Dr. Emily Gibson has written an excellent piece explaining the obstacles she has faced in persuading parents to have their children vaccinated:
As a physician, I help enforce vaccination requirements for a state university. A day doesn’t go by without my having a discussion with a prospective student (or more likely the student’s parent) about the necessity for our requirement for proof of mumps, measles, rubella vaccination immunity. I have been labeled a Nazi, a Communist, a pawn of the pharmaceutical industry and many more unprintable names because I happen to believe in the efficacy of modern vaccine to help keep a community free of infectious disease outbreaks that will kill people.
We have forgotten these are honest to goodness killers of healthy human beings. We forget that unvaccinated children continue to die in developing countries for lack of access to vaccine. Yet educated and well-meaning American parents make the decision daily to leave their children unvaccinated, believing they are doing the best thing for their children by protecting them from potentially rare and often unproven vaccine side effects.
I’ve had caring loving parents tell me that God will provide the needed immunity if their child gets sick so taking the risk of a vaccine is unnecessary. Actually they are banking that everyone else will be vaccinated. The problem is: guess again. There are now too many deciding that they are the ones who can remain vaccine-free. Babies died in California this past year from becoming infected with whooping cough–in the year 2010– when this is a completely preventable illness.
I tell these parents God does provide immunity — after suffering through a life threatening disease which threatens those who are unfortunately exposed. He also provides immunity in the form of a vial of vaccine, a needle and syringe. I don’t think any one of these parents would deny the life saving miracle of injectable insulin for their child diagnosed with diabetes, nor would they fail to strap their child into a car seat. Vaccines are miracles and instruments of prevention too, but the rub is that we have to give them to healthy youngsters in order to keep them healthy.
As a society, or as clinicians, we simply don’t think about immunizations in the same way as we did in the fifties. When I received my first DPT vaccination at the age of 4 months, my mother wrote in my baby book:
“Up most of the night with fever 104.5 degrees, considered a good ‘take’ for the vaccine.” She truly was relieved that it had made me sick, as it meant that I would be safe if exposed to those killer diseases that were so common in the 1950s. Now a febrile reaction like that would almost be considered grounds for a law suit.
Read the full piece here.
Read the full piece here.