Vaccinations—Rejection of Injection

A team at the Royal Free Hospital in London is concerned that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine may overload the immune systems of some infants. They recently published a study of 12 children with inflammatory bowel syndrome and behavioral disorders allegedly caused by the triple-dose MMR vaccine. Nine of the children have been diagnosed as autistic. It is thought that bowel inflammation could have triggered the extreme social withdrawal of autism found in some of the children.

There is no question that vaccinations cause adverse reactions. Since 1979, oral polio vaccinations have given about 200 people the crippling disease. In 1986, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which has handed out payments to over 2,600 people whose children died, or were seriously injured, by vaccines.

Proponents of vaccines agree that there are risks, but what, they ask, are the alternatives? Before the advent of the polio vaccine, thousands of people each year were afflicted with the disease. When the polio vaccine first came out, polio was such a terrifying threat that a small number of bad reactions to the vaccine did not seem significant.

Health officials are now concerned that many people are not having their children vaccinated, which could lead to major disease outbreaks. In Japan, two children died after receiving DPT shots in 1974, and, as a result, the percentage of school children receiving the pertussis vaccine for whooping cough, fell from 80% to 10%. Although the disease had nearly disappeared from the country, it returned in 1979 causing 13,000 infections and 41 deaths. There have been similar outbreaks in several countries due to declining vaccination coverage.

Even though vaccinations prevent suffering and save lives, there remains the question of possible long-term negative health consequences. Are our immune systems being subtly weakened by this universal medical procedure? Could vaccinations somehow be at the root of the many chronic diseases suffered by millions of people today?

In safety trials for vaccines, children are checked for a matter of weeks to identify any acute reactions. Once the vaccine is in use, however, doctors in the field are the only ones who could report adverse reactions. But how can they possibly know whether a vaccination given a year, a decade, or half a century earlier was the root cause of an illness? Even some proponents of vaccines concede that the long-term effects of vaccines have not been properly investigated.   Based on information in: The New Republic, 3-23-98