Perhaps the answer is “crunchy moms.”

That’s my theory for why the Bellevue School District leads the state in the number of parents who decline to vaccinate their children against the measles. Spokane Public Schools is second; 2,077 students have exemptions. Plus, the immunization status of another 5,175 students is unknown because of incomplete records. Overall, the Northwest lags the nation on this critical public health issue.

Bellevue, with a large population of educated parents, is interesting because it represents the disconnect between science-based knowledge and contrived enlightenment, a condition common on the West Side and, apparently, in some local enclaves.

I hadn’t heard the term “crunchy moms” (think granola) before listening to a National Public Radio feature on a woman who used to oppose vaccination. As a young mother, she fell in with others in pursuit of a natural lifestyle – childbirth without pain medication, “co-sleeping” with babies, cloth-only diapers and so on. No harm there.

But crunchies (they can be male, too) also may turn to alternative “medicine” in an attempt to harmonize mind, body and spirit to prevent illness, and heal naturally. Immunization is “unnatural,” so they resist. This is where it gets dangerous, and why government must intervene. Otherwise, herd immunity, which was critical to eradicating measles, is undermined.

Unfortunately, most states, including Washington and Idaho, have made it too easy to opt out of vaccinations, allowing exemptions for personal, religious and medical reasons. Washington tightened up the exemption statute in 2011, mandating a doctor visit before accepting a medical excuse. But naturopaths are on the approved list of providers, and they have a history of antipathy toward immunization.

Benedict Lust, who brought naturopathy to the United States in the early 20th century, rejected the orthodoxy that microorganisms cause disease. His theory was that people caused their ailments through bad living, and he promoted many practices grounded in a pseudoscientific back-to-nature ethos. From there, herbal nostrums and vitamin sales have exploded, along with cynicism about vaccination.

Had mainstream medicine rejected germ theory, countless numbers of people would’ve been ravaged by smallpox and polio. Measles would not have been eradicated. In 1918, Lust said, “The contemporary fashion of healing disease is that of serums, inoculations and vaccines, which, instead of being an improvement on the fake medicines of former ages are of no value in the cure of disease. …”

This view isn’t monolithic among naturopaths today. For instance, Jonathan Bell sits on the Vaccine Advisory Committee at the Washington Department of Health, and in a 2014 report on the Washington Association of Naturopathic Physicians website, he wrote, “In my review of the available research, I have found an overwhelming amount of evidence supportive of vaccination.”

The practice needs more like him to spread the word.

The rising opposition to vaccination has come from several directions. On the left, inoculation is an affront to nature. On the right, government edicts are an affront to freedom. Others inexplicably cling to the thoroughly discredited link to autism.

Mississippi has cut through the excuses by only allowing exemptions for legitimate medical reasons, which are rare. As a result, the state that is a national leader in smoking and obesity has the highest vaccination rate. On this issue, it’s a public health beacon.

Lawmakers should stop co-sleeping with pseudoscience and wake up on exemptions. Parents who object can home-school their kids. It’s the natural response to what should’ve been an avoidable outbreak.