Vaccine Decisions

It may be difficult to find a doctor who will treat your child if you question vaccination; want to give your child fewer vaccines; or use a different schedule than the one recommended by government health officials. The best way to find an open minded doctor, who wants to be a partner with you in making health care decisions for your children and is sensitive to your concerns, is to contact health professionals in the prepared childbirth, breast feeding, nutrition and wholistic or alternative and complimentary health care fields.

I am not certain what you mean by getting your daughter "passively immunized." The term "passive immunization" usually refers to the process by which a person comes into contact with the body fluids of another person who has recently received a live virus vaccine (such as live oral polio vaccine) and the live virus transmission confers or "boosts" the immunity of that person. Another type of passive immunization is the use of intravenous immune globulin after a person has been exposed to a disease such as tetanus. Immune globulin contains antibodies from the blood of persons who are immune to a particular disease.

The idea of separating combination vaccines (such as live MMR vaccine for measles, mumps, rubella) into their single components has been in the news during the past decade because of the debate about whether exposing a child simultaneously to three live viruses in the MMR vaccine can cause autism. Although government health authorities deny the MMR vaccine can cause autism, parents continue to report an association between receipt of MMR vaccine and their child's regression into autism. Therefore, some parents prefer to give their children the three separate vaccines singly spaced apart as a precaution. Because few doctors in the U.S. stock the separate vaccines, American parents have reported they must buy a multi-dose vial of each of the three vaccines from a pharmacy and take them to their physican for administration.

If you make the decision to vaccinate your child with one or more vaccines, make sure you read the product manufacturer insert and consult other sources of information so you know what kinds of vaccine reaction symptoms to look for after your child is vaccinated. Remember that vaccine reactions can occur from minutes to hours, days and weeks after vaccination depending upon the vaccine(s) given.

And if you choose to vaccinate, go to the website of the National Vaccine Information Center at www.nvic.org <http://www.nvic.org> where we have a list of eight questions to ask yourself BEFORE your child gets vaccinated. Becoming educated about diseases and vaccines will help you make the best vaccination decision you can for your child.