Vaccinations for Infants and Children

[marmota_monax]

For those of us in the US who listen to NPR's morning show "Morning Edition", today we heard a piece in defense of vaccines. Here's a link to the story and the audio piece. In the interest of fairness, NPR has provided links at the bottom of the page and on this page that reflect other viewpoints and stories about this topic

Comments

[asakiyume]

I heard the story and was in total agreement about the virtue of vaccination. My mom tells me the story of when I cried when I got the DPT (diphtheria-pertussis [whooping cough]-tetanus vaccine) as a baby--she was distressed, and the doctor said, "Well, you should see what a baby with diphtheria looks like." Yeah.

Diphtheria is a HORRIBLE disease. I'm glad it's not around any more, and I would hate for it to come back because people didn't vaccinate.

I think it's important to be on the lookout for problems with vaccines, and it's true that sometimes pharmaceutical companies try to hide information about adverse reactions. In this case, however, the evidence seems clear.

Of course then there's also the fact that the vaccines don't always work the way people think they do. I didn't realize that the whooping cough vaccine wore off in adolescence, and then this summer two of my kids got it, so.... but it was a much milder case than it would have been if they had never been vaccinated, and whooping cough in a teenager isn't generally life threatening, whereas it is for an infant under six months...