There have concerted campaigns of wilful ignorance by certain groups of extremely cruel, callous, selfish and anti-social people to prevent vaccination and return to the days of crippling and often fatal, infectious diseases. Not just the obvious ones like polio, tetanus and tuberculosis; but also the more insidious illnesses like measles.
They act by frightening parents into replacing care with dogma.
Some of the fear arose from a British doctor who published a very poor paper claiming the MMR vaccine as a "cause" of autism, but that was subsequently shown utterly wrong - he had confused correlation with cause. Sadly the damage had been done, and the rebuttal received far less coverage or notice than the original publication.
In some countries, the campaign has a political slant, driven by people who hate anything they can link to "The West".
Otherwise, I do not understand these campaigners' motives, especially in countries like the USA that like to boast how clever and educated they are.
I wonder how many of these bullies have any children of their own? None, probably, and I hope they do not, for I would fear for their children' safety.
@ArishMell measles is not usually lethal just as flu is not always lethal.
Check this graph on polio vs lead, arsenic, DDT etc:
From his book 'Health and Healing' Dr Andrew Weil best answers it with this statement:
"Scientific medicine has taken credit it does not deserve for some advances in health. Most people believe that victory over the infectious diseases of the last century came with the invention of immunisations. In fact, cholera, typhoid, tetanus, diphtheria and whooping cough, etc, were in decline before vaccines for them became available - the result of better methods of sanitation, sewage disposal, and distribution of food and water."
From http://www.vaclib.org/sites/debate/web1.html
I am 100% for making ours bodies stronger, but not through poison and not before we are ready for them:
Babies are given a hepatitis B vaccine in the first 12 hours of life, when hepatitis B happens by: - Sexual contact - Sharing of needles - Accidental needle sticks - Mother to child (the mom would already have very visible symptoms if she she's already infected) https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hepatitis-b/symptoms-causes/syc-20366802
From all I read, baby's immune system is not fully developed before 2 years old, so no vaccines should be accepted before that as they will be no anti-bodies produced anyway.
@sunlight Thankyou for showing us that example of what parents and doctors are up against from the disease-wanters.
Measles is not usually lethal in otherwise healthy children, no, and I have had it; but it can lead to very damaging diseases later; more so I believe in girls.
Weil's pointing out improvements in sanitation etc. is of course right but that does not yet apply world-wide, and even in countries like ours, is still only part of the solution.
That paper's crude attempt to use his and others' work, and to compare vaccines which overwhelmingly succeed in protect life with poisons that have no health benefits at all, is absurd, cynical, cruel, wilful fear-mongering.
Using the problems of shared needles or inoculations given too early in life, is also absurd fear-mongering, by blaming the principle for neglect or incompetence in its administration.
There are people who deliberately and concertedly want children left unprotected from highly-infectious diseases that could seriously harm or even kill them. Worse, these people use fear and ignorance backed by misuse of science is one of their weapons.
I would challenge these groups to identify themselves and tell us all their motives. I wonder what other modern health benefits they would want banned.
