Dear C and Dr. B;
The recent measles epidemic has turned my PTA group into a war zone. One of the anti-vaxxer parents is a nurse with three kids, and she hasn’t vaccinated any of them. The pro-V mothers are angry because they think the anti-vaxxers are endangering everyone. Not one person on either side will listen to the other.
My kids are already vaccinated, because that’s what people did in my time. But now, my sister, whose son is at the age where vaccinations start, is torn on the issue. Why? Because one of my children was diagnosed with autism not long after being vaccinated. The doctors tell me that the two incidents are completely unrelated, and autism is often detected at that age in both vaccinated and unvaccinated children. However, my sister can’t just shrug this off, and I do wonder myself. The fanatics in the anti-vax movement turn me off, but there are some people leading the movement for whom I have a great deal of respect. in fact, enough of what they say makes so much sense it scares me.
I am not sure who to trust. The AMA and the pharmaceutical companies have a bad track record when it comes to medical error and drug recalls. You have to understand – when autism after vaccination actually happens to your own kids, it’s much harder to say the anti-vaxxers are crazy.
Who to Trust?
Dr. B says: There is inherent risk to all medical treatment, but you have to keep in mind that if it wasn’t for vaccines, a large portion of your family would already be dead. The reason anti-vaxxers have the luxury to even consider their philosophy is because of vaccines. One hundred years ago, when diseases like polio and small pox killed hundreds, people would have sold their souls for vaccines. If you do not vaccinate, you depend on others being vaccinated – and if enough people stop, many deadly diseases could spread again. These diseases aren’t gone, but in the US, people just don’t have them because of vaccination programs in the past. What anti-vaxxers don’t realize is that in other parts of the world, vaccination has been far less extensive. When their children leave home and go to school and college, they will be exposed to people who have not been vaccinated. Anti-vaxxers are not just taking a chance with their own kids, but with future generations to come. If your vaccinated daughter gets pregnant and is exposed to measles from your sister’s unvaccinated child, your blind, intellectually challenged grandchild will not be thanking anyone for those anti-vaccination philosophies.
A personal peeve of mine is people who feel they are experts because they did an internet search. Fifty percent of the information you find there is pure BS. You have to know how to check resources and authors for validity. At the moment, we have a president who fires his science advisors, gets his information from Fox News and the Breitbart network, and develops policies based the parts he agrees with. Look how that’s working out. Good luck!
C says: While I do think the anti-vaxxers offer up unproven arguments that are largely emotionally driven, I also know that the “experts” are not infallible. Research results can be skewed depending on who funds them…and how often have doctors changed their stance on coffee and alcohol? I decided to check into two sites which offered more credible anti-vax data: childrenshealthdefense.org and greenmedinfo.com. While neither site could convince me that vaccines caused autism, their research on the efficacy of vaccines caught my attention.
When I worked with immigrant children during the summer of 2016, I was first required to prove that I was immunized against a number of diseases. It shocked me when the results of my lab tests came in – I had no antibodies in my blood against polio. I knew I’d been immunized because it was mandatory at my school, and I had the scar to prove it. But as far as my protection against polio? I may as well never have been vaccinated. At the time, it made no sense. Today, I checked the CDC site for facts on the polio vaccine; they stated clearly that when properly administered, the vaccine offers lifetime protection. So, how was it that I did not have a single antibody left? I needed to know more. I read further and found some unsettling facts on flu vaccines – some years the effectiveness was estimated to be as low as 33%. A web search uncovered another surprise – our recent measles outbreak has not been the first. There were at least six epidemics reported worldwide between 1985 and 1992, some in communities where vaccine compliance was at 90%.
So, do I side with the anti-vaxxers now? Absolutely not. Vaccines were an important breakthough in controlling deadly disease. But the CDC and other medical authorities do us a disservice by giving us only part of the truth. When people blindly trust that they are protected, they take silly chances that they wouldn’t otherwise. Cases of skin cancer have risen dramatically since the introduction of sun block, and why? Because people think they are invulnerable and bake in cancer-causing rays past any reasonable limit. As far as protecting ourselves from contagions, we could all take a lesson from the Far East. There, the majority of people automatically don masks when sick, to protect others. In the US, only medical facilities hand them out. We all need to use common sense in protecting both ourselves and others. A vaccine is not a magic shield. Don’t believe ANYONE who tells you it is.