Editorial: Debate is over on vaccinating your kids

Advice on raising a child is a tricky thing. Customs change. Medical recommendations change. Generational differences arise.

Remember when putting infants on their stomachs to sleep was the preferred, even recommended way? It wasn't until 1992 that the American Academy of Pediatrics advised against that practice because of concerns about and new research related to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. And according to an article in Parents magazine, SIDS cases have dropped 50 percent since that time.

In the 1970s, according to that same article, the proportion of infants who were breast-fed reached an all-time low of 24 percent. Today 75 percent are breast-fed.

Go back even further — think the 1960s Mad Men era — and look how children were allowed to run wild in the car as the adults were driving. And car seats for infants? Nope.

Even when car seats were common years later, correct usage changed over time.

Given all that, it may not be surprising that some challenge the wisdom of immunizing their children, especially if they have no firsthand knowledge of what might occur if their children get a disease like measles. Because of the vaccine licensed in the U.S. in 1963, measles, which killed about 450 to 500 Americans a year before vaccine, was declared eliminated in 2000, according to an Associated Press story.

And now it's in the early stages of a comeback — highlighted by an outbreak at Disneyland and, closer to home, it was announced Thursday that five infants under the age of 1 have measles. All were at a day-care center in Palatine. That follows another suburban case last month.

Politicians are getting involved and the debate is getting fueled on social media.

But the facts and the science are clear; there should be no debate. Children should be immunized unless they have a medical or religious waiver, as Illinois state law allows. Parents need to do their homework.

Children who can't be vaccinated because of health reasons could easily get measles from another child just by being in the same vicinity, it's that contagious.

“Measles may not spread as fast as erroneous sound bites and tweets, but both have the potential to cause a great amount of damage,” U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, a Naperville Democrat said Wednesday on the House floor. “It does not take a scientist (Foster is one) to realize that opposing vaccines is wrong.”

Foster was taking to task some potential presidential candidates and even one local candidate who tried to make the case that parents should have a choice.

Tell that to the parents of the babies at the Palatine day-care center who now have measles, potentially because of another parent's choice.

Protect your children and others' — get them immunized.