Who can blame parents with kids in public schools for being a little disturbed when the health care decisions of others pose a potential threat to their families?
It is unsettling to see an expansion in the number of families who claim exemptions so their kids do not have to receive vaccinations against preventable childhood diseases like mumps, measles, polio and hepatitis. Those medical advancements have changed the world, making it a place where kids don't have to think about deadly childhood diseases. Science in the 2oth century did what science does best -- it provided solutions that make life better for people all around the world.And yet Northwest Arkansas has the biggest concentration of people who have sought and received exemptions from the state-mandated vaccinations than any other part of the state. Parents of almost 600 students in Washington County and 900 in Benton County have exempted the young ones from at least one vaccine because of medical, religious or philosophical reasons, according to the Arkansas Department of Health.
What’s the point?
It’s unfortunate Northwest Arkansas has become a pocket of resistance to the beneficial effects of vaccinations.
The next closest is Pulaski County, with 261 exempted kids.
Medical professionals see the wonder of vaccinations. As one Northwest Arkansas doctor put it, they "use your body against getting an infection." But for some parents, the worries about possible side-effects are enough to scare them away from one of modern medicine's greatest developments.
Anyone advocating for vaccinations must acknowledge possible side-effects. For each type of vaccinations, there are some reactions that may happen. Not will, but may.
Think of vaccinations along the same line as surgeries. Our nation's health care institutions perform nearly 52 million inpatient surgeries a year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. In every one of those, the patient or a family member signs documents to indicate they understand the risks, up to and including death. The lawyer-driven language is enough to frighten anyone away from life-changing or -altering surgery, but people undergo those surgeries anyway. Why? Because the benefits far outweigh the potential for a bad outcome.
Why do we live so long these days? According to the National Institute on Aging, average life expectancy for most babies born in 1900 was 50 years or less. Today, people are generally expected to live into their 70s, 80s and beyond. A large part of the credit goes to the scientific advances that allowed for a shift in the leading causes of death and illness from infectious and parasitic diseases to noncommunicable diseases and chronic conditions.
But let's not forget that in eras before vaccinations against smallpox, polio, measles and other diseases, it wasn't just that adults could live longer. Children managed to make it through the early years when they were susceptible to most dangerous impacts of these diseases. For a long time, it wasn't unusual at all for a parent to have lost a child, or children, to now-preventable diseases.
The Centers for Disease Control reminds us that most adults these days have no experience with the devastating consequences that vaccine-preventable diseases can have on families and communities. Today's child-rearing families live in a cocoon of protection created by the health care decisions of generations before us, and the parents of today are setting the stage for what future generations will either benefit from or, like the national debt, be forced to reckon with.
Bentonville School Board member Rebecca Powers has become vocal in expressing her concerns. After years of following the vaccination routine, she balked at the required second shot for chicken pox because her own review of information made her concerned about the dangers. Then, after her son was on bus with a student who came down with the disease, he was forced to stay home for 21 days. Powers has been critical of the experience, saying it felt more like a punishment for her son.
When it comes to public school education, we support an expectation for vaccinations. We respect parents who decide against them based on religious or medical concerns, but those parents must also recognize there are potential consequences to those decisions. Forcing unvaccinated kids to stay home until the window of incubation has passed is a reasonable trade-off for the benefit of those children and the full student population. Nobody said maintaining one's convictions was easy.
It's disappointing Arkansas lawmakers decided in 2003 to expand exemptions to cover simple "philosophical" objections to vaccinations. That opens the option to pretty much anyone for any reason, and it increases the danger to students. The science of vaccinations is solid, despite the cottage industry of skeptics that try to keep faulty information alive.
It's better to keep kids alive.
Modern medicine has demonstrated over and over again that the diseases are far worse than the small change of vaccination complications. Hopefully Northwest Arkansas will one day catch up with the rest of the state and nation in recognizing the value of vaccinations to all.
Commentary on 02/24/2015