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Parents know it. Their children’s health is more important than their own. They’ll hold off eating to give their sons and daughters bread. They’ll work two jobs, seven days a week, to provide everything that their children need to succeed and be happy in life.
But when it comes to children’s health, a lot of things can seem out of a parents’ control. Even minor illnesses, such as colds and “24-hour flus,” can seem terrifying to a parent. No matter how well you care for your children, it doesn’t seem to matter in protecting them from ailments.
For parents of small children, one of the most challenging and frightening decisions revolves around children’s inoculations. Shots, as children not so affectionately refer to them, are said to be essential in protecting your children’s health from deadly disease.
On the other hand, some experts out there claim that these immunizations actually put your children at risk for disease and harm. There have been persistent rumors in the media about potential links of immunizations and such conditions as autism. What can you believe?
The Truth about Immunizations
The truth about immunizations is that they have been one of the most wonderful medical findings of modern times. They have saved millions, if not billions, of children from such past scourges as measles, mumps, tetanus, and a host of other diseases.
Amazingly, the science behind their success is simple, far simpler than, say, explaining how an artificial heart or a MRI machine works.
Vaccines are actually dead or weakened versions of bacteria or viruses. Normally, these miniature “germs” would wreak havoc in your child’s body if they were at full strength. But weakened, they serve more like a war game for his or her body. They train the body for future “wars” against the germs.
Then in the future, if this bacteria or virus comes into contact with your child, his or her body has the proper weapons and know-how to beat this enemy. In the scientific parlance, these weapons are white blood cells called antibodies. The know-how are actually provided by other cells called memory cells.
This “training” keeps your child’s body in fighting shape for years, sometimes for a whole lifetime. That’s where the word immunity comes from. Your child is virtually immune, or free, from this disease.
Children especially need this immunity. They entered life with a supply of their mother’s antibodies and memory cells. But after only a year or less, this free pass wears off. Children are left essentially without any protection from that point on.
A Class Full of Coughers
Then imagine your unprotected children as they begin school. That puts them in contact with dozens, if not hundreds, of other children. Multiply that number by the millions. That’s how many germs each children brings to school with them.
No wonder a classroom of children is full of runny noses, wracking coughs, and other signs of illness. Some of these germs may be minor colds, coughs, and sore throats. But others may be whooping cough, hepatitis, or other more serious, if not fatal, diseases.
Unprotected, your children may not be able to fend off these bacteria and viruses. This explains why, before immunizations, thousands of children died from preventable diseases like measles and polio.
Unprotected, your children also endanger the health of other children around them. For instead of these diseases being eradicated by immunizations, they are allowed to linger in the occasional boy and girl who do not get immunized. The germs, then, live another day.
Weigh the risks
Of course, it’s up to you, the parent, to decide what is right for your children’s health. But do not make this decision without the help of your pediatrician, along with the advice of other experienced mothers.
The thought of your poor little ones getting stuck with a half dozen needles is not the most appealing image to a mother. Then again, having these same little ones come down with the hepatitis or tetanus is far less attractive an option.
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