Unvaccinated Children May Be a Risk to Kids Going Through Chemo

For clarity, an unvaccinated child only poses a risk to others if infected with a disease. “The healthy unvaccinated child poses no risk to the child undergoing cancer therapy, unless the healthy child has an active infection,” emphasizes Dr. Olshefski. But, if they do expose a child with a weak immune system to a disease, it can be particularly dangerous. “Children with poor immune systems don't clear infections as easily and are at increased risk for complications from the infection. For example, a simple cold may evolve into pneumonia.”  In short, these infections can turn deadly. “The sad fact is that children can die from vaccine-preventable infections, and that risk is higher in cancer patients.”

So the risk to a child going through cancer treatment increases if they are exposed to a number of children who have not been vaccinated. This is based on the concept of “herd immunity.” What this means is that the more people in a community who are vaccinated, the lower the risk for everyone in the community. But if there are a number of people in the community not vaccinated, the risk for everybody goes up.

And so a child going through chemo has an increased risk of a deadly infection if they attend a school where large numbers of children are not vaccinated. Dr. Olshefski says, “We also want the children to be able live normal lives. We encourage the children to attend school and other community events, when possible. That is only possible when the population the children are exposed to have been properly vaccinated as recommended.”

Recently, an article on a website called Scary Mommy documented one mom’s plea to parents of healthy children to vaccinate if possible. The article went viral.

The laws on immunizations vary state to state and there is no federal law on vaccinations. As of December 2018, all 50 states allow parents to abstain from vaccinations for their children for medical reasons including cancer treatments or autoimmune disorders; 47 states allow for vaccination exemptions for religious reasons; and just 17 states allow for philosophical/personal belief exemptions.

Fueled by the anti-vaccine movement, bills allowing freedom from vaccination have been introduced in many state legislatures in recent years. But there is evidence out this week that many of these anti-vaccine bills are not being passed. A new study found it’s far more likely that a pro-vaccine bill that limits exceptions from the requirement that children be vaccinated to attend public schools is more likely to become law than an anti-vaccine bill.

The debate around the right to choose not to vaccinate your children is nothing newit’s been around for many years. Much of today’s anti-vaccine movement was fueled by the medical journal The Lancet, which published an article in 1999 that claimed to show a link between the Measles Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. The journal later retracted the findings after 10 of the 12 co-authors themselves issued a “retraction of interpretation” to clarify that they did not find a causal link between a vaccine and autism in children. Today the study is viewed by the medical community as totally discredited.

 

Today, parents who are against vaccination are generally concerned about both the safety and the effectiveness of these immunizations, explains Ashley Everly, a toxicologist who works with Health Freedom Idaho. Vaccines contain aluminum, she says, which has been studied and found to potentially cause neurological damage. Further, she believes, “Vaccines are only tested for their ability to produce antibodies. However, the presence of antibodies does not equate to having immunity. Individuals may not develop antibodies in response to vaccination at all, but if a person does, the antibodies wane relatively quickly over time.”

More important to her is that she feels that parents are not being given all the information before vaccinating their children. “Doctors are not educated on vaccine ingredients, adverse reactions and events, the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, the current independent scientific research beyond the industry-funded papers that the CDC presents to the public, and more. Parents walk into a well-check appointment for their new baby and have no idea what the potential consequences are when they vaccinate, and so many families live with such terrible regret that they did not educate themselves first.”

But while the anti-vaccine community continues to push their claims that vaccines can be dangerous and they have the right to refuse them for their children, in the the medical community today there is no debate. “The evidence that vaccines are safe and effective has been supported by numerous research studies,” says Dr. Olshefski. There is a clear consensus in the medical community about the value of vaccinations. “High immunization rates have reduced dramatically the incidence of many diseases, such as diphtheria, measles, mumps, polio, tetanus, and others.”

And he says the way to have an effective vaccination program is widespread immunization and careful surveillance to detect outbreaks of infections. This approach, he says will keep the virus from reproducing and keep all children safe from preventable diseases.

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