Only a handful of candidates for President in 2016 have declared their intention to run, but the recent measles outbreak has already caused a stir amongst the probable candidates.
Two weeks ago, a measles outbreak started to spread from Disneyland in California and has quickly reached other parts of the country, including Arizona, where up to 1,000 people may have been infected. In recent history, the measles has been essentially eradicated and as a result, most doctors and medical facilities are not prepared to deal with a serious outbreak. This means the new outbreak should be serious cause for alarm.
Many have placed the blame for the recent outbreak on the recent spike of the number of parents who are choosing to not vaccinate their children. As a result, once one person becomes infected, they have a far higher chance of passing the virus to other people who haven't been vaccinated. In order to prevent the spread from a single infected person to other people who can't be vaccinated, such as young infants, “90 percent to 95 percent of people must be vaccinated in order to protect the entire population, or achieve what is called herd immunity.”
The blame placed on parents who aren’t vaccinating their children has spawned a new debate over whether the government should be able to force parents to vaccinate their children. Over the past several years, there has been discussion that vaccines could lead to mental illnesses, which lead parents to shy away from vaccinations, but the single study linking vaccines to autism has been thoroughly debunked time and time again. There is absolutely no evidence linking vaccines to autism, but the debate has now moved beyond the potential to cause autism.
On Monday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said, “Parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well.” Christie is the same Governor who quarantined a nurse returning from Africa over the fear that she might have Ebola, which she of course did not.
As EJ Montini said in the Arizona Republic on Tuesday, “The best way to suppress an outbreak of any childhood disease with a suitable vaccine, like measles, is to deny access to public schools for children who are not vaccinated.” When parents send their children to public schools, they should be required to vaccinate their children to prevent the rapid spread of such dangerous diseases.
Sadly the public health dangers associated with not getting vaccinations isn’t the worst part of the outbreak. On Monday, the Huffington Post published an article titled “Hillary Rodham Clinton Will Be a President Who Believes in Science.” In the run up to the 2016 elections, Hillary Clinton has been labeled as a pro-science candidate.
It is unfathomable to think that presidential candidates might actually debate the existent of science, as if it were opinion. Our society is driven by scientific fact and yet the country, or at least the country’s politicians, can’t even agree on the most significant achievements of the past century.
So far the debate over the existence of science has been limited to climate change and now vaccinations, but there's no saying how far certain people could take the debate. Candidates shouldn't have to be labeled as pro-fact or anti-fact. Facts are just that: facts that everyone has agreed on, not something to be debated by politicians who, as many in the Republican Party often like to remind us, are not scientists.
A measles outbreak could be very dangerous, but it doesn't compare to the potential dangers associated with an entire political party becoming anti-science. If something this dramatic were to happen, all of the significant progress that has been made to eradicate deadly diseases could be lost.
Reach the columnist at zjosephs@asu.edu or follow @zachjosephson on Twitter.
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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