So the Today show had two interesting subjects on today...cord blood and vaccines. Two things I am totally up in the air on. The first segment was about a family who's little boy was diagnosed with cerebral palsy around 2 years of ages and his parents happened to have banked his cord blood. After his diagnosis, they entered in a experimental study at Duke and he received a transfusion of his own stem cells. His progress was almost immediate. He had not spoken hardly ever and within days was vocal. All kinds of changes for the good. Enough that the doctors said the disease could practically go away. Very interesting and I hope they continue to do more research on it. We had decided not to bank Zach's cord blood. Its a fairly new process and fairly expensive upfront. About $2000 for the collection and storage for the first year and then about $125 every year thereafter. Kinda like an insurance policy since you never know if you would use it or not, but maybe for the next baby I will think more about it now....
And the next is the highly controversial segment on vaccines. Some people are now saying that vaccines are linked to autism as I'm sure you have heard. Well this segment showed both extremes. One mother gave her twin boys the standard vaccines and after the 15 month shots saw a total regression. They went back to like a 9 month milestones and worse. Another mom chose not to get the shots and her little girl got spinal meningitis. So the extremes of both. Some friends recommended reading The Vaccine Book by Dr Sears I think it was? Its a really tough decision. Obviously I would never want my child to get sick and or potentially die due to not getting vaccines, but at the same time, it would be horrible to go through the experience of vaccinating him and then see him totally regress too. Apparently a family won some lawsuit this week due to their child being diagnosed with autism related to the shots. It appears that the MMR shot at 15 months that seems to be in question the most, as well as the mercury in the DPT shots. So what do you do? The risk of infectious disease would seem to outweigh the chances of negative effects of the vaccines, especially since the CDC says there is no correlation. Then how do you explain how seemingly "normal" children go from happy kiddos to non-vocal and hardly recognizing their parents??? I don't know? Is it coincidence due to the timing of the shots and the developmental stages of kids? Who knows, but its just another thing to think about...
Then all of this gets me thinking, what should Zach be doing at this point? Anything yet? He is 1 month old today! Most milestones I see are at the 2-3 month stage so not a lot to judge yet.
Anyway, just more things to add to the list of worries and decisions but I guess that is just part of being a parent...
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Paranoia!
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I will say that there are a lot of kids with autism out there. I run into it a lot with my kids' friends. I got my kids vaccinated, but stopped when they wanted to make my kids do Hep A (it was just coming out as required). I think shots may be required for school though. As a homeschooler, I don't have that issue so I am not sure on current laws.
ReplyDeletei talked to a pediatrician about this too and the ped said there is no link btwn vaccines and autism - just one doctor's opinion. you do have to have your shots to start school, but she said there is some court waiver you can get to enroll your kids if they haven't been immunized. i don't know what the requirements are for that. for my two cents, my kid is getting her shots!
ReplyDeleteBased on my research, the link to autism is strong (& recently was admitted to by the government) ONLY for vaccines that contain mercury (ingredient starts with a T - can't remember what it's called), which is commonly EXCLUDED from vaccines now (they are excluded in the TX Children's network of doctors' offices). They have not been able to prove a link when mercury is excluded, but the anecdotal evidence is scary for any parent. There is a form of autism that is regressive which would show up around 15 mo so it COULD be a coincidence, but that doesn't reassure me much. I figure in the US where most children are immunized it is probably not too big a risk to put off the immunizations until they are older, but if you take them to the airport, for instance, or a foreign country or anywhere else where the risk of contracting one of these diseases is higher then that might be different. We struggled when we took J to Europe at 15 mo - just at the critical age! I have a friend who is opposed to vaccines & she recommended a great web site - I will try to find b/c it's a great source of info. I have gotten all of J's vaccines (although I delayed the MMR), but the web site suggests that a child can gain the necessary immunities just by being around a child who has recently been vaccinated - interesting!
ReplyDeleteI would have loved to have banked Danny's cord blood, but it was so cost prohibitive. Maybe if we hadn't spent all of our money on fertility treatments! (Sorry, did that sound bitter?) :) I am concerned about the vaccines thing, but we are going to go ahead and get them. We feel it's riskier if he doesn't.
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