Unsure about vaccines? Do a little research

Vaccines save lives. Smallpox was eliminated from the world because of vaccines. It killed roughly 200 million to 500 million people worldwide in the 1800s and continued until immunization against it became widespread.

When English physician Edward Jenner introduced the first smallpox immunization in the late 1780s, it took decades before people believed in it. Don’t get me wrong, the first vaccination had lots of problems, but so did smallpox.

Now, let’s go on to childhood immunizations that I think are worth mentioning, starting with measles. Before the measles vaccine became available in 1963, pretty much everyone got the disease. That’s because it is super-infectious.

About 50,000 people ended up in the hospital every year with measles, which was nearly unavoidable in the United States. More than 90% of Americans contracted measles before turning 15, with an estimated 3 million to 4 million cases annually.

And measles led to many other bad things — about 1,000 cases of encephalitis and meningitis, brain damage, 48,000 hospitalizations and about 1,000 deaths. Not pretty.

When immunizations took off, measles was practically eradicated. For the last two decades, fewer than 200 cases were reported yearly. Compare that to this year: We’re at about 1,500 confirmed cases of measles reported in the U.S. as of this writing, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

With that, let’s address misinformation vs. information. First off, everything we do has side effects. Get into your car, drive down the street and you risk dying. We reduce that risk by using seat belts, avoiding drinking alcohol before driving and other choices.

Oh, one more thing: The measles-mumps-rubella vaccine does not cause autism. There have now been excellent studies disproving the notion that it does.

We don’t know why autism is on the rise. Some of this is sampling, because we’re looking for it more. Part of it is the evolving definition of autism. There are kids with autism now who have symptoms that were not defined as autism years ago. This plays a role.

But there is no credible scientific evidence that the MMR vaccine causes autism, despite all the noise that’s in the blogosphere.

Now let’s talk about the Hib vaccine, which protects against the Haemophilus influenzae type b bacteria. Before the widespread use of the Hib vaccine, this caused infections in about 20,000 children, with most occurring in babies under 1 year old. It was the leading cause of meningitis, and about 1,000 kids died from it every year.

The Hib vaccine didn’t come out until the early 1990s. The vaccine is given at 2, 4 and 6 months with a booster at 12 to 15 months.

I can think of five cases of meningitis from Hib that I saw in the early part of my practice before the vaccine was available. One of the kids was never the same. She got it at 5 years old. This little girl was a bright, shining presence.

After she contracted Hib, I took care of her over the next 20 years. She went to high school, but never graduated and had great difficulty living independently. When she and her family moved away from the area, I lost track of her.

The bottom line here is that the Hib vaccine is nothing to be complacent about. Like the measles vaccine, it has side effects. I recommend you go to the Mayo Clinic website, which is excellent in this regard, and read up on it. Just Google “Mayo Clinic Hib,” and it should come right up.

My spin: If you are the type of person who does research before you buy a phone, computer, car, house or refrigerator, then use that mindset when you decide on health care such as immunizations. But be sure it is smart research, even discussed with smart friends, which will give you the smartest outcome.

Then discuss that with your health care person, and you decide. Stay well.