I have a friend who has a deadly stomach illness that is kept alive by medication not approved by the FDA which relatives ship her from overseas. Taking medication not approved by the FDA isn't an issue for me: we clearly don't have a omniscient medical society. However the FDA is there to protect us and we should at least review medications that haven't been approved to see why before we use them. Desperate situations may take desperate measures.
But I am very perturbed by people falsifying data and also by the recreation of an environment full of preventable but possibly deadly and disabling diseases. My father lost a lot of his eyesight due to "routine" childhood mumps before there was a vaccine, and I'm not able to say "oh it's just a risk I'll take with my children." The part that really kills me is babies are the ones who can't get MMR until they're a year, and especially those old enough to not survive solely on breast milk. They're the ones who are going to be most adversely affected by other people not vaccinating because of autism fear and yet infants have the greatest mortality rate from measles because their little bodies can't handle all the symptoms. And the only treatment is to wait it out and hope. It's also one thing for wealthy people to "opt out" when the impact of the illnesses on their lives are ameliorated by their good health benefits and access to health care, but they can easily impact the poor who may not have any health care or limited capacity to take time off from work to nurse ailing children or elderly.
This is an issue of an equitable society. When you don't vaccinate your children, you're making it clear that you and your children are more worthy than other people.
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