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This is a tough call. The ABC show is basically arguing for freedom of speech.

The Doctors' group and others are arguing against what they are basically labeling as reckless disinformation and rumors about the safety of childhood vaccinations.

Measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, smallpox, polio, etc. used to cripple and/or kill children and adults.

The higher the number of children denied immunization based upon parental fears that immunizations cause autism, the greater the risk of reemergence of deadly illnesses, sadly resulting in an increase in the number of deaths from preventable diseases.

Yet the anti-immunization side has many heartrending anecdotal stories with claims that childhood vaccines cause autism.

I have a couple of anecdotal stories, one from my childhood, and a current one.

When I was in third grade, one day a friend told me that her brother had died from whooping cough. It was very sad hearing that and I began crying right along with my friend.

It didn't occur to me to be frightened because I had never heard of whooping cough. It also didn't occur to me that my friend's brother had exposed everyone in my friend's family and everyone at school. My childhood naivete back then protected me from fear and allowed my sadness to govern.

Today I have friends who had a lovely baby boy born about fourteen years ago. Sometime around their son's third birthday, the parents noticed that their son had some very serious behavior problems. The Mother was convinced that her son had autism and that the autism was caused by the vaccinations given to her son shortly after his birth.

The couple spent the next several years taking their son to different specialists. Finally a doctor diagnosed the boy as having Asperger's Syndrome, which is one of many autism disorders along the autism spectrum.

After seeing the boy's many struggles, after hearing the parents' endless stories, including how much work they went through, first in getting their son diagnosed and then finding adequate treatment for him, I admit to having some difficulty not believing that the vaccinations may have caused their son's autism.

Yet the couple's second born child, a girl, also began displaying similar behaviors at the same age her brother had first begun displaying his autism symptoms. As I recall, the couple had not permitted doctors to give their daughter any vaccinations.

This raises a couple of questions. In the case of my friends and their son and daughter, both diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, it seems that Asperger's might have been a disorder which was genetically based.

Yet what parent in their right mind would risk their child getting Asperger's Syndrome by relying on current medical opinion that Asperger's Syndrome is just a heritable illness and that childhood vaccines are safe?

What parent could be reassured that they have nothing to fear from currently recommended childhood immunizations, especially, as in the case of my friends, if they already had one vaccinated child diagnosed as having autism?

And then there's my childhood friend's brother who died of whooping cough.

What parent in their right mind would put their child at risk of dying from a preventable illness by forbidding their child the protection afforded by childhood vaccines?

I believe in freedom of speech, otherwise, someone today might say that I have no right to type up my opinion nor share my anecdotal stories.

However freedom of speech ends when someone wants to yell "FIRE!" in a crowded theater.

In this case, I don't see any difference between someone yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater and the network airing a show portraying parents of an autistic child winning millions of dollars in a lawsuit against a medical corporation in a claim that their child's autism was caused by childhood vaccinations.