Should You Vaccinate? By Hilary Butler, director, Immunisation Awareness Society Inc., www.ias.org.nz Let me put to you some questions to be answered at a personal level: 1) Are you willing now to face up to the possible consequences of any sickness or disease especially as it may affect your children, whether you vaccinate or not? 2) If something goes wrong e.g. life-threatening “complications”, side effects, brain damage or even death, do you have a “faith” which will see you through the crisis, however long it may be? 3) Continuing good health is what everyone wants, but how are you going to achieve it? Who are you going to listen to? Are you confused by the many voices of the so-called experts? 4) Do you have convictions that will not be compromised whatever strategies, pressures and arguments are brought to bear on you? Are you able to verbalise them simply with confidence and clarity? 5) When faced with the choice to vaccinate or not to vaccinate, are you prepared to acknowledge that you have to make a decision? 6) What is that decision to be based on? For example, pressure and/or smooth talk of health “professionals”; your “gut feeling”; a “faith”(that won’t let you down!); human wisdom? 7) When you make your decision, are you prepared to accept responsibility for it, whatever the outcome? Or will you want to look around for scapegoats if something goes wrong? 8) If you are unwilling to make a well-informed decision then you have to allow someone to make it for you. If you delegate your responsibility to another person, are you prepared to accept the outcomes without apportioning blame if they are not what you want?