Vaccinations: Swine Flu is the Least of It

I do not understand the anti-vaccine follow-the-lemmings crowd.  Study after study after study has shown no connection between vaccination and autism, but millions–millions–of people have not gotten polio, pertussis, diptheria, tetanus, meningitis, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis, rotavirus and other horrible dieases, and have not died, or been crippled, or been hospitalized, or suffered horribly because they were vaccinated.  People who choose not to vaccinate their children are putting their childen–and mine–at risk for diseases that have been largely controlled or eradicated.

Our first pediatrician, when we questioned her about vaccinations, like so many other new overeducated parents these days, spoke of the “awesome power” of disease and convinced me instantly that I was playing with my child’s life if I considered not vaccinating him.  She agreed that we should be careful about how many vaccinations to give him at one time, and to avoid thimerosal if we felt strongly about it.  On the strength of her convictions, and our independent reading, we have fully vaccinated both of our sons.

I have a friend whose son is autistic, and she believes that something in the vaccines reacted with something in his chemistry and genes and that something was the catalyst which pushed him into the spectrum.  I feel terrible about her son; I wish there was more information about the causes of autism.  But I’m glad her son doesn’t have polio.

(Just now, my two year old woke up for the third time in half an hour.  He’s crying and holding his hands over his ears because his ears hurt.  We’re all sick here; he probably has an ear infection.  Tomorrow, we can take him to the doctor.)

But my sons have both gotten flu shots this season, and while we’re at the doctor’s tomorrow, we’re going to see if they have the swine flu vaccine.  Because if something happened to one of my children–or my child got another child sick!–because I didn’t vaccinate him, I don’t know how I could live with myself.

Read this terrific article about vaccinations from Wired Magazine.

Consider: In certain parts of the US, vaccination rates have dropped so low that occurrences of some children’s diseases are approaching pre-vaccine levels for the first time ever. And the number of people who choose not to vaccinate their children (so-called philosophical exemptions are available in about 20 states, including Pennsylvania, Texas, and much of the West) continues to rise. In states where such opting out is allowed, 2.6 percent of parents did so last year, up from 1 percent in 1991, according to the CDC. In some communities, like California’s affluent Marin County, just north of San Francisco, non-vaccination rates are approaching 6 percent (counterintuitively, higher rates of non-vaccination often correspond with higher levels of education and wealth).