Bill Gates Quotes

Despite the debunking, you have a small group in the last five years that hasn't wanted to vaccinate their children, for instance, for measles. Then, all of sudden, we got an outbreak of measles and kids were starting to die from measles.

At present, intelligent people do not have their children vaccinated, nor does the law now compel them to. The result is not, as the Jennerians prophesied, the extermination of the human race by smallpox; on the contrary more people are now killed by vaccination than by smallpox.

Some of the old diseases that we think are gone - case in point, measles - are back, now that somebody has spread around, in a very wicked way, the idea that these inoculations were making children autistic. Now we're getting outbreaks that are killing children. The end result is, if you create a population that lacks immunity, and diseases are still there, you're going to get outbreaks and you're going to get death.

The choice made by families not to immunize their children is not supported by public policy or medical research nor should such action be supported by taxpayers in the form of child care payments.

People think they're making individual decisions for themselves and their family not to get vaccinated. It's not just an individual choice - you're a hazard to society.

I think public awareness of how good vaccines are for kids and how they are good for public health is a great idea.

I would certainly use my voice to try and avoid anything that undermines confidence, so that parents are using vaccines fully.

When children are immunized, it's really the beginning of a new day for them.

I talked to lots of people who are vaccine-hesitant, and I actually was one myself until I got further into this project, and most of them actually are in my demographic: so well-educated people with advanced degrees who are upper middle-class and have read quite a bit on the subject.

I think that people's resistance to vaccination isn't going to disappear until we address some of the nonmedical reasons for that resistance and people's discomfort and distrust of the government. That's bigger than what most medical professionals can handle.

On the pro-vaccine side - and not everyone does this, but I saw it enough for it to make me really uncomfortable - is a tendency to accuse people who are wary of vaccination of being stupid and not understanding science.

Vaccines save lives; fear endangers them. It's a simple message parents need to keep hearing.

Why do people refuse to vaccinate their children against measles or whooping cough? In many cases, because they have never seen measles and have no idea what it might do.

I'm very much in favor of vaccinations, and I've been very vocal about that because it's insane to forgo this.

If you give us a safe vaccine, we'll use it. It shouldn't be polio versus autism.

What I saw when I was doing research is that in pursuit of a middle ground, people will kind of split the difference between the two extremes that they're hearing. And I think what's problematic is that people are seeing vaccinating on schedule, on time, as an extreme position.

Birtherism surely increased Americans' distrust of politics, though in ways that are hard to pin down. By contrast, when anti-vaxxers persuade parents not to vaccinate children, the result can be sickness and even death.

I think a lot of parents who are smart, well-read - they're the ones who are choosing not to vaccinate. And oftentimes, those who may not be as well-read - they are vaccinating. So to say you just have a bunch of crackpots who are choosing not to do this to their children, I just don't think that's actually true.

I'm very pro vaccine. I get all six of my kids vaccinated. I believe vaccines save millions of lives, and people ought to be getting vaccinated.

Measles will always show you if someone isn't doing a good job on vaccinations. Kids will start dying of measles.

It is true that there are some parents who have concerns about vaccines, but while we hear about these concerns a lot in the media, I don't want people to think that the majority of parents out there do not believe in vaccines and then most kids aren't getting vaccinated. In fact, it's exactly the opposite.

Most parents vaccinate their kids. That is the bottom line.

If you don't vaccinate your child, it's not only your child that is at risk. It's also other children, including other children who, for medical reasons, can't be vaccinated.

I don't care if people get angry about that, believing the rubbish that vaccinations cause trouble or make the child worse or something. That's not what I believe. I think it's important for me to say.

Maybe someday it will seem quaint that, during a time of plague, some of the parents of the 1990s wanted to deny their children protection so that they could safeguard their own self- image. Or maybe we'll just seem like a bunch of lunatics.