Vaccination – “just a shot”, or loss of immunity? “Vaccinations protect against diseases

Prof. Robert S. Mendelsohn, pediatrician (USA)

East West Journal, November 1984

Since I've written before about the dangers of mass vaccinations, I know that this is an idea that you may have a hard time accepting. Vaccines are marketed so skillfully and vigorously that many parents consider them a miracle that has eradicated many once-feared diseases. Accordingly, it would be foolhardy to resist them. For a pediatrician to attack what has become the bread and butter of pediatric practice is equivalent to a priest refusing to acknowledge the innocence of the Pope.

Knowing all this, I can only hope that you will put aside your preconceived notions while I talk about my views on vaccines.

Most of what you have been taught to believe about vaccines is simply not true. Not only do I have bad feelings about vaccinations, but if I were to follow my inner convictions in writing this chapter, I would have to urge you to reject all vaccinations for your child. I won't do this because parents in nearly half the states have lost the right to make a choice. Doctors, not politicians, are successfully lobbying for laws that force parents to vaccinate their children as necessary condition for their admission to school.

However, even in these states, you can convince your pediatrician to remove the pertussis component from the DPT vaccine. This vaccine, the most dangerous of all, is the subject of such debate that many doctors, just hearing about it, become nervous, anticipating lawsuits. And they should be nervous, because a child in Chicago who was injured by a whooping cough vaccine recently received a $5.5 million settlement. If your doctor is in this mood, use this to your advantage, since your child’s health is at stake.

Although I myself prescribed vaccinations in the early years of my practice, I became a staunch opponent mass vaccinations because of the countless dangers associated with them. This topic is so complex and vast that it deserves an entire book. Accordingly, here I must content myself with merely summing up my objections to the fanatical zeal with which pediatricians blindly shoot foreign proteins into your child's body, unaware of the harm they can cause.

Here are the main reasons for my doubts:

1. There is no convincing scientific evidence that mass vaccinations are responsible for the disappearance of any childhood diseases. It is true that certain childhood diseases that were once common have decreased or disappeared with the introduction of vaccinations. No one knows why this happened, although it may be due to Better conditions life. If vaccinations were responsible for the reduction or disappearance of these diseases in the United States, then one might ask why they disappeared at the same time in Europe, where there was no mass vaccination.

2. The Salk vaccine is generally believed to be responsible for ending the polio epidemics that plagued American children in the 1940s and 50s. If so, why did these epidemics also end in Europe, where the polio vaccine was not so widely used? It is appropriate to ask why the Sabin virus vaccine is still given to children when Jonas Salk, the pioneer of the polio vaccine, pointed out that the Sabin vaccine is now responsible for the majority of detected cases of polio. The continued pushing of this vaccine on children is irrational behavior by doctors and confirms my point that doctors keep repeating their mistakes. In addition to the story of the polio vaccine, we can recall the reluctance of doctors to stop vaccinations against smallpox, which have been the single cause of death from the disease for three decades now that the disease itself has disappeared. Think about it! For thirty years, children have been dying from the smallpox vaccine, even though the disease is no longer a threat.

3. There are significant risks associated with each vaccine, as well as numerous contraindications that make vaccinations dangerous for your child. However, doctors prescribe them routinely, usually without warning parents about the dangers and without checking whether the vaccine is contraindicated for the child. No child should be vaccinated without such a preliminary check, but in clinics they line up whole armies of children and give them vaccinations, and the parents do not ask a single question!

4. While the dangers of immediate reactions to vaccines are well known (but rarely warned about), no one knows long term consequences introduction of foreign proteins into your child’s body. Even more shocking is the fact that no one is making a concerted effort to find out!

5. There is an ever-growing suspicion that vaccinations against relatively harmless childhood diseases may be responsible for the sharp increase in autoimmune diseases observed since the introduction of mass vaccinations. These are such terrible diseases as cancer, leukemia, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, systemic lupus erythematosus and Guillain-Barré syndrome. The mechanism of autoimmune diseases can be simplistically explained by the inability of the body's defense system to distinguish between foreign agents and its own tissues, as a result of which the body begins to destroy itself. Have we traded mumps and measles for cancer and leukemia?

