Ashland, Ore., and Vashon, Wash. In California, where the

statewide rate is about 1.5 percent, some counties were as high as 10

percent to 19 percent of kindergartners.

In the San Diego measles outbreak, four of the cases, including the first

one, came from a single charter school, and 17 children stayed home

during the outbreak to avoid contracting the illness.

There is substantial evidence that communities with pools of unvaccinated

clusters risk infecting a broad community that includes people who have

been inoculated.

For instance, in a 2006 mumps outbreak in Iowa that infected 219 people,

the majority of those sickened had been vaccinated. In a 2005 measles

outbreak in Indiana, there were 34 cases, including six people who had

been vaccinated.

Here in California, six pertussis outbreaks infected 24 people in 2007;

only 2 of 24 were documented as having been appropriately

immunized.

A surveillance program in the mid ’90s in Canada of infants and

preschoolers found that cases of Hib fell to between 8 and 10 cases a

year from 550 a year after a vaccine program was begun, and roughly half

of those cases were among children whose vaccine failed.

Gardiner contributed reporting from Washington.

PROVE provides information on vaccines, and

immunization policies and practices that affect the children and adults

of Texas. Our mission is to prevent vaccine injury and death and to

promote and protect the right of every person to make informed

independent vaccination decisions for themselves and their family.

This information is not to be construed as medical OR legal advice.

Contact Information

prove@...

(email)

http://vaccineinfo.net/ (web

site)

Subscribe to PROVE Email Updates:

http://vaccineinfo.net/subscribe.htm

Tell a Friend about PROVE:

http://vaccineinfo.net/subscribe/friends.shtml

--------------------------------------------------------

Sheri Nakken, former R.N., MA, Hahnemannian

Homeopath

Vaccination Information & Choice Network, Nevada City CA & Wales

UK

Vaccines -

http://www.wellwithin1.com/vaccine.htm Vaccine Dangers &

Childhood Disease & Homeopathy Email classes start in March

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