My wife is a naturopathic doctor and midwife who serves the communities of Santa Monica, Venice, Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Beverly Hills and Calabasas, among others. These are the wealthiest, whitest enclaves of Los Angeles. As a result, they are the the areas with the highest incidence of measles and pertussis in the United States. Further, she teaches a vaccine workshop every two months - what the vaccine schedule is, what it used to be, how long the vaccines are effective, the risks you take by not vaccinating your children, what you can do to protect your unvaccinated child's health, what you need to do to protect the health of your community, etc. In addition to her doctorate, she also has a bachelor's in math. Her father, a Ph. D organic chemist, is lead scientist for a multinational testing firm and holds eight patents related to diabetes testing. And while those on the militant science side love to deride her school because she had to take two courses in homeopathy, those on the woo side love to deride her school because she had to take a full year of gross lab, complete with cadaver studies. She doesn't spend a lot of time on "the internet." I do. In other words, we're pretty much at ground zero of this debate 24-7. And I gotta tell ya - everybody wringing their hands and linking to "jennymccarthybodycount.com" isn't helping, isn't making anyone change their minds, and isn't useful. You know how everyone derides /r/atheism for being a circlejerk full of meanies who have no interest in understanding the faithful? It's like that. REASONS PARENTS DO NOT VACCINATE THEIR KIDS - The vaccine schedule is roughly three times as deep as it was when you were a kid and all the new vaccines are made by for-profit companies. Are they likely harmless? Probably. But the studies done by the FDA do not guarantee this to the same degree as, say, heart medication. Lipitor has been implicated in up to 80 deaths; Merck paid settlements on 3500 deaths with Vioxx, settled with 27,000 individual patients for heart attacks, and was implicated in the deaths of 28,000 people by the FDA. This was a drug that had full clinical approval and was being taken by 2 million people when it was pulled. - The world is full of toxins that "we" used to endorse as safe. Asbestos, lead paint, CFCs, DDT, you name it - anything that was once profitable and is now toxic is a counterargument waiting to happen for any vaccine skeptic. - They aren't stupid, they're scared. Go do two Google searches real quick: Look up " varicella vaccine risks " and survey what you see. Now go look up " chicken pox vaccine risks " and compare. Notice how the anti-vax contingent's information is much more readable, much more accessible, and much more human-scale? If you're already in a position of not trusting the FDA, and the FDA's website is full of doublespeak and mumbo-jumbo that doesn't tell you anything human, do you really think you're going to dodge "compassionatesouls.com?" - Stuff we grew up with is now considered HOLY SHIT OH MY GOD BAD. Remember chicken pox? It sucked, but not that hard. The mortality rate from chicken pox in 1995, incidentally, was 0.0023%. That's 90 deaths from 3.9 million cases. We've been vaccinating pretty much every kid now and that 90 deaths dropped to 15 deaths in 2007. In exchange for those 75 saved children, on the other hand, things have gotten completely fucking out of hand: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/11/the-chicke... That's right: have you kid hang out with someone with chicken pox and you are "playing russian roulette with his health." - The vaccine schedule is arbitrary as fuck. Canada does a different one. Every country in Europe does a different one. Every country in Asia does a different one. Ever notice how your Asian friends all have smallpox vaccination scars? That's because their parent countries still consider smallpox a viable threat - it is, after all, one of the most easily weaponizable pathogens we know of and it's a picture-perfect bio-war agent. We still have some, Russia still has some, and 50 different strains have been gene sequenced so a clever lab could build smallpox from scratch. Yet I can't get me a smallpox vaccine without joining the Army. How 'bout Anthrax? We've seen that sonofabitch weaponized. Fuckin' Tom Brokaw got some in the mail. Where'd he get it from? Well, although no one has been able to definitively charge anyone, DHS slandered the fuck out of a scientist at USAAMRID, same place you'd get Smallpox from. So can I get an Anthrax vaccine? Not without jumping through a shitload of hoops. Keep this in mind as well - that thing that makes global warming skeptics believe more and more fervently in meaningless shreds of data the more you attack their facts? Same thing happens to the vaccine skeptics. They're not stupid. They just judge your data as invalid. The more you harp on your data, the less attention they pay to you. These are people who are experiencing a great deal of stigma and putting their children's health at risk (don't think they don't know it) because of the distrust and fear they have of the lobbying arm of "big medicine." They fucking cry out for education, and what everyone on this page (and every other page I've ever commented on) wants to tell them is "STFU>FO take your shot." "Denial is a powerful force." The minute you say that, you're flipping off your empathy switch. That helps no one. /rant out