In 2007, I spent a month living in rural Kenya with the Kipsigi tribe. I was teaching in a school with hundreds of children, most of which did not have access to vaccines. I saw first hand children so sick with various illnesses which would have been prevented if they would have had access to a vaccine. It was so hard leaving those children, and thinking, how many of them will be here when I return in a few years, how many will make into adulthood? I came home feeling angry at how we take advantage of so much, that could make a huge differnce to those in underdeveloped countries.

When I returned from Kenya, I received a wonderful homecoming gift. My daughter was conceived the day after my return home. There was never a question in my mind that I would not vaccinate my child. We live in a country where our children are fortunate enough to be protected against these terrible illnesses which really can cause serious harm. Why would I want to put my child at risk for an illness which could be prevented. When there are so many children in other countries whose lives could be saved with vaccinations. I felt like it was my duty, as a mother to protect my child against these diseases, when I know there are so many mothers around the world that wish they could do the same. If I had not vaccinated, and my daughter ever got sick, how would I have felt then?

Let me also mention that my Master's thesis was on Autism, so I feel like I am educated in that subject area. In my year of research, I did not find ANY outstanding evidence that made me even gave me the slightest fear or hesitation of my daughter developing autism from vaccinations.

Hi there! Just wanted to add that our son has severe allergies and I would never have thought twice about vaccinating. He can't have the flu vaccine b/c of his egg allergy, but as for the life and death illnesses...there is just no choice for us. Actually I have not even given it any thought and assumed it was not a choice??? Don't schools require all shots be up to date? I am with ya...it is the responsible thing to do!
Caroline
*mom of 2 beautiful babes (one with a missing front tooth and the other...HEALED from his Eczema! Probiotics..woo hoo!!

I am greatly saddened by alot of these comments and by the comment in the blog:
"And I realized, I do not think that I would ever be able to forgive the parents of that infected boy. That is my raw, honest emotion toward that scenario."

It sounds to me like most of you do NOT know why we - parents who choose not to vax - do what we do. And rather than give the benefit of the doubt when you freely admit never having researched the subject, you instead choose to judge and label us socially irresponsible. It is frightening and upsetting really - the whole lack of goodwill to humankind.

Here is something by Dr. Jay Gordon that adequate sums up my feelings on the matter of social responsibility:

"It is not our job to prove danger, it's their job to prove that attempting to create immunity against certain illnesses is safe and worth the risk to an individual child. The discussion of Public Health is important but parents also want and are completely entitled to discuss risks and benefits for one child, their child."
http://www.drjaygordon.com/development/pediatricks/vacc2008.asp

I personally choose to reserve my judgement toward others until I have the whole story. There is a whole lot more to the case against vaccines than autism and conspiracy theory.

Well said. I admire your ability to separate emotion from logic, and acknowledge that both play a role in an increasingly controversial health care practice. As you said, it's a first-world luxury. Vaccinations and clean drinking water are the starting points for world wide health care and disease prevention. These basics are simply unavailable for too many children.

I was not immunized as a child. My mom had had a terrible reaction to vaccination - a coma. Plus she was an early "green" hippie and from what she researched, she thought promoting my immune system naturally (prolonged breastfeeding and a crazy healthy diet) was better.

I never got sick with anything but chickenpox.

I am trying to conceive and they ran Rubella immunity on me. A qualitative test from one lab had me immune, so I did indeed come into contact with it and fought it off. A new doc re-ran it as standard procedure with a quantitative test and it was a little low.
I struggled with whether or not to get the shot. My anti-vaccine background + having to sit out a month after the shot when we'd been trying to conceive a long time already was a tough choice, especially since I did have some immunity.
But I read what could happen if a fetus was exposed and decided the risk was too great.
I had a terrible reaction to the MMR shot. Not a coma like my mom, but I was in a lot of pain. Lumps came up on the back of my head so swollen and painful I had to ice my head for several days. Plus the typical fever and rash.

The thing with rubella that I couldn't get over is it's typically only a problem for fetuses. Children and adults who get it just get benignly sick, as with chickenpox, then they are immune for life. Vaccines are not permanent immunity (many women have to get the MMR over again when they are trying to conceive as it can "wear off"). I remember with chicken pox, moms would take their kids over to the house with chicken pox so they could go ahead and get it over with. Seems like that would be the way to go with Rubella too.
I know there are much more serious diseases that we vaccinate against, but I think vax'ing against relatively safe diseases is not necessary.

When I do get my baby, I am probably going to follow the safer schedule and selectively vax. I am scared of the MMR shot though after what my mom and I both went through.

I agree with you on this one Dooce! Well said!

Oh, hey, I just blogged about this very issue! I'm not anti-vaccines, all of my children were vaccinated on the recommended US schedule. But I really wish I had known more about the safety of the ingredients in the vaccines themselves, the safety of the vaccination schedule, the option of following a less rigorous schedule. I know that people say things like "there are only trace amounts of thimerosal (sp?) in vaccines" or "the CDC says yada yada yada" but not one single person I've ever spoken to can tell me exactly how much thimerosol (sp?) was in vaccines previously or exactly how much "trace amounts" is, nor exactly how much is considered safe. How can anyone blindly trust that the whole "safe, TRACE amounts" line fed to us by the medical community, which is very politically structured and influenced by corporate money with corporate interests, is genuinely safe? The problem I have with vaccines is that I don't trust the CDC, AAP, drug manufacturers (I mean, c'mon, people, where do you think these vaccines come from? These are the same makers of meds whose manufacturing costs are only pennies per dollar of retail price!) to tell us the truth.
I wish I had known about all of these concerns 7 years ago when not only did I have my firstborn vaccinated, but I allowed him to participate in a research study on an investigational combination vaccine! (They hooked me with "This vaccine has already been proven safe in Canada, and is already being used there".)
So, yes, I'm more in the Jenny McCarthy camp than not, and even though when I have my next child (yes, I DO want to have a 5th child at some point, lol), I still plan to vaccinate him (at least, it BETTER be a 'him'), although on a slower schedule. And I don't believe for a minute that the scientific studies that show that there is no link between vaccines and autism are unbiased and completely factual. The reason that there is no link between vaccines and autism is because it is a chance occurrence. That doesn't mean that it happens in numbers too small to ignore; it shouldn't be ignored or dismissed, and the risks are just as real and valid as a disease with a more predictable pattern.
If you've read all the way to the end of this, Thank You for listening, and Heather, thanks for facilitating a place for people to speak their minds.

You did a nice job explaining this debate.

I understand that parents who do not vaccinate their children are concerned and trying to protect their children. But I also think they are selfish. They benefit from the herd without taking any personal risks. They live in a society that has controlled many of these infectious diseases. So the diseases seem less real and less threatening than autism (or whatever other concerns they may have).

I'm a long time lurker and am commenting on this post because it really hits home for me. My 4 year old is autistic. The one thing that everyone can agree on is that there a great deal that is unknown about autism and absolutely no one can tell you what the cause is. Autism is a processing disorder. There are many different things that can effect how a person’s brain processes information. My feeling is that vaccinations may cause symptoms of autism in "some" children but certainly not ALL of them and certainly not MOST of them. I don't believe that it was the cause of my son's autism. Unfortunately, the media has sensationalized autism and celebrities like Jenny McCarthy and people who give her a platform to voice her one sided, ignorant opinions are not doing autistic children or their families any favors. She really needs to stop. Anyway, thanks Heather for writing such a rational and balanced post. I wish everyone could see this issue from your perspective.

me putting your children at risk by not vaccinating my own is like putting everyone at risk when you drive and talk on your cell phone, or smoke and pollute my air, or support the meat industry and have millions of cows contribute to the rise in greenhouses gasses and pollute our drinking water.

everyone does their own thing to put others at risk at some point or another so all of the sad and sorry moms that post here need to get over themselves and worry about bigger and better things. we all make choices-

apparently not many of you read about" Deadly Immunity" in Rolling Stone."...it is a good read and quite eye opening and oh yeah REAL.

you all are a bunch of dumb-ass moms that need a clue. or two.

I'm in the selective and delayed camp, and one thing that really disturbs me about the almost-militant pro-vaccine group is that they really know NOTHING about those diseases. Whooping cough is only deadly for young infants, and even with the current schedule they don't reach full immunity until past 1 year. Personally, I'll be starting my kid on that at 6 months, not 2. But if your 10 year old gets whooping cough, it's overall not a huge deal. Really really really unpleasant, but it's simply not life threatening.

Neither's measles, in most cases. Which they don't recommend you getting that shot until 12-18 months.

I won't be doing the flu or chickenpox vax because a) chicken pox is NO BIG DEAL and b) I'd rather my kid get the flu. Again, the flu sucks, but it's not a big deal.

My concern is that the schedule starts way too young and has way too many shots too soon.

I'm not concerned AT ALL about Hep B at birth because the only way my child could get it is if I had it, and I don't. Therefore, non issue. She'll get that when she's like 6 or 8 or so.

We're all so afraid of these diseases and in reality most of them aren't deadly for most people (immunocompromised people being the obvious exception). And thus the rhetoric ramps up and EVERYONE gets attacked.

I've also, personally, had a nurse try to upsell me on vaccines. I need a tetanus booster, and she tried to get me to get more in the exact same way a waitress tries to get you to order an appetizer.

Please do more research. More than likely, the vaccination is not effective against preventing these childhood diseases anyway. Please look at the death rate of each disease and then when each vaccine for the disease was introduced. Each vaccine was introduced after a significant drop in the death rate of each and every disease it was supposed to prevent.

I understand your concern for an unvaccinated baby (even though I don't think a vaccine would do any good) but herd immunity makes no sense. If one child is unvaccinated in a classroom of 20, the other 19 SHOULD be immune to the disease. Right?

Hmm, something to really consider. Are vaccines even effective?

Neil Z. Miller is a great author on this subject.

I'm nearly 30 and when I was a kid, you weren't allowed into public schools if you weren't vaccinated. Is that still the case? Can you travel without vaccinations? I know you can't serve in the military without vaccinations. Although, I'm not quite sure that a person who opts not to vaccinate their kid will send them to public school or will let them serve in the military. First world luxury indeed. I'm not sure I could be friends with the type of personality who refuses to vaccinate their child.

Here here. If you can, please vaccinate your children. For my child's sake.

I've learned a lot from reading through all of this. Thanks Heather.
I'm so impressed by how thoughtful this discussion is! I'm grateful to live in a country where vaccines are accessible and affordable.
Both my maternal grandparents had polio in their early twenties and nearly died from it. Their young children, including my mother, were some of the first to get the polio vaccine. Jonas Salk truly saved their lives. I agree with the person who said there is a growing & slightly irrational amount of distrust in doctors, perhaps as a result of the internet. I think it's important to stay educated and informed and to be an advocate for myself and my family, but I also think it's important to listen to and respect my doctor. If I didn't trust my doctor, I would find a new one. I have that "first world" luxury.

Don't have time to read the nearly thousand comments, so sorry if I'm just repeating everyone else. I totally agree with this post. I know a woman who refuses to have her children vaccinated because she knows someone whose child had a bad reaction to a vacination. She actually said that she doesn't think it would be a problem because everyone else is getting their children vaccinated.

I think one problem is that a lot of people are trying to judge the scientific validity of claims without really understanding science. Study A shows something bad, study B shows it is not the case. If study A was a small group and maybe not rigorously controlled, then it isn't as persuasive as study B, but to someone who doesn't get that, it is just two equal studies. And it is really easy to give extra weight to anecdotal evidence and say "I don't care what the studies say".

Another thing is that the parents of children today don't really get how bad those diseases were. I told my aunt about the woman who would not vaccinate her kids and she said when she was growing up, EVERYBODY knew someone who had died of or been crippled from polio, and when the polio vaccine came out, it was an absolute miracle. We don't get that. We don't get how bad these diseases are because we've never lived with them. We think whatever, mumps or measles -- just a bad flu. But these diseases that we vaccinate against can be life threatening or have life long consequences (e.g. infertility from mumps). We think that it is normal for all the kids we know to grow up healthy, but it is actually a miracle that we don't all know somebody whose child has died in infancy due to disease.

Heather, part of the problem here is that a large proportion of our peers know virtually nothing about American history. Too many can't place the Civil War in the correct century. Those who refuse to vaccinate should take a stroll through a late-19th/early-20th century cemetery sometime and read off the names of the residents who died before they reached the ripe old age of...let's say...12?

Entire families wiped out by measles. Three siblings in one month by whooping cough. Two-month-old twins and their four brothers in a week by something else that we've learned to prevent.

Think it can't happen again? Keep refusing to vaccinate your kids. The viruses will return with a vengeance, and mutate while they're at it, and then the vaccines won't work at all anymore. No more worries about seizures and autism spectrum disorders...so much simpler to just put flowers on a grave.

Cold, right? I vaccinated my kids. I think it's entirely possible that my son's horrible reactions to every single vaccination are, in fact, somehow linked to his autism. And I'd still do it again, because the risks to my kids and the community as a whole are greater if I don't vaccinate.

There are no guarantees. Wearing a seatbelt poses a certain amount of risk, too - check the statistics. I'm guessing the same people who refuse to vaccinate wouldn't dream of pulling out of the driveway without making sure their kids are strapped in tight. Why? Because the risk of going without the seatbelt is greater.

Play the odds. Vaccinate your children. Or don't, move to a cabin in the mountains, and keep your little petri dishes the hell away from my kids, mmm'kay?

What a lovely, eloquent, right-on post. I couldn't agree more. Thanks for this.

For the person who mentioned they won't take their non-immunized child out of the country: Has it ever occurred to you that there are non-immunized people in *this* country that may have come from other countries or been around different products from other countries that may have the diseases on them? Has it ever occurred to you that someone from *this* country could get your child sick?

I'm totally against doing more than one shot at a time, but who says you can't go every two weeks when the 8 or so shots are due? I figure that's what I'm going to do when I have kids. They're definitely going to get immunized (I'd rather have an autistic child than a dead child), and they'll get all their shots "on time," but not all at once. If that means they get one shot every two weeks for their first birthday, then so be it. I definitely won't let the doctor due multiple shots at once, but I also won't wait around forever to get all the vaccines that my child needs.

Also: I'm the type of person who'd love to insert vaccines into my body, simply for the hell of it. I'm deathly afraid of pain, and sickness causes more pain than that of a shot. I'm disappointed I can't be vaccinated for smallpox, but I'm not desperate enough to join the military to get it.

