There is talk, maybe too much talk, about vaccines. Scrutiny of the most common and proven
vaccines, vaccines that for decades have successfully prevented horrible
disease with very little risk to the general population has been and is still
under fire. The current Secretary for the
Dept. of Health and Human Services (DHSS) and his anti-vaxxing cadre conspire
to turn science on its head, advocating for unproven and potentially dangerous changes,
derived from a level of ignorance that often crosses into sheer stupidity.
All the information is out there.
Many decades of study and research and data collection have shown the
benefits far, far outweigh the potential risks, which are very small. But I guess some folks cannot see what’s
plainly proven since they have not “seen” or experienced the effects
themselves, which is the whole reason for vaccines—so you’d never acquire the
disease or see it in someone else. Lack
of direct personal experience—again, I’m supposing here—possibly clouds their
judgment. The conspiracy behind vaccines
holds tightly in their minds, but their locked-in beliefs affects others,
particularly their own children whom they choose not to vaccinate, and to the
family and friends whom they influence against vaccinations.
Sometimes direct, eyewitness, personal experience may prove helpful, for
I’ve actually seen cases of vaccine-preventable disease, all of which were
truly scary and devastating.
Epiglottitis
The Haemophilus influenza B (HiB) vaccination came out for young
children in the mid-1980s. This was
designed to prevent childhood meningitis, a life-threatening disease. It also prevents epiglottis,
a dire condition caused by the same bug, where the epiglottis (the flap that
closes the voice box and larynx when swallowing) becomes severely swollen,
potentially obstructing the airway, which can lead to death. Children have very small airways and can
obstruct easily, which is the reason they are immediately brought to the OR to
secure their airway with intubation (carefully placing a tube through
the larynx in down into the trachea) or tracheotomy
–both very difficult and much riskier in a small child under emergent
conditions, given the very small and soft trachea, the size of a straw in
really young kids. I saw two
epiglottitis cases as a resident at Children’s Hospital in Wisconsin in the
early 1990s. Both required an immediate
trip to the OR, intubation (thankfully no emergent trach) followed by ICU
admission for at least a week. Fortunately,
I’ve not seen childhood epiglottitis in private practice due to the vaccination,
though I’ve seen them in adults born long before the vaccine was
administered. But adults have much
larger airways with more airspace to spare, and most of the time they can be
treated without having to secure the airway with intubation or a trach. In the last 30+ years, I can recall only two
adults whom I brought to the OR to secure the airway with a tracheotomy, but the
others we were able to manage in the ICU without a trip to the OR. The concern comes with the decrease in
vaccinations, and cases of childhood epiglottitis may creep up.
Tetanus
Yes this still exists. The
bacterium creates dormant spores that live a long time (they survive for
decades, even under extreme heat or freezing conditions) and reside anywhere in
the environment, found in dust, soil or rusting objects. The risk of tetanus is virtually
everywhere. All it takes is cut in the
skin and exposure to the spores. And
what kid doesn’t get dirty playing outside in dirt and dust? I’ve told this story before (Listen
to Your Mother…) and will recapture the main summary: an elderly man
brought to me by his son, a man who could not speak or eat given his “locked
jaw,” frozen shut by the spasm of tetanus.
About a week prior he had cut his hand on a rusty chain fence and
received his first tetanus vaccination when he presented to urgent care. But this was too late. I admitted him to the hospital, consulted the
infectious disease doc who confirmed tetanus, started treatment, but
unfortunately the poor patient went into respiratory arrest and died a few days
later.
Polio
Polio has been nearly eradicated.
Yet I recall, as a med student in the late 1980s, rounding on a VA
patient chronically bedridden on a ventilator for 20 years! He was unvaccinated, contracted polio, became
paralyzed from the neck down and never recovered. He needed a trach tube through his neck for
the ventilator. He was in a private room
on the top floor, where nurses attended to his daily needs and the medicine
team rounded on him once a week.
Franklin D. Roosevelt (U.S. president during World War II, for those
ignorant of history) had polio, before a vaccine was invented. He was paralyzed from the waist down and
tried to conceal this from the public; photos typically show him seated, but
there are rare photos showing him in a wheel chair or with braces on his legs.
Polio is easily preventable; the vaccine has been around for well over a
half century with proven safety. I
received mine through oral syrup as a kid.
Small pox
Lastly, small pox has essentially been eradicated with a vaccine, such
that a small pox vaccine is no longer needed.
In the 1950s, WHO (the World Health Organization) began a global
vaccination campaign, making it the only human disease to be eradicated. The vaccinations thus stopped in the
mid-1970s. I still have my small pox
vaccine scar on my left arm—and never remembered getting it.
Vaccines can wipe out an entire type of devastating infectious disease, only with a willing population acting not only for themselves but contributing to the health and safety of fellow citizens and the greater good of humanity in general. Granted, there are risks with vaccines--this goes with anything in medicine or with any worthwhile endeavor in any field. However, history and data have shown the risk of complications are extremely low, and the benefits far outweigh those potential risks.
©Randall
S. Fong, M.D.
For more topics on
medicine, health and the weirdness of life in general, check out the rest of
the blog site at randallfong.blogspot.com
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