Why Doctors Give in on Vaccines

The Medical Surrender of Vaccines

Even in an era defined by profound technological advances, the practice of medicine remains an art as well a science—a fact that often frustrates both physicians and their patients. For many conditions, solutions are not simple and there are rarely easy answers. There are exceptions, of course; perhaps the most notable among them has been the success of vaccines.

Until recently, in the United States and other wealthy countries, diseases such as measles, pertussis and rotavirus—which kill hundreds of thousands of infants in the developing world each year—had virtually disappeared. Both measles and pertussis are now back, largely because increasing numbers of children remain unvaccinated. Vaccines are the most powerful public-health tool that pediatricians possess. Unfortunately, there are people (a minority, but a dangerous one) who just don’t care.

Many of these people don’t approve of the vaccine schedule set out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and they seek to spread the shots over a longer time period than the one recommended. This has presented American pediatricians with a stark new challenge to their Hippocratic Oaths. Which does more harm: delaying scheduled vaccines and reducing their effectiveness, or refusing to delay and running the risk that parents will simply not vaccinate their children at all?

It’s a terrible choice, forced almost wholly by the notion (which is demonstrably untrue) that if a child receives “too many vaccines too soon” it could overwhelm his or her immune system. A study published this week in the journal Pediatrics provides the best proof yet that a large majority of doctors agree to the delays. Ninety-three per cent of those surveyed for the study reported that they had been asked, at least once, to delay vaccines. The physicians acquiesce in overwhelming numbers—two thirds said they do so at least occasionally—even though most of them don’t want to, and even though they are aware that data clearly show that such delays put their patients (and those around them) at increased risk.

Nobody can dispute that the number of vaccines has grown significantly. A hundred years ago, children received a single vaccine: smallpox. By 1962, that number had grown to five (diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, polio, and the M.M.R.). Today, the C.D.C. advises that children be vaccinated for fourteen diseases before age six, on a recommended schedule that usually includes twenty-nine shots, sometimes several at once. Vaccines worry parents, in part because of of an old, unfounded, and ultimately discredited theory that children who receive measles vaccines develop autism at higher rates than other children. (They don’t, as has been demonstrated in dozens of studies carried out throughout the world.)

That baseless concern, publicized by activists such as Jenny McCarthy, morphed into a movement to spread out the timing of vaccines in order to protect children from a possible shock to their immune systems. But there simply is no such threat. Because progress in molecular biology has made it possible to create vaccines with fewer antigens, children’s systems are now exposed to far less of a burden than was the case in the past. The smallpox vaccine, for example, contained two hundred proteins—all separate molecules. All together, the vaccines that children routinely receive today contain fewer than a hundred and fifty.

The number of bacteria that live on the nose of a newborn child or on the surface of his or her throat is in the trillions. “Those bacteria have between 2,000 and 6,000 immunological components and consequently our body makes grams of antibody to combat these bacteria,” Paul Offit, the chief of the infectious-diseases division at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, has written. “The number of immunological challenges contained in vaccines is not figuratively, it is literally a drop in the ocean of what you encounter every day.” Offit has long been one of the nation’s most prominent proponents of vaccines—and he has long been vilified for his stance.

Pediatricians spend, on average, less than twenty minutes with each patient—often far less—and they usually have to cover a lot of ground. Finding the time for a lengthy discussion of vaccine safety is never easy. Moreover, at least one recent study suggests that certain efforts to correct false impressions about the dangers of vaccines actually make people less likely to get vaccinated. It appears, again for no good scientific reason, that simply knowing more about vaccines convinces many people to avoid them.

The days when patients stood by placidly as doctors told them what to do are over, and good riddance to them. We are far more capable of assembling information and deciding what is best for us or for our children than we ever have been. And we certainly have the energy to devote to our fear of disease. (Anyone who watched as the nation displayed hysteria over “our” Ebola epidemic, in which two people in a nation of three hundred and thirty million died, saw that.)

But the medical profession’s widespread surrender on vaccines is deeply troubling. And it all but guarantees that preventable illnesses will continue to harm people and put children’s lives in danger. An Internet connection doesn’t make us all experts, and it doesn’t make it easier to distinguish between useful data and lies. That’s why trained physicians and nurses are more essential today than they have ever been. Unfortunately, that is not a truth universally acknowledged—even by doctors.

