How Safe are Vaccines?

A recent Time article by Alice Park caught my attention. It talks about how more American parents are choosing not to vaccinate their children. It also talked about how the group who published a study on Autism linked to vaccinations retracted their initial statements citing that their information and findings were just not conclusive enough.

If you'd like some interesting reading, here's the article.

What saddened me the most though, was a statistic that, "the number of polio cases in Nigeria in 2006, was 888, after religious leaders convinced parents they should not allow their children to be vaccinated. The country reported fewer than 30 cases in 2000."

I know there are certain children who are predisposed to genetic conditions that are affected by vaccines. But what parents are actually paying for and doing those tests to double check?

A parent in the article talked about why she wasn't doing vaccines for her children, "My husband and I believe that we are born with an immune system, and we need to trust that."

First of all, these people (those who choose not to vaccinate) need to watch Outbreak or I am Legend (well, actually, I only saw part of the movie because I was too scared and kept leaving the room... but I did see the part where the rats were all crazy)... love you Will. Second, do the testing/screening and stop complaining that you are being put in a hard spot because the public schools won't let you in. Third, think about really what would happen and the pain your child would suffer if they contracted Polio, Hep B, Measles... if they actually survived?

And that is my momentary soapbox. I think it really stemmed from the other day when I saw a 1 year old sitting on his mother's lap in the car at a busy intersection. Needless to say, my vigilante self wrote down the license plate and called the police. However, I wish I would have followed them to give their names to child services.

Also yeah for my niecey who just bravely endured her first rounds of shots at 2 months!