Thank you for sharing this article. My niece is newly pregnant and she shared with her mother and me that her MIL and so her husband are anti-vaccine. My sister and I came down hard on the side of vaccinating (although we encouraged her to discuss it with a pediatrician and to bring her husband along to voice his concerns).

I think this article makes it clear what kind of fire you are playing with if you don't vaccinate.

I wished one of my coworkers would understand this, she thinks her child can die from vaccines which is extremely rare. She doesn't understand her child can die from the diseases vaccines prevent. It probably why we are seeing more whooping cough and other things because of peoples fear. I work with animals and have seen tetanus in animals that died with treatment. It is no joke how serious something like tetanus can be. I think it is like that person said, our generation was not around in the days when polio and other things were more common when vaccines were just starting to come out. Me personally I couldn't tell you what polio was about. I think people just really need to be educated about the benefits outweighing the cons of vaccines. Look at the new HPV vaccine that can help prevent this disease which can cause cancer of the cervix or throat. A

Thanks for this link...We need to understand as parents the importance of immunizations. The diseases that were once killers of children when I was growing up were no longer a worry after vaccinations came into play...Now too many people think it is no longer necessary to vaccinate. My friends daughter almost lost her baby last winter to whooping cough. She still did not go get the other children vaccinated. Many diseases are making a come back.

The Chinese word for whooping cough translates as "100 day cough". Think about that - who would take a chance on their child getting that? Unbelievable.

This topic is much more complex than most people realize. From a public health perspective and from a statistical standpoint, it's a no-brainer to vaccinate all children against all major diseases. However, the view from an individual perspective is different. There are risks associated with each type of vaccination that are entirely unrelated to the autism study cited by so many. Here is just one example:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/39253
I am totally in favor of pertussis vaccination, but it does double an individual child's risk of encephalitis. This doesn't matter unless it's ***your*** child who develops encephalitis. This is the perspective of the parent.

Individual reactions to vaccines vary. Health professionals need to take this into account. Until they do, parents will continue to try to protect their children from low-probability vaccination reactions at the expense of high-probability public health epidemics.

There is nothing preventing the adults who work with children from getting vaccinated, is there? My sister worked in a nursing home for years and routinely got the flu vaccine to protect herself.

My son had a reaction to the child shots. That didn't stop me from having him immunized. They ended up giving him the adult one, but had to have a lesser dose more often. He was a very hyper child & the Dr put him on meds for this. I did not like the reaction he had on this med, made him like a zombi, so I got to checking things out & found that taking away any foods that had artificial coloring, flavoring, sugar, additives & preservatives totally turned him around. It was almost impossible to find products at the store with out any of these items in it. So I made everything from scratch so I could control what was in them. It was so much more work for me, but well worth it. His teachers, at school, could hardly believe the difference in him. Believe me when I say that a lot of problems are caused by what is being added to our foods.

after watching a newborn colt die from tetanus, that was enough for me. my kids were vaccinated!

Food allergies are no joke. ADHD is different than a food allergy although a food allergy can mimic some similar symptoms. ADHD is a neurological chemical imbalance in the brain. There's a group of several tests that a doctor should preform before diagnosing and putting a child on meds for ADHD. A kid who has ADHD will still have ADHD unrelated to the diet issues.

It would be like saying if you take sugar away from a diabetic child, the child will not be diabetic. It's not sugar that makes the child a diabetic, it's the child's body isn't making insulin to process the different sugars. No sugar and the child will still be diabetic and need insulin. Diet can help or make it worst, but it won't fix it. Same with ADHD.

I have a great niece who just had a baby and posted a link on facebook page how Amish kids have lower rates of autism because they don't get vaccinated. I shared with her the high rates of birth defects and the higher infant morality rates. I hope her peds doctor can make her see reason.

I agree with everything being said here. To add to it our country has so many people from other countries.....do we know what or if they or their children have been vaccinated? All of the children need to be vaccinated. Adults, too.

Hugs