Vaccines

What You Need to Know

Vaccinations Can Save Your Child’s Life

Much of the commentary on vaccine safety in the media today is filled with misinformation. As pediatricians, we are very concerned that any confusion about the value of immunizations could potentially harm or even kill children right here in Atlanta.

Vaccinations are very effective in preventing serious illnesses and saving lives. Children and young adults should receive all the recommended vaccines published by the Centers for Disease Control and the American Academy of Pediatrics. The recommended vaccine schedules are the result of years and years of scientific study and data gathering on millions of children by thousands of our brightest scientists and physicians. Vaccines are very safe, and based on all available evidence and current studies, we firmly believe that vaccines do not cause autism or other developmental disabilities. We also believe that thimerisol, a preservative that has been in vaccines for decades and remains in only some flu vaccines, does not cause autism or other developmental disabilities. Since thimerisol was removed from the majority of vaccines over five years ago, the incidence of autism has gone up (exponentially). It hasn’t gone down, which is what one would expect if autism were really caused by this preservative.

Because of vaccines, many of you have never seen the tragedy of a child with polio or children with tetanus, whooping cough, bacterial meningitis or even chickenpox. Even younger doctors in our group remember admitting children with bacterial meningitis in the days before the Pneumococcal and H. Influenza vaccines. The very success of vaccines can make us complacent, but let us be clear: failing to vaccinate can lead to tragic results. Over the past several years, many people in Europe have chosen not to vaccinate their children with the MMR vaccine after publication of an unfounded suspicion (later retracted) that the vaccine caused autism. As a result of under-immunization, there have been a large number of outbreaks of measles and several deaths from complications of measles in Europe over the past several years, as well as increasing incidence of measles and whooping cough here in the United States.

All of our country’s health departments (including here in the state of Georgia) are now on the lookout for cases of measles. As an example of how quickly this disease spreads, an unimmunized little girl went to visit friends in Switzerland. She came home after a week and went back to her daycare. Unfortunately, over 50% of her daycare was unimmunized. This one little girl’s exposure led to over 70 children being quarantined for three weeks at home and two hospitalizations, including that of a two-month-old baby. Ten percent of people who get measles die from the illness. There is no medicine to treat measles. We can only prevent it with the MMR vaccine.

There are dangers in deviating from the proven vaccine schedule. We are making you aware of these facts not to scare you, but to emphasize the importance of vaccinating your child. We recognize that the choice may be a very emotional one for some parents. We will do everything we can to help you reach the conclusion that vaccinating according to the schedule is the right thing to do. However, should you have doubts, please discuss these with us. Delaying or “breaking up the vaccines” to give one or two at a time over two or more visits goes against expert recommendations and can put your child at risk for serious illness (or even death). Most of the diseases covered by the vaccines are more severe to children under the age of two years, so delaying the vaccines puts your child at a greater risk of medical harm or death.

Resources

We ask you to seek only the best-researched information on unbiased websites. Two great websites that are not government related are at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia at www.vaccine.chop.edu and www.vaccineinformation.org. We’re here to answer your questions, and we believe vaccinations are currently our greatest responsibility as pediatricians. Your children’s lives depend on them!

www.cdc.gov/vaccines - Information from the CDC regarding vaccine-preventable diseases and risks versus benefits of vaccination.

www.immunizationinfo.org - Website for the National Network for Immunization Information.

www.immunize.org/stories - Website of stories of families who have suffered from vaccine- preventable diseases.

www.pertussis.com - Information on whooping cough.

www.vaccine.org - A group of professional organizations dedicated to providing factual information regarding vaccines.

http://www.vaccinateyourbaby.org/

http://www.vaccineinformation.org/photos/index.asp

http://www.voicesforvaccines.org/