Because of the recent outbreak of measles among some children who visited Disneyland, the mass media have focused on parents who are afraid to have their children vaccinated. Measles can kill, but many parents have been fooled by widespread disinformation that measles vaccinations may lead to autism. This is a blatant lie. No one knows what causes autism, but we have voluminous proof that vaccines do not.
The lie was raised to prominence by Andrew Wakefield, a British surgeon who profited hugely by submitting a fraudulent paper in 1998 to the leading medical journal Lancet. Beforehand he had been hired by lawyers trying to sue vaccine companies to prove their case, and the journal paper was the result. His paper reviews the cases of 12 children, claiming that they all developed autism within two weeks of receiving the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine. It was later shown, however, that some of these children had signs of autism prior to the vaccinations and others never had autism. Wakefield’s medical license was subsequently revoked.
Every study since then has rejected Wakefield’s attribution of autism to the vaccine, any vaccine. But his murderous lie lives on through self-serving celebrities like Jenny McCarthy, the Playboy model, who refuses to vaccinate her children. Wakefield himself has built a following in his adopted home of Texas, where he continues to claim he is the victim of government collusion with vaccine manufacturers. One doesn’t have to support either government or vaccine makers to conclude that Wakefield is responsible for crimes against the working class.
When unvaccinated children catch the measles, or other potentially deadly contagious diseases, they expose other children. When too few children in a community (less than 90 percent) have been vaccinated, all are at risk of epidemics, even those who have been vaccinated. Measles was once virtually eradicated in the U.S. and Europe, even if not everywhere in the world, due solely to the vaccine. Of every thousand children who contract measles, one or two will die. But no children will develop autism from the vaccine.
Laws passed by pandering and ignorant politicians in many places allow vaccination exemptions for parents on the grounds of religious or simply “personal” beliefs. But what if someone has a “personal” belief that it’s all right to steal?  Stealing, though enforced by capitalist conditions, is still a violation of working-class morality. And incidentally it’s against the law, unless committed by huge banks and corporations. The stunning hypocrisy of vaccine exemptions in turn supports the spread of anti-scientific mysticism and superstition — useful tools for the reigning capitalist class to keep workers divided and subjugated.
Most parents who fail to vaccinate their children out of fear are simply trying to protect them. But it’s not the motivation that counts; it’s the effect. Despite opposition by the American Pediatric Society, some pediatricians refuse to accept children as patients whose parents won’t have them vaccinated, on the grounds that exposure to unvaccinated children raises the disease risk for their other patients. Likewise, some school districts refuse to allow children to attend school until they are vaccinated. Both of these measures represent a scattered approach that does not solve the problem for the children or their parents.
Only a centrally planned cooperative system, based on the best that science can offer — i.e., communism — will be capable of stemming the effects of mysticism and disinformation and be able to protect children as well as adults. Communism is a system that will encourage families, friends, and neighbors to help each other with childcare and other needs. Communism raises science to a premium while eradicating mysticism and superstition. Under communist leadership, with the Progressive Labor Party having grown to include millions of workers, the working class will see to it that all parents have the wherewithal to feed, clothe, and shelter their children, and to be guided only by science rather than be confused by superstition.