A reader writes:
Regarding your debate on homeschooling, one of your readers states, "Instead of acting as if they are watching homeschoolers from behind glass or through a microscope, why don't writers try actually talking to us? We don't bite. Most of us have had our shots."
While I appreciate the desire to be represented fairly in the media, I take issue with the idea that "most of us have had our shots". Where I live in Washington State, we have one of the easiest methods to refuse basic childhood vaccinations and one of the highest rates of non-vaccination in the country. (Here [pdf] are the vaccines required for K-12 entrance.) Since those vaccines are required to enter the public school system, those who are not vaccinated are generally home-schooled.
I live north of Seattle in Snohomish Country, where we currently have an epidemic of whooping cough. The health department is handing out vaccines for free. (You can read more on the issue at their website.) Most years we might have 20 or so cases, but in the first two months of 2012 we're up to over 100. That puts children who are too young to receive the vaccine at risk, as well as individuals with compromised immune systems and adults whose own vaccinations have lapsed. So yeah, when I hear about home schoolers in my area, I wonder what the heck they're carrying.
Some facts to back this up:
Some public health officials are concerned that the growing popularity of home schooling has created gaps in the vaccination safety net, leading to outbreaks of rare childhood diseases. In August [2008], the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported measles cases had spiked; 131 cases were reported nationwide for the first seven months of the year, compared with an average of 63 cases per year since 2000. Of the infected, 91% were unvaccinated, most because of "philosophical or religious beliefs," the CDC said.
Home-schooled children accounted for 25 out of 30 cases in an outbreak of measles in suburban Chicago in May, according to the CDC. In Grant County in Washington, public health officials tied 11 of 19 measles cases to unvaccinated home-schooled children.
Lance Rodewald, director of the CDC's Immunization Services Division, says the measles outbreaks show a problem with state policies allowing home-schooled children to escape vaccines. "One of the contributors we are seeing has to do with exemption laws," he says. "Somebody who has taken an exemption from school laws, like a philosophical or religious exemption, is 35 times more likely to get measles … and 22 times more likely to get whooping cough."
The Dish 