Dear vaccine opponents:
I wonder whether the reason so many young parents are refusing to vaccinate their children is that they themselves have never had measles, mumps, chickenpox, or rubella — especially measles. They were born so long after these vaccines were developed and widely used that they have no idea what it feels like to be sick with these diseases or to watch a child suffer their ravages. These “usual childhood illnesses,” as we used to call them in medicine, are no longer usual. To some young parents of today they are an abstraction.
Let me tell you what it’s like to have measles. I came down with measles when I was about 10 years old, in the mid-1950s. I had never been as sick before then, and have never been so sick since. I was sent home from school one morning with a fever, a sore throat, and nausea, an infection which by that evening had rendered a normally healthy little girl into a weeping child with a temperature of 104.5, vomiting, and a throat so sore she couldn’t swallow. My pediatrician came to the house the next day (yes, a house call!) and diagnosed measles based on the above symptoms and the prevalence of the illness at that time in our area. The diagnosis was further confirmed by the “Koplik spots” I had in my throat and mouth and the rash that emerged a couple of days later.
I remember that I was seriously ill and, for many days, barely able to get out of bed. Of course there was no attending school or spending time with my little brother — for more than two weeks. I have hazy memories of taking aspirin and of my parents packing my feverish body in cool towels to try to bring my temperature down. I remember the rash, the irritability. As Dr. Paul Offit remarked about measles in an L.A. Times article Jan. 26, “there’s a miserableness quotient.” Regaining my strength took weeks; I wasn’t well even after the acute illness was over.
I also had an interesting case of giant hives all over my body soon after I recovered — an allergic reaction to something random that I had eaten. Apparently there is a period of increased vulnerability to allergies, even transient ones, following measles.
I was fortunate. Some children developed measles encephalitis followed by permanent brain injury or death. And many got pneumonia, the most common cause of death in young children.
Modern medicine had eliminated this potentially devastating infectious disease by the year 2000 when, thanks to the MMR vaccine, the disease was no longer native to the United States. And now, 15 years later, we are in the middle of a serious and completely unnecessary outbreak. The U.S. is at risk again. Why? Because of pockets of unvaccinated people (cdc.gov).
Please do not be the mother or father who buys into urban myth and pseudoscience when hard, actual science has shown that immunizations on the schedule approved by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) do not cause autism and do not overwhelm a baby’s immune system. Please don’t think your child is more special than my grandchildren or your neighbors’ children who do get vaccinated. Please educate yourselves, be responsible to your children and your community, and contribute to the “herd immunity” that we all must strive for again. I’m sure you would not need further convincing if you saw a child suffering with measles.
Margo Herman Ciesla, RN, MN, PMHNP
Nurse Practitioner, Pacific Palisades
My maps show your Santa Monica autism cluster lines up very well with the highest density of installed broadcast microwave earthstations and pulsed microwave radars. Radiation has been raised as a possible cause of autism. I think the radiation may be reflecting and refracting off overhead airplanes and the overhead weather. I am a chemical/environmental engineer.
http://darkmattersalot.com/2015/05/21/just-for-the-hell-of-it-i-threw-in-the-microwave-relay-stations/
I’m almost 60 and also remember when there were no vaccinations for measles, mumps and chicken pox, and I had them all; most kids did in those days. There’s pending legislation that the Governor has indicated that he will sign, that will do away with all but medical exemptions related to children getting vaccinated. in Santa Monica, I think the rate of non-vaccination is somewhere around 14%. That’s a lot of children potentially getting infected and spreading it to who knows how many people. This measles outbreak started at Disneyland but has spread to other states and Mexico. Here’s the link to the article I referred to: http://www.latimes.com/local/politics/la-me-pol-measles-vaccination-20150205-story.html
Diane Lynn asked about cost of vaccinations. There are clinics that vaccinate for free in Santa Monica. They don’t even require documentation.
Who is paying for the vaccines children get? Could cost be a deterrent?
Thank you Ms. Herman Ciesla for writing this letter. I only wish it had been printed on the front page! Your true account and perspective regarding why young parents don’t vaccinate is powerful. I agree with you, as a 50 year old, who was vaccinated for every disease for which there was a vaccination, I have not witnessed what these diseases look like when they invade a body. I can tell you that every time a neighborhood child had the Chicken Pox my mother sent us to play with them however, I never got it. When I was pregnant with my second child my mother-in-law wanted to come visit. She called informing me she had Shingles, but her doctor assured her it was safe to come visit. My doctor did not agree, and believed I probably had had the Chicken Pox but had forgotten. She tested me, and sure enough, I had no immunity against Chicken Pox having never had it. She was EMPHATIC that I not be in the same home or room as my mother-in-law (who angrily postponed her visit). My OBGYN informed me that if a pregnant woman contracts the Chicken Pox the baby can be born deaf and with a lot of other, PREVENTABLE (now) defects. Once I delivered my baby I was vaccinated for the Chicken Pox. I wonder if young parents today (many of whom may not be vaccinated against Chicken Pox) realize that by not immunizing they put their unborn children at risk.
As a child I contracted Chicken Pox and Mumps. That was an awful experience. I agree with the person who wrote this letter to the editor. I’m almost 50 years old and I still remember the excruciating pain of having the Mumps. I also have first hand experience with Autism Spectrum. The hardest thing about Autism is dealing with overpaid SMMUSD administrators who don’t want to give services to children that need them. There is no proven connection to Autism from vaccines anyway. This current outbreak that we are experiencing was completely preventable. The only thing standing in the way is the egos of adults. Children don’t ask to come into this world. We bring them here and it is OUR responsibility to protect them. Vaccinate your children.
What a great letter! I am almost 64 years of age. I grew up in Cincinnati. And each summer there were weeks at a time when my sister and I were not allowed to go to playgrounds and when the municipal swimming pools were empty even though the temperature was in the nineties and the humidity made everyone uncomfortable. I remember a girl in our neighborhood being in an iron lung due to polio, and I remember another neighborhood child was crippled and could not walk without braces due to polio. I ALSO remember a day when the church bells rang for no reason and my mother and grandmother were crying out of happiness. It was the day that the announcement was made that the Salk Vaccine was safe, effective, and would begin being distributed immediately nationwide. I remember lining up with my mother and my sister at St. Peter & Paul church to get the vaccine, and I remember that the line of patents and children stretched around the block. Polio was such a scourge that parents were thrilled that the immunization was available because the year before the vaccine there were 58,000 new cases of childhood polio reported in the USA. It was inconceivable – back them – that a parent would have declined to vaccinate their child for polio. And polio virtually disappeared from the USA because virtually all children were vaccinated. Re measles and mumps: I suffered (terribly) from measles and mumps when I was a child because no vaccine was available. However, my children did NOT suffer because there was a vaccine available by the time they were born. I think back to the 1950s and to the neighborhood girl in an iron lung, and the neighborhood boy who was crippled from polio, and I think that there has to be a special place in hell for the parents who knowingly make their children (and other children) vulnerable to these terrible diseases because they refuse to vaccine their children, even though there is no scientific evidence that supports the position that vaccination is more dangerous than the diseases that vaccination prevents. I daresay that if one of these anti-vaccination parents actually saw firsthand their child suffering from measles and its complications, or if one of these anti-vaccine parents actually saw firsthand their child in an iron lung because of polio, their uninformed opinions on vaccination would quickly change.