Over the holiday I was involved in a
heated debate over whether or not parents should have their children
vaccinated. In order to avoid my personal opinion potentially
influencing anyone, I’ll withhold what side of the argument I was on
and stick to the facts as best I can.
The CDC recommends the following series
of vaccinations from the time of birth to around 6 years old :
- Hepatitis B
- Rotavirus
- Diphtheria,tetanus, pertussis
- Haemophilus influenzae Type B
- pneumococcal
- inactivated polio-virus
- influenza
- measles, mumps, rubella
- varicella
- hepatitis A
- meningococcal
From 7 to 18 a second series of vaccinations is recommended including:
- tetanus
- diphtheria,
- pertussis,
- HPV,
- meningococcal
- influenza,
- pneumococcal,
- hepatitis A,
- hepatitis B,
- inactivated polio-virus,
- measles, mumps,
rubella
Why do they recommend all of these vaccinations? Well to answer that we have to start with what happens when you get sick.
On the most basic level, when you get
sick, your immune system fights back by producing antibodies. But
while your body is busy producing these antibodies, you are faced
with feeling the effects of the virus or bacteria. The good news is that once you
are exposed to a disease the antibodies you produce are not forgotten
and any future exposure is easily fought off the disease making it highly
unlikely to get the same illness twice. The bad news is that the
effects of the disease can be disastrous. For example, before the
Polio vaccine was developed, hundreds of thousands of children were
paralyzed and thousands more died. Hepatitis negatively effects the
liver and is incurable, tetanus kills 1 in 5 people who get it and HPV can lead to cervical cancer.
Preventing these problems cause by disease is the motivation for the
development of vaccines. A vaccine consists of a dead, weakened or
partial version of the disease that allows a person’s immune system
to develop needed antibodies without having to get sick.
If the masses are immune, the disease
slowly dies out and can become completely eradicated. This is what happened
to small pox. Small pox is a disease that caused complications such
as swelling of the brain, eye, skin and bone infection and serve
bleeding. Most troubling, it caused death in as many as 30% of all
those effected. Today, the small pox vaccine is no longer needed to be given
routinely and if we continue vaccination of the other diseases
hopefully those vaccines will be unnecessary as well. This effect is
known as a herd immunity; if everyone is immune, the disease has no
one left to infect and will die out. Today small pox only really exists in laboratories for research purposes.
Vaccines have been shown to be 90 to
100% effective. There are arguments that diseases like small pox
would have been defeated with just better sanitation and hygiene and isolating those infected. While
it did in fact help, the disease wouldn’t be killed and would still
infect people. Studies show that for those diseases we have vaccines
for, there was a dramatic drop in cases of that disease.
There is a downside to every “medical
miracle” (or any medical development for that matter). Vaccines are no exception. Minor reactions are mild
fever, rash and soreness around the injection site. Moderate reactions include, high fever,
chills or muscle aches. A high fever in children can cause febrile
seizures. The child will convulse uncontrollably and be unconscious
for a short amount of time. As scary as this may appear, it’s
normally not serious. Allergic reaction and brain infection are
possible with vaccines but are extremely rare. But all of these things
(with the exception of the soreness of the injection site and allergy), could
also be caused by other unknown means. The correlation between the
vaccine and these problems may be consequential as none of the
problems are unique to vaccines and are common in young children.
Another concern is Guillain-Barré
Syndrome which has been associated with the influenza vaccine.
Guillain-Barré Syndrome is a neurological disorder that causes the
immune system to attack the nerve cells. Around 3000 to 6000 people
develop Guillain-Barré Syndrome each year regardless of vaccination.
It’s a condition associated with influenza and therefore in very rare
cases, it’s been associated with the influenza vaccine. In 1976, the
swine flu vaccine resulted in 1 additional case per 100,000 people
than previous reports of the syndrome. Regardless, the influenza
vaccine is recommended for those at risk for contracting the flu and
having serious complications from it (usually the young and the old).
So knowing that do you want to
vaccinate your kids? Well, it is like an insurance policy. When you
have auto insurance, you are betting that you may get in an accident. There’s a decent chance you will in your lifetime but there’s no guarantee.
If a person gets a vaccine it’s a bet that the child will be exposed
to the disease. If not they are taking the chance that they won’t.
But the fact is, when children aren’t vaccinated, we start to see
outbreaks of diseases. In 1970s Japan, children weren’t vaccinated against
whooping cough due to a belief the vaccine was harmful. Within a few
years, the cases of the disease went from 393 to 13,000. It was
decided that the benefits outweigh the risks and the vaccine began
routine again. The United States has seen outbreaks of measles, mumps
and whooping cough. This is usually caused by a person who is not vaccinated leaving the country and contracts the disease only to bring it back to the States and infect others (which is why in order to visit some countries you are required to get certain vaccines). The effectiveness of vaccines is supported since,
children that contract the illness are those whose parents chose not to
get them vaccinated or could not be vaccinated for medical reasons
(with a few exceptions). Such reasons that a child couldn’t be vaccinated include previous allergic
reaction or organ transplant. So not only are you protecting your
child, you are protecting those who can’t get the vaccine.
Most of this information came straight
from the CDC so if you want any further information, that would be a
good place to start. Legally, the FDA are required to report all side
effects of any medication. Some unfortunately are unknown when the drug is released to the public and there have been a few rare cases
were side effects were under-reported. The best the public can do is
know the facts and make educated decisions. I’d urge you to look to
the experts when making these discussions and try to keep away from
conspiracy theories and propaganda on the Internet and in the media.
This turned out a lot longer than intended so I’ll go over the
counter arguments next post…