Vermont Is No. 1 for Shots, but Vaccine Foes Do Exist

Hannah Schwartz wasn’t surprised to hear Vermont has the highest rate of childhood immunization in the country.

Though the state has a reputation for harboring freethinkers and a seemingly high population of those who practice alternative medicine, Schwartz, a midwife in training, knows it also has a few key elements that support the medical establishment’s view on preventing some childhood disease.

There’s Dr. Dynasaur, which gets uninsured children in to see a doctor, and there’s a statewide system that emphasizes conventional forms of preventive medicine for children.

“It’s really pushed here,” Schwartz said of immunizations.

Schwartz, 24, chose not to immunize her 2-year-old boy. But she’s in the minority, and she knows it. Nationwide, the childhood immunization rate is at an all-time high, with more than 90% of toddlers receiving critical vaccines by age 2. And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, last year Vermont had the highest rate for some common childhood immunizations in the country.

Most doctors believe that’s great news.

“Look at the things that have made a difference in the population’s health in the past 100 years,” said Dr. Joseph Hagan, a pediatrician in South Burlington. “Public hygiene, better nutrition and immunizations.”

That’s part of the issue, say parents who choose not to immunize: Immunizations are a public health measure. But parents as individuals can choose not to immunize because they protect their individual children against disease in other ways, such as breast-feeding and keeping them away from children who appear to be ill. Being aware of their emotional health helps too, they say.

“I’m willing to strengthen my kids’ immunity through good food, a healthy lifestyle, good sleep patterns, lots of time outside, and a safe exposure to germs,” said Kris Coville, 32, who with her husband, Glenn, owns the 240-acre Craftsbury farm where the Covilles and the Schwartz family live. “I allow them to gain immunity from the world around them.”

The other part of the issue, and the most important one for those parents, is the possibility that immunizations do sometimes harm children. Schwartz and the Covilles believe they cause lupus, asthma and food allergies. Schwartz herself was never immunized against anything as a child.

And most parents hear stories sooner or later about a baby who was severely harmed by the pertussis shot, for example.

“There have been hundreds of cases of children becoming mentally retarded from vaccinations. Everything from allergies to learning disabilities are linked to vaccinations,” said Amy Butler, 27, of Plainfield, the mother of a 19-month-old. “Most children that die of SIDS had vaccinations in the last 48 hours. Most doctors won’t admit it.”

Immunization supporters say the chance of harm is tiny compared to the risks posed by the once-common childhood diseases.

“I will not dispute that [harm from the pertussis shots] has occurred,” said Hagan, who teaches at the University of Vermont’s medical school. But doctors today use a different vaccine that is much less risky than even five years ago, he said. And sometimes neurological illnesses that strike seemingly healthy babies are blamed wrongly on immunizations.

“There has been some over-identification of alleged pertussis injury, in which people have tried to explain other horrible things that have happened at random,” he said. “The serious reactions that caused irreversible brain damage are over-identified by medical malpractice suits and by the press. If you look critically at a lot of these cases, these kids did not have pertussis reactions, they had something else.”

Hagan believes some people choose not to immunize because they haven’t seen the harm infectious diseases can do.

“Parents are questioning it now because they don’t know these diseases,” he said. “Few people have any idea what diphtheria is. If you want to know, go to the old cemetery [in town] and look for an old family plot from the turn of the last century, and you’ll find a few family plots where an entire family died in a six-week period in the winter, and if you go to the town records you’ll find they died of diphtheria.”

Glenn Coville, 27, said drug companies promote immunizations because they are a huge moneymaker. “I think doctors have perfectly good motives,” he said.

Schwartz and the Covilles are not alone in their beliefs. A study in the November issue of Pediatrics magazine found that about one-fourth of parents surveyed said children get too many immunizations, weakening their ability to fight diseases.

Public health officials who disagree approach the issue in two ways.

First, they’re trying to reach children who don’t have their shots not because of philosophical reasons but because they don’t see the doctor regularly, and steering them toward clinics.

In mid-December, then-President Clinton announced a new federal effort that will have the Agriculture Department, which administers the federal nutrition program for Women, Infants and Children (or WIC), examine the immunization status of children and refer those who don’t have their shots to local health providers or clinics. Uninsured children receive vaccinations free under the Vaccines for Children program. Data show that in 41 states, children enrolled in WIC are less likely to have their immunizations up to date.

Secondly, they are mounting an information campaign to reach parents who oppose the shots on other grounds with the National Network for Immunization Information, launched recently by the American Academy of Pediatrics and three other medical groups. It has a Web site that Hagan hopes will serve as a balance to a mass of unsubstantiated information on immunization.

“I think there are so many people out there who are anti-immunization simply based on feeling, not based on science,” Hagan said.

The Covilles, Butler and Schwartz, for their part, and Hagan, for his, are careful to emphasize that they respect the other side’s opinion. Hagan said many parents ask him questions when they bring their children in for shots, and some ultimately choose not to immunize.

And parents who bar their children from being immunized said they might approach the question differently if they lived in a more populated area, such as New York City, or sent their children to day care.

“It’s a really hard decision to make, because children do die of infectious diseases,” said Kris Coville, who has a 19-month-old, a 4-year-old and a baby on the way. “Childhood diseases are risky, but my belief is vaccines are also risky. Parents need to be able to be informed and make a choice.”

But they resent knowing that some might consider them bad parents for refusing to immunize. On a recent trip to the pediatrician, Glenn Coville read the package insert for the diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine. The shot contained a tiny amount of formaldehyde.

“Think about injecting that stuff right into your child’s bloodstream,” he said. “People, when they say we’re irresponsible . . . the mainstream is feeding their kids sugar, putting them in front of the TV eight hours a day, all these immune-suppressing things, and then they immunize their kids and feel really good about it.

“You can do all these immune-suppressing activities and still get the A-OK from the pediatrician because you immunize,” he said.

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National Network for Immunization Information: https://www.immunizationinfo.org

American Academy of Pediatrics: https://www.aap.org