I'm emphasizing my concern here because you probably won't hear this from your pediatrician. At a forum of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in 1982, a resolution was proposed to ensure that parents were informed about the benefits and risks of vaccinations. The resolution insisted that “the AAP prepare in a clear and accessible language information that a prudent parent would want to know about the benefits and risks of routine vaccinations, the risk of vaccine-preventable diseases, and the most common adverse reactions on vaccinations and their treatment." Probably, the assembled doctors did not consider that "prudent parents" could be allowed access to information of this kind, since they rejected the resolution!

The heated debate among doctors around vaccinations has not escaped the attention of the media. mass media. More and more parents are refusing to vaccinate their children and are facing legal consequences for doing so. Parents whose children have become lifelong disabled after vaccinations no longer accept this as a blow of fate, but are filing lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers and doctors who prescribed vaccinations. Some companies have stopped producing vaccines, and the remaining ones are expanding the list of contraindications from year to year. It is noteworthy that since vaccinations are the reason for parents' repeated visits to doctors, which is the latter's bread and butter, pediatricians continue to defend vaccinations until the day they die.

As a parent, only you can decide whether to refuse vaccinations or take the risk of giving them to your child. Before your child gets any shots, let me give you the facts about the potential risks and benefits of the vaccines your pediatrician recommends and advocates. If you decide that you do not want your child to be vaccinated and your state requires you to, write to me and I may be able to advise you on what to do to restore your freedom of choice.

Piggy

Piggy - a relatively harmless viral disease, usually found in childhood. With this disease, one or both submandibular muscles swell salivary glands, located in front and below the ears. Typical symptoms are elevated temperature, lack of appetite, headache and back pain. Swelling of the glands begins after 2-3 days and disappears on the 6-7th day of illness. However, one gland may be affected first, and after 10-12 days the second one. With any variant of mumps, lifelong immunity is developed.

Mumps does not require treatment. If your child has mumps, encourage him to stay in bed for 2-3 days, giving him soft foods and plenty of fluids. Ice packs can be applied to swollen glands. If the headaches are very severe, you can give a little whiskey or acetaminophen. Give me 10 drops of whiskey to a small child and up to half a tablespoon for the eldest. The dose can be repeated after an hour if necessary.

Most children receive the mumps vaccine along with the measles and rubella vaccine (MMR) at approximately 15 months of age. Pediatricians defend this vaccine, arguing that although mumps is not a serious childhood disease, if children are not immune, they can get it as adults. In this case, inflammation of the testicles - orchitis - may develop. IN in rare cases this becomes the cause of infertility.

If infertility as a consequence of orchitis was a serious threat, and the mumps vaccine guaranteed that adult men would not get it, I would be among those doctors who insist on vaccination. But I am not among them, because their arguments are meaningless. Orchitis rarely leads to infertility, and even when it does, it is usually limited to one testicle, while the ability of the second testicle to produce sperm can double the world's population. And that is not all. No one knows whether the immunity induced by the mumps vaccine actually continues into adulthood. Accordingly, the question remains whether your child, who was vaccinated against mumps at 15 months and avoided it in childhood, will suffer more serious consequences of this disease as an adult.

You won't find pediatricians advertising this information, but side effects This vaccination can be very difficult. In some children, the vaccine causes allergic reactions such as rash, itching and bruising. There may be symptoms of central involvement nervous system- febrile seizures, unilateral sensory deafness and encephalitis. True, the risk of this is minimal, but why should your child be exposed to it at all - is it really to prevent a harmless childhood disease from developing one with more serious consequences in adulthood?

Measles

Measles is a contagious viral disease transmitted by contact with an object previously used by the patient. In the beginning there is a feeling of fatigue, slight fever, headache and back pain. Then redness of the eyes and photophobia appear. The temperature rises for 3-4 days and reaches 40 0 ​​C. Sometimes small white dots can be seen in the mouth; A small, spotted pink rash appears below the hairline and behind the ears, then spreads to the entire body within 36 hours. The rash may appear immediately, but it disappears gradually, over 3-4 days. Measles is contagious for 7-8 days, starting 3-4 days before the rash appears. Accordingly, if one of your children gets measles, others will likely get it before you know the first one has it.

No treatment is required other than rest, plenty of fluids to prevent possible dehydration due to fever, and cornstarch baths to relieve itching. If a child suffers from photophobia, it is necessary to curtain the windows. Contrary to popular myth, there is no danger of blindness.

