To the editor: Thanks to the author of this article for her heart-rending report on the devastating, almost always fatal condition of subacute sclerosing panencephalitis resulting from measles (“Doctors warn of a deadly complication from measles outbreaks,” March 17).
I am 82 years old. As a child, I contracted chickenpox, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, scarlet fever and measles. I was fortunate to have no lasting complications from these potentially life-threatening ailments. When the polio vaccine came out, my parents rushed to get it to my sisters and me. To our parents, it was a no-brainer.
As an educator for 50 years in biology and anatomy/physiology, I find it incomprehensible that many parents have chosen to listen to people like Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his cohort of sycophants who have dissuaded them from vaccinating their children and themselves.
Our adult children are 54 and 48. We have never worried about them suffering from preventable diseases as I did. For my wife and me, getting us all vaccinated has always been a no-brainer.
Jerry Lasnik, Thousand Oaks
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To the editor: At the time that my parents were born in the early 1900s, it was considered an unusual blessing to be able to raise all of your children to adulthood. The proliferation and severity of diseases caused by viruses frequently robbed parents of their precious little ones. We could say that there has been constant war between humans and viruses for thousands of years.
Over the past few decades, scientists have discovered ways of overcoming the ravages of those pesky microbes by strengthening and arming the human immune system to recognize an invasion and fight it. So now, it is highly unusual to not be able to raise all of our children to adulthood.
It seems to me that since we now have the scientific knowledge to arm our children in this way, it could be considered a mortal sin to not give one’s children that opportunity to grow up and experience a long, disease-free life.
The virus war has been won. It makes no sense to throw away the armaments now.
Zena Thorpe, Chatsworth