First of all, one in 10 die from these diseases? They take a parent’s erroneous belief and state it as fact?
Second, few say that unvaccinated children will not get these diseases. However, the vaccinated are getting them – full-blown to subclinical cases – as well, with questionable benefit. And these diseases can be quite unpleasant. The question is, what are the long-term consequences of the diseases compared to the long-term consequences of the vaccines. The examples of children they used did not apparently have any long-term consequences from the diseases.
And, of course, there has been additional research published by Wakefield since this letter was sent. - SM
Jan 03, 2001
Unprotected People
SOME PARENTS FALL FOR VACCINATION SCARE STORIES,
WITH DEADLY RESULTS
The following article was written by Betty Bumpers and
Rosalynn Carter, co-founders of Every Child by Two, an organization promoting
early vaccination of children.
As mothers and co-founders of the vaccine advocacy
organization Every Child
By Two, we are deeply concerned about a dangerous Internet
and media campaign being waged to undermine the use of vaccines.
A growing number of American families are getting bad—sometimes
even fatal—medical advice from the Internet.
For Suzanne and Leonard Walther of Murfreesboro, Tenn., a
simple and well-intentioned Internet search on this important health issue on
July 19 turned into their worst nightmare.
The Walthers were looking for information on the safety of
vaccines for their new baby, Mary Catherine. What they found were sensational
sites dedicated to alarming parents.
These sites, short on science and long on inflammatory
rhetoric, claim vaccines are linked to just about anything affecting children—allergies,
autism, juvenile diabetes and attention deficit disorder. Claims are even made
that vaccines are the cause of shaken baby syndrome, the AIDS epidemic and
sudden infant death syndrome.
Even though many of the Web sites are listing
misinformation about vaccines without scientific basis, parents concerned about
their children are understandably susceptible to such claims.
The scare tactics worked with the Walthers, and they
decided not to immunize their daughter. It was a choice they lived to regret.
Days before Mary Catherine’s first birthday, she was
stricken with a form of meningitis that has been nearly eliminated in this
country and that could have been prevented by a simple vaccination.
Before the vaccine became available in the late 1980s, one
in every 20 infected children died from complications related to this disease,
and 15 percent to 20 percent of the survivors suffered permanent brain damage.
Mary Catherine was lucky. She survived, but her ordeal
certainly prompted her parents to question health information they find on the
Internet.
Tom and Patsy Morris of Columbus, Ga., had a similar
experience. In their case, it was a news story that drove their decision not to
complete their son’s series of the pertussis vaccination in the early 1990s.
A year later, Nickolas was close to death with whooping
cough. He, too, survived, but the ordeal weighs heavily on his parents, who
thought they were making an informed decision based on sound scientific
information.
These stories are cautionary tales of a dangerous trend:
junk science fueling the fears of well-meaning parents.
While the Internet has become an excellent resource for
health information, it also grants access to false, misleading and distorted
information that can confuse even the most well-educated consumer.
There are few areas where the impact of a health scare can
be as devastating as with vaccines. It’s easy to be afraid of everyday
childhood ailments that almost everyone has seen or heard about.
But it’s difficult to fear deadly diseases such as “wild”
type polio and smallpox that most new parents in our country, and many young
pediatricians, have never seen.
Americans take for granted that these diseases have been
eradicated, never to return. Ironically, the global public health and
philanthropic communities are spending enormous amounts of money and effort to
ensure that underdeveloped countries—where children and adults regularly die
from diseases we no longer fear—have access to the vaccines some are urging us to
shun.
All it takes is well-organized media and Internet scare
campaigns to convince some parents not to vaccinate their children.
Unfortunately, electing not to vaccinate your child can
have long-term consequences that go beyond just your child’s illness.
Unvaccinated children can collectively rejuvenate long-dormant diseases and
trigger lethal epidemics.
The recent measles outbreak in Ireland provides a vivid
example of this phenomenon. An isolated study conducted by a Scottish
researcher, Andrew Wakefield, and reported in 1998, claimed that the measles,
mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR) could be linked to autism.
The study has been refuted by further research and has
been criticized as being very limited because it used too few cases to make any
scientifically valid generalizations about the causes of autism. Only 12
children were included in the study.
In addition, there were inadequate groups of control
children, and the study did not identify the time period during which the cases
were identified.
An expert committee from the U.K. Medical Research Council
reviewed this study shortly after its release and concluded that there was no
evidence to link the MMR vaccine with autism.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration confirm that the vast body of scientific
evidence shows no link between autism and vaccines.
Unfortunately, as a result of the momentary loss of
confidence in the MMR vaccine, vaccination levels declined, and Dublin
experienced a sudden outbreak of measles in epidemic proportions. As of Sept.
30, Ireland had reported 1,523 cases of measles, including several deaths, as
compared to 148 cases for the whole of 1999.
In the United States, nearly everyone had measles before
immunization was available. Between 1953 and 1963, 3 million to 4 million
measles cases and an average of 450 measles-associated deaths were reported
each year. In 1999, there were only 86 cases of measles in the United States,
and none resulted in death.
Make no mistake: The consequences of ignoring safe and
effective immunizations are real and can be lethal. The effort to undermine
vaccines seeks to capitalize on a distorted perception of risk.
Vaccines on rare occasions do cause side effects. But in
the final analysis, vaccines represent infinitely far less risk than the
diseases they prevent. As Suzanne Walther said, “I don’t want my child to be
the one in 3 million” who has a bad reaction to a vaccine. “But I also don’t
want mine to be the one in 10 that dies if they get the disease. I’d rather
take my chances with the one in 3 million than the one in 10.”
Her words are sound advice for all parents. Please make
sure your children follow the vaccination schedule prescribed by public-health
officials. They will live far healthier lives because of it.
Rosalynn Carter, former first lady, and Betty Bumpers,
former first lady of
Arkansas, are co-founders of Every Child By Two (ECBT), an
organization
promoting early vaccination of children, headquartered at
666 11th Street
N.W., Suite 202, Washington, DC, 20001. Visit ECBT’s
website at:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
offers resources to
help people evaluate the scientific accuracy of an
immunization website’s
content. Go to: http://www.cdc.gov/od/nvpo/people.htm and
click on “Ten Tips on Evaluating Information on Immunization.”
The Immunization Action Coalition (IAC) has published this
story for the
purpose of making it available for our readers’ review. We
have not verified
the story’s content, for which the author is solely
responsible. The views
reflected in this story are the writer’s and do not
necessarily reflect the
position of IAC.
To read “Unprotected People” stories that were previously
published in IAC
EXPRESS, visit: http://www.immunize.org/stories/
IAC is collecting stories of people who have suffered or
died from
vaccine-preventable diseases. Please let us know if you
have personal
stories, or if you know of stories that have appeared in
the media, that
describe the suffering that occurred because someone wasn’t
immunized. In
addition, we are also collecting case reports to help us
illustrate the morbidity and mortality caused by vaccine-preventable diseases.
If you have stories or case reports that can help save
lives, e-mail them
to: iacx@immunize.org
or fax them to (651) 647-9131.
Immunization Action Coalition1573 Selby AvenueSt. Paul MN
55104
E-mail: admin@immunize.org
Web: http://www.immunize.org/
Tel: (651) 647-9009Fax: (651) 647-9131
This page was updated on January 3, 2001