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Here's the October 14th announcement of the first four cases of polio in Minnesota.
As Joe wrote, many American children are under-vaccinated. A 2003 CDC survey revealed that, by age two, more than 1/3 of American children have been at least six months late getting one or more standard childhood immunizations, and only 18% of kids in the U.S. are getting all their vaccinations when they should.
The MedPageToday Teaching Brief cited above goes on to say:
"There is also concern under-vaccinated children may be geographically clustered...which would raise the potential for outbreaks and if children aren't properly immunized, rates of infection could be exacerbated. For example, the CDC points to an outbreak of whooping cough in the 1990s in which 25 infants died, 15 of whom had not been vaccinated in time."
A survey by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health showed that most parents who opt out of standard immunizations for their school-age children do so not because of any religious beliefs but because they believe the shots could harm their kids. According to the MedPageToday Teaching Brief that reported this finding:
"...69% of the parents surveyed in four states whose children had shot exemptions cited concern about the safety of vaccines as their chief reason for rejecting them.... Nearly half said that vaccines might 'overload the immune system.' Other reasons for requesting exemptions from mandatory school-entrance vaccinations included the belief that children weren't at risk for the disease anyway, that the disease was not dangerous, or that the vaccines might not work.... Exemptions for religious, ethical or moral reasons (i.e. opposition to animal testing of vaccines) ranked lower among their reasons for not being vaccinated."
A survey of primary-care pediatricians in Chicago showed that 39% of those doctors would end their relationships with families who refused all vaccines, and 28% would end their relationships with families who refused some vaccines. 85% of the doctors surveyed had treated patients who refused some vaccines, and 54% had patients who turned down all vaccines.
While rejecting patients may not be quite the right approach, those doctors have a convincing point. The truth is, unvaccinated children are at greater risk for contracting vaccine-preventable diseases and they're more likely to transmit those diseases to children too young to be vaccinated, people who can't be vaccinated because of medical problems, and people who, for some reason, don't develop immunity after being vaccinated. "Bucking the Herd", an article published in The Atlantic Monthly in 2002, uses the experience of families in Boulder, Colorado, to show how parents who refuse vaccination for their kids may be putting entire communities at risk.
Read the USFDA publication "Understanding Vaccine Safety: Immunization Remains Our Best Defense Against Deadly Disease."
Here is a list of six common misconceptions about vaccination and how to respond to them. And this CDC site describes what would happen if we stopped giving vaccinations.
This message board run by the Berkeley Parents Network shows the kinds of questions and answers parents are asking and giving each other on the subject of vaccination.
And here's a personal observation: my daycare provider, who works from her home, recently asked another family to leave her program because they refused to vaccinate their child. While I respect those parents' right to reject vaccines on religious or philosophical grounds, I also say, "Go, Deb! Keep the other kids safe!"
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