Jewish measles

[Aryeh Shore]

About 10% percent of the US population is no longer vaccinated against measles. Some out of religious reasons and some of out an unsubstantiated fear of autism. This is possible if there is no big measles vector. However, the Cheredi community in Israel has a massive outbreak of measles and it is infecting the US population. We have not have had any deaths from measles in Israel but there have been 4 deaths this year from whooping cough.
Isn't there some sort of Jewish Halacha that people should get vaccinated and not kill theirs and other peoples children unnecessarily?

[Rivka Leah]

I obviously can't answer and give a psak halacha, but I can give my opinion. I think that many people are more afraid of what is in the vaccine than the disease that the vaccine is designed to prevent.

[Aryeh Shore]

Which sounds like something I am always asking. If in one generation people are living thirty years longer and are healthier than ever before, why do so many people think that there food and water are toxic?
One answer is the failure of science education. If 60% of the public believe in astrology and even respectable paper have horoscope pages, someone isn't getting their message accross.
Actually it is wierd with the poor science education in the religious community in they manage to pick up all the funny things like organic foods and the anti-vaccine theories. Someone suggested that since the Cheredim don't trust the secular authorities then is natural to go along with anti-establishment trends.
I have never heard of any halachic authority suggest you should not get vaccinated and reading the billboards in Mea Shaarim, I gather the poskim are unanamous on the importance of vaccination.

[Rivka Leah]

I personally know of particular instances where people were allergic to the components of the vaccine itself and the parents prefered to pass on the vaccine rather than take the risk of a reaction.

[Tsvi Rogin]

Not so longer ago, when I was growing up in the 1950's, measles was not considered a big deal disease. Our parents davka sent us over to a house where a kid had measles so that we would get it young and develop natural antibodies. So too with mumps and german measles (rubella). These were considered normal childhood diseases. The only problem was for girls who didn't get them until post puberty, or rachmana litslan when pregnant. Notice that they no longer vaccinate for smallpox because the risk from the vaccine exceeds the risk of getting the diesease.

[Aryeh Shore]

If you have an allergy to eggs or gelatin, one has to evaluate the risks of influenza vaccines or yellow fever vaccines. One in a million people are going to have a bad reaction to a vaccine, especially the flu vaccines which are made up new each year. Personally, I would rather get the flu.
That is correct. The half million or so deaths from measles each year are in developing countries. Children in developed countries rarely die from measles. In developed countries less than 1 in 1000 children die. For most diseases which can be vaccinated, mortality rates are 1:10,000 or more while the vaccines cause severe side effects in one in a million. This is the decision made by every health service. For example, Japanese encephalitis causes death in 1:10,000 while the vaccine kills 1:100,000. (No idea why). Therefore most travel physicians say it is not worth the risk.
Bottom line: We live in a world of acceptable risk. The benefits of vaccination for your children far outway the risks. It is irresponsible for public health authorities to allow large groups of people not to be vaccinated as the results can be very high morbidity and mortality.
It is immoral not to be vaccinated against a vaccinated disease and travel to a place where people aren't vaccinated and infect them. In Judiasm we go by the experts. If you do not vaccinate your child against a disease which she subsequent gets because you don't like the government, this is not acceptable. In Israel, there are halachic hotlines from Nativ HaChesed or Yad Sarah which will be happy to address any problems one has.
It should be noted that recombinant vaccines like hepatitis are extremely safe as they have no allergens. Live vaccines are considered potentially dangerous and the WHO policy is to eliminate live vaccines where ever possible. For example, the live polio vaccine is no longer given in the US (mortality rate of 1 in 2.5 million).
They no longer vaccinate for smallpox because the disease has been eliminated. Measles was almost eliminated but the Moslems felt it was a plot by the CIA to sterilize them so the program collapsed. (As odd as the Jews are, the non-Jews will always come up with something weirder.)

