National Infant Immunization Week (NIIW) is an annual observance to highlight the importance of protecting infants from vaccine-preventable diseases. In honor of NIIW, Kimball Medical Center pediatrician Neal Gittleman, MD, is offering five reasons why you should immunize your child. “As a parent, you want to do what is best for your children. You know about the importance of car seats, baby gates, and other ways to keep them safe,” says Dr. Gittleman. “However, one of the best ways to protect your children is to make sure they have all of their vaccinations.”
Immunizations can save your child’s life. Because of advances in medical science, your child can be protected against more diseases than ever before. Some diseases that once injured or killed thousands of children have been eliminated completely and others are close to being gone – primarily due to safe and effective vaccines. One example of the great impact vaccines can have is the eradication of polio in the United States. Polio was once America’s most-feared disease causing death and paralysis across the country but today, thanks to vaccination, there are no reports of polio in the United States.
Vaccination is safe and effective. All vaccines are only given to children after a long and careful review by scientists, doctors, and healthcare professionals. Vaccines will involve some discomfort and may cause pain, redness, or tenderness at the site of injection but this is minimal compared to the pain, discomfort, and trauma of the diseases these vaccines prevent. The most comprehensive scientific studies and reviews have not found a link between vaccines and autism. Groups of experts, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the National Institute of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other federal agencies also agree that vaccines are not responsible for the number of children now recognized to have autism.
Immunization protects others you care about. Serious vaccine-preventable diseases still occur. Unfortunately, some babies are too young to be completely vaccinated and some people may not be able to receive vaccinations due to allergies, illness, weakened immune systems, or other reasons. To help keep these individuals safe, it is important that you and your children who are able to get vaccinated are fully immunized. This not only protects your family, but also helps prevent the spread of these diseases to your friends and loved ones.
Immunizations can save your family time and money. A child with a vaccine-preventable disease can be kept out of schools or daycare facilities. A prolonged illness can take a financial toll because of lost time at work, medical bills, or long-term disability care. In comparison, getting vaccinated against these diseases is a good investment and usually covered by insurance. If cost is an issue for you, vaccines are available at no cost to children who might not otherwise be vaccinated because of inability to pay through a federally-funded program called Vaccines for Children. To find out more, ask your child’s healthcare provider.
Immunization protects future generations. Vaccines have reduced and, in some cases, eliminated many diseases that killed or severely disabled people just a few generations before. For example, smallpox vaccination helped eradicate that disease world wide. Your children don’t have to get smallpox shots any more because the disease no longer exists. If we keep vaccinating now, parents in the future may be able to trust that diseases like polio and measles won’t infect, cripple, or kill children.
To schedule an appointment with Dr. Gittleman or another pediatrician on staff at Kimball Medical Center, please call the Saint Barnabas Health Care Link at 1-888-SBHS-123 (888-724-7123).
Call the CDC yourself. There is a particular vaccine which is given to newborn babies born in NJ hospitals, followed by 3 or more boosters within the next few months, unless rejected by the parent or guardian. When the CDC was asked for information on the long term studies performed on the adverse effects of this vaccine, they stated:
“We have no information on long term studies performed. But as far as we know there are no long term adverse effects”.
Can you make heads or tails of this statement?
Do you really want to inject something into your child that does not have long term studies performed?
Most studies performed to monitor for adverse reactions to vaccinations are done for several days to several weeks. There are no long-term (i.e. months or years) safety studies on vaccines.
And in the meantime, we see many diseases on the rise: cancer, ulcerated colitis, Crohn’s disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, asthma, autism to name a few.
This is not to say that immunizations do not at times serve a necessary purpose. However, childhood vaccines, in its present numbers and forms, are definitely under strong suspicion of posing one of the major causes of the increasing pattern of sickness, allergies, autism, and other neurobehavioral problems now being seen in our youngsters….
If we continue to enforce vaccine programs, one shudders to think how the future will look…
Don’t vaccinate before you educate!
The fact is that when the vaccines came out, the diseases were 99% gone already – check the facts. The vaccines were worked on for a long time and then they realized that even though the diseases were gone we spent so much money on it that we need to make that money back by forcing people to get vaccinated. It’s the govt’ in with the drug companies – who are the ones who educate the dr. ……
whoever let’s their children be vaccinated before eighteen is oiver on killing another human being. am i being too dramatic? no i don’t think so. you read my next sentence and decide. as any young parent knows the pediatrician always says, “keep the baby away from people with colds and even coughs”, if so you tell me if any child should be vaccinated with flu or hepatitis vaccines.
now that you are allowed to choose. and you know that you do NOT have to vaccinate your children or yourself for that matter no matter how dramatic the dr’s are especially this one.
one last piece of advice from someone who has been shoved almost every medical thing the dr’s can think of to in my case and caused me 11 yeas of almost constant misery. trust your gut it makes more sense then the 5 reasons mentioned above even if we assume what she said it’s true it was just copied almost word for word from a medical book.
For those who are not brave enough to go against what your doctor recommends (which is what he was brainwashed in medical school but most likely never researched or studied the topic himself), the least you can do for your child is to delay the immunizations. In Japan, the rate of SIDS dropped dramatically when they postponed the recommended schedule from 3 months of age to 2 years of age.
published medical literature shows that vaccines alter the genetic code of people causing them to suffer damage to their immune systems, which is making them vulnerable to numerous physical and psychological complications.
A single vaccine give to a 6-pound newborn is equivalent to giving 30 vaccines in the same day to a 180-pound adult.
I have chosen not to immunize my two children. The risk of immunizing was greater than the risk of infection by disease. Now that mumps is so rampant in lakewood I’ve considered immunizing solely with the mumps vaccine. I’ve called numerous pediatrician offices but noone offers just the mumps vaccine. Does anyone have any input or suggestions?
My family only uses Dr Gittleman because he gives drugs only when necessary and not when its convenient. This is a fact known throughout lkwd and its a major factor why there is a waiting list to get into his practice. So i find it quite humorous that people who may have read an article here and there think they know more then a brilliant doctor with thousands of patients.
a. It seems that you decided for yourself that the knowledge of people who are speaking up is limited to having “read an article here and there”. That is quite humorous.
b. Since when does one person have a monopoly on brilliance?
Enough of all this silly talk from doctors who have years of medical training and experience with thousands of kids! Enough of these “studies” by drug companies who will be held financially and punitively accountable if they are guilty of misinformation!
I am going to trust my chiropractor, because she also has experience in reiki, jiu-jitsu and homeopathy, and she lived in India for a year before she became frum. She says to trust my gut. Although there’s no real way to know, she may even have some training. When I was suffering from hypochondriasis, she put me on a strict regimen of placebos, and I felt better almost instantly. Besides, in the days of the Romans, they had no vaccines, and it doesn’t say anywhere that they had polio.
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If it were possible for the drug companies to be held financially accountable, there would probably be a lot more long term studies performed. And there would probably be a lot fewer recommended shots. But since the law was passed in 1986 that the drug companies who manufacture the shots are not directly liable for adverse reactions, and the government instead takes the responsibility (i.e. and pays out for people adversely affected by shots), this is not the case.