Measles vaccine is another component of the MMR vaccine, which children receive at an early age. Doctors insist that this vaccination is necessary to prevent measles encephalitis, which can occur in one in 1,000 cases. Having decades of experience treating measles and having spoken with many pediatricians on numerous occasions, I double-checked the statistics and concluded that a ratio of 1:1000 may be correct for malnourished children living in poverty, but for children from middle-income and middle-income families. above average income, if you exclude simple drowsiness from the measles itself, the frequency of true encephalitis is more likely 1:10,000 or even 1:100,000.

Having scared you of the unlikely possibility of measles encephalitis, your doctor is unlikely to share with you information about the dangers of the vaccine he is using to prevent it. The use of measles vaccine is associated with the dangers of encephalopathy and other complications such as subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, which causes irreversible, fatal brain damage.

Other (sometimes fatal) complications associated with measles vaccine include ataxia (inability to coordinate muscle activity), mental retardation, aseptic meningitis, convulsions, and hemiparesis (paralysis of one side of the body). Secondary complications associated with the vaccine can be even more frightening. They include encephalitis, juvenile diabetes, multiple sclerosis.

I would consider the risks associated with the use of a vaccine unacceptable even if there was compelling evidence that the vaccine was effective. But they don’t exist either. The dramatic decline in measles incidence occurred long before the vaccine was introduced. In 1958, there were about 800,000 cases of measles in the United States, but by 1962—the year before the vaccine was introduced—that number had dropped by 300,000. Over the next four years, as children were vaccinated with the ineffective and now discontinued virus-killed vaccine, this number fell by another 300,000. In 1900, there were 13.3 deaths from measles per 100,000 population. By 1955, before the first measles vaccine, mortality had dropped by 97.7% to 0.03 deaths per 100,000.

These figures alone provide compelling evidence that measles was disappearing even before the introduction of the vaccine. If you don't think so, consider this: In a 30-state study, more than half of the children who got measles were properly vaccinated. Moreover, according to WHO, the chances of getting measles are about 15 times higher for those vaccinated against it.

“So why,” you may ask, “in the face of these facts, do doctors continue to vaccinate?” The answer may lie in one case that occurred in California fourteen years ago, after the advent of the measles vaccine. There was a severe measles epidemic in Los Angeles, and parents were being forced to vaccinate all children 6 months of age and older, despite warnings from the Public Health Service that vaccinating children under one year of age was pointless and potentially dangerous. . Although Los Angeles doctors responded by vaccinating every child they could get their hands on, several doctors familiar with the problem of immune system damage and the dangers of "slow viruses" chose not to vaccinate their own babies. Unlike those parents who were not told anything about this, they discovered that the "slow viruses" found in all live vaccines and, in particular, in the measles vaccine, can hide in human tissue for years. They may later manifest as encephalitis, multiple sclerosis, or become potential seeds for the development and growth of cancer.

One Los Angeles doctor who refused to vaccinate his seven-month-old said: “What worries me is that the vaccine virus not only provides very little protection against measles, but may remain in the body, affecting it in ways that we know little about.” ". This concern about his own child did not stop him, however, from prescribing vaccinations for the children of his patients. "As a parent, I had the luxury of choice for my child. As a doctor... by law and in accordance with the requirements of the profession, I am obliged to accept recommendations...".

Perhaps the time has come when non-physician parents will have the privilege of choice that only doctors and their children now enjoy?

Rubella

Rubella is a safe childhood disease that does not require treatment.

Initial symptoms are fever and runny nose, accompanied by a sore throat. It becomes clear to you that we're talking about about an illness other than the common cold, when a rash appears on the face and spreads to the arms and body. The elements of the rash do not merge, as happens in the case of measles; the rash disappears after 2-3 days. The patient needs to rest and drink, no other treatment is required.

The threat of rubella lies in the possibility of harm to the fetus if a woman becomes infected with it in the first trimester of pregnancy. Fear of this is used to justify vaccinating all children, boys and girls, with the MMR vaccine. The merits of this vaccine are questionable for the same reasons that were described above regarding mumps. There is no need to protect children from a harmless disease, and the side effects of a vaccine are completely unacceptable if we are talking about the good of the child. They include arthritis, arthralgia (joint pain), and polyneuritis, manifested by pain, numbness, or a tingling sensation in the peripheral nerves. Although these symptoms are usually temporary, they can last for months and do not appear until two months after the vaccine. Because of this, parents may not associate the symptoms that appear with the vaccination.

