By Glenn Ellis
Vaccination has long been a familiar, highly effective form of medicine and a triumph of public health. Because vaccination is both an individual medical intervention and a central component of public health efforts, it raises a distinct set of legal and ethical issues – from debates over their risks and benefits to the use of government vaccination requirements – and makes vaccine policymaking uniquely challenging. In the United States, state policies mandate certain immunizations, including school entry requirements, which cover significant numbers of children.
The first school vaccination requirements were enacted in the 1850s to prevent smallpox. Federal and state efforts to eradicate measles in the 1960s and 1970s motivated many modern mandates policies. By the 1990s, all 50 states required students to receive certain immunizations, and most states required coverage for older schoolchildren and those in daycare centers and Head Start programs.
All 50 states allow vaccination exemptions for medical contraindications; to address individuals’ beliefs and their varied concerns about vaccination, 48 states allow religious exemptions; and 20 states allow exemptions for philosophical reasons. Many scientific and medical research studies have found that individuals who exercise religious and/or philosophical exemptions are at a greater risk of contracting infections, which put themselves and their communities at risk. Thus, medical and public health advocates often struggle to balance the ethics of protecting individual beliefs and the community’s health.
Never mind that study after study has failed to uncover evidence of such a link; these parents are weighing the risks and benefits (at least as they understand them) of vaccinating or opting out and trying to make the best decision they can for their children.
The problem is that the other children with which their children are sharing a world get ignored in the calculation.
Before we go any further, let’s acknowledge that people who choose to vaccinate and those who do not probably have very different understandings of the risks and benefits, and especially of their magnitudes and likelihoods.
So, let’s say all the folks in my community are vaccinated against measles except me. Within this community (assuming I’m not wandering off to exotic and unvaccinated lands, and that people from exotic and unvaccinated lands don’t come wandering through), my chances of getting measles are extremely low.
Indeed, they are as low as they are because everyone else in the community has been vaccinated against measles – none of my neighbors can serve as a host where the virus can hang out and then get transmitted to me.
I get a benefit (freedom from measles) that I didn’t pay for. The other folks in my community who got the vaccine paid for it.
In fact, it usually doesn’t require that everyone else in the community be vaccinated against measles for me to be reasonably safe from it. Owing to “herd immunity,” measles is unlikely to run through the community if the people without immunity are relatively few and well interspersed with the vaccinated people. This is a good thing, since babies in the U.S. don’t get their first vaccination against measles until 12 months, and some people are unable to get vaccinated even if they’re willing to bear the cost (e.g., because they have compromised immune systems or are allergic to an ingredient of the vaccine). And, in other cases, people may get vaccinated but the vaccines might not be fully effective — if exposed, they might still get the disease. Herd immunity tends to protect these folks from the disease — at least as long as enough of the herd is vaccinated.
I clearly understand that the decision not to vaccinate children.
Set aside for the moment the issue of whether these concerns are well grounded in fact.
Instead, let’s look at the other side of the coin: If I vaccinate my kids, no matter what your views about whether they are the cause of autism and asthma, you are not going to claim that my kids getting their shots raise your kids’ odds of getting autism or asthma. But if you don’t vaccinate your kids, even if I vaccinate mine, your decision does raise my kids’ chance of catching preventable infectious diseases. My decision to vaccinate doesn’t hurt you (and probably helps you in the ways discussed above). Your decision not to vaccinate could well hurt me.
The overwhelming medical evidence finds that most vaccine side effects among newborns and young children are mild—swelling, redness and a small, hard lump at the site of the injection—and typically pass within a couple days. A far less common but serious vaccine side effect, occurring in fewer than one in a million cases, is an immediate allergic reaction that can be treated with common medications to ease itching or swelling or, in more serious cases, by administering epinephrine.
Rarely, with certain vaccinations there can be other problems. After receiving the first shot of the measles–mumps–rubella (MMR) vaccination, for example, a child has a roughly one in 3,000 chance of developing a fever that leads to a seizure. Such seizures do not lead to any permanent neurological damage. Moreover, they also occur more generally when kids develop high fevers—afflicting up to 5 percent of young children. That does not mean it is not upsetting to see.
You’ll never know how many times your child is exposed to a vaccine-preventable disease and makes use of his or her vaccine-induced immunity.
Remember, I’m not a doctor. I just sound like one.
Take good care of yourself and live the best life possible!
The information included in this column is for educational purposes only. It is not intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice. The reader should always consult his or her healthcare provider to determine the appropriateness of the information for their own situation or if they have any questions regarding a medical condition or treatment plan.
Glenn Ellis, is a Health Advocacy Communications Specialist. He is the author of Which Doctor?, and Information is the Best Medicine. For more good health information, visit: www.glennellis.com
