Are You Concerned About Vaccinations?

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

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

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

Short of any irrefutable evidence that vaccinations cause autism, however, I agree that the ability to vaccinate your child against illnesses that once killed people in large numbers is a medical advance worth taking advantage of.

(FWIW: My wife has a master's degree in social work and works as the clinical coordinator for a program that provides services to adolescents on the autism spectrum, so she is perhaps more tuned in than most people to the issues surrounding that community ... and she had no hesitation about getting our kids vaccinated.)

Mon, 2009-04-06 04:52

I really hate to bottom-line a subject as complex as this, but here it is:

I'd rather my child be autistic than dead.

Until irrefutable evidence is given that vaccinations are more dangerous than not getting vaccinations, I will continue to support them. As Daddy Scratches pointed out above, the odds indicate that vaccinations are safer than no vaccines.

Mon, 2009-04-06 05:14

This is obviously a hot button issue, as it should be. Our children's life and health are our most important priorities as parents. There is a lot of conflicting information out there and I certainly don't have the medical expertise to cut through the static and distill the information down into what has been clinically proven.

Fortunately for me, I married a highly intelligent woman that is in the medical field. I asked my wife about vaccinations during her pregnancy and to her there was no debate over whether or not we'd have our son vaccinated. To her, as a doctor of pharmacy that can make sense of all this medical nonsense, the issue was working with our pediatrician to alter slightly the schedule to make her more comfortable with when he got certain vaccinations. Once our son was born and we had his first visit they quickly agreed to her altered time table and the rest is history.

As Daddy Scratches pointed out above you have to play the odds. Vaccinations provide a significant medical advantage and there isn't substantial credible data to support any like to autism. There is, however, significant credible data to support that they prevent many illnesses that previously killed people in droves.

We too chose to avoid the amnio when my wife was pregnant for the same reason, despite the warnings over advanced maternal age. We chose the non-invasive nuchal translucency test and those results we so good we weren't about to risk the amnio.

Mon, 2009-04-06 05:16

it's hard. it's really hard to (in my case) be a new parent, read a ton of shit in the hopes that it is educating you on becoming a parent... and then have the shit scared out of you when you read the shit on becoming a parent. on one hand, you want to be "armed" more or less, with all the info you can possibly find (in this case) regarding vaccinations.

which is all well and good. i'm definitely NOT saying, "fear the literature," or "don't educate yourself on what you're putting in to your child's body." but i am saying that it is scary.

our son was allergic to my breast milk, so i could only nurse him for the first 5 weeks of his little life. (you guys have heard me talk about this on here before). because of his experience within those first 5 weeks and the pain that it caused his little body, he taught himself NOT to eat.

"food refusal" which is what our son was "diagnosed" with at one point in time, is a sign of autism. it's one of those listed out, "oh shit, my child is going to be the 1 in 4 boy" things that doctors especially look for. because of this "diagnosis" we prolonged some of our son's vaccinations. we got them. (he's due for his 12 month in a few weeks) but we were very careful about when we scheduled them, making sure that he was his strongest, his immunities were up when we injected him with diseases.

the crappy thing, that my husband and i found, was that because of this "food refusal" diagnosis and the behavior that our son taught himself, doctors started treating him as though he were autistic, when in fact he's not... he was just allergic to my boob juice.

point being, it's a double-edged sword. you want to "know" what's out there, you want to "know" what could potentially happen, and you want to "know" the side effects... but you don't want to "know" because then you would know.

Mon, 2009-04-06 06:18

I was nervous when it came time to vaccinate my baby. I knew that there was no link, scientifically, but the anecdotal evidence was certainly compelling and Jenny McCarthy seems to feel pretty strongly about it and she was in Playboy. So...

My first visit with our pediatrician was actually a visit with the Nurse Practitioner and she was extremely helpful and listened to my concerns. She said it was up to me whether we vaccinated but that if we started, the school districts expect you to do them all so I did have to decide sooner rather than later.

She explained that with autism, a fever can trigger it. And with vaccines, a fever is sometimes a side effect and that if the child is predisposed, he or she will get show symptoms regardless if the fever was caused by encountering a sick child in the waiting room or from a reaction to the vaccine. Whether or not it was just a bunch of propaganda, I don't know but it put my mind at ease. People (med students, other doctors) I've talked to since then have agreed with what she told me. The NP also said that the MD who initially made those claims should be in prison because of the children who died from not getting vaccinated.

In the end I suppose it comes down to a risk of fever which might trigger your child's predisposition dominoes to fall or big, scary, true risk of disease and death.

I decided to vaccinate.

Mon, 2009-04-06 07:17

I think it has a lot to do with general distrust of the medical community and those who we think at least deem themselves the intellectual elite. One thing that never ceases to irritate me is books/lectures/programs with titles like "Cures THEY don't want you to know about." What? I'm not saying there aren't doctors who don't listen at all to their patients -- you'll find jerks in every profession, and it's especially grievous here; my mom recently finished a month-long stint in the hospital thanks in part to one -- but the medical profession as a whole is self-checking, meticulous, compassionate and smarter than us about medical stuff. They have volumes of knowledge -- the stuff that tells them that people can DIE from things like measles and chicken pox -- whereas we have our experiences. Experiences are vitally important, but so is what they have to tell us, and we would be wise to listen up.

I don't have an autistic child, and I would never dream of diminishing the tragedy and heartbreak these families go through, nor would I even pretend to understand it. But I think a large part of the anti-vaccine movement; the reason many people still rail against vaccines even after the testimony of the CDC, World Health Organization and many others; is that they want to have something to blame. It's highly dissatisfying to hear "Well, we really don't know what's causing this terrible disorder that's come between you and your child. We're still working on it." So as soon as a target presents itself, we latch on. I think it's completely understandable. But I think that now that (to the best of our medical community's knowledge) the link has been discounted, we should invest our time looking into other factors contributing to autism, and into using vaccines to their greatest effect. They really are, as Alice said, one of the greatest innovations of modern medicine. I think we have a responsibility as parents to learn as much as we can and to be the final decision makers, but these doctor people? They know what they're talking about, at least way more than we do. Respecting that is smart.

I don't think the anecdotes are wrong or insincere at all; I just think maybe we misinterpret what we see. The ages when our kids start receiving vaccines pretty much correlate with the ages when autism symptoms begin to appear. It seems like it might be a bit of a confirmation bias. Do we hear about the tons and tons of cases where kids got vaccines and (aside from protesting about needles being shoved into their arms and legs) were just fine? Or about the cases in which autism symptoms began to present themselves with no apparent correlation to the vaccine? Of course not, because people don't report when stuff doesn't happen.

Great episode, everyone. I'm glad you addressed this issue, and you did an admirable job kicking off the conversation.

Mon, 2009-04-06 09:03