The one thing I don't get: Why hasn't anyone developed immunization to the itchiness mosquito bites cause?! I'm dying for that vaccination!

I don't think we ever have to understand, others parents decision on this topic. We have to look past the headline, It's not only the vaccines alone, but the schedule. They should be spread out and given one at a time. If we went back to the schedule before 1989, we would see the rates of neurological illness decline (food allergies, speech delay, apraxia, Sensory Integration Dysfunction, ADD, ADHD,ADS's, etc.

The reason we have vaccines, is because pharma companies, create them for profit and sell the idea to the gov't.

If you look at it a different way, maybe it's understandable, vaccines are a form of medicine. Why should anyone past judgement on parents what type of medicine they give their children wether it in pill, cream or needle form....

Once you go through the pain and heartbreak (that never ever goes away) of your child suffering neuoroligical impairment because of the vaccines, you may think differently.

Heather,

I applaud you for broaching this difficult topic and for doing so in a sensitive way. We need more of these discussions.

My 20 month old has had most of her shots but the more I read, the more I am starting to spread them out. I don't think modern medicine is bad, I do think it has gotten out of hand. What has changed so much in the past 20 years that we have to have so many more vaccines?

I also need to ask you, in the most gentlest way, since its a decision no parent should be forced to make, if your baby had a seizure after a vaccine, would you continue to vaccinate her? I know, you said that you felt some sensitive populations should be able to delay of avoid certain shots, the problem is, our medical system has failed to even acknowledge that some people might be sensitive. They offer us no way of predicting ahead of time, whether there may be a bad reaction. The fact of the matter is, that it is the unlikely people, the ones that do suffer the negative consequences, that must be the trailblazers.

Reading over all of these comments -- and I say this again as a parent who has vaccinated her daughter -- I do think the parents who are choosing not to vaccinate or opting for different schedules, are as a whole more informed.

Likewise, I think your commentary, while sensitive, is a little ill-informed. Measles generally does not kill. Autism is much more epidemic than measles.

I know you've written in the past about all the people who don't understand your use of antidepressants and how ignorant they are. I think you should likewise admit that you don't understand the struggles of every family/every child out there.

Few people are 100% anti-vaccine. Fine, vaccinate for polio. But why chicken pox? Why? Why do our doctors tell us the mercury has all been removed from vaccines when all you have to do is pick up The Vaccine Book, to learn that it has not? Our immune systems can only fight off so much at once, and I am concerned they are beign overtaxed.

Ok... well I agree everyone has the right to decide for there own children, but this is not just affecting there OWN children! I have 3 children which have all and in the process of getting immunizations and I would not change it. I do know people that do not get there children immunized and do hesitate about the thought of my children coming in contact with them? I would never be able to forgive them if they got my children sick. It is a odd "trend" and I will not put my children in harms way for a "trend" I need alot more proof to change my mind!

My first child died 72 hours after her first vaccinations due to a severe reaction to them. For that reason, I decided to delay vaccinations for my next 2 children by a few months. I was terrified of losing my babies, although they say lightning never strikes twice in the same place, I figured I better err on the side of caution just in case. I think vaccinations are really a good idea. In spite of losing my own dear daughter, I still believe it is better to have your child vaccinated.

I agree with you 100%! I split up my daughter's shots to two at a time--not so much for medical reasons, but more because my baby is much happier and handles two shots better. She had four shots once and cried for two days. After that I decided to spare my sanity and split the shots up. :-)

However, I have much more rage towards parents who don't immunize, and I've yet to be able to empathize with their decision. When my daughter was four months old my neighbor brought her daugther over who had RSV. I had no idea her daughter was that sick until my baby caught it and my neighbor told me it was probably from her daughter, who had RSV. I was SO UPSET. My baby was sick for six weeks and ended up in the ER. Every night at 4am, while I was giving my sick baby breathing treatments, I wanted to call my neighbor and scream at her. It took me months to forgive her carelessness.

My parents live in Oregon and we live in Florida. In a couple weeks we're flying out to see them--my baby is only 8 months old. I shouldn't have to be afraid that she'll catch measles on the plane because some parent who did a couple hours of internet research thinks she knows more than a doctor who has been to 8+ years of school. Parents who choose not to vaccinate their children risk the lives of our babies who are too young to receive certain shots. And that pisses me off.

I have not read every comment, so I apologise if I repeat anything.

I believe that unless you have been personally affected by a vaccination gone wrong then you have absolutly no idea what that parent or child is going through. I really don't think that anyone can judge them.

I was perfectly healthy until the age of 14 when I was forced to have the Tetnus/Diptheria/Polio vaccination. Until then I had had every other vaccination without a problem but I can honestly say that having the Tetnus vaccination has ruined my life.
Everyone has to remember that it is not just Autism that can occur from having a vaccination, there are a whole list of diseases can result from any vaccination.
I'm not about to say what illness I suffer from, as it is a highly debated illness in itself, but I do know that I contracted it as a direct result of a Tetnus vaccination.
Whilst at the moment I'm not as ill as a lot of people with the same disease, I spend every single day knowing that the next day I might get worse or that the next day I might not be able to move or talk or do anything.
This is not the life I had imagined I would have at 21 years old. I would not wish my life on my worst enemy.

I do not have children, but if and when I do there is no way that I will be able to make the decision to vaccinate them or not. That decision I will have to leave to the father.

Whilst I understand those who are angry at parents for not vaccinating their children, you cannot judge them if you have no idea of the decisions behind their actions.

Too many comments to read them all - but I'm curious: are there cases of autism in children who were not vaccinated? If there is not a link - and there are so many people refusing to vaccinate - wouldn't there be children developing autism anyway? I'm all for vaccinations - and I don't believe there is a link - but wouldn't the proof be an autistic child who never received any vaccines?

I run a very small home day care program, and while I respect a parent's choice to not immunize, I will not accept children without immunization into my program. Both of my children, who are now grown, experienced adverse reactions each time they were immunized (fevers, etc.), but I felt that it was worth that to protect them and their peers from the horrible diseases the immunizations were created to prevent.

I have had potential parents harass me, threated to sue me, and some have even made more serious threats when denied enrollment. But, I feel it is my responsibility to provide the safest environment I can for all of the children in my care.

This is such a controversial topic, as the Lioness protecting her cub, in each of us comes out.

I want to respond with a post I wrote about vaccines in March.

http://www.puremothers.com/?p=456

It's worth reading, because some vaccines, like Rubella are made with aborted fetal tissue. A lot of parents don't know this. Sometimes we have to make hard ethical choices. I encourage moms who "can't forgive" other mothers whose un-vaccinated children may unwittingly infect their own children to look more closely at their reasons for not vaccinating. No mother wants to harm a child, whether it's her own or anothers.

What the... a famous person endorsing immunizations? Who turned the world upside down? Thanks Heather for a voice of sanity. There has never been a single scientific study that has ever proven any sort of link between autism and immunizations. This sick and sad turn of events that will eventually lead to more childhood deaths has all been driven by the press and by stupid celebrities going on Oprah and telling everyone that immunizations gave their babies autism. It is really, really awful and a horrifying lie to get people to tune in, and buy magazines. Get your kids immunized people. As fast as you can.

When our children were born, we chose to vaccinate them, although it was on a more spread out schedule with no more than 2 shots at once. We never thought twice about it, other than there was a miniscule chance the MMR could induce autism if presented prior to 18 months - so we waited until they were 2. Then my daughter had a fever spike to over 103 and sezures as a direct result of her vax's. Within one month she developed severe allergies. We were told she'd outgrow the seizures and the fever thing was just a common reaction from the vax - and did we want to go ahead and schedule her next round. That was 3 years ago, and she still spikes a very high fever with EVERY illness (no one in our family, including her pre-vax has ever been prone to high fevers of any kind). She still has those seizures she was supposed to have outgrown by now. If she doesn't take medication twice daily, her allergies are so severe she is considered medically deaf. This may last her entire life.

At this point we began really looking at what's in the vaccines (which is pretty scary AND disgusting), looking at the safety of them and looking at the diseases they're supposed to prevent. DH had mumps as a child. I saw measles firsthand with my cousin. I had chickenpox as a preteen. None of these were more than a blip on the radar, far from the lifethreatening illnesses people think they are. Can they be life threatening? ANY illness can go wrong, even the common cold! My son's rotovirus was far, far worse and more lifethreatening than any of those I mentioned. Given all of this, we have decided we will not be immunizing our children any further.

THere seem to be a couple of possible misconceptions in the replies here. Many parents who vaccinate are NOT trying to rely on herd immunity. We do not fear measles or chickenpox, and rather than wanting our child protected by your child's immunization, we want our children exposed to it. Immunizations do not instill lifelong immunity. They wear off. No one knows when, but some last as little as 5 years in some people. Even if you vax your child, there's a chance that vax will wear off by high school or sooner. Exposure to the illness however generally confers lifelong immunity. We don't want your herd immunity. As for the chance that my unvaxxed child will make your vaxxed child ill, the concern actually goes the other way. More cases of chickenpox are caused by the vax and then passed to unvaxxed children. The same is true of any live vaccine. A child who is vaxxed CAN still contract the illness.

I have no problem with anyone who chooses to vaccinate their children, and I have no problem with someone saying to me "hey, I don't understand why you feel this way, can you tell me your side?", but until you have a child that has been damaged, possibly permenantly, by vaccinations, I can life without the condescending attitude that is so often found in these type of discussions.

I'm really surprised by the number of parents who are chosing not to vaccinate against the chicken pox because its "no big deal." For some children, its just a few uncomforatable days, but for others the case can be extreme. For me personally I had a horrible bout with chicken pox, it was down my throat, in my vagina and caused scars all over my chest and face which are still very visible. A friend of mine had chicken pox on her EYEBALLS. Why would you ever let your child go through that kind of discomfort if you can avoid it? We can't protect our children from everything, but don't we want to try?

My children were born in Ethiopia. When we travelled to adopt them, there were tallies of deaths from communicable diseases listed in the local papers. Many children in orphanages there were orphaned not by AIDS, as most people would guess, but by illnesses like the measles, hepatitis B, and malaria.

I worked for several years with children who have autism. Autism scares the bejeezus out of me, but I still chose to vaccinate my kids for precisely the reasons you spoke about in your post.

1) Dooce = AWESOME!

2) I'm either "somewhat autistic" or have an "autism spectrum diagnosis," depending on which branch of medicine you ask. I firmly believe that I was BORN THIS WAY. According to my parents and the rest of my relatives, my personality has been . . . unique, shall we say, since I was born. I put any blame on my brain's workings on fetal alcohol syndrome (smoking and drinking during pregnancy? . . . thanks, mom), NOT vaccines. I didn't change at any point.

3) Losing a child IS the worst thing that can happen to anyone. Autism isn't death. Stop treating it like a death sentence. Please?

There are too many comments for me to bother reading them all so I am sorry if I am repeating what a bunch of other people have already said but I completely agree with you. My daughter is 6 months old and I have chosen to have her vaccinated on a normal schedule. There have been many studies that disprove the theory that vaccinations cause autism and autism spectrum disorders. Perhaps the reason why autism appears around the same time that children receive certain vaccinations is because this is the time where the symptoms of autism begin to surface. The rise of autism and autism spectrum disorders can also be from a better understanding of the disorder, as well as better diagnostics.

Here is some information I found:
"A new study provides more proof that childhood vaccines with mercury as a preservative -- no longer on the market -- did not cause autism, researchers reported on Monday.

The findings came from a look at children diagnosed with autism in California from 1995 to 2007. It found that the number of autism cases continued to rise through that period even though the preservative thimerosal -- nearly half of which is made of ethylmercury -- was removed from most vaccines in 2001.

The data "do not show any recent decrease in autism in California despite the exclusion of more than trace levels of thimerosal from nearly all childhood vaccines (and) do not support the hypothesis that that exposure (to it) during childhood is a primary cause of autism," the study concluded.

Some earlier studies had linked mercury to autism, theorizing that as more and more children were being vaccinated against more health threats, it could explain increases in autism.

But a 2004 report from the U.S. Institute of Medicine said a review of existing studies did not appear to back the mercury-autism theory."

949. Katie - There is absolutely Scientific evidence REFUTING immunizations cause autism. Its Ilusary. Whether a child is immunized or not. That is the age where autism symtoms come up.

visit http://vaccinesafety.ecbt.org/ecbt/studies.htm#02

This is such a tricky subject. The thing is, on the video, it seems that you're arguing vaccinating vs. not vaccinating as if those are the only 2 options, & stating preventing diseases vs. getting autism as the only 2 outcomes. It's not that black & white. Personally, I am not vaccinating my children according to the recommended schedule by the CDC, but I am not anti-vaccine, nor do I cite autism as my reason not to vaccinate. We are choosing which vaccines my children will get, based on their health histories, their risk & exposure to each disease, our family's health histories, and the side effects involved for each vaccine. I think some of the recommended vaccines are completely ridiculous, like the Hep B for newborns, or the Gardasil vaccine, and the flu vaccine. I understand the goal of vaccinating, but don't believe that you should make it mandatory for entire populations. It's dangerous & just irresponsible. I think the side effects alone are pretty alarming, and good reason to at least do some research before blinding following the CDC, who has a vested interest in how many vaccines your family pays for. That's like trusting Nike to tell you how many pairs of shoes everyone should own. Not the best source. It's a known fact that mercury (still found in the majority of vaccines, b/c they keep postponing the deadline to remove it) is a neurotoxin. I don't think it's a coincidence that all these brain-related diseases & conditions dramatically increased along with the rate of vaccines administered.

My daughter is a vaccine injured child, and up until her seizure, I was following the CDC's schedule without question. Now, I'm a much more informed parent, and I found a new pediatrician who encourages his patients to be involved in the decision making of their own healthcare. He fully supports our decision not to vaccinate, and even wrote a book on the subject, entitled "Educate Before You Vaccinate". I think every parent owes it to their children to do a little reading before making a decision that could potentially hurt them. Every family is different, so I don't believe there's a right answer here, as far as whether to vaccinate. However, I do feel strongly that it's wrong to mass vaccinate entire populations on the recommendation of a company with an obvious agenda.

I've posted already at #891 but I've continued to read the additional posts.

There's one image I can't get out of my head. It's a scene from the "John Adams" mini-series in which Abigail Adams makes the decision to have herself and her children innoculated against small pox. It's a true story. She was one hell of a brave woman. Watch it and then you'll understand why vaccinations must contain cells from infected human tissue. Where do you think the vaccine possibly comes from otherwise???

