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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JUNE 5, 2018
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND
Editor
Founded in 1873
JEREMY FELDMAN
Circulation Manager
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Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
Avoiding childhood immunization
carries a risk — for every one of us
P
ublic health is one of America’s
great accomplishments. It is
difficult in 2018 to imagine a
time when cities and towns commonly
had open sewers. Or a time when
diseases such as whooping cough,
measles, tuberculosis, influenza and
polio cut broad swaths through the U.S.
population.
These days one seldom hears the
word “sanitarian.” Historically, these
were the people who made great strides
in cleaning up our cities and towns.
Americans broadly think little of
public health these days. If anything,
we demean public health through the
budget process.
Too many Americans have also for-
gotten the effects of childhood vacci-
nations — another of public health’s
great accomplishments. Paris Achen of
our statehouse bureau recently reported
that the percent of Oregon parents
declining vaccination for their chil-
dren has ticked upward. This is in the
face of the 2013 Oregon Legislature,
which made the process of opting out
of childhood vaccination more difficult.
The new law requires an education pro-
cess prior to opting out.
But, as Achen reported, “…(E)duca-
tion efforts face a daunting popular
culture belief that immunizations can
cause autism and other problems.” A
1998 article in the British medical jour-
nal The Lancet became the touchstone
for those with fear of childhood vacci-
nations. It asserted that vaccination was
linked to an incidence of autism.
Though that research was debunked
“The scientific
philosophy of
immunizing most of
the population is to
keep the incidence of
disease at a minimum.
That is because there
always are people
in the population
with poor immune
systems to fight off
bacteria and viruses that
cause communicable
diseases.”
12 years later by considerable peer
review, the power of social media
keeps the bogus theory alive.
Some parents also maintain an illu-
sion that their children have “good
immunity” and thus do not need pro-
tection from disease. In fact children,
pregnant women and older adults have
less robust immune response to any
infectious agent.
With more unvaccinated children
and adults in the population, there have
been outbreaks of measles and even
whooping cough. Achen noted that,
“More than a dozen students in Lane
County, including two at the University
of Oregon in Eugene, contracted
whooping cough earlier this spring.
In December, about a dozen cases of
the disease were reported at schools in
Clark County, Washington.”
The Center for Disease Control
reports that, “2012 was the record year
with more the 48,000 cases of whoop-
ing cough, the most cases that CDC has
seen in the past 60 years. Prior to vac-
cinations the US had 200,000 cases per
year.”
The CDC notes that most of the
deaths each year are in babies younger
than 3 months of age. Even healthy
babies can be very ill because of an
immature immune system that is still
developing. It is important that preg-
nant women get the whooping cough
vaccine during each pregnancy, so
that the mother transfers the greatest
amount of protective antibodies to her
child.
It is important to note that babies
with whooping cough don’t cough at
all, the CDC said. Instead, it causes
them to stop breathing and turn blue.
Other complications include violent,
uncontrolled shaking, life-threatening
pauses in breathing, and brain disease.
It is useful to remember the past.
For instance, it is common in pioneer
cemeteries to see a row of headstones
marking children’s deaths in one win-
ter from chicken pox and whooping
cough.
The scientific philosophy of immu-
nizing most of the population is to keep
the incidence of disease at a minimum.
That is because there always are peo-
ple in the population with poor immune
systems to fight off bacteria and viruses
E.J. Harris/East Oregonian
Registered nurse Eryn Griffin fills a sy-
ringe while preparing a dose of the Menac-
tra vaccine at the Umatilla County Health
Department offices in Hermiston. Menac-
tra prevents some forms of meningitis.
that cause communicable diseases.
Those include babies, children, preg-
nant women and older adults, as well
as people with chronic diseases and
cancer. Health care workers are immu-
nized to help ensure that they do not
pass communicable diseases to patients
who are often in compromised health
status.
Thus vaccines were developed to
save lives. We are fools to forget that.
