Letters to the Editor: Public health policy must be driven by data, not political grandstanding
-
Click here to listen to this article - Share via
See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Set us as preferred
To the editor: President Trump’s executive order to space out childhood vaccinations ignores decades of rigorous scientific consensus (“Trump to sign executive order calling for spacing out childhood shots,” Aug. 10). Neither the president nor Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. possesses medical degrees or public health expertise, yet they are overriding established pediatric guidelines.
Forcing parents to schedule multiple, separate medical visits for individual injections introduces unnecessary logistical and financial burdens. Worse, these separate single-disease vaccines are not even currently available for children in the U.S. Complying with this unscientific directive will leave children unvaccinated and vulnerable for longer periods.
The administration’s anti-vaccine rhetoric will only sow widespread confusion, ultimately driving up rates of entirely preventable childhood diseases. Public health policy must be dictated by proven medical data and licensed professionals, not political grandstanding.
Charlene Sodergren, Tehachapi
..
To the editor: Here are some suggestions for additional executive orders that defy science and sanity: The sun shall rise in the west. Circles will have four corners. And of course, there’s a 50% tariff on gravity. We’ve been ripped off by gravity for decades, after all.
Mark Tracy, Carlsbad
