Some friends of mine recently had a baby boy, and while he’s currently perfectly healthy, they are opting not to have him innoculated. This appals me. To support their position, they’ve thrown some books( and I use the term loosely) at me. Every one says that inocculations are useless at best and unbelievably dangerous at worst. Except for “How to Rais Healthy Kids In Spite of Your Doctor”, the others they showed me were by homeopathic “authorities” of one sort or another. They were a trifle non-plussed when I explained waht malarky homeopathy actually is (they didn’t even know what the word meant; thought it meant “holistic”), but that wasn’t enough. I greatly fear I’m in a “you can’t reason a man out of a position he did not arrive there by reason” type situation.
So I went to Amazon to back up my side and was flabergasted to see how many jaw-droppingly awful books are being foisted onto the gullible public. I couldn’t find a single book that explains why vaccination is a good idea.
So now I turn to you, the teaming millions for references. What should I be looking for, and where should I be looking? I’ve found a few resources on the net, but Lord, not much. And while I’m on the topic, I’m also looking for good books on the history of epidemics. I’ve already got “Plagues and Peoples” by McNeill, but what else is recommended? Particulary focused on modern times?
I know this may be moved to Great Debates, but I thought I’d start here.
I live in Asheville, NC which has been called America’s New Age Mecca. We have lots and lots of anti-vaccine folks around town. Outside of town, (within 50 miles or so) there are many “Intentional Communities”. These are places where people live in mud and straw houses, take gravity powered showers, always breastfeed (which is fine with me), and rarely have their children vaccinated. About two summers ago there was an outbreak of polio at an intentional community. Can you imagine that, an outbreak of polio at the end of the 20th century? If you want to convince your friends to have their child vaccinated, show them a picture of a child with polio. Explain to them that this is a very real possibility.
I’m off to look for a cite for the above incident.
It looks like I got the disease wrong. It doesn’t appear that it was polio. Damn my memory! I’ll look into it further. I’m positive that some kids got messed up by something that most kids are vaccinated against.
Not all parents who choose to delay the innoculation of their children are tree hugging nutters. Not all choose to live in straw huts and practice communal type living. Not all of us anti-vaccination-at-an-early-age proponents enter into this decision lightly and once that decision is made, many embark on a constant re-evaluation process. Contrary to popular belief, parents who choose not to have their infant kids vaccinated in the first few years of their lives, don’t necessarily make a bee line to the nearest holistic practitioner any more than they consult the local tarrot card reader. We have not all lost our minds nor are we happily experimenting with our children’s health. We are doing what makes sense in light of the limited data available decribing the detriments of early and heavy doses of vaccination. Given that a majority of parents give absolutely no thought to this very serious issue while they happily hand over their kids to the local physician, we feel that we are at the very least on higher moral ground. Not because we chose not to vaccinate but because we chose to give the matter the serious consideration in warrants.
So kindly knock off the premature judgements until you’ve heard and read all the facts. You don’t hear me ranting and raving “I told you so!” every time a child is reported to have brain damage due to encephelitis (sp?) because he/she reacted badly to the latest round of DPT vaccination.
By the way, did you know that more and more findings are being published establishing links between Immunological disorders and vaccination? Ditto for Parkinsons, Diabetese, Alzheimers, etc… I’d love to give you a cite but I’m working under a serious deadline and don’t have the luxury or searching for it right now. I’m sure you will find it with the same amount of success as I if you give it a try.
Try this site http://www.cdc.gov/nip/. Pretty concise and comprehensive. Children die from diseases that are preventable and that is senseless. People also get sick from immunizations. Make your decision then accept the consequences of your actions.
Quicksilver, I know you are busy, but I’d really like to see some cites for your information. I know that there are some hazards associated with vaccinations, but to the best of my knowledge serious adverse reactions are rare, and nothing compared to the consequences of your child catching one of these diseases.
Remember why the vaccines were invented to start with - children were dying from these diseases.
sliv, you might remind your friends that, regardless of their personal feelings about vaccines, in many states your child cannot enter a day-care program or attend school without a valid vaccination record. Vaccination requirements are a public health matter, not an individual choice - other children’s lives are at stake. While your friends might choose to risk their children’s lives by refusing vaccinations, they have no right to expose other people’s children to whatever diseases their unvaccinated children might be carrying.
Immune systems, especially in the young, are tricky things, and vaccinations do not guarantee immunity - they are simply our best bet on preventing these diseases. It is one thing to risk having your own child contract, for example, polio - it is another thing entirely to risk exposing another 600 first graders to such a horrible disease.
