Diphtheria Returns To Spain For Lack of Vaccination

TuringTest writes: A six-year-old child was admitted to a hospital in Barcelona and diagnosed with diphtheria, which hasn't occurred in Spain since 1986 and was largely unheard of in western Europe. The boy had not been vaccinated despite the vaccine being available in free vaccination programs. Spanish general health secretary called anti-vaccination campaigns "irresponsible" and said: "The right to vaccination is for children, not for the parents to decide." The child is in critical condition, though he's now being treated with a serum expressly brought from Russia through an emergency procedure.

Comments

Re: Parents should be liable

[Jason Levine]

As the parent of a child with autism, the "vaccines cause autism" crowd triply annoys me.

1. They take funding that should go to diagnosis/treatment and send it to Yet Another Study that will yet again show no link. (Or worse: Advocating "treatments" that are a baby step shy of torture.)

2. They fear monger autism such that you'd think your child would be better off dead than autistic. I know plenty of parents of kids on the spectrum. Some with pretty severe issues. None would rather their kids were dead.

3. They make it hard to support autism societies because you need to first weed out the ones dedicated to "proving" an autism-vaccine link.

The sooner these people accept that autism and vaccines have no link, the better for everyone.