Another historical note - Do you know why the Continental Army survived the winter at Valley Forge and continued on to win the battle in the spring? Because General George Washington insisted that all of his soldiers be innoculated. More than half of the British troops were killed by small pox.

Heather, I disagree with you a lot (and that's ok) but I'm with you 100% on this issue. No argument the anti-vaccine population has put out there justifies me willingly and knowingly putting my children at risk.

To me, it is both ignorant and defiant.

Thanks for sharing this with everyone.

I'd like to know if you, Heather, or any of the readers out there would continue vaccinating if your child had a serious adverse reaction after a round of shots?

Please find out about SV40. Look it up. Also, while you're researching, look up the terms serotype replacement and molecular mimicry. As long as you're actually researching and finding things out for yourself, you might find out the difference between antibodies and cellular immunity. Which is more important for good health?

I have some questions: How has MRSA gotten so strong? Why are little kids getting shingles? Are you scared of Scarlet Fever now? There's a vaccine in development--do you think you or your kids need it? How many of your fully vaccinated kids have had ear infections? How often? How about allergies? Asthma? Do they have eczema? Other skin ailments that won't go away quickly? Digestive issues--chronic constipation, poor absorption? Are they growing well? Do they get sick often?

Every fully vaccinated kid I know has had some or all of these problems. How is that healthy?

Not all doctors support routine vaccination. There's a lot of room for criticism. Not the least of which may be prompted if you read the actual vaccine package inserts where they let you know that the vaccine is not tested for carcinogenic, mutagenic potential or potential to impair fertility. If they're not looking for something, they won't find it.

More questions: Do you know what the ingredients are in vaccines? Do you know that the death rate of measles, diphtheria, tetanus, etc ALL fell to negligible levels BEFORE the vaccines were introduced? If you look, you can find that information in the U.S. Vital Statistics. Are you up to date on the vaccines that the CDC suggests you should have as an adult? Do you know that live vaccines (MMR, Flu) shed? That means the virus is excreted in the feces, saliva and nasal secretions for weeks after administration. Have you kept YOUR vaccinated kids away from babies or the elderly during those weeks after vaccination? Why not? Did the doctor show you the package insert as he/she is instructed to do on the package insert?

Do some research and find out about it for yourself. Your kids deserve that.

I'm a public health student, specializing in infectious disease epidemiology, and I wanted to thank you for your thoughtful and eloquent post on a frustrating and sensitive subject. You are absolutely right about herd immunity -- and it is also important to recognize that "vaccination" doesn't always equal "immunization". Sometimes, for whatever reason, the body just doesn't mount an immune response and the vaccine doesn't work for that child. This leaves children who had been appropriately vaccinated vulnerable, and increases the need for high levels of vaccination coverage.

The popularization of the autism-measles vaccine theory is from a poorly designed Lancet study that got a lot of press. 10 of the 13 authors have since rescinded on their original hypothesis (that there is a link between measles and autism). This "association" has since been debunked over and over again through eloquently designed studies. There simply is no scientific proof that there's an association. It is very important to remember that statistical significance does NOT equal causality!

The fact of the matter is that we're extraordinarily lucky in this country. Even when our children DO get measles (either due to not being vaccinated, or being appropriately vaccinated but not immunized), it is commonly mild - although the case fatality rate is still around 1%. In other parts of the world, measles is a leading killer of children, because of concomitant infectious, malnutrition, etc.

To say, as I have heard, that vaccination has no medical benefit is ridiculous. I'll use the example of poliomyelitis, which was a leading cause of permanent disability in this country. The inactivated vaccine, the first polio vaccine developed, was introduced in the mid 1950s, when there were 13,000-20,000 cases of polio every year. If you look at a graph, the cases of polio dropped drastically after its introduction -- by about 95%, by the time they introduced the live oral vaccine in the 1960s. That is a HUGE drop, in a short period of time. There hasn't been a case of indigenous, wild-type polio in the United States since 1979. And we've seen in other countries, most recently in Nigeria, that when vaccination campaigns stop and the disease is not eliminated entirely from a geographic area, it comes back.

Obviously vaccines have risk of side effects. If there is a 1 in a million chance of an adverse reaction, and 4 million children get vaccinated every year, 4 children have an adverse reaction -- and these cases are frequently played up in courts and the media. It's important to keep in mind, though, that many, many more than 4 children would die or be permanently disabled by the diseases vaccines prevent. We just haven't seen these diseases in this country in a very long time, so it's easy to think they're gone, though it's clear they're not. I hope we don't have to see an increase in outbreaks in order for the general public to accept why vaccination is so important, but I have a feeling that's where we're headed.

Stephanie @969: My husband, my sister, stepsister, and myself were all fully vaccinated at the respective schedules for our ages.

1) I have had NO vaccine preventable diseases or any reactions to any of them.
2) My sister, who was old enough for the chicken pox shot (she's 8 years younger than me) still got chicken pox despite it.
3) My stepsister developed regular grand mal seizures due to the DPT shot, which is a known reaction.
4) My husband, despite being fully vaccinated, got pertussis at 12.

So, of the 4 people whose vaccination history I know, only one of them, myself, has had the intended effect.

I have read a few more comments here and there and how some people roll their eyes at the HPV vaccine. The shot helps protect against HPV 16 and HPV 18 which have shown to cause cervical cancer. (there are other versions of this shot they are testing for further protection)

The reason for the younger age (starting at 12 i believe) they give the vaccine showed better results in protection against the virus in women 12-25 years of age and whom have never had any sexual experience. Meaning that they had no exposure to the virus so they can produce the antibodies against the virus. But it wont work if you have been expose to the virus which is one of the most common STD out there (1 in 4 people have it and its rising) Even the CDC says that at least 20 million people in the U.S. have the virus

The problem is some people never develop the warts that are cause by the virus and symptoms go un-noticed or symptoms never even manifest. It just bothers me that people think their daughter wont need it. Its like saying "My daughter is not having sex", and everyone knows how kids are and they dont tell their parents everything. Its protecting females from the virus considering her partner may have the virus but show no signs of it and then can give it to her.

I do agree though that vaccines need to be re-vamped and made cleaner. Definatly more research is needed.

Autism isn't the only thing parents are worried about regarding vaccines... There may or may not be a link between vaccines and autism, but there was such compelling evidence of a link between SIDS and vaccines, that Japan changed the entire country's immunization schedule. Currently Japanese children don't get more than 6 shots before the age of 2, and they have one of the lowest (best) infant mortality rates in the world.

There is also a difference in the body's immune response between disease entering through mucous membranes, vs. disease injected right into the bloodstream. Many people think injected pathogens can trigger autoimmune disease in people who are predisposed, as the immune system mistakenly thinks it should attack the body itself, since the problem was discovered IN the body, not in the mucous membranes which would signal an external attacking invader.

I believe the parents who report devastating consequences and side effects after their children receive vaccinations. You know, there isn't really any good way to scientifically and ethically prove that a vaccine may pose a dire risk to children, because any negative effect can always be brushed off and attributed to something else. (In other words, there aren't any children isolated in bubbles, to control for extraneous influences other than vaccines.) Even vaccine-makers have disclaimers on their products, and are aware of possible side effects.
And you can't deny that the number of shots has increased. Older people talk about everyone getting vaccinated and no one complained, we all lived through it, and walked 15 miles to school and back, uphill in both directions. But compare the US 1980's vaccination schedule to the current one, and you will see a big difference.

I think herd immunity is a good idea, but I also understand that putting your own child in harms way for the sake of the general population is not something any loving parent would do lightly. If there is a doubt in your mind that a vaccine, meant to protect your healthy child, will actually harm him/her, it may be a risk you aren't willing to take. I'm ok with that, I understand why a parent would choose not to vaccinate. Of course, I agree that this is a luxury "controversy" of 1st world societies, and we may take for granted a country free of measles, mumps, and polio. But I completely respect a parent's right to decide for themselves and their children. Freedom is dangerous, but I'll take freedom every time over Safe and Smothered.

Personally, I started out vaccinating my daughter according to the recommended US schedule, at 2 and 4 months, but after her horrible reaction at 4 months (high fever, lethargic, unhappy, weird shudders that may have been seizures), I've decided to forgo any more until she is 1 year old. After doing much research, I'll be following Dr. Sears' alternative schedule. I won't give her the chicken pox vaccine at all, I'll let her get that naturally. Also, no one in my family gets the flu shot, and we are always A-OK, pretty good considering we live in Wisconsin where the flu rages through every winter. (Incidentally, it always seems that the flu that goes around never matches up to the vaccine given, it's always a different strain.) So I do think vaccination is important, but bunching up many shots at once at such a young age is unwarranted and potentially harmful, and I see some vaccines as unnecessary altogether.

I admire your courage in addressing this issue Heather. I understand completely selective vaxing and I'm quite surprised just how aggressive the vaxing schedule is in the U.S. I would like to say however that the reasons that many parents choose not to vax are multifaceted. It isn't just related to a fear of autism. At the moment I am reading posts in some parenting forums, and the anti-vax parents are apparently feeling very victimised by the responses to your post. According to them, all of the people that have agreed with you are misinformed, uninformed and ignorant. But this is the arguement that they use every time to justify their decision not to vaccinate their child/children. We're ignorant, they're not.

As for me, it never even occured to me NOT to vaccinate my child. I see children dying all over the world because they do not have access to proper health care and the vaccinations that have improved our health for decades. Yet, there are people choosing not to vaccinate, it boggles my mind.

I am one of those moms...One of my children is vaccinated. Two are not. My son, my middle child, had a reaction to the DPT. Which was given at the same time as the MMR.

And I watched my son who had been meeting every developmental mile stone, begin to lag behind. He is now 15, and verbal, but he will NEVER be the same, or the same as other kids. We talk about how it feels to be so different from his peers.

When I had my youngest years later, I chose not to risk it. I know, there is no hard data on this. I know lots of people tell me it's just a fluke. But no one. No doctor, has ever been able to tell me what caused the sudden change in my healthy baby boy.

I will say though. I would NEVER judge parents who choose to vaccinate. And if their child developed an autism spectrum disorder I would not blame them. They where doing the best they could. And I hope for (but don't usually get) the same kind of respect from parents who DO vaccinate their children.

RE:

973. Joanna said:
If your child is vaccinated, then theoretically, shouldn't your child be protected against the disease for which he or she vaccinated? So why blame the parents of an unvaccinated child who has measles or chicken pox?

Are you joking? Vaccinations are not 100% effective, and some children physically cannot receive them. Less and less people receiving vaccines will clearly lead to the disease being spread around more easily, therefore, even children who were vaccinated will be more vulnerable.

and RE:980. Laura said:
Every fully vaccinated kid I know has had some or all of these problems. How is that healthy?

Duh. The vax are not for ear infections or colds. They are for specific diseases.

That is SUCH bullshit, Heather, that children who are ten months old will possibly die from Measles (or the other childhood diseases your mentioned). Maybe if they are in a war torn country, without decent nutrition.

Utter bullshit in a Western Country where children are well nourished. You, my dear, have bought the hype and the scare mongering.

When children go through these NORMAL childhood diseases, they experience developmental leaps after recovery AND they *have immunity for LIFE*. That immunity for life? DOES NOT EXIST WITH ANY 'VACCINE' or 'IMMUNIZATION'. I speak from experience, NOT opinion. Read on sweetheart.

I rarely comment, but this post is just utter misinformed bullshit, steeped in your own misinformed fears.

My son developed seizures JUST after infant vaccines (and we stopped vaccinating as a result). Those seizures eventually stopped but not for THREE YEARS (of sheer hell). By that time I had subjected my daughter to 5 years of vaccinations.

My daughter, within weeks of receiving the MMR (3rd booster!) just around the time her little brother was born, rapidly developed severe dyslexia. She went from a bright, coordinated, naturally inquisitive child to one who couldn't sit still for 1 sec, and lost any measure of concentration she'd had before, and totally fucked up recall (her short term and long term memory have been fucked ever since).

So, I did my homework. Then I harkened back to a conversation when my daughter was first born, one where my gentle grandmother asked me to really critically think whether or not I wanted to vaccinate my newborn. One of her little sisters DIED within 48 hours of a vaccine at 18 mos. I wish I had listened. But I caved in to the propaganda by the paediatrician.

The pressure is tremendous for new mothers.

VACCINES DO NOT PREVENT diseases - they merely SUPPRESS and when those children are exposed to the [childhood] disease - one of two things happens:
1) they develop seemingly unrelated symptoms (a morphed type of expression of said disease)
2) they develop the disease in full force anyway. (rarer)

The later is what happened to my daughter, and myself when exposed to Rubella. My daughter had had the MMR and two boosters - and I had had MMR every five years of my life (kidney history - low immunity - I bought the bullshit). Where was the so called protection then?

I gave birth to my son in March 1997. The day I gave birth, they gave me an MMR booster. 14 weeks later, we all travelled to Greece for a month's holiday, where we were exposed to Rubella (German Measles) enroute. Me, my daughter and my son all three came down with it (it lasted three weeks in total and was not any worse than a bad cold with a mild fever!). My son was only 14 weeks old. He had the LEAST severe symptoms. We merely had to wear hats, sunglasses and avoid high-sun exposure.

Remember - if your body develops a fever? It means your immune system is doing it's job. Stop and let that simple truth sink in for a moment.

So please - before you start spouting off about vaccines, get some training that isn't biased and steeped in the fucking Pharma industry. And based on their biased [so called] studies.

Oh - and things haven't significantly changed in the last five years Heather. That statement you made? Is about YOU - it just shows you don't know jack about this topic, beyond the propaganda bullshit you've been fed (along with the rest of us) and are too afraid to challenge. The true research is available on the web for more than the last five years - by reputable people who worked in this industry (nurses, doctors, etc.).

Your statement about losing control? Totally back to front. You give up control when you subject yourself to some doctor's opinion, which he's been spoonfed in college - and has not bothered to challenge. Fortunately, there are doctors out there, albeit few - who do challenge the crap they've been fed.

We who have vaccine damaged children have to contend with those effects for the rest of our lives. We also have to contend with utter rage when we read such misinformed bullshit like this. And we have to contend with forgiving ourselves for subjecting our children to the poison that was put in their little bodies, with lasting effects for their rest of their lives. At least my children lived and are functional. Some don't and some never recover.