QS, there are some studies that show some sort of corr between innoc & various afflictions, but the same corr can be drawn from phases of the moon, etc. All of these corr. disapear like the morning dew when the next study is done. There is not one study that shows a solid danger to a normal child from the std early innoc. And by YOU not innoc YOUR child, you’re putting off they day that NO child has to innoc for anything (like with smallpox). Sounds selfish to me.
Sliv, try the CDC or the Surgeon General.
Oh, and Polio HAS made a minor comeback. One of my buddies, had it, and he was the last before the vaccine. God, please don’t let that happen to YOUR child. I beg you.
QuickSilver and anyone who does not intend to vaccinate your child: I congratulate you for being responsible parents but you must repeat must read all the evidence [good cites are http://www.cdc.gov and the World Health Organization]. The evidence is overwhelming positive as to the benefits of immunization and child survival. The choice in the US is ultimately yours. Several items to consider:
a. Did your child’s mother breastfeed your child until at least three months? One of the most significant benefits of breastfeeding is to pass on the mother’s antibodies to her child - in other words “immunization”.
b. What are the chances of adverse reactions in your child?
Some chance ranging from slight aches at the site, slight fever [the most prevalent], vaccine induced disease to severe adverse reactions which happen one in a million. The chances of your child dying in a car accident are greater than dying from a severe vaccination reaction.
c. What are the chances of falling ill of the disease? It all depends upon the vaccine efficacy rate and the number of parents in your area who took the minimal risk and had their children immunized. It is clear that a child is at higher risk of dying from the preventable disease than a severe adverse reaction.
d. The authorities who advocate not vaccinating your children do not have or refuse to accept the scientific data showing that immunizations are safe. These advocates tend to resurface every seven years or so. What happens? Lots of parents decide not to have their child immunized which results in large pockets of unprotected children who are the first to fall victim during epidemics. Since the last twenty years there have been large pertussis epidemics in Great Britain, the US [multiple], Japan and Europe. For all intents and purposes, each child’s death was the result of that child not being protected by immunization.
e. The ability to postpone epidemics by reducing disease transmission or eradicating it altogether depends upon our participation in immunization programs. Your child’s risk of exposure is increasing as our globe is shrinking. You’d have to live in Montana, home school your child and never go to town to lower the risk of exposure to some disease agent.
I personally have seen too many young children die from measles or are crippled by polio simply because they were not immunized. One of my cousins failed to have your second child fully immunized and he is now deaf due to a bad bout of meningitis. A friend of mine died from fulminant hepatitis B because he did not complete his series of shots. All my kids have been vaccinated at the earliest possible moment because I could not in good conscience not protect them from disease and possible death.
I will be perfectly honest with you and will let you know that my public health specialty is child survival. So I might be “biased” towards immunizations. I guess I am because I have seen the positive results: closing down a measles ward in an African capital [it had to be reopened some eight years later because immunization rates plummeted as the country fell apart politically], I have seen increasing child survival rates due principally to immunizations, much fewer polio cases just ten years after an immunization program began. I have seen African mothers walk twenty miles plus to have their child immunized or who gathered together before dawn to participate in a immunization campaign. I have only seen three adverse reactions [beyond the aches and fever] which was due to badly administered BCG shots. I have heard of one severe reaction during one campaign which was due to an allergic reaction which the staff quickly responded to. There probably have been others since I have been doing this stuff since 1984.
Again, thanks for acting like a responsible parent for your child. It’s important to have a logical and sound reason for doing or not doing something for your child. On the other hand, it is foolish to look at the true facts in this case and decide not to protect your child. Yes, there are risks to immunization. The benefits, however, far outweigh those one in a million risks. Yes, it is a tragedy if your child is that one in a million. Yes, it is doubly tragic when a child dies from a vaccine preventable disease because his parent foolishly decided against the true facts.
To answer your question, you will really have to slog through dozens of scientific reports on the efficacy and adverse effects of the many vaccines now available. You can find these reports by searching the data base maintained by the (U.S.) National Library of Medicine which can be found at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/
If you don’t have some experience with biostatistics or epidemiology you may find some of the reports hard to interpret.
An excellent and very readable paper on the “Health consequences of religious and philosophical exemptions from immunization laws: individual and societal risk of measles” by Salmon DA, Haber M, Gangarosa EJ, Phillips L, Smith NJ, Chen RT can be found in the 7 July 1999 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Another publication by the same group on whooping cough immunization is Gangarosa EJ, Galazka AM, Wolfe CR, Phillips LM, Gangarosa RE, Miller E, Chen RT “Impact of anti-vaccine movements on pertussis control: the untold story” which appeared in The Lancet for 31 January 1998.
