The guy in the iron lung

In America, we live in a pax romana with regards to disease. It might not seem that way sometimes, what with our rising rates of autism, cancer, kids dying from peanut allergies, and so on. But as recently as 50 years ago, there were no preventative measures for mumps, which can make men sterile. Or rubella, which can cause serious birth defects if contracted by a pregnant woman in her first trimester. Measles killed hundreds of people a year, and hospitalized 20 percent of those who caught it — most of them children. Those who grew up in the 1950s remember going to the county fair and gawking at “the guy in the iron lung” paralyzed from polio. The specter of disease was real and present.

Today, we have what’s known as “herd immunity.” That is, enough people have been vaccinated that they protect the unvaccinated, or those whose vaccinations fail. The chances of an American getting these formerly common childhood illnesses are very slim. The chances of dying from them are even slimmer. Not because the diseases aren’t serious, but because they aren’t nearly as prevalent.

In fact, herd immunity is actually why some parents don’t vaccinate. “When you think of it that way, it’s hard to want to get vaccinated when you hear anecdotally about things going wrong from vaccines,” says Dr. Justin Davis, a San Francisco physician.

Time and time again, you get the message: rewards come to those who think out of the box

Davis also points out an irony he perceives among his patients. Many of them consider themselves “global participants” — they bike, recycle, and generally take proactive measures to protect the environment. But when it comes to vaccines and immunity, these parents utilize resources more selfishly. He is somewhat sanguine about this. “I take longer showers than I should, and I drive a car and take airplanes. Who am I to say how people of privilege should choose to use the resources available to them?” Davis says. Of course, there’s an inherent problem with that position: “If everybody were to [opt out of vaccinations],” he admits, “there would be huge ramifications.”

One of the tenets of a Waldorf education is to teach self-reliance, independence, and critical thinking skills. “They’re saying, be educated before you just go along with the herd,” says one parent. Clearly, this same type of impulse also leads some parents to question the status quo with regards to vaccines.

“People on the pro-vaccinations side think that people who don’t vaccinate, or vaccinate selectively, are crazy and uninformed,” says John, the parent whose kids got chicken pox from the lollipop. “I think that the people who make these decisions are actually the most well-informed parents, and they’re generally working with their healthcare providers to make these decisions.”

Questioning authority is an impulse that can often serve you well. And that truth is held in particularly high regard in the Bay Area. After all, this is the land where Apple computer was born and “Think Different” became a mantra. Where the expression “disruption” became the tech-term-du-jour to describe companies that were either breaking or skirting the law. Where Bradley Manning was elected Grand Marshal of the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade. Time and time again, you get the message: rewards come to those who think out of the box.

But when well-educated, high-performing people choose to engage in risky, self-serving medical behavior, it also begs the question: what made them feel so alienated from mainstream Western medicine to begin with?

The answer, according to vaccine advocate Dr. Paul Offit, largely comes down to how medical practitioners are perceived. In his takedown of alternative medicine, Do You Believe In Magic, he writes:

“Practitioners of modern medicine can appear callous and insensitive. Patients feel more like a number than a person. That’s where alternative healers come in: they provide individual care, because they care … Where modern medicine is spiritless and technological … alternative medicine is spiritual and meaningful.”

It is not surprising that a class of person deeply involved in searching for and expressing their own individual uniqueness — and that of their children — would be turned off by a cookie-cutter approach to health. And it’s not surprising that in their disaffection, they’d turn away and seek, as one parent put it, “other modalities.”

And that’s when the doubts begin to creep in.