Trump immigration policy veers from abhorrent to evil
W
e as a nation have crossed so
many ugly lines recently, yet one
new policy of President Donald
Trump’s particularly haunts me. I’m speak-
ing of the administration’s tactic of seizing
children from desperate refugees at the
border.
“I was given only five minutes to say
goodbye,” a Salvadoran woman wrote in a
declaration in an American
Civil Liberties Union law-
suit against the government,
after her 4- and 10-year-old
sons were taken from her.
“My babies started crying
when they found out we
NICHOLAS were going to be separated.”
KRISTOF
“In tears myself, I asked
my boys to be brave, and
I promised we would be together soon. I
begged the woman who took my children
to keep them together so they could at least
have each other.”
This mother, who for her protection is
identified only by her initials, J.I.L., said that
while in El Salvador she was severely beaten
in front of her family by a gang, and she
then fled the country to save the lives of her
children.
Who among us would not do the same?
J.I.L. noted that she had heard that her
children might have been separated and sent
to two different foster homes, and added: “I
am scared for my little boys.”
Is this really who we are? As a parent, as
the son of a refugee myself, I find that in this
case Trump’s policy has veered from merely
abhorrent to truly evil.
Family separations arise in part because
of the new Trump administration policy,
announced last month, of “zero tolerance”
for people who cross the border illegally.
That means that parents are jailed (which
happened rarely before), and their kids are
taken away from them.
“That’s no different than what we do
every day in every part of the United States
when an adult of a family commits a crime,”
Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen
Nielsen told NPR this month. “If you as a
parent break into a house, you will be incar-
cerated by police and thereby separated from
your family.”
Yet Mirian, a Honduran woman who
arrived in the U.S., broke no law. She simply
followed the established procedure by pre-
senting herself at an official border crossing
point and requesting asylum because her life
was in danger in Honduras — nevertheless,
her 18-month-old was taken from her.
“The immigration officers made me walk
out with my son to a government vehicle and
place my son in a car seat in the vehicle,”
Mirian said in a declaration accompanying
the ACLU suit. “My son was crying as I put
him in the seat. I did not even have a chance
to comfort my son, because the officers
slammed the door shut as soon as he was in
his seat.”
Likewise, Ms. G, a Mexican in the ACLU
suit, went to an official border crossing point
and requested asylum with her 4-year-old son
and blind 6-year-old daughter. None of them
had broken U.S. law, yet the children were
taken from their mother.
“I have not seen my children for one and a
half months,” Ms. G wrote in her declaration.
“I worry about them constantly and don’t
know when I will see them.”
Granted, this does not happen to all who
present themselves at the border and do not
cross illegally; it seems arbitrary. But even
for those parents who commit a misdemeanor
by illegally entering the U.S. — because they
want to protect their children from Central
American gangs — the U.S. response seems
to be in effect to kidnap youngsters.
If you or I commit a misdemeanor, we
might lose our kids for a few days while
we’re in jail, and then we’d get them back.
But border-crossers serve a few days in jail
for illegal entry — and after emerging from
criminal custody, they still don’t get their
kids back soon, said Lee Gelernt, an ACLU
lawyer. In one case, he said, it has been
eight months and the child still has not been
returned.
It’s true that immigration policy is a
nightmare, we can’t take everyone and
almost no one advocates open borders. Some
immigrants bring small children with them
and claim to be the parent in hopes that this
will spare them from detention.
Yet none of that should be an excuse for
brutalizing children by ripping them away
from their parents. I was at times ferociously
critical of President Barack Obama’s
handling of Central American refugees, but
past administrations managed these difficult
trade-offs without gratuitously embracing
cruelty. One fruitful step has been to work
with countries to curb gang violence that
forces people to flee.
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly
hails family separation as a “tough deterrent”
and shrugs that “the children will be taken
care of — put into foster care or whatever.”
So what’s next, Mr. President? Minefields
at the border would be an even more
effective deterrent. Or East German-style
marksmen in watch towers to shoot those
who cross?
We as a nation should protect our borders.
We must even more assiduously protect our
soul.
Nicholas Kristof is a syndicated columnist
for the New York Times News Service.