[mean lunch lady]

It's entirely possible that they will keep adding more and more things to the list. I am so glad my kids are adults now and don't have to go through all that. By the time they are between 2 and 3 years old, in Florida, children have to have 4 polio, 4 DTP, 4 HIB, 1 MMR, 1 Varicella, 3 Hepatitis B, and now 3 pnuemo or Prevnar shots on their Immunization Certificate. They are like little pincushions. And if you want them in school they have to have the shots or they are excluded from school (this includes preschool) and daycare. You have to wonder, when will it be enough?

[Rightone]

C'mon. I'm not a big fan of shots for the kids and they have made some mistakes over the years, but overall, these shots do save lives. More and more kids are alive today due to disease prevention.

Sure you can find the few who die because of allergies, etc. but those are the exceptions.

[Triple Word Score]

The long-term damage to the immune system has not even been recognized yet. I guarantee that we don't want kids getting polio. The rare death due to chicken pox was an egregious thing, too.

But adults are getting lupus and arthritis and shingles and chronic fatigue syndrome and cancer and severe allergies at ever-increasing rates. It's like our immune systems become unfocused, and I think the vaccination schedules contribute to this. We ought to vaccinate intelligently. If there's an outbreak of measles, vaccinate for measles. I don't propose that letting thousands die of influenza is a great idea. (I think a LOT could be done simply by insisting that sick people stay HOME!)

Control our borders and keep sick people out (sorry, sir, you have a fever, we must quarantine you, your business trip will have to wait--how could that be harder than keeping out exploding tennis shoes?) Give the CDC fast computers and fast response units prepared to vaccinate targeted populations for everything from chicken pox to small pox. What are the odds of a kid in Kansas being exposed to whooping cough today, especially if we're watching for an outbreak? Almost nil. That's because practically all of the potential carriers are already immune. We could take advantage of that to allow a generation to grow up not vaccinated for that unless some risk actually shows up!

And then let our children's immune systems have a generation to breathe and go back to normal. I see that hardly anyone is able to throw off the simplest cold without being sick for weeks. We can't do anything without antibiotics anymore--and antibiotics are still prescribed for viral infections. We know what we're doing to ourselves, but we keep doing it in the quest for perfect health--when in fact perfect health comes from a strong immune system that can cope with natural challenges if it's left alone to do its job.

I don't think vaccines are evil. I think that we ought to be thinking very seriously about the consequences of making our childrens' immune systems respond to fifty-nine false alarms before they're two!

[TheMole]

Japan versus USA vaccination program

It has become rather well known that when Japan raised its minimum vaccination age to two years in 1975 the overall infant mortality rate improved to become the best in the world. In an effort to find out what has become of this 'no vaccination under two' policy that the following information was searched for and collected into one place. In 1995, Japan's vaccination laws changed. The 2002 vaccination scehdule is below.

Two 'immunization schedules' follow, the 1st is from Japan and the second is from the USA (CDC). One can readily compare the current recommendations for the two countries.

You will note that Japan recommends, in the first year of life:
six injections. (Count the red arrows, each of which is a shot.) And only three more in the second year of life.

Now count the shots recommended in the CDC recommended schedule, 13 in the first 12 months, with 15 being possible because an infant may receive the third Hep B and the third IPV shot in the first year of life. And seven more in the second year of life.

This does not take into account that the infant might be in a selected population in either country and be recommended for yet one more shot in the first year of life. The total for most children is 20 injections in the first two years of life in the USA and only 9 injections in the first two years in Japan.

link to the charts and the rest of the page