Proponents of Question 1 to “reject Big Pharma” are trying to confuse the issue, as if vaccination is being forced on Maine by a pharmaceutical industry already demonized by the opioid crisis.

The fundamental point of Question 1 is one of children’s health. According to the Mayo Clinic, measles kills over 100,000 children under age 5 annually worldwide. I’m old enough to have had measles as a child, and it was miserable. I missed a week of school. I only hoped to get chicken pox and mumps soon, so these “necessary childhood evils” could be behind me. Measles vaccine easily prevents the disease.

I got a DPT series shortly after birth, and was one of the first to get polio vaccine. But I went to school with a boy who had had polio. When we graduated from high school, his useless legs were still no bigger than my arms. An adult neighbor died of the disease.

Are there risks with vaccines? Yes. But they’re far less than the risks in getting the diseases they prevent. Some people cannot get the vaccines because of compromised immune systems. But if everyone else around them is immunized, they are also indirectly protected.

Remember also that in 2010, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who had claimed a link between vaccines and autism, lost his license to practice medicine when it was revealed that his entire “study” was fiction.

To claim this is a matter of inalienable parental rights is based on an erroneous fundamental assumption: that individual rights transcend community responsibility.

Requiring students to have a basic suite of vaccines before attending public schools to protect themselves as well as everyone else is as common-sense as not allowing them to carry guns. Mainers who care about Mainers will vote no on Question 1.

 

Robert Nelson

Clinton