Unvaccinated Children Worry Public Health Officials

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26291109?GT1=43001

Parents who choose not to vaccinate their children for childhood diseases like measels, mumps, polio, whooping cough and more are sparking a public concern among health officials and other parents. Those who opt out are concerned about things like the rumored possible link of vaccines and autism, or sometimes for religious reasons, but officials insist that the benefits of the vaccines far outweigh any potential harm.

Further, officials are concerned that these pockets of parents who seek to exempt their children from the required vaccinations are increasing the odds that an outbreak will occur. The explanation is that vaccinations need to be kept at a particular percent level in order to protect everyone. Statistically even those who don't receive the vaccines are "safe" due to the immunity of everyone around them, and the unlikeliness of the disease finding it's way to a non-vaccinated child. With more and more children clustered together who aren't protected, it opens a gateway through which one of those scourges of the past can find an entry point.

But because the vaccines aren’t quite 100 percent effective and because protection can wane, even those who are vaccinated can get sick, Omer added.

That's only too clear to Cheri Rae, 55, a Santa Barbara, Calif., mother whose son, Daniel, was 7 and vaccinated when he contracted pertussis from an unimmunized playmate.

“He was as sick as any child I’ve ever seen,” said Rae, noting that four years later, Daniel has only recently stopped taking powerful drugs to combat lingering respiratory effects from the disease.

Vaccines rely upon "herd immunity" to protect the population and prevent the return of deadly diseases that we have already figured out how to combat.

Though rare, severe problems can occur, including serious allergic reactions, long-term seizures, coma or permanent brain damage. With the DTaP vaccine, the combination shot for diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, for instance, the CDC estimates severe problems occur in less than 1 in a million doses.

But parents often reject vaccinations not because of these known risks, but because of unproven links to disorders such as asthma, attention deficit disorder, or autism.

Increasingly, parents are opting not to vaccinate or, more often, to vaccinate selectively because they don’t trust the safety conclusions of the federal government or medical groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, said Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center in Vienna, Va.

Some parents are concerned that the vaccines aimed at protecting the whole population don't sufficiently take into account the genetic differences that could harm their individual child. As a result some parents have become unwilling to subject their children to even a small risk that is meant to protect everyone.

Mandatory vaccine requirements in many states endanger children who may be genetically vulnerable to reactions, essentially marginalizing their risk for the sake of the larger population, Fisher said.

“Once you decide that individuals are expendable in the name of the greater good, how many is too many?” she said. “You can decide that it’s OK to throw some people under the bus because that’s the price of doing business.”

Part of the problem rests with the very success of vaccines, noted Peg Crowley, the director of the Community Health Center where Isabella Parker got her shots. This generation of parents doesn’t recall how sick a toddler can be with measles, so they focus on the very small risk associated with vaccines.

“One of the biggest issues is that parents think they’re safe to make this decision,” said Crowley, who recalls quarantines from her own childhood. “There’s no memory of the consequences of these diseases. We take our protection sometimes for granted.”

Check out our February posting about the 2008 Infant Vaccination Schedule for vaccine scheduling details.