As a retired teacher, I am grateful that the students I taught were vaccinated, as they were required to be. It was the beginning of the era where people were questioning the possibilities of vaccinations causing autism.

Right now, U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly believes in individual choice with no government mandate for vaccinations. These vaccinations protect our school students from infecting each other. They keep the students safe from spreading measles, mumps, polio and Hepatitis B.

I am old enough to have seen a polio machine but not to have seen anyone in one, except in a picture. When people are left to make up their own minds, I fear we leave our population in danger of going back to before we had vaccinations.

Rep. Kelly supports Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decisions on health care and his advisory panel questioning childhood vaccinations. While those people are physicians, they are all skeptics.

Since 1991, we have been vaccinating newborns for Hepatitis B at birth. Since then, infections have had a 99% decrease. Now parents can choose to wait two months to vaccinate, which puts them at risk during their most vulnerable time.

Vaccinations have saved people's lives.

I had a friend with polio. Do you know anyone with polio? When kids recovered from polio, they might walk with braces or crutches. Kids died from the measles. Is this what we want again?

Suzan Draper, Butler