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Our View: Immunizations are safe, and they work

The world is coming close to eliminating polio from the face of the earth. Thanks to massive immunization efforts since 1985, only a handful of new cases of the once-dreaded disease pop up each year, in war torn and remote areas of the world like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. In a few years, this disease that once ravaged young bodies across the U.S. as well as the rest of the world will have gone the way of smallpox.

The power of vaccines to prevent disease is incredible. But we still see outbreaks of easily-preventable diseases in the U.S., including Minnesota. In the last couple of weeks a measles outbreak has popped up in Minneapolis — 12 children, all of them members of Somali families, all of them unvaccinated, have been infected.

Somali families in Minneapolis, who once had a high rate of vaccinations, apparently became spooked by several cases of autism in their community, and they harkened back to the firmly discredited notion that vaccinations cause autism. That notion was popularized by a British researcher, Andrew Wakefield, but it has been subjected to vigorous tests and studies, with the inevitable conclusion that vaccines do not cause autism.

When children are not vaccinated against diseases like measles they can become sick when exposed, and can pass it on to others, especially younger children in their families who are too young for vaccinations.

People will not listen to doctors and scientists who have studied immunizations and vaccines and their effects, but they will listen to their next door neighbor who saw something wild and outdated on the Internet.

Those old enough to remember the polio epidemics of the 1950s should know that vaccines and immunizations can be life savers. There’s really no good excuse for refusing to have children vaccinated, or putting it off. We hope this recent outbreak won’t result in serious problems for the victims, and that it will encourage Somali parents, or any parent who thinks the “risks” of vaccinations are too great to get some good, reliable information on the benefits.

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