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Previous Volume 350:1156 March 11, 2004 Number 11 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

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To the Editor: The recommendation by Offit and Peter in their Sounding Board article (Dec. 11 issue)¹ that clinicians and colleges actively inform parents about the benefits of meningococcal vaccine is a classic example of the "fallacy of the commons." The fallacy is that individuals can act without consequences to themselves or society. For example, the authors seem to assume that a parent's decision to purchase $80 of vaccine will incur no loss of opportunity to purchase something more valuable, such as a lipid profile. They seem to assume that the effort spent on informing parents of college students about . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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