Joseph,
Avram, what would a middle ground constitute and how might someone taking a middle ground on this issue act on that position vis-a-vis vaccinating his children?
The extremes are narrow, but the middle is broad. And different families have different situations, needs, and concerns. For example, in the situation I described above about the infant having a scary reaction after vaccines – the doctor should discuss what happened with the parents in a compassionate and sympathetic way (and actually report the reaction), and make recommendations that take the parents’ concerns into consideration and are based on the actual risk/benefit ratio for that family at that time, not scare tactics. Better for the vaccinations to be spread out, or even one or two declined, than to demand the parents stick to the schedule and threaten to deny them medical care, which will potentially result in the kid not getting any more vaccinations (or checkups).
Some thought can go into this. If parents want to space out vaccinations and their child is in daycare, a doctor can recommend that it is a good idea to not delay vaccinations such as Hep-B and Pertussis. If the baby is at home all of the time, maybe those vaccinations can be done after the first birthday. Etc. etc.