Trump, vaccination, and the right to kill children

Does liberty mean a right to kill other people’s children, slowly and painfully? It would, if the Trump Administration had its way. It’s pressing states to allow broad vaccine exemptions as part of its larger campaign against settled medical practice. The danger is clearest with measles. Children usually recover from it, albeit often with some permanent damage. But a 2016 California study found that when infants under a year old are infected, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) – in which the virus lingers in the brain and slowly destroys it – develops in about one in 600 cases, far higher than the 1-in-100,000 figure doctors long cited. Long after the initial infection, the child becomes clumsy and forgetful, then experiences headaches, fevers, and seizures, loses motor control, and finally becomes bedridden and dies. There is no cure. Babies can't be vaccinated on the standard schedule until 12 to 15 months old — earlier doses, at six months, are only given for travel to…