The hepatitis A vaccine is also sometimes recommended for adults. Travelers to certain countries and people at risk of contracting hepatitis A — such as men who have sex with men, people who use drugs, and people with chronic liver disease — should consider being vaccinated for hepatitis A.
Meningococcal disease is a serious bacterial illness that can cause meningitis inflammation of the protective layer surrounding the brain and spinal cord and bloodstream infection , or sepsis. Children can get meningococcal disease by living in close quarters with others, sharing utensils, kissing, or inhaling the secondhand smoke of an infected person. The CDC recommends that children ages 11—12 years through 16 years get two doses of the meningococcal vaccine Menactra.
In addition, college freshmen living in dormitories should also get the meningococcal vaccine. Some colleges require their students to be vaccinated before moving on campus.
For all vaccines, the risk of severe allergic reaction is small, but serious. You should go to the emergency room or call if you experience any of the following effects within a few hours of receiving any vaccine:. According to the CDC , almost 80 million people about 1 in 4 are infected in the United States, with about 14 million people becoming infected each year. The HPV vaccine is now generally recommended for both girls and boys at ages 11 and Studies suggest that the HPV vaccine is relatively safe.
Side effects are usually mild and can include:. Tdap boosters are combination booster shots that protect adults and children against three diseases that used to be very common in the United States before this vaccine was developed. Since Tdap boosters have been administered, the CDC reports that cases of tetanus and diphtheria have decreased by 99 percent and cases of pertussis have dropped by around 80 percent.
Most states have some type of Tdap vaccination requirement for children, teens, and young adults. The single-dose Boostrix was approved for use in children as young as 10 and up. Adacel is given as a single dose to people at ages 10 through 64 years. Healthcare professionals and anyone having close contact with newborn babies should receive a Tdap vaccination.
This includes pregnant women, who should get the vaccine during every pregnancy to protect their newborn from pertussis. The vaccines listed above have made a big difference in the prevention of disease. For more information about these vaccines, check out the following articles, and visit the CDC website here. Vaccines help protect children against many dangerous diseases. Find out what vaccines are recommended and when they should be given. The MMR vaccine helps prevent the measles, mumps, and rubella German measles.
Parents need to have a clear understanding of what the risk is. The problem is, if more and more parents make that kind of decision, we will reach the tipping point where our herd immunity is no longer adequate, and diseases will come back into our country. And if we have big gaps in our herd immunity, somebody could bring polio into our country, and then any unvaccinated children in the area could come down with a very serious illness.
Approximately 20 states in the United States allow personal exemptions from vaccines. To put it simply, vaccines are not mandatory in 20 states. In the other 30 states, you have to have a religious reason to opt out of vaccines. So while [vaccination is] a little bit more mandatory in those states, you could still view that as somewhat optional if you can claim a religious exemption.
I believe that vaccines are a health care decision that parents should have the power to make for their own children. The main reason I feel that vaccines should be optional for parents is that every vaccine has the potential to cause a fatal reaction. And no government should be able to force parents into putting their child through something that puts that child at risk of dying. And one of the very common reasons I hear is very interesting. Many parents view vaccinating as an active risk.
And the risk of choosing not to vaccinate is what I call a passive risk, that parents are taking a risk by not doing something. One reason people are vaccine-hesitant is that we see autism but we no longer see diphtheria, etc.
And then we could see what used to be very rare illnesses become more common. We might see measles escalate. We might see diphtheria come back into the United States. God forbid, we might see polio come back. Then children are going to start dying. And then a lot of those parents that had chosen not to vaccinate might change their mind, and they might start vaccinating again, and then new parents might be more inclined to vaccinate their babies if we see these diseases come back.
The good of the group outweighs the good of the one. Many people would look at the decision to not vaccinate, the decision that the few are making, as a selfish decision. You could look at it that they are being selfish. As parents, most of us are going to make selfish decisions when it comes to our children. Talk about tracking and finding out the adverse effects of vaccines. One of the biggest criticisms of the vaccine system that I hear from parents is the worry about side effects and how common or rare these side effects are, and how these side effects are tracked.
That would be really tough to do. That would just take so much money and be such a huge, monumental effort that no one in the health care industry has ever undertaken that.
Instead, what we have is a passive surveillance system. Whenever there is a bad reaction that a doctor or a parent feels might be from the vaccine, the doctor or the parent reports it to the CDC. Then those reports are tabulated, and if too many reports of something bad shows up for a certain vaccine, then they write that down as a possible side effect, and they add it as a warning in the prescribing information so that parents can realize what the risk is.
