A Fort Hood soldier's wife sparked a Halloween conversation on Facebook after she said two men passed out anti-vaccine information to children who were trick-or-treating in a neighborhood on post.
According to Sarah Rogers' account, the two men walked down a street in the Pershing Park Family Housing complex and handed kids and some parents Halloween bags that were filled with a pen that looked like a syringe, an anti-vaccine information sheet of paper, and two pieces of candy.
Rogers said parents have every right to choose not to vaccinate their children, but she did not believe strangers approaching children on the street to deliver vaccination information was the proper way to provide that information.
“I don’t care what people think about vaccines," Rogers said by phone. "I vaccinate my children. And, I respect another parent’s choice not to. But, to give it to a child – to hand a syringe pen like that to a child is completely unacceptable.”
The anti-vaccine information sheet claimed vaccines were linked to autism, diabetes, and cancer. The piece of paper directed readers to a website called LearnTheRisk.org.
Brandy Vaughan, the website's founder and executive director, said her organization had a rubber bracelet initiative for Halloween, but she said some individuals prefer the fliers instead. She said the fliers were free to download off the Learn the Risk website, and her organization had no control over how they were distributed.
"There is a local Learn The Risk Texas chapter that was just launched," Vaughan wrote in an email. "The main non-profit organization is global since the vaccine conversation is an important one everywhere."
It was unclear who the two people who distributed the papers were, so neither could be immediately reached.
