Walnut Creek , California ( CNN ) -- On a beautiful morning in my hometown of Walnut Creek , California , I sat watching my daughter playing in the park . There she was , along with many other kids , swinging , sliding , and running with the kind of pure joy you see only in children . Behind us lay a green soccer field , filled with two teams of kids competing for nothing but bragging rights and team spirit . Their parents along the sidelines were enjoying the action . My daughter is just 2 years old , but I looked forward to the day I would be one of those parents , cheering her on to victory . If it were 60 years ago , many children on this playground and soccer field might have been crippled or died from childhood diseases for which we now have vaccines . Children growing up in that era were at risk for infections like polio , measles , whooping cough , meningitis , and many other diseases that infect , maim and kill without prejudice or warning . All of this changed when some dedicated , hardworking doctors and scientists discovered a way to protect children from these scourges : vaccines . Like a suit of armor , vaccines shielded children against these infections . Even better , as more children got vaccinated , that protection extended to kids who could n't be vaccinated , like those who were too young to get shots . In the time before vaccines , there were years where measles infected , maimed or killed half a million people ; polio paralyzed nearly 16,000 ; whooping cough infected nearly 150,000 people . The victims of these illnesses were mostly children like mine , yours , and those at the park . But as children everywhere got vaccinated , communities banished these diseases into medical history . By 2001 , there was a 99.99 percent reduction in measles compared with the pre-vaccine era ; the reductions in whooping cough and meningitis were 96 percent and 99 percent , respectively . No child gets polio anymore . It 's easy to give the credit for that success to doctors and vaccine makers , but it 's really parents and communities who deserve praise . They did the hard work of making sure their children and their neighbors ' children got vaccinated . For all that success , however , the reputation of vaccines got a black eye about a decade ago , when a doctor in England called a news conference and dramatically announced that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine caused autism . The shock of that discovery sent ripples of fear through parents and communities in Britain . Like a contagion , that fear soon spread to America . Many parents began refusing to get their kids shots because of a growing anti-vaccination movement . That movement , though small , is well-funded , vocal -- even violent at times -- and supported by some prominent people : politicians , doctors , celebrities and media leaders . These folks took a claim against one vaccine and , by twisting rumors and innuendo into `` evidence , '' advanced a conspiracy theory that all childhood vaccines caused autism . What nobody knew was that the British doctor who claimed vaccines caused autism , Andrew Wakefield , had his own secrets . Among them , that he had performed some very risky , invasive experiments on children without approval from the hospital he worked at ; that he had accepted nearly a million dollars from legal firms suing vaccine manufacturers ; and that he had applied for a patent for a replacement vaccine to the one he claimed caused autism , which would have made him a very rich man . More important was the fact that anybody who tried to reproduce Wakefield 's research could n't get the same results . Further , study after study on the MMR and other vaccines showed no link between any of them and autism . But by the time the truth about Wakefield came out in 2004 , it was too late . The notion that vaccines cause autism became conventional wisdom in many places . As a result , in pockets of our country , vaccination rates have dropped precipitously . And , to nobody 's surprise , that choice has resurrected long-gone diseases . In 2008 , a San Diego , California , child , whose parents had refused to vaccinate him , returned from vacation with measles , exposing children too young to be vaccinated to the disease . Any child who had been exposed had to be quarantined for several weeks at home . No school . No park . No sports . In early 2009 , a child in rural Minnesota died from meningitis caused by the bacteria Haemophilus influenzae . His parents had refused to vaccinate him against the disease . Four other children were hospitalized with the exact same disease . Two of those were also children of parents who had refused vaccines . The fourth was a 5-month-old baby who was just too young to have been completely immunized . The fifth was a child who has an immune deficiency . This year , in my home state of California , more than 900 cases of whooping cough have been recorded so far , up from around 200 last year . Five children have died . Three months ago , the Lancet , the journal which first published Andrew Wakefield 's work , formally retracted his original research paper , expunging its existence from the canon of medical research . Shortly afterward , he was banned from practicing medicine in the United Kingdom . Doctors and scientists may be satisfied with that outcome , but what happens next is n't up to us . Rather , and just like 60 years ago , it 's up to you . You 're going to have to decide whether to vaccinate your children . And if you decide , as I hope you do , to protect your children against these deadly diseases , then you 'll be choosing health . You 'll be choosing health for your child and family . You 'll be choosing health for your community , because every child who 's vaccinated helps to create an ecosystem of protection for those too young to get shots . You 'll be choosing to keep your kids out of my doctor 's office and keep them on that playground , in school , on that soccer field , which is right where they belong . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Rahul Parikh .
Rahul Parikh : Before vaccines , polio , measles , whooping cough , meningitis afflicted children . Parikh : Diseases virtually wiped out , but an anti-vaccine trend threatens to bring them back . Comment: As whooping cough cases mount in California , he says , it 's clear kids need shots .