The Truth About Vaccines”

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I agree....makes me sick. Keela Maurine Meleck wrote: No words can express how biased and disgusting this article is. Maurineschaferatsprynet <schafersprynet> wrote: TIME's new cover story, on stands tomorrow and available now online,is titled "The Truth About Vaccines."http://tinyurl.com/4oxcgwIn it, TIME's Alice Park reports on the debate about vaccinatingchildren in the U.S., writing, "Spurred by claims that vaccinationscan be linked to autism, increasing numbers of parents are raisingquestions about whether vaccines, far from panaceas, are actuallyharmful to children." This trend, Park writes, "is forcing bothpolicymakers and parents to wrestle with a dilemma that goes to theheart of democracy: whether the common welfare should trump theindividual's right to choose … all but two states allow waivers forchildren whose parents object to vaccines on religious grounds; 20allow parents to opt out on philosophical grounds. Currently, nearlyone-half of 1% of kids enrolled in school are unvaccinated under amedical waiver; 2% to 3% have a nonmedical one, and the numbers appearto be rising."Park reports, "vaccinations protect not only the

kids who receive theshots but also those who can't receive them—such as newborns andcancer patients with suppressed immune systems. These vulnerable folksdepend on riding the so-called herd-immunity effect. The higher theimmunization rate in any population, the less likely that a pathogenwill penetrate the group and find a susceptible person inside. Asimmunization rates drop, that protection grows thinner."There are many reasons why parents may choose not to immunize theirchildren, Park reports, but "more than any other issue, the questionof autism has fueled the battle over vaccines. Since the 1980s, thenumber of vaccinations children receive has doubled, and in that sametime, autism diagnoses have soared threefold … It was perhapsinevitable that parents would make a connection between [chemicals insome vaccines] and autism, since symptoms typically appear around age2, by which time babies have already received a

fair number ofvaccines. That link could be merely temporal, of course; babies alsoget their first teeth after they get their first vaccines, but thatdoesn't mean one causes the other." The cdc and the NationalInstitutes of Health have concluded that there is no scientificevidence to support a link between autism and vaccines, Park reports.Aside from autism concerns, some parents are worried that vaccinescould harm their children's immune systems, but Park reports there islittle evidence to support that claim: "Experts stress that it's notthe number of inoculations that matters but the number ofimmune-stimulating antigens—or proteins—in them. Thanks to a betterunderstanding of which viral or bacterial proteins are best atactivating the immune system, that number has plummeted." Full story: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1808438,00.htmlhttp://tinyurl.com/4oxcgw