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In many ways, Ethan Lindenberger looks like most other teens. High school student from Norwalk, Ohio, he runs his school's debate club, is a member of his local church, and plans to begin his university studies in the fall. But unlike many of his peers, the 18-year-old has not received several vaccines considered standard – and, according to doctors and public health officials, of utmost importance – vaccinations childhood. In the coming months, he plans to look for these vaccines for the very first time.
Lindenberger's records, which he shares with Undark, show that he has not yet been vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella, chickenpox or even polio, a disease that can cause paralysis and sometimes death . He attributed this in part to the fact that his mother was influenced by dubious anti-vaccination information online, ranging from the theories that vaccinations can cause brain damage, to the work of the discredited physician Andrew Wakefield and his study, long denied , linking the MMR vaccine to autism. .
The Wakefield study and other information relating to false vaccination however remain actively peddled on social media, where her mother, Lindenberger, said: "She has somehow fallen into that room. echoed and received more and more misinformation. " His father, he says, espouses similar beliefs, but takes a more casual approach.
Ethan Lindenberger
Lindenberger's records show that he received two shots in 2002, although in an interview his mother, Jill Wheeler, said it was a mistake and insisted that his son did not had received only one vaccination for tetanus after cutting as a child. After vaccinating her first daughter and beginning to vaccinate her eldest son, Wheeler, who owns a children's theater company, said she learned she had the right not to participate. "If I have a choice, I want to know what my choices are and make the decision as an educated mother," she said. According to her arguments for and against vaccination, she chose not to continue with her other five children.
It was not a wise choice, according to most experts, who believe that curbing the spread of false information and getting infants and young children vaccinated on time offers the best chance of protection against disease. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sets this schedule for children every year, depending on when they are most at risk. And vaccines, of course, not only benefit individuals: they stop the spread of the disease from one person to another and help protect those who can not receive certain vaccines for medical reasons.
But in some states, as parents increasingly take advantage of non-medical exemptions to give up standard vaccines, more and more children are reaching their teens only to be discovered – by their peers, their teachers , and via Twitter, Facebook and other online platforms. … that their bodies are at the center of a fierce battle between science and pseudoscience. More and more unvaccinated quasi-adults are exploring the literature and asking questions on online forums to discover for themselves the truth about vaccines and the options available to them at home. approach to the age of consent.
"I am a very obedient child. I'm not really trying to go against my mother. Even though I'm 18, I do not pull this card. "
In spite of her mother's beliefs, Lindenberger – who was planning to vaccinate some of the vaccines – said that she had done her own research and, with the support of her science teacher, pastor and friends, made an appointment at his health department to start catching up. But with the measles epidemic spreading to unvaccinated children in the Pacific Northwest, younger teens facing similar situations to Lindenberger raise the question of whether they should also be allowed to give their consent.
According to Allison Winnike, President and CEO of The Immunization Partnership, a Texas-based non-profit organization dedicated to eradicating vaccine-preventable diseases through education and training. Community involvement, the best scenario is to try to reach a resolution among themselves when disagreements on childhood vaccines leave a young under-immunized.
"It's a bit like Plan A," she says. "But we must also think of a plan B."
At present, no federal law allows a minor to consent to vaccination. Instead, it is up to states, with different degrees of specificity, to determine whether children can make decisions about health care themselves. Last year, a 15-year-old Minnesota student – who, contacted by Undark, only asked to be identified as being "Danny" – turned to Reddit for advice, noting that He had spent four years trying to convince his anti-vaccine parent that vaccines are safe. "I did not succeed," he writes.
Minnesota, like many other states, allows minors to make certain choices related to pregnancy, badually transmitted infections, and the abuse of alcohol and drugs. The allowances are extended to minors separated from their parents or guardians, from those who are married or from those who have children. Apart from these circumstances, however, the only vaccine that a typical teenager like Danny could consent to is hepatitis B. This vaccine, which is also given for the first time before a newborn baby leaves the Hospital, protects against a virus that can cause liver swelling and complications that can lead to organic lesions and cancer.
In California, then-governor Jerry Brown enacted a similar law in 2011 allowing 12-year-olds to be vaccinated against hepatitis B, as well as the HPV vaccine, the leading cause uterine cervical cancer and others. In Alabama and Oregon, broader laws allow minors aged 14 and 15, respectively, to consent to their own health care.
But according to Winnike, regulations for vaccination are rare.
"Most states do not have specific laws governing immunization," she said, although steps have been taken to extend the rights of minors in preventive care, including contraception and vaccination.
In 2017, the Texas legislature introduced a bill that would have allowed minors aged 14 and over to consent to vaccines specifically for the prevention of cancer, which – as in California – would have included hepatitis B and HPV. In the same year, Minnesota introduced a single HPV-focused bill. Neither bill left the committee.
Jill Wheeler
Despite some parents' concern about the idea that a child consents to a medical procedure, Winnike points out that, as all vaccines recommended by the CDC are subject to rigorous standards, "they should generally be considered safe for the consent of a teenager ". As she points out, with Alabama, Illinois and many other states, teen parents have the right to make medical decisions about their children without further supervision.
