Rantz: Foster kids better off away from anti-vaxxers

Taken from Tuesday’s edition of the Jason Rantz Show on KIRO Radio.

The topic of the safety of vaccinations has become a local and national topic.

According to The Seattle Times, in Washington state, there are dozens of foster care parents who say they’ll give up their licenses to care for foster kids over a state regulation that mandates these foster care kids get flu and whooping cough vaccines if they’re under the age of 2. We’re the only state in the country with a law like this on the books.

And, just a few weeks ago, we shared with you the story of local foster mother Jamie Smith. She refused to get flu shots for herself and her children despite the rule.

“To me, they’re more important – their safety – than trying to fight to keep this little guy,” Smith told KOMO TV.

Smith thinks the argument over whether to get her kids vaccinated is about safety, but not from what they would be vaccinated against.

“I’ve done a lot of research on it and I don’t like some of the side effects that it has,” Smith said.

As the Times points out, some foster parents said they object to the flu vaccine because they believe it is “experimental” and poses potential side effects.

Others said they simply don’t like being told to inoculate themselves and their biological kids.

“We will not get the flu shot. We choose not to,” said Glory Tichy, 35, a Tacoma mother of three biological kids and a 2-year-old foster daughter. “Right now, our license has been amended and we cannot take any children under 2. I’m desperately hoping and praying that it gets overturned or they think twice about it.”

“The flu vaccine seems experimental to me,” said Crystal Farnsworth Deline, 50, of Cle Elum. “It doesn’t feel like a safe vaccine.”

Her concerns are echoed by Ann Marie Henninger, 47, a registered nurse in Sequim, who has been a foster parent for seven years and is currently licensed for children from birth to age 6.

“The vaccine itself has risks and is no guarantee that one will not come down with the illness,” she wrote, adding: “This decision is not evidence-based and will result in the loss of countless foster families who will raise their age limit of dependent children accepted rather than submit to the government mandate that they vaccinate their families against their will and better judgment.”

Now, the worry is that the regulation will make worse a problem the state is currently facing: a shortage of foster homes.

In Yakima County, at least three dozen of some 490 licensed foster parents — about 7 percent — already have asked to have their licenses changed in order to avoid the flu shots, according to the Times.

I’d rather have the problem of a lack of foster care homes than put these kids in the hands of people who don’t understand vaccinations, especially because these kids lives can be on the line if they don’t get vaccinated.

We’re seeing an increase of measles, mumps, and whooping cough because parents are choosing not to vaccinate their kid. They heard some celebrity talk about why they’re not getting their children vaccinated.

There is no doubt whatsoever that vaccines are safe, no matter what fringe activists will tell you.

People keep mouthing off about how vaccines are tied to autism rates. That is a myth. But what about that 1998 study from Andrew Wakefield?

The study was retracted. Do you know why? It was a fraud. Wakefield lost his medical license. He falsified data, he put forward erroneous conclusions. The data that he did have was misreported.

As Vox.com points out, a British investigative journalist reports Brian Deer followed up with the families of each of the 12 kids in the study. He concluded, “No case was free of misreporting or alteration.”

You learn that the parents of many of the kids deny the conclusions in the study.

More from Vox:

Some of the kids who Wakefield suggested were diagnosed with autism actually weren’t; others who Wakefield suggested were “previously normal” actually had pre-existing developmental issues before getting their shots.

As the editor of The British Medical Journal points out, “Wakefield has been given ample opportunity either to replicate the paper’s findings, or to say he was mistaken. He has declined to do either.” In 2004, 10 of his coauthors on the original paper retracted it, but Wakefield didn’t join them, and he has since continued to push his views, including doing the rounds on the anti-vaxxer speakers’ circuit and publishing books.

On his own website, he portrays himself as an embattled hero: “In the pursuit of possible links between childhood vaccines, intestinal inflammation, and neurologic injury in children, Dr. Wakefield lost his job in the Department of Medicine at London’s Royal Free Hospital, his country, his career, and his medical license.” He even tried to sue the BMJ and Deer, suggesting they were going after him in some sort of vendetta. So far, these lawsuits have gone nowhere.

And some people think he’s a hero. He’s fighting big pharmaceutical companies who want to sell their vaccines, get kids sick, then sell treatment to the sick kids for the rest of their lives.

Follow the money.

OK, let’s follow the money. Again, according to Vox:

“Wakefield also had financial conflicts of interest. Among them, while he was discrediting the combination measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, and suggesting parents should give their children single shots over a longer period of time, he was conveniently filing patents for single-disease vaccines.

Brian Deer’s investigation revealed that, in June 1997, he had filed a patent for a supposedly “safer” single measles vaccine. Deer writes, “Although Wakefield denied any such plans, his proposed shot, and a network of companies intended to raise venture capital for purported inventions — including ‘a replacement for attenuated viral vaccines’, commercial testing kits and what he claimed to be a possible ‘complete cure’ for autism — were set out in confidential documents.”

Taken from Tuesday’s edition of the Jason Rantz Show on KIRO Radio.