Wall Street Journal: To Vaccinate or Not: The Growing Debate

March 21, 2008, 11:02 am Posted by Sara Schaefer Munoz

The New York Times reports today that San Diego had a highly unusual outbreak of measles last month. Of the 12 children who fell ill, it says nine of them had not been inoculated against the virus because their parents objected. (Clarification: The other three were not inoculated because they were too young.)

The story says that parents skeptical of vaccines take advantage of exemptions to laws requiring vaccinations for school-age children. Epidemiologists say children who are not vaccinated are unnecessarily susceptible to serious illnesses, and also present a danger to children who have had their shots — the measles vaccine, for instance, is only 95% effective — and to those children too young to receive certain vaccines. (Measles, almost wholly eradicated in the United States through vaccines, can cause pneumonia and brain swelling, which in rare cases can lead to death.)

According to the piece, such parents are aware of the risks, but still choose not to give their children the shots because of an “unproven notion” that vaccines are linked to autism and other disorders. “I refuse to sacrifice my children for the greater good,” said Sybil Carlson in the article, whose 6-year-old son goes to school with several of the children hit by the measles outbreak in San Diego.

Indeed, in 1991, less than 1% of children in the states with personal-belief exemptions went without vaccines based on the exemption; by 2004, the most recent year for which data are available, the percentage had increased to 2.54%, the piece says.

Juggle readers, would you rather expose your children to childhood diseases — such as the “measles parties” mentioned in the article — then get them vaccinated? For those who work, has the growing number of unvaccinated children affected your thoughts about using group childcare?

Dr. Haley's comments on the governement's refusal to study vaccinated vs non-vaccinated populations

I want to pass on Dr. Haley's opinion about the studies the government uses and their refusal to examine vaccinated vs non-vaccinated populations.

The attempt by the CDC and AAP to promote the concept that thimerosal containing vaccines is safe for all but those with “underlying mitochondrial disorder” is similar to the previous attempt to label autism as a genetic disorder. This attempt is geared to place research funds into areas other than looking at vaccines in general and thimerosal in specific as the cause for the recent increase in autism.

We need to push for academic funding to do an epidemiological study not controlled by the CDC or AAP on the diseases and illnesses between the vaccinated and non-vaccinated populations. The CDC and AAP refuse to do this for reasons unknown, but most likely fear of the facts that may be found which may even involve more than autism causation---like whether or not the flu vaccines work, or any possible relationship between early vaccines and asthma rates.

However, it appears as if no governmental agency or body can understand the importance of the vaccinated versus non-vaccinated study to the welfare of our children and the overall cost of encompassing medical treatments in the USA. However, in my opinion, the CDC is impeding this due to the fear of a handful of bureaucrats who played an important role in implementing the CDC mandated vaccine program. In my opinion, the AAP does not support such a study due to the implications that forcing patients to follow the CDC mandate through pediatric programs has caused a major epidemic in our children and the loss of financial benefits presented by a forced well baby visits system.

What I am proposing, along with many others, regarding the study of vaccinated versus non-vaccinated populations represents straight-forward scientific logic. The fact that the major medical agencies and associations refuse to do this and insist on spending millions on genetic or mitochondrial disorder research suggests a force is working hard to prevent such a study----perhaps because they already know the answer. I would hardily promise to quite hammering vaccines if a reliable USA located academic institution was assigned the task to evaluate the vaccinated versus non-vaccinated populations and found no harmful effects of our vaccination program. The recent report from Manitoba, Canada on an approximate 5% versus 16% asthma rate on adolescents receiving thimerosal containing DPT at 4 months versus 2 months of age, respectively, tells us that there is a lot about the various aspects of the mandated vaccine program that science does not understand at this time. A comprehensive study of the vaccinated versus the non-vaccinated followed by the design of global monitoring of identified “vaccine risk factors” would provide the basis of implementing a much safer vaccine program.

Everyone should be aware of the fact that most of the epidemiological studies routinely quoted by the CDC, AAP and others as showing no connection between vaccines with thimerosal and autism were funded by the CDC, done by non-USA citizens, mostly done in Europe by individuals involved in producing thimerosal containing vaccines and on populations where the autism rate was more than 13 times less than in the USA. Interestingly, three of the epidemiological studies most quoted by pediatricians as proving thimerosal safety actually showed that thimerosal removal lead to an increase in autism, in one this increase was about 20 fold. To report that decreasing exposure to a potent neurotoxin like thimerosal decreased any specific neurological disease is ridiculous. Perhaps this is why the countries where the data was collected (Denmark, Sweden, England) and the reports filed have not followed the conclusion of the authors and still maintain thimerosal removal from pediatric vaccines. In my opinion, only our CDC and AAP give any scientific credence to the obviously low quality epidemiological studies done by these Danish, Swedish and English researchers who had obvious vested interests in the outcome. Again, this begs the question why our government does not fund a major epidemiological study on vaccinated versus non-vaccinated American children done by a prestigious American university!

I can only imagine the embarrassment to some professional groups when the American public finally find out that the autism epidemic was brought to light through considerable efforts by the mothers and fathers of autistic children, and not the government agencies or medical organizations that should have been in the forefront of recognizing this disaster. Where was the CDC, AAP, AMA, our neurological associations, etc. when the epidemic was in its early stages? I was involved in the autism issue starting in 1998 because of parents of autistic children, and what I distinctly remember was a flat denial by many of our aforementioned medical groups that an autism epidemic even existed. The very fact that we are having the CDC, who in my opinion caused the autistic epidemic through their mandated vaccine program which was not evaluated for safety, still involved in determining the cause of the autism epidemic is a failure of our government and our national medical programs. During the upcoming elections we have the opportunity to use our voting privileges to elect officials that will push for a complete evaluation of our national vaccine program. I strongly suggest that making foundation research based on vaccinated versus non-vaccinated populations regarding the autism/vaccine safety concern a major campaign issue.

Boyd Haley