The Enduring Benefits of Vaccination

We hear both sides of the story: this time pro-vaccination

Recently I wrote about a type of scientific denialism — often practiced by religious people — that cheats children out of the wonders of modern cosmology and encourages unnecessary religious doubt. But there is another sort of scientific skepticism — often displayed by affluent and educated parents — that withholds routine childhood vaccinations and encourages unnecessary disease.

These should be kept in proportion. The belief that human beings walked with dinosaurs is wrong. The belief that vaccinations cause autism or brain damage is wrong and dangerous. From the Washington Post

Vaccine Advocate Takes on the Alternative Medicine Industry

Dr. Paul Offit doesn’t like getting threats. But the 62-year-old pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia says it goes with the territory when taking on powerful industries and interest groups whose beliefs are deeply rooted in emotion.

He’s ready for a tsunami of criticism with his latest foray into debunking popular wisdom – “Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine” in which he takes on the vitamin and herbal supplements industry, alternative medicine of all kinds, Congress and celebrity doctors who peddle their own products…From NBC

This was a year ago. The reaction has been divided as anticipated.

Pro-Vaccine View vs Anti-Vaccine Movement

A Doctor’s Take on the Anti-Vaccine Movement

The Rise Of The Anti-Vaccine Movement 

In the United States, we are witnessing the scientifically ignorant and sometimes deadly impact of an anti-vaccine movement. Individuals who support the movement continue to question the safety and necessity of vaccines despite extensive medical literature to the contrary.

When laboratory-produced vaccines were first introduced over 50 years ago, there were legitimate concerns about their safety. Many vaccines in their older forms were associated with the risk of rare but dangerous reactions.

The vaccines we use today have minimal risks and an extremely safe track record. They have undergone rigorous testing and scrutiny by the scientific community and have proven their effectiveness in large-scale clinical trials.

As a result, the days of school closures for measles and pertussis outbreaks have become a relic of the past. The side effects from vaccines are almost always mild. And even in the extremely rare case of a more serious allergic reaction, physicians and their staff are trained to deal with it.

Simply put, the benefits of vaccination substantially outweigh the risks.

Yet for the last two decades, fear mongers associated with the anti-vaccine movement in the U.S. and other developed countries have convinced some parents to refuse to vaccinate their kids.

The result is an erosion in health gains, both individual and collective. And in some parts of the country, we are witnessing a reversal of what many believe is one of the greatest advances in medical science in the last century.

The Fear Mongering Behind Measles And Whooping Cough

Measles and whooping cough are very serious, highly contagious respiratory diseases spread through the air by breathing, coughing or sneezing.

Although their clinical symptoms are different, both carry risks of long-term problems and even death.

Measles begins with fever, runny nose, cough and a rash all over the body. Before the introduction of a measles vaccine in 1963, hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. contracted the disease annually. Thousands were permanently disabled and between 400 and 500 people died. But since 1963, reported cases fell to less than a thousand a year.

Things started changing in 1998 when a British physician published a study in “The Lancet” medical journal that falsely asserted a connection between autism and the combined measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine.

An investigation into the work revealed the research was unethical and rife with conflicts of interest. The article was filled with false and fraudulent data, and the health care risks described have been completely discredited. In 2010, the paper was fully retracted from “The Lancet,” a remarkable event in the world of peer-reviewed journals.

But the damage was done. Vaccination rates in the UK plummeted and reported cases of measles soared. In the U.S., new measles cases have tripled as of 2013, with reported outbreaks in eight American communities. The recent outbreak in New York City has sickened at least a dozen people.

Meanwhile, whooping cough, a highly contagious bacterial infection, has seen a huge increase in the number of people infected each year.

The incidence of whooping cough was relatively low in the U.S. – around 5,000 cases annually – when vaccination was the unchallenged standard of care. But the impact of the anti-vaccine rhetoric and associated fear has contributed to several outbreaks across the United States and Europe, resulting in multiple infant deaths.

In 2010, three were 9,000 cases of whooping cough reported in California alone, causing the deaths of 10 infants under the age of 1 – the most in the state since 1947.

The first whooping cough vaccine was developed in the mid-1920s.  By the mid-1940s, it was used widely and often administered in combination with the diphtheria and tetanus vaccines.

