I have not immunised my children.... and have strong opinions about live virus vaccinations which precluded me from doing so. They are now 10 and 12 and have had measles, chicken pox and even whooping cough after being exposed to immunised children who became ill. I took the responsibility of my choices seriously and quarantined them for their entire illnesses.

I do, however, not judge anyone who chooses to immunise their own. I agree that it is a first world luxury to choose. And I'm grateful for that luxury.

What I wanted to say to you, however, was that I appreciate how wonderfully worded your post was. I read no judgement and if more people were willing to have open discussions about controversial topics WITHOUT flaming, the world would be a better place!

On this I agree with you completly! One of my daughters came down with Rubella at 8 weeks old from another child who's mother decided not to vaccinate.

This disease has an incubation rate before it manifests and I unwittingly exposed my pregnant sister in law to the infection which could have seriously harmed her unborn baby. As well, my daughter was so very sick for over a week.

I could not and never will forgive this mother for the risk she willingly exposed my family to for what I considered supersitious ignorance.

I live in an area that has recently had mass outbreaks of whooping cough. As a child when I got the vaccination I got really sick when I got the DPT shot. Since then, I haven’t been vaccinated with the “P” or pertussis part of the vaccine for fear that I will again have the same reaction. Every time I hear about another outbreak here in Minnesota, I fear that I will get sick. I wonder if the parents of children who haven’t had their children vaccinated fear the same thing?

BTW, I completely agree with your thoughts on this one...

Kate

Heather, I am firmly with you on this. I think it is really important to be vaccinated and to prevent the old childhood diseases emerging again.

I think I come from an interesting background, in that I was not vaccinated as a child (my mother was one of the "conspiracy" types I suppose) and I got ill with pretty much all of the childhood ilnesses - measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, whooping cough. Luckily I got over them with no long-term ill effects that I know of, but I would not want to go through them again.

My brother wasn't born when I had mumps, and has therefore never had them, leading to worries that if he gets them now he might become infertile.

My mother has changed her mind nowadays and says she would vaccinate if she had to go through it again. When I have children they will be getting the standard schedule. When I travelled overseas I made sure I had all the vaccinations needed before I travelled.

A good reference for information is neurodiversity.com, also some of the bloggers at sciencebasemedicine.org.

Best wishes for the rest of the book tour and the birth of your second daughter!

Glyn

Thank you. I think this was well put. And I agree.

I vaccinated all 3 of my kids with no problems but that was years ago. Today I would ask for a less aggressive schedule of treatment because I suspect that may be a large part of the side effect issue. But I would always vaccinate. It is a calculated risk. But so is driving, flying in a plane or eating sushi. Sometimes we do those things that serve the whole even if our personal druthers would have us living happily free of any risk in a yurt in the middle of Montana.

Well thought out and written. Thank you for clarifying what the real issue is. I too have vaccinated both my children, and agree with you wholeheartedly.

I'm right there with you, Heather, without the empathy or understanding you display. I have never understood mothers who don't vaccinate their kids.

After dozens of elegant scientific studies with large sample sizes, there has been NO LINK shown between vaccines and autism.

Over and over again, the scientific community tell us vaccines don't cause autism! And if we don't trust science - and let's face it, even mothers who don't vaccinate fly in planes, drive cars, use the internet and go to the ER when their kids are sick - ALL provided to us through scientific research - we've only got people's gut feelings and empirical evidence to hold onto.

The signs of autism often first become obvious around 12 and 18 months, when vaccines are administered. These are sad and terrible coicidences, unfortunately.

"If you've decided that the risks are too great to vaccinate your child then you are counting on the rest of us who are willing to take those risks to decrease the chances that your child will be exposed to these diseases. You are counting on us."

This is where I do have judgment about people who choose not to vaccinate. They are not weighing the risk of vaccinatng their children against the risk of their child catching whatever disease the vaccination is supposed to prevent. They are expecting other parents to bear that burden.

