At the pediatrician's office today, I read with interest the article published on Boston.com
http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/health/articles/2011/01/23/vaccine_phobia_is_letting_preventable_infectious_diseases_needlessly_threaten_our_children/
They had made many copies available for pick up.
I am not a pediatrician nor a medical doctor but I am a PhD and have a deep understanding of how our body works and responds to diseases.
I have enjoyed reading the article, it is pretty accurate, however, it is still not quite the full story.
Of course these type of diseases do not kill every child who contracts them, we always have the child with underlying conditions (e.g immunosuppression) or simply an unfortunate genetic make up (e.g. allergies, asthma). Truth be said, side effects and death from vaccination is much much less that the terrible side effects and death by each of these diseases.
So where does the real problem lie? The problem is not in the PANIC Virus, rather in the VACCINE MANIA this country has been experiencing for some time now. What has happened to fast food, it is now happening to vaccines: SUPER SIZE ME.
We now have 5 (penta-) in one and even 6 (hexa-) in one vaccines? Why does everything have to be an extreme? First and foremost these vaccines are not tested (no matter what anyone says, if you care to search deep in the medical and scientific literature, you will find that the performance of some of our currently used vaccines will be known to us in years to come! ). In addition, some multiple vaccine combinations have begun to contain even non obligatory vaccines as well. Is the public aware of this? Lets be honest these are definitively sneaked in!
The public is not informed properly, the leaflets we get from our pediatricians have zero useful information. To name one, fever is not a true "adverse effect"... we do not mention the real ones because of course we do not want to panic the masses, at the same time if we do not educate them, we can't complain when Jenny McCarthy assumes MMR caused her son's autism.
It should also be noted that we have different kind of vaccines (made from purified proteins, attenuated, live)...which one of those causes less overload and shock to the immune-system when multiple vaccine combinations are administered? Well let me tell you my children are not going near a multiple attenuated vaccine (MMR?!).
And so how can the public be educated if the scientific and medical staff has not appropriately conducted tests and evaluated risks on vaccines currently and commonly used ?
Lets say that a vaccine is used and it is successful for many years, disease incidence goes down and percentage of recorded side effects per patient stays the same ...eventually the vaccine side effects will be higher than the ones caused by the disease...and so people will start refusing vaccination!
Are we there?
I keep discussing this with my husband, who works in the field of infectious diseases and I keep getting the usual "no matter what, vaccination is ultimately better", better for who? I think he means better for the society as a whole...but I am a mother, so what about my child? Is this vaccination better for my child? Not necessarily and this is the true answer!
We (scientist and medics) do not know what are the benefit vs risks of these multiple vaccinations on small children.
So I simply ask why should a child be submitted to all of those vaccines at once?
I have always respectfully refused.
Is it necessary for a few hours old child, to be vaccinated with hepatitis B? And a few weeks later bombarded with multiple vaccines?
MODERATION, A LARGE DOSE OF MODERATION.
In my country the multiple vaccine are still hard to find and nobody got crazy about the thimerosal and the consequences of mercury levels in vaccination. The panic in America ensued only when they started administering multiple vaccines at once in babies so young! Then it occurred to them that perhaps they would be getting too close to the levels of acceptable mercury a child could get in one go! No shit dick tracy!
I am going to end it here by saying that education, reason and moderation are all needed not just a dose of reason!
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