Sharon Racey will never forget the sound. “Cough, cough, cough, then a huge breath–hhhhhh,” says Racey, of Boulder, Colo.
She is sounding out her son’s horrible gasping when he had whooping cough at 2 1/2 months. “You’d rather suffer 10,000 times over than have your child go through that. It was very traumatic for everyone involved. We thought we were going to lose our baby.”
Somehow Racey’s husband had contracted whooping cough, which can appear like a bad cold in adults, and passed it on to son Timothy, now 3. Four to five times an hour the baby was racked with a coughing fit. Sometimes he stopped breathing.
Only two weeks before Timothy began coughing he had had his first vaccination against pertussis–whooping cough. To be effective, a child needs four vaccinations against whooping cough before age 2.
But Timothy isn’t the only child racked with the coughs and wheezing of pertussis. National, state and local health groups recommend children be vaccinated against 10 diseases: diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis B, Hemophilus influenza type b (or Hib) and chickenpox. Children need 80 percent of inoculations, most of which must be given in multiple doses, during the first 2 years.
Some parents say they haven’t time or money to have their children inoculated. But others choose not to immunize.
Jan Kirschner, a Boulder chiropractor and father, doesn’t think vaccinating children is a good idea. He says he applauds parents who decide to immunize children as long as they are aware of the downside.
Kirschner argues vaccinations don’t eliminate diseases. Polio has shown up three times in the last century, and the first two times it disappeared on its own. When the outbreak occurred in the 1950s, he says, polio already was on the decline when the vaccination was introduced.
Dennis Lenaway, epidemiologist with the Boulder County Health Department, says anyone who knows the history of vaccine-preventable diseases knows diseases won’t go away by themselves. Smallpox was eradicated because of the vaccine, he says.
Yet diphtheria has become rampant in the former Soviet Union, says Ann Bailey, epidemiologist nurse for the county health department. In 1989, there were 839 cases there. In 1994, 50,000 cases and 1,700 deaths were reported. She says the disease spread because the health system in the former Soviet Union collapsed with the political system and people weren’t being vaccinated.
Lenaway says before the measles vaccination was developed, from 500,000 to a million cases were reported each year. After the vaccine was introduced in 1963, measles nose-dived. In 1995, 294 cases were reported in the U.S. Kirschner argues that even vaccinated children still get the diseases.
True, Lenaway says, but the numbers are minute. He says statistics show most children who have had all immunizations do not get the disease, and when those fully immunized get whooping cough, studies have shown they don’t get severe cases.
Some argue the risks of reaction to immunizations is too great. Kirschner says there can be convulsions, collapse and shock.
Dr. Stephen Fries, a pediatrician at the Boulder Medical Center, says severe reactions to the shots are rare. For the majority, he says, the only reactions parents might see are redness and swelling around the site, some fussiness, maybe fever.
“There are side effects and reactions, but the diseases are much worse,” Fries says.
Some believe these diseases are nature’s way of building immunity, so they argue it’s better to get the disease than to vaccinate.
Kirschner, who survived measles and mumps as a child, says he’d rather his daughter get them than be vaccinated.
“If my daughter, God forbid, got whooping cough, life would not be fun for us,” he says. She would probably have to stay home from school. He would most likely take off work to care for her.
“But I also know that kids don’t die from whooping cough anymore.” Kirschner says.
Not true, says Lenaway. The disease can be fatal in children under age 1.
“It almost killed my husband. And he was 27 at the time,” Racey says. “Has he (Kirschner) ever seen a little body wracked with coughs so bad it’s convulsing? He wouldn’t say it’s a minor inconvenience. The flu is a minor inconvenience. A cold is a minor inconvenience. A toothache is a minor inconvenience. As soon as they found it was pertussis, my entire family was put on quarantine.”
In fact, Racey and her husband, Stewart, had to declare bankruptcy because their insurance wouldn’t cover more than $50,000 in medical bills accrued while their son was in hospital off and on for two months.
Neither Lenaway nor Fries understands the argument that having the disease is better than getting a vaccine. “Why does somebody think getting the disease is a good idea just to develop an immunity?” says Lenaway. “You can get the disease and have a lifelong immunity or you can get two vaccines and have a lifelong immunity.”