The biggest danger of the rubella vaccine is that it can leave expectant mothers without natural immunity from the disease. By preventing rubella in childhood, vaccination can increase the risk of getting rubella during childbearing years. My doubts on this issue are shared by many doctors. A group of doctors in Connecticut, led by two leading epidemiologists, has nearly succeeded in crossing rubella off their list of legally required vaccinations.

Study after study shows that many women who received the rubella vaccine as children do not have blood-tested immunity as adults. Other tests demonstrate a high percentage of ineffectiveness of both the trivaccine as a whole and the vaccines included in its composition individually. Finally, decisive question, which has not yet been answered: does vaccine immunity last as long as immunity after natural disease? A high percentage of children do not have evidence of immunity in blood tests taken just 4-5 years after the rubella vaccine.

Today, due to vaccination, most women do not have natural immunity. If their vaccine immunity disappears, they can become infected with rubella during pregnancy and thus harm their unborn children.

Being a considerable skeptic, I have always believed that the most reliable path Finding out what people believe is watching what they do, not listening to what they say. If main danger rubella is not for the child, but for the fetus, then pregnant women should be protected from the disease by their obstetricians. However, published in Journal of the American Medical Association(JAMA) study showed, using the example of California, that over 90 % of women obstetricians and gynecologists refused to get this vaccine. If doctors themselves are afraid of this vaccine, then why should there be a law requiring you and other parents to give it to their children?

Whooping cough

Whooping cough is a highly contagious bacterial disease usually transmitted through the air from someone who is infected.

Incubation period ranges from 7 to 14 days. The initial symptoms of the disease are indistinguishable from those of a common cold: runny nose, sneezing, lethargy or lack of appetite, slight lacrimation, and sometimes moderate fever. As the disease progresses, a severe cough develops in the evenings. Then he appears during the day. Within 7-10 days from the onset of the first symptoms, the cough becomes paroxysmal (attacks). The child may cough up to 12 times after each breath, and his face darkens and takes on a bluish or purple tint. Each attack of whooping cough ends with an inhalation with a characteristic sound. Vomiting is often an additional symptom of the disease.

Whooping cough can affect any age group, but more than half of the cases are under two years of age. The disease can be dangerous and even life threatening, especially in infants. Those infected can spread the disease to others within about a month of the first symptoms appearing, so it is important that they are isolated, especially from other children.

If your child gets whooping cough, there is no specific treatment that your doctor can offer, nor any other that you can do at home. The child should rest in conditions of comfort and isolation. Cough medications are used, but they rarely really help, so I don't recommend them. However, if your baby gets whooping cough, you should consult your doctor because... Hospitalization may be required. The main dangers of the disease are pneumonia and exhaustion from coughing. It is known that very young children can suffer rib fractures due to severe coughing spells.

Vaccination against whooping cough is carried out together with vaccinations against diphtheria and tetanus as part of DPT. Although this vaccine has been used for decades, it is one of the most controversial. Doubts remain about its effectiveness, and many doctors share my concern that potential harm side effects of vaccines may exceed their proclaimed effectiveness.

Prof. Gordon T. Stewart, chair of community medicine at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, is one of the most outspoken critics of the pertussis vaccine. He says he supported the vaccine until 1974, but then saw outbreaks of whooping cough among vaccinated children. "Right now in Glasgow," he says, "30% of all whooping cough cases occur in the vaccinated population. This leads me to believe that the vaccine is ineffective."

As with other infectious diseases, mortality began to decline before a vaccine became available. The vaccine was first used in 1936, and mortality rates have declined steadily since 1900 or earlier. According to Stewart, "the reduction in pertussis mortality was 80% before the introduction of the vaccine." He shares my opinion that the key factor in the whooping cough story was not the vaccine, but improving the living conditions of potential sufferers.

Common side effects of the pertussis vaccine recognized by JAMA are fever, screaming fits, state of shock and local skin manifestations such as sweating, redness of the skin, pain. Less known but more serious effects include convulsions and irreversible brain damage causing mental retardation. This vaccine is also associated withsudden infant death syndrome - SIDS . In 1978-79, with the expansion of the childhood immunization program, eight cases of SIDS were reported following immediately after routine DPT vaccination.

