The Pros and Cons of Infant Vaccines

What's Best for Your Baby?

By Dr. Edward R. Rosick

The last 100 years have seen major changes in the way medical care is delivered to newborns and infants. With the advent of antibiotics, sterile surgical procedures and space-age technology, infant mortality has plummeted. Diseases such as smallpox, polio and measles used to be the cause of thousands of infant and toddler deaths a year. But now, these deadly illnesses are just distant memories, their demise brought about by the widespread use of vaccines.

Yet as we enter the 21st century, some parents are questioning whether or not vaccines themselves are harmful to their children, leading to a very active, and even at times, acrimonious, debate.

It has been more than 200 years since a British physician, Edward Jenner, introduced vaccines to Western medicine. Ever since Jenner's work, his proponents have touted vaccines as a way to rid diseases in an essentially risk-free manner.

They point to the demise of most childhood illnesses as proof of the power of vaccines. It is a rare case indeed to hear of an infant or child coming down with illness such as measles, mumps or diphtheria. Most doctors graduating from a pediatric residency nowadays have only seen these illnesses in textbooks. With the advent of new vaccines against such diseases as chickenpox, parents can expect that their infants will face even fewer of the once common, and sometimes deadly, childhood illnesses than they themselves did.

Vaccine skeptics counter that the decreases seen in pediatric communicable diseases came about just as much, if not more, because of such mundane things as public sanitation, purified drinking water and better nutrition.

These people who question the carte blanche approval of all vaccines were given nationwide coverage to voice their concerns during U.S. Congressional hearings of 1999 and 2000. In April 2000, Congressman Dan Burton, chairman of the Government Reform Committee, held hearings on the possible link between certain vaccines, such as the combined MMR (measles, mumps, rubella), and autism.

Congressman Burton's daughter, Danielle Burton Sarkine, has an infant daughter who almost died after a possible reaction to the hepatitis B vaccine and a young son who turned autistic after a multiple series of vaccinations. While there were a number of anti-vaccine proponents at these hearings, Burton stated that his hearing was not questioning the good that vaccines have done, but was simply calling for more research into a better understanding of why a certain portion of children who receive vaccines seem to have serious side effects, such as autism.

One person whose voice was heard loud and clear at these hearings was Barbara Loe Fisher. Fisher is the co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), a non-profit group formed in 1982. According to their Web site, the NVIC is "dedicated to preventing vaccine injuries and deaths through public education and defending the human right to informed consent to vaccination."

The NVIC and Fisher take great pains to point out that they are not against giving infants and children vaccinations to protect them from possible deadly diseases. Rather, as Fisher stated in a 1999 Congressional hearing on the hepatitis B vaccine, "I think what's important, at the end of the day, is to acknowledge that we are all here because we love our children and we want to protect them from harm ... we need to find ways to protect them from vaccine injury and death while we create public health policies designed to protect them from the ravages of disease."

Want to see more?

• A Double Shot: Combined Vaccines - The Latest in Immunization
• Immunization on the Record: Preventative Measures to Keep Your Children Healthy
• Schedule of Childhood Vaccinations
• Talk about it!