The Vaccination Debate - Why Moms Are Up in Arms

Taking your baby in for his or her well-child checkup can be an exciting and also worrisome time. Today he gets his shots, but how many is too many? What if my baby gets sick from it? Many moms who are fiercely against vaccinations do make some good points, but should we go anti-vaccine or look for another solution?

I believe vaccinations are important and at the same time that they need to be given more carefully. A baby, especially a four month old should not be dosed up with four, actually six separate shots. Everyone's body is not exactly the same and it stands to reason that some will have problems when given multiple vaccines at once. It is hard to say whether conditions like epilepsy and autism are caused by one single vaccine or because a child's immune system goes haywire and simply cannot process the combinations.

It is completely understandable for a parent to be fearful, even angry when vaccinations are forced upon their children. It is true vaccines only provide immunity to certain strains and that getting shots does not guarantee your child will never get sick. There are studies and even doctors who tell of the correlation between autism and epilepsy and vaccines. Also there are many lawsuits being processed debating whether or not a vaccine caused a child's autism. While the evidence my not be 100% concrete, there must be something to it.

On the other hand, going anti-vaccine is not the answer either. We still need to make sure diseases aren't running rampant in schools and daycares. The trick is to make vaccines safer for everyone. Combination shots and getting several at once seem to be responsible for most of the cases where a vaccine injury has occurred. Some neurologists recommend that babies get shots two weeks apart in-order to allow their immune system to process the chemicals without being overloaded.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is rather callous in their statements that only one in a million are injured by a vaccine. To me, that is like saying, "Who cares as long as it's not my family member or child being hurt." Clearly more and more children are getting autism and epilepsy and we need to change our standardized way of vaccinating every child to fewer doses at once. Not everyone's body can tolerate the same level of drugs and one child hurt by a vaccine is still one too many.