“Vaccines don’t cause autism. Vaccines, instead, prevent disease. Vaccines have wiped out a score of formerly deadly childhood diseases. Vaccine skepticism has helped to bring some of those diseases back from near extinction.” –Alex Pareene
Ignorance will kill more children than measles. If Hippocrates were alive today, he would be spanking idiotic parents whose skepticism has caused them to falsify the true essence of modern immunization. Filipino children are being denied immunizations because their parents are ignorant or misinformed. However, RA 10152, or the Mandatory Infants and Children Health Immunization Act of 2011, requires government hospitals and health centers to provide free immunizations to infants and children up to five years old.
Some Filipino parents are refusing to immunize their kids out of fear the vaccine may have negative side effects, similar to the Dengvaxia situation. Others, meanwhile, have been influenced by a debunked study that claims certain vaccines contribute to developing autism; along with a theory that claims vaccines are linked to brain damage. These kinds of fears have left thousands of Filipino children without immunizations and at risk of contracting diseases such as measles, rubella, mumps, and hepatitis.
With the Department of Health recently declaring a measles outbreak in various regions across the country, the United Nations Children’s Fund, or UNICEF, along with Filipino pediatricians and experts on infectious disease, have expressed alarm as the outbreak has affected some 20,000 children since December 2018. While the disease itself is evil, the biggest evil has created a monster in the minds of their parents.
According to Socrates, “There is only one good, knowledge; and one evil, ignorance.”
Do it yourself (if you can)
American political publication “The Hill” reported on 18-year-old Ethan Lindenberger of Norfolk, Ohio, who opted to receive his first vaccines despite objection from his parents. He has gone without vaccinations due to his mother’s anti-vaccine beliefs.
The teenager said his mother, Jill Wheeler, was influenced by misinformation, including the aforementioned debunked study. He said his mother would recount the negative side to vaccines and how they were “bad.”
Lindenberger said he initially thought it was normal not to be vaccinated; however, his friends and classmates were all vaccinated. He told the publication, that was when he began doing his own research.
“When I started looking into it myself, it became very apparent that there was a lot more evidence in defense of vaccinations,” the teen stated.
Lindenberger said he approached his mother with research that debunked some of her claims, including a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that explained how vaccines do not cause autism.
“Her response was simply, ‘That’s what they want you to think,’” he said. “I was just blown away that, you know, the largest health organization in the entire world would be written off with a kind of conspiracy theory-like statement like that.”
After failing to change his mother’s thinking on the matter, Lindenberger decided to get vaccinated on his own after turning 18 years old.
The report also noted, the story comes at a time when more measles outbreaks have been reported in the Pacific Northwest, prompting more concern among minors on whether they can personally consent to receive immunizations.
Last month alone, measles cases were confirmed in ten states according to the CDC.
Washington officials also declared a public health emergency as an outbreak of measles recently spread across an “anti-vaccination hot spot” near Portland, Oregon./WDJ