An important reason why some parents refuse to have their children vaccinated is that many of the vaccines routinely given are to prevent diseases no longer seen in this country.
Here’s what you should know:
1. Parents who refuse vaccinations for any reason are making a big mistake. The reason that these diseases are no longer seen in this country is because the vast majority of parents have their children vaccinated. Experience shows that if vaccine refusal increases sharply, or the vaccinating programs become lax – often because of the program’s success – the diseases return via travelers from countries where vaccination programs are less stringent, which is most of the world.
2. Vaccines are the number one advancement in the history of medicine. (The second is antibiotics.) Vaccines save millions of lives yearly, mostly those of children, and save countless children from crippling and disfiguring diseases – and do so with no known serious side effects. Parents who refuse vaccinations because of their conscientious beliefs place other children at risk, a dilemma difficult to unravel on ethical grounds.
3. Crediting non-vaccine factors for the sharp decreases in vaccine-preventable diseases is erroneous. While better sanitation, less crowding, and healthier diets, for example, may be contributing factors, vaccines provide the knockout punch. Statistics bear this out. And while most vaccine-preventable diseases are no longer seen in this country, the causative organisms are present. Depending on the disease, the organisms continue to exist in soil, sewage, blood, and, sometimes, in perfectly healthy individuals. Only vaccines keep them from surfacing.
4. Non-vaccinated children benefit by others being vaccinated. Parents of non-vaccinated children often cite the fact that their children do not become ill as proof that the vaccines are not necessary. Not so. These children are getting a free ride, so to speak. The more children vaccinated, the less chance that a non-vaccinated child will come in contact with someone who is infected. (You can’t have a forest fire where only a few, widely separated trees stand.)
5. Non-vaccinated children delay the day that some vaccination programs can be terminated. Ironically, the only known method to permanently eliminate most childhood diseases is to eradicate the causative organisms. And the only known way to do this is to vaccinate virtually every person in the world. Eliminating measles, mumps, rubella, and polio, for example, is theoretically possible – it happened to smallpox.
6. Even optimal vaccination programs are not 100% effective. For example, infants become susceptible to contracting pertussis (whooping cough) soon after birth, a time when the disease is particularly life-threatening. But available vaccines do not protect infants from pertussis until the infants are several months older, leaving a “window period” during which infants are susceptible.
Protecting infants from pertussis requires that individuals in contact with the infants be vaccinated. Likely, unvaccinated individuals caused the recent pertussis outbreak in California, resulting in several deaths.
7. Compromising accepted vaccination schedules to please parents is counterproductive. Experience with tens of billions of doses of vaccines given to billions of children has delineated the earliest age that vaccines are effective and the optimum number of doses necessary to yield maximum long-term protection. Achieving immunity is delayed by waiting until children are older to vaccinate, increasing the time interval between doses, or giving one vaccine at a time. A single dose of many multi-dose vaccines gives little or no protection.
8. Non-vaccinated children become non-vaccinated adults. Many vaccine-preventable diseases – measles, mumps and rubella, for example – are far more serious for adults than for children. Before the age of vaccinations, children were infected at early ages, mainly because these diseases are so contagious. Now that most children are vaccinated, chances increase that non-vaccinated children reach adulthood without being infected.
Rubella and chickenpox are devastating to a fetus if a non-vaccinated woman contracts the disease during pregnancy. In 1964-1965, before rubella immunization was standard in the U.S., an epidemic of rubella occurred. The epidemic resulted in about 20,000 infants born with the effects of the disease. Of these, 11,600 were deaf, 3,580 were blind, and 1,800 were mentally retarded. In addition, there were 11,250 miscarriages and 2,100 neonatal deaths.
9. It is risky to take non-vaccinated children overseas. It is risky for those children – and for your children if your children are not optimally vaccinated. Fully vaccinated American children by the age of 11 years have received 52 doses of vaccines against 14 diseases. Few other countries come close. As a result, the U.S. has the lowest incidence of vaccine-preventable diseases. Of the cases that do occur, many can be traced to overseas travel. Last year there were only 156 known cases of measles in the U.S., likely all imported, compared with thousands of cases in Europe, and millions in Africa and Asia.
10. Tens of millions of individuals enter the U.S. annually from overseas. They come from every country in the world. They are Americans (including children) returning home, tourists (including children) visiting the U.S., students studying at American colleges, parents bringing home children adopted overseas, immigrants, and others. No one is checked for disease; there is no way to do so. Travelers have spread vaccine-preventable diseases to non-immunized Americans on domestic flights, at colleges and other schools, at popular theme parks, everywhere.
Vaccination programs are the only way to prevent these diseases from returning to the U.S.