Thanks, Heather, for a well-written post. I feel for people who can't vaccinate their kids because of health issues. And I think doing vaccines on your own schedule works best for some people. But basically, I think getting vaccinated is a civic duty.

It seems to me that if one thinks the vaccines work and you want to get them for your children, then get them and they'll be protected.

It then makes sense that if I don't want to vaccinate my children, it's them that I'm taking the risk with, not your children. Doesn't that make sense? Your kids got vaccinated, so they're protected.

I simply chose to take a different risk with my kids. The risk of getting sick with an unpleasant but usually not fatal disease, over the risk of autism and many other things.

But if you and your kids are vaccinated and you believe those vaccines protect you, then you are fine and I'm not putting you at risk.

Feel free to tell me if you disagree, I don't charge much for disagreeing :-)

I work in the pediatrics department of a large university - and recently it was discovered that the doctor (Dr. Andrew Wakefield) who started the vaccination scare manipulated data in his findings so that he could market an alternate "safer" vaccine that parents would be more likely to use...(i.e. he was scaring everyone for his own profit. Everyone claims to have done their homework in this area, but now the wave of ignorance on this topic has taken hold that very few people are listening to the fact that the information that was originally give was FALSE.

http://briandeer.com/mmr/st-wakefield-vaccine.htm

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article5683671.ece

I suggest everyone continue doing their homework in this issue...especially since children are are more at risk to contracting deadly diseases because of it.

To the woman who got Rubella in Greece, do you think your wearing a hat protected any pregnant women you might have come in contact with? Women who might not even have known they were pregnant? So you went all around your vacation, possibly spreading it wherever you went, with I am assuming no thought to what you might be doing to anyone else????????????????

I wanted to respond to Deborah who kindly responded to me that the reason many people do not give their children the chicken pox vaccine is because it contains tissue from aborted fetuses. While its true that the vaccine was developed using embryonic tissue, the vaccine itself does not contain the tissue of aborted fetuses. I understand how some do not want to support research that used embryonic cells, though the vaccine itself does not contain aborted babies - that's sensationalized media reporting.

The increasing numbers of autistic kids in our country could have more to do with our diets based on preprocessed foods than with vaccines. The amount of mercury of high fructose corn syrup consumed over a lifetime in soft drinks, fruit snacks, candy and other foods will add up to more than vaccines: http://www.physorg.com/news152264729.html

I sympathize with their intentions, but they could be putting their kids and my kids in harms way and still putting their kids at risk.

I am the mother of a child who died from Meningitis, a child who is completed vaccinated to no ill effects and a child who will die if given a Pertussis vaccine. I understand protecting us all from disease, but that should include protecting us from tainted vaccines aggressively given to those tiny people with no immune systems. My son is alive today only because of a quick resuscitation, prolonged hospitalization and 6 months on a breathing and heart monitor following his DPT shot. He has some long standing issues. This does not have to be a herd issue, this should be a safety issue, for the herd and the individual.

I am so happy to see you discuss this highly charged issue! I wanted to draw your attention to some good science websites that discuss autism and vaccines. In essence, there has yet to be a study that links them. I understand the other side affects that children can have due to vaccines, but I wanted to point you in the direction of these websites for the specific autism argument.
Science-Based Parenting
Science-Based Medicine
Respectful Insolence
These websites try to point readers in the direction of studies done on a world of various medical practices for us to better educate ourselves, but they do deal with vaccines quite frequently.
I hope these help you and other readers!
-Megan

This is indeed a very controversial topic and I applaud you for talking about it both candidly and articulately! I agree with everything you said. This is very much a 1st world luxury, and I have to admit I am very opinionated about this topic both because I am a parent and because I have worked for several years in public health in 3rd world countries. Mothers in 3rd world countries, if they are lucky enough to have access to regular and reliable vaccinations, sometimes have to walk tens of miles and/or wait hours in order to get the vaccinations for their children. They are willing to do this because they have seen their own or their neighbors children become extremely sick or even die from these diseases. They would be appalled at the thought of a mother in the US willingly refusing such a relatively easy and cheap opportunity to safeguard the health and security of her children.

I've experienced the thoughts and questions about the possibility that vaccines cause autism, but I've also looked at the many very reliable studies that have been done and I come away with the belief that the real risks of children getting sick or even dying from these diseases outweighs the very unlikely possibility that vaccines cause autism. Thank you for broaching this sensitive topic.

My 6 week old son ended up getting whopping cough from someone in the hospital when he was born who hadn't been immunized. At 6 weeks old, and 6.5 pounds my son fought for his life.

I immunize my kids. Period.

I don't know if there is even a point in posting anymore, but I just wanted to say that I appreciate the thoughtful posting of the majority of the replies! So often, people just let their emotions take over and this topic turns into mud-slinging.

I did want to address a couple of things: the biggest segement of the population who is uneducated on this topic (from my personal experience) are those who fully vaccinate, no question. I'm sorry, but I have absolutely zero respect for a mother who willingly injects her baby with 32 shots (full of chemicals) without question. I personally don't believe that autism is caused so much by one vaccine, but in the past 10 yrs we've gone from a reasonable schedule of 10 shots, to what I consider an insane level of 32. Do you know that a child's blood brain barrier is not fully functioning until 3yr? So their body doesn't have the ability that an older child does to filter out the toxins in vaccines (and they are toxins if you read the ingredient lists) and they go right into the brain. I think it's irresponsible to just take the risk with your childs' body and not do your research first.
I'm sure there are some completely ignorant non-vaxers our there but from my personal experience they are hands down far more educated on this topic than the majority of on scheduled vaxers. And I'm not talking kooky, online paranioa, I'm talking about mom's who know the disease stats in their counties, who know the ingredients of each vaccine, the side effects, the death rates of each vaccine (and yes those are public information from government sources) and so on. Most people who don't question the vaccine schedule don't even realize that vaccines don't offer full immunity and that each vaccine has caused death in children and serious, permanent injury. I think it's a heavy decision either way, we need to demand the government provide our children with a SAFE schedule and parents need to stop assuming "Dr. knows best" and not questioning this. I'm graduating from nusring school in a few weeks and the average person has know idea how little some Dr.'s know about vaccines, vaccine safety, etc... They just assume the Dr. learned about it and knows what's up. But please remember, most Dr.'s learned about vaccines years and years aga in med school, THEY ARE COURTED by the pharm companies, and pharm companies have become a billion dollar industry. Some of that is amazing a miracle of modern medicine, but I see a TON of overmedication with dangerous side effects because people won't question the Dr. about it. People: question your Dr. he is not God and you'd be amazed at how little they do know about certain topics. I've questioned some of my sons peds, and they do know far less about how vaccines than I do, and that's scary.
All of that said, after doing my research I vaccinated my son on a delayed schedule, but he's fully up to date at age 4. I didn't rely on herd immunity when making my decision: there were literally dozens of books, journals, articles on boths sides of the issue that I read and I looked at each disease with it's risks, and each vaccine and it's known (these are published, not personal stories)side effects, injury rate, and death rate and went from there. It was never a black and white issue, and for those parents who think it is, I would venture to guess you are basing your arguement on what other tell you and not digging into the facts. I still agonize over what I will do for future children. I just hate that there isn't a safer schedule. I'm not anti-vax at all, I'm just anti-lack of information and a medical system that is too influenced by a billion dollar industry. It's right to question, and don't be bullied by medical professional who try to intimidate parents for asking reasonable questions!

TO: Lisa Post #996. AMEN!!! Thank you for the wonderful post!

Side note: To all of you that delay immunizations, why do you do it? Are you nervous? You don't trust all those wonderful doctors? CDC? FDA? AAP? AMA? You all should just go ahead and stick to the rigorous schedule recommended by our pharma and goverment officials.

Sheeples!

To comment 1019 (Anon) thank you for your level headed and intelligent response :-) I vaccinated my child and I am glad that I did, but in saying that, our vaccination schedule is no where near as aggressive as it appears to be in the U.S. I agree that it is far too many and far too young an age. Reading your response was like a breath of fresh air in comparison to the angry response of comment 996... because of your level headed response and calm approach, I'd be more likely to research the issue.

It's offtopic, but as a journalist you might be interested.

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Very well written - thank you Heather. I enjoy reading all sides of this debate. We vacinated our girls with no problem but if I had to do it over I think I would have looked into a modified schedule a little closer. It does seem like a lot to give a little baby as it is set up now.

"And I realized, I do not think that I would ever be able to forgive the parents of that infected boy. That is my raw, honest emotion toward that scenario."

Yeah, this statement by the Dooce bugged me, too. And I do appreciate Heather's attempt to be reasoned, sensible and compassionate.

But.

But we are still learning about vaccines and their affects on our children. Studies do not prove safety. Simply, no studies have definitively proven a correlation with Autism. Big difference.

Consider this.

Back in September my doctor had wanted to give my daughter the Quad - which is the MMR plus Varicella. Less shots.

I declined. (We have our own schedule going...)

Then a month later, I read that the Quad puts children at an increased risk of febrile seizures.

http://blogs.babycenter.com/momformation/2009/01/21/combination-vaccine-...

My point being... we are still learning what these shots mean. They are not proven safe. I do vaccinate my daughter but we have our own schedule going and are declining some shots (Chicken pox, the flu, delayed MMR). Many people would be critical of us for that.

Perhaps, Heather, the more we learn about vaccines the more discoveries we will have about their implications on our children's health. And perhaps in the future some mothers will be coming to you saying that they are unable to forgive you for their sick child.

I understand both sides of the spectrum, but I chose to wait to vaccinate. It's too high a dosage for such little babies. I am for vaccinating, but do it at your own discretion. YOU make decisions for YOUR child.

@ 1030. GailV - said: I wasn't vaccinated for measles. No one in my family was vaccinated for measles. I got measles, mumps, rubella and chicken pox as a child. This was the 60s in small town Midwest. EVERYBODY got measles, mumps, rubella and chicken pox -- thousands upon thousands of kids. People didn't freak out about it. Doctors knew how to care for children with these diseases, as did parents. I honestly feel that more kids die from these diseases because of inappropriate medical care than because of the virulence of the diseases"

And many many more thousands DIED Gail. I think Heather actually did her research, and didnt go by what a Mommy blog said happened to their children. Underlying assumptions meaning what?

I immunized homeopathically-!
If you are immunized then my hoemopathically immunized child cannot 'infect you'
and yes they are 'allowed' to be in school...
schools no longer along with all the other kids who live here--they do not discriminate against those who do not immunise

I do have a grandmas that survived tetnus about 15 years ago- was given the wrong vaccine at the hospital (there are slow acting and fast acting versions)-- so I think they have their place
immunizations have their place just not with infants and young children

I have to say I disagree with you. I have a 16 month that has not been vaccinated and my reasons are many and Autism is at the bottom of my list. Have you read what is in the vaccines? There are so many toxic metals as well aborted fetal cells, monkey kidney cells and the list goes on. I may not be a dr. but I don't want to be injecting those things into my kid. Clean up vaccines and we can talk.
Also I want some independent studies on vaccines. If I recall all studies are in bed with the drug companies. Of course you are going to get the *right* outcome. And all the experts are in bed with the drug companies and what are they going to say ...
I have researched each vaccine and disease. I am not doing vaccines because I don't want my child to cry. I don't because there are not good studies and we don't know the effects completely.

Well here is my two bits. I think the problem is that vaccines work too well for their own good. If they only worked 50% of the time, I think more people would be getting them. How many of the non-immunizers have seen tetanus in a baby, I would think none. It is NASTY! If people saw these diseases regularly they would have a healthy fear of them and get their kids immunized. Or vaccines should work 100% of the time (instead of the 90-98% depending on the vaccine). Then mothers like me wouldn't have to care what those other people do, my kids would be safe.

oh, then there are those non-immunizers who get the polio vaccine for themselves before going to Africa... don't get me started on those folks

I wanted to add another thing- not that it matters at this point with the bazillion and one comments but my daughter was not given her Hep vax until her 2 month check-up, not at birth. At 4 months old she was in daycare and was accidentally given a bottle of another mothers breastmilk. I needed to have a very uncomfortable conversation with this other mother I had never met and find out her infectious disease status. Besides how gross it is that my daughter got this, all i could think was how glad I was that I had gotten the Hep vax before she started daycare. The other mom was clean of all blood born diseases but what if she wasnt?

Just another thing to consider.

"The choice to refuse vaccinations just seems to me to be a first world luxury."

Thank you for your perspective, and thank you for this particular thought. It's so true. I've been to an African hospital full of dying babies. To this day there are no words for what I saw, from the feverish eyes of the children to the looks of desperation on the faces of the mothers. I know not everyone agrees with you and that there are all sorts of variations on how much or how little people agree with you, but thank you for acknowledging that, because seriously, until you've been to a hospital in the back of beyond where there are stray dogs running the hallways, where the maternity ward windows have been broken with a rock because someone slipped out of the unsecured mental health ward, where the TB patients live in shacks in the back yard because there's no other way to isolate them, and where the babies and kids are DYING because their parents had positively no access to vaccines, you don't "get it."

I know I probably sound harsh, but there it is. Heather (comment 902) put it all much more eloquently than I did, and I have to say I share her feelings. It's hard to see that (I was in Kenya also) and then return to the US and hear people denying their child the right to a vaccine. I respect the decision of each parent, but I definitely do not understand it. I just can't, and honestly after Africa, I'm not sure any evidence against vaccination ever could.

Maybe all those vaccines I had before going to Africa made me biased though...

Thanks for saying this, Heather! With more than 1,000 comments (whew!) I will admit I haven't read the thread as thoroughly as I normally might. So sorry if this has already been said.

One thing I would like to stress, and which I just posted on, is that although it is indeed an intriguing case of when my personal 'life, liberty and pursuit of happiness' bumps against yours, we ought not to ever confuse celebrity with expertise.

I respect Jenny M, always found her to be funny, and never for a moment bought the dumb blonde routine; but just because her son had autism does not make her a medical expert.

I've just started blogging, please check it out: http://chunklight.blogspot.com/2009/04/vacillating-on-vaccinations.html

I totally agree with you that innocent bystanders were hurt in the specific story you listed, because some of the children weren't unvaccinated by choice, rather, because they weren't old enough. If you are going out of the country, regardless of where, you should have to have current shots. Why was this not checked for international travel? I really like your herd theory.

