OCR Text |
Show Find the time save your child Why should parents have the right to intentionally expose their children to potentially crippling and deadly diseases? The recent measles outbreak in Davis County has disclosed a staggering stag-gering statistic. Nearly 500 children in county schools have not received routine childhood vaccinations because their parents have signed a form exempting them from the treatment. JUDY JENSEN Asst. Managing Editor This is absurd! Yes, the exemption form clearly states that if an infectious disease does break out, the unprotected child must be taken out of school until the problem has ended, but for some innocent children it's too late. Today there are children in Davis County suffering from measles because their parents would not get them immunized. In 1990 some 50 children died in the U.S. from measles. Signing an exempt form may be signing your child's death warrant. When Dr. Jonas Salk discovered a vaccine for polio, the disease which crippled and led to the deaths of thousands of children, millions of children lined up for their shots or medicine-laced sugar cubes. Parents did whatever it took to get their children to the "miracle" drug. America had seen the crippling crippl-ing effects of that dreaded disease. They had seen the monster-Uke "iron lungs" in which stricken children lived their lives. At that time in America, children had classmates who could not walk, or could walk only with the help of leg braces. For those children there was no vaccine. They could not be protected. pro-tected. Today we allow parents to choose if their child may be crippled or diseased. Why? Yes, there are a few rare cases where for medical reasons a child cannot have the vaccine, but certainly cer-tainly not 500 in Davis County. The choice not to protect a child does not only affect that child, but every child in a classroom must be exposed expos-ed to a disease which can be prevented? Why should the children too ill to have the vaccine have an additional risk added because healthy children's parents have not had their child inoculated? Some object on the grounds that the cure may be worse than the disease. Some refer to television programs which sensationalize the rare cases where an adverse reaction reac-tion to a medication has created serious se-rious complications. Those cases are very rare. The normal side effects of most vaccines include hyperirritability and crying. These things are not terminal, nor are they contagious. Some questionable decisions parents make affect only their child, but in this circumstance the decision deci-sion affects many children, and the results of the decision can be dead- Jy. The statistics are real. Children do die from measles, whooping cough, and polio. Parents are listing "personal" or "religious" as reasons for exemptions from protecting protec-ting their children. "Personal" most likely means "too lazy to take the child to the clinic." Find the time. Save your child. And for those listing "religious" as a reason for not immunizing your children, I refer you to Luke 17:2, the Biblical scripture which speaks of drowning in the depths of the sea with a millstone tied around the neck as a better fate than what awaits one who harms "one of my little ones." Take off that millstone and get your babies protected. Modem medicine may have found a cure for terminal childhood diseases. What we need is a cure for terminal lack of common sense. |