Nowadays, many parents are not letting their children get vaccinated for childhood diseases such as whooping cough (pertussis) and measles. Some of these parents have heard the (very much mistaken) claim that childhood vaccinations increase the risk of autism in children. Other parents refuse to permit the pertussis and measles vaccines because they believe (also mistakenly) that these diseases aren't common and aren't dangerous, and that the vaccines don't work anyway.
Whooping cough is not uncommon—more than 10,000 cases were reported in the U.S. in 2008—and this illness is deadly serious: Before the vaccine became available, pertussis was associated with more than 8,000 deaths each year.
The vaccine's effectiveness is shown by a recent study reported in a June issue of the journal Pediatrics. The study found that children who were not vaccinated against pertussis were 23 times more likely to develop whooping cough than were those who had received the full course of vaccinations.
Even though less than 1 percent of children do not receive the vaccine, the author of the study estimated that 11 percent of all cases of whooping cough in the U.S. were related to children whose parents turned down the inoculations.
Most states require that every child get the standard vaccinations before being admitted to school; some states, however, also allow exemptions. For example, a parent may be able to get around the vaccination requirement by claiming that inoculations are against the family's religious beliefs.
But by refusing to have their children vaccinated, these parents not only put their own children at risk for the highly contagious bacterial infection that causes whooping cough, but they endanger neighbor children and the child's classmates as well.
The author of the article in Pediatrics recommends that whenever a doctor encounters parents who refuse to have their children vaccinated, he or she should "just acknowledge their fears and help them weigh the risks and benefits" of the childhood immunization schedule.
At least one pediatrician in Baltimore has taken a different approach. He has decided not to see children whose parents refuse to have them immunized because he feels it puts his other patients at too great a risk.
Some parents still subscribe to the irrational (and now completely discredited) fear that vaccines can cause autism in their children. These parents need to counter their uneasiness by considering the proven record of protection that inoculations have provided for so long.
