{"id":23197,"date":"2019-03-12T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2019-03-12T17:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=23197"},"modified":"2019-03-09T21:31:06","modified_gmt":"2019-03-10T03:31:06","slug":"ohio-teen-on-his-struggle-to-get-vaccinations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2019\/03\/12\/ohio-teen-on-his-struggle-to-get-vaccinations\/","title":{"rendered":"Ohio Teen on His Struggle to Get Vaccinations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0Norwalk, OH resident <\/span>Ethan Lindenberger appeared before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Tuesday March 5 to talk about how he decided to get vaccinated against the wishes of his mother, who is anti-vaccine.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Lindenberger, who is now 18, grew up without common immunizations before finally getting them in December. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0He described being pulled out of class on many occasions, to be told he needed to get said immunizations, but his mother, who is an anti-vaxxer, always opted out for him.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Most states allow parents to opt out of vaccinations for religious reasons, and seventeen states allow parents to opt out for personal or philosophical reasons.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0The Norwalk High School senior told the committee:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cIn one such instance when I approached my mother with information from the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) that explained that vaccines do not cause autism she replied with, \u2018That\u2019s what they want you to think.\u2019\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Ethan went on to add: \u201cSkepticism and worry took the forefront in terms of information.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Ethan took to Reddit for answers, saying \u201cMy parents are kind of stupid,\u201d and went on to ask where he could get vaccinated. He inferred on the post that his parents thought that vaccinations were \u201csome kind of government scheme.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cMy mother would turn to anti-vaccine groups online and on social media, looking for her evidence in defense rather than through health officials and credible sources.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Lindenberger cited Facebook as a landmark in his mother\u2019s change in opinions regarding vaccinations, saying that he believed his siblings that predated Facebook were vaccinated, but that his younger siblings had not been.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cI didn\u2019t agree with anything he said,\u201d Jill Wheeler, Lindenberger\u2019s mother,\u00a0<\/span>told the Associated Press<\/span>. \u201cThey\u2019ve made him the poster child for the pharmaceutical industry.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Facebook was brought up many times throughout his testimony before Congress on Tuesday.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cDoes your mother get most of her information online?\u201d asked Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cYes. . . . Mainly Facebook,\u201d Lindenberger replied.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cAnd where do you get most of your information?\u201d Isakson asked.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cNot Facebook,\u201d Lindenberger said, laughing. \u201cFrom CDC, World Health Organization, scientific journals and also cited information from those organizations . . . accredited sources.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0The Lindenberger story comes at the tail end of six ongoing measles outbreaks across the United States, including major outbreaks in Washington and Oregon. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Most of those outbreaks centered in Clark County Oregon, an area outside of Portland that has been dubbed a \u201chot spot\u201d due a high rate of nonmedical exemptions for required vaccinations.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Facebook has shared a large brunt of that scrutiny, as health advocates and law makers have criticized the social media site over ads and anti-vaccination groups on its network.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0U.S. Representative from California, Adam Schiff wrote to Mark Zuckerberg last month, along with Instagram, suggesting that the sites were \u201csurfacing and recommending messages\u201d that discourage immunizations.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0The company\u00a0<\/span>told The Washington Post<\/span> it has “taken steps to reduce the distribution of health related misinformation on Facebook, but we know we have more to do.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Richard Foltz<\/strong>
\n<\/span>Reporter<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0Norwalk, OH resident Ethan Lindenberger appeared before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Tuesday March 5 to talk about how he decided to get vaccinated against the wishes of his mother, who is anti-vaccine. \u00a0 \u00a0Lindenberger, who is now 18, grew up without common immunizations before finally getting them in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10416,"featured_media":23200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tartan-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-629","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/botox-close-up-injection-415816-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10416"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23197"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23202,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23197\/revisions\/23202"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}