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Unprotected People
Stories: General |
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Some Parents Fall for Vaccination Scare Stories, with Deadly Results |
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| Click here for a fully-formatted PDF version
of this story |
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| 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. (Editor's note: In 2018, Every Child By Two changed its name to
Vaccinate Your Family.) |
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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 of the U.S. 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 in Washington,
DC. In 2018, ECBT's name was changed to Vaccinate Your
Family (VYF). Visit VYF's website at
www.vaccinateyourfamily.org.
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| 1/3/01 •
STORY #38 |
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| Disclaimer: The Immunization Action Coalition (IAC) publishes
Unprotected People Stories for the purpose of making them available
for our readers' review. We have not verified the content of this
story. |
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| This page was updated on
January 3, 2001. |
| This page was reviewed on
January 3, 2001. |
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ACIP Recommendations
Vaccine Information Statements 
