(Host) Vermont has the second-to-last rate in the nation for childhood
immunizations. Commentator Deborah Luskin thinks that Vermont parents
who opt out of vaccinating their children put their children,
themselves, and other Vermonters at risk for preventable disease.
(Luskin)
When we were expecting our first child, my husband and I visited local
cemeteries in search of old fashioned, New England names.
I was
drawn to the flat, black, slates that predate the Revolutionary War. I
read with some foreboding about twenty-year old Elizabeths and Susannahs
who were buried with their infants in their arms. As an older
first-time mom, I knew pregnancy carried risks for me as well as our
child. But I was healthy, optimistic and had access to twentieth century
health care.
My husband, a physician, was drawn to clusters of
marble headstones from 1918, the year the Influenza Pandemic killed more than 20 million people around the world. He stood before two
large stones with a half dozen small ones between them: a whole family
wiped out. Vermont was hard hit, with more than 6,000 cases reported in a single week.
Tim pointed out small, hundred-year-old headstones
marking the graves of infants, toddlers and young children. "Whooping
Cough, Croup, German Measles – these were all fatal diseases back then,"
he told me. He pointed to a stone of a man who died in his thirties.
"My age," he said. "This guy could have died from a cut. Without the
tetanus vaccine, Lockjaw was common – and lethal."
Our children
were all born healthy, which is a mercy in itself. They were immunized
against polio, pertussis, tetanus, diphtheria, Rubella and Mumps.
My children had healthier childhoods than even I did.
I’m
old enough to remember my whole family trooping down to the local
junior high, where we ate sugar cubes laced with the new polio vaccine.
My parents, who’d spent their childhood summers avoiding movie theaters
and public swimming pools in fear of contracting the disease, were
vaccinated as well.
My children have flourished in Vermont, and
have traveled to less healthy corners of the world. Before leaving for
Turkey and Russia, they were vaccinated against Hepatitis A and B. For
trips to India, Rwanda, The Rift Valley, Siberia, Northern Thailand and
Morocco, they were inoculated against Typhoid, Yellow Fever and Japanese
Encephalitis. They also had Polio and Tetanus Boosters, and took
medication to prevent malaria.
Back home and off to dorm life,
they had shots to prevent HPV and meningitis. Every year, they’re
inoculated against influenza. I get a yearly flu shot, too. But none was
available for H1N1 the first year Swine Flu circled the globe – and put
me in bed for four miserable days. Global travel is a boon to the
spread of disease; no fence along a border can keep viruses out. Only
our own immune systems, triggered by vaccines, can effectively do that.
My
physician husband calls vaccines the most profound medical advance in
human history. I call them peace of mind. Thanks to immunizations, my
children are not likely to contract deadly, communicable, and
preventable diseases. In Vermont, they’re in much greater danger of
being hit by someone driving under the influence. Too bad we can’t
provide immunity for that.