This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Parents who fail to have their children vaccinated for measles, mumps and rubella are asking for trouble, for their own children and everyone else's.

Vaccinations against other diseases, including diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus, also are recommended by doctors and are most effective when children are small. Human papillomavirus vaccinations are important for girls and young women to prevent cervical cancer.

An outbreak of measles in the Salt Lake Valley that has infected nine people so far and is probably not over yet shows just how dangerous it is to avoid getting vaccinated.

The so-called "childhood diseases" — measles, mumps and rubella — can cause serious problems for pregnant women. Measles and mumps can have complications, including miscarriage, and if a pregnant woman were to contract rubella, her child could be born with congenital rubella syndrome, which causes a combination of birth defects.

If unvaccinated children in schools are infected with any of these diseases, they can spread them to one another and to adults, including pregnant teachers, who may not be vaccinated or who have not received the necessary booster shot if they were born after 1956.

There is really no good excuse for failing to keep childhood vaccinations up-to-date. Health departments offer the shots free or at low cost for low-income families, and pediatricians have plenty of the vaccine and can give the shots when babies and children go in for their checkups.

There are medical conditions, including specific allergies, that preclude some people getting vaccinations, but the vast majority have no good reason for avoiding them. The Utah health department should not give parents a pass simply because they ask to have their children excused from the vaccinations required to enter school.

Some misinformed parents wrongly believe that vaccinations are dangerous. In 1998 Andrew Wakefield, a British physician and quasi-researcher, published a study linking vaccines and autism. That study has been proven fraudulent, Wakefield has been barred from practicing medicine and the publication that printed the article retracted it and apologized. There is no demonstrated link between vaccinations and autism. Period. But the myth, like a virus, is hard to kill.

Vaccinations are one of medical science's greatest advances. Deadly smallpox was beaten by vaccination, and the scourge of polio has been nearly eradicated. Failure to vaccinate against other diseases can cause dangerous outbreaks. It's irresponsible for parents to send children to school unvaccinated, and for public schools to accept them.