Melinda Gates Quotes

At present, intelligent people do not have their children vaccinated, nor does the law now compel them to. The result is not, as the Jennerians prophesied, the extermination of the human race by smallpox; on the contrary more people are now killed by vaccination than by smallpox.

Some of the old diseases that we think are gone - case in point, measles - are back, now that somebody has spread around, in a very wicked way, the idea that these inoculations were making children autistic. Now we're getting outbreaks that are killing children. The end result is, if you create a population that lacks immunity, and diseases are still there, you're going to get outbreaks and you're going to get death.

Maybe someday it will seem quaint that, during a time of plague, some of the parents of the 1990s wanted to deny their children protection so that they could safeguard their own self- image. Or maybe we'll just seem like a bunch of lunatics.

So it's an absolute lie that has killed thousands of kids. Because the mothers who heard that lie, many of them didn't have their kids take either pertussis or measles vaccine, and their children are dead today. And so the people who go and engage in those anti-vaccine efforts -- you know, they, they kill children. It's a very sad thing, because these vaccines are important.

I think public awareness of how good vaccines are for kids and how they are good for public health is a great idea.

The choice made by families not to immunize their children is not supported by public policy or medical research nor should such action be supported by taxpayers in the form of child care payments.

When children are immunized, it's really the beginning of a new day for them.

We're all in denial from time to time. We all see things that are too painful to really deal with. But this has consequences, and the consequences of not vaccinating your children are not only just that those children are exposed to illnesses; it's that everyone else they go to school with and they hang around with are, too.

In some areas, immunity has been eroded so much that the child who's not vaccinated is now actually more vulnerable to the complications of infectious diseases.

Measles will always show you if someone isn't doing a good job on vaccinations. Kids will start dying of measles.

Most parents vaccinate their kids. That is the bottom line.

As a parent, the responsible thing to do - if you love your child - is to vaccinate your child.

Vaccines are a miracle; they're fantastic. Anything that makes people hesitate to give their children these vaccines according to the recommended schedule creates risk. Risk for the children who don't get vaccinated and risk for children, some of whom don't have an immune system, so they're benefiting from the fact that the community protection means the disease doesn't get to them.

I just want people to know the facts and science and the information... measles is preventable.

One of the mysteries of hep B immunization is that vaccinating only 'high risk' groups, which was the original public health strategy, did not bring down rates of infection.

Vaccines don't cause autism. Vaccines, instead, prevent disease. Vaccines have wiped out a score of formerly deadly childhood diseases. Vaccine skepticism has helped to bring some of those diseases back from near extinction.

When I was a child, there were not that many vaccines. I was vaccinated for polio. I actually got measles as a child. I got pertussis, whooping cough. I remember that very well.

Vaccines save lives; fear endangers them. It's a simple message parents need to keep hearing.

Why do people refuse to vaccinate their children against measles or whooping cough? In many cases, because they have never seen measles and have no idea what it might do.

I'm very much in favor of vaccinations, and I've been very vocal about that because it's insane to forgo this.

People think they're making individual decisions for themselves and their family not to get vaccinated. It's not just an individual choice - you're a hazard to society.

The truth is, there is no link between vaccines and autism. Vaccines are incredibly important.

Birtherism surely increased Americans' distrust of politics, though in ways that are hard to pin down. By contrast, when anti-vaxxers persuade parents not to vaccinate children, the result can be sickness and even death.

I think a lot of parents who are smart, well-read - they're the ones who are choosing not to vaccinate. And oftentimes, those who may not be as well-read - they are vaccinating. So to say you just have a bunch of crackpots who are choosing not to do this to their children, I just don't think that's actually true.

There are pockets of liberal, affluent America where parents don't want their kids vaccinated.