Conor Daly:
> Our current dilemma is to decide whether to vaccinate our 5-month old (who
> is *terribly* cute! :-) or not.
Personally I don't have kids, but I am very much in favor of
vaccination, and I (and my brothers) went through all the normal
vaccination programme in Norway.
Why I want vaccination? Well, simply because it's almost ALWAYS safer to
get the vaccine rather than go through the disease itself! So even if
there is a minor risk of getting a flu or fever or get serious
inflammations or whatever by getting the vaccination, the risk is
smaller than the risk of getting polio or measles or whatever disease.
Another and even more important aspect is the solidarity aspect: there
are quite a few children/people that simply CAN'T have the vaccination,
due to health reasons. By protecting the big majority of the population
also this small minority is protected. For some diseases I think about
70% vaccination is enough, while other require 94%. There are lots of
exaples from environments where the parents from ideological reasons
have denied vaccination of their kids and thus had serious outbreaks of
e.g. measles. This has happend several times in the Rudolph Steiner
(Waldorff?) schools in Norway during the 90ies because anthroposophs
tend to mean disease is a "natural" challenge for the human immune
defence system.
The effects of stopping the vaccination programmes? Well, just have a
look at lots of countries in Africa, Balcan, Russia, Eastern Europe,
Asia, South America...
Remember: if you think that your child is too valueable to expose to the
minor risk of vaccination, what will happen if everybody thinks like you?
Magni :)
--
sash is very good for you.
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