To Vaccinate Or Not To Vaccinate — That Is The Question

She was dewy-eyed and smiling, the way most young mothers are. She was having a
post-partum depression, and seemed to be responding very well to her treatment.

She asked me a question that shook me to my very foundation.

“Do you think I should vaccinate my baby?” I told her to talk to her pediatrician.

“He wants to do everything some professional association tells him to do. I want to know
the real truth.”

Yeah, I try really hard to go for the truth.

The answer is “sometimes, mostly yes.” I believe every responsible parent should not
only be instructed in the advantages and risks of vaccinations of all sorts by the
administering pediatrician or agency, but also check things out themselves. Doctors are
overworked and often limited in time. The knowledge of the internet is infinite.

The hard part is to determine what information on the internet is to believe.

So I tried to tell her how to think. It boiled down to three questions that she could ask.

• What is the real risk of the disease that the vaccine is supposed to prevent?
• What is the real risk of the vaccine?
• Which risk is bigger?

I strongly suspect the advantage-risk balance will end up being in favor of vaccination.

These are the questions that need to be answered. Not by me, because this is not my
specialty and I am a specialized physician. By every parent and every doctor who cares
for every parent’s child. And they need to be answered in “fair and balanced” ways, not
in ways that repeat mindlessly whatever a professional association says, or even worse,
whatever a vaccine producer says.

The truth of the matter is that throughout history, since the beginning of vaccination in
the 18th century with Edward Jenner, there have been pro-vaccination and anti-
vaccination movements. In general and at most times in most ways, periods of anti-
vaccination seem to have been followed with awful resurgence of the deadly diseases
which vaccination was meant to prevent.

Smallpox, for example, was greatly feared in the 18th century, with an estimated
(according to Voltaire) 60% of the population getting it and 20% of the population dying
from it. In 1840 the British Vaccination Acts allowed the government to vaccinate
anybody who wanted it, thanks to Jenner’s proof that inoculation with the cowpox did
indeed confer immunity from the smallpox.

Most early criticism of vaccination was religious in origin, as many believed that the
Lord gave disease to people as punishment for sin and humans could not fight this one.
(The same argument came from the pulpits condemning Ben Franklin’s lightning rod).

I am glad this is not a current criticism. I am proud that one of my biggest personal
heroes, Thomas Jefferson, tried to work with Dr. Waterhouse, a well known Boston
physician, to try to get batches of vaccine to the southern states without the inactivation
of machine batches by heat, a real problem in those days.

Now, most of the concern is about thimerosal, a mercury-containing substrate that has
been present in a large number of vaccines. It is amazing how few people know that the
U.S.A. has a “vaccine court,” which is a popular name for the Court of Federal Claims,
which administers compensation for those who have been hurt by vaccines, using a no
fault system. It is funded by a 75 cent fee on every dose of vaccine administrated. If it
did not exist, the threat of liability for the relatively few accidents that happen with
vaccine administration most likely would have stopped the companies who make
vaccines from making them altogether.

The real problem for most parents is the connection of autism with thimerosal. I can
vouch for the fact that the symptoms associated with Mercury toxicity as described in the
child do have some real commonalities with those described in autism. Not everything
known is summarized here, but the judicial folks seem to have made a real effort to
figure out what is going on. Like judicial folks say, however, “the jury is still out,” and
there are over 5000 cases awaiting adjudication.

What is predictable is that in this country, medical controversies seem destined to become
legal controversies. Even the New England Journal of Medicine agrees with that one.

This argument is not over. There are plenty of vaccines and it is impossible to make a
complete generalization.

I cannot make this decision for individual parents. Clearly, nobody wants to be in the
position of suing a federal court, even in a no-fault program, because a child is autistic.

I can offer at least a little counsel.

In general, I would counsel parents to get vaccinations for their children against life
threatening diseases. I would counsel them, as I did the dewy-eyed mother who initiated
this series of thought processes, to secure absolutely all information possible.
I think the first question is to ask the pediatrician or public health agency nurse if the
vaccine in question is made with thimerosal. My understanding is that thimerosal has
been removed from a large number of vaccines and other chemicals are used in its place.
It is perfectly licit for any parent to request an alternative vaccine that does not contain
thimerosal. This is not my area of expertise, so I cannot give a catalogue.

What I can tell you is to weigh the advantages and risks of everything you do for
whatever ails you. This is an action which is squarely within the province of being a
patient. We are not in the era of authoritative, all-knowing physicians. We are in an era
of enlightened patients, who get information off the internet and challenge their
physicians.

Go for it.