The Fat Lady Sings

Relax, It's Just A Little Pinprick

Thus far, the most confusing thing I have had to face as a mother has been the decision regarding which vaccinations my son will receive and when he'll receive them. I'm trying to approach this from the position that the standard immunization schedule is not set in stone.

Before Myles was born, we interviewed his pediatrician to be sure that he would support our decision to delay the vaccination schedule and possibly skip some of the shots altogether. Then I began doing the necessary research to determine which shots we want Myles to receive and at what age.

The available information about childhood immunizations is all over the map. It's difficult to find anything that is not at best, completely polarized to one opinion or another and at worst alarmist and paranoid.

In one camp there are the purists who feel that not providing every vaccination available to your child is tantamount to abuse. On the other side, you have those who believe that immunizations are no longer necessary and that we are injecting high levels of toxic substances into our children for diseases to which they have little or no chance of ever being exposed.

I fall somewhere squarely in the middle. I believe that vaccinations save lives. I know that there are diseases out there that we need to protect Myles against and I feel fortunate that we live in a developed country where they are readily available. However I also believe that many of the immunizations children receive on the traditional schedule are given too early and some need not be given at all.

For example, the varicella vaccine, which protects against chicken pox, can lead to bigger problems later in life. If a child gets chicken pox it is almost never serious and their exposure to the virus, which is what the vaccine essentially does in smaller amounts, will ensure their immunity.

The varicella vaccine can lose it's efficacy over time, leaving an unwitting adult who has been vaccinated as a child at risk for shingles, a much more dangerous form of the virus. We've decided we would much rather Myles get the natural immunity from a case of chicken pox at a young age and if he doesn't get them by the time he's six or seven, we'll consider having him inoculated.

In addition, there are diseases for which a two month old child simply does not need to be immunized, such as tetanus. It's my opinion that when Myles is on the move 12 months from now, that would be the time to get him a tetanus booster. Right now, his chances of getting tetanus are slim to none.

Another example is the Hepatitis B vaccine. Because there is little to no chance that Myles will be coming into contact with the blood or bodily fluids of someone at risk for the disease, like a prostitute or an IV drug user, we've chosen to wait until he's 12 or 13 years old to administer this vaccine.

That's as far as I've gotten at this point. For those of us who are considering delaying and selectively vaccinating, the amount of research we have to do on our own (and our children's) behalves is astounding, confusing and downright frightening.

There is a great deal of anecdotal evidence around the ingredients in immunizations, or the amount and age at which they are administered, being linked to the onset of autism, although the medical community patently denies a connection at this point. In addition to concerns about autism, I'm just not ready to start injecting large amounts of viruses and toxins into my 11 pound 3 1/2 month old child.

Of course I could save myself the trouble of trying to figure all of this out for myself by vaccinating with all the recommended shots on the prescribed schedule, but I just don't feel comfortable with that. I would never, ever do anything to hurt Myles. At this point, I'm not sure that giving him the vaccines would be better than not giving them to him for a little longer.

The debate about this issue tends to get extremely heated. People on either side of the spectrum feel passionately that their position is the correct one. Those who favor vaccinating believe that their decision to protect their children gives those who don't wish to vaccinate the latitude to make that decision safely. Conversely, those who don't vaccinate at all feel that those who do are putting their children at great risk.

Complicating the issue further, as I recently discovered when we purchased private health insurance, many insurance companies in the US don't offer coverage for immunization, or offer very little, as is the case with our insurance company.

The first round of vaccinations, recommended at two months would have cost us almost $800 out of pocket. By my estimation, the total out of pocket cost for all recommended vaccines would be more than $7000. So for us, and many other Americans, any vaccinations that we do choose will have to be administered by the Department of Public Health at a greatly discounted rate.

It's confounding to me that such great importance is placed on childhood immunization, so much so that the government in some states is making it mandatory that new immunizations, such as the HPV vaccine be administered to all girls by the time they reach seventh grade. Don't even get me started on the fact that the government is now mandating vaccination against an STD for 12 year old girls. At the same time, pharmaceutical companies, health insurers and the government make it expensive and difficult for many of us to have access to those same mandatory vaccines.

In our state, children must have a certain list of vaccinations before they are allowed to enter the public school system. Additionally, if we want to take Myles out of the country, which we will likely do before he's five or six, he'll have to be current on all his immunizations. I'm fine with that. I'm just not ready to give him all the vaccines right away.   

As far as I'm concerned, it's a very personal, individual decision. I want to do everything I can to be sure Myles will be as healthy as possible and for me, at the moment, that means not vaccinating on schedule.

I just wish there were more sane, solid information available on the subject so that anyone who chooses this route can make the most informed decisions possible.

