Vaccines and Autism: The Debate Continues

Actress Amanda Peet fanned the flames when she told Cookie magazine recently that she feels that parents who don't vaccinate their kids "are parasites." And some parents in New Jersey are up in arms over legislation that requires all kids entering preschool or day care in September to get the flu shot.

While I see the benefit to protecting kids from infectious diseases, and I really see the benefit of reducing the number of sick days taken and the amount of school missed because kids keep getting sick, I have a big problem with making this particular immunization manditory. Here's why:

It's not the "Big Brother" aspect of it, per se, or the fact that the influenza vaccine isn't really that effective (it works on less than 15 percent of the people who exhbit flu-like symptoms). It's the fact that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the flu shot is one of the few vaccines that still contain thimerosal, a preservative made up of approximately 49-percent ethyl mercury that has been linked anecdotally to autism. ... [More]

Read the rest of the article at Work It, Mom! and weigh in at the end of the piece. Do you vaccinate your kids? Why or why not?