Child Vaccinations - The Doctors Debate

in 2008 already over 130 cases of measles the biggest outbreak since 1996 and the CDC is blaming these pockets of children where there are communities where parents are choosing not to vaccinate their kids and this is a real concern for us right this is probably one of the biggest uh vaccine questions because the the measles vaccines well actually the MMR which is part of the measles that's probably one of the biggest controversial vaccines maybe 10 years ago this thing with autism came up but that's really seems to have settled down a lot you know most of the evidence linking measles with autism is kind of settled down and most of the doctors and scientists agree that it probably isn't the major cause but I still have a lot of parents coming into my office saying I want to get vaccines but I don't want to get that one and I say okay well let's talk about it let's what are the risks of measles most people don't know one out of every thousand kids get that get measles will die it's it can be a fatal illness it is very very contagious tell tell us what the measles are because most people have never seen it many times it's just it's a mild illness you get this ter ter rash and fever and terrible cold symptoms and child is miserable cough but in some kids it can be much much more severe than that and fatal that's a great point we do have a guest Barbara L Fisher is here from the national vaccine information center I want you to give us your opinion is this measles outbreak something that you look at and think well whoa we need to be careful here about the message we're sending to moms because if they don't vaccinate we could have a measles outbreak and it could become an epidemic where like years ago 4 million people are getting the measles well I mean I have to come from the perspective of a parent who has a vaccine injured child I mean in 1980 I took my bright healthy precocious little two and a halfy old boy in for a fourth DPT shot and within hours of that shot I witnessed him suffer a convulsion a collapse shock a state of unconsciousness and he was eventually diagnosed with minimal brain damage including multiple learning abilities and attention deficit disorder with with regard to measles 131 cases of measles out of 300 million people is not an epidemic we have a 98% vaccination not an epidemic because kids are being vaccinated we have more than tripled the numbers of doses of vaccines we're giving our children in the last quarter Century at the same time we have seen children become disabled and chronically ill one in six child in America is now learning disabled one in nine has asthma one in 100 to 150 develops autism one in 450 has diabetes that's the big question why are so many highly vaccinated children so sick and let's quickly explain how a vaccine works the vaccine basically it's an injection with maybe a killed virus in there or a killed bacteria so that that killed or part of the bacteria basically fools the immune system into thinking the child just got the illness so that the immunes memory immune systems memory can then be ready for the next time the child gets exposed to the real illness and can fight it off and so that's why we as doctors love vaccinations because they prevent huge outbreaks of illnesses that that can kill children but explained to us why you feel so passionately okay the first sentence I have to say is I I'm not out to ban vaccines I don't I believe in the concept of eradicating infectious diseases sure right now the one siiz fits-all for everybody not working a vaccination is a medical procedure that should have questions prior to getting a vaccination such as is your child currently ill is your child currently taking antibiotics does your family have a history of autoimmune disease is your child allergic to eggs MMR cultured in an egg medium none of these questions are ever asked a 5 pound preey gets the same vaccination as a 10 pound full termer they need to be individualized and explain why you feel this way and why you decided not to vaccinate your youngest children so I have three I have three children my oldest I is kind of the sacrificial lamb he was vaccinated and had a huge amount of thimerosol huge amount of mercury um and after he had the MMR and the chickenpox vaccination on the same day we never saw him again for three years never saw him again meaning he developed autism he lost language he lost social skills he lost bowel control he became very sick within hours of vaccination so I you know I held his hand over over the proverbial fire he got burned don't ask me to line up my other two children to get burned again what kind of parent would I be and that's really the discussion we want to focus on here is the requirement that you have to vaccinate your children in in certain States Jim correct me if I'm wrong but for the most part vaccinations are required right you know some of the other states will have religious exemptions not just personal exemptions but yeah you're some states you're stuck you can't go to public schools you may have to a lot of parents have to homeschool and and that in itself creates a pocket what if I have a familial history to a negative response to vaccination I'm literally supposed to vaccinate or educate like I have to choose education or vaccination should I be mandated by the government I will say no you shouldn't because I do have a few families in my practice that have a some sort of familial tendency towards reactions to certain vaccines the live vaccines and they're on they're in studies in at places like UCLA but that's that's not all families just just just a few families that's why I'm against mandatory vaccines I think somebody should be have the right to say no here's the thing