The estimate of the number of people protected from the disease among those vaccinated varies from 50 to 80%. According to JAMA, there are an average of 1,000 to 3,000 cases of whooping cough and 5 to 20 deaths from it each year in the United States.

Diphtheria

Although it was one of the most dangerous diseases in our grandmothers' time, today diphtheria has almost disappeared. Only 5 cases were reported in the United States in 1980. Most doctors insist that the decline was due to vaccinations, but there is ample evidence that the incidence of diphtheria was declining even before vaccinations became available.

Diphtheria is a highly contagious infectious disease transmitted by coughing or sneezing of infected people, as well as by touching things that have previously been touched by infected people. The incubation period of the disease is from 2 to 5 days, and the first symptoms are sore throat, headache, nausea, cough and temperature up to 39-40 0 C. As the disease progresses, dirty white plaques appear in the throat and tonsils. They cause swelling of the throat and larynx, which makes swallowing difficult and, in severe cases, the airways may be blocked to such an extent that death from suffocation occurs. The disease requires the attention of a doctor; treatment is carried out with antibiotics - penicillin or erythromycin.

Today, your child is no more likely to get diphtheria than to be bitten by a cobra. However, millions of children are vaccinated against it at 2, 4, 6 and 8 months of age, and then booster shots when they go to school. This occurs despite the fact that rarely reported outbreaks of diphtheria occur as often among vaccinated people as among unvaccinated people. During the diphtheria outbreak in Chicago in 1969, the city health department reported that 4 of 16 cases were fully immunized and 5 others had received one or more doses of the vaccine. Two of these five had evidence of complete immunity to the disease. According to another report, in one of three deaths and fourteen of twenty-three cases of illness during another diphtheria outbreak, the victims were fully vaccinated.

Examples like these undermine the argument that the disappearance of diphtheria or other childhood diseases can be attributed to vaccinations. If this were indeed the case, how could anti-vaxxers explain these facts? Only half of states have legal requirements for vaccinations against infectious diseases, and the percentage of children vaccinated varies among states. As a consequence of this, tens of thousands, if not millions, of children in areas where medical services are limited and there are almost no pediatricians at all have not received vaccinations against infectious diseases and therefore must be exposed to them. However, the incidence of infectious diseases has no correlation with the existence of mandatory vaccination laws in a particular state.

In light of the rarity of this disease, the presence effective treatment antibiotics, the questionable effectiveness of the vaccine, the annual multimillion-dollar expenditure on this vaccine, the ever-present potential for severe long-term effects of this or that vaccine, I find it impossible to advocate mass vaccination against diphtheria. I admit that significant harm from vaccines has not yet been clearly established, but this does not mean that it does not exist. During the half century that vaccinations have been used, no efforts have been made not a single one study to determine the long-term harm of vaccinations.

Chicken pox

This is my favorite childhood disease, firstly because it is relatively harmless and secondly because no pharmaceutical manufacturer has been able to develop a vaccine. The second reason, however, may be short-lived, as there are already reports that a vaccine will soon appear ( Nowadays, such a vaccine, called Varivax, is already included in the US vaccination calendar and is being actively promoted on the market around the world. Cm. H. Butler - A.K.).

Chickenpox is a viral infectious disease that is very common in children. The first symptoms of the disease are usually a mild fever, headache, back pain and lack of appetite.

After a day or two, small red spots appear, which after a few hours enlarge and turn into blisters. Eventually, a scab forms and disappears within a week or two. The development of the disease is accompanied severe itching, and we must try to prevent the child from scratching the itchy skin. To relieve itching, you can use calamine lotions or cornstarch baths.

There is no need to seek medical help for chickenpox. You just need to stay in bed and drink as much as possible to prevent dehydration due to the fever.

The incubation period of chickenpox is 2-3 weeks, the disease is contagious for two weeks; the danger of infection appears two days after the rash appears. The child should be isolated for this period of time.

Tuberculosis

Parents should have the right to assume, as most do, that their doctor's tests provide accurate results.

Tuberculin skin test ( Mantoux test - A.K.) is by no means medical procedure of such kind. Even the American Academy of Pediatrics, which rarely criticizes procedures adopted in the daily practice of its members, issued a statement critical of this test. According to this statement, " Several recent studies have cast doubt on the sensitivity of some TB screening tests. The conference convened by the Bureau of Biologics recommended that manufacturers test each batch on fifty known positive patients to ensure that the product produced has sufficient capability to detect active tuberculosis in any individual tested. However, since many tests are not double-blind, randomized and involve many concurrent skin tests(i.e. there is a possibility of suppression of the reaction), then their interpretation is difficult".

