The Great Vaccination Debate

  • There are parts of the country where up to 20% of families are saying ‘no’ to vaccines. (Photo by Bill Branson, courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)

Babies and young children get a lot more vaccines today than they did ten years ago. To most parents, it’s a chance to protect their children from more diseases. But there are pockets of places where lots of people are opting out of vaccines. Julie Grant reports that it has the Centers for Disease Control concerned:

Transcript

Babies and young children get a lot more vaccines today than they did ten years ago. To most parents, it’s a chance to protect their children from more diseases. But there are pockets of places where lots of people are opting out of vaccines. Julie Grant reports that it has the Centers for Disease Control concerned:

Heather Waltz has a five month old daughter. Most Americans her age have already started a series of vaccinations – to prevent everything from Hepatitis B, to Diphtheria, to Polio.

But Waltz’s little girl isn’t going to get those shots. Her mom worries they could cause things like autism, juvenile diabetes and even cancer.

“I think the jury’s still out, as far as what the research says. But there is enough anecdotal sort of stuff to make me aware and decide that, really, right at this point, vaccinating wasn’t what I wanted to do.”

Waltz is among a small, but growing number of parents who are becoming skeptical of vaccines.

Lance Rodewald is director of immunization services at the Centers for Disease Control.

He says more than 90% of American children are vaccinated. But there are parts of the country where up to 20% of families are saying ‘no’ to vaccines.

“And that’s getting to a rate of lack of protection of children that really can be a fertile ground for the spreading of diseases like measles. And we actually saw that last year.”

In one case last year, Rodewald says a child who wasn’t vaccinated caught the measles in Switzerland and brought it back to Arizona.

“The parents didn’t realize that the child had measles – brought him to the pediatricians office where there were babies that were too young to be vaccinated that got measles. And then that particular outbreak went through four generations of spread, from child to child to child to child before it was able to be contained.”

Measles can cause more than just a nasty rash. In rare cases, it can lead to death. Measles still causes 200,000 deaths around the world. But it’s been almost eradicated in the U.S. because of vaccines.

Rodewald says many parents are concerned about vaccines today because of a ten-year old scientific article that linked the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella to autism. Rodewald says the science in that article proved to be wrong.

“The authors withdrew their names from the article. But this particular study set off a whole series of concerns about vaccines and autism that, to this day, is still talked about.”

Rodewald says many studies have been done and found no association, no cause and effect, between vaccines and autism.

It’s tough for parents to wade through all the information that’s out there these days. And there are so many vaccines to try to understand. Back in the mid-1990s, children were given 6 vaccines. Today, they’re supposed to get more than twice that many.

Mother Heather Waltz tries to keep up with it all and says she still plans to avoid vaccines.

Waltz: “For every bit of research and every article I find sort of helping me support my point, there’s a million other bits of research and articles saying that I’m a bad parent, or saying that I’m somehow damaging the health of the entire United States by not vaccinating my child. Just this idea that she could be a measles monster and just running around and infecting her classmates with measles or something like that, and that would be a terrible thing.”

Grant: “What do you think when you see that?”

Waltz: “It doesn’t make logical sense to me. Because to me, if you have 30 kids in a classroom, and my one isn’t vaccinated, wouldn’t my child be the one at risk? Not the public’s.”

But even if Waltz’s daughter doesn’t get vaccinated, she’ll probably be safe from these diseases. With so many other kids getting inoculations, most of the U.S. is not fertile ground for them to regain traction.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Parallels Found Between West Nile Virus and Polio

Scientists are comparing the effects of West Nile virus to Polio, because they share similar symptoms. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton has more:

Transcript

Scientists are comparing the effects West Nile Virus to Polio because they share
similar
symptoms. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton has more:


Researchers say both the West Nile virus and Polio can live in the body for years
before
launching an attack against the nervous system. And there’s evidence both can lead
to other
medical problems years after the initial illness.


In the case of polio, this delay is known as “PPS,” or “post polio syndrome.”


Science journalist, Janet Ginsburg, says those kinds of outbreaks begin with a range
of symptoms.


“And a lot of people had a flu-like illness, just like West Nile fever. These
people today are
showing up with PPS. So you have this model of polio.”


Ginsberg says more research needs to be done before a connection is certain.


There have been fewer than a couple of dozen cases of the West Nile virus in the
Great Lakes
States so far this year.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jenny Lawton.