The Orthodox Union (OU) and the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) issued a statement on Tuesday strongly urging all parents to vaccinate their healthy children on the timetable recommended by their pediatrician. The statement came in response to the ongoing measles outbreak said to have begun at California’s Disneyland last month, which brought the international debate regarding vaccination once again to the public sphere.
“There’s been a lot of reporting to suggest that Orthodox Jews commonly don’t vaccinate, but that’s just not so,” an OU spokesman told JLNJ. “In both the Jewish and secular media, reporting on the measles outbreak could lead people to believe that Orthodox Jews don’t vaccinate, so this statement might help to set the record straight. It should also make it perfectly clear that the vast majority of poskim (halachic decisors) stand on the side of vaccination.”
The OU and RCA also sought to dispel the notion that anyone believes vaccinations are linked to autism, citing in the statement that the particular link between the two was published in a study that was retracted and characterized as fraudulent. Its author was subsequently stripped of his medical license. The statement indicated that the ongoing measles outbreak demonstrates how this kind of misinformation could bear very serious consequences, not only for peoples’ own children but others too, especially those medically unable to be vaccinated.
“Judaism places the highest value on preserving human life. It is well known that those facing even a potential life or death situation are instructed to set aside the Sabbath and other key tenets of halachic (Jewish law) observance until the emergency has passed,” the statement said.
The spokesman discussed with JLNJ the very real halachic obligations to care for one’s own health as well as to take measures to prevent harm and illness to others, and indicated that Jewish law defers to the consensus of medical experts in determining and prescribing appropriate medical responses to illness and prevention. The statement concludes that the consensus of major poskim supports the development of so-called herd immunity, essentially the vaccination of children to not only protect them from the disease itself and to eradicate illness from the larger community, but also to protect others who may be vulnerable.
By Elizabeth Kratz
