Well, can we put forward another explanation for the explosion of peanut and other allergies?
I’m mainly agnostic on the whole vaccine thing in general—I’m not in the field so what do I know. Yet I do believe that pro-vaccination folks have their case dramatically undermined by pushing for vaccines against things like chickenpox where the severity is very slight, and things like HPV for young girls, a disease that can be entirely avoided almost by keeping your pants on.
Forcefully triggering an immune reaction has risks of its own. Maybe the benefits outweigh the risks for smallpox and polio. I’m not so sure in the case of chickenpox.
While chickenpox maybe a minor illness in your childhood, when it comes back as shingles in adulthood there can be serious complications.
In my case I think it lead to the loss of hearing in my left ear. My first experience with shingles was on my left forehead (and subsequent concern about it getting into the left eye).
IMHO Vaccines risks to rewards have to be weighed. As does every action we make.
“Shingles is caused by the varicella-zoster virus — the same virus that causes chickenpox. After you’ve had chickenpox, the virus lies inactive in nerve tissue near your spinal cord and brain. Years later, the virus may reactivate as shingles.” Ref: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/shingles/DS00098
There are a LOT of potential explanations. One which has been put forth by serious researchers, is that many children in developed countries are growing up in unnaturally sterile environments, with homes constantly being cleaned, Lysol’d, vacuumed with vacuum cleaners equipped with HEPA filters, spending little time outside interacting with bugs and bird poop, and thus not getting a normal range and quantity of exposures to properly develop their immune systems (this is consistent with what’s been demonstrated with more ordinary allergies, that children growing up on farms are far less likely to be allergic to things like dogs/cats/pollen).
The key is the correlation to developed countries, where there’s a whole range of synthetic chemicals that people are exposed to on a daily basis. The chemicals emanating from foam rubber furniture cushions and “rubber” backed rugs, adhesives used in plywood and pressboard products, fiberglass used in insulation, and the idiotic fire retardant chemicals that are all over upholstery fabric and children pajamas. Another chemical of unknown effects was spotted recently — can’t recall what it was, but it’s formed by chlorinated water and heat, and they found elevated levels in the blood of people who’d recently taken a shower! Compulsive showering is a very modern Western concept (and still not nearly as frequent in Europe as in the US. And then there are all the lawn chemicals and household cleaning products and home/garden pesticides. There are just so MANY things that could be causing this, that trying to blame vaccines is really absurd. One big part of the puzzle may simply be that kids who were genetically predisposed to this used to die long before reaching reproductive age (and still do in underdeveloped countries), and thus not pass on the genes for it. Now they’re all running around with epi-pens and being helicoptered to the hospital.
And wait til you come down with shingles to decide that it’s not worth vaccinating against chicken pox. For some people it never fully goes away. For my father, it took several months and also involved a trip to the emergency room when a doctor thought his symptoms sounded like a heart attack. An elderly woman who lived next door to my vacation home, and had been doing fine living on her own, ended up having to move into a nursing about 3 years ago due to shingles. The pain remains unmanageable without drugs that impair her balance and reflexes, so she can’t live on her own anymore. Keeping her in a nursing home for what may well turn out to be 10 years or more, with not only ruin her quality of life, but cost several hundred thousand dollars.