The statement concludes: “TB screening tests are imperfect, and clinicians should be aware that both false-positive and false-negative results are possible.”

In short, your child can have tuberculosis even if the tuberculin test is negative. Or he may not have tuberculosis, despite positive test. With many doctors this can lead to dire consequences. It is almost certain that if this happens to your child, your child will be subjected to unnecessary and dangerous single or multiple x-rays. chest. In addition, the doctor may prescribe him dangerous drugs - for example, isoniazid for long months, "to prevent the development of tuberculosis." And the American Medical Association (AMA) acknowledges that doctors are indiscriminately and overprescribing isoniazid. This is a shame because this medicine has a long list of adverse reactions from the nervous, gastrointestinal, hematopoietic and endocrine systems, and also influences Bone marrow and skin. It should also not be overlooked that your child may become a pariah among the neighbors due to a deep-rooted fear of this infectious disease.

I'm convinced that possible consequences positive skin tuberculin test much more dangerous than the disease itself. I believe that parents should reject this test until they know for sure that their child has been in contact with a person with tuberculosis.

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)

The horror of waking up in the morning and finding your baby dead in the crib lurks in the minds of many parents. Medical Science the cause of SIDS has yet to be found, but the most popular hypothesis among researchers is damage to the central nervous system, which results in suppression of voluntary breathing.

This is a logical explanation, but it leaves the question unanswered: what causes dysfunction of the central nervous system? My suspicion, shared by many fellow professionals, is that the 10,000 cases of SIDS reported annually in the United States are associated with one or more vaccines received by children. Pertussis vaccine - the most likely culprit, but others may be guilty.

Dr. William Torch with Faculty of Medicine University of Nevada, published a report in which he suggests that the DPT vaccine may be responsible for SIDS. He found that two-thirds of 103 babies who died of SIDS had received the vaccine within three weeks of death, with many dying within 24 hours of receiving the vaccine. He argues that this is not mere coincidence, concluding that "causality is confirmed," according to at least, in some cases sudden death and DPT vaccinations. The same vaccine has been linked to deaths in Tennessee. Following intervention by the US Surgeon General, vaccine manufacturers recalled all unused doses of this vaccine series.

Expectant mothers concerned about SIDS should remember the importance of breastfeeding in preventing certain diseases. There is evidence that breastfed children are less susceptible to allergies, respiratory diseases, gastroenteritis, hypokalemia, obesity, multiple sclerosis and SIDS. One Scientific research according to SIDS concludes: " Breast-feeding can be considered a single barrier on the innumerable number of paths leading to SIDS.”

Polio

No one who lived in the 1940s. and saw pictures of children connected to ventilator, and the President of the United States, confined to a wheelchair by this terrible disease, and who was prohibited from using public beaches for fear of contracting polio, cannot forget the fear that reigned then. Polio is virtually non-existent today, but the fear remains, and with it the belief that polio has been eradicated by vaccination. This is not surprising given the strong campaign to promote the vaccine; The fact is that not a single scientific study has proven that it was the vaccine that made polio disappear. As previously noted, it has also disappeared in parts of the world where the vaccine has not been widely used.

For parents of the current generation, it is important to witness the fact that mass vaccinations against polio are responsible for the majority of cases of this disease. In September 1977, Jonas Salk, who developed the killed polio vaccine, and other scientists confirmed this. He said most of the few cases reported in the United States since 1970 were probably by-product live polio vaccine routinely used in the United States.

Notably, there is ongoing debate among immunologists regarding the relative risks of using killed versus live viruses. Proponents of using killed virus vaccines argue that it is the presence of live viruses that is responsible for polio cases. Those who support the use of live virus vaccines argue that killed viruses do not provide sufficient protection and, in fact, increase the susceptibility of the vaccine to the disease.

This provides me with a rare and convenient opportunity to be neutral. I believe both sides are right, and using both vaccines increases, not decreases, your child's chance of contracting polio.

In short, it turns out that the most effective way protect your child from polio - make sure he is not vaccinated against it!