Letter from Hilary Butler in response to "Debate on childhood vaccination"

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Letter from Hilary Butler in response to "Debate on childhood vaccination" (see below)

Dear Sir,

 
In response to Anna G Rubin, Who states: "Why put your children and the rest of us at risk?" perhaps she should re-consider her current unthinking dogmatic position.
 
As the wife of a man, who had had five injectable Salk vaccines, and three oral Sabins - and who then went on to get sub-clinical bulbar polio, which left him in excrutiating agony for nearly a year, she should recognise, that there is a different side to the story which she has not experienced.
 
As a mother, who had wonderful rubella titres 6 months prior to my first pregnancy, and who subsequently contracted clinical rubella at 8 weeks pregnancy, I have first hand experience and proof, that so-called vaccine-induced immunity does not always work.
 
If vaccines protect "the rest" ...meaning..., those who have had the vaccines, then why should unvaccinated children be a risk to the vaccinated?  After all, wasn't that what vaccines were made to do?  To protect those who chose to have them, from the "worst" that diseases can throw at them? The fact is, that this issue is not a simple as she would make it out to be.
 
Perhaps she should consider a quote from Drs Petr Skrabanek and James McCormick's book "The Follies and Fallacies in Medicine."  on page 41.
 
"Since life itself is a universally fatal sexualy transmitted disease, living it to the full demands a balance between reasonable and unreasonable risk.  Since balance is a matter of judgement, dogmatism has little place."
 
Sincerely,
 
Hilary Butler,
New Zealand.
 
Debate on childhood vaccination

 

9/19/2002

AS THE MOTHER of two young children and a professional who works with polio survivors, I was interested to read your article about West Coast mothers choosing not to vaccinate their children against pertussis, or whooping cough (''Parents weigh decision to vaccinate,'' Page A3, Sept. 9).

 

This issue is alive in our area as well. Some of the women in my mothers group have debated giving their children vaccines against common childhood ailments, fearing the side effects. I, for one, see in my daily work the devastating lifelong repercussions of polio and cannot fathom putting my child at risk for polio, whooping cough, or even chicken pox.

I feel fortunate to live in a country where we have access to vaccines against these potentially life-threatening diseases. Why put your children and the rest of us at risk?

ANNA G. RUBIN

Framingham

The writer is education and outreach coordinator of the International Rehabilitation Center for Polio.

This story ran on page A16 of the Boston Globe on 9/19/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.



 

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