The New “Religion” of Not Vaccinating Will Kill Children

Some of us seem to have forgotten that there are such things as childhood epidemics–and what they are like.

Parents who won’t vaccinate their kids are in the news across America. The reason, of course, is that epidemics of measles are breaking out in several states. Some of us seem to have forgotten that there are such things as childhood epidemics–and what they are like.

The U. S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in 2000 categorized measles as an “eliminated disease” in the United States. CDC attributed this to “a highly effective measles vaccine, a strong vaccination program that achieves high vaccine coverage in children, and a strong public health system for detecting and responding to measles cases and outbreaks.”

“Eliminated,” in this context, means not that there are no cases of measles, but that the disease does not continually exist in America. There are periods when there are no cases. That means, in turn, that new cases are not endemic to the United States, but brought from abroad. In effect, science had made measles a “foreigner” in America. The CDC had reason to cheer this achievement. Before measles vaccination began half-a-century ago, in 1963, some three to four million Americans contracted measles each year. About 500 died each year, 48,000 had a serious enough case to be hospitalized, and 4,000 developed encephalitis (a life-threatening brain swelling) from measles. This caused the CDC to categorize measles as the most deadly of all childhood rash/fever diseases.

The CDC offensive, from 1978 to its successful conclusion in 2000, when measles was labeled “eliminated”—joining smallpox and polio, for example—relied upon the highly effective measles vaccine. Typically, children at pre-school age get the MMR vaccine, preventing measles, mumps, and rubella (a milder version of measles), and two doses of the vaccine are 97 percent effective. Compared with the pre-vaccine era, measles has been 99 percent eliminated.

The new measles outbreaks this year are attributed by the CDC to infection brought from abroad and a drop in the rate of vaccination. But inasmuch as the “importation” of measles has been a consistent factor since 2000 (the “elimination” date), and we have not had outbreaks, the new causal explanation of the outbreaks is the refusal of parents to get their children vaccinated.

To bring back localized epidemics of measles, that decision by parents has had to become statistically significant, requiring some determination on their part.  A very few children are exempted from vaccination on medical grounds (e.g., allergies), but the great majority of such exemptions today are on religious grounds.

The “religion” in question is not “living naturally,” but, in reality, that is the basis of the overwhelming majority of vaccination refusals. The outbreak of measles is recent and so far not studied in depth on a national level. But many hints about what is happening can be found on a local level.

I live in East Hampton, in Suffolk County, the half of Long Island farthest east of New York City. An enterprising reporter for our local newspaper, the East Hampton Star, has collected statistics on measles vaccination for every school in our region and reached some disturbing conclusions.

In the February 12 edition of the Star, a weekly, reporter Amanda M. Fairbanks begins by quoting a local family doctor, Dr. Nadia Persheff, who is astonished at the growth of the vaccine-refusal movement. She estimates that 10 to 15 percent of her patients (children) have had no vaccinations. And, she says, she is unable to sleep nights. “This is a health emergency. If Ebola didn’t throw us all over the edge, measles is much more contagious.”

The parents of unvaccinated children tend to be white, wealthier, and better educated than parents whose children are fully vaccinated.

And, said Dr. Persheff, paraphrased by the reporter: “The parents of unvaccinated children tend to be white, wealthier, and better educated than parents whose children are fully vaccinated.” Demographically, those parents tend to be similar to those in Manhattan, an epicenter of the natural living, non-GMO eating, and the “nothing artificial” green movement in America.

I will not repeat, here, Ms. Fairbanks’s statistics on vaccination rates in every school, public and private, in the greater East Hampton area. One thing stands out. East Hampton’s public schools have very high and effective rates of vaccination of their students. But East Hampton’s elite, high-cost private schools, where wealthy and ambitious parents send their children, have some of the lowest vaccination rates in the region.

Indeed, the wealthy resort communities of Suffolk County, the eastern section of Long Island, are reported by the state’s health department to have the largest number of medical and religious exemptions for vaccination in the State of New York. After reporting on the region’s public schools, all of which have very high vaccination rates, the Star story turns to two of the region’s elite independent schools: the Hayground School in Bridgehampton and the Ross School in East Hampton.

“Over the past two years, Hayground saw a drop in immunizations rates of 5.4 percent. In the 2013-2014 school year only 63.6 percent were completely immunized…with 33.3 percent receiving religious exemptions…”

And: “Among 78 private schools in Suffolk County included in the 2013-2014 data, Hayground had the fifth lowest vaccination rate and Ross had the 15^th lowest.”

And “Ross, meanwhile, saw a nearly 7 percent decline in immunization rates. For 2013-2014, 86.3 percent of students were completely immunized, with 1.4 percent receiving religious exemptions…”

Both schools pointedly declined to be interviewed for the story.

Things have changed. Not long ago, the poorest parents, with least education, seemed to be the locus of the problem of unvaccinated children. Today, it is the opposite: the wealthier, most educated, most “sophisticated” parents are committed to circumventing the state law requiring vaccination to enter school. The Star story makes it more specific: The group of parents in Suffolk County resisting vaccinating their children are “well-educated, wealthy parents who equate making natural and healthy choices with not vaccinating their children.”

