People believe all kinds of strange things, and most of the time it doesn't matter. Trouble arises, however, when their odd beliefs affect other people's health.
Such, unfortunately, is the case with parents who choose not to immunize their children against diseases that killed and crippled millions before vaccines were developed and made widely available. The anti-vaccine movement is driven largely by parents who believe that certain vaccines can cause autism, a suspicion that has been thoroughly investigated and authoritatively debunked.
A new study in the journal Pediatrics has found that children not vaccinated against pertussis are 23 times more likely to contract the disease, also known as whooping cough. This is hardly a surprise. What may be more alarming is that those who refuse to vaccinate are likely endangering the rest of us. Immunized children who are in contact with unvaccinated peers are at elevated risk of getting sick.
That's why, as Stephanie Desmon reported in The Baltimore Sun last week, at least one local doctor is refusing to treat children who haven't had their shots. Although fewer than 1 percent of children are not immunized, their numbers have doubled in recent years, a trend that worries Dr. Daniel Levy of Owings Mills: "We're going to start seeing the return of diseases we had almost gotten rid of."
Parents of autistic children deserve sympathy and support. There should be adequate services for these families, as well as more research into the steady rise over the last 20 years in diagnoses of "autism spectrum disorders," which describes an array of developmental, language and social difficulties.
But a dangerous ignorance should not be tolerated. As Dr. Timothy F. Doran, chairman of pediatrics at Greater Baltimore Medical Center, pointed out in these pages last year, the original study linking the MMR vaccine with autism was based on a mere 12 patients; the lead author was charged with misconduct, and his co-authors disavowed the work.
Further confusion was sown by the recent case of a Maryland-born girl who developed features of autism after receiving vaccinations, and whose family was compensated by the federal government. As Dr. Doran pointed out, this compensation fund is a "no-fault" program designed to avoid the tort process. The award was in no sense proof of a vaccine-autism link, and it did nothing to disprove the dozens of large-scale studies, from multiple countries, that have failed to demonstrate one.
Maryland law requires vaccinations against a dozen diseases from birth to age 5, but shockingly, any parent can send an unvaccinated child to school by simply signing a statement asserting that the vaccination is a violation of religious beliefs.
That's an unacceptable endangerment of public health. The number of definite pertussis cases in Maryland rose from 43 in 2007 to 64 last year. Before the next 50 percent increase, the state should seriously consider barring unvaccinated children from attending public schools. If parents want to make a risky decision regarding their children's health, perhaps they should have to make other arrangements for their education rather than endanger everyone else.
