Quantcast
Published On: Wed, Apr 2nd, 2014

Majority of adults support mandatory vaccinations for school-aged children, 33% of parents with young children believe ‘vaccinations can cause autism’

PRESS RELEASE

According to a survey released today by the National Consumers League (NCL), the nation’s pioneering consumer organization, adult Americans lack sufficient information about the safety of vaccines and the risks of failing to vaccinate for highly contagious diseases. Despite scientific studies clarifying that vaccines are not linked to autism in children, 33 percent of parents of children under the age of 18 and 29 percent of all adults continue to believe “vaccinations can cause autism.” According to public health experts, the failure to vaccinate children has recently led to outbreaks of highly contagious, preventable, and sometimes deadly diseases, like whooping cough.

Image/CDC

Image/CDC

NCL’s survey of 1,756 U.S. adults, conducted online by Harris Poll in August and September, also revealed that 50 percent of parents are aware of the study that linked autism to childhood vaccinations, but only half of these parents are aware that the study has since been discredited and retracted.

“The anti-vaccination movement that has gained so much momentum in recent years is doing real, measurable damage to the health of our communities,” said Sally Greenberg, Executive Director of NCL. “Vaccinations for diseases that had been wiped out until recently are being rejected by a small but significant number of parents, causing some of these virulent diseases to emerge once again. Those who choose not to vaccinate put the rest of us at risk.”

Examples of the re-emergence of diseases caused by failure to vaccinate include the following, according to a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report:

  • An outbreak of mumps on the Ohio State University campus infected 69 individuals;
  • 27 people were infected with mumps after an outbreak at Fordham University; and
  • New York City recently warned of a measles outbreak that infected16 individuals. According to the CDC report, “The increase in measles cases in the United States in 2013 serves as a reminder that imported measles cases can result in large outbreaks, particularly if introduced into areas with pockets of unvaccinated persons. During 2013, nearly two-thirds of the cases came from three outbreaks. Transmission occurred after introduction of measles into communities with pockets of persons unvaccinated because of philosophical or religious beliefs.”

According to NCL’s survey, while most Americans understand the benefits of vaccination, many still see it as an issue of individual choice. More than 4 in 5 (82 percent) adults agree that vaccinations help reduce health care costs, and 72 percent are concerned about the drop in vaccination rates in the United States. However, 60 percent say they respect the decision of parents when choosing whether or not to vaccinate their children.

Survey findings

Only two in 5 (39 percent) of parents surveyed describe themselves as being extremely or very knowledgeable about how vaccines work. But, among those, 35 percent also believe that vaccinations can cause autism.

Who parents trust for information about vaccines:

81% health care providers
37% Web-based sources
32% the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
22% family
10% child’s school

Nearly a quarter of parents (23%) trust physicians on TV like Dr. Oz and Dr. Gupta to relay medical information to the public, 11 percent trust morning shows like the ‘Today Show,’ and 7% trust talk show hosts to relay medical information.

Nearly two in five adults (37 percent) who are somewhat or not at all knowledgeable about how vaccines work say they trust the doctors on TV to relay medical information to the public. Less than a third (29%) of adults who are extremely or very knowledgeable feel the same.

On Mandatory Vaccination Policies

  • A majority of adults (87%) and Parents (81%) support mandatory vaccinations for school-aged children.
  • 76% of parents say that they think parents or guardians should have the final say about whether or not children should be vaccinated (vs. 64% of all adults).

For more infectious disease news and information, visit and “like” the Infectious Disease News Facebook page and the Outbreak News This Week Radio Show page.

 

unnamedpassport1

On the DISPATCH: Headlines  Local  Opinion

Subscribe to Weekly Newsletter

* indicates required
/ ( mm / dd ) [ALL INFO CONFIDENTIAL]

About the Author

- The generic Dispatch designation, used primarily for press releases or syndicated content, but may be used for guest author requesting a generic nomenclature

Displaying 4 Comments
Have Your Say
  1. DM says:

    Ok…so why would you let other people control what you put in your, or worse, your children’s body? I NEVER want ANYONE telling me what chemicals I need in my body. Are people STUPID??? You wanna give total control of your whole reality to people who don’t care about you? Let strangers inject anything they see fit into your kids??? REALLY??

  2. Dean says:

    I believe vaccines are dangerous. Just look at the list of things put into them. How can that possibly help protect. Are those toxic ingredients like mercury, aluminum, polysorbate-80, formaldehyde, wild viruses, and squalene to simply disappear without causing major grief to the body? And putting that stuff into infants and pregnant women is supposed to be safe? How come there has never been tests against unvaccinated kids to see which has a healthier first decade of life? Recent tests using primates has found that those vaccinated do appear to become autistic.

  3. Rich says:

    Despite this article’s claims to the contrary, to date there has never been a single controlled study comparing Autism rates in the fully vaccinated vs. the fully unvaccinated. Keeping the truth? More like spewing industry-funded pseudoscientific rhetoric.

  4. Carol Walters says:

    We keep hearing about the “outbreaks” of these diseases in the news but what they are leaving out is whether or not those who now have the disease were vaccinated themselves. Another thing they leave out is the fact that those who have recently been vaccinated actually spread the disease. How nice to know this information after the fact wouldn’t you say?

Leave a comment

XHTML: You can use these html tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

like_us_on_facebook

 

The Global Dispatch Facebook page- click here

Movie News Facebook page - click here

Television News Facebook page - click here

Weird News Facebook page - click here 

DISPATCH RADIO

dispatch_radio

THE BRANDON JONES SHOW

brandon_jones_show-logo

Archives