YOU ARE WATCHING
Vaccines: Separating Fact from Fear Video Series
This is the content
NOW PLAYING: 3 of 10
Are Vaccinations Safe?
CHOP physicians point out how the side effects of vaccines are small risks compared to the larger benefits of vaccination against infectious diseases.
This video series answers questions many parents have about vaccines. It also contains the stories of several parents whose children suffered vaccine-preventable diseases.
Videos in this Series
- Introduction: Vaccine Safety Concerns
- Are Vaccinations Necessary?
- NOW PLAYING
Are Vaccinations Safe? - Why are There So Many Vaccines?
- Can My Baby Get Four or Five Vaccines at a Time?
- Is it Better to Be Naturally or Artificially Immunized?
- Is There a Link Between the MMR Vaccine and Autism?
- Do Vaccines Cause Chronic Illnesses?
- New Vaccines, Should You Wait?
- Vaccine Safety: Good Information vs. Bad Information
Transcript: Are Vaccinations Safe?
Parent: Are there any risks, and are they safe?
Paul A. Offit, MD: I think the heart of this, I think why we're here tonight, in some ways, is an attempt to answer the question, "Are vaccines safe?" All vaccines have mild side effects like pain or redness or tenderness where the shot is given, and some vaccines have more severe side effects. For example, the new pertussis vaccine, or whooping cough vaccine, is a very, very, rare cause of persistent, inconsolable crying, listlessness, lethargy, high fever. And so I think, any parent could reasonably ask, "Why not just avoid the risk and not get a vaccine?"
Marina Catallozzi, MD: Pertussis in its clinical form is really an awful disease and a devastating diseases to watch because there's really very little that you can do. In infants, specifically, you know, a young child is coughing; and we always think of it as a whooping cough. Young children cannot create a whoop, and so they basically become apneic. They stop breathing and turn blue. And this can happen at any time.
Kristine Macartney, MD:: Pertussis is very common in adults. In fact, it's a relatively common cause of an illness with prolonged cough in adults. And adults may not seek medical attention or be aware of what their infection is. They can then pass pertussis onto younger members of the family.
Marina Catallozzi, MD: Her two-month-old came in, wasn't breathing for a time, needed a breathing tube, was in the Intensive Care Nursery. The two-year-old was coughing and vomiting, unable to eat for a week. The four-year-old was coughing so horribly that she would ask for help before going into her coughing spasms. There was a 7-year-old and a 17-year-old, and each of those children really missed school for several weeks. The whole family was really adversely affected from something that could have been prevented. It's really hard as a caretaker to see the effect of choosing not to immunize.
Paul A. Offit, MD: For example, in Japan in the mid 1970s what happened when people stopped getting the pertussis vaccine is there was a dramatic increase in the number of hospitalizations and deaths from pertussis.
Marina Catallozzi, MD: The last thing I want to be doing is seeing a lot of measles cases or lots of polio cases or lots of cases of pertussis because I don't want to be good at those diseases. I want to see them really just in the textbooks.
Paul A. Offit, MD: We need to understand that vaccines certainly do have risks, but they're small. And if we choose not to get vaccines, then we're exchanging these small risks for much, much larger risks.
Contact Us
We would like to hear from you. Please use our online form to contact us with questions or comments.