vaccines

I've read a few different discussions or blogs trying to figure out if vaccines are paleo or not. There are people who think eating right will protect them from flu. There are people who believe vaccines are unnatural, and generally an evil seed of fascist government imposing its ideas on free people. There are people who believe vaccines cause autism or other deformations. There are people who simply don't like to see their babies cry of feel miserable for a day so endanger them to diseases that not only can make them miserable for life, but simply can kill them.

I find the anti-vaccine movement selfish and very dangerous. It's one thing to push the big pharma to provide the best, the safest and purest vaccines possible. To push for trials checking the safety of vaccine combinations or best time of vaccine. But to promote no vaccine whatsoever? This is child abuse and selfishness. Vaccines are one of the most amazing achievements of medicine, saving millions of lives. But now there are people who think they know more than the hundreds of professional researches and doctors (hey, I know there are under-educated doctors and biased researchers... but not all of them and not even majority of them!), who can decide about the health and death of not only their own child, but also the health of children around him or her. There needs to be 93% of vaccination in the society for it to protect properly. If it exists, even the not-vaccinated are protected. Saying that the kid is all fine and not sick as a proof for lack of need for vaccine is not just idiotic and ignorant, but also abusive and parasitic.

This article takes on the whooping cough epidemic as one of the signs of dangers of the anti-vaccine movement. Do they really want to go back to the life with polio, measles, small pox and dozens of other horrible diseases?