Dad of boy with cancer wants unvaccinated kids not near his chld. It is a health hazzard.

http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/why-dad-fighting-keep-unvaccinated-kids-out-school?akid=12738.294211.PaC6zB&rd=1&src=newsletter1031124&t=8

The anti-vaccine movement has managed to gain an alarming amount of legitimacy in recent years, propelled by high profile Concerned Moms like Jenny McCarthy and Kristin Cavallari, as well as media-friendly pediatricians like Dr. Jay Gordon, who claims to have signed hundreds of “personal belief exemptions” for parents who choose not to vaccinate their children against diseases like measles and polio. Recently, Gordon reassured CBS News, “Measles is almost an always a benign childhood illness.” Yet as vaccine rates have dropped in certain areas – often, notably, in affluent, educated hotspots — once previously all but eliminated illnesses have been seeing a strong return. And in California this month, a measles outbreak that seems to have originated in Disneyland has made painfully clear the consequences of refusing to vaccinate.
Now, a Marin county father is trying to change the odds – and with a compelling personal reason. Carl Krawitt’s six year-old son Rhett was diagnosed with leukemia in 2010. The boy endured four years of chemotherapy, and, happily, is now considered in remission. But while his immune system is still recovering from the experience, he is not yet able to receive his vaccinations, and it may be months before he can. In the meantime, however, he’s living in the California county with one of the state’s highest rates of “personal belief” exemptions — 6.45 percent.

Carl Krawitt says that all of the children in his son’s elementary school class are vaccinated, but his school itself has a seven percent exemption rate. And now he and his wife are asking the district to “require immunization as a condition of attendance, with the only exception being those who cannot medically be vaccinated.” As Krawitt explained to NPR this week, “If you choose not to immunize your own child and your own child dies because they get measles, OK, that’s your responsibility, that’s your choice. But if your child gets sick and gets my child sick and my child dies, then … your action has harmed my child.” And as Rhett’s oncologist, Dr. Robert Goldsby, says, “It’s not just Rhett. There are hundreds of other kids in the Bay Area that are going through cancer therapy, and it’s not fair to them. They can’t get immunized; they have to rely on their friends and colleagues and community to help protect them.”