Vaccination Madness
Apr. 29th, 2007 10:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsOne of the things that happened this weekend was I got to listen to two people, one a parent of a very small child, discuss the relative merits of vaccination. The parent had joined up a mailing list of local parents in the area, the purpose of which was to alert the entire list if any one child caught a common childhood disease such as chickenpox or the measles, so that all of the children could be assembled into a big party and allowed to catch the disease.
The other man immediately commended him for his decision and started to deride all vaccinations as unnecessary and even dangerous, started ranting about mecury in vaccines, and went on for ten minutes in this vein. It seems the other conversant had stepped on one of his favorite subjects.
I held my tongue. I shouldn't have. There are three reasons why I think the father's decision is madness. First, there's no thimeresol (the mercury formulation used as a preservative) in the chickenpox vaccine. None. Pediatric vaccines are packaged in single-use preloads these days; the only vaccines in the US that contain thimersol are influenza vaccines, and that's mostly a function of the necessitated speed with which they're produced. Secondly, the risk of injury or illness from the chickenpox vaccine is less than one percent the risk of injury or illness from chickenpox itself. Chickenpox has a death rate, and it's surprisingly high for children under the age of 9, over 50 deaths a year. The vaccine, so far as we know, hasn't killed anyone.
More to the point, the anti-vaccination nuts put my kids at risk. At some point, when enough kids aren't immunized, you hit a tipping point where epidemics can rattle through an entire community and the viral impact load can be enough to make even the immunized kids sick.
If you want more of this, go read Respectful Insolence and in his search column type "vaccines". He deals with these people on a pretty frequent basis, and I must say he puts up a better fight than I do.
The other man immediately commended him for his decision and started to deride all vaccinations as unnecessary and even dangerous, started ranting about mecury in vaccines, and went on for ten minutes in this vein. It seems the other conversant had stepped on one of his favorite subjects.
I held my tongue. I shouldn't have. There are three reasons why I think the father's decision is madness. First, there's no thimeresol (the mercury formulation used as a preservative) in the chickenpox vaccine. None. Pediatric vaccines are packaged in single-use preloads these days; the only vaccines in the US that contain thimersol are influenza vaccines, and that's mostly a function of the necessitated speed with which they're produced. Secondly, the risk of injury or illness from the chickenpox vaccine is less than one percent the risk of injury or illness from chickenpox itself. Chickenpox has a death rate, and it's surprisingly high for children under the age of 9, over 50 deaths a year. The vaccine, so far as we know, hasn't killed anyone.
More to the point, the anti-vaccination nuts put my kids at risk. At some point, when enough kids aren't immunized, you hit a tipping point where epidemics can rattle through an entire community and the viral impact load can be enough to make even the immunized kids sick.
If you want more of this, go read Respectful Insolence and in his search column type "vaccines". He deals with these people on a pretty frequent basis, and I must say he puts up a better fight than I do.
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Date: 2007-04-30 06:56 pm (UTC)On the one hand, I've had my daughters vaccinated against everything except chickenpox ... but that's at least partially because they both had the chickenpox when they were very young.
On the other hand, I was absolutely horrified to find out that most of those vaccines had contained thimerosol--it's really only in the last few years that it's been taken out of pediatric vaccines. I was even more horrified when I read last year that the CDC was recommending that all children should get the 'flu vaccine, despite the fact that there were only enough pediatric doses for about 20% of the pediatric population.
On the third hand, I'm not so sure that vaccinating perfectly healthy children--children who do NOT have immune deficiencies, that is--is really a good idea, particularly when the disease they're being vaccinated against is only serious if they DO have an immune deficiency. Your immune system only works well if it gets used, which means that in order for it to become strong, it has to be used to fight off disease.
And after all, if a given disease is generally only dangerous for adults, wouldn't it make sense to vaccinate against it (a) if a child has a compromised immune systerm, or (b) when someone hits, say 14 or 15 and hasn't had it yet?
I don't get the 'flu vaccine, and I doubt that I ever will--my immune system is strong and I expect it to stay that way. My elder daughter is going to have to start getting it (much to her disgust; she also believes you have to exercise your immune system to make it strong) because she's going to be working in a medical field and it's required. My father DOES get it, because he's a transplant patient and thus has a depressed immune system. And yes, adult patients with depressed immune systems DO get the dose with the mercury in it.