The New Vaccine Rules Have Parents Asking: Who Can We Trust?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Michael Smerconish** (0:15)
Welcome to The Smerconish Podcast for Independent Minds.

**Michael Smerconish** (0:20)
Let's talk about today's poll question. Let's talk about the Thursday poll question. I'm being a little sneaky with it. I'm telling you that up front, and I've got a special guest in the on deck circle who will help me provide expertise on the matter. I'm asking, it sounds so simple, should parents have the final say on their child's vaccines? Should parents have the final say on their child's vaccines? Doctors say that, this is in the newsletter today, there's a story from the Associated Press, doctors say that President Trump's new executive order on vaccines is misguided and likely to stoke fear and confusion among parents at a time when measles is raging, immunization rates are falling, and children are heading back to school.
This order was signed on Monday. It advocates separating the measles, mumps and rubella, MMR vaccine, into three different single disease shots and giving all childhood immunizations at separate appointments when possible. How practical is that?
In the newsletter today, I said this, watching the debate unfold has made me think of a tragedy that I know that I've referenced on air, but finally needed to go back and see if factually it comports with my recollection, and it does. So the dateline is Northeast Philadelphia, and the year is 2009 A two-year-old by the name of Kent Scheibel got pneumonia. His parents, Herbert and Catherine, third generation members of the first century Gospel Church prayed. Their church teaches that it's a sin to trust in medical help and pills. Tragically, Kent died. A jury convicted the parents of involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment. The judge gave them probation, no prison, on conditions. Chief among them, if another child gets sick, call a doctor.
Four years later, four years after the death of Kent, it's now April of 2013, eight-month-old Brandon, another of their sons, developed diarrhea and trouble breathing. Again, they prayed. He died of dehydration and bacterial pneumonia. He was carried to a funeral home instead of to a hospital. This time, they pled no contest to third-degree murder. Judge Benjamin Lerner told them, you've killed two of your children.
Not God, not your church, not religious devotion, you. The surviving children went into foster care. And I've been thinking about the Schiebels this week because of Monday, the president signing that executive order cutting the vaccines the federal government universally recommends for kids from 17 to 11 and directing that the MMR be split into three separate shots.
His defenders are not making a scientific argument, at least not to my untrained eye. The AAP says there's no new evidence and the order itself, this is what's jumping out at me, promises maximal parental choice. In other words, the White House seems to me, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the president, to be making a rights argument, meaning this is a parents call, which makes me think of the Schiebels. And usually it is, but there was a Supreme Court case in 1944 that said parents may be free to become martyrs themselves, but it doesn't follow that they're free in identical circumstances to make martyrs of their own children. The Schiebels are the extreme. Extremes are where we usually find the line.
But one more thing that occurred to me, for a generation, this is the parents call. That was the anti-vaccine argument, right? That was the mindset of the Schiebels. Parents claiming the right to refuse what the government had recommended. But on Monday, things seem to have flipped. Now, the government is the one recommending less, and it's the pro-vaccine parents claiming that it's the parents call. The right to all 17 shots, whatever this White House may advise. And the skeptics, for the first time, seem content to let Washington decide. In other words, nobody changed their mind about vaccines this week. They changed their mind about who decides.
And the principle followed the outcome. That's the setup for today's poll question at smerconish.com. You might want to ask yourself whether you had, whether you would have answered my poll question the same way preceding Monday. But make sure you go vote. Dr. Brian McDonough is widely known for his long-standing role as medical editor for two Gigundo radio stations, 1010 Winds in New York City, KYW in Philadelphia. His daily health reports have aired for more than 25 years. In his clinical work, he serves as the chair of the Graduate Medical Education Committee for the Department of Family Medicine at the St. Francis Hospital. For over three decades, he's combined inpatient and outpatient expertise with a deep commitment to medical education, training more than 175 board-certified family physicians as department chair. Dr. McDonough, thank you so much for being here. Did I jog your memory with the Schiebel case?