I believed that I had plumbed the nadir of reprehensible anti-vax behavior with my recent posts on the lactation consultant who recommends lying to patients about her vaccination status, and who asserted that the recent outbreak of polio in Syrian refugee camps in the result of deliberate infection by UNICEF personnel.
But, alas, I was wrong. Some anti-vax nuts have sunk even lower.
At the cesspit of alt health nonsense known as Mothering.com, Geotrouvetout writes:
I am mostly against vaccination with a few exceptions. I live in MA where it is possible to get an exemption for school admission but I’d think it would be more durable to simply have a fake. I’d love to see examples and get tips.
In my country of origin, I’ve had a doctor signing on for me without actually vaccinating but that will be harder here and I signed another one myself. It was very easy and worked, it’s just a paper booklet. If a stamp is needed, it’s easy to have one made over the internet for cheap…
Is s/he trying to forge vaccination records for school? Actually it’s even worse:
The baby will go to daycare at 3 months and vaccination starts at birth here with Hep B (which we will reject) and 2 months with DTaP, which I may do later if I do it. The issue with the exemption is that it needs to be renewed yearly. Once you have a fake it’s a no worries pass that does not expire. Also should we need to move, some States do not allow exemptions. It would also prevent any fight with the day care and schools that my not be so understanding with having a non vaccinated child in the house.
I guess if you don’t care about increasing your own infant’s risk of death from an easily preventable disease, why would you care about killing other people’s infants?
And who could deny that lying is ever so much easier than taking responsibility and accepting the consequences of telling the truth?
This is right up there with lying about having cancer so you can raise funds from unsuspecting people.
No, I take it back. This is worse. The cancer lie merely deprives the innocent of their money; the vaccination lie can kill their babies.
Fortunately, some members of Mothering.com balk at the idea of lying.
I disagree with what you are doing. What kind of example are you setting for your child to lie and falsify documents? Granted, your child is a baby now, but eventually if you keep needing to turn in vaccination records they’ll figure it out. Are you going to tell your child they are not actually vaccinated when they get older? Or are you going to lie to them as well? What if they tell someone they are not vaccinated? Are you going to teach them to lie and say they have had their vaccinations? Also, it seems like you could have a lawsuit on your hands if it ever comes out that you falsified documents that could potentially put other people’s kids at risk…
Another expressed her reservations more succinctly:
I think faking vaccination records is ill-advised, unethical, and potentially harmful to other people in your community. I think it’s reasonable for people on the “I’m Not Vaccinating” forum to have strong, negative reactions to fraud. It’s “I’m not vaxing”, not “Immoral Weasels – Support Only.”
But then there is this outrage from Taximom5:
The decision to lie to protect one’s child from a high risk of harm is exactly what many Jewish parents in in the 1930’s and 1940’s did; they obtained fraudulent documents identifying their children as Aryan in order to protect them from harm, and sent them to live with Christian families.
Edit: some posters are accusing me of equating vaccinations with genocide. This is not the case. The Jewish parents who sent their children away to live in safety as Christians had no idea that the death camps even existed.
Imagine that. They accused her equating vaccination with genocide when she was merely equating vaccination with wholesale murder. So glad she explained that subtle distinction.
Mothering.com deleted the most strongly worded condemnations because, as Cynthia Mosher explains:
…[T]here have been some responses that were really out of line. I have removed the posting privileges to this thread for a few people because of their posts and will also be issuing them a warning. It is not cool to insult and attack a member, no matter what you think of their opinions or actions.
That’s right. It’s totally cool to lie about your baby’s vaccination status thereby risking the lives of other infants and children, but it is totally uncool to insult a member for doing so.
Who is Geotrouvetout? It is easy to figure out with a minimal amount of sleuthing, given the clues of Massachusetts resident, immigrant, parent of an infant/now toddler and knowing that geotrouvetout is French for geocaching.
I congratulate Geotrouvetout for achieving a lowlife trifecta: stupid, selfish and unethical.
I couldn’t imagine it was possible to think less of the anti-vax brigade, but I was wrong. Thanks, Geotrouvetout for setting me straight!
