Vaccination Yes Or No?

I saw this post in my reader today and I was so happy to read it. The hole vaccination discussion is something that makes me slightly angry. Why? Because I feel it should not be a discussion at all.

We always vaccinated our kids and will keep doing it. And to be honest, I really struggle with people who do not vaccinate. For me in this case it is not a “your decision vs my decision” thing as this “your decision” affects other kids to a point where it gets dangerous.

When we were first confronted with the decision about vaccinating or not I asked our doctor why it is so super important. I remember saying that after all, we have been through it all and have survived. I remember using the word ‘survived’. She looked at me and told me that our kids will probably be totally fine if not vaccinated but that they would be a risk to kids with immune systems that are not up to scratch. She also mentioned how many kids in third world countries pass away from deceases we handle pretty well. Just because they don’t have the money and/or the tools to deal with it. For me that made the difference.

Yes, I take a risk when vaccinating my children. But it is really small. So far we were lucky and our kids reacted well on the vaccines. Our doc opened my eyes to the bigger picture and I kept them open.

Brock Heasley

Detail from “Vaccines Work: Here are the Facts” by Maki Naro

I am not a scientist.

I say that to get it out of the way and let you know up front what sort of blog is this is going to be. There are plenty of articles and blogs out there that provide ample research and reasoning in support of vaccinations. The comic I’ve excerpted to the left is a great primer and is fun to read to boot. It gives a basic rundown of the objections raised by the anti-vaccination crowd and answers them in the best format for communicating ideas man has yet created (yeah, that’s right). If you’re looking for something more detailed, this exhaustively hyperlinked blog has basically done all the work for you. The point of both the comic and blog is this: vaccinations are good and believing otherwise is not a good idea.

You…

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