[Aryeh Shore]

The idea that circumcision was somehow a hygienic proceedure was wide spread in the US but not in Europe or Asia. It does not appear to be based on any scientific evidence. The tendency today is not to do proceedures on a patient which they do not necessarily need and may not appreciate when they reach the age of consent. However, there is good evidence epidemological evidence that circumcism does protect against aids.
Rubella vaccination is a special case since it has no benefit to the recipient. It just protects unborn fetuses which one may or may not ever come in contact with.
As for what vaccinations are important for public health, again we have to rely on expert opinion. No scientist will say that they don't make mistakes but the chances with recombinant vaccines are a lot less than previously and by the next generation, all vaccines will be recombinant DNA.
The flu vaccine just benefits you as there is no way of stopping the next wave of preventing a population from being exposed to the flu. (The flu virus mutates sufficiently ever year to make last years vaccination less potent.) However, Israel is now recommending it for the entire pre-school population. Up to a few years ago, the injections against the flu were not a vaccine but gamma globulin which entailed a risk. In the last decade, real vaccines have become available.
It is difficult for the public, even those with some science education, to understand from the popular press (Tomatos are good for you; tomatos are bad for you) because this information is based on observations which change from population to population. It make it hard to understand scientific facts like DNA determination of paternity.

[Aryeh Shore]

Aids and circumcision is a good example of population studies. Tribes which practice circumcision in Uganda had significanlty less aids than uncut tribes. However, in Kenya, the circumcision is performed so unhygiencially that many children become infected by AIDS from the proceedure giving circumcized males more AIDS than uncircumcized males.
Now we are coming up a new ethical dilemma, vaccination against cervical cancer. This will only benefit persons who insist on having a large number of sexual partners. To what extent do you vaccinate an entire population against a disease which most don't need but will not be effective if you try to only reach the target group.

[Rivka Leah]

Certainly that's the case if you are allergic to eggs/gelatin, but who's to say that those are the only allergies possible?

Who is the one defining acceptable risk? Are you? who's determining that? I think that the parents have to define acceptable risk for their own children. It may be that for many people the benefits of the vaccines outweigh the risks for those people, but that may NOT be the case for other people who are allergic to other components in the vaccines (not eggs or gelatin). You can't say that vaccines like hepatitis do not have any allergens. Where is the research on that? where is the list of ingredients?

Aryeh Shore said:

If you have an allergy to eggs or gelatin, one has to evaluate the risks of influenza vaccines or yellow fever vaccines. ... For most diseases which can be vaccinated, mortality rates are 1:10,000 or more while the vaccines cause severe side effects in one in a million. Bottom line: ... acceptable risk. The benefits of vaccination for your children far outway the risks. It is irresponsible for public health authorities to allow large groups of people not to be vaccinated as the results can be very high morbidity and mortality.
It is immoral not to be vaccinated against a vaccinated disease and travel to a place where people aren't vaccinated and infect them. In Judiasm we go by the experts. If you do not vaccinate your child against a disease which she subsequent gets because you don't like the government, this is not acceptable. It should be noted that recombinant vaccines like hepatitis are extremely safe as they have no allergens.

[Rivka Leah]

Gavriel Silverstein said:

B"H,

I'm not sure the Halachic position on this but my immediate thought from Torah is that not being vaccinated (at least if death or disfigurement, crippling, etc. can result from catching the disease with any frequency) is that a) we have an obligation to take care of ourselves and our bodies, which are on loan from HaShem and b) that we are not to stand idly by our brothers' blood. I think both generally tend to argue in favor of vaccination, provided vaccination is safe.

.

"We have an obligation to take care of ourselves and our bodies." This may or may not then require vaccines. Would you rather have a child who's vaccinated? or a child that is mentally ill due to the components in the vaccine that s/he was allergic to? Maybe the obligation is to NOT vaccinate and take smarter measures and keep said children away from outbreaks and not travel to foreign countries - a small price to pay for a healthy child.

[Aryeh Shore]

Rivka Leah said:

Gavriel Silverstein said:

B"H,

I'm not sure the Halachic position on this but my immediate thought from Torah is that not being vaccinated (at least if death or disfigurement, crippling, etc. can result from catching the disease with any frequency) is that a) we have an obligation to take care of ourselves and our bodies, which are on loan from HaShem and b) that we are not to stand idly by our brothers' blood. I think both generally tend to argue in favor of vaccination, provided vaccination is safe.

.

