Sunni Mariah was at her doctor’s office in Colorado when she noticed a sign up on the wall, promoting vaccination. So she took a photo and posted it on Facebook, commenting that the sign was “throwing some serious shade”.
Within a few days, the post had been shared more than 130,000 times, and had sent anti-vaxxers into a fury. What Mariah didn’t know was that the words on the sign had been written by a doctor from Australia, Rachel Heap.
Dr Heap is an intensive care specialist who works in the Northern Rivers region of NSW. In her spare time, she politely and respectfully does her best to correct misinformation put out by “professional anti-vaxxers”. It’s tough work, but she keeps at it.
Top Comments
I have been working on a research paper for the past couple of weeks for my college course and it has been on vaccinations. I have taken the stance that you should vaccinate your children. With parents choosing to not vaccinate their children, they could be putting other children’s lives in danger. Although vaccines only help to prevent the spread of diseases, they are also allowing our bodies to develop antibodies in order to be able to fight against the disease. The antibodies help us as humans to be able to have a fighting chance of survival against the serious diseases that face our nation today. Research shows that it has been estimated that for each U.S. birth cohort receiving recommended childhood immunizations, around 20 million illnesses and more than 40,000 deaths are prevented. Research has also proven that vaccinations are not a contributing factor to the cause of autism like some parents choose to believe. While it is true that parents in general have the right to choose whether or not their child gets a medical treatment – and vaccines are a medical treatment – the vaccination choice is fundamentally different in that it affects not just the child, but the entire community. Personal beliefs, even religious beliefs, do not give anyone the right to put the health or lives of others at risk. If we continue to completely vaccinate our children and ourselves, parents in the future may be able to trust that some diseases of today will no longer be around to harm their children in the future.
Tougher laws are needed. Make vaccination mandatory under law. Failure to comply results in prison for the parents and the children apprehended by child protective services.
And the vaccine-affected? What jail time is shelled out for the damage done to them by vaccines?