to the editor: Thank you to the author of this article for her harrowing report on the devastating and almost always fatal disease of subacute sclerosing panencephalitis resulting from measles (“Doctors warn of 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 life-threatening ailments. When the polio vaccine came out, my parents rushed to give it to my sisters and me. For 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 Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his cohort of sycophants, who have discouraged them from vaccinating their children and themselves.
Our adult children are 54 and 48 years old. We have never been worried about them suffering from preventable diseases like me. For my wife and I, getting everyone vaccinated has always been a no-brainer.
Jerry Lasnik, Thousand Oaks
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to the editor: At the time my parents were born, in the early 1900s, it was considered a rare blessing to be able to raise all of their children to adulthood. The proliferation and severity of diseases caused by viruses often deprived parents of their precious little ones. We could say that there has been a constant war between humans and viruses for thousands of years.
In recent decades, scientists have discovered ways to overcome the ravages of those pesky microbes by strengthening and arming the human immune system to recognize an invasion and fight it off. So now it's very unusual No to 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 the opportunity to grow up and experience a long, disease-free life.
The virus war has been won. There is no point in throwing away weapons now.
Zena Thorpe, Chatsworth
