Measles cases on increase in United States

9 September 2008

By JULIE DEARDORFF

Measles cases in the United States are rising, and parents who reject vaccination are shouldering much of the blame. Nearly half of the 131 cases so far this year involved unvaccinated children, including 25 home-schooled kids in Illinois.

Health officials worry that as vaccination rates decline, herd immunity is lost, increasing the chance of a mass disease outbreak. Some pediatricians, mean-while, are frustrated that they have to spend so much time convincing parents that vaccines such as the measles, mumps and rubella shot are safe.

Questioning in itself is not a bad thing, especially since the Internet has ignited an information explosion, some of it inaccurate. It does, however, reflect a larger crisis of confidence in public health officials and policy, which has developed partly because so many new, seemingly unnecessary vac-cines have been added to the schedule and because no one can explain what causes, how to prevent or how to treat the new childhood disorders: asthma, allergies, attention deficit disorder and autism.

The number of vaccines children receive has tripled since the early 1980s. In 1982, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control recom-mended 23 doses of 7 vaccines for children up to age 6.

Today’s typical 6-year-old has had 48 doses of 12 vaccines. (Toss in the flu shot, which may or may not be effective, and it boosts the number to 69 doses of 16 vaccines by age 18.) Immunization against diseases that were once a childhood rite of passage and that conferred lifelong immunity, such as chick-enpox, is now required for public school in many states, including Illinois. And the Hepatitis B vaccine is routinely given to babies the day after they’re born, even though the illness is contracted through blood transfusions and sexual activity. Parents wonder: “Why can’t the Hep B vaccine wait?”

But what really prompted questions was the 1997 decision by the Food and Drug Administration to remove the mercury-based preservative thimerosal from most vaccines as a precaution, due to concerns about the “theoretical potential for neurotoxicity” and the growing number of vaccines containing thimerosal on the immunization schedule.

Though no evidence of harm has been shown, a mental link to thimerosal was made, a scarlet letter on vaccines that re-mains to this day.

Several recent developments have sparked other questions about vaccines:

Dr. Bernadine Healy, the former head of the National Institutes of Health, told CBS News that she thinks “public health officials have been too quick to dismiss the (autism-vaccine) hypothesis as irrational.”

In March, government health officials conceded that childhood vaccines aggra-vated a rare, underlying cellular disorder in 9-year-old Hannah Poling that ultimately led to autism-like symptoms.

America might be over-vaccinating its kids and health officials might want to re-evaluate and adjust the immunization sched-ule, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine. But not because of health concerns; the vaccines might just be unnecessary and waste a lot of money.

A study in the journal Pediatrics found that 33 percent of pediatricians would strongly recommend the rotavirus vaccine if it were up to the doctor’s discretion. But if it becomes an “official” recommendation by the American Academy of Pediatrics, that number goes up to 50 percent.

Last year, a week after CDC announced that the influenza vaccine was effective against only 40 percent of the season’s flu viruses, it recommended that all children over 6 months get a flu shot.
Vaccination, considered to be one of medi-cine’s greatest achievements, is a personal decision that is often forced on people for the greater good. Parents who question vaccines are simply seeking information and advocat-ing for their children.

We have the right to question everything that goes into our children’s bodies, whether it’s food, herbs, over-the-counter medications or prescription drugs. Vaccines, which like any medical procedure carry both benefits and risks, should not be an exception.