I’d prefer not to insult my readers and friends who choose not to vaccinate, yet I appreciate you finding my blog and voicing your opinion.

I am glad to hear (again) that the original paper linking MMR and autism was bad science.

Did you see my post, or read the articles I read, about the new suspected link between autism and TV-watching?

By the way, Dr. Sears strongly advises parents vaccinate in his “Vaccine” book, so he’s really not the enemy in this situation.

In fact, the book has special chapters addressing the anti-vax community, attempting to change their minds, or at least get them to do a minimum vaccine schedule.

He does suggest that if parents are concerned about MMR, there are ways to obtain the three vaccines (measles, mumps, rubella) separately and space them out.

If he was more extreme in his opinions previous to that book, I don’t know about it.

From my own experience, I have been happy with my decision to separate out the vaccines one at a time (rather than four or five in one visit) to reduce the potential side effects and temper the load on my baby’s developing immune system. I was also glad to have a conversation with my pediatrician about whether or not the Rotavirus vaccine was necessary, and to choose WITH HER not to continue it.

I, myself, got the pertussis vaccine on my second day in the hospital, post-partum, and my baby has had DTaP and all of his other necessary shots to date, albeit more slowly than the AAP schedule, and with additional costs (from the co-pays per visit).

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Further note to my readers: I tried to contact Dr. Mike but the email address he provided doesn’t seem to be real. I researched his visitor path and discovered that he was googling the phrase “criticism of Dr. Sears vaccine schedule.” I found that interesting, so thought you might too. Because this old post is not one that often receives hits. And he seems in his comment to be mounting some kind of campaign, and yelling at someone, though if he read the post thoroughly, I don’t know if he means me.

I tried googling his search terms and came upon this brilliantly-written post on vaccines, concerns about environmental and immune system overload, and links to autism and other behavioral issues:

http://www.svmoms.com/2008/08/every-child-by.html

I met Kari at BlogHer08, briefly, and I thought she was an incredible woman — just from those few minutes. This post she wrote seals that opinion.

Curious that Dr. Mike didn’t rant at her too. I may check a few more links to see where else he went. Since my boy is napping at the moment…

Re: “generally anti-vax kids are healthy” this is not about generally. This is about that statistical number of kids who die from some of these diseases. As I wrote above, I got all three of MMR plus chicken pox in childhood. I was healthy and fine. But some significant number of children out of a thousand do die of these diseases without the vaccine. And the epidemics can be very very costly.

How about this on diphtheria: “Mortality/Morbidity: The most widely quoted diphtheria mortality rate is 5-10%. It may reach higher than 20% in children younger than 5 years. Disproportionately high rates of death were observed in individuals older than 40 years during an epidemic in the States of the former Soviet Union. Infection with the gravis strain is associated with higher mortality rates.

In the 1920s in the United States, 15,000 deaths were reported annually. ”

from http://www.emedicine.com/emerg/topic138.htm

Some have argued that the anti-vax people are only skating by because the rest of us get our shots, and there are still so few of them. But by not getting their shots, they keep the reservoirs of disease going in the population.

Still I am all in favor of questioning doctors closely about the vax schedule and being conservative about how much and when, etc.

NoMasNinos’s last blog post..Gray Skies are Gonna…

Now I had measles, mumps, chicken pox AND rubella as a child, and I didn’t die. But these diseases do cause great harm to a certain percentage of the population. And diptheria kills.

It is true that the more granola/groovy private schools in affluent, liberal enclaves like Berkeley/Oakland do have more trouble with non-vaccinated children than public schools do. Public schools just say – tough luck, vax or leave.

OTOH – it is always good to ask questions and be cautious. Why not be conservative about the vax schedule? What harm could that cause?

And flu shots – I let my hubbie and pediatrician talk me into them for the kids one year, but not again. I am not convinced that the shots do anything useful and I want my kids to get immune to the various strains as they run through the population. If and when the biggie flu virus hits, I want my kids to have as many immunities as possible.