I had to have my MMR vaccinations 2x because the doctors here in Utah did not record them correctly, so when we moved to Cali, I had to have them again. I turned out just fine...oh and didn't they discover the doctor was LYING about MMR vaccination linking to autism? Where is the proof of argument for this fear, if the ONLY proof there was has been uncovered as falsified to begin with?

Quote:
#1040. Give me a break said:
Well Rebekah, if you say we don't know the effects of vaccines completely, we sure do know the effects of not vaccinating, death for many. If you're excited about mercury in vaccines, there is none in my kids vaccines, simple. Oh, I hope you don't eat Tuna, way too much mercury.

I was talking about the formaldehyde, aluminum, MSG as well as the monkey fetal cells, monkey kidnet cells, aborted fetus cells. So all these are *good* for you???

And the side effects I am talking about are food allergies, eczema, and other diseases vaccinated kids are getting at alarming rates. I know that asthma and ADHD have been linked to vaccines.

I have friends that have vaccinated on the schedule and I SEE what it is has done to their child. She has terrible eczema, food allergies after her 12 month vaccines.

And to address all the deaths. The diseases were on a decline before vaccines were started. It is due to better hygiene not the vaccines. And I am not going to trade one thing for another. Because if I vaccinated and then my child comes up with a severe food allergy then I have just traded one problem for the next.

Sorry I don't see your point. :)

I love how anti-vaxers comment on "do you know this" or "have your thought about that" and the information in their posts are full of misinformation, misunderstanding and logical fallacies. Oh yeah, I can see how they have done their "research". Then there is the conspiracy theories. I love the conspiracy theories. I'm OK though because I'm wearing a tin foil hat.

It sends me into fits of giggles when an anti-vaxer says to do more research when they are the ones that have it wrong. The sobering part of it is that innocent children are going to suffer because of the arrogance of their ignorance and I always say a prayer for those poor kids.

Re: query by 1052 (Anonymous)

Here are some recent problems.

------------------------
1. 988 (Rachel)
quoted: "...there was such compelling evidence of a link between SIDS and vaccines, that Japan changed the entire country's immunization schedule. Currently Japanese children don't get more than 6 shots before the age of 2, and they have one of the lowest (best) infant mortality rates in the world."

correction: The rates of SIDS actually rose in Japan per the official autopsy records of the country over the time period when the pertussis vaccination was delayed (1974-1978). Japanese researchers are on record with the following statement from one of their major medical journals (Nippon Hoigaku Zasshi, 1992 Dec. 46(6): p. 407-12): "An inevitable conclusion of studies in the Netherlands, Great Britain, the United States and Japan is that sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is intimately linked to the prone sleeping position of infants."
See article with references at http://preview.tinyurl.com/dfsywx

----------------------
2. 1030 (GailV)
quoted: "And, because I actually had measles rather than a vaccination, my understanding is that my breastmilk would provide antibodies to protect my hypothetical 10 month old. The 10 month old child of a vaccinated mother wouldn't receive the same protection -- a little "whoops" that vaccinating has delivered to the next generation of children."

correction: It's unlikely that her hypothetical 10-month old would have been protected from measles via her maternal antibodies in breastmilk, because when titers of measles antibodies are drawn from such infants, less than 5% had levels which were high enough to protect them by the time they were 9 months old. That's only 1 in 20. Possible, but not great odds to rely on for protection.

These are infants of mothers who had the disease earlier in life, tested as fully immunized by titer at the time of delivery, and then breastfed those babies as the sole nutritional support. Below are links to 2 such studies.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/d5bmhl (India, 1998)
http://preview.tinyurl.com/dytn9e (Nigeria, 2005)

---------------
3. 1036 (Ashley)
quoted: "Or that the mortality rate of measles is .03% in developed nations."

correction: Her number is off by an order of magnitude: "The acute child fatality rate in industrialized nations is only 0.1-0.2%, compared with a 2-10% fatality rate in children in the developing world."
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1132710-overview

Additionally the very small incidence of measles in developed countries with good vaccination records skew the percentages: i.e., mortality rate of small numbers of infected people will vary widely, as even 1 additional death can double the percentage or more. But the more people are infected, the more stable will be the mortality rate, and it's likely to be significantly different than an easily skewed rate drawn from a small sample.

------------

4. Multiple commenters have claimed that the measles and other such diseases were on the decrease *before* vaccination. That isn't true. The CDC has a graph of actual incidence at http://preview.tinyurl.com/d8se2o .

Measles deaths were on the decrease, because we could take better care of secondary infections through antibiotics, etc. The deaths were down, but it was still the primary infectious disease killer of kids. But the *number of people infected* did not significantly drop until after the vaccination program was in effect. The CDC link explains this well.

It pisses me off that I do everything possible to keep my child safe yet my son could get sick and die because of other's paranoia in not immunizing their child.

I don't comment much or even necessarily agree with you often, Heather, but I have to give you a hearty "AMEN!" on today's post.

Well articulated, especially this line:

"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."

EXACTLY!

You hit the nail on the head. I'm all about "live and let live", but when certain personal decisions negatively affect the rest of society, then the "live and let live" philosophy becomes problematic.

(Very gracious, 1056 Christina. :))

Heather:

You are a mommy-blogger turned vaccination expert? Come on.

I am definitely one of those mothers you will never understand... vaccinations are the least of the ways we differ.

I know how to bring a child's fever down without the use of drugs. I understand depression and discipline myself to keep on top of it through a variety of methods which, in my experience are better than taking a pill. When pregnant, I don't act as if I'm nature's oddity and write a 300-word essay about my swollen ankles. I discipline children who speak to me the way you describe Leta speaking to you. I don't think my doctor has more answers than the generations of women before me who've cared for children with chicken pox. I've successfully delivered babies at home after doctors in my town began refusing to do vaginal births after c-sections. My children drink green smoothies with breakfast and don't have a taste for sweets. TV watching is my kids' least favorite activity and outdoor exploration is tops. Two of my children have never had to see a doctor and I can count on one hand the times I've taken any of them to a clinic. Despite being exposed to illnesses, they are rare in my home and don't linger.

I am not the ignorant, disease-spreading, negligent parent you describe. Thankfully, I am an American Mother who still has the freedom to exercise her right to make thoughtful decisions. A Luxury? Damn right!

Hi. This is my first comment here. I learned of this blog from the Oprah Winfrey Show. Congratulations on your success.

I am the mom of a fully vaccinated daughter who has autism and intractible seizures due to vaccinations.

Thimerosal (49% ethyl mercury) was never in the MMR. Though Thimerosal has been REDUCED in some vaccines, it has not been removed. Thimerosal containing vaccines with the full doses were not recalled when the lower dose versions were created. Some of them had an expiration date of 2007. IOW, peds were still giving them to children as recently as 2 years ago. With the flu vaccine having been added to the vaccine schedule, the decrease in Thimerosal in the other vaccines hasn't accomplished anything in the way of cleaning up vaccines or reducing the levels of mercury in them, as the vast majority of flu shots available - to adults and children, still contain the full dose of Thimerosal.

I just cringe when I read comments from people who say they have researched or who hold professional medical positions and agree that there is no causation between vaccines and chronic disabilites such as autism. Go to www.fourteenstudies.org and see just how flawed the studies showing no link actually are. It is unfathomable that these studies were conducted the way they were and are promoted. There are far more not-flawed studies showing links and causes. People have been awarded damages for vaccine induced autism, MMR induced autism, Hep B Vaccine induced MS and death. And don't forget about all those precious teenaged girls who are dead or paralyzed from Gardasil. Those who have advanced ALS. Yet, the industry controlled media is restricted from reporting them. All we hear from them are the autism omnibus results. If anyone actually read those proceedings, they would see what a farce the verdicts were. The verdict that is being appealed and the actual appeal can be read at www.ageofautism.com

Thimerosal is the second most toxic substance known to man. We wouldn't let our children drink it but it's being injected into their tiny bodies, along with aluminum, formaldehyde, fetal products from humans, chickens, cows, pigs, and monkeys - along with the viruses. Give me chicken pox any day. Give me pneumonia any day. They are better than shingles and drug-resistent strains of pneumonia that have resulted from said vaccines. We should not have to trade even deadly diseases like tetanus and polio for chronic disabilties for which insurance companies, by the way, will not cover. This is too high a price for children to have to pay to protect the herd. It does NOT have to be this way! The focus needs to be on demanding that vaccines and the vaccine schedule be changed. Parents are not the problem. We are sounding the alarm ABOUT the problem.

Read Jenny McCartney and Dr. Jerry Kartnizel's new book. It lays it all out for parents and pediatricians who want to actually contribute to the well being of all children.

Change has to come to the vaccine program so that diseases can be kept at bay and also so that the man-made epidemic of autism and the increase in the number of children with diabetes, ADD, ADHD, diabetes, cancers, asthma, and genetic mutations - all of which correlate with the increase in the vaccine schedule in 1989 - can finally end. Autism via mercury poisoning is NOT acceptable and not something anyone should accept as the new norm in more than 1 in 150 children. Our children are the sickest, most vaccinated in the world.

An epidemic of permanently disabled children with no recourse is too high a price for anyone to pay.

Thank you for reading.

@ 1061. Anonymous:

I would like to learn more about your treatments that worked for you that you described in your comment. Is there a link to a site or a blog?

@1061 Smug much? Why do you bother reading Heather's work if she bothers you so much? It's fine that you lead your life differently and make different choices, but you can't really come to *her* site and act righteously indignant towards her over your perceived superiority.

Good lord, you sound tiresome.

Can't public schools prevent your child from starting school each year if you do not vaccinate?

Ok, strictly speaking, I am an "immunizer" :) My two children are both fully vaccinated and I am a card carrying member to prove it. I also have a sister that doesn't have health insurance for her kids and they are marginally vaccinated. My biggest concern/gripe on the non-vaccinated community is that when my 12 yr old cousin had a traumatic brain injury, he was put into the pediatric ICU with a 10 month old baby with whooping cough. So, why do I care about that? Well, because my cousins lungs had both collapsed and he had chest tubes in both lungs, brain swelling and it was agreed that any infection, virus would have compromised his healing. Ok, yes, this would be an anecdote... but it will stick with me for the rest of my life.

I also have several friends with autistic children that staggered their second/third children's vaccination schedules and fully support the advocacy of their children. But I also think that a few people can change the course of many more... and I would not want that on my conscience, nor should others.

Heather,

Everyone knows that measles and mumps are caused by impure thoughts. Don't let the bastards get you down!

Africa has GREAT hygiene! No wonder the vaccines work SO well and when they are gone the disease sky rockets!

So WHAT to all you people who "agree", it seems this site "blows up" to the people who disagree. No wonder more are not posting.

The forum should be divided: agree and disagree, otherwise it is just a big circular argument.

So many people "never forgive" "cannot stand" ect. those who choose not to.

VACCINATED CHILDREN SPREAD THE DISEASES TOO!!!!

Read about the polio outbreaks caused by the vaccine!!!

THE ISSUE IS HYGIENE!!!! WASH YOUR HANDS AND STOP SUCKING YOUR FINGERS KIDS!!! (in other words, parents, teach your children to be CLEAN!)

And does anyone have any idea how much fecal matter is on playground equipment, shopping cart seats, ect. Fecal matter spreads these diseases from VACCINATED children!

Oh, but the evil unvaccinated ones brew up the diseases in their cauldrons and head for the park to infest...

I vaccinate my children. I vaccinate them for everything I possibly can. I wish I could vaccinate them for more. I wish I could give my baby a shot and reduce their risk for Cancer, or for AIDS as I can reduce their risk for measles, mumps or rubella. I wish I could vaccinate them from street violence and gang shooting. I wish I could vaccinate them from drugs addictions and drunk drivers. As it is I'll take what I can get.

Hey 1077 Kim, why don't you try depending on something other than a drug made from monkey kidneys and aborted fetuses to protect your children?

After reading your post I wonder how anyone can have the audacity to say by not vaccinating people are depending on the "herd". It sounds like it is the vaccinators that are depending on the "pharmeceutical herd"

Prove that vaccines work. And don't get your funding from the vaccine makers.

She wants to vaccinate against Aids, street drugs and gang shootings? Try an education and moral upbringing.

The mentality that a shot can "protect" is skewed. It does not mean don't do it (I do plan to vaccinate mine) it just means don't sit back and relax after you do.

Also, and Infant does not need Hep. B. if he is kept clean and Hygienic, considering it is a sexually transmitted or fecal/blood transmitted disease.

I AGREE that not everyone can keep their babies out of childcare, and if they are there, they should prob. be vaccinated along with the rest.

Often times people who chose not to do so because they CAN and know how to do it RIGHT.

All of you people saying "I fear to contact a non-vaccinated Person" when you yourself can't be vaccinated have it wrong. The most contagious are those who have been recently injected with the vaccine's. (They are carrying LIVE vaccines..ie the disease)

As for my sources. I know I read reliable sources and I have my own experience. I dont need to justify for this site. But this site is really bad mouthing the people who chose not to vaccinate. (The responders, not the original post)
There is obviously enough people out there who chose not to, and they have thier sources.

I just encourage YOU to look at YOUR SOURCES and see WHO PAYS FOR THE RESEARCH!

Of course the CDC is going to say "no common thread to connect gargasil deaths to the vaccine" only a moron would not know that the COMMON THREAD IS THAT THEY ALL HAD THE VACCINE AND WERE OTHERWISE YOUNG AND HEALTHY!!!! Hello???

Still, it is a much bigger picture, and this thread does not cover the expanse. It is not about autism. It is about common sense. A newborn baby does not need that treatment, it can wait. Unless the mother must put the baby in childcare right away, it can wait.

Just wait. Your baby would thank you. Common sense.

@RealityCheck.....hmmmm....I don't even know where to begin to respond to all that. Perhaps I will first point out that I used the phrase "REDUCE THE RISK" not "PROTECT OUTRIGHT"! And perhaps I should also point out that while I do indeed educate my children and raise them up to be outstanding members of our society, that it is infact a great big world out there, and I can not rely on you, or anyone else for that matter, to do the same. Lastly, never once did I bad-mouth anyone who chose not to vaccinate. I simply voiced my personal choice and gave my personal reasons for making that choice. This was in no way a slight against you nor an attack on the personal choices you have made. Perhaps you would not have come off looking like such a lunatic if I had been treated as fairly.

By helping to protecting YOUR child,
you are helping to protecting SOCIETY.

This is #1061 Again.

I'm not perfect. I'm far from it. And (#1084) if you are a victim of sexual abuse, you can understand the SEVERE depressive tendencies I'm forced to manage. I think I do have the capacity to understand other people's pain pretty well, actually.