For the moment, however, adolescents who still live at home and are not covered by a specific state law may have to continue to pressure their parents – or just wait. At the County Health Department of Lindenberger Hometown in Ohio, Christina Cherry, Director of Public Health Nursing, said all she could do was provide a teenager with the appropriate information to share. with his parent or guardian. "In addition," writes Cherry in an email, "we can encourage the child / youth to bring in the parent or legal guardian to meet with us or their primary care provider to discuss parents' concerns about of vaccination. "
No federal law allows a minor to consent to vaccination. Rather, it is up to states to determine whether children can make decisions about health themselves.
Such an approach seems to have worked, at least to a small extent, for Danny, who has just turned 16. In a phone call, the high school student said that his mother had finally allowed him to be vaccinated against polio and tetanus as a result of a conversation with his doctor. However, for any other vaccination, he says he will probably have to wait until he is 18 years old.
For this reason, Danny stated that he was in favor of lowering the age of consent to be vaccinated on his own, but added that this alone would not solve the problem. "Put an end to the spread of false information," he added, as well as many other factors, to take into account. Infants also need to be vaccinated, he said, and this remains, for the most part, entirely the parents' choice.
"The most difficult aspect to understand is that they want the best for me," said Danny about his parents. "And this decision, in my opinion, has not been properly documented or informed."
Lindenberger said it was not easy to tell her mother about her choice to be vaccinated, even though he thought it was the right thing to do. "I am a very obedient child," Lindenberger said. "I'm not really trying to go against my mother. Even though I'm 18, I do not pull this card. "
It helped a little, he says, that his father reacted less harshly. Despite being in the "same camp" as her mother, Lindenberger said, her father told her: "Hey, you're 18, you can do what you want and we can not really t & # To prevent it. "
Up to now, according to his vaccination records, Lindenberger has received a series of vaccines – for HPV, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, influenza and diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough ( DTaP) – and will return to the health department later this month for his second round. Cherry confirmed that a previously unvaccinated adult had to show up at least three times over a six-month period.
For her part, Lindenberger's mother said that her son's decision to be vaccinated was an insult to him. "I did not immunize him because I thought it was the best way to protect him and keep him safe," said Wheeler about his son, calling his decision "a slap" .
"It's like he spit on me," she continued. "You do not know anything, I do not trust you. You do not know what you're talking about. You made a bad decision and I will fix it. "
Ohio, like the vast majority of states, allows parents to exempt their children from vaccines that would otherwise be needed for admission to school for religious reasons. It is also part of a smaller group of states that allow exemptions for personal or philosophical reasons. Wheeler said that her exemptions were simply for personal reasons and that she did not generally receive much criticism.
"She even told me when I asked questions about the university," says Lindenberger, "that if you push hard enough, they will not require you to get vaccinated." Even for universities like Ohio State, which have seen hundreds of mumps cases. in 2014 – students can get an exemption only on "a good cause".
Non-medical exemptions have generally decreased across the country, but tens of thousands of people are still granted each year and some states, including Oregon, Idaho and North Dakota, see their numbers increase, exposing these areas to a risk of future epidemics.
"We're seeing more and more anti-vaccine parents coming together in different parts of the country," Winnike said. Although these parents can do a lot of damage, a larger group, she says, is made up of parents "reluctant to vaccinate". "Once you come to talk to them, hear some of their fears, and then explain to them the scientific benefits and benefits to health care, they are more willing to vaccinate their children."
Nevertheless, Wheeler remains firm in his dismissals, saying that many vaccines are useless, even dangerous. "Polio, if you're really doing polio research, has been almost completely eradicated, almost gone, there was almost no case of polio when they introduced the oral vaccine," she said. . "The oral vaccine started to give polio to people. And it went almost completely from eradication to the figures drawn, going up the sky, from the vaccination. "
Wheeler called his son's decision a slap. "It was like he spit on me saying," You do not know anything. "
However, like many anti-vaccine arguments, such a reflection – though rooted in a real concern for the health and safety of its children – is based on an erroneous distortion of history. The development of oral vaccine in the mid-twentieth century was in fact an indispensable complement to the injectable vaccine, making it possible to significantly reduce the number of cases of poliomyelitis in the world partly because it was relatively easy to transport and administer. However, since the oral vaccine uses a live, weakened form of the virus, it is also likely to cause the disease, but sporadic epidemics of vaccine-origin poliomyelitis remain a challenge in some parts of the developing world. The figures, however, are revealing: about 201 cases of vaccine-origin poliomyelitis have been followed worldwide in 2018, according to the World Health Organization. Before the start of global eradication efforts in 1988, 350,000 children were paralyzed by the disease each year.
Also note: the United States has not used an oral polio vaccine for almost two decades.
And yet, Wheeler says that her experience with Ethan convinced her to start talking to her youngest children about why she chose to pbad their vaccines. "It opened my eyes," said Wheeler, "to say," I'd better educate them now. Do not wait until they are 18 years old. But I have to start educating my 16s and my 14s now, saying this That's why I do not believe it.
Lindenberger says he also discussed the issue with his siblings himself and had mixed reactions. His 16-year-old brother, he says, "wants to be vaccinated as soon as he turns 18," while his 14-year-old sister "fully agrees with all of my mother's heart."
Lindenberger says that her conversation with her mother has not changed anything.
"We both know where we are," he said.
This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.
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