Vaccine Information
There is a lot of information in the media these days regarding vaccine safety. Much of it is misinformation and unfortunately, this misinformation is getting a lot of press. We, your community pediatricians, are very concerned that this could affect the lives of our patients and could potentially harm or needlessly kill the children here in Cherokee County. So, again, we are here to say…
Vaccinations are very effective in preventing serious illnesses and save lives.
All children and young adults should receive all the recommended vaccines published by the Centers for Disease Control and the American Academy of Pediatrics. The recommended vaccines and their schedule given are the results of years and years of scientific study and data gathering on millions of children by thousands of our brightest scientist and physicians.
Vaccines are very safe, and based on all available literature, evidence and current studies; we believe that vaccines do not cause autism or other developmental disabilities. We firmly believe that thimerisol, a preservative that has been in vaccines for decades and remains in only some flu vaccines,
does not cause autism or other developmental disabilities. Since thimerisol was removed from the majority of vaccines over 5 years ago, the incidence of autism as gone up (exponentially), not down as one would suspect of course if autism was caused by this preservative.
These things being said, we recognize that there has always been and will likely always be controversy surrounding vaccination. Indeed, Benjamin Franklin, persuaded by his brother, was opposed to the smallpox vaccine until scientific data convinced him otherwise. Tragically, he had delayed inoculating his favorite son, Franky, who contracted smallpox and died at the age of 4, leaving Ben with a lifetime
of guilt and remorse. Quoting Mr. Franklin’s autobiography:
In 1736, I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the
smallpox…I long regretted this bitterly, and still regret that I had not given
it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of parents who omit
that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves
If a child died under it, my example showing that the regret may
be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen.
The vaccine campaign is truly a victim of its own success. It is precisely because vaccines are so effective at preventing illness that we are even discussing whether or not they should be given. Because
of vaccines, many of you have never seen a child with polio, tetanus, whooping cough, bacterial meningitis or even chickenpox, or known a friend or family member whose child died of one of these diseases. Even younger doctors remember admitting 3-4 children a night with bacterial meningitis in the days before the Pneumococcal and H. Influenza vaccines. Such success can make us complacent or even lazy about vaccinating. But such an attitude, if it becomes widespread, can only lead to
tragic results. Over the past several years, many people in Europe have chosen not to vaccinate their children with the MMR vaccine after publication of an unfounded suspicion (later retracted) that the vaccine caused autism. As a result of under-immunization, there have been small outbreaks of measles and several deaths from complications of measles in Europe over the past several years.
Here in the United States, all of the country’s health departments (including here in the state of Georgia) are now on the lookout for cases of measles. In December, an unimmunized little girl went to visit friends in Switzerland. She came home after a week and went back to her daycare. Unfortunately, over 50% of her daycare was unimmunized. This one little girl lead to over 70 children being quarantined for 3 weeks at home, and two hospitalizations, one being a 2month old baby. One place that several children were exposed to this potentially fatal disease was in a pediatrician’s waiting room where a child with measles sat with newborns and other children for over an hour waiting to see their pediatrician. Another large outbreak was recently seen in Arizona, and over 7 states now have seen measles in the last 4 months. Will Georgia be next?
We are making you aware of these facts not to scare you or coerce you, but to emphasize the importance of vaccinating your child. We recognize that the choice may be a very emotional one for some parents. We will do everything we can to convince you that vaccinating according to the schedule is the right thing to do. However, should you have doubts, please discuss these with your health care
provider. Delaying or “breaking up the vaccines” to give one or two at a time over two or more visits goes against expert recommendations, and can put your child at risk for serious illness (or even death). Most of the diseases covered by the vaccines are more severe to children under the age of 2 years, so delaying the vaccines again puts your child at a greater risk of medical harm or death.
Finally, a couple items about Hannah Polling, and the anti vaccine people we’re hearing from in the newspaper and on the Today Show and Larry King. Hannah has a serious neurological illness called a mitochondrial disorder. This is a very rare neurological disease that often can have signs of autism as a side effect of the illness. Her parents did not know before vaccinating Hannah that she had this disorder. Also, Hannah’s fever began several weeks after her vaccines, and may have been associated just as likely from a viral illness as from her vaccines. The vaccine court is not a court of law and was brought into existence to protect children. There is no “beyond a reasonable doubt” in the vaccine court, and even a potential thought of some link results in payment to the child…no proof needs to be obtained. And last, Jenny McCarthy is a very outspoken anti-vaccine spokesperson. She is often quoted in articles and has been on TV many times. One thing that is not in these articles or is she asked about in the TV shows is about the fact she belongs to the Scientology religion which also does not believe in anti-depressants as well as medications for ADD. She has no medical background whatsoever.
We do not definitively know what causes autism. Experts at the leading Universities around the world as well as the CDC and NIH are trying to find the answers. We do know there is a genetic predisposition, and we also know that a large percentage of the children who were formally diagnosed as mentally retarded are now being diagnosed as autistic. Also, many of the kids we grown-ups went to school with who are now the computer gurus, scientists, engineers, and doctors of the world could possibly have been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome if they had been born in 1994 instead of 1964. We ask you to seek the best studied information on unbiased websites. Two great websites that are not government related are at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia at www.vaccine.chop.edu and www.vaccineinformation.org . Get the best information and ask questions. We’re here to answer them, and believe this is our current #1 most important job as pediatricians. Your children’s lives depend on them!