An increasingly concerning trend has emerged over the last five years: the number of kindergartners exempt from vaccines has risen from 2.2 to 3.6 percent. The reason behind this increase is not medical exemptions but rather a dangerous combination of misinformation and the rise in conservative ideology that has overtaken the country.

It has become increasingly challenging to avoid false information, as it saturates most social media platforms and even news sources. Social media in particular has influenced a rise in conservatism among young Americans, ranging from alt-right beliefs masked as humor to romanticized “trad-wife” lifestyles.

The “anti-vax” trend stems from similar belief systems. What starts as a mistrust of science becomes further fueled by misinformation from social media, biased news sources and poorly informed parents. While these parents typically have good intentions in wanting to protect their children, it is their responsibility not to fall victim to fear-mongering or believe everything they hear on social media.

If a person is responsible enough to have and care for a child, they should be responsible enough to research the information they are presented with to come to the safest decision for their child’s health.

The current Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has had a crucial role in furthering this movement. For instance, in a May 2025 interview, Kennedy stated that the MMR vaccine “contains a lot of aborted fetus debris and DNA particles.” Regardless of where a person stands on abortion, the idea of the parts of an aborted fetus being injected into babies is horrifying and only furthers a parent’s reason not to vaccinate their children.

Alarmingly, Kennedy is not the only person spreading this narrative. For instance, the anti-vax organization Texans for Vaccine Choice states that vaccine manufacturers use living cells from aborted fetuses and that “to harvest cells from aborted fetuses, the baby must be extracted alive so that selected body portions can be removed while the cells are still viable.”

This information is intentionally twisted. There are select vaccines that use fetal cell lines — populations of cells grown in laboratories that originated from fetal tissue — but, because of purification processes, it is untrue that any vaccines have fetal cells or tissue in them. All fetal cell lines were originally developed from two aborted fetuses in the 1960s, and because fetal cell lines infinitely replicate, new tissue is not needed.

A final concern of many parents-to-be or parents of young children is the fear of the ingredients in vaccines. Anti-vax advocates frequently misrepresent the inclusion of ingredients like aluminum, formaldehyde, mercury and other scary-sounding chemicals in vaccines as dangerous.

However, it takes little research to discover that these ingredients are used in minimal amounts and all serve a purpose. Aluminum is used as an adjuvant, a substance added to some vaccines to enhance the immune response.

An infant on a regular vaccination schedule will receive approximately 4.4 milligrams of aluminum between all the vaccinations they receive by the time they are six months old. However, in the same six months, infants who are breastfed ingest approximately seven milligrams of aluminum, infants who are fed regular formula ingest about 38 milligrams of aluminum and infants who are fed soy-based formula ingest 117 milligrams of aluminum.

Formaldehyde is used to inactivate viruses, ensuring the vaccine effectively protects against disease rather than causing it. Formaldehyde also occurs naturally in the body, and a newborn baby has about 50 to 70 times more formaldehyde in their body at any given time than the amount they would receive in a vaccine.

Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative, contains ethylmercury, which is safer than methylmercury — a chemical found in certain fish, vegetables and even baby rice cereal — because it clears from the body quickly. Thimerosal is used in multidose vaccines, like the influenza vaccine, to prevent bacterial growth, but it is not found in any childhood vaccines. Additionally, as a precautionary measure, manufacturers have eliminated or reduced the amount of ethylmercury in vaccines, although there is no evidence to suggest that it is dangerous.

While initial concerns for child vaccines are understandable, it takes little research to discover how baseless these concerns are. The health of the population of the United States is at risk, and it is irresponsible to believe that vaccines are more harmful to children than potentially becoming infected with a life-threatening disease.

For many, the chance of their child becoming sick from a preventable disease feels more abstract than their child having an adverse reaction to a vaccine. Still, just because becoming ill from being unvaccinated is not absolute, it does not make leaving children unvaccinated a risk worth taking.

Vaccines have been incredibly successful in significantly lowering child mortality rates over the last several decades, and it is foolish to think that they are not necessary. Herd immunity is critical, and if the trend of parents not vaccinating their children prevails, we will see an increase in continued disease outbreaks in the coming years.

It is critical that this trend stops, or the country could face disease outbreaks comparable to those of previous centuries, putting the health and the lives of children and the greater American population at a deadly risk.

Riley Lavrovsky is a junior majoring in psychology. 

Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the view of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the Staff Editorial.