My point is that there are many alternatives to being sick & depressed. There are countless ways to strengthen your own immune system and the immune system of your children without vaccinations or synthetic drugs.

Who can argue that we are raising obese children? Sick & depressed children? We don't have to live like this and if you and I don't put our own health first, and teach our children to do the same, who will? Health and vaccinations go hand in hand. Autism, auto-immune diseases, depression, self-mutilation, violence, addiction... all of these dis-eases are on the rise in spite of the government's efforts. And you know what? We can all use to pay more attention to our children's health than the government does.

I read "Heather" rarely... we happen to share a mutual friend so sometimes I check in. I can't deny she is hysterical & I like Chuck. =) Speaking out against a group of people that she "doesn't understand" but assumes to have authority over is to me, in the same category as Oprah suddenly becoming a politician. Seriously??!

ALL of us who had children that had bad reactions to vaccines and coincidentally became autistic after their shots had something else in common: we were PRO vaccines. Most of us got our own childhood vaccines, and we trusted doctors/pharmaceutical companies/government agencies in the administration of vaccines to our own kids. I didn't realize until long afterwards that I had about five different vaccines, my son had nearly fifty. And knowing ahead of time who will be sensitive to a vaccine and who won't, well that's almost an impossibility. Those of you who think you would rather risk having a child with autism than a child who contracts what might be a deadly illness, well, wait until you have one and see how you feel about it.

I found the video to be very one sided and not open. I am glad to see you have a human side and realize there is more to the story. The problem you have created is that Mothers continue to want honesty in the conversation. I do not know why the producers were driven to be disingenuous but I pray it was not the all mighty pharmaceutical dollar. My concern is where will the schedule stop? U.S.is currently are 34 out of 36 in the list of 1st world infant mortality rates and we have about three times the number of vaccines on our schedule. Currently there are 140 vaccines waiting for approval. Pharmaceutical companies are lobbying for HPV Vaccine for boys and many more required boosters. Why wasn't the solution to the measles outbreak vaccinate before you travel? http://www.causecast.org/member/tanners-dad

I had a daughter.

She had a severely compromised immune system, and was unable to have any live vaccines.

At 14.5 months we were warned of a local chickenpox outbreak. We shut down, asked friends not to visit us. I'm immune, so did the shopping without her or my husband, who is not. One of the few people who did come to see us unknowingly had been infected.

Katie received acyclovir immediately to lower the severity of any potential infection and indeed, came down with chickenpox at 15 months old. Initially she recovered, but the battering her poor body took was too much, and she began to shut down. She died at 16 months old.

Luckily I can't blame anyone, as chickenpox vaccination is not common in the UK. But if it was available as a childhood standard vaccination here then you can bet I would have blamed every local parent who had exercised their right not to have that vaccination.

Your immunised and healthy child protects all those in your community like my precious Katie. Lower the community immunity you endanger other children's lives. It's that simple. And I can't understand anyone who can't understand that and thinks 'oh, it's just one kid not vaccinated, it'll be fine...

I think 4 children died from the flu last year where I live in Western Australia. Am I getting my 2 & 4yr olds the free flu shot? Hell, yes. My sister in law works on vaccines and she is encouraging me to make sure our whooping cough vax's are upto date as there is a bad strain coming through. Am I going to make sure they are upto date for whooping cough? Hell, yes. I understand people's opinions about doing more research and I am guilty of really blindly just trusting the medical and scientific community, and it has made me think more about it but I don't think I would ever not vaccinate.

First let me commend you that overall, this is an honest, well-written and mostly free from judgment post. As a parent who did choose, along with her spouse (this does not fall all on the mother, folks) to delay the vaccinations/immunizations of our boys, i do take offense to the statement:

"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."

For the record, maybe partly we are and this is the luxury we are afforded in living in this country. I think we're allowed and I am grateful. And when we decided this for our family, we also knew there would be accountability for our actions. Great freedom does not come without great responsibility. We researched what we needed to do to minimize our risk of contracting any of these diseases and thus not put our community at risk of contracting any of these diseases.

Admittedly, I do judge the family that took their child(ren) out of their country of origin without having them vaccinated. I also think it's interesting that even children who were vaccinated against measles, still contracted it. Why isn't there a critical discussion of this?

The spur in my side that got my husband and I to look at vaccinations more critically was my nephew. He developed quite normally until about 16 months when he received the mmr. As a clinician (and not just his aunt) I watched his development deteriorate or come to a screeching halt. When he was 2 1/2, I sat my sister down and had to be the messenger. It is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, to tell my sister that her first born child had autism and needed to be evaluated.

As a human being, I was not reasoned into this conclusion that there was some link between receiving this vac and his decline. However, I did begin to look at more empirical evidence, including the statements and research put out by the CDC on the safety of vaccinations. Most of these were either funded by a drug company (= not independent and thus had biases) or flawed. I also looked at the objective information, like what is contained (I understand that this has supposedly been remedied- but for the record, it was also supposedly remedied in the 90's and early 2000's) in the vaccinations, including thimerosol and aluminum. I looked at the diagnostic criteria for mercury poisoning and compared it to the diagnostic criteria for autism. I'll let whomever is interested, do the same on their own. I looked at the rate of autism from when I was a child, the rate of autism now and compared it to the vaccination schedules. The links are just too hard to ignore for me and my husband. Just so we're clear, there were 131 cases, total, reported of the measles in the first 7 months of last year. The national rate of autism is 1:150; in Utah it is 1:133 and for boys in Utah, it is 1:79. We viewed the latter risk as greater when there are things we can do to prevent the former.

Once we made our decision, we educated ourselves on everything from the symptoms and epidemiology of the diseases we would be delaying vaccinations on to what we needed to do in order to insulate ourselves from contracting and not assume a risk to our community. We consider ourselves to be quite educated on this topic; I dare say we follow a healthier diet than the majority of this country (one could say that those who vaccinate do so in order to not think about their daily health- that statement would be false and inflammatory) and my children have been breastfed way longer than the national average (2+ years). In addition, unlike this family that traveled to Europe and back, no member of our family travels abroad. We'd much rather forgo a 2 week vacation in a foreign land than a potential lifetime of neurological health issues.

All that being said, I don't "count" on you to keep my children free from diseases. I do still believe vaccinations have done a world of good to improve our quality of life. I respect and honor the parents who see vaccinating their children as the right thing to do for their family. I say "amen" to Vanessa and encourage everyone who is faced with this decision to think critically and educate yourself. Ultimately, no matter what decision you make, you are accountable and responsible for it. The Dr. Sears book on vaccinations is great and so is "Vaccinations: A Thoughtful Parents' Guide".

This is a new reason not to vaccinate:
Aborted babies in vaccines!

Of all the blogs I love, I think DOOCE has the most out there readers ;-)

I did vaccinate my son according to the CDC recommended schedule. You will find that most people labelled "anti-vaccine" have done this. The reason we feel the current schedule is dangerous is because our children suffered devastating reactions to said vaccination practices. I encourage all expecting and new parents to research both sides of the argument and decided for themselves which vaccines are necessary for their child. Nine times out of ten, parents who have done their research choose to vaccinate according to the 1986 schedule, when the autism rate in this country was 1 in 10,000 kids. Those seem to be odds that parents are ok with. Since 1986, the CDC has added 26 doses to the schedule, and the autism rate has skyrocketed. 2004 numbers indicate that the rate was 1 in 150 children, 1 in 80 boys. If you have a child now, the odds are not so good, if you have a boy you are really rolling the dice. Most recent studies put the current odds at 1 in 80 children in the US that will be diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder. Playing the odds no longer seems like a good choice. Our son developed perfectly until his 15 month well visit to the pediatrician. The CDC advises us to give our 15 month old children 5 live virus vaccines in one visit. We have since found out that our son has a fairly common autoimmune response going on in his body. Imagine my surprise when I read Merck's Guide to Childhood Health and found that a simple test would have revealed our son's immune issue. Merck advises that children with this issue not be vaccinated with live virus vaccines, as doing so could cause vaccine-induced encephalitis, which is a fancy word for vaccine-induced autism. Did anyone's pediatrician ever advise them of this? Not mine, I had to find out the hard way. We are now 1 year into treatment for vaccine injury, and our son is making a tremendous comeback. He is now talking, smiling, laughing and understanding things we say. Needless to say, he will never be vaccinated again (on the advice of our new pediatrician), and I wish with all my heart that I had researched both sides of the issue myself. Our current vaccination program lacks the most important thing for parents - informed consent. If I was informed of all the risks at the beginning (which would be before you give birth, as our kids are vaccinated at 12 hours old for a sexually transmitted disease that very few are at risk for until late teen years when their forced immunity will have already faded away), I like to think I would not have taken the AAP'S line of garbage so seriously. I like to think I would have discovered earlier the massive conflicts of interest infecting the development of new vaccines. It would have saved my little boy years of pain, it woud have given him a chance to develop like he should have. Instead, we have now spent our life savings trying to bring him back. It has been worth every penny, but still eats me alive that the medical establishment is the one who broke him, and they wanted no part of fixing him. It is a position I do not wish to see any new parent in. BE INFORMED!

I just want to mention the case of a close friend who refused vaccines for her son on the basis that she believed that they caused autism. She knew every single chemical, every possible combination, every strain of this or that bacteria/virus that just SO CLEARLY caused autism. She had done her research. She was informed, more so than any other parent. She wasn't going to be foolish like the great brainwashed masses who willingly injected their children with what amounted to autism juice!

Her son is now eight years old, adorable, strong, healthy in every way, except that he's autistic. That he is healthy in every way probably has to do with the fact that after he was diagnosed with autism, she saw the error in the causal ties she had so firmly believed in before that point, and decided to have him vaccinated. She finally decided that a LIVE child was much better than a dead one, autistic or not.

I am firmly in the camp that vaccination is necessary to ensure the health of our whole society. My experience has told me that the "research" being publicized on causality as regards autism suffers greatly under it's own false cause (specifically that of post hoc ergo propter hoc- just because two things are closely related in time does not mean that one causes the other... just because the phone rings every time I get in the shower does not mean that I should get in the shower if I want the phone to ring. Duh.).

I have another friend with twins who are hearing impaired, and this type of hearing loss was likely caused because she was exposed to someone with rubella while she was pregnant. So because some dipshit stranger decided not to vaccinate, her children will live a lifetime with hearing loss. Doesn't seem very fair to me. I tend to believe that your right to swing your fist (to not vaccinate in this case) ends where my body begins (where your children infect me or mine). Swing all you want, but the second that your fist-swinging causes harm to me, your right to do so ends.

I couldn't agree with you more! I am pregnant with my 4th child and with each child I have been more and more concerned about my choice to give them their schduled shots. I have listened to mom's who refuse the vaccinations for their children and walked away thinking maybe I should consider holistic treatment as well...then I decided to stop letting their thoughts overtake my own and did TONS of online research on the subject and was able to come up with the same conclusion you have come up with. I recently left our pediatrician who insisted that my baby get 6-7 vaccine's all at once. It just seemed to be too much. We now go to a family doctor who only administers 3-4 vaccines(at the most) in one visit. The risk of them getting one of these life threatening diseases is so much higher to me than getting their scheduled vaccines!

I love what you've said here. It's exactly how I feel. I would never rely on other parents to keep my child safe from childhood diseases. It scares me to not have my children vaccinated. I would have a very hard time forgiving someone who exposed my child to a deadly disease all because they didn't want to vaccinate.

I'm the mom of a profoundly autistic, vaccinated 7 year old, and I agree with you 100%. Once we had her diagnosis we could see clues she had given us since her birth. I especially love this part of your post:

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.

Jen

I find this thread very interesting. First, my son is fully vacinated and does receive his flu shot yearly because he has a genetic condition that would make the flu and other illness very serious for him. My son was also a preemie. When the hospital "caught up" his immunizations with 4 shots in one day he received 239% more mercury than estimated to be safe by the EPA. My son does not have autisim but he does have sensory integration issues, severe allergies and auditory processing disorder.

My concerns as a parent, of course, are what is best for my son. He struggles to function in the school setting and to be frank, the school systems is not able to handle the flood of kids coming into the classroom like my son. Out of the 14 boys in his cub scout den, 12 have some type of nuerological issue, auto-immune issue or non-verbal learning disability. We live in an area with a nationally ranked school district. This is an area of educated parents with the means to obtain excellent medical care. As another post mentioned, those of us (and our ranks are growing rapidly)who are fortunate not to be dealing with autism but that are dealing with other serious medical issues and learning disabilities do have to question what is happening to this generation of children. We also have to search out solutions because there are very few medical professionals willing to even have a discussion about the issues and the school system solution is called medication (even if an accurate diagnosis has not been made).

I don't think it is right to judge another person's choice to not immunize or to formulate their own schedule until you dealt with what they are dealing with. It is easy to say that we don't want our children to die (of course, no one wants any child to die) but people do have children that are being harmed and is it fair to expect those children to struggle through life? Is fair to expect a child with autism to live in pain daily and be unable to communicate his pain? I don't think we realize what a harsh life that is (and I do have a close friend who has a severely autisic son - his first word was at the age of 14 years and he was a teenager before he was toilet trained).

There is not good evidence to show no link to autisim or the increasing rate of serious childhood diseases. Until the answer to why can be answered, how can the CDC rule out anything? And really, if we all breast fed (I didn't have the opportunity) our babies wouldn't that be giving them an even better chance of surviving if exposed to the illness? As adults, have we all kept up with our booster shots? No vaccine lasts forever and as adults we should be taking the responsiblity to stay current if we expect our children to.

Everyone should read Age of Autism for a month, check out the link to Dr. Bernadine Healy and see what an unbiased, well educated doctor has to say. Check out Dr. Bob Sears' book on vaccination. Check out the information on various rulings in vaccine court such as Hannah Poling. Learn about the vaccine court and who it protects and who foots the bill. Check out the mortality rate of our country vs. other civilized countries. Ask around your child's elementary school and see how many kids you can find that don't suffer from some kind of nuero or autoimmune problem. How many kids in your school are on the autisim spectrum? Check out how much it will cost us as taxpayers to financially take care of these kids once their parents pass away. As a country, we have to wake up to the fact something horrible is happening to our children, more so that other countries, and find out why. Until then, no should judge another parents decision nor should they assume all things in our market place have been throughly tested and are safe!