Many vaccine reactions go unreported, and many vaccine reactions that are reported might not be a vaccine reaction at all. It goes both ways. If we could develop a system that tracks every vaccine and every child, at least for a number of years so we could collect some very good data that tells us how commonly these severe reactions occur, then parents would be more informed; they would feel more confidence in the system.
When I was writing my book, I tried to discover and tried to figure out for parents, what is the likelihood your baby might have a very severe reaction? What do you make of social media when it comes to information on vaccines? How do you try to put your patients back on track? You search a lot of different Web sites, you get a lot of different opinions and a lot of conspiracy theories.
I think parents need to turn to a trusted source. People decide which science to believe in. Is there good science and bad science? Doctors will publish that kind of research in a more obscure journal, a more alternatively minded journal or one that is not peer-reviewed by university types of medical researchers. As a doctor, I like to look at all kinds of different studies, and I will look at some research that is not peer-reviewed or that is not published in a mainstream journal.
I think we need to have a meeting of the minds, to have more acceptance of some of these alternative viewpoints that people are researching, so that we can really get to the bottom of a lot of these controversies. Safety testing. Vaccines are generally tested in about 30, babies, and they monitor these babies for about a month to look for any severe reactions. If everything pans out OK, then they determine that the vaccine is safe to use. There are a couple of drawbacks with that system.
Now, it is a very thorough system; they do a lot of safety research here. I would like to see us do more long-term safety research studies on these large groups of children, so then we can determine that they are safe in the long term.
Is that OK? However, my schedule does follow within the guidelines, the parameters that you are allowed to give vaccines. The only place that my vaccine schedule differs in that regard is simply not giving so many together. I spread them out. They do say you can spread the vaccines out if you choose to. It does fall within the established parameters of how we should use vaccines. If a herd of children is following your schedule, does that pose a threat to the unvaccinated child who has a compromised immune system?
These children are very susceptible to getting sick and dying from diseases, and if there are a lot of unvaccinated children in the area, those unvaccinated kids could put the compromised kids at risk. The CDC says the amount of aluminum in vaccines is safe. You question that. List the vaccines that contain aluminum. Do you question the safety? I looked at what safety research has been done to determine that that chemical is safe to use in children.
One of the chemicals I came across that ended up alarming me a little bit is aluminum. We use aluminum foil. They limit it to about 50 mcg [micrograms] per day, and they say any more than 50 mcg may not be safe for humans. So I decided to look at how much aluminum is in each vaccine. And what I found in each vaccine is that some vaccines contain as much as mcg of aluminum.
Some vaccines contain a couple hundred micrograms of aluminum. And if you add up all the vaccines together that all contain aluminum, that you give all at the same time to a 2-month-old baby and a 4-month-old baby and a 6-month-old baby, all the aluminum given altogether adds up to about 1, mcg for each one of those days.
And those studies are showing that the amount in vaccines are safe. I concluded that there might be a problem with aluminum. We should spread it out as best we can. Do vaccines cause autism? Is it OK to skip certain vaccines? Get the facts on these and other common questions. Childhood vaccines protect children from a variety of serious or potentially fatal diseases, including diphtheria, measles, mumps, rubella, polio, tetanus, whooping cough pertussis and others.
If these diseases seem uncommon — or even unheard of — it's usually because these vaccines are doing their job. Still, you might wonder about the benefits and risks of childhood vaccines. Here are straight answers to common questions about childhood vaccines.
A natural infection might provide better immunity than vaccination — but there are serious risks. For example, a natural chickenpox varicella infection could lead to pneumonia. A natural polio infection could cause permanent paralysis. A natural mumps infection could lead to deafness. A natural Haemophilus influenzae type b Hib infection could result in permanent brain damage or even death. Vaccination can help prevent these diseases and their potentially serious complications.
Vaccines do not cause autism. Despite much controversy on the topic, researchers haven't found a connection between autism and childhood vaccines. In fact, the original study that ignited the debate years ago has been retracted. Any vaccine can cause side effects. Usually, these side effects are minor — a low-grade fever, fussiness and soreness at the injection site.
Some vaccines cause a temporary headache, fatigue or loss of appetite. Rarely, a child might experience a severe allergic reaction or a neurological side effect, such as a seizure. Although these rare side effects are a concern, the risk of a vaccine causing serious harm or death is extremely small. The benefits of getting a vaccine are much greater than the possible side effects for almost all children. Of course, vaccines aren't given to children who have known allergies to specific vaccine components.
Likewise, if your child develops a life-threatening reaction to a particular vaccine, further doses of that vaccine won't be given. The diseases that childhood vaccines are meant to prevent are most likely to occur when a child is very young and the risk of complications is greatest.
That makes early vaccination — sometimes beginning shortly after birth — essential. If you postpone vaccines until a child is older, it might be too late. In general, skipping vaccines isn't a good idea.
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