Dear Science,

I don’t have kids of my own, but my friends are about to have a kid. They’re agonizing over vaccinations. Their argument: Since we’ve been vaccinating against the most serious infections for half a century, aren’t they basically extinct in the U.S.? Since vaccination has risk, why bother? We don’t vaccinate for smallpox. Who gets whooping cough these days? Or measles? For things that are caused by bacteria, on the rare chance their kid gets it, they say they can just use antibiotics. I’m not convinced. Are they right, Science?

Vaccination Skeptic

You’re right. Whooping cough is a good place to start in explaining why. Whooping cough is primarily caused by a bacterium called Bordetella pertussis. For the past decades, most children in the developed world have received (at least) three vaccinations against it (mixed in with vaccines against tetanus and diphtheria) at ages 2, 4, and 6 months; in more recent decades, most children have received this vaccine combination five times. It sounds like overkill; it isn’t. Despite all this effort, a tremendous number of adults get this infection every year. About a decade ago, a quick and dirty study of UCLA college students with a cough lasting six days or more showed that about a quarter of them had pertussis. What’s going on here?

Vaccines work by mimicking an infection—giving the immune system a chance to play-fight against a weakened (or dead) version of a real pathogen. The result (when things work) is memory immune cells that are prepped and honed against the disease. This practice against a weakened stand-in prepares the immune system to fight off the real deal with far more efficiency. With pertussis, this memory wears out over time. Decades into life, we’ve forgotten how to fight the whooping cough bug. We get sick, but not as sick as we would have become as a kid. The CDC now recommends that all adults get a booster at least once. If you haven’t, you should. Right now. Go to the health department and demand a Tdap.

When an adult (who hasn’t received a booster) is infected with pertussis and comes into contact with a newborn (before the first vaccination against whooping cough), the kid gets sick—really sick. Antibiotics don’t work once the disease has started, as the real disease is caused by toxins made by the bacteria. The kid coughs so hard he can’t breathe. Brain damage can occur. The kid typically ends up in the ICU, where his stay will cost more than a lifetime of preventative health care.

For the love of all living things, people, vaccinate your kids. It’s an act of pure selfishness not to.

Sincerely Yours,

Science

Send your science questions to
dearscience@thestranger.com

Jonathan Golob is an actual doctor.

10 replies on “Dear Science”

  3. Science, You neglected to mention that “who gets whooping cough [and measles] these days” are un-vaccinated children. In the few years since people have started vacillating over vaccinating their children the number of preventable childhood deaths from these diseases have skyrocketed!

  4. Preach it, Golub.

    The parents are “agonizing” over vaccinations? I don’t think so. The agonizing won’t start until the parents are sitting up one night in the dim light of their kid’s hospital room, watching their child’s ribs pop into prominence with each breath, watching the lcd trace of the heartbeat on the monitor, wondering if s/he’ll be ok, and realizing too late they’ve let the anti-vaccine movement turn them into the moral equivalent of those Jehova’s Witnesses who let their kids die of easily treatable bowel obstructions.

  5. Too many people listen to crazies like Jenny McCarthy over actual scientists. Thanks for spreading the word, Golub. I hope people are listening.

  7. Never mind tetanus, which doesn’t have a human reservoir, so there will never be herd immunity for these “i trust my kids immune system” luddites. I trust immune systems too–to respond to vaccines!

  9. Can we take a moment to say, once again, loud and clear: Vaccines do not cause autism.
    The only scientific paper to make this claim has bee roundly discredited.

    this cannot be said often enough: there is no risk to vaccinating your child. There is significant risk in not doing so.

  10. @9….and even assuming the infinitesimal chance that vaccines did have something to do with autism, would you really rather your child DIE than get autism? If so, fuck you and go to hell.

Comments are closed.