And after all of that isn't it great that we live in a country where we can have an open discussion about things like this?

I believe in vaccinations. However, I do not agree with the scheudle the doctors give. I have chosen the alternative schedule called "Dr. Bob's alternative vaccination schedule." I have found it to be a great way of vaccinating your child on a safe schedule. I do NOT believe in giving the flu shot, which will only build up your child's immune system, not kill them. I also believe that giving your newborn baby the hepatitus shot when he/she is only one day old is NOT a good decision. There are certain decisions that make each parent comfortable. This was my decision and is not a decision that would put other children at risk either. You can be for vaccines but yet not for EXACTLY what they reccomend.

Im curious and was wondering if anyone has any information relating to this. But my question is that is there any record of any children that came down with Autism anyway, even though they were NOT vaccinated what so ever? I havent been able to find any information only information about children getting the MMR and then days later they are Autistic.

Is there some research out there saying that Autism could be pre-dispotioned and the genes get turned on at a certain age and then the signs and symptoms of Autism show? I hope someday they can come up with a screening process to find out who is "Sensative" to possible vaccines and be able to not vaccinate those who should not have the shots due to health reasons.

plus i do believe research should be done to make the shots safer so kids dont have to deal with the side effects.

My grandfather died from GBS after a flu vaccination.

A co-workers child went from speaking in sentences to non-verbal within hours after an MMR. A neighbor's child had the same outcome. Neither has recovered.

My daughter suffered seizures after a DPT.

Putting any chemical substance into anyone's body is a matter of freedom and no one should be asked to risk the life of their own child for some greater good. It's noble to choose to do so, but not less than to not make that choice.

Why don't some parents choose to vaccinate? Because they love their children and don't want to risk their death - same as for parents who vaccinate. It's all decisions regarding life and death and weighing our own selfishness over the good of others. Every time we get in a car or a plane, we risk the lives of many through direct impact on the environment and yet the controversy isn't as great as that of vaccination, yet is potentially farther reaching in it's harm. I don't understand the lack of empathy for those who do not vaccinate when people do things every day that put others at risk. If anyone's slate is clean, they can throw stones. I haven't met anyone yet with a clean slate.

Go Dooce! Right on!

I read this blog post, and all of the comments, the night before my son was due for his 2 months vaccines. I had him vaccinated on a modified schedule, and while I'm happy I did it, it broke my heart. I wrote a blog post about the experience, but I just want to say that I have a great deal of compassion for parents on both sides of the issue.

Here's a thought...did you know that the companies that manufacture the vaccines currently used in the US refuse to be held liable for vaccine-related injuries - the fund that is used to compensate vaccine-damaged children comes from a TAX paid by parents receiving the vaccine.

When I purchase a product, I like to be assured that whoever makes it has some motivation to continually monitor its safety. This is not the case with the pharmaceutical companies supplying our vaccines.

My reasons for not vaccinating are too deep to discuss here. I will note that my non-vaccinated children were exposed to whooping cough while visiting family. Three vaccinated nieces and nephews came down with it. My children did get sick and have a severe cough but we all tested negative for whooping cough. The rest of the family (all vaccinated) tested positive and were sick for 2 months. There are factors of health BESIDES vaccines that can impact your health. We take our health seriously and do not rely on false assurance from unreliable sources such as pharmaceutical companies.

Re: 1112 (Anonymous), quoted: "If you check out the graph from the CDC, you will see that it starts in 1950. This is one of the ways the medical institution distorts data (lies to us). If you go to a statistical graph that begins in 1800, you will be shocked to see that the occurrence of infectious disease was up at the top and from that high number it had decreased by 95% before vaccinations ever came on the horizon."

---

correction: No, I will reiterate -- this is a problem with people not understanding how to make sense of scientific literature. You have to check that both the x and y axis list the same things, or you are comparing apples and oranges.

There are dozens of anti-vaccination sites with the graph you describe, such as pictured here: http://tinyurl.com/cn9ea [Note: The website linked has *inaccurate* information. See below.]

If you look on the left of the anti-vaccination site graph, the category is "Deaths per 100,000." If you look on the left of the CDC site graph, the category is "Cases (thousands)." They aren't the same thing, as the graphs are not counting up the same things. You cannot compare them directly the way anti-vaccination sites do. One measures the percentage of people infected who went on to die, and the other measures the percentage of people who were healthy that became infected.

As I said above, sanitation, antibiotics, and other advances had improved the *death* rate. It did not have that much of an impact on the *infection* rate -- about the same percentage of people were getting infected, it's just that fewer of them were dying of the infection.

First, I am a parent and I work in the medical field, and I know personally many children with Autism. Given the experience that I have working with these children, there is no way that not vaccinating is acceptable! It is completely irresponsible. Even if you home-school, even if your child is never is daycare, even if you never take your child out of the country. Your unvaccinated child WILL- at some point in their life, whether it is during school or college or their work, or from a traveller to this country- come into contact with an illness or disease that could have been prevented by a vaccine. We cannot live in a bubble, and neither can our children. You do not have the power to protect them if they are not vaccinated. Maybe they won't die, maybe they will be disabled or disfigured, but it could have been prevented. Just because these diseases, do not occur frequently in our country any longer (because of the miracle of science and vaccines), does not mean that they are not still rampant throughout the rest of the world!

And if you truly fear that a vaccine will cause your child to develop Autism or another illness, or be the trigger to cause such, what difference will modifying your vaccine schedule do for you? One of those vaccines, whether alone or grouped would cause it, according to that line of thought. This means your child would still develop Autism because they received the vaccine eventually.

Vaccines work because the immune system MUST be challenged to develop immunity, and often the result of the immune system kicking into gear to develop antibodies is a fever. This is the same reason your child has a fever when they are ill at any time.

There is no empirical evidence to support this. All medications given in this country go through unbelievably rigorous testing before they are allowed, and have generally been used in other countries for many years without adverse affects. And yes, that research is usually paid for by drug companies, because they are required to pay for it- no one else is footing the bill.

I forgot to say that her child is so severely damaged he requires full time care (paid for by you and I). I'd like to see someone research details about the amount of money paid out.

RE: 1125 - I AGREE - My physician worked for the govt in the vaccine program before quitting due to reasons of conscience - and yes I have seen his data and charts showing that vaccines are not responsible for the decline of childhood illnesses.

To 1127 - I was born in 1960 and certainly have never had the number of immunizations that are "required" now - my immune system was challenged enough that I'm a healthy 48 year old woman. I survived chicken pox as did everyone that I know of from this era.

I understand what you are saying but take a look at the immunization schedule from the 1980s - much less autism, no massive plagues and fewer shots. There is something to be said for challenging the system but not overwhelming it.

For a different view, that readily offers up sources to back up their position, check out Age of Autism. At a minimum we should all be working towards finding a common ground and understanding the actual studies from all points of view.

First, cleanliness does not prevent all illness or disease, some especially virulent diseases are airborne- like measles. And second, vaccines DO NOT cause the disease that they are vaccinating against. We give vaccines of dead or inactive or modified strains of an illness that are enough to prompt an immune response and "trick" our bodies into producing the correct antibodies. Disease is not spread by those recently vaccinated because we are not giving people live diseases to vaccinate them. Take an F***ing microbiology course and get your facts straight.

To #1134 it is an attenuated vaccine- so even though it is live, it is modified, as #1133 points out.

I told myself I would never again comment on the immunization issue because I'm too close, too raw, too many things to mention, but I'm going to comment here because I feel it would be remiss not to. I can honestly tell you that I can see both sides because I have been both moms. At 31 I was the mom with the healthy newborn daughter; following the standard immunization schedule, trusting my pediatrician blindly and just doing my part to go along with the system. It was 1996 when she was born and not only was autism something I would only later come to know of through the movie "Rainman", it had not affected anyone that I'd ever known personally or otherwise, nor did I know of or pay serious attention to claims that immunizations could be dangerous (other than the standard warnings that came on neatly copied sheets at the peds. office each time she got her shots).Our family had no genetic predisposition to autism so none of that would have ever entered my mind. Unconcerned. Not us. Those things won't happen to us. In fact, I can even remember expressing disgust at the "celebrity moms" that I saw one morning on GMA discussing whether they should immunize or not; given the various warnings against. I felt it was ridiculous and thought how wonderful it must be to have a life where they had time to obsess over such issues. "Just do your part", I'd been thinking, "get over yourselves". Fast forward to late 1997 when my son was born. Same thing. Super mom blessed with two wonderful healthy babies. No question about their shots, it's just a part of life. December 1998 was when I took my son to the peds. for his one year old series of shots. That was the day I said goodbye to my talking, laughing animated little boy and brought home a baby who just days later could no longer call me momma. He couldn't look us in the eye and was no longer interested in playing with big sister. He drifted away slowly, bit by bit, day by day. I could look at him and gaze into his eyes, but he wasn't there. He was now lost in his own world and we were at a complete loss as to how to bring him back. But we did. My boy has worked since he was 2 years old to find his way back to us and to a world he can share with others. And it took therapy,therapists,diet intervention,secretin injections,homeopathy,cranial sacral manipulation,NAET treatments, blah blah blah blah--you name it, we did it. It meant lifestyle changes to go to one income when I needed to become a SAHM, substituting to a scaled down lifestyle since no insurance covers alternative treatments and they don't come cheaply. And yes, it was worth every cent. But could I do it again? To a mom who has watched their child be ripped away from them after having been immunized, you have to understand that while I once saw them getting their shots as a protective parental measure for them and those around them, now is as frightening to me as if the doctor put a gun with one bullet to their head and I just had to hope I got lucky when he pulled the trigger. I can't bring myself to do that. I had my 3rd blessedly healthy baby in 2003 and she is not immunized. Not a day goes by that I don't struggle with the weight of this and whether I've made the right choice. I am a responsible, kind person who cares very much about all of our kids and I would no sooner harm another's child than I would harm my own. I am leaning towards spacing them now that she is older, but am still not certain. I guess all I am trying to point out in this very controversial debate is that you need to remember that most times, these decisions are not made without a hell of a lot of pain behind them. And to the people who continue to say, "Well, I'd rather have a child with autism than a child who is dead", you know not of what you speak. First off, it is a crass statement, as obviously the thought of losing our child is our biggest nightmare, but secondly, you are thinking of YOU in this scenario. Imagine watching your child struggle with something that's hurting them on a daily basis and not being able to fix it. You are not the only one who's suffering. They are and feeling that you are responsible for it is devastating. You're never the same.

1128-"To Jean #1124 - is it fair to expect parents to immunize when they have a family history that would lead them to believe that their child is at risk for serious side effects of the immunization?"

You're asking someone who got high fevers from shots, and my first two got high fevers from shots. My youngest's reaction from the "P" was not something like a fever. To me that is not a reaction serious enough to warrant not getting vaccinated. My youngest went limp and was unconscious after his DPT shot. And I continued to get him vaccinated for everything except pertussis. You don't even know if your child will get a reaction if you are just going by "family history." I can be neurotic about something and find enough information on the internet to justify that neurosis. I'm sorry, but I think it is selfish when parents don't vaccinate their children. Do these parents even care that they can be responsible for a pregnant woman losing her baby?

I vaccinated my first born but have not fully vaccinated my second born. I am waiting till she is older. Here in San Diego they have chickenpox parties and Measles parties. I have avoided them b/c I did not want my unvaccinated child to yet have the disease. Reading about Measles and Chickenpox I am not too scared. My pediatrician said the flu was much worse than Measles last year. Vaccines are not 100% effective. Many times the children who are vaccinated are the ones getting others sick. Do those people feel guilty? I will be vaccinating my second child before she enters private preschool or travels to see relatives in India. I simply cannot give so many vaccines to my baby all at once so I have followed roughly the Sears schedule. I think the drug companies who make vaccines are huge and not apt to share what they really know. I also believe vaccines are not soley to blame but in combination with other genetic factors are devastating for some. The chickenpox vaccine is not for the same virus (the natural one) as is out there. So of course it is not 100% effective. Many times you see people who get sick with cancer are the ones who are never sick with anything them bam they have cancer. Our immune system need to work, to practice. Unfortunately as people we need to take some risks. Risk if we do or risk if we don't. But we need to not assume there is a greater good looking out for our best interest....b/c that is not the case in large companies. Modern medicine errs on the side of caution and sometimes that is good but sometimes it creates killer strains mutated like the one strain of flu that the nasal spray no longer works for. Doctors and scientists are not gods. They only know so much and should not declare things do not cause harm that could. They should have to prove vaccines do not cause harm not that they do.
My 2 cents,
Susanne from San Diego,CA

"I am not enthusiastic about your proposal to continue to vaccinate children that are exhibiting symptoms of vaccine injury. Goodness!!! Even the vaccine companies admit some children should NOT be vaccinated."

He had a vaccine injury to pertussis, not a vaccine injury to every vaccination. Please tell me you're not saying that a child who had a reaction to pertussis can't be vaccinated against anything. Because it sounds like that is what you're saying.

And I know people will quickly argue that cancer and autism are two totally different things and at two totally different sides of the spectrum, but they are both illnesses.

Ray...autism is NOT an illness. It is NOT a disease. It can neither be prevented NOR cured.

In response to a few people wishing for a simple test that would indicate a genetic susceptibility to autoimmune disease (which equates to a greater vaccine risk), there IS a test in the works. Much research has been done in this area in the past 7-8 years, and they are very close to pin-pointing the genes responsible, if they haven't done so already. (It's been a year or so since I last checked.) But once that is accomplished, a simple blood test will be available, and susceptible children/adults will be easily identified.

By the way... to those of you who are so quick to spout off about the vaccine/autism link being totally, 100% debunked, that is not at all accurate. "Autoimmune autism" is a very real condition and one that is in fact being linked strongly to vaccines, and as more research is being done, the link only grows stronger. Take a few hours, or weeks, or months, and read up on some of the recent medical journals in the field of Rheumatology... very interesting and you will learn a lot.

I have read a lot of these comments now.

To those parents who have said you believe a vaccine caused your child's autism and that you are now faced with the job of "reversing" the disease:

No. The vaccines did not cause autism. Autistic people are born genetically predisposed to develop it, and YES, the vaccines may have TRIGGERED it. They did not CAUSE it, and your child probably had a high chance of displaying the disease even if he hadn't been vaccinated. If you want to blame anything, blame you and your spouse's genetics.

Also, and I can't believe I have to explain this to someone with an autistic child, but it is not a disease you can REVERSE. Autism is TREATABLE, but not CURABLE. Your child may someday look you in the eyes again, but they are not likely to actively socialize.

