Protecting health

Ask Kathryn Riffenburg about the importance of childhood immunizations, and she'll give you a blunt answer: Parents who don't believe in vaccinating their kids could kill somebody else's baby.

Riffenburg watched her two-month-old son, Brady, die during a 2012 Massachusetts outbreak of whooping cough, a disease that once was widely considered an affliction of the past. Brady was vulnerable because he was too young to be immunized, and he apparently caught the disease from someone who hadn't been vaccinated.

"It just seemed like it was impossible," she said.

After burying her child, she's spoken out against the growing number of parents who refuse to immunize their children. Now, this problem is gaining traction in Texas.

Our state is becoming a focal point for the misguided and dangerous anti-vaccine movement, which threatens one of the most important advances in public health of the last century. Vaccinating children against potentially deadly diseases saves an estimated 2.5 million lives every year.

The anti-vaccine movement grew out of a 1998 study that claimed to establish a link between common childhood vaccines and autism. But a British medical journal later concluded it was an elaborate fraud perpetrated by a doctor who collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from a law firm hoping to sue vaccine makers.

The study was retracted and the doctor at the center of the scandal, Andrew Wakefield, was stripped of his medical license. Dozens of subsequent studies have thoroughly debunked the link between vaccines and autism, but the perception won't die.

Now Wakefield lives in Austin, which is developing into a hotbed of anti-vaccine activism. Organized vaccine opponents are lobbying Texas lawmakers to pass a number of bills that would make it easier for parents to avoid vaccinating their children against potentially deadly diseases. As of last fall, more than 45,000 Texas children had received nonmedical exemptions allowing them to attend school without receiving routine vaccinations.

Just think about that. If you have a baby who's too young to have been vaccinated, your infant could contract whopping cough from a sick, unvaccinated child you pass in a grocery store.

What's especially troubling is the fact that our new president seems sympathetic to anti-vaccine activists. He's reportedly met with leaders of the movement, including Wakefield, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he's talking with the Trump administration about leading a "vaccine safety commission."

All of this has frightened some people concerned about public health issues to push back against vaccine opponents. State Rep. Sarah Davis, R-West University Place, whose district includes the Texas Medical Center, has introduced a number of bills on the subject, including legislation that would require parents to take an online education course before getting a waiver for their children to attend school without vaccinations. Dr. Peter Hotez, director of the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, has spoken out about the danger the anti-vaccine movement poses not just to public health in Texas and the United States, but also worldwide.

This matter is too important to public health to become politicized, with vaccine opponents donning red shirts and vaccine supporters donning blue shirts. Sensible Republicans and Democrats in Austin need to shoot down legislation proposed by the wrong-headed anti-vaccine movement and, at the very least, pass Davis' bill requiring parents to learn about childhood diseases before they opt their sons and daughters out of routine vaccinations.

The argument against childhood vaccinations is a dangerous fraud. For the sake of our children and the health of our society, our lawmakers need to stand against it.