I also have issues with parents who refuse to acknowledge the results of scientific studies on the subject. On the one hand, I realize that there are examples from history that make it difficult to trust the scientific community when they assure us that x is safe or that there is no connection between y and z. OTOH, people who choose to believe anecdotal "common sense" evidence over cold, hard, empirical facts make me nuts.

I do think the number of vaccinations that children get these days does seem excessive and some of the things that they vaccinate for aren't horribly dangerous to most kids (i.e. chicken pox) but that the big ones absolutely should be vaccinated for. Can these kids without immunizations go to school? Most of the people I know who refuse to immunize home school their kids or plan to.

I know I had to get a new MMR to go to college because there was some question about the effectiveness of the vaccine I had in the early 70's.

I wish that the conversation among parents didn't always have to be as black and white as Pro-Vaccination and Anti-Vaccination. I believe we can still be for vaccinating our children while ALSO being critical of an overly aggressive One Size Fits All vaccination schedule, of some ridiculously unnecessary vaccines that will probably hurt our children in the long run more than they will help (I'm talking the chicken pox vaccine mostly), of some of the sketchy cocktail ingredients and poor independent testing (or lack thereof) done, and of pharmaceutical power and intentions. We can still protect our children from some of history's worst diseases while demanding improvement in the way it's all done.

And yes, the herd mentality to vaccination is part of the point, even if you know the chances of your kid contracting Hep B is minimal or you're not afraid of what the measles looks like on your (non-immune compromised) child. I wish every parent the best of luck in sorting through all of the (mis)information and making the best decision not only for their child but for others as well...

A helpful read for me was Dr. Sears' The Vaccine Book, by the way.

Thanks Heather. It's one of those areas where I've felt like I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't. I chose to vaccinate our daughter schedule though, and thankfully no regrets so far.

I don't think I've ever heard it put so well. I cannot imagine the heartbreak of having a child develop autism. Nor can I fathom the pain of having a child die, much less of a preventable illness.

The fact is, scientific evidence is overwhelming AGAINST vaccines causing autism. The fact that some children develop autism symptoms around the time of their vaccinations seems a matter of the fallacy of causation. Maybe that particular vaccine is given around the age symptoms commonly develop or become noticeable. It is even possible that after all the controversy surrounding vaccinations, parents and doctors come to note behaviors that were already present.

What we know is that measles, polio, etc, can cause debilitating and sometimes deadly illnesses. Some people cannot be vaccinated, and it seems to me that allowing these illnesses to gain a foothold in the population again invites the risk of "new and improved" diseases developing for which we do NOT have adequate vaccines. Asking everyone to join a non-vaccinating family in assuming that risk is...shocking.

One lesson about parenting that I learned during my wife's pregnancy is that, like it or not, you have to play the odds. At one point, we were advised that we could have an amniocentesis conducted to check for a certain chromosomal disorder ... but, based on the figures provided to us, the odds of the amnio causing some kind of problem were greater than the odds of our unborn child being afflicted with the chromosomal disorder in question. Thus, we passed on getting the amnio.

With regard to vaccination: we felt that the odds of our children developing a life-threatening illness if not vaccinated posed a greater risk than the odds of our children developing autism in the wake of their vaccinations. Thus, we got them vaccinated.

Now, if they *had* developed symptoms of autism, I'm sure I'd be singing a much different tune, and therefore I have no quarrel with parents who, after being put in that unfortunate position, advocate not getting your child vaccinated.

Short of any irrefutable evidence that vaccinations cause autism, however, I agree that the ability to vaccinate your child against illnesses that once killed people in large numbers is a medical advance worth taking advantage of.
(FWIW: My wife has a master's degree in social work and works as the clinical coordinator for a program that provides services to adolescents on the autism spectrum, so she is perhaps more tuned in than most people to the issues surrounding that community ... and she had no hesitation about getting our kids vaccinated.)

I think the pros outweigh the cons. I rather take my chances with the vaccine than the illness.

Thanks for the great read!