*I know these aren't the exact Pink Floyd lyrics, but I'm taking artistic license.

**Cross posted at Soul Gardening

Anatomy of a disaster

In the new WP article about Cheney's excess of partisan zeal in reducing our environment to a polluted, hothouse mess, we find this scenario:

'Let the water flow'
There was, as it happened, an established exemption to the Endangered Species Act.

A rarely invoked panel of seven Cabinet officials, known informally as the "God Squad," is empowered by the statute to determine that economic hardship outweighs the benefit of protecting threatened wildlife. But after discussing the option with Smith, Cheney rejected that course. He had another idea, one that would not put the administration on record as advocating the extinction of endangered or threatened species.

The thing to do, Cheney told Smith, was to get science on the side of the farmers. And the way to do that was to ask the National Academy of Sciences to scrutinize the work of the federal biologists who wanted to protect the fish.

Smith said he told Cheney that he thought that was a roll of the dice. Academy panels are independently appointed, receive no payment and must reach a conclusion that can withstand peer review.

"It worried me that these are individuals who are unreachable," Smith said of the academy members. But Cheney was firm, expressing no such concerns about the result. "He felt we had to match the science."

Smith also wasn't sure that the Klamath case -- "a small place in a small corner of the country" -- would meet the science academy's rigorous internal process for deciding what to study. Cheney took care of that. "He called them and said, 'Please look at this, it's important,'" Smith said. "Everyone just went flying at it."

William Kearney, a spokesman for the National Academies, said he was unaware of any direct contact from Cheney on the matter. The official request came from the Interior Department, he said.

It was Norton who announced the review, and it was Bush and his political adviser Karl Rovewho traveled to Oregon in February 2002 to assure farmers that they had the administration's support. A month later, Cheney got what he wanted when the science academy delivered a preliminary report finding "no substantial scientific foundation" to justify withholding water from the farmers.

There was not enough clear evidence that proposed higher lake levels would benefit suckerfish, the report found. And it hypothesized that the practice of releasing warm lake water into the river during spawning season might do more harm than good to the coho, which thrive in lower temperatures.

Norton flew to Klamath Falls in March to open the head gate as farmers chanted "Let the water flow!" And seizing on the report's draft findings, the Bureau of Reclamation immediately submitted a new decade-long plan to give the farmers their full share of water.

When the lead biologist for the National Marine Fisheries Service team critiqued the science academy's report in a draft opinion objecting to the plan, the critique was edited out by superiors and his objections were overruled, he said. The biologist, Michael Kelly, who has since quit the federal agency, said in a whistle-blower claim that it was clear to him that "someone at a higher level" had ordered his agency to endorse the proposal regardless of the consequences to the fish.

Months later, the first of an estimated 77,000 dead salmon began washing up on the banks of the warm, slow-moving river. Not only were threatened coho dying -- so were chinook salmon, the staple of commercial fishing in Oregon and Northern California. State and federal biologists soon concluded that the diversion of water to farms was at least partly responsible.

Fishermen filed lawsuits and courts ruled that the new irrigation plan violated the Endangered Species Act. Echoing Kelly's objections, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit observed that the 10-year plan wouldn't provide enough water for the fish until year nine. By then, the 2005 opinion said, "all the water in the world" could not save the fish, "for there will be none to protect." In March 2006, a federal judge prohibited the government from diverting water for agricultural use whenever water levels dropped beneath a certain point.

Last summer, the federal government declared a "commercial fishery failure" on the West Coast after several years of poor chinook returns virtually shut down the industry, opening the way for Congress to approve more than $60 million in disaster aid to help fishermen recover their losses. That came on top of the $15 million that the government has paid Klamath farmers since 2002 not to farm, in order to reduce demand.

The science academy panel, in its final report, acknowledged that its draft report was "controversial," but it stood by its conclusions. Instead of focusing on the irrigation spigot, it recommended broad and expensive changes to improve fish habitat.

"The farmers were grateful for our decision, but we made the decision based on the scientific outcome," said the panel chairman, William Lewis, a biologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "It just so happened the outcome favored the farmers."

But J.B. Ruhl, another member of the panel and a Florida State University law professor who specializes in endangered species cases, said the Bureau of Reclamation went "too far," making judgments that were not backed up by the academy's draft report. "The approach they took was inviting criticism," Ruhl said, "and I didn't think it was supported by our recommendations."

So, they threw $75 million at the problem, had the worst fishkill in history anyway, and the problem remains and will get worse as the glaciers in the american west disappear and global warming dries out the breadbasket of North America.

How much does it cost to build a desalination plant??  How many could we have built with $75 million and a functioning army corps of engineers?