Should Parents Be Forced to Vaccinate Their Children?

By Deirdre Imus, Huffington Post. Posted June 3, 2008.

This week Time magazine's cover story "The Truth About Vaccines" carries an ominous suggestion ... "worried about autism, many parents are opting out of immunizations. How they're putting the rest of us at risk." (June 2, 2008). Finally, a major periodical puts a spotlight on the most emotionally charged and inaccurately reported medical controversy in modern history. And what does Time do? Blame parents for a crisis in confidence created by public health officials. If you were hoping to learn the "truth" about vaccinations, you are not going to find it in this issue of Time.

In her article, "How Safe Are Vaccines?" Alice Park attempts to address growing concerns about vaccines and asks the million-dollar question that parents around the country really want to know. Unfortunately, Park's version of the "truth" does a disservice to readers when it falls into the same trap that has plagued similar reports: gross inaccuracies, reliance on industry-funded spokesmen whose conflicts are not disclosed, and the all too familiar and constant beat of immunization dogma suggesting doomsday disease scenarios.

Those of you who have read my postings before know that I am very skeptical of both the public health officials' and the mainstream media's ability to objectively and forthrightly cover this issue. The Time article does nothing to change that opinion. If anything, it confirms it.

At the heart of Park's report, however, is the question about parental rights. Should parents be forced to vaccinate their children given the growing concerns about vaccine safety?

For over a year now, there has been a steady stream of articles about school districts and health departments' heavy-handed actions towards parents who choose not to vaccine their children. Intimidation tactics that included monetary fines, expulsion from school, even threats to call in child protection agencies were used to try and coerce parents into compliance with the current immunization recommendations.

In March, the New York Times ran two separate articles on the subject of parents deciding not to vaccinate their children ("More Families Are Shunning Inoculations" [March 2], "Public Health Risk Seen as Parents Reject Vaccines" [March 21]). Other news organizations around the country ran similar stories.

Throughout the article, Park implies parents are too "confused" to do their own homework on this subject or lack the good sense to make an informed decision. In reality, parents are deciding to opt out of vaccinations because they are concerned that vaccines may put their children at risk for adverse reactions that they feel are more threatening than the diseases the vaccines are purported to prevent. Chief among these concerns is the possible association between vaccines and autism.

As the Time article details, concerns about thimerosal-containing vaccines is one of several concerns that continues to weigh on the conscience of many parents. In one sentence Ms. Park states, "Thimerosal can do serious damage to brain tissue, especially in children, whose brains are still developing" and then dismissively trivializes parental concerns about a possible link between the developmental neurotoxin and autism by saying "that link could be merely temporal, of course; babies also get their first teeth after they get their first vaccines, but that doesn't mean one causes the other." The absurdly of this analogy ranks with one of the most nonsensical comments I think I have ever read. This "temporal" association has been reported by literally thousands of parents across the country who have documented evidence of their normally developing child regressing into a world of silence and isolation. To consider these vaccines containing neurotoxins like mercury and aluminum, along with other toxins, would seem to be reasonable, absent any other logical explanation.

The article also inaccurately reports that thimerosal-containing vaccines were "replaced" with thimerosal-free formulas in 2001. Thimerosal-containing vaccines were not recalled as the article suggests and remained on clinic shelves well into 2003, according to government communications. In addition, the majority of flu shots, given to pregnant women and babies as young as six months, still contain 25 micrograms of thimerosal.

According to the article, "In the first four months of this year, 64 confirmed cases of measles were reported in the U.S., scattered across 11 hot spots ... the most by this date for any year since 2001; 54 cases had links to other countries, an only one of the 64 patients had been vaccinated." Interestingly, the map denoting the location where the outbreaks occurred show that in four of the 11 "hot spots" only 1 case of measles was reported and only three states had more than 10 cases.

See more stories tagged with: autism, health, vaccines, parent rights

Deirdre Imus is Founder and President of the Deirdre Imus Environmental Center for Pediatric Oncology, and Co-founder, Co-Director of Imus Ranch, a working cattle ranch for kids with cancer.

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