For Many, Obama Visit is Start of Healing Journey
The two blasts that rocked the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon caused physical damage to Boylston Street and killed or injured hundreds of innocent people. News of the bombing traveled backward along the 26.2-mile course instantaneously, affecting every inch of the annual race. Three days later in a new, high-security Boston, local dignitaries, political officials, families of the three people who were killed in the bombings, hundreds of Boston Athletic Association volunteers, Boston Police, fire and medical personnel and The First Family gathered at the Church of the Holy Cross for an interfaith service in Boston’s South End to pray for the victims and to attempt to close this dark chapter of the marathon’s 117 year history. President Barack Obama stirred the solemn crowd with a speech that highlighted the display of strength of a close-knit city and especially the victims. “Know this,” he said. “As you begin this long journey to recovery: your city is with you, your Commonwealth is with you, your country is with you, we will all be with you for when you learn to stand and walk and, yes, run again. Of that I have no doubt: You will run again.” Hopkinton volunteers find solace in president’s words Monday, April 15 was as beautiful a race-day one could ask for. When the bombs went off at 2:49 p.m., the shockwave of information reached Hopkinton as fast as it takes to send a text message. There stood Boston Athletic Association volunteers Patryk Kornecki and Robert George, sending runners off at the starting line on Main Street. When the bombs went off they’d already wrapped up their day’s work, but knew that pain and fear would lie ahead. They were in attendance along with several volunteers wearing blue and white Boston Marathon jackets in a show of strength and solidarity, rising to simultaneously defy the bombers and be at the sides of the victims. “The thing is…our whole society was down,” George, 21, said in an interview after the ceremony, “With President Obama giving such a moving speech it just uplifted the whole society.” George said the show of support since Monday has filled him with a sense of pride for the running community and the people of Massachusetts. “It gives a sense of pride, of devotion to the whole community to rise again, to forget about the tragedies…and look toward a better future,” he said. Wellesley attendees drew strength from meaning of Patriots’ Day Up the road, at mile marker 13.1 in Wellesley, Marathon Monday is nothing short of Mardi Gras. The Wellesley College women form the “scream tunnel,” where […]
Parenting: Are So Many Shots for Baby Safe?
For parents concerned about vaccines and the possibility of harm they may do, the newest research tests the “too many, too soon” theory, and encourages us to put it to rest. Today the central worry questions the large number of vaccines given, and how many are given at one time, especially when they’re being administered to the vulnerable bodies of very young children. The new study, published online April 1 in the Journal of Pediatrics, found no relationship between the increased exposure to vaccines and autism. As the number of recommended childhood vaccinations has grown over the decades, so have autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnoses – and in the public mind, the two have been difficult to separate. Fifteen years ago, a now-discredited paper first started the controversy around vaccines and autism. That study described eight children who developed autism after receiving the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine. In big scarlet letters, “RETRACTED” now appears across that paper on the website of the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, which refuted the paper in 2010. In 2004, the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the health arm of the nonprofit National Academy of Sciences, concluded from its review of evidence that neither the MMR vaccine nor thimerosal, a preservative that is another focus of parents’ concern, causes autism. Yet about a third of parents still have doubts about vaccine safety, and one survey found that more than 10 percent of parents delay or refuse vaccinations, most of those believing that it’s safer to delay than to administer them according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) schedule. It’s an issue that’s alive and well in our own community, judging from the discussions on GardenMoms, the 8,700-member strong online parenting group in the Boston metro area. Parents asking for doctors who are sympathetic to alternative vaccination schedules will find that commenters in the group can easily provide those referrals. Consider that two-year-olds today should have received a total of about two dozen shots and as many as five jabs in a visit to the doctor’s office, for protection from 13 separate diseases. In comparison, their parents as babies were likely immunized against seven illnesses. We’ve seen eradication of smallpox and we’re oh, so close on polio, thanks to vaccines. Yet with the volumes of anti-vaccine information available to 21st century parents, it’s no surprise that they’re wondering about the wisdom of that difference. But according to the new research – which was a secondary analysis of existing data on 1,008 children who were born in the years 1994 to ’99 – there was no increased risk of developing autism, as the babies in the study […]