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LETTERS: Vaccination proven

Editor: Re: Online question of the week, Feb. 12-19.

Editor:

Re: Online question of the week, Feb. 12-19.

Peace Arch News asks if all children should be vaccinated.

There are a few – very few – who, for medical reasons, e.g. leukemia, cannot be vaccinated. That is one of the reasons why the rest of us should be vaccinated, to protect the lives of those who cannot.

Many of us in the older generation experienced chickenpox, mumps, measles, whooping cough and the terror of polio. We thought these diseases banished, at least from North America, thanks to inoculations. Now we see them returning: in Disneyland, Ontario and, locally, in the Fraser Valley.

The current craze of refusing vaccination goes back to Andrew Wakefield, who used falsified data to link the MMR vaccine with autism. Wakefield was discredited and struck off the medical register, but his misinformation continues to influence credulous people.

Parents who “have a feeling” or “aren’t convinced” or “are suspicious of pharmaceuticals” put their children and the rest of the community at risk, especially infants and the frail elderly.

Providing more education does not seem to erase the current notion that non-scientific opinions have equal weight to facts supported by medical health professionals. Gullible persons base their convictions on religious or quasi-health leaders, on their friends’ beliefs or on Googled opinions that bolster their own views.

Ideas are not a ‘fair game’; some ideas are true, some are false, some are unproven. The value of vaccination has been proven for over 200 years in the Western world.

One defence against ignorance is to exclude unvaccinated people from as many public spheres as possible. Public schools should require proof of vaccination; parents should check the health policies of private schools.

Publicly funded programs could also have vaccination policies. Naturopaths, chiropractors and other “alternative practitioners” should be prohibited from passing off nosodes as providing protection.

Everyone should be vaccinated, except for the very few with medical exemptions.

Marje Holmgren, White Rock