After reading my last post on vaccinations, some of you may be considering (or reconsidering) the safeness and effectiveness of vaccines. Perhaps you want to do some research, but don’t know where to start. Well, today’s your lucky day! The lovely members of the Mothering Forums have compiled an outline of sorts to help organize each vaccine’s pertinent information.
For each VPD (vaccine preventable disease), research, research, research until you can fill in each part of the following outline:
1. Name of the disease
2. Description of the disease
3. Length of time from initial infection to end of all symptoms
4. Infectious period
5. Normal symptoms of the disease
6. Known serious consequences of the disease
7. Proportion of persons infected developing serious consequences
8. Transmission route of the disease
9. Prevalence of the disease
10. Treatments of the disease and efficacy of those treatments
11. Relevant research about the disease
12. Name of the vaccine
13. Company that makes the vaccine
14. Contents of the vaccine
14A. The significance of whether or not the vaccine is live
15. History of development of the vaccine
16. Known side-effects of the vaccine and rate of incidence of those side-effects
17. Possible side-effects not yet acknowledged by the vaccine maker
18. Relevant research into the vaccine
19. How effective is the vaccine at preventing the disease?
20. What is the vaccine meant to do? (Many vaccines are not meant to prevent infection or transmission.)
21. Number of cases reported each year
22. Number of deaths reported each year from the vaccine and natural disease
Here’s a list of resources to get you started:
Info from the CDC
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report: download the current issue
CDC Pink Book
Reported Cases and Deaths from VPDs, United States, 1950-2007
Info from VAERS
Package Inserts- .pdf format
Videos
Dr. Sherri Tenpenny talking about vaccines
Are Vaccines Safe?
Books
Vaccinations: A Thoughtful Parent’s Guide
What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Children’s Vaccinations
Excellent Blogs with References
Inside Vaccines
We don’t Buy It–specifically, Laura’s posts labeled Vaccines
I don’t claim to know everything there is to know about vaccines, but if you have a question, post it in the comments section or shoot me an e-mail. If I can’t answer it for you, I should be able to point you in the right direction.
Happy researching!
You can ask me as I’ve sold them for the past 5 years. Another book to consider is “Vaccines:What Every Parent Should Know” by Dr. Paul Offit.
Janet,
Since Dr. Paul Offit holds a vaccine patent, I’d say he’s probably the LEAST unbiased person to talk to about vaccines.
Again, we need to consult scholarly, peer-reviewed, UNBIASED resources when we conduct our research of vaccines. Offit’s book is 180 degrees away from unbiased.