Quicksilver, if you find the time, I’m seriously interested in reading your information.
I’m sure human vaccines are much more critically researched and tested, but there are several vaccines available for dogs and cats that are controversial, and individual veterinarians and/or owners might elect not to use them. Whle I’m a firm believer in vaccination in general, it is also wise to educate oneself about the potential problems associated with some vaccines, especially new ones. Vaccinations for diseases such as chickenpox, which is not usually a serious illness, might be a more controversial matter.
However, something to consider about vaccines is that, in most cases, they are used as protection against viruses, against which we have no other defense. Bacterial infections are treatable with antibiotics (although antibiotic resistance is becoming a serious problem), but there a very few anti-viral drugs available, they are not particularly effective, and generally have pretty serious side effects. Once you become infected by a virus, all that can really be done is relieve the symptoms while hoping that the body’s immune system can cope with the invader. Much better to prevent the viral infection to begin with, than to acquire it and hope you are strong enough to survive it!
Are there any bacterial vaccines for humans? I know there are a few for domestic animals, but they are not very effective and often involve serious side effects. At the moment, I can’t even remember the correct term for a bacterial vaccine.
Why don’t you all try to accept the reality that vaccinations can KILL.
I was affected by the DPT shot as a child(yes it’s been proven, and I won a federal lawsuit). I’ve spoken about this several times on this board. Try going to http://www.909shot.com for some info, or for a very informative book(that just happens to feature me :)), read “DPT: A shot in the dark” by Barbara Loe Fisher.
Essentially, I’m one of two DPT reacted children who are productive adults(although the reaction has left me with epilepsy, LD’s, allergies and athsma).
I’m not saying that immunizing is bad, because I support most vaccinations, but certainly not the DPT shot. My brother was opted out after my reaction, and he’s suffered none. As a result of the above, my children will be opted out as well.
If every child was opted out, there’d be a problem, but for a few kids to be opted out for various reasons, be it philosophical or medical, shouldn’t be the end of the world.
GaWD, I am truly sorry that your life was so seriously altered as the result of the shot. You’ve made it clear- you have zero perspective, beyond your own case ( and yeah, being published in a book kind of removes the need for a cite here on SD).
Nobody doubts that there are people, a VERY small number, who suffer. The recent stories on the Military and the Anthrax shots are another example. This is a society, however. Sadly, numbers dictate policy. I for one am grateful for that. While I monitor all health issues that affect my kids as closely as I can, I have never for a second doubted the percentages where immunization shots are concerned.
Do as you wish with your kids. I wouldn’t call you a tree-hugging nutter. I’d simply say you are chosing paths for your children, based on your own tragic experience. I do that too. I have been attacked by dogs ( PLURAL ), and my kids are afraid of dogs. Same concept.
However, my kids’ fear of dogs can’t cost 25 other kids in school their health, or their lives. You excercise your independance at a ( possibly ) huge cost to others. Does that not bother you at all?
I believe the problem was with the P part of the DPT shot. You can now get just a DT shot if that is what you wish. There were/are significant problems with the P vaccine. But if all children were immunized with the P vaccine, less total childern would die. If a few parents wish to opt out its there business, but you can’t eliminate all risk in life.
Yes, you can get just a DT instead of a DPT. Many neurologists rcommend DT-only for children with known neurological disorders, such as my son. There are also new P components that may have less risk.
“Concern about the possible role of pertussis vaccine in causing neurologic reactions has been present since the earliest days of vaccine use. Rare but serious acute neurologic illnesses, including encephalitis/encephalopathy and prolonged convulsions, have been anecdotally reported following receipt of whole-cell pertussis vaccine given as DTP (62,63). Whether pertussis vaccine causes or is only coincidentally related to such illnesses or reveals an inevitable event has been difficult to determine conclusively … the National Childhood Encephalopathy Study (NCES) and other controlled epidemiologic studies have provided evidence that DTP can cause acute encephalopathy (64-68). This adverse event occurs rarely, with an estimated risk of zero to 10.5 episodes per million DTP vaccinations (68) … According to IOM, the balance of evidence was consistent with a causal relationship between DTP and some forms of chronic nervous system disorders in children who had developed an acute neurologic disorder after receiving DTP. However, IOM also concluded that the results were insufficient to determine whether DTP increases the overall risk for chronic nervous system dysfunction in children.”
GaWd:
I certainly accept that reality, and I think many of the other participants do. I also accept that eating fried chicken can KILL, stepping off the sidewalk to cross the street can KILL, and almost all actions we take in life can KILL. We cannot and should not avoid evertyhing that can KILL. We have to make decisions based on the possibility of death, the probability of death, and many other factors.