Vaccinating Children | I'm All For It

Vaccinating children is not a thing of the past. If anything we should learn from the past and what has happened because people haven’t vaccinated. But what about rumors that vaccinating causing autism? And, what all are they putting in my baby? Should this be something that is our children’s choice like people say circumcision and ear piercing should be? Here are my thoughts.

When I talked about circumcision, I had no idea the kind of response I was going to get. It made me understand that it was something where you were changing your child’s life forever. But isn’t that what happens when you are vaccinating your child as well? When thinking, and reading all the things that were said, I wanted to really look into this topic.

As parents, we are the care takers of our children and we look into what we are doing for our children in what we feel is their best interest. We are looking out for them and their health. Circumcision I really had looked into both sides, from non bias sources. I wanted to know the facts, and when I shared that post I was sharing some things I found that I didn’t know.

That being said, when it comes to vaccinating my child I feel like this has been researched a lot. People are very passionate about both sides. I just feel, if we can stop these life threatening diseases from spreading and hurting our children then why not?

In 1941, there were 894,134 cases of reported measles. Before the measles vaccine was licenses in 1963, the CDC admits there was massive underreporting of measles cases and that “because virtually all children acquired measles, the number of measles cases probably approached 3.5 million per year.”

Then a vaccine came out and the numbers dropped. In an eight-year period between 1993 and 2001, there were 1804 cases of measles reported in 120 outbreaks. After only 15 measles cases were reported between 1999 and 2001 and with more than 90 percent of school children having received two doses of MMR vaccine, public health officials declared that measles was no longer endemic in the United States in 2000. Clearly, this was working.

In 2007 there was an increase in celebrities promoting anti-vaccination rhetoric. Because of their celebrity status they appeared on several television shows and published multiple books advising parents not to vaccinate their children. Why were we listening to these people? Because they’re on a show we love and feel they know everything?

Because of this movement, the number of cases started to increase:

2007 there were 43 cases
2008 there were 140 cases
2009 there were 71 cases
2010 there were 63 cases
2011 there were 220 cases
2012 there were 55 cases
2013 there were 187 cases
2014 there were 634 cases
2015 through January 28 there were 68 cases

Thankfully, the big doctor, Andrew Wakefield, announced that he had faked the research linking autism to MMR vaccine, lost his license to practice medicine and made millions helping lawyers sue and selling books. And now he is living in a mansion in England. A complete fraud that still has people thinking everything he said was right.

Being just one of many vaccines children are given, it still proves the point that we as parents need to look more into why they are important. I vaccinate my children, I get vaccinated and I hope you will too. But I will say, there are in fact of a lot of vaccines. Here is the vaccination schedule from 1983 vs now:

I thought I would talk to a doctor myself about this. Dr Abby Kramer says, “I am an encourager of getting educated…on both sides of the issue. I encourage EVERY parent to look directly at the CDC’s website and read about the ingredients of the vaccines your child is receiving and the potential side effects. Most parents and even physicians aren’t fully aware of the ingredients.”

You can find more information about vaccines and their ingredients here.

So for all those anti-vaccine people, here is a little science. Enjoy and share.