Parents Who Don't Vaccinate Play a Risky Game
Immunization roulette
Dawn and Scott Richardson decided 2 1/2 years ago not to immunize their daughter Alexa with the standard round of vaccines for infants and toddlers. They first began to question the safety of vaccines when one of their cats went into shock following an immunization and had to be revived by the veterinarian.
But the moment they knew they weren't going to vaccinate their daughter was when they spoke to the parents of a 3-month-old baby, who died after receiving a series of immunizations. "[The parents] had not wanted to vaccinate, but the doctor convinced them," Dawn says. "They went against their better judgment and the child ended up dying."
In fact, deaths caused by vaccines are extremely rare, says Jon Abramson, chair of pediatrics at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C. Roughly 100 million doses are given each year in the United States. In 1997, 92 deaths in young children may have been caused by vaccines. The risk of a severe nonfatal reaction to vaccines, which usually contain live or weakened versions of the pathogen, is more common, but also small. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (DTP) vaccine carries at worst a 1 in 100,000 chance of permanent brain damage.
Stephen Mulhauser was 3 1/2 months old when he received his second DTP shot. He began shrieking a few hours later. This lasted 9 1/2 hours. He also developed a high fever. After a few days, his eyes started wandering independently of each other, and he stopped playing with his toys. Stephen is now 16 years old and lives with his family in New York City. He has profound hearing loss and multiple disabilities, and he has difficulty feeding and dressing himself. "What really bothers me is that I thought I was protecting him by doing what the doctors told me was the right thing to do," says his mother, Linda.
Health experts say the 1 percent of parents who don't vaccinate their children are not protecting them. "This is flawed and truncated reasoning," says Louis Sullivan, former secretary of health and human services. A child exposed to measles is much more likely to suffer complications from the disease than from the vaccine. According to the CDC, a child has a 1 in 2,000 chance of suffering encephalitis, which causes fever and transient mental disorientation, from the measles, compared with the 1 in a million chance of suffering encephalitis from the vaccine.
Outbreaks. The odds are greater that a child will not be exposed to diseases when most other children are vaccinated, but the possibility exists. Such was the case in the early 1990s, when cities throughout the United States were hit with measles outbreaks, killing nine children in Philadelphia and at least 12 people in Dallas. This year, outbreaks of whooping cough have been reported in California in children who have not been immunized.
The fact that vaccines carry a risk is "a reality we all have to confront," Sullivan says. Scientists still don't know why immunizations go wrong but are trying to reduce the risk. A safer "acellular" pertussis vaccine that contains less of the virus than the original whole-cell version is now available. And parents are increasingly opting for an injectable, inactivated form of polio vaccine, rather than the live oral-dosage form that can cause paralysis.
Big shots The CDC recommends these vaccines by age 6: Hepatitis B Diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis H influenza type b Polio Measles, mumps, rubella Varicella
This story appears in the November 23, 1998 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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