We have three children. Aside from the occasional sniffle (and one moderately scary thing we had to take care of), all three are as healthy as horses. My grandfather used that simile often, so I am taking it on faith that horses are some of the healthiest creatures around.
Ok, back to the kids. There are several reasons why we believe they are healthy:
- We insist their primary diet be predominantly from the ground (fruits, veggies, nuts, whole grains – organic when feasible or dictated by the dirty dozen list) or from something that had a mother (typically chicken, turkey or fish, occasionally pork, once in a while beef). They also have their Isagenix organic whey protein shake in the morning with a little shot of the Isagenix cleanse drink (organic aloe vera-based). That’s for the additional nutrition and minerals that they’re missing with the other “regular” food.
- They take a dose of liquid colostrum every morning (Isagenix Isamune) – three spritzes in the mouth. If they feel like they’re beginning to come down with a sniffle, we add a nightly dose as well until they’re back to normal. Usually takes less than a couple days.
- They’re up-to-date on all their vaccines.
Huh? Wait a minute! I thought you were going to go all Jenny McCarthy on us and rail against vaccines!
Hold your horses (the healthy ones, remember?). I’ve read Jenny’s book. She presents a large body of evidence, and her stories are compelling. More on that in a minute.
This article is about risk. Humans are not very good at assessing most risks. We just aren’t. Too many emotional things come into play when we try to decide how risky a particular behavior is. Bruce Schneier, love him or hate him, is an industry expert on security. He’s written about how humans process risk here, here, here, here and here. And that’s just a representative sample from the past 6 months.
So…back to vaccinations. What does risk have to do with vaccinations? Everything.
Ok, class, quick quiz. What was the leading cause of death in the United States in 1900? Pneumonia and Influenza. What was 10th on the list in 1900? Diptheria. (Here’s the reference from the CDC. Last page of the PDF, and work your way up for more recent years)
Fast forward to 1950 (page 50 of the same PDF, for you slackers). Pneumonia and Influenza have dropped to number 6. Diptheria is no longer on the list. However we have a new cause at number 5: Diseases of Early Infancy. But…why wasn’t that on the 1900 list? Wasn’t infant mortality higher in 1900 than 1950? Yes it was. Ask any genealogy expert, and they’ll tell you. But in 1900, the vast majority of births happened in the home and mortality data was not formally kept. In 1950, the vast majority of births happened in hospitals where there was much more rigor in record keeping.
Hey, what about smallpox? Hasn’t it killed millions of people in the US? Why isn’t it on the list? Yes it has, but it was largely eradicated in the US in the late 1890’s. And 1900 is as far back as the CDC’s data goes. Stop interrupting.
Back to the CDC data. Fast forward to 1990 (p. 10, Spiccoli). Pneumonia and the flu are steady at #6. Infant mortality is hanging out (renamed) at number 15. Why haven’t they dropped further? That’s a great question. Maybe we should look at more than just the ranking of the top 10 or 15. Let’s look at the rate at which these deaths occurred.
In the PDF, take a look at the far right column of numbers. That’s the death rate per 100,000 people of population in the US at the time the data was taken. So that’ll be our comparison point. Let’s look at Pneumonia and Flu:
- 1900: 202.2
- 1950: 31.3
- 1990: 32.0
So in 1900 there were 6 times as many people dying per capita from pneumonia and influenza than in “modern” times. Just as another comparison point so that you have some context, what was the rate in 1918? That was the year of the massive Spanish Flu pandemic.
- 1918: 588.5 (and back on the top of the list for the next three years)
Another quick quiz. When was flu vaccine first widely available in the US? In the 1940’s. Here’s a decent Time magazine article on some history.
Sure, death rate from the flu has gotten a lot lower, but why hasn’t the flu been completely eradicated? Another great question for which there isn’t an easy answer. Read what Dr. Michael T. Osterholm said about the next flu pandemic in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2005.
