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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Measles Outbreak Drives Vaccination Debate

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Monday, February 9, 2015   

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.- Doctors, parents and politicians all over the country are involved in a heated debate over vaccinations following a measles outbreak that began at Disneyland in California.

Top health leaders have linked the outbreak to children who were not vaccinated for the disease. Dr. Lainna Callentine says it's crucial parents and their pediatricians have an open dialogue about the reasons they are choosing, or not choosing, to vaccinate their children.

"As a pediatrician, my role is to educate and to empower parents to make healthy decisions on behalf of their children," says Callentine. "But I have to respect that a parent has a right ultimately to make that decision and that is not my personal right on their behalf."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention more than 100 people from 14 states were reported to have measles in January, most of them linked to the Disneyland outbreak. As of yet, there have been no cases in Missouri, but measles has been confirmed in neighboring Illinois, as well as Minnesota and South Dakota.

Parents delaying or avoiding vaccinations for their children do so for religious purposes, medical issues, poverty, or a lack of access to medical care, but regardless of the reasons, some doctors refuse to accept patients whose parents are anti-vaccine. Callentine says that sends the wrong message.

"I see a problem with physicians who do not allow healthy dialogue and questions," she says. "When you push them out of your practice, you're really pushing them into the arms of perhaps some of the charlatans out there who are feeding a lot of misinformation. "

According to a Pew Research Center report, about 68 percent of Americans say vaccines should be required, and 30 percent say vaccines should be a matter of personal choice.

Callentine adds there is a lot of information available about vaccinations and parents should be fully educated before making a decision for their child.

"It's important for parents to understand the information they are looking at and where that information comes from," she says. "It's also important to understand how those illnesses are transmitted. There's a lot of other factors that they need to look at as far as risks to the vaccine or risks to contracting that illness."


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