Re: Denise van Domselaar's letter "Vaccines cause more harm than measles: writer" (Gazette, May 3).
Wow, after reading this letter I had to go check my calendar: yep, it's 2014 ... not 1914. I'm not sure where Ms. van Domselaar gets her "facts" from ... wacky celebrities maybe, or pseudo-scientific articles from conspiracy websites.
The whole vaccines-cause-autism argument was thoroughly debunked by numerous reputable scientific studies. And anyone who argues that people would be better off just catching measles or mumps or rubella or whooping cough has obviously never had to deal with the loss of a loved one from what could have been an entirely preventable disease.
What about the eradication of smallpox? That was only achieved by vaccination on a global scale. Is Ms. van Domselaar arguing that that was wrong? When my father was an infant in Holland in the 1920s, back before vaccinations, he caught whooping cough and survived. So he developed antibodies the “natural” way.
Unfortunately, his older sister also caught whooping cough and died. Today she would have been vaccinated and immune. Guess which immunity my grandparents would have preferred their kids had, given the choice?
Kathy Van Hoof, St. Albert