Back to the risk conversation. What do you think it was like to have a loved one die of the flu in 1900? It was just as bad as it is today, only it was 6 times more likely to happen then than it is now. In 1918, it was a staggering 18 times more likely. How about death by diphtheria? Or smallpox? Or maybe even worse than death, how about severe physical or mental disability brought on by rubella or polio or hib meningitis?
Smallpox and polio have been completely eradicated in the United States of America due entirely to vaccinations. Most of us are too young to remember when those two illnesses were prevalent in our country. Remember what Schneier said about how immediacy impacts our ability to assess risk? Most of us don’t consider polio a risk because most of us haven’t experienced it in our lifetimes. It doesn’t make it any less of a real risk. Just because they’ve been eradicated in this country doesn’t mean they’ve been removed from the earth altogether.
So, what are the childhood vaccination recommendation standards in this country? MMR for measles, mumps and rubella. DPT for diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus. Add to that the polio vaccine. Most states and municipalities are also recommending flu and swine flu shots especially for certain particularly vulnerable demographics (folks with COPD, the elderly, children, etc.). Should you have your children vaccinated?
Let’s take a look at a different facet of the story. What about the negative consequences of vaccinations? Back to risk again. What is the risk of developing a significant (or even fatal) condition directly because of the vaccination? Is the “cure” worse than the “disease”? (Yes, I know, vaccinations aren’t cures – you know what I mean). Is the risk of vaccination larger/worse than the risk of not vaccinating?
Back to Jenny McCarthy for a moment. She really is a lovely person (in all meanings of the word), and she’s as staunch an advocate for her family as you’ll ever find. It’s not the vaccine, per se, that she’s against. It’s the ancillary toxins that come along with the vaccine that she’s adamant to eradicate. Thimerosal, a mercury-based chemical, is an antiseptic and anti-fungal preservative used in certain vaccines. It just so happens that, in addition to fighting fungus and bacteria, mercury is also toxic to humans…even in trace doses. Jenny and her folks have built a body of evidence supporting the assertion that toxins (like Thimerosal) in vaccines can cause autism (and other bad stuff). Other scientists and drug companies have tried to build bodies of evidence to support the opposite.
How about for us? For our family, it’s a case-by-case determination. We’ve chosen to vaccinate our kids on all the standard childhood stuff, and we’ve chosen to have our kids be vaccinated with Thimerosal-free vaccines (even if it means getting multiple shots instead of just one – mean parents, I know).
And we’ve also chosen not to give our kids flu shots. Here’s why, in case you’re interested. You know we’ve done tons of research on the effects of colostrum. Get Andrew Keech’s book. It explains how and why colostrum works. The data tells us that colostrum is equally or more effective than flu vaccines in preventing occurrence and diminishing effects of the flu. And since we know there are no toxins in Isamune, we determined it was the better choice. So far, it’s going well. The first 4 weeks of school this year, a lot of kids were out sick. Our kids got on the verge (mildly) a couple brief moments, but they luckily have not been affected by illness at all this school year.
Let me emphasize that this was a well-researched family decision that we determined was right for us. You need to do your own research and make your own decision for yourselves and your families.
And I’m saving the most incendiary for last. If you really want to dig into the debate, go read Amy Wallace’s article in this month’s Wired magazine in which she interviews Dr. Paul Offit and lays bare some of the awful impacts of ”pseudo-science”.
What is your answer to the question?
UPDATE 10/23/2009:
Here’s a synchronicity for you. Last night on the news, it was reported that the NYC Department of Health has confirmed an outbreak of the mumps in Brooklyn. 57 cases have been confirmed. The most detailed story is from the NY Daily News. It seems a boy went to the UK (where vaccination levels are much lower, apparently) and contracted the disease. He came back and went to summer camp, where he infected a bunch of kids, many of which had received the MMR vaccine (some had not). This topic is only going to get hotter as the stakes get higher.
Update 2/2/2010:
The Lancet, which is the UK’s premier medical journal, just announced that it’s retracting its 1998 paper linking vaccine to autism. This retraction is based on an ethics judgement last week by Britain’s General Medical Council against Andrew Wakefield, the lead researcher in the study. Here’s a link to an article about it on Yahoo.