It is reprinted with permission of the publisher, IDG Books. It seems that almost every month newspaper articles and television programs depict the horrors of vaccines. The villains of these stories are greedy vaccine manufacturers, disinterested doctors, and burdensome regulatory agencies. The focus of the stories is that children are hurt unnecessarily by vaccines, and the tone is one of intrigue and cover-up. Below we have listed the most commonly aired stories about vaccines and have tried to separate fact from myth.
Infants are too young to get vaccinated.
Children are immunized in the first few months of life because a number of vaccine-preventable diseases infect them when they are very young. Almost all of the cases are in children less than 1 year of age. Children under 2 years old are 500 times more likely to catch Hib meningitis if someone with a Hib infection is living in the home. About 90 percent of newborns whose mothers are infected with hepatitis B will contract hepatitis and go on to develop chronic liver disease, cirrhosis, and possibly liver cancer. For these reasons, it is very important for infants to be fully immunized against certain diseases by the time they are 6 months old.