Each year more and more Arkansas parents are choosing not to vaccinate their infants and small children. According to Dr. Dirk Haselow, medical director and section chief for communicable disease and immunizations at the Arkansas Department of Health, the number of parents seeking exemptions from the mandated vaccines has doubled every three years since 2002, when exemptions for philosophical reasons were first allowed. Why? If vaccines prevent all kinds of serious diseases and protect the population against widespread outbreaks, why would anyone choose to opt out? Apparently, the very premise of vaccine science is in question by many people. One of whom is Chris Barr, founder of NotaDoc.org.

Vaccines: Science-based or Bad Science?

“I’m against vaccination because the science behind vaccination is fraudulent,” says Barr, host of Arkansas’s KLRG 880 AM radio show, “Voice of Change.” Barr says his experience with vaccines goes back to the 1970’s, when he first began researching the subject. Though the vast majority of doctors, like Haselow, say there are countless studies that support the effectiveness of vaccines, Barr cites examples otherwise. “When you look at the success of the smallpox vaccines, it took almost 200 years before smallpox disappeared. In Barr’s opinion, it went out on its own and had nothing to do with the small pox vaccine.

Barr states the eradication of certain diseases has more to do with clean living conditions, like pure water and sewage systems, and less to do with vaccines. “The places in the world where they still have these diseases is where they don’t have these things,” he says.

Of course, most doctors say it is just the opposite. “Diseases are low because of vaccines,” Haselow says. Haselow uses measles as an example. He says that in Europe, large numbers of people are declining measles vaccines, and as a result, France is seeing tens of thousands of cases of the disease. However, Barr and other opponents of vaccines chalk up such studies as bad science.

A link to autism: the ongoing debate

Another claim of vaccine opponents is that they are the cause of, or at least a contributing factor to, autism. The debate over this issue has persisted since the late 1990’s. Haselow states that a certain number of children do exhibit autistic symptoms shortly after receiving vaccines. However, he attributes it more to coincidence rather than a direct link. “What we don’t see is an excess number of autism cases related in time after the vaccine,” he says.

“As young parents, my husband and I had heard the vaccination debates and did a lot of research on our own," says Jacqueline Frizzell, a central Arkansas mother of two-year-old twins. "We then talked to our pediatrician and decided to have our twins vaccinated. Our son developed an eye infection at nine months that could have resulted in serious complications and hospitalization had we not done vaccinations. In light of that, we were very grateful for our decision.”

Going with the herd or against the grain

Despite stark differences over the science, opponents also suggest that vaccines continue to be administered because of money. “This is a huge boom to medicine,” Barr says. “The devotion to vaccines began at high levels for monetary reasons; everybody else is following herd of thought,” Barr suggests.

The largest “herd” is definitely in support of vaccines. According to a September 2011 CDC report, rates for most of the long-standing recommended vaccines are at or above 90 percent, and countless studies seem to prove their effectiveness.

Barr acknowledges that he is in the marginal minority; however, he claims that if you look at history, “the majority has never been right. It’s always the select minority that has the truth.”

Many central Arkansas parents believe they too are on the right (though less popular) side of this issue and refuse to have their children vaccinated. Haselow says many doctors are concerned about this growing trend and fear that resistance to certain diseases will go down. Though many see the choice to refuse vaccination as a “public health risk,” those who choose it are simply exercising their legal right according to the state law that allows exemptions.

(Editor’s Note: We recognize this is an emotionally charged issue and strive to present both sides to our readers. The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the opinions of Arkansas Business Publishing Group.)