Sacramento parents need to vaccinate their children

The resurgence of whooping cough, a deadly disease that is entirely preventable through the use of vaccination, is a shame. Even worse is the evidence that the very people who ought to know better—well-educated middle-class Californians—make up the majority of those forgoing vaccination for their children.

All of this stems from an incredibly uninformed and fearful belief that vaccination causes damage. Parents fear that children will get sick from the vaccines; that there are chemicals and preservatives in the vaccines that will harm them; that, given the reduction in “childhood” illnesses like measles, mumps and whooping cough, vaccination is no longer necessary.

The most-feared preservative, thimerosal, has never been found to cause more than a local hypersensitivity reaction—that is, swelling at the injection site. It’s no longer present in any of the vaccines given to children younger than 6 (with the exception of influenza vaccines, which are available in a preservative-free form), and hasn’t been for more than a decade.

The vaccine-autism link, which has caused so much fear, was cited in one study that was retracted because the researcher falsified results.

That’s it. The scientifically soundest preventive medicine we have is vaccination. But frightened, uninformed parents have put us in a situation where we’ve had a recent measles outbreak in the Bay Area, and we’re currently having a whooping cough epidemic.

Don’t wait until it’s your child struggling to breathe—anyone who has ever heard the signature sound of a child gasping with whooping cough will never forget it. The reason so many vaccinations are recommended for children is because they save lives. Educate, vaccinate and keep children healthy.