According to a New Study, Nothing Can Change an Anti-Vaxxer’s Mind

[pnwmom]

55. People forget that the vaccine safety movement sprang up in connection with the old DPT vaccine,

a "whole cell vaccine" that was implicated in enough deaths and serious injuries that Congress set up the Vaccine Court, so that injured children could be compensated (although the Court made very few awards). Eventually, in response to public pressure, the safer "split cell" vaccine was developed, that didn't come with the same risks.

But decades earlier, my healthy 6th month old sister had a half dose of DPT vaccine because the kids in our family had always had such bad reactions. She developed encephalitis and died the next day. And even earlier than that, one of my mother's cousins died the day after a vaccine and the other was permanently paralyzed. The doctors then thought it was the diphtheria part of the vaccine that had hurt them, and that they must have had a dose from a "bad batch," but in retrospect, it was probably the pertussis. In my children's generation of cousins, my son had seizures for a week, and my niece had a temperature above 105, before the pediatricians decided to withhold the pertussis vaccine from all the cousins.

Now, thanks to the pressure brought to bear by concerned parents and injured families, a safer DPT vaccine is available. When my granddaughter was born, I volunteered myself as the first guinea pig. The effect was similar to a flu vaccine. Then all three young adult children had it, including the son who had had seizures. No problem.

I'm not anti-vaccine. I'm pro safe vaccines. There's a difference.