With so much contradictory information about the swine flu vaccine, making the right choice for our children isn’t easy.
- April Daniels Hussar, BettyConfidential.com
One of the scariest, most difficult-to-decide issues I’ve faced since becoming a mom has been the vaccine question. Our pediatrician told us on our very first visit with our precious newborn daughter in our arms: “If I gave each of you a million dollars and a year, and told one of you to research the case against vaccines, and the other to research the case for them, you’d both come back with an equal amount of material to support your arguments.”
Gulp.
And that’s the problem we’re facing again, right now, with the Swine Flu vaccine. It seems like every day I hear more and more conflicting views:
Pro: The vaccine is perfectly safe.
Con: It’s not safe; it hasn’t been tested enough.
Pro: It’s crazy not to use it.
Con: It supposedly has higher levels of mercury in it than other
vaccines.
Add to the debate that the media is over-hyping it as usual, while at the same time children seem more susceptible to this flu and sometimes with tragic results.
And it’s not just people like me (who are generally nervous about vaccines) struggling with this issue. It’s been an endless topic of conversation among my fellow parents everywhere I go, from my daughter’s elementary school to her ballet class to my online community of Twittering and blogging moms. We seem to be divided into three camps – those adamantly for it; those adamantly against it; and the rest of us who don’t know what to do.
Erin Kotecki Vest, mother of two and a journalist turned full-time blogger, sums up the “Are you crazy, you’re endangering not only your kids but mine,” school of thought in her recent blog post, “Just a quick rant about the piggy flu and vaccines.”
Quite bluntly, she writes:
“The next child that dies from swine flu could be your fault.”
Erin’s reasoning is that by neglecting to vaccinate our children against H1N1, we put high-risk children, like her own child who suffers from asthma, in danger.
Catherine Connors, another writer and blogger, and mother of two, agrees. “I'm emphatically, passionately FOR the vaccine, and will be vaccinating my children at first opportunity.” Catherine’s son, Jasper, who is 17 months old, is currently recuperating from a respiratory illness and can't get the vaccine until he's recovered. In the meantime, Catherine says, H1N1 could be devastating for him, given the weakened condition of his lungs.
On the other side of the debate, Josie Daga hasn’t heard anyone say that not giving it to one’s own children puts other kids in danger. This Toronto-based mother of two children, ages 2 and 4, says, “When I tell parents I'm not, it is more of an ‘I understand.’” She is not giving either of her young children the swine flu vaccine because, she explains, “I think there is just too much unknown about the vaccine. I would rather risk my children getting the swine flu – which I believe (despite the media hype) would be nothing worse than a regular flu – than risk injecting my small children with a relatively untested vaccine.”
Melinda Malari, a mom in Ohio, says her pediatrician talked frankly with her in August and told her the H1N1 vaccine is not fully tested, and that media and politics forced its immediate release. After reading this Atlantic Monthly article titled “Does the Vaccine Matter?”, her mind was made up.
“That being said,” says Melinda, “We never get flu shots. We're healthy and prefer to rely on the basics of good nutrition, lots of hand washing, and plenty of rest. Seinfeld's ‘5-second rule’ in our house keeps our immune system boosted.” She adds, “ If it were demonstrated that H1N1 were deadly, I'd reconsider. Having known people who had H1N1 and survived – well, it takes away the panic.”
Audra Kell, a mother of three in Arizona, agrees that the risks of the vaccine outweigh the risks of the disease. “When my youngest got the chicken pox immunization, my middle boy then came down with the chicken pox and had to be hospitalized for three days. His outbreak caused my oldest boy to break out in shingles, since he had already had the chicken pox. It was a nightmare. I'm done with vaccines. If my child will end up in the hospital anyway, we'll take our chances.”
When it comes to the information (and misinformation) available on the Web, we could go back and forth for hours (days). I could show you FamiliesFightingFlu.com, a site filled with heartbreaking stories of children who died of the flu. Then I could show you this article quoting a chiropractor in California who says that the swine flu shot contains formaldehyde and Polysorbate 80, which causes infertility in mice, and that multi-dose formulations of the vaccine, “contain the mercury-filled preservative thimerosal.” Or this article about a group of pediatricians in Florida who refuse to recommend the vaccine: “‘The vaccine has not been proved to be safe and we don't know anything about it,’ says Dr. Dina Badra.” Or even worse, this video making its way around the web as viral videos do – it’s an Inside Edition report on a beautiful young cheerleader who got a regular flu shot this summer and days later was stricken with a rare and debilitating neurological muscular disorder. Have some tissues handy.
And then, after Googling “swine flu children deaths” and totally freaking ourselves out, we could stroll over to the Center for Disease Control Web site, where it very clearly states: “A flu vaccine is the first and most important step in protecting against flu infection.”
In a world where so much conflicting information is at our fingertips, being a parent is, sometimes, in some ways, harder than ever. What am I going to do? So far, I’m still sitting on the fence and worrying.
What do you think? What should moms do? Take our chances that the swine flu will either pass us by, or isn’t as bad as the potential side effects of the vaccine? Or follow the conventional wisdom and mainstream scientific advice, and vaccinate our children in the hopes it will keep them safe, and not turn them into a one-in-a-million statistic?
April Daniels Hussar is BettyConfidential’s Deputy Editor.
To read more from BettyConfidential | Swine Flu and Your Kids