I'm on the fence on the whole vaccination thing. While it's obviously a public health concern and the anti-vaccers are basing their behavior on refuted evidence and bad priorities, their concern does align with some history that deserves heeding. The government has intentionally administered harmful or experimental substances to unwitting and unwilling citizens in the past, and has done so in alliance with pharmaceutical companies. Given the state of politics today, I see no reason to believe that this could not happen again or is not already happening. Mandatory vaccinations would be about the most ideal opportunity for such abuses imaginable.
I'm definitely not one who buys into the disproven crap about vaccinations causing autism and stuff like that. I have no reason to believe they are currently abused. However, as much as I would like to trust authorities to use these tools exclusively for the benefit of public health, I simply can't. I don't prevent my children from getting their essential immunizations or anything / the stuff that you guys are talking about. But I don't bother with others such as the annual flu vaccine.
*hides*
There is no incentive for them to do that, at least not with vaccines. Pharmaceutical companies make bank off of effective vaccines, and would suffer great profit loss if they ever did something like that.
You should not be risking your children's livelihoods by ignoring available medical treatments. Children can and have died of influenza, which
kills ~50,000 people in the United States every year. I myself remember my case of it when I was a young child vividly because of how horrific it was.
Your children aren't very likely to ever encounter a polio virus, much less actually be infected, but I'm sure you got them that vaccine.
In the end, all vaccines are essential vaccines, and it is not just a person's prerogative but their responsibility to themselves and those around them to be vaccinated.