Parental Hot Topics: Childhood Immunizations

I wrote a post about this topic when applied to my own son last fall. It was called 'I choose to Vaccinate' and you can read it here.

In this post I stated my strictly personal reasons, but I'd like to touch on it again and share some other blogs and articles I've found since then that might shed a little more light on the subject. This was a more researched topic and I don't have anything negative to show because I couldn't find a lot of negative data or research on this topic. I googled for days trying to find opposing arguments about shots for kids... and just wanted to share some of my findings that I think are significant.

On this ABC News Blog, Carrie Gann writes about the risks of limiting your child's vaccines and how doing so can increase the time that the kids are vulnerable to these diseases. 

• "Dr. Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said it may be easy for parents to misunderstand the risks posed if their children skip vaccinations for diseases that have been very rare for decades."  

 The only real reason these diseases have been rare in the US for so long is BECAUSE we have vaccinated kids against them!!

• "But there has been a recent resurgence of certain diseases that could be prevented by vaccines, and doctors say it highlights the dangers of missing these shots. In May, Washington declared an outbreak of whooping cough or pertussis for the first time in decades. California declared an outbreak in 2010 after 9,000 people came down with the disease and 10 died from it. Several states have reported increasing cases of whooping cough, measles and mumps."

 The whole point of these vaccinations is to let the child's body accept them early to prevent these disease when our kids are their most vulnerable - through their first year of life.

In reading this blog from Mom's in Omaha, Nebraska I found this to be true for most parents trying to decide whether or not to vaccinate.

• "Parents who opt out of the recommended CDC immunization schedule argue that vaccinations are unsafe and that some still contain mercury. Some still feel that there are links to autism. Some feel the flu shot causes the flu. Or that it’s better to let children get chicken pox naturally. There is overwhelming evidence from the Institute of Medicine, the nation’s most esteemed adviser on issues of health and medicine, that vaccines are safe and effective in an overwhelming majority of cases. Some of the cases in which the vaccines caused serious side effects were actually because of existing conditions that didn’t present themselves until the time the child received a vaccination"

Then I started to think about all the myths that surround this subject, and in trying to just educate my readers a little I wanted to post some of the typical ideas parents have about vaccinations from this article I read about the Myths of Vaccines.

•  It's not necessarily important to Vaccinate kids against diseases no longer present in the US. 
• Reality: "Although some diseases like polio and diphtheria aren't often seen in America (in large part because of the success of the vaccination efforts), they can be quite common in other parts of the world. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that travelers can unknowingly bring these diseases into the United States, and if we were not protected by vaccinations, these diseases could quickly spread throughout the population." 

• Getting too many vaccines can overwhelm the immune system and cause adverse reactions or even serious illness. 
• Reality: "Children's immune systems are capable of combating far more antigens (weak or killed viruses) than they encounter via immunizations. In fact, the jury is still out on if there's an actual limit on how many the body can handle—though one study puts the number around a theoretical 10,000 vaccines in one day.... The CDC reports that most vaccine adverse events are minor and temporary, such as a sore arm or mild fever and "so few deaths can plausibly be attributed to vaccines that it is hard to assess the risk statistically." Of all deaths reported to the Health and Human Services' Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting site between 1990 and 1992, only one is believed to be even possibly associated with a vaccine."

• They cause Autism. 
• Reality: "There is no scientific evidence that this link exists. Groups of experts, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Institute of Medicine (IOM), agree that vaccines are not responsible for the growing number of children now recognized to have autism.... Noting the volume of scientific evidence disproving this link, an executive member of one of the nation's foremost autism advocacy groups, Autism Speaks, recently stepped down from her position because she disagrees with the group’s continued position that there is a connection between the vaccines and autism." 
• From the Autism Speaks website: "Many studies have been conducted to determine if a link exists between vaccination and increased prevalence of autism, with particular attention to the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and those containing thimerosal. These studies have not found a link between vaccines and autism. We strongly encourage parents to have their children vaccinated, because this will protect them against serious diseases. It remains possible that, in rare cases, immunization might trigger the onset of autism symptoms in a child with an underlying medical or genetic condition. Autism Speaks is funding studies on the underlying biology of autism, including studies to better understand medical and genetic conditions that are associated with autism." It's a very rare situation that this MIGHT occur.

So, before you make the decision to NOT vaccinate your child, please look at all the evidence and don't take this decision lightly.