Your editorial on opting out of having one’s children vaccinated (“Our View: ‘Opt-out’ fallout includes Westbrook chicken pox outbreak,” May 18) is a reminder of a larger trend toward denying science.

Science denial is not limited to any one ideological group. We have the climate deniers, who are mostly on the right, and we have on the left those who reject the idea that any GMO product is helpful to humankind. The vaccine deniers seem to be from across the political spectrum.

Many adults who became parents after the 1980s or thereabouts likely never went to school with a classmate who had polio, as I did, nor, perhaps, have they ever experienced or known anyone with tuberculosis, diphtheria or cholera, or even the measles, mumps or chicken pox.

It seems as though some parents are treating vaccinations as a lifestyle choice, without fully appreciating the real life-and-death implications of such a decision. It suggests that they know more than the scientists who have toiled for the last two or three centuries to try to eradicate some of the most dreadful diseases known. It is a selfish decision that puts their own children and the children around them at needless risk.

Robert Howe

Brunswick