Childhood Immunizations

Ever wonder Why Immunize? Childhood immunizations are a mystery to many and you've likely heard controversies that confuse matters even more...

• Autism from Vaccines?
• Mercury in Thimerisal?
• Immune Overload from Vaccines?

Childhood immunizations began as an attempt to protect a researcher's child from an unstoppable, horrific death. In 1796, Edward Jenner injected pus from a milkmaid with cowpox to his son and others on a hunch it could prevent the deadly smallpox. (Eew!)

Then as now, many diseases dangerous to adults were deadly to children, and smallpox was the specter of the century. It's easier to imagine such an experiment on your own child if you think of Ebola or cancer or autism marauding our streets in a very contagious but silent form. Everyone knew friends and acquaintances who had been suddenly struck down. That terror of being helpless to prevent losing your child at an early age made smallpox the first-ever government intrusion into private health (via mandated childhood immunizations.)

Current childhood immunization schedules reflect the balance between cost of disease (in lives, hospitalizations, and long term damage) and the cost and hassle of immunizing.

The first infant immunizations attacked diseases that often killed or maimed (polio, measles, whooping cough). Now, recommended childhood immunizations win the trade-off between the cost of immunizing everyone and the cost of life, hospitalization, and nuisance of the diseases.

MOST people don't end up in the hospital with brain swelling or blood infections after chicken pox, but enough do that the cost of the chicken pox vaccine (varicella) was felt to be worth it to society. MOST children don't end up dehydrated and in the hospital after rotavirus diarrhea, but enough do that the vaccine was felt to be worth it.

Why immunize... newborns?

Why immunize... at all?

There are two downsides to the strategy of refusing childhood immunizations and "counting on the community": one is that kids with immune system problems (leukemia, organ transplant) depend on this herd immunity – too many wildebeests and the protection falls apart. The other downside to refusing immunizations is when the disease has an outbreak in your community, or if you travel to a place where the disease exists and you're unprotected.

Choosing not to immunize either yourself or your child MIGHT turn out all right if you stay in the United States and there aren't too many others who choose to do the same. Skipping your own or your child's travel immunizations when traveling abroad can be very dangerous.

How vaccines work:

Like most things you learn in school for the first time, the immune system remembers for a variable amount of time, then the system forgets. If the pattern is presented again soon enough, the next time your system sees that pattern, the immune system REALLY remembers, and by the third time it rarely forgets. This accounts for the timing of childhood immunizations, and the reason you get booster shots. Most shots are scheduled based on the optimum timing to make sure your immune system remembers the pattern the most.

When you have a primed immune system, a disease is fought off so rapidly you don't get sick at all (in other words, you're IMMUNE.) When the system has never seen a disease before, it takes a while for it to develop an adequate response, and you can get ill while your system learns to fight it off the hard way. Whether it is permanently bad for you to get ill while you learn depends on the risk of the disease.

Immune system overload from vaccines?

What this means is that the amount of material your immune system is learning from is very small compared to what it's exposed to getting a regular cold or flu or infected scratch. It's just that the pieces are very specific and they exactly target what your body needs to fight off the most dangerous diseases.

Do vaccines cause autism?

In order to prove causality, the problem has to only occur in the presence of the mystery agent, has to go away when the agent is removed, and has to come back when re-introduced. Since you can't look at causal presence or absence of autism in a single child, and regrettably it won't go away, the only way to sneak up on truth is to look at populations.

Thimerosal was removed from vaccines by 2002, but autism incidence continues to increase. Experts think the causes are multifactorial – a genetic susceptibility plus exposure to something or somethings. Maybe it's excess corn syrup... for more information with before and after rates in countries which experimented with stopping vaccines, see these articles:
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-06-20.html#feature
http://www.skeptics.com.au/journal/1997/1_immunise.htm

Why do we REALLY mistrust vaccines?

Think about this: would you give your child a shot to prevent car crashes? leukemia? autism? In many ways, that's the current analogy to what smallpox, polio, and measles used to be. If you don't know someone personally who is crippled, sterilized, killed or scarred by disease, it's tough to justify any pain to your child.

Now that most of the diseases we're immunizing for are not on our emotional radar, it becomes the theoretical risk of measles or polio returning compared to the theoretical risk of autism. We don't know any children wasted from polio; we all know someone with an autistic child.

We're a tough society, and 90% of adults don't mind getting shots themselves. There's not much data on how much we mind watching our CHILD get shots, though, and when you're sleep deprived and your whole world is about protecting that tiny little newborn, well... watching them get poked again and again and again has to evoke some primal sensation of concern.

What if immunizations didn't hurt?