With a disease throwback to the measles just this year, it seems more and more people are listening to celebrities for medical advice. It’s too easy to take status as authority in this day and age, and ignore the potential risks.

Students are required to get the necessary vaccinations to attend public school, but have the option to opt out for religious reasons. However, even the more conservative religions (i.e. amish) have been permitting, even encouraging vaccinations in the past decades.

The only real opposition comes from public figures like Gwyneth Paltrow, who believes her feelings can alter the molecular structure of water, obviously a very well-versed woman in the area of science.

Anti-vax parents blame vaccinations for many disabilities and ailments, despite experts refuting this time and time again, the most popular, and seemingly only, study supporting these claims has been admitted, by the scientist Mark Geier, to be false, as well as dismissed by The Institute of Medicine.

Many parents still are still wary of the unnatural ingredients in vaccines, such as preservatives, and the risk of deadly allergic reactions to the vaccines. However, the risk is less than a hundredth of a percent for a child to go into anaphylactic shock.

The preservative in vaccines, thimerosal, that was believed to cause autism has been subject to countless studies, and has overwhelmingly been proved a myth, and is no longer present in many new vaccinations.

This spread of false information is not only detrimental to the unvaccinated children, and all the people they put at risk, but to individuals with disabilities like autism as well. It makes it seems as if they have something wrong with them.

The only medical risk that would get it the way of vaccination is if a child were to have an autoimmune disorder and aren’t strong enough to receive the vaccinations. This disorder also makes them more susceptible to diseases, giving even more reason to get other children vaccinated.

It should be a public duty to vaccinate, as the benefits heavily outweigh the risks.