Vaccines Are The Safer Choice
Last week the Institute of Medicine released a huge and densely researched report looking into evidence that vaccines cause serious, harmful reactions. It’s 645 pages long, and available in its entirely here (abstracts, summaries, and a link to download the whole document are here.) Health experts reviewed over 1000 published studies looking for specific, verifiable links between common childhood vaccines and serious adverse reactions. Their conclusion: “…few health problems are caused by or clearly associated with vaccines.”
That’s not to say that vaccines are 100% safe. The report goes into great detail about reported adverse events, which can be serious, and are real. But serious adverse events are very, very rare– much rarer than adverse events following diseases.
Most parents make sure their children are fully vaccinated; others choose not to allow one or more vaccines. Parents from both groups both need to know that neither one of their decisions is 100% safe. You can get the vaccines, and accept a real but very small risk of serious adverse reactions; or you can skip the vaccines, and accept the real risk of endangering your child’s life (and the lives of other exposed people in the community) with a vaccine-preventable disease. Parents would like to choose the path with zero percent risk– but that is not possible.
You cannot avoid all of the health risks your children face. But you can choose the path of less risk.
These sorts of risk decisions occur in many of life’s choices. Think about seat belts. 99% of the time, a child in a car accident is safer wearing a seat belt. But there is a small risk of wearing seat belts– what if the car went over a bridge into the water? Wouldn’t the seat belt slow her escape from the sinking vehicle? Seat belts (like vaccines) are not inherently 100% safe. Yet it’s the better decision to insist that your children wear them. In other words, there is less risk in wearing seat belts than in not wearing seat belts.
The risks of not vaccinating have been increasing. As more families have chosen to “opt out,” communities in the US and abroad are experiencing resurgences of serious illnesses like measles and pertussis. These are not minor illnesses. Pertussis causes brain damage and death in babies, and measles is accompanied by a significant risk of encephalitis and other complications. When balancing the risks of disease versus vaccines, keep in mind that the disease risks are growing, even while more and more studies are showing that the vaccines are safer than ever.
You wouldn’t want your child to run across the street without looking, and you wouldn’t want him to ride in a car without a seat belt. Life does have risks, but you have the opportunity to choose to avoid at least some risks to your child. Protect your kids. Choose safety, and get them fully immunized.
Btw, bilo bi zgodno da moderator prebaci ovu temu na pdf Medicina
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