Religious Morality Has Created A Sick Fear Of Vaccinations

Andrew Wakefield started it and the world ran with it.

Vaccinations work but Wakefield's 1998 report (published in The Lancet) gave rise to the notion that autism and bowel disease had been caused by the MMR vaccination. My kids were raised in this era so my wife and I contributed to the hysteria. When we couldn't find immunization forms or were too lazy to haul the kids to the hospital, we used the exemptions ourselves. Though we had heard these reports while raising our five daughters,  we didn't realize who Wakefield was or that he had caused the scare that allowed us to put off grueling doctors visits with little babies in tow. As it turns out, the state of Colorado is the worst in the nation for vaccinations.

Wakefield, who no longer has a license to practice medicine as a direct result of this hysteria, allowed parents like myself a way to avoid hours in a doctors office full of crying kids and babies waiting to cry some more from a series of shots that many parents can hardly stand to watch.  Wakefield might have opened the door to freedom of choice, especially as it relates to the field of untested medicines, but he most likely lost his license to practice medicine as a result of junk science.

There is no corroboration of Wakefield's finding but there remains this state by state option to vaccinate or to believe that  the disapproved Wakefield was on to something.  Wisconsin Republican House Rep. Sean Duffy declared that he would like to pick and choose which vaccinations fit his morals while raising his children. Duffy, who married the mother of his 7 children one year after Wakefield published his junk, remains convinced that there is a moral component connected to the choice to vaccinate or not to vaccinate our children.  Typically that declaration is a hidden message against the HPV vaccine that is being suggested as a proven method of limiting the risk of cervical cancer created by the infectious environment created by the act of sex.

The Morality Clause
For some time, religious exemption allowed some parents to morally claim a reason against protecting our children and the children they encounter. States who have realized the source of the non-vaccination hysteria have moved to remove the moral exemption that places everyone at risk (students can't attend public school without vaccinations), but another vaccination came along to expand on the fear that Wakefield already developed towards vaccines.

Since the rise of the HPV vaccine, the persistence with comparing vaccinations and morality lives on.  There is no reasonable connection between being vaccinated and being promiscuous, but somehow those who oppose the HPV vaccine think that having it is just a formula for free sexual behaviors.  Apparently the risk associated with the HPV vaccine can also be mitigated by limiting the number of sexual partners, but the notion that taking it means you intend to have multiple partners is sickening to me.  It assumes that any of us will be able to predict the sexual behaviors of our children and withholds a life saving vaccine as a dangling carrot against the potential of more than one sexual partner. The mere notion assumes that God intends deadly illnesses for sexual sinners. Even if this were true, and it is not, parents who would rather their own children get the worst of God's anger are distorted about God- vaccine's, and distorted about sexual behaviors of average adult people.

States who dare to push the HPV vaccine have indirectly disrupted the acceptance of vaccinations overall.  We raised our children during the initial trials of the HPV vaccine and had it pushed at our five daughters fresh off of the fear that Wakefield already produced towards MMR.  We declined, but our concerns with the HPV were not moral,  we just didn't want our daughters to be a part of a new medicine recall.  We certainly have encouraged our adult daughters to get the HPV vaccine because vaccines work and diseases are not a direct result of sin.  Sometimes even the innocent get sick.

Aside from religious exemption, vaccinations are the law.  Unfortunately, religion has such a wide brush of definition that even lazy and uninformed parents have found the religion to sign the waiver and send their kids to school without vaccinations. Thanks to herd immunity, the vaccinated herd has primarily kept the lazy and religious kids safe from illness, but it only takes one case of the measles to overtake the herd quickly.  VERY QUICKLY.

Measles travel easily through the air and they remain in a room for hours after the infected person leaves the room, making every person that enters that room susceptible to the illness.  Fear of vaccinations that lead to religious exemptions has reduced the amount of vaccinated people within the entire herd making all of us more susceptible to catching measles.  Even if you have been vaccinated, you can catch the illness, but with a greater chance of survival once you catch it.

Simply put, the measles are bad, and vaccinations are good. Don't be lazy or morally stupid.