Clever Currents: Vaccines: New Studies Show They Are Safe, And They Are Working.

A pair of unrelated studies were published in September. Both of them brought good news about the safety and efficacy of vaccines in young children. UNICEF reported that annual child deaths fell below 10 million for the first time since records have been kept. As they point out, 9.7 million deaths of children under 5 years is “unacceptable”. But the trend is good. Most of these deaths occur in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, and they are preventable. Much of the credit for the recent good news is the success of measles vaccination programs around the world. Add to this that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examined the record of over 1,000 children who were exposed to thimerosal in the 1990’s and found no link to neurological problems.

The Blue Lake take on it:
There will always be lingering doubts about vaccines – and this will always be a highly charged topic. The CDC study above did not examine links to autism. A separate study on that issue is expected in one year. A good source for reasonable advice to parents on vaccine safety is the American Academy of Pediatrics. The CDC also has an interesting comparison of the risk from vaccine vs. contracting a preventable disease.