Don't immunize? You risk your health, others, and can be sued

[caption id="attachment_22451" align="alignleft" width="211"] child receiving polio immunization[/caption]

Carol Forsloff---If you are one of those individuals recommending people not take immunizations, or not taking them yourself, you might want to read about the growing number of people coming down with preventable illnesses, for whom you might be responsible.  In other words, experts say if you want to be one of those playing Russian roulette with your health, it is unfair to put the gun to someone else's head.

That can be the case, for example,  measles, mumps, or influenza, all of which can kill, depending upon the immune system of those exposed to infections that cause various communicable diseases.

The growing number of cases of children who have polio is another piece of evidence of the problems related to refusing immunizations, putting some countries in a serious situation.

Some of this has to do with the associations that were made at one time by a researcher, whose conclusions, it turned out, were bogus and eventually uncovered as that.  But as people often keep hold of the original information, that might be false, and therefore refuse to believe in anything that refutes preconceived beliefs, folks still maintain that immunizations cause autism.

Some of this false information is passed along by bloggers, some of whom may come from countries that offer little protection from certain diseases, like the country of Pakistan.   This month 70 health care workers in Khyber refused to give polio vaccinations.  Bloggers from that area of the world often state that polio still exists despite immunizations, or even caused by them, and that the medical authorities simply changed the names of certain diseases in order to cover up their manipulations.  But look closer at the evidence, if any is provided, and often it is another blogger or a defrocked doctor or someone whose medical credentials are often questionable.

Much of the tuberculosis that is spread occurs as a result of people coming to the United States from the part of the world where people refuse immunizations.  The newest multidrug resistant concern is of concern to public health officials because TB used to be one of the diseases that created numerous fatalities in the US.  Health officials became especially vigilant when there was an uptick in the disease during the 1970's and 80's, but it has declined as a result of that vigilance.

The fact remains that those people who don't have immunizations put other people's lives at risk.  There is both legal and moral culpability by doing that, and that is aided by those who continuously offer false information that not only can harm those who read it but many other people as well, with potential outbreaks of diseases entirely possible as a result of making bold statements without factual basis.

And finally if you are traveling to a country such as Pakistan, the US government offers a list of vaccinations to prevent becoming ill from the diseases in that country.  Given the resistance to vaccinations, it is likely those recommendations are cogent.