For those who have been living under a rock for the past decade, it may come as a bit of a surprise that in the US a large (though thankfully still definitely minority) number of parents have become convinced that childhood vaccination leads to autism. There is absolutely no scientific evidence for this, and, in fact, there are numerous large well-designed studies that refute this claim. Nonetheless, under the stellar public health thought doled out by such luminaries as Jenny McCarthy, a growing number of parents are choosing not to vaccinate their children.
So, of course, their children are more likely to contract these childhood illnesses that the rest of the first world has essentially conquered -- measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, etc. It's bad for these children, but ultimately, many children suffer in various different ways from the stupid actions of their parents.
What's lost in this discussion, though, is how these parents are actually putting other people's children at risk. One of the major concepts in public health is that of herd immunity; essentially, if enough individuals in the population are immune to a particular disease, then even those individuals who would be susceptible to it are protected, because there aren't enough vulnerable individuals for an epidemic to take hold and spread. Those parents who don't vaccinate their kids are exploiting this herd immunity, betting on the fact that if enough other kids are immunized, their kids won't be exposed to the disease in the first place. * But the more parents who exploit this herd immunity, the less protection it becomes. And that is a major problem for those children who
have to depend on herd immunity, because they are too young to be vaccinated, or because their immune systems are compromised for other reasons. The anti-vaccine fundamentalists rely on the sympathy people feel for the autistic children they claim are the result of vaccination programs, and sick children are a great way to gain sympathy.
To that end,
