You, madam, have my utmost admiration and respect. You are to be commended for your “naïveté” regarding the increasing erosion of freedoms in western societies. I too, hope you’re wrong, but I harbour the same concerns.

You have earned my admiration with your clear critical thinking and cogent argument, not to mention your sense of parental responsibility and results as a home educator.

I strongly agree with all your points and position. Your arguments outshine all the other posters. The “science” concerning vaccinations is not settled. As long as agencies with commercial or political interests are providing the studies and reports, the truth will not emerge (bearing in mind that all truth is transitory, relative and subject to perspective, parameters and knowledge base. There is no absolute truth.). More people like yourself are needed to rise above the sheeple and challenge the herd mentality by speaking out.

Keep up the good work in raising your children to critically think, and search out truth to the best of their ability. Future society will be the better for it. I wish I had the privilege of knowing you personally.

Best wishes to you and your family.

…..Vern

I don’t think that you do agree, if you understand my point. I put vaccines in with the previous grouping (akin to negligence)

How restricted do my freedoms have to be for me to ‘have a clue’? I don’t have to live in Russia for me to have an understanding of what it is like and know that I’d prefer not to live like that.

What does science have to do with a call for compulsory vaccinations? That’s what I’ve been wondering throughout this whole thread. It’s not about the vaccinations, it’s about freedom of choice and parents’ rights.

Just for clarification, I was a chemist in my ‘pre-mommy’ days. I have a chemistry degree, since you seem to think I have a ‘basic lack of science education’. Funny. My big dream back in my college days was to cure cancer. My big dream now is to raise my children to think for themselves and not accept information as fact just because some scientist said it or some politician said it or because I said it. Finding people who think for themselves and can reason together is a rare commodity.

Actually, I’d take your challenge to take those tests in a New York minute! Politics, government and current events are all passions/hobbies/interests of mine. I think I’d do pretty well. My 19 year old clepped American Government and I homeschooled her so I must have done SOMETHING right! ;-)’

And, I don’t think assessing my child’s risk is ‘inherently flawed’ or ‘selfishly biased’. You can’t know my child’s risk factors so you can make that judgment.

To say that the risk for MY CHILD is ‘orders of magnitude less than the risk of being unvaccinated’ is ‘inherently flawed and selifshly biased’, in my opinion, because you don’t know my child’s risk factors!

Also, how much more ‘small worlded’ can you be to say that my one non-vaccinated child poses a risk to the larger population as a whole? What if my child never acquired a dread disease to spread? Or what if everyone else is vaccinated? Then there is no risk to them. You can’t assume my non-vaccinated child, simply by the fact he’s non-vaccinated, is a risk to anyone.