There are opinions, but few good statistics, on what that means. It has been pointed out, though, that today’s young parents, born in the early 1980s, never experienced epidemics of measles, whooping cough, or flu. To them, the payoff of immunization is not real. Most did not contract measles or whooping cough or diphtheria as children or have childhood friends who died of those diseases. They merely take for granted that today you send your child to school without worrying about any of the deadly contagions earlier generations dreaded.

Balanced against this false sense of automatic invincibility is the highly specific concern that vaccinations account for the recent apparent increase in the incidence of autism. Autism is a devastating brain disorder that manifests itself in early childhood, rendering children heart-breakingly intellectually and emotionally remote, and persisting for a lifetime. It truly is a terrifying disorder, sometimes striking children who seem to be developing normally in their first year or so, and slamming down a screen on their further progress. For parents, this as-yet-unexplained brain disorder is a catastrophe. And groping for some explanation of this sudden tragedy, many parents—but no medical or scientific professionals—have pointed at vaccinations.

The Centers for Disease Control, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and other investigators repeatedly have probed the alleged link between vaccines and autism—and declared, one and all, that there is no evidence of any link. A standard article on what is called “regressive autism” describes a widespread phenomenon whereby children seem to develop verbal and social skills, but, between ages 15 and 30 months, are diagnosed with autism. Mrs. Haagen says that her daughter was so diagnosed at 17 months—and claims it resulted from a vaccination around that time.

No medical or scientific connection between vaccination and the onset of autism has been found. A parent cannot merely protest that vaccines cause autism or that children walking to school alone are vulnerable to abduction by aliens.

This well-recognized onset of autism, in a child seeming to develop normally, has been seized upon by agonized parents and blamed upon vaccination, which happens to coincidentally come at about the same age. No medical or scientific connection between vaccination and the onset of autism has been found. But the conviction among parents has spread that vaccination, this sudden injection of a manufactured, artificial, and unnatural substance in their children, caused the disaster of autism.

The CDC Web site is understanding: “about 1 in 68 children born in 2002 have [autism spectrum disorders] ASD. This is higher than estimates from the early 1990s. Over the years, some people have been concerned that autism might be linked to the vaccines children receive. Concerns have related to different aspects of vaccines, including vaccine ingredients.”

Vaccines do, in fact, include ingredients in addition to disease antigens, weakened or killed, that cause our immune system to develop defenses against the disease, and parents suspect that those ingredients are the culprits in causing autism. Thimerosal was used as a preservative in many childhood vaccines, although eliminated in 2001, except in one influenza vaccine, but has been widely identified as the culprit in autism. Again, no scientific studies support this—or any connection between vaccines and autism—but parents tuned into natural living and natural medicine are unconvinced.

Still, a parent cannot merely protest that vaccines cause autism or that children walking to school alone are vulnerable to abduction by aliens. There must be a basis—and states offer it. Forty-eight states allow exemptions to vaccination for religious reasons. Some states insist that parents must be part of a religious group with “bona fide objections” to vaccination. Iowa asks parents if “immunization conflicts with a genuine and sincere religious belief and that the belief is in fact religious, and not based merely on philosophical, scientific, moral, personal, or medical opposition to immunizations.” In other states, parents merely sign a form affirming religious objections to vaccination.

Certainly, that is the tactic of choice at the prestigious, exclusive Hayground School in Bridgehampton, where an astonishing one-third of typically secular, sophisticated, ultra-liberal parents have, it seems, a “genuine” religious objection to vaccination of their children.

To parents who send their kids to local public schools that doesn’t cut it. A long-established local pediatrician, Gail Schonfeld, now refuses to accept patients the children of parents who won’t permit immunization. She believes in vaccines—in fact, considers them just plain good medical practice—and says if “parents don’t trust me with this, we won’t have a good working relationship.”

She views the surge in the number of “religious” exemptions as worrisome. She says: “You can raise your child however you want until you are endangering your child and those around you. That right, you simply do not have.”

An op-Ed in the New York Times by a Philadelphia pediatrician, “What Would Jesus Do About Measles?” talks about non-vaccinating parents and the religious exemption and/or “philosophical” exemption, and then recalls the measles epidemic of late 1990 and 1991 in Philadelphia, introduced by a teenager returning from Spain who attended a rock concert.

At least back then, wealthy liberals were not faking religious beliefs.

The epidemic spread rapidly, hundreds ill, nine died, and a CDC team ascertained that the vectors of the contagion were children from two denominations that rejected medicine in favor of prayer. Authorities in this case took action, getting a court order to examine the children, then literally taking legal custody of them for a day or two to vaccinate them. The religious groups asked the Civil Liberties Union to stand up for them, but the Union said: No, there is too strong and clear a competing “right.”

At least back then, wealthy liberals were not faking religious beliefs.

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About the Author: Walter Donway

Walter Donway contributes to Savvy Street on political economy, science, and trends in fiction, film, and culture. Walter Donway’s most recent book is Donald Trump and His Enemies: How the Media Put Trump in Office (Romantic Revolution Books: New York, September 2017). His Amazon profile can be found here