THE TWO SIDES OF THE DEBATE

Why doctors recommend vaccinations:

Many doctors believe that vaccinations are one of medical science’s greatest success stories, responsible for wiping out many deadly infectious diseases.

Many of the vaccinations protect against diseases for which there may not be a cure.

If there is a cure for the disease, surely prevention is better than cure.

Bacteria that cause disease are developing resistance to the antibiotic cures. In these cases, vaccines are the only reliable tools to prevent disease.

The theory states that if enough people get vaccinated, the disease will disappear. Smallpox is an example of a disease successfully wiped out using immunisation. In order to eliminate a disease the vaccination levels have to run at 95%. This means that 95 in every 100 children have to be vaccinated for the disease to be effectively wiped out. This is known as herd protection, and doctors hope that other diseases such as measles and mumps can soon be banished.

“Vaccination is the single most cost-effective health intervention.”

Some doctors believe that vaccinations strengthen the immune system.

The WHO believes that immunisation is “a key element of public health…a crucial element in enabling every child to reach his/her full physical and intellectual potential.”

We are in a cycle. When a disease is prevalent, everybody wants a vaccine to control the disease. With the success of the vaccine, the disease becomes rare, and so people pay more attention to the side-effects of the vaccine. Fewer children are immunised, and as a result the incidence of disease increases. This cycle has been going on ever since the introduction of vaccinations, so the latest rumblings by parents and media are nothing new. We should continue with the vaccination programme undaunted.

Doctors believe that in many cases vaccines are wrongly blamed for side effects. Often, developmental abnormalities, like fits, seizures and autism, first appear in the early years of life, just at a time when the immunisation programme is taking place.

As with all medicines, some people will experience serious side effects. But the number of people that do suffer a serious reaction is so small, that it does not outweigh the good that vaccinations bring.

The government pays GP surgeries for each child immunised. There is a financial bonus for reaching vaccination targets, and missing these targets would put financial pressure on the surgery.

Why homoeopaths suggest an alternative to vaccination:

Homoeopaths believe that the death rate from infectious childhood diseases has declined due to better sanitation, hygiene and nutrition levels, and improved housing, and not because of the immunisation programmes.

Homoeopaths point out, that even if you do accept that vaccination programmes have been responsible for the reduction in disease, epidemics still occur. For example, 18 years after the compulsory smallpox vaccination was introduced in England, the worst smallpox epidemic of the nineteenth century occurred, killing 44,000 people. Unless vaccines are 100% effective, and unless all children are vaccinated (two unlikely scenarios), mass immunisation will never completely eradicate the disease.

Alternative practitioners believe that the virus or bacteria is never truly wiped out but can alter itself into a different, related, disease. They believe that by trying to eliminate often harmless diseases like mumps we are creating a situation where new, and maybe more serious, diseases will appear. Dr Vera Scheibner has reported a 399% increase in the incidence of disease caused by infection of the Hib bacteria since the 1940s. She asks “Why have developed countries experienced such an increase in invasive infections in the last 40 years? The best demonstrable common factor in this period is a documented push for mass vaccination.”

Homoeopaths are concerned that foreign material is injected directly into our bloodstream, rather than being processed by our body’s normal defence systems – namely the skin, mucous membranes and digestive system.

Homoeopaths believe that vaccinations weaken the immune system. They fear that no-one has investigated the long-term effects of giving an infant at least 18 different jabs by the time he is 4 months old, and 21 vaccinations by the time he is about 15 months old. They wonder just how many vaccines an immature immune system can handle. There are two reasons why the Government starts jabs in the first year. First, some of the diseases in question are at there most dangerous if caught by infants under the age of one, and second, the Government believes that “starting the programme early and having short intervals, reduces the opportunities for failing to complete a course” of vaccinations.

Homoeopaths believe that childhood diseases are beneficial to the child. After an illness, a child will often experience a physical and/or mental developmental leap. Furthermore, contracting a childhood disease can help wipe out inherited traits such as asthma and eczema. For example, a study in Guinea-Bissau found that children who had contracted measles naturally, were less likely to suffer from eczema, asthma and/or hay fever than children who had been vaccinated.

Homoeopaths believe that many of the diseases we are vaccinated against, such as measles or mumps, are not the potential killers we are led to believe. They point out that most people over 30 have had measles.

Research shows that protection afforded by a vaccination is always inferior to that given by natural infection.

No vaccine is 100% safe.

Some homoeopaths would argue that vaccines work imperfectly, and at an unacceptable cost to your child’s health.

Homoeopaths believe that if your child has a healthy lifestyle, and eats a good balanced diet, then he is less likely to catch a disease, and if he does, it will affect him less severely.

The pros and cons of multiple jabs

These days many vaccines are administered in one injection. If you follow the government guidelines, your child will have three triple jabs, and three quadruple jabs by the time he is five years old. These polyvalent vaccines, as scientists call them, are a huge benefit to the vaccination programme. A child will gain protection against three or four illnesses from just one visit to his GP. This means that many more children are likely to be immunised, and so herd protection can be attained. It also reduces the huge cost of the vaccination programme.

Many people argue that it is ill-advised to give a child a triple or quadruple jab. We don’t know how the individual components of the polyvalent vaccines work together. Their effectiveness could be reduced. And then there is the question of side effects. We are giving our children three or four viruses that they would be very unlikely to catch at the same time naturally. Some scientists ask whether children’s immune system can cope with a triple hit at once.