"We have an obligation to take care of ourselves and our bodies." This may or may not then require vaccines. Would you rather have a child who's vaccinated? or a child that is mentally ill due to the components in the vaccine that s/he was allergic to? Maybe the obligation is to NOT vaccinate and take smarter measures and keep said children away from outbreaks and not travel to foreign countries - a small price to pay for a healthy child.

And don't let the child cross streets, fly on airplanes or for that matter go to school where they will be exposed to diseases. After all look at all those people who died from liver cancer because they went to a Cheredi kindergarten in Israel (one of my friends died at age 45 recently because of this. The new vaccine against hepatitis has been a great success and this problem has been eliminated.)
The answer of course is that the risk is of the vaccine of damaging the child is so tiny compared to the sure risk of damage and death from the disease. The nagging question is why is autism rising in the US. No one has an answer and no answer is scary. By the way we only have vaccines for fifty or so of the 150 viral diseases, not counting bioterrorism. However, this year it is evident that thousands of people are getting sick and two have died unnessarily because of the drop in vaccination rates and Israeli Cheredim are the main source.
Another scary thing is the rise in allergies and asthma. The best explaination is that the air and water are too clean. What do you suggest? However, it is correct that the chances of a well nourished child dying from a disease is much, much less than an starving child, i.e., it is unlikely that a major flu epidemic in the western world would result in the millions who died in 1919.
As why recombinants are safer, the allergies to egg are because live viruses need to be grown in eggs or special media. Recombinant DNA does not.

[Rivka Leah]

Gavriel Silverstein said:

B"H

The air is not too clean, nor the water, but B"H they tend both to be much more clean in developed countries then they were a generation ago! I believe that there may be some medical literature to confirm this but the increase in sin, generally stated, is the most directly responsible cause for the increase in autism and other birth defects in the US. In fact, and this is already a few years old, I believe that now over 30%(!!!) of children born in the US are considered to have some kind of birth defect or other. The increase in fornication and STDs among childbearing women (something well over 65 million "sexually active aged" US people has at least one STD now - that's SCARY) is directly linked to birth defects in the children that come out of their diseased wombs. The numbers are so staggering that I have not seen the CDC publish them now since 2006 because they have gotten so high (and were increasing at a pace that was nearly unbelievable). All the more reason to be a strict Torah Jew.

As for allergies, including asthma, I have no real direct knowledge on it but I believe that there have been a significant number of studies proving two culprits: 1) lack of breast feeding - using formula instead - which helps pass on antibodies, etc. to infants and 2) much greater use of prescribed medicines to infants and toddlers, which apparently (and logically) makes their immune systems dependent on the drugs, without developing their own natural defenses. Since medical science has little ability to understand the long-term holistic impact of any given drug on each and every component of a person's health, the internal systems that each drug impacts beyond it's intended direct reach are unpredictable and unknown at the time of the administration of the drug. The pharmaceutical industry has created one big human chemistry set out of drug-dependent generations that solve one disease only to have another pop up that was never an issue. Add a little more of this and take a little more of that away and they correct for that, only to enable another to germinate...

and I would agree with that. Except in the cases where the mother did breastfeed and never used formula and said child had very limited exposure to medication with the exception of vaccines. I will say that I do vaccinate and have vaccinated my children; however, having found that the components in the vaccine are highly reactive for one of my children I cannot in good conscience give him any more. In his particular instance I think the risks of the vaccines far outweigh the benefits. I have and will continue to vaccinate my other children who do not have his problems.

[Aryeh Shore]

Well. From 1920 to 1995 the number of people with STPs in the US population has pretty well stayed at 40%. In 1995, the CDC started an intensive program of gonnorhea elimination and it has been successful. The point is that there hasn't been much change in the sexual habits of the US population. There have been changes in the choice of recreational drugs and unsanitized needles are a problem.
Exposing children to pollutants at a early age seems to protect against allergies. This comes from studies of families with two or more pets or farm kids who have less allergies. Many diseases are far more devastating to older children and adults than very young children. The classic example is polio in the mid-century where middle class kids got serious polio while the poor kids who were exposed to lots of garbage early on did not.
The question remains if the air is cleaner (and it is) and the water is cleaner, why are some diseases like allergies increasing. Overall health statistics are much better today than in the previous generation. The autism increase is in the eyes of the beholder. It is a rather recent classification and a lot of people prefer to call their kids autistic rather than something else.