I have previously written that in my opinion, if you vaccinate your children or your self, that is
Bodhisattvic activity, serving the needs of this life of many beings and relieving them
from potential harm and suffering.
And if you do not
vaccinate, unless it is due to medical reasons or lack of opportunity,
you are putting others and your self at risk, potentially causing harm and
suffering, and maybe nurturing self-centeredness and delusion. What self
do you protect? How? What is protecting? How far or narrow is self?
What is being the Bodhisattva you are?
The book and article cited below further clarify the consequences of not-vaccinating - for the individual, their family and the larger community,
The first paragraph is an excerpt from a NY Times review of this interesting book, ON IMMUNITY: An Inoculation by Eula Biss
"Biss unpacks what the fear of vaccines tells us about larger anxieties involving purity, contamination and interdependency. Deeply researched and anchored in Biss’s own experiences as a new mother, this ferociously intelligent book is itself an inoculation against bad science and superstition, and a reminder that we owe one another our lives."
And these are the introduction and conclusion from an article by Dr. Haider Javed Warraich:
"I was working on the hospital infectious-disease service when our team
was asked to see a young girl with a mysterious illness that no one had
been able to diagnose. She had come to the emergency room with a fever
and runny nose and had a rash spreading across her body. She had
developed a cough so harsh that “whooping cough” had been added to the
long list of possible infirmities. But when the senior doctor on our
team,
Frank Berkowitz,
an expert in pediatric infections—arrived at her room, he knew
the diagnosis immediately: She had measles.
Many developing countries continue to suffer from measles, an
extremely contagious respiratory disease, but the U.S. in 2000 was
declared “measles free” by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. The news of a confirmed case set our hospital abuzz, and
uniformed CDC officers soon swooped in.
How did the young girl get the disease? Her parents had refused to vaccinate her.
Hers is far from the only case. Measles is making a terrifying comeback
in the U.S., with some 600 cases reported this year, more than in any
year in the past two decades. There are two reasons: the ease of
international travel, and an increasing number of people refusing
vaccinations, usually on behalf of their children...."
"The re-emergence of measles may be the harbinger of other infections
such as polio returning from the history books. While autonomy needs to
be a central value driving medical decision-making, legislators need to
protect American children. The young girl at my hospital with measles
survived, but others might not be so lucky. "
The full article is here:
http://online.wsj.com/articles/haider-javed-warraich-the-measles-outbreak-coming-near-you-1417652911
