Should i space vaccines

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Back to top. Allison Kempe, a University of Colorado School of Medicine professor of pediatrics who researches popular resistance to vaccines:. And that results in the child being unprotected for longer periods of time.

It may result in outbreaks of disease and it may mean that because the vaccines are spaced out, the child doesn't actually end up getting all of them because it involves coming in for so many appointments. All those things are unknown. And there's absolutely no science behind it, that's the biggest thing.

Ben Kruskal, a vaccine expert and director of infection control at Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, offers a similar view from the pediatric trenches.

I've broken down his concerns here into five parts:. Particularly because, as CDC vaccine-communication expert Glen Nowak points out, the diseases that vaccines can prevent are particularly dangerous when they occur in the youngest children. Under the standard CDC vaccine schedule , a child sometimes gets several shots at once. If those are spaced out, you have to bring the child in for more visits than the usual check-up schedule.

For very young children, Ben said, "I think the number of traumatic events is probably more relevant than the number of needles they get at one visit.

I think having three or four visits with one needle apiece is probably more traumatic to a baby than having one visit with three or four needles.

I've never seen data on this issue, but it's a very strong impression that I, and the clinical staff I work with, all share. Particularly in children around 1 year old and up, he said, if they're having one shot a week for several weeks, "By the third visit they tend to be really frightened, and it's terrible for the parents and it's terrible for the staff. Adds the CDC's Glen Nowak: "Some research suggests that it's really the first injection that causes the highest level of stress.

Each time you bring your child into the doctor's office for those extra shots, there's risk of various infections from the sick patients in the waiting room. The more "non-standard" a vaccination schedules is, the greater the likelihood of errors, Ben said.

If a medical staff is not used to a child's schedule, they might miss a vaccination or repeat it. Things "can go wrong," he said, "though the good news is that extra doses are not harmful.

But you're hurting the child for no reason. Let me not mince words. I believe deeply in the power of parental instinct, and in parents' rights to seek what they deem the best care for a child.

But it seems to me that many people are pulling these alternative vaccine schedules out of, shall we say, their bottoms, with no strong scientific basis for the timing they choose.

Thirty years ago, children received vaccines that protected against eight diseases: measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, Hemophilus influenzae type b and polio. The total number of bacterial and viral proteins contained in earlier versions of these vaccines was a little more than 3, Today, young children receive vaccines that protect against 14 diseases: the eight earlier ones plus hepatitis a, hepatitis B, rotavirus, influenza, chickenpox and pneumococcal disease.

But the total number of bacterial and viral components in these vaccines is only about When the vaccine for pertussis, or whooping cough, was developed, for example, it had about 3, such components, Feemster said. Now the vaccine contains three to five proteins. Studies have shown that it is just as stressful for babies to receive one shot as it is to receive more than one shot. Splitting each set of immunizations into two visits just doubles the stress in a child's life.

Some parents say they would prefer to space out their children's shots. Why is that bad? If a 2-month-old doesn't get a recommended vaccine dose to protect against pertussis, the baby could get this highly contagious disease and become severely ill, she said. Up to 80 percent of babies with whooping cough end up in the hospital, and about 1 in infants die. Whooping cough makes children cough uncontrollably. The cough is often so hard and so persistent that children make a pitiful "whooping" sound.

When children are not up-to-date on their vaccines, it not only increases the risk of disease for them, but also increases the risk that it will spread to other vulnerable people, she said.

How do we know that the recommended schedule is the best schedule? The federal government has a committee that reviews all available data on vaccine effectiveness and safety, and it updates the recommendations every year. The panel issues guidelines that are widely followed, including recommendations for childhood vaccines that form the basis for vaccination requirements set by public schools.