Anguished parents. Doctors in tears. Utah's long measles outbreak takes a toll.

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26. In part, we can thank the Nixon Administration.

Several members of his administration, including Haldeman, were members of the Church of Jesus Christ, Scientist. Because of them, legal exemptions were added to federal policy that indemnified parents if their kids were harmed because medical treatment was withheld for religious reasons.

The current spate of "medical freedom" and anti-vax madness goes way beyond religious beliefs, but had religious exemptions been more closely regulated 50 years ago, we might be in a better place right now.

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Full disclosure - my maternal grandmother's family were mostly Christian Scientists. I still have the copy of Mary Baker Eddy's teachings that were on my grandmother's nightstand when she died. But there were also genetic predispositions toward both breast and uterine cancers in her family - meaning quite a few women in the family died younger than they should have.

My mother was no agnostic, but she also knew how to read a family tree. As far as I know, she was the first woman in her family to have had both cancers - but because she was so conscientious about screening, they were both caught early enough that she didn't need chemotherapy. I don't want to minimize what the surgery and radiation therapy did to her, but it could have been way, way worse.