Neal Pollard
Despite the work of some special interest groups trying to expose the health risks to children who get vaccinated, there has historically been inestimable value derived from them. Perhaps no incident proves this better than the deadly, debilitating outbreaks of polio in the 20th Century. Starting early in the 1900s, polio cases turned into outbreaks. In 1916, 9000 cases were reported in New York City alone. Even a U.S. president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, contracted it as a young man. Physicians raced to find remedies, treatments, and preventatives. The “March of Dimes” was created to fight Infantile Paralysis due to polio. The Mayo Clinic got involved around the time the U.S. was drawn into World War II, which distracted America’s best medical researchers with military-related projects. In the last five years of the 1940s, there was an average of 20,000 new cases of polio per year. It is hard for most of us alive today to remember the panic and fear struck by this mysterious malady. Then, Jonas Salk develops the first successful vaccine around 1950. Albert Sabin eventually develops an even more effective vaccine. By 1964, there were only 121 cases in this country. By 1994, the World Health Organization certified the entire western hemisphere as “polio free” (much information via timeline at http://users.cloudnet.com/edrbsass/poliotimeline.htm).
It would be hard to imagine parents who knew of other infected children not rushing to take steps to protect their own. For that matter, they would surely move to prevent their own infection. Whatever perceived risk or sacrifice, the risk of doing nothing was surely, universally seen as worse.
To call sin an epidemic is to grossly understate. Beyond even pandemic proportions, this spiritual malady is universal. Every accountable person has the problem (Rom. 3:10,23; 1 Jn. 5:19). The effect is spiritually fatal in 100% of untreated cases (Rom. 6:23). Yet, it is an affliction mankind always chooses to contract.
No words can adequately describe the love, mercy, grace, and compassion that drove God to supply the cure. While it came at an incomparably high price (cf. Jn. 3:16), it is 100% effective in eradicating the effects of the malady. That is, no one who ever obeyed from the heart God’s plan of salvation ever failed to receive what God promised–forgiveness (cf. Rom. 6:17; Ac. 2:38). Can you imagine, then, that people every day and every week have the opportunity to be cured, but choose to refuse it. May God give us courage and compassion to persist in making the cure available!
The Preacher Pollard Blog 
Excellent piece, Neal.
Excellent article, Mr. Neal…especially on a highly controversial topic such as vaccinations. Thanks for drawing the even more important spiritual parallel.