Since California has now declared whooping cough an epidemic, there’s a push to make vaccines mandatory—eliminate all exemptions for everyone, regardless of religious or philosophical beliefs. In other words, close the chapter on vaccines. Discourage any discussion.
Yes, there are no studies proving a correlation between autism and vaccines. And yes, we have to acknowledge that many, many kids get vaccinated without a problem, and many diseases have virtually disappeared since we’ve vaccinated children.
But I don’t think the topic of vaccines is as black-and-white as many would like us to believe. Here are some facts that are generally swept under the carpet.
1. A vaccination actually doesn’t guarantee that you won’t get the disease it’s targeting.
Yep, you can still get the disease even if you’re vaccinated (although this fact is seldom mentioned in articles). Moreover, there’s no predicting who is more vulnerable to the disease.
2. The medical community is not sure how long immunity lasts.
Booster shot guidelines (as to when and how often we need them) are so often changed.
3. Different countries have different vaccine schedules.
Since there’s no universally accepted schedule for vaccines, the timing and number of shots given at one time could be important variables to consider.
I may have some personal experience with the timing of vaccines. Within an hour of my youngest daughter receiving her first vaccine, her temperature shot up, and she started experiencing convulsions. We were lucky—no brain damage as my doctor feared may have resulted, but I’ll never forget that agonizing night.
My daughter was born six weeks premature. So in a sense, she was really only two weeks old when I dutifully took her to get her shot at the two-month mark. Would she have had the severe reaction if I had waited until she was older? Who knows? After that night, our doctor wrote emphatically all over our daughter’s medical chart that she should never, ever receive any future whooping cough vaccines.
4. Today’s seniors have not received the same number of current vaccines as today’s kids.
That means we don’t have medical studies that prove there are no long-term effects from vaccines. In the absence of such data, I’m guessing we won’t find even the strongest proponents of vaccines giving their patients a signed guarantee that there will never be any adverse effects as a result of being vaccinated.
Those are just a few of the facts that need to be included in a general discussion on vaccines. And then, throw into the mix all the parents who swear their child’s neurological development significantly declined after getting a shot. I’ve met many of them. These parents often have pre- and post-videos that underscore their convictions of the change. You’ll never get them to believe that there wasn’t a correlation between the vaccine and the change in their child thereafter.
So that’s why we have to keep talking about vaccines, why we have to keep all parts of the discussion alive. Most importantly, we should be concerned about trends that automatically dismiss parents who question health and safety issues as ignorant victims of sensationalized media. Instead, we should all want to encourage healthy discussions that focus on unfiltered factual information—until we find answers that are truly satisfying to everyone.
There are many things about the idea that exemptions being removed, for instance, my daughter had a reaction to the acellular pertussis component of the shot (DTaP) which was made acellular to prevent reactions. At that time I was told by the doctor to NEVER give ANY of my children a pertussis shot again….
Fast forward 7 years, ds kicked a hayfork on accident, got a puncture wound, try to find a medical establishment which will give a Td shot to a child without the pertussis component in it. It took almost 2 days before we could find a place which actually HAD the Td, and then MANY phone calls to the pharmacist to try to see if it was possible to actually give Td to a child rather than an adult. The problem with this new idea is it will take options off the table as they phase out the Td in favor of DTaP only giving both adults and children the same combination.
Thankfully this is a shot which I do not also have huge moral problems with, but if they push the envelope with this shot, what happens when they decide that they are going to remove the ability to state medical, religious, moral, ethical, or philosophical objections to other shots?
Another problem with the whole vaccine debate is that both sides are severely polarized and much of the time each spends talking to the public is spent demonizing the other side of the aisle rather than producing evidence that the shots are safe….or not….that they should be morally objectionable or not….etc.
The most informative piece of information I have found on them was the product insert sheet. I know it is prohibitive to read for anyone who does not have a medical background, but when you take the effort, and use a good dictionary to look up the words which are elusive in meaning, you can see exactly what it is that they expect us to inject into ourselves, and our children. Whether the germs are alive or dead, what they grow the disease on, what they preserve the solution with, who the indicated recipient is, and for whom the shot is medically unwise….etc.
That did far more to make up my mind regarding what we do with our children than all of the other sensationalized rhetoric for one side or the other.
I am a nurse, I have worked in Head Start in CA, where much of my time was spent dealing with the immunization status of children, and learning about immunizations (at least what the govt. wanted us to know about them), and as a result of my own additional study, my husband and I have opted to not use most of the available immunizations….Sadly, all of the answers will not be satisfactory to everyone, the government will still want immunized populations, and various people will still want to opt out for a variety of reasons, the answers which reassure one group that mass immunization is the right thing to do are the same answers which start alarm bells going in others’ minds.
Thanks for your thoughtful response. Nothing like a personal experience with vaccines to prompt a quest for more information. Like the suggestion for reading the actual product insert, and thanks for keeping the discussion alive.
Nancy