By Cathy Jameson

 Mother Angry After Daughter Vaccinated

Why is this the title of the article? I can easily (and have) thought of a few other title options. 

School Nurse Crosses the Line: child suffers from vaccine given at school

Schools Unsafe for Students: school nurses allowed to stab and jab at will

Officials Pass the Buck and Hide Behind Vague News Releases for Involvement With Student Vaccinated Without Consent

You won’t see a retraction of the story to use those headlines.  The entire article would have to be rewritten as well. 

We start reading about this horrid event with the following emotional sentence:  “Sighle Kinney is fuming after her 14-year-old daughter was given four shots by the school nurse at Marcus Garvey Academy without her permission.”  Really?  That’s the opening sentence?  Of course it’s warranted and depicts some of the truth—a teenager was just assaulted--but, why isn’t the nurse strung up the proverbial flag pole in the opening sentence?  She’s the one who made the mistake.   Why isn’t the school also part of the main focus of this story?  They’re the ones who opened the doors to the nurse who made the mistake.  Why is it that the child and her “fuming” mother make the headlines instead the actual people who caused the problem?

This type of story is not new.  Here’s another mis-titled article for you.  This one happened last year. 

Ohio Boy Given H1N1 Vaccine Against Mom's Wishes Worse than the title is again the opening paragraph:  “A furious mother says her 7-year-old son, who has problems with medications, was vaccinated for swine flu at school against her wishes.”  Damn that furious woman for being so, so…so furious!  How dare she!

Of course the mother is furious.  Her child was just medically assaulted.  The media twisted the actual news and turned a terrible situation into a sensationalized, train-wreck styled article.  They should have targeting the perpetrators (the school, the school nurse, and health care system contracted by the school) but instead focused on reaction. 

Better titles suited for what happened to the young boy rather than the ones that centered on distraught, hysterical mother madness could be:

School Allowed Health Department To Vaccinate Young Boy At School Clinic – boy’s vaccine exemption isn’t worth the paper it’s written on

Vaccine Given Despite Supporting Exemption – adults need remedial reading courses to know what their own forms say

I’m sure you won’t see those in print though.

In both news stories it’s not the educated, professional administration who have made a huge mistake.  It’s not the school system who allowed unwanted and unsafe practices on school grounds.  And, it’s not a health care system, nor their employees, who haphazardly acknowledged an oopsie, something bad might’ve just happened.  The media instead circles over the emotional women who have every right to be irate.  They should be vocal about what just happened to their children.  They both were trying to get answers about who messed up and why.  Up to the terrible damage done, they both did everything right to protect their children:  they made a decision for their child’s health.  They filled out forms to support their decision.  Their forms were filed for future reference.  They trusted their kids would be safe and exempt from vaccines at school where they probably hoped kids would be able to do what kids do at school—that is to learn, not to get vaccinated.  But, the kids were vaccinated.  Vaccinated at school.  Vaccinated against their will.  

Instead of outing the person wielding the vaccines on school property, Mother is to blame.  She’s labeled as furious.  Fuming.  Angry.  Why isn’t she being called informed, knowledgeable and thoughtful?  That is truly what she is, isn’t she?  It takes all of that and more to make the decision to vaccinate or not.  But, that’s not what the media wants to focus on. 

As a Mother who has learned a great deal about vaccines, I walk away from an article like these two with great sadness.  I carry a huge load of responsibility for my children as their Mother.  Mothers all over the world do the same.  Many of us are learning as we go, collecting information to make future decisions.  We make life-changing and even life-saving decisions several times as we parent the children in our care.  Our children depend on us to be attentive, supportive and protective.  Mothering is a calling we feel very strongly about.  It’s shaped by our actions, our attitudes, but most importantly by our children.  With this, we might find a sense of calm as we Mother.  I have a feeling the Mothers in these two articles at one point in their lives thought they were composed and at peace with their decisions for their children.  But, the Mothers were described as anything but peaceful in the news articles.  They were downright furious.

I know a good news story when I see one because I’ve been hunting down the truth for a long time now.  Don’t get me wrong, stories like the young girl and the even younger boy being vaccinated against their will are very newsworthy.  In fact every newspaper should have shared that information.  But, the person writing the article missed the point completely when they focused on the Mothers. Parts of the truth were there but well hidden behind the image of a basketcase.  That is not the image our society needs to see when it comes to mistakes being made with vaccines.