Letters: Parents should control vaccines

While speaking to Fox News Channel host Greta Van Susteren after the recent Republican presidential debate, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) merely repeated the expressed fear of a woman who told her the human papillomavirus vaccine left her daughter mentally retarded. But like so many others in the liberal mainstream media, columnist Daniel Akst wasted no time in assailing Bachmann for saying "dumb things" to "parents who rely on these particular dumb things" where their children's health is concerned .

What is lost in the condescending remarks of Akst and others so like-minded is that Bachmann's account of the parent's concern was simply anecdotal in her amplification of the very legitimate issue regarding parental rights versus government dictum. And Akst's likening the HPV infection to something truly insidious and deadly such as smallpox fails to persuade.

Bachmann understands the real point here: the free and informed choices by parents who, rather than being forced to opt out, ought to be able to opt in to such programs, whether by government mandate or more preferably, by recommendation.

Jeffrey Converse, Locust Valley
 

Vaccination is a good idea, but the mandating of vaccination is like a disease. It can only be spread by consensual action by two parties, and is an intrusion on a person's liberty.

Keep the government out of our lives. It has too much control already.

Larry Cohen, Valley Stream