NORWALK, Ohio (WSVN) — A young Ohio man is getting all the vaccines a lot of people traditionally get as children now that he is 18 years old.
According to NPR, Ethan Lindenberger never received vaccines for diseases like hepatitis, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, or the chickenpox.
Lindenberger’s mother is anti-vaccination, and Lindenberger said she has been influenced by false information. As a result, the teen was never vaccinated.
His older sister was vaccinated and his older brother was partially vaccinated, but when his mother discovered she could opt out of the practice, she chose not to vaccinate her younger five children.
“God knows how I’m still alive,” Lindenberger wrote in a post on Reddit in November.
Lindenberger said he listened to what his mother told him about vaccines while growing up and believed it was common practice. However, upon being asked by educators to get vaccinated and learning that all of his friends had been vaccinated, he did his own research.
“When I started looking into it myself, it became very apparent that there was a lot more evidence in defense of vaccinations, in their favor,” Lindenberger told NPR.
Lindenberger said he confronted his mother with the information, but she simply rebuffed him. Now that he is a legal adult, he has gotten vaccinations for HPV, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and influenza.
Lindenberger said the vaccinations have caused a bit of tension in his family, but while he said he doesn’t question his mother’s love, he does question her judgment.
Lindenberger said that his mother has tried to convince him to stop getting vaccines, but to no avail. Lindenberger has more shots scheduled for later this month.
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