Do yo ubelieve in vaccinations for your baby/toddler?

I know we have a few grown-ups here so I would like to generate some discussion on what your experience has been. We are expecting our first child in June and will be faced with a few tough decisions.

Here is a link against vaccinations:

http://www.mercola.com/2002/mar/27/vaccine_infants.htm

http://www.mercola.com/2004/feb/25/v..._discovery.htm

We got all the vacines my pediatrician recommended we get for our 2 kids.

Ask your pediatrician we he/she thinks.

For us it was a no-brainer.

Yup vaccinate...why take that chance with your little one?

If there was truly a huge danger, wouldn't you think most folks would have stopped vaccinating years ago, and doctors would all be against it?

Our two year old has all her shots and isn't any worse for wear.

We got the shots. Vaccines are one of the advantages of living in the modern western world...

The only one I have SOME concerns over is the Smallpox Vaccine if its reintroduced (even though I had it, and my wife had it with no problems)

I was in the last cohort of British kids not to be vaccinated against the measles. I caught the measles and was so ill I had the last rites read over me. Just have a guess where I stand on the need for vaccination.

Having said that, there are some rare instances where a particular vaccine may not be suitable for a particular child, but a talk with your paedeatrician should sort this out.

Vaccinate! Mumbo jumbo aside, and no offence to chiroprators(sp) but having your neck re-aligned (which carries it's own inherent risks) will not protect you, or your children from any physical infections.

There IS some small chance at actually developing an adverse reaction to a vacination. However, the benefits of the treatments far outweight the possible adverse effects.

In under 100 years we went from a very real threat of death in childhood from Measles, Polio, and Small Pox to the elimination of one, and the virtual elimination of the others.

There was a minor debate about this recently (again) in Ontario after a group of Chiroprators came out advocating the government stop vaccinating children. Thank god wiser heads prevailed.

Definitely vaccinate. What you have to remember is that a baby's immune system is underdeveloped and it takes a while for the immune system to become mature. Vaccines help in a sense that they build up the immune system and help develop it. With all the viruses that are out there, vaccinations are a must.
Look, just cause one doctor says it's bad doesn't mean squat. If indeed vaccinations were really bad for kids then I would guess the whole world would have regulations against vaccines, which is not the case.

At least this thread is a lot tamer than the ones on the parenting forums I visit!

You'll find just about every mothering/parenting forum out there will state the evils of vaccinations and invariably, someone posts links to the Mercola site. Don't let one website and a zillion frantic first-time mothers influence you into not thinking for yourself.

Personally, I'm all for vaccinations. I'm not as firm about their scheduling and some of the "lesser" diseases, but for the traditional biggies, you got it.

There's a lot of people who use scare tactics to instill fear in already nervous parents. . ."OMG my kid is going to be autistic!". I'm sure you've heard all this before. The long-term complications of many of these diseases are no less severe than any potential complications from vaccinations.

In any case, the decision is solely up to you and the mother. That's the beauty of being a parent. The only thing I ask is that you do research, and plenty of it. Don't just look at the Mercola site and other websites run by extremists. Look at the medical journals and at honest and ethical studies before making up your mind.

We did it for our daughter (2.5), and our son (11 weeks) gets his first round next Tuesday. He had bronchitis recently, otherwise, they'd be done at 2 months.

Vaccinating does carry risks, but the odds are in your favor if you do it.

My mother is a nurse and she does vaccinations all the time. She's also over 70 and has seen the pre-vaccine years as well as the post-vaccine years. Her advice is to get everything except chicken pox. She tells my brothers and sisters to absolutely REFUSE chicken pox because a) it is relatively harmless if they get it b) if they get it from the vaccine, it is worse and c) there is research that the vaccine may not be as strong in adults and if you get chicken pox as an adult, you are in a world of hurt (i.e. you can die). All the other vaccines are worth the trouble. As to why parents don't get them? Well my mom says it's "because parents don't want to have to face the fact that the kids will be stuck with a few needles and crying their eyes out, so they make excuses". (Her words, not mine) Just a little theory from a tough old nurse w/ 50+ years of experience.

P.S. My mother still makes fun of my brother, a cop and one tough SOB, for crying about needles. The rest of us (all 6) would not have dared to cry. And yes, mom still brings home needles (Tetanus, Hepatitis, flu shots) and sticks us in the ass (or arm) once in a while, just like the old days and with about the same amount of compassion - none!

The only reason people even consider this debatable is because of the huge success of vaccination programs.

Vaccines have been responsible for drastically reducing the incidence of childhood diseases. If measles, mumps, whooping cough, polio, etc. were prevalent, you wouldn't even think twice about protecting your child. Yes, there are risks with any vaccination. It's far better than the risk of getting the actual disease.