there there's a lot of studies out there some of them show zero let's just talk about autism first um some of them show no link and some of them a possible link me as a physician I stayed with an open mind when this the autism vaccine debate first came online and I I had a lot of parents scared and and asking me questions and I I kind of went along with it and but over the years over the last several years the data has shown okay it probably isn't just the vaccines what is it we still don't know I believe there other environmental many kids get get these illnesses without getting vaccinated but what a great study if offit and gerting and a bunch of other people would go let's study the vaccinated versus the non-vaccinated no one is doing that study that study needs to be done I I do agree with you in terms of that one size does not fit all one size fits all doesn't work in medicine in general exactly so why are we doing that with vaccines everyone wants doctors to have all the answers but you can't have all the answers when there's an emerging new problem and and this new illness that's on the rise something like autism where there's absolutely no evidence that it's from vaccines I would love to protect my child from infectious diseases I would love to walk into your office and feel completely confident yes I'd like this shot this shot this shot and my child's going to be fine the fact is I walked in he got shots and he didn't speak to me for three years Dr Alman I'm curious of your thoughts because I have to tell you I tend to agree with Dr Sears that hey if you're a mom and you're educated and you don't want your kids to be vaccinated you should have that choice if you're making an informed decision in my opinion the problem is is that these diseases are still out there and when we have pockets of kids that aren't immunized or infants that are too young to be immunized or imuno compromised children that can't be immunized these diseases spread very quickly and we see a lot of children dying two things that I do want to point out because I do find that moms when they come to my office they don't understand this is that vaccines are always changing and being improved thanks to vaccine technology the vaccines we give today are very different from the vaccines that we gave 30 years ago and you explained how vaccines work there's those little immunologic particles in them or immunogenic particles and all the vaccines together today have less of those than one vaccine did 30 years ago so that's something that parents don't understand you forgive me if I don't trust the pharmaceutical industry I'm sorry their bottom line is the dollar my bottom line is my child I don't trust the pharmaceutical IND let me say this I will guarantee you Dr Alman and Dr Sear's bottom line is saving child's lives I will guarantee fall all over yourselves to make vaccine safer and I will be the first one at your door to sign my kid up for inoculation I totally agree with you I think vaccines have gotten safer like you said you know even the vaccine that harmed your child that's that's been improved Barbara like any other drug they carry a risk that's greater for some than others informed consent has been the central ethical principle in the practice of modern medicine vaccine should be not separated out from the informed consent ethic and I think it's a human right to be able to decide what you are willing to risk your life for or your child's life for I think it's so important I I sit down with parents if they're being vaccinated or not parents want to know they want to be informed and and I they want to know what are my risks for catching an illness what are my risks for having being harmed by a vaccine and between 1991 and and 01 out of 1.9 billion doses of vaccines given there was 18,000 adverse you know bad bad outcomes one in 55 00 doses of vaccines will cause a problem that sounds pretty bad but now what are the kids risks at catching one of these illnesses 85,000 kids a year will catch some sort of vaccine preventable illness out of 50 million kids that comes to about 1 in600 kids a year will catch some sort of vaccine preventable illness and that's each year so but doctor we still need to go back to this question this big question as we have suppressed so many infectious diseases in childhood we have seen this corresponding rise in chronic disease and disability and I think it's a fair question for parents to ask and scientists and doctors at in the federal health agencies have got to answer this for us have we traded something let me say one last thing the life expectancy in this country is longer than it's ever been and it's because of things like vaccinations now you have your fears and I understand that but the reason you do is because you have had a terrible tragedy in your life but there are a lot of people still alive today because of vaccinations and we we need to recognize that and whatever side you take we can all agree we are after the same goal we want to keep our kids healthy the bottom line is talk to your doctors make an informed decision the overwhelming majority of Pediatricians in this country strongly support vaccinations

Channel: The Doctors

Views: 767,907

Keywords: Emergency, The Doctors (TV Show), General Practitioner, OB/GYN, Children, Physical Health, Dr. Ordon, Plastic Surgery, Travis Stork, Dr. Travis, Health, Advice, Jim Sears, NVIC, Kids, Mental Health, ER, Andrew Ordon, Remedies, DPT, thedoctors, Tips, Healthy, Masterson, Lisa Masterson, Medicine, Ordon, Medical Advice, Measles, Dr. Sears, Doctor, Pediatrics, Fitness, Vaccination, Doctors, Practice, Pediatrician, Stork, Dr. Masterson, Sears

Id: eMrFV2rnHlo

Length: 10min 19sec (619 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 03 2008