Editorial roundup

July 13 Johnson City Press

Vaccinating children

Local students will be returning to the classroom in early August. That means many parents are preparing by buying new clothes, school supplies and backpacks for their children.

There’s one other very important thing school administrators are urging parents to do before the first day of school: Make sure their children are properly protected against measles, mumps and rubella, varicella, diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, hepatitis A and B and poliomyelitis.

School officials know there are still parents in this country who refuse to have their children vaccinated against these communicable diseases. Given what we know from proven medical science, it’s hard to understand why parents would want to place their school-age children at such a risk.

Many of today’s opponents to immunizations are people who stubbornly cling to the discredited notion that vaccines are linked to autism and other disorders. Parents who believe such nonsense are putting both their children and their classmates in danger.

Unvaccinated children have led to recent outbreaks of measles in Arizona, California and West Tennessee.

We know that vaccines have saved many lives. Epidemiologists and other medical experts warn personal belief exemptions to vaccinations represent a bad public policy with no basis in science.

You can learn the facts about autism by going to autismsociety.org to read more about a disorder that the government estimates afflicts about 1 in 150 children in this country.

We urge parents to ignore the misinformation being spread on the internet by irresponsible politicians and by uninformed celebrities and make sure their children are up to date on their vaccinations.