To put it in a current context, not getting vaccinations is like saying we haven't had a major terrorist incident in a few years so it's safe to eliminate all security checkpoints at airports.

IMHO, of course.

It also makes sense from a practical standpoint. You are NEVER going to get your child into a day care (if you are going that route..) without his shots being up to date.

I'm not sure about public school. Can you even get a kid into school without current shots?

In Maryland, it's required if kids are going to attend public schools.

Another way to look at it is this: If you vaccinate and the kid has a reaction to it, you'll feel horrible, but at least you were doing what you thought was best for the kid's health.

If you don't vaccinate and god forbid he gets polio, or some other horrible disease, you will forever blame yourself for NOT doing everything you could have to prevent it.

I was going to post exactly that. My very first thougth when I saw the title was that you have to be from such a country to even question the need for children's vaccination.

The things some take for granted... .

--
H

Not everybody uses this reasoning to refuse the shots. An alternative form of reasoning goes like this:

1. What's good for the group may not be good for the individual. For example, society has undoubedly benefitted from vaccinations, but there are few people that have had serious complications from them.

2. If everybody else gets their vacines, the risk of a disease spreading is greatly diminished.

3. Therefore, an individual can forgo their vacines (and hence the risks), while at the same time beneffiting from their use by other people.

Of course this logic breaks down as more people buy into it. Overall, I agree with Eric.Ha's reasoning.

When I took my daughter in for her final round of vaccinations, the pediatrician was too lazy to give her just what she needed, so she gave her another two rounds of multiple (quad) vaccinations. Consequently, my daughter ended up getting four times the normal lifetime dosage of two vaccines (measles and one other I can't remember - it was eight years ago) and immediately went into monoclonal seizures. She's been suffering from seizures ever since, though it finally looks as if she's begining to overcome them.

Despite my experience, I still think you should vaccinate. But take the following precautions:

1. Insist that the vaccinations be thymerisol- and mercury-free. Vaccinations have been manufactured without these toxins as preservatives for some years now, but a lot of the old stuff remains. Doctors will try to push the old stuff just to get rid of it, so don't stand for it. (I know one doctor who even claimed that the vaccinations he was using were mislabeled and didn't actually contain the tymerisol or mercury identified right there on the labels.) Because of the unnecessarily high dosages my daughter endured, her mercury intake was more than twice as much during the first two years of her life than she will be expected to injest for the remainder of her life.

2. Insist that vaccinations be split up when necessary in order to avoid overdosing on any one vaccine. This stuff isn't cough syrup, and more is definitely not better. Vaccines are harmful, diseased toxins that you shouldn't take any more than you have to. Doctors get paid $100 by the federal government for every vaccine delivered (and a quad cocktail gets them $400), so some unscrupulous doctors will intentionally overdose your children just for the extra money. Keep track of what your child needs, and don't let them do to your child what they did to mine for the sake of a boat payment.

3. Don't vaccinate for chicken pox. Vaccinations address and enhance only one aspect of immunity. Consequently, vaccinations never work as well in enhancing the immune system as actually getting the disease the vaccinations are intended to prevent. So diseases like chicken pox, which are relatively mild for children to endure, work better than the corresponding vaccine at building up the immune system. Some people even apply this philosophy to whooping cough and other diseases that aren't likely to cause permanent harm, but that's your choice.

I wish I had known better than to trust my doctor before I began vaccinating my daughter. I still would have vaccinated, but I would have at least not allowed the overdoses and useless, harmful chemicals. Though I believe in the use of vaccinations, I now believe that the manufacturing system and delivery system we have in place here in the US is tragically flawed. But a well-informed parent should do just fine.

That made me laugh when I read it. My kid is a TANK. When he got his first set of shots the nurse looked at me and said "hes going to scream... You ready dad?"

I said "nah... he'll be alright..."

She laughed, stuck him in the leg and.... waited... NOTHING... (I grinned)

She pulls out the next one, stuck his other leg and he goes "grrrr" As if to say "Hey, quit it lady!"

Im cracking up now... She goes for number three... he lets out one "ahhh" and stops with this "you B&^%H" look on his face...

That was the WORST reaction he ever had...

Hey, that's my mom's reasoning, not mine, so you have to talk to her. One warning, she may be in her 70's, but she's still tough as nails and she carries needles!

Erik.HA,

My brother is 45 yrs old, a cop, used to play Junior hockey (led the league in penalty minutes) and is as tough as my mom and he still whines and cries about shots.

