Parents Might Be Jailed For Not Vaccinating Their Children

This is a little over the top and sensational but since it's true and was reported on MSNBC I am willing to put it here. I'm not looking to stir up the whole vaccination debate but this seems a bit extreme. For the record my kid has all the standard mandated vaccinations (not the flu) but I'm not all that comfortable with it especially after reading David Kirby's Evidence of Harm. We do give my little guy a healthy dose of anti-oxidants before each shot, though.

Recently there has been a trend of forcing immunizations among certain demographics in an effort to prevent conditions that really are not imminently life threatening. Many times the efficacy of the immunization itself is still in question but state and federal officials force the mandate through anyway. Unfortunately, this is done without allowing for ANY balanced and informed decision making by the citizens. I think if the people knew what the science shows they'd be the ones forcing a more moderate application. I sniff an upcoming battle between citizen groups, government agencies and the pharmaceutical companies that will probably make it to the Supreme Court if this trend continues. At that point we may have the open national conversation about the safety and efficacy of vaccinations we desperately need.

For a solid evidenced based review of this issue please click on DocAltMed and read what Dr. Avery Jenkins has to say. He's a natural health care provider (also without the wacky stuff) who relies on the evidence to make his clinical decisions. He wrote a well referenced post on this very topic just a few weeks ago. In the end you'll have to follow the law but become your own informed advocate. The whole vaccination issue needs to be cracked open and re-evaluated. What should be forced? What should be dropped because the literature shows it's a failure? What should be left as optional? But now it's just getting silly when you jail parents for not providing vaccinations that in some cases are essentially unneeded in healthy populations of school aged children, have potential serious side effects, and might not even work in the first place. Really now.