Most of the parents I know who make the decision to question, delay or refuse vaccinations for their children do so for many reasons, most notably this one:
They love their kids.
It may be a misinformed love, but it is a fierce and protective love nonetheless. The wind can blow hard in America, and too often, the bough breaks, cradles fall, and our children are born into a culture that seems to care so little for their well-being and health.
Environmental toxins and corporate greed. Supermarket shelves full of unpronounceable ingredients more suited for laboratory than garden. A junk Hollywood that promotes the worst of human nature.
Vaccines then come to represent just one more long needle to doubt and suspect. Deciding to delay or refuse vaccinations is another way to pull up the drawbridge, keeping a chaotic world out.
Yes, of course, an unvaccinated population also can lead to an even sicker world. An immunized society is its own form of drawbridge, keeping healthy kids in and so many debilitating diseases out. (My children have had all their shots, which I know you're wondering.)
Since the measles outbreak at Disneyland, we have re-entered an old national debate on individual freedom versus the common good. In this debate, it's easy to cast anti-vaccine parents as villains.
It's also unfair.
These aren't lazy parents. Often, they are engaged and vigilant moms and dads who refuse to treat parenting as an act of whimsy. Like those who arm themselves with handguns, these parents arm themselves with late-night Internet reading and 1,000 questions for the pediatrician.
Do you know what thimerosol is? Know the ins and outs of organic food, breastfeeding and Bisphenol A? They do. Spent countless hours scouring the Internet for explanations why rates of autism are sky-high? They have.
So even if their skepticism about immunization science poses a problem for the rest of us, they are acting out of a very praiseworthy place -- a sincere concern for their children and a reluctance to participate in a whatever-you-say herd mentality.
And what of parents who habitually text and drive, thus endangering everybody on the road around them while teaching their backseat kids a habit no less deadly than drinking and driving?
Or the dad who tells bitter jokes at the dinner table, feeding his kids a steady diet of racism, homophobia and hatred? Or the mom who demeans and bullies?
Their kids walk into the public square and playgrounds carrying their own strains of an illness that is transmitted and contagious; while it may be less quantifiable than a measles outbreak, there are times when it can be just as deadly.
What is ignorance if not a sickness? What is hatred if not a disease?
We are not immune from one another.
Let's not forget this: Encouraging such vaccine skepticism is a larger American landscape of distrust.
Red-faced media personalities yell down any viewpoints different from theirs. Politicians deny the science of climate change, which makes it easier to deny the science of everything else, including vaccinations. The Internet makes everyone a doctor, able to Google-search until any diagnosis is dispelled and refuted a thousand times.
I trust my pediatrician -- and should, because she's an expert -- yet such trust is hard to come by. In our flat society, we don't allow anyone to hold our respect or faith for too long. We're suspicious, always Sherlock before the old institutions that used to hold our trust.
It's high time we reviewed and renewed a list of acts of common good participation -- the things we remain obedient to for the health of America.
Vaccines belong on that list. So do critical, loving parents.
Contact David Cook at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter at DavidCookTFP.