En Español
Make a difference. Volunteer for a Clinical Trial
Find A...
Resources:
This website is accredited by Health On the Net Foundation. Click to verify.We comply with the HONcode standard for trustworthy health information:
verify here
Vaccine Debate STORY BY

Karen Krakower

If you were born before the mid-50s, you remember foregoing springtime birthday parties, because that was “polio season.” You knew at least one kid in school with leg braces. And the two most dreaded words were “iron lung.”

By the early 60s, you lined up for your sugar cubes and TB “bunny tracks” and a scant few decades later, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus were as historical as small pox and the Black Plague.

But, as of Sept 1, 2003, a new law may bring the past back to haunt us.

According to State of Texas House Bill 2292, unvaccinated kids will be allowed to enter Texas public schools and day-care centers if their parents are philosophically opposed to immunizations. The bill states that immunization is not required for admission to any elementary or secondary school if the parents of the “applicant decline[s] immunization for reasons of conscience…”

Exemptions for compromised health or religious reasons have been recognized in the past.

This section of the bill was driven by parent organizations that have, in recent years, become suspicious of long-term effects of immunizations on children. The pediatric community staunchly refutes unsubstantiated claims that certain vaccines are linked with autism, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, among other conditions.

The Good Ol' Days Weren't All Good

Making vaccines optional “takes us 100 years backwards,” says Lynnette Mazur, professor of pediatrics at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston, with a master’s degree in public health.

“I lived through those years when you couldn’t go out because of polio outbreaks. I was practicing in Houston during the ‘88-‘89 measles outbreak that infected 1700 kids and killed 11, including one pregnant woman. I see the kids hospitalized with pertussis or cellulitis from chicken pox. Talk to the grandparents who remember those years,” Mazur says. “People have lost perspective on this.”

Kim Connelly Smith, UT associate professor of pediatrics and who also holds a master’s degree in public health, agrees. “One of the problems we have when you start preventing diseases is that people become more afraid of the vaccine than the disease. And people can find anything on the internet to support their fears.”

In his book “What Every Parent Should Know about Vaccines,” author Louis Bell, MD cites that before mass immunizations in the U.S., each year we could expect

Currently, Bell writes, only about two cases of diphtheria are reported and three cases of birth defects from rubella, with no cases of polio.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report the following risk from disease versus the risk from vaccine:

Both Smith and Mazur acknowledge that parents come to their offices frightened by scurrilous internet information and misinformed friends. “There are all kinds of rumors and when parents have questions, we listen, explain and refer them to reliable information sources such as the American Academy of Pediatrics or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” Smith says.

Mazur says that one perpetuating myth is that the younger the child, the higher the possibility for complications and long-term damage from combination immunizations, such as the MMR or DTaP (measles-mumps-rubella or diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis). “This is just flat untrue. We want to immunize them younger because that’s the age when they are most susceptible; that’s when the disease strikes.”

She also warns that diseases like pertussis can strike adults who continue to circulate whooping cough infection in the community. Adults lose their immunity to pertussis over time and become susceptible to the disease later in life. Immunizing kids can protect the whole family.

Parents are also concerned that certain vaccines are unnecessary in young children, such as hepatitis B, since that strain usually requires blood, semen or fecal contact to acquire. But Smith says teens need the coverage, as do college students, since their behaviors might become riskier.

Babies and College Kids

Infants need the vaccine as well since it is highly effective in preventing pregnant women from passing hepatitis B infection to their babies. Early infection with hepatitis B virus is a known cause of liver cancer.

The meningococcal meningitis vaccine is an optional vaccine but is recommended for certain high-risk groups. Mazur urges college freshmen who are living in close quarters such as dormitories to get the vaccine. “You know how it is in college—you’re sleeping far less than you did the year before and your immune system is completely stressed out.”

What parents need to remember is that there is a balance in risk assessment. As Bell wrote, 200 people choke to death on food, though we continue to eat; 100 are struck by lightening, though we go outside in the rain.

“We take a bath, even though 350 die in bath-related accidents each year. The odds are heavily in our favor.”

Last Updated: 8-21-2003