Fantasyland? My bright, healthy nephew "died" from a "safe" DPT shot. He began having seizures immediately after the shot. Lost all his speech, and now at the age of 23, he functions at the level of a 3-4 year old.
Your nephew is truely a tradgedy. And such extremely rare cases do occur, but Diphtheria (DPT) is a very serious bacterial disease that can make a person unable to breathe, cause paralysis, or even heart failure.
About 10% of the people who get diphtheria die from it. Before the DPT shot was introduced, 17,000 children died in a single year in the United States alone in a diphtheria epidemic. Over the last several years, only a very few cases of diphtheria have been reported in the United States. In 1988 there were zero cases. This is primarily because most children have had shots to protect them. Diphtheria isn't gone, but most children are ready for it if they are exposed.
17,000 deaths vs. a very rare few? Do the math.