In 1991, a combination vaccine called DTaP reduced the frequency of side effects and eliminated nearly all major adverse reactions from whooping cough immunization.

Unfortunately, California is now one of 19 states that allow “personal belief” exemptions for parents before their children enter school. As a result, non-medical exemptions in California have tripled between 2000 and 2010 with some schools in affluent communities reporting rates as high as 84 percent.

And as the 2010 outbreak demonstrated, clusters of whooping cough appear most frequently in these communities with higher than average non-medical exemptions.

Even if this exemption did not exist, there will always be some individuals who will not be vaccinated and others who will lose their immunity decades after the vaccine is given. Protecting these folks requires what health experts call “herd immunity.”

If a single parent does not immunize a child, the risk to that individual is low. But as the number of unvaccinated children grows, the risk of numerous people contracting and spreading the disease multiplies, creating a public health risk for a large segment of the population.

For highly contagious diseases like whooping cough and measles, herd immunity is dependent on having 95 percent of the population in a community immunized. When the immunization rate falls, the danger to both the young and elderly increases dramatically.

A Plea To Parents

We have highly safe and effective vaccines readily available to prevent many of the most dangerous childhood diseases. Yet despite decades of research that demonstrate their overwhelming positive impact on the health of our children, we are losing ground.

Before parents decide not to vaccinate their son or daughter, they need to consider the scientific evidence. They need to imagine how they will feel should their child die or experience long-term disability from an easily preventable disease.

And as a society, before we allow misinformation to threaten public health, we must recognize that vaccines today are safe and effective. Anything less is irresponsible. We owe it to our children and our communities to make vaccination universal.

Autism, Vaccine, Hollywood, Anti-Vaccine Truthers(?)

Parents whose beloved children have autism would not stop thinking of what they could have done differently. More important, they won’t stop looking for what can cure their beloved children. A possible correlation between Autism and Vaccine has not been a scientifically proven matter. Still, modern medical science has not figured out about the exact causes of many chronic pain and illnesses.

Jenny McCarthy: Report of new stance on autism, vaccines ‘irresponsible and inaccurate’

Jenny McCarthy says she plans to take legal action following a report claiming she had changed her controversial anti-vaccination stance.

McCarthy is an outspoken advocate for autism research and treatment whose views on vaccination have put her at odds with health experts.

Kristin Cavallari: ‘I’ve Read Too Many Books’ To Vaccinate My Child

“Vaccines are not something I wanted to publicly come out and speak on. I sort of got bombarded in this interview and thrown off-guard,” said the celeb, who is married to Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler.

“There’s really scary statistics out there, and to each their own. Autism wasn’t prevalent — like it is now — years ago, so something is going on, whether it’s the chemicals in our food or the vaccines,” she continued. “Something is happening, and we can’t really ignore that. I choose to believe that I think it’s in the vaccines but, again, to each their own and that’s where I stand on it.”

The topic of vaccination came up during Cavallari’s interview on Fox with “The Independents” host and former MTV VJ Kennedy, who brought up their fellow MTV alum, Jenny McCarthy. McCarthy has been vocal in her opposition to vaccinations, claiming that they cause autism despite a multitude of scientific studies to the contrary.

Cavallari told Kennedy she has not vaccinated her young son, Camden, and that she does not plan to vaccinate her new son after he’s born, either.

“You know what? I have read too many books about autism,” Cavallari said on Fox, where the comment was met with immediate skepticism from Kennedy.

“There is a pediatric group called Homestead, or Home First? Pregnancy brain, I’ve got it confused,” she continued on Thursday. “They’ve never vaccinated any of their children and they haven’t had one case of autism. And now, 1 in 88 boys is autistic, which is a really scary statistic … The vaccinations have changed over the years, there’s more mercury and other…”

Anti-Vaccine Truthers Are Becoming a Scary Epidemic in the United States

It might seem incomprehensible that parents would intentionally keep their children from receiving vaccines that prevent serious illnesses. Measles, for example, causes serious complications in one in 20 children. The measles vaccine causes serious complications in justone or two children for every million that receive it. But thanks to a discredited and formally retracted study submitted by Dr. A.J. Wakefield that linked vaccines to autism, millions of parents believe that they’re protecting their children from developing a psychological condition. Every single major public health organization in the world has denied the vaccine-autism link, but that’s just not good enough for some people.