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Family Health: New Research Says Vaccines Are Safer Than You Might Think
August 29th, 2011
Photography by futureatlas.com, via Flickr (CC)
It’s a hot-button issue for parents: should you get your child vaccinated, or not? Parents on both sides of the fence are passionate about the topic and can readily offer a list of points for or against immunization. But new research from the Institute of Medicine may change the way that you look at vaccines.
According to a report by NPR.org:
“The independent panel considered adverse effects from eight common childhood vaccines, and found that in many cases there wasn’t enough evidence to say if there was a problem. But the committee came out loud and clear on the controversial question which drove the report. Do vaccines—such as the one against measles, mumps and rubella—cause autism? Nope.”
“With the start of the new school year, it’s time to ensure that children are up to date on their immunizations, making this report’s findings about the safety of these eight vaccines particularly timely,” said panel chair Ellen Wright Clayton, professor of pediatrics and law at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, in a news release. “The findings should be reassuring to parents that few health problems are clearly connected to immunizations, and these effects occur relatively rarely. And repeated study has made clear that some health problems are not caused by vaccines.”
While researchers dismissed a link between vaccines and autism, they noted that some vaccines are linked to side effects such as fever and allergic reactions, among others. To learn more about which vaccines are associated with these side effects, you can read the report here on the IOM website and also on the CBC News site.
Are you for or against vaccinations? Does this report change the way you feel about them?
Copyright © 2012 St. Joseph Media. All Rights Reserved.