Please, for god's sake, read a child psychology book by a legitimate doctor. Just one.

Ok...I agree to a point...I did vaccinate my now 15 month old son according to schedule up until he turned 1, BUT was very nervous to proceed with the MMR vaccination because that is the one that all of the autism claims are against. What we decided to do, after much research, and reading about the current measles outbreaks around the country, was to split up that one vaccine, into 3 separate vaccines. We'll have to pay out of pocket for this, but as the mother of a very normal, social, happy 15 month old boy, I had just heard too many stories of women claiming they had normal, social, happy 15 month old boys until after they got sick from getting the MMR vaccine. I didn't like the idea of "riding the coattails" of those who did decide to vaccinate...it didn't seem fair that another parent should assume a risk I am not willing to. However, that being said, I'm not sure what kind of an ignorant idiot would take a child that hadn't been fully vaccinated out of the country. That was one thing that came up for discussion between my husband and myself, and we did both agree that if we took a trip, even just to Europe, that we'd have to fully vaccinate the kid first. Just seems dumb that they wouldn't have done that.

I just finished reading Jenny McCarthy's Mother Warriors and I definitely believe there is a link between the vaccine schedules and Autism and I am very concerned about the vaccinations of my grandchildren. However, what I don't understand is why they aren't working on a line of safe vaccines? Make them in smaller, more frequent batches so that the preservatives aren't required. Reduce or eliminate any mercury or aluminum in them and make them easier to get.

You can get a flu shot at the pharmacy or grocery store, why couldn't you get vaccinations that way? Then parents would have an easier time of spreading the vaccines out, say once per month instead of hitting a child's immune system with dozens of vaccines within such a short period of time.

I feel that most choices mother's make are their own business. I don't judge work vs stay at home or bottle vs breast and generally am good with many ideas people feel are hippy dippy, granola crunchy. I believe, generally, that we all do the best we can. But, when it comes to this topic, I am totally on one side. I believe, as someone phrased it early on in the comments, that not vaccinating your children can only be done based on "superstitious ignorance" and should not be allowed. There is no reasonable, logical or scientific study that shows vaccines to be anything but good. And even the one, much talked about and now debunked, study that linked one, no-longer-used vaccine to autism, noted that vaccines do far, FAR more good than harm.

The reason I feel so strongly is because you're not just putting your own child's health and safety at risk, you're risking everyone else's and, not only that, you're doing so with the full knowledge that this thing you consider dangerous and evil for YOUR kids MUST be done to my kids, or else your kids may not survive their childhoods (as, before these vaccines, many children did not).

This is one of the very rare occasions where I think the masses do have the right, duty actually, to override your free will--something I almost never say.

I am thankful for choices as this is one of the premises that our country is based upon and many so called selfish and self serving decisions are made based on our free choice.

There are many public health risks out there that we should all be actively working on to lower. Simple things such as riding ones bike, choosing wisely what we eat, and generally what we consume can and will make our world a better place for the next generation. Vaccinations are simply another one of these.

We chose not to vaccinate and understood then as we do now that we would be worried whether we did or did not. We decided that the risks to our child outweighed the benefits of the vaccinations. As crazy as this may sound to some, we find the decision to vaccinate just as crazy! We could not and would not ever inject a disease right into our childs bloodstream, ever. Nor would we ever inject him with mercury(not in new batches of vacc. anymore tho you do have to make sure the batches are new), or formaldehyde or any of the other numerous chemicals in vaccinations.

It is important to understand that vaccines are not 100% effective and have not been tested well enough to know how long they stay viable in the body for. The other thing to understand is that the ONLY people who are testing for the safety of vaccinations AND writing the literature(or at least that the "facts" stated in literature are from these companies alone) are the exact same companies that make the vaccines. The profit they are making from vaccinations is enormous. There have NEVER been any other studies done.

As for links to problems directly resulting in ones child being vaccinated, there has already been one other post re. the Govt. fund set up specifically for those families whose children have been harmed. Therefore it is a known FACT that vacc. can and have been known to cause irreversible harm and death. And these are only the families who know that the harm came from the vacc...

We all make choices regarding our children. Not one person knows for sure whether those choices will be the correct ones. It seems to me that the key is to be informed as well as open minded. I have plenty of friends who have chosen to vaccinate their children and we respect each others decisions. Including myself, I believe we could all stand to stop judging others and begin to really hear and try to understand. So much could be gained by simply not believing we alone know the BEST way.

I never do anything simply because the majority feels it to be the right thing to do. I do my research and follow my intuition. And as many other Mothers out there who have stopped reading every "expert" book on child rearing, etc our family has learned to follow and honor our own loving instincts and not defer to the "experts".

I am 34, and I had whooping cough when I was 3. I don't think there was any vaccination for it then, and my parents had no medical insurance anyway. I can tell you it's a scary illness. I couldn't breathe. And when you can't really breathe, yes, you start to panic that you're going to die. I honestly didn't even know there was a vaccination for it until I had kids six years ago. Did I make sure they got it? Hell yes. I know exactly what it feels like and I wouldn't ever want them to go through the same if I could avoid it.

Same with chickenpox. I had that too. EXTREMELY unpleasant.

My husband is older than I am, and back then polio was still feared. The polio vaccine was basically the only thing that stood in the way between your kid and a lifetime in an iron lung sometimes (can you imagine?). He also has a good-sized scar on his arm from a smallpox vaccine, which they no longer give anymore. Smallpox is, fortunately, a vaccination success story.

On the Gardasil--and I guess I am a little inconsistent here but I admit it--I am for it in theory, but like many others have said I am going to wait until it's been around just a little bit longer. My six year-olds have a ways to go for that anyway :)

Okay, after reading several posts I got fired up enough to actually post myself. I am a mother of two. My son is 4 and is perfectly normal. He was vaccinated following the standard schedule with no obvious effects. My daughter, however, is 2.5 and she did end up with autism after receiving vaccinations at around 10 months. I noticed that someone had posted that perhaps these kids were already experiencing delays but parents are trying to create a link that is not there and blame it on the vaccines. I am here to tell you my daughter was perfectly normal prior to those vaccines, in fact slightly advanced compared to what my son had been at the same age. After vaccines, she developed a high fever and then began regressing. No, I am not a scientist, and no, I am not 100% certain that it was entirely the vaccines. Maybe the vaccines trigger something that is already genetically predisposed. But for those that will say "SCIENCE has proven there is no link", I would like to point out that at one time "science" also stated that the world was flat and "science" has, throughout history, been wrong countless times. That being said, I understand that people do not want their child to develop a devastating illness due to my (future) children not being vaccinated. And I feel like most parents, particularly those of us that already have special needs children and know what it is like to see your child experiencing pain, will be cautious in keeping their child quarantined from others if they are sick. But please, do not judge the parents who choose not to vaccinate. I hope you never know what it is like to watch your child slipping away and wonder every day if there was something that you could have done differently to prevent it.

And furthermore, those of you that are so for vaccines, why are you being so hateful and judgemental of those of us that aren't? I haven't read one post that has berated any of you that choose to have your child vaccinated! And to that smug-ass Michelle chick (#1149 I believe), where do you get off trying to make mothers who are simply trying to find hope in the possibility that there may be a-yes I will say it-CURE out there for autism feel like we are stupid or ignorant for trying to do so? If your child (heaven forbid) contracted HIV would you just resign yourself to the fact or would you join the cause to find a cure? My daughter has several well respected and "legitimate" doctors as you say, who are fortunately open to the idea that there may be other ways to treat autism. There would be no vaccines at all if people had just assumed there was no way to cure polio or whatever. And also, chickenpox is not a big deal compared to autism (excluding those with immuno-compromised children), and actually the chickenpox vaccine is causing shingles to become more common and to show up even in teenagers! Now shingles is serious!!! I am sorry that I have gotten a little upset, but I just can't believe that someone can be so rude and arrogant. I never thought in a million years that I would have a child with a disability...my spouse's and my genetics are just fine thank you...but here I am and I do and I know what it is like for people like you to think that you are somehow better or know more. Sister, if the same thing had happened to your child, you would be singing an entirely different tune. So please show some respect.

well AMEN to #1164!
For pointing out our blind herdlike mentality. It's just business baby.
Now turn off your computer and start really making your own choices without being suckered by those who really do not have your or your families best interests in mind. It is a difficult thing to wrap our heads around that so much of this bullshit is really just business.
Money makes the world go round. If they can make the vaccine they can spread the disease too.

And doesn't one type of measles endanger developing fetuses? One day these unimmunized children are going to grow up and be pregnant and have to bear the risk of birth defects due to exposure to measles. That correlation has been clearly proven and is one that is terrifying.

Great post!

Thank you for this post. It doesn't take a genius (well, maybe it does!) to see that common killer diseases---> vaccinations--->elimination of common killer diseases, and people choosing not to vaccinate---> upsurge in preventable diseases.

On the subject of pet vaccines, if you choose not to vaccinate your pets, you'd better make sure they never go outside, never come in contact with another animal, and never get injured, scratched, or bitten. We recently had to deal with the county Health Department because one of our cats bit another of our cats, who developed an abcess that needed treatment. The bitee was recently adopted after a family friend died and we could not verify that she was vaccinated for rabies. The biters vaccine was one month out of date (totally our lapse). Several exams, multiple phone calls, letters and faxes to the Health Dept., and hundreds of dollars later, lesson learned.

Vaccines should be the law for children, just as they are for pets.

I'm with fiona on this one. I have to run to work so I don't have time to go at this, but science is ever changing, what we know now compared to 50 years ago blows the mind, really. And that will continue.
I love how DO YOUR RESEARCH is shouted at the non vaccinators, but really, the people who make such things need to find a safer alternative for our children.

*running out to have an Aspertame ladened coffee...*

I hope you're still reading the comments at 1100+. I think the reasons you state are good ones, but I still disagree. We live in Germany and have chosen to delay certain vaccinations (mainly because our daughter's reactions to her first rounds were pretty severe). There have been measles outbreaks here, as well, and every time I think about our decision, my stomach does flips because there IS a risk involved. But there is a risk involved in vaccinating, too, and since our child has already shown a certain sensitivity to other vaccines, we see this risk as being higher for our daughter than for some other kids.
I actually thought it was difficult to find good information on vaccines, mainly because there are almost no scientific studies on the medium to long-term effects of vaccinating vs. not vaccinating. But there are good statistics on actual outbreaks, and something that many pro-vaccination experts fail to talk about when there is a measles outbreak is that a large percentage of the people who contract the disease are FULLY VACCINATED. The vaccine is nowhere near being 100% effective, and so as long as there are countries in this world where vaccination is not mandatory, even a compulsory vaccination policy in the U.S. (or Germany, or any other country) would not protect us against an outbreak. That boy who brought measles back from Switzerland could just as easily have been fully vaccinated. And would it then still have been his parents' fault?

While I can understand the reasons parents don't vaccinate -- because really, aren't we all doing what we feel in our gut is right? -- I agree it's dangerous. Regardless of anyone's stance, it's always good to talk about the issues that affect us all.

i have read so many of these comments... and i can only come to one conclusion... there was very little research done by the mothers here... and i'm sorry but i would rather not deliberately kill or permanently harm my child with a vaccine.... it is so sad to see people spreading heresay and propaganda when there is such a large epidemic of severly injured children from vaccination... i supposed there are people here that think it is ok if a child dies from a vaccine as long as noone admits to it.... i have seen paul offit mentioned here... that man holds a patent on a vaccine... he has serious conflict of interest..he should not be allowed to practice.... It's sad that people here are obviously told what to think by thier doctors and people who make a living in this field without actually doing some research on thier own to see the politics behind it all.... I think people who even bother to worry about whether someone has injected themselves and condem others for not vaccinated are a serious danger to the human race... for all of our thousands of years of evolution we now have a population who are mistakenly convinced that we need injections and genetic modification to live... many of you mean well... and that's ok... but i don't see any comments on here that are antivax... and i would almost guarantee that those comments have been omitted, because there are few anit vaxers i know who go by the statements pro-vax people make as to why anti vaxers don't vaccinate.... most of you are uninformed about why there are millions of people who are refusing to vax... your not being told the truth

While I had horrible reactions to the vaccinations when I was little, I would go through it again and again. In fact, the tetanus in DPT still gets me. The reaction is strange and when I was younger, my parents thought I was "playing" but I was not. I reacted by not being able to use whichever limb the shot went into. It took a day or so to recover from it and for a couple more days I would have a feverish spot when the injection went.

The risks and reactions I have had are worth it in my mind. My future children will have all vacs done and I will inform the ped of my reactions just to make sure.

Of course, this all comes up at a time that everything I played with and was surrounded with is considered endangering a child. I can assure you that at the age of 35 I am just fine and those things (including no helmet for bike riding with several horrible crashes) did not scar me.

For those that want to hate the "non-vaccinators" just a few things to consider before judging so harshly.

Blindly trusting the government and marketplace to have our best interest and safety at heart - see YouTube - Dr. Confesses Cancer & Other Viruses is found in Vaccines

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgBBwOnmy3w

This was filmed and left out of a PBS program. It features Dr. Maurice Hillerman - notice how concerned he is, although it might be hard to hear over the laughter.

For those requesting real studies and scientific proof see www.fourteenstudies.org. Keep in mind that Dr. Julie Gerberding, CDC, has admitted that the studies that the CDC used and relied on were seriously flawed.

See Age of Autism. Front page has a link to a CBS video of Dr. Bernadine Healy. See what an educated/respected doctor has to say. She presents a very balanced perspective - an attitude that we would all benefit from.

See Age of Autism, February 3, 2009 "Vaccine Court, Hep B Caused MS". Also, read the article immediately following titled "How Important is the Hep B Vaccination at Birth?" Take a good look at those pictures - would you vaccinate another child of yours after this experience?

Age of Autism, April 3, 2009 "Autism & Vaccines Around the World" and "Vaccine Schedule, Autism Rates and Under 5 Mortality". Is this the best we can expect from the US?

These are topics that should be research/studied before judging others. I think that the death of a baby from a Hep B vaccination is just as horrifying as a baby that has died from the measles - should we as a country accept either death? Why do we have to pick one side or the other - shouldn't we expect safety for all of our citizens?

For those who wish harsh penalties or mandatory vaccination - be careful what you wish for. Giving away our freedom of choice would not stop with this one issue........