Amy Parker grew up with crunchy-granola hippie parents who raised her on an "incredibly healthy" lifestyle. She ate mostly organic, homegrown vegetables (with organic, local meat once a week), had juice and raw milk instead of soda, avoided processed sugars, exercised regularly, and so on. "And yet I was sick all the time," she writes at Slate. The reason: She wasn't vaccinated. She contracted measles, mumps, whooping cough, and more on a frighteningly regular basis.
"So the anti-vaccine advocates’ fears of having the 'natural immunity sterilized out of us' just doesn’t cut it for me," she writes. For her, natural immunity didn't work. As for fears of complications from vaccines, "I know far more people who have experienced complications from preventable childhood illnesses than I have ever met with complications from vaccines." Yes, that's anecdotal. But if evidence-based science hasn't convinced anti-vaxxers, then anecdotes are all we have left. Parker's kids have been vaccinated. "They are both healthier than I have ever been." Check out her full column. (More vaccine stories.)
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