Okay first let’s get this out of the way. I was watching TV last night… yes I often do in the late hours of the night after the kids go to bed. On Wednesday I like to watch Lie to Me and Criminal Minds… awesome shows both of them. I state this because the last time I mentioned a specific TV show episode on my blog…which I am about to do… I got bashed in the comments for watching the evils of TV. So there it is… I watch TV… avert your eyes now if that bothers you. ;)
As I was watching last night, I was flipping around between channels to avoid watching any commercials. I watched a few minutes of Law and Order Special Victims Unit and saw that it was a seemingly uninteresting episode where they suspected a mom (Hillary Duff) had killed her 11 month old daughter. Not something that really interested me so I turned back to my regular show.
About 20 minutes later I checked back in and I see the show has done a 180 degree turn. The little girl has apparently died from measles. She was exposed to them in a park by an unvaccinated boy who got the illness from an Amish teenager. The mother of the unvaccinated child is then charged and goes on trial for negligent homicide and on the show they continually scream at her saying that she murdered a child.
Yes, that got my attention and I stayed tuned in for the rest of the show. I was so freaking angry by what I saw. And yes it is just a TV show but have you noticed just how many TV shows now have done this exact same thing? They make up bogus stories about how terrifying these diseases are and how non-vaccinating parents are no better than murderers. It is alarming to me as a non-vaccinating parent that this propaganda is getting spread around and stirring up hate towards a group of parents who are only attempting to do what is right by their children.
In the shows defense they did give the defense attorney some good lines where he made the expert witness, a doctor, admit that the MMR vaccine can have side effects that include seizures and death and that the side effects are not so rare. But mostly they allowed this doctor to really bash non-vaccinating parents and make them sound stupid.
In the end the jury did not convict the non-vaccinating parent of wrong doing but according to the prosecutor this was only because the mother of the dead child was a party girl parent who had neglected her child. Supposedly the jury did not want to punish the woman who had at least tried to be a good parent. A bunch of nonsense it what it is. The grandfather of the baby ends up killing himself in front of the non-vaccinating mom, telling her she murdered not one, but two people.
They also spread an outright lie by saying that children who attend public school are required to be vaccinated or their parents are breaking the law. ALL states have exemptions so this is a flat out lie. The state in question, New York, has two… a medical and a religious exemption.
One thing they failed to really highlight in this fictional story was that the unvaccinated child who got measles was absolutely fine. This only supports the widely held belief that most vaccinations are not meant to protect our own kids from these diseases but to protect other portions of the population… infants, immune suppressed, and the elderly come to mind. So when you take a risk vaccinating your child, and you are taking a risk, you are doing so not for them… but for other people. I for one did not make the conscious decision to bring 3 children into this world only to put other people’s interests before theirs.
On the show they basically said non-vaccinating parents are uneducated and foolish. But I have met hundreds of non-vaccinating parents and they are some of the smartest most compassionate people you could ever come across. They have poured over books (written by doctors) that highlight the dangers of vaccines, they read the studies that have been done about vaccine safety, and they make the best decision they can. In my experience it is USUALLY (not aways) the parents who DO vaccinate that are uneducated about the issue. Now of course some research and decide that they think the risks do not outweigh the protective benefits and they vaccinate but in general most parents just do what their doctor tells them and what they are pressured by society to do.
That is what I did with my first child and he almost died as a result. I now buck the system and call my own shots for the health of my kids. I won’t sacrifice them on the alter of public good. We choose not to vaccinate and we choose to only live in a state that allows for philosophical exemptions.
But the point is that through mediums like TV the public is being influenced to “hate” parents who buck the system and choose not to vaccinate. It doesn’t matter that many thousands of kids are injured by vaccines every year and it doesn’t matter that I witnessed my son go into respiratory arrest due to vaccines … the public is being informed that I/we are negligent parents.
I heard that an episode of Private Practice a couple weeks back also had a “bad mom” who didn’t vaccinate and her child dies of measles.
It makes me weary of what the future has in store. But then I remember that this is the same public that tells me pharmaceuticals, genetically modified foods, and irradiated foods are safe and that herbs and natural foods are suspect. I consider the source and then I can exhale and know that this propaganda is only out there because they are running scared. More parents are waking up to their lies and they are running scared and trying to gain ground with scare tactics. I for one will stand my ground and get even louder in my defense of parental CHOICE.
What about you? Did you see the show?
See also this important book review: He’s Not Autistic, but…
