You love your child. You want your child to be healthy.
To me, those statements explain why I vaccinate my children. However, I know that some parents and caregivers may not reach the same conclusion. I respect the decisions of the parents of children in my Downtown Eugene Kaiser Permanente practice, but I do talk to the adults about why I have chosen differently for my family.
I explain that preventable diseases are not benign. Some will lead to hospitalization and long-term consequences. You don’t have to experience polio, which used to paralyze 15,000 people every year in America, to know that you don’t want your child to get it. For older generations, the development of vaccines was miraculous, and these shots remain our first line of defense against a group of diseases.
Sometimes, parents will read something online about vaccines or be told something by friends. I ask parents to double check the information’s credibility. For example, you cannot get the disease from the vaccination. And, vaccines carry only a small risk of side effects, and these are usually minor. You may have heard about a British physician’s false link between autism and a small study of vaccines. He was thoroughly discredited and lost his medical license, but the information is still out there.