I'm the same way... I actually pass out at the sight of an I-V needle... Dont know where my kid got it... He falls, bangs his face on stuff,I cringe, he looks at me and giggles....

Im registering him for the NFL draft NOW!

Needles are nothing to me. The only time I cried was when I was going in for a muscle biopsy when I was 8 and the anesthesiologist kept missing my vein with the stuff to help knock me out and injecting it into my muscles. It felt like I was burning from the inside out.

OH PISS ON THAT!!! No way in hell! Not with a straight jacket and a stun gun could they hold me down for that... Just reading that is enough to make me seriously queesy...

I have to turn away for half the scenes on E.R. and keep asking my wife "are they done yet?" "nope" "now?" "Not yet." "What about now?" "its commercial" "DAMNIT!!! WHAT DID I MISS???"

Needle phobias are not funny. I have one of those. Doesn't matter how muc it doesn't hurt, it doesn't go away.

When I went to the dermatolgist for a mole removal, they were nice enough to treat it seriously and had me lay down so I wouldn't pass out.

Andto stay on subject, vaccines are good, m'kay.

I hear that Joe, and you're right.... most doctors and nurses mock me for it... But at the same time theyre giggling they say "we see people like you all the time". Not sure that's supposed to make me feel better or what? I've had to have surgery twice, and both times the I-V insertion was the worst part for me...

Here's my $0.02 on the subject, courtesy of Straight Dope:

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mvaccine.html

I'm all for every vaccination you can get. Especially adults and Hep B, one of those that most people skip because it takes multiple visits.

My older brother is a total whimp when it comes to shots. He ainted a few times, always get's light headed. I am the total opposite, I sit down and ask them which arm they want and I always watch. I once got stitches in my head with no pain killers

Brian, I'm sorry about what happened to your daughter, but your post is riddled with misinformation.


Be very careful about this generalization; you're way off base. No one I have ever worked with has done this or would ever think of doing this. Vaccine dose lot numbers are carefully tracked and documented with each injection, and administration is virtually always checked by at least two individuals.


Only particular vaccinations should ever be given in divided doses. One should follow the immunization guidelines established by the CDC and the Red Book committee, and deviate only when medically indicated (such as for immunosuppressed patients).


Wrong, in general. Most vaccinations are inactivated or engineered substances that have no potential to cause harm. Additives are another issue, over which there is considerable debate, much misinformation, and very little hard evidence to substantiate certain claims. There are a few live or attenuated vaccinations in use, such as the varicella vaccine and the oral polio vaccine (although inactivated polio has replaced oral polio in the standard schedule) and their use is appropriate.


Now where did you read or hear this? Perhaps your doctor does this, but the rest of us don't. This kind of mud-slinging destroys your credibility.


There is perhaps no substitute for achieving proper humoral and cellular immunity than actual infection with a virus like varicella, and I will grant you that we are not certain of the extent and duration of protection that immunization against it confers. However, in the case of pertussis (whooping cough), it is far too dangerous of a disease for one to take a chance in allowing one's children to be exposed. I have taken care of several children with pertussis, a few of whom have been critically ill; it is that serious.


The tragedy, in my estimation, is that we still cannot immunize all of our children. We have excellent vaccines against a number of diseases that still haven't been eradicated, against infections that can have serious health consequences in childhood (e.g., Streptococcus pneumoniae) and against some which can have life-long health consequences (e.g., Hepatitis B). Plus, our children are being exposed to pathogens from other corners of the globe. Given the continued migration of peoples into the US from areas with diseases no longer endemic to the US--pertussis is a good example--we are seeing a resurgence in particular infections in pockets of the country. The overall benefit of a comprehensive immunization program, including crucial new vaccinations such as Prevnar and immunoglobulin preparations such as Synagis (against RSV), has a tremendous impact on the general health of our children.

I'm sorry, again, for your experience, and there are data to suggest that vaccines, overall, are not perfect. But the alternative, in terms of the impact on the health of US children, is far more frightening.

--Angelo.M (who rarely signs his posts), M.D.

What Angelo said...

I would just add that chicken pox is not a mild disease for all:

-CDC
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5223a3.htm

Chris:

Absolutely. Varicella infection can be devastating in certain individuals, including adults. One of the most feared presentations of varicella is varicella pneumonia in an immunocompromised patient. It can be deadly.

And so, we are concerned about the extent and the duration of immunity to varicella after vaccination. What we don't want is to create a generation of children who are vaccinated against it, never get the actual disease, and then experience regression of their immunity as they age into adulthood. As in the case of measles/mumps/rubella or hepatitis B immunization, it may be necessary to obtain titers later in life to insure that the immune response is still sufficient.