Mississippi has long had high childhood immunization rates, but a federal judge has ordered the state to allow parents to opt out on religious grounds.

Mississippi has long had high childhood immunization rates, but a federal judge has ordered the state to allow parents to opt out on religious grounds.

For more than 40 years, Mississippi had one of the strictest school vaccination requirements in the nation, and its high childhood immunization rates have been a source of pride. But in July, the state began excusing children from vaccination if their parents cited religious objections, after a federal judge sided with a “medical freedom” group.

Today, 2,100 Mississippi schoolchildren are officially exempt from vaccination on religious grounds. Five hundred more are exempt because their health precludes vaccination. Dr. Daniel P. Edney, the state health officer, warns that if the total number of exemptions climbs above 3,000, Mississippi will once again face the risk of deadly diseases that are now just a memory.

“For the last 40 years, our main goal has been to protect those children at highest risk of measles, mumps, rubella, polio,” Dr. Edney said in an interview, “and that’s those children that have chronic illnesses that make them more vulnerable.” He called the ruling “a very bitter pill for me to swallow.”

Mississippi is not an isolated case. Buoyed by their success at overturning coronavirus mandates, medical and religious freedom groups are taking aim at a new target: childhood school vaccine mandates, long considered the foundation of the nation’s defense against infectious disease.

  • @time_lord
    0•1 year ago

    Religion says not to alter or mutilate your body. That’s why very religious people might skip getting earrings or tattoos too.

    Edit: A vaccine is, by definition, artificially altering your immune system response.

    • uphillbothways
      2•1 year ago

      A vaccine isn’t going to alter your immune system response anymore than digging in the garden might. Honestly, digging in the garden or eating some fresh fruit/vegetables/cheese will probably expose you to more foreign genetic material, virii and microbes than a vaccine ever would, thereby altering your immune response to a much greater degree. It’s ignorant made up reasoning loosely based on ignorant made up useless meandering out dated philosophies.

      The immune system is a learned response system. It’s trained by exposure. That’s the way it works. The specific way it is introduced to foreign material doesn’t matter, except that certain ways are more likely to allow an infection to take hold.

      You know what can really alter and possibly mutilate a body? A serious infection.

      Edit to add:
      Going to the gym or just exercising alters the body by making it stronger, adding muscle, but have never heard a religious person say that is taboo because that would be ridiculous. Vaccines make your immune system stronger in much the same fashion, through use and training. There’s absolutely no good argument against them.