Vaccination is apparently a topic that can get people really fired up. To grossly stereotype the two extremes, you have the anti-vaccine crowd who essentially equate vaccines with poison and then you have the pro-vaccine crowd who essentially accuse anti-vacciners of being selfish fear-mongerers.
We don't fall into either camp. If I had to guess, most people don't. They just get the vaccinations because they trust their doctors (who trust the AAP) to know what is best. And I do believe that when the CDC puts out their vaccination schedule, they do it with the overall health of the whole country as their top priority.
If you don't really worry about vaccines and are fine with the decisions you've made, feel free to not read the rest of this post. I don't really want to disturb your peace of mind, though I don't think there's anything here that would. That's not the point of this post anyway, to try to change your mind or judge what other people do - I just was working through this myself before starting our pediatrician search and figured why not share it with you all?
When it came to vaccines, we weren't really worried about autism or side effects. But we decided we needed to look into the topic of immunizations a bit more for two reasons. First, it seemed unnecessary for our newborn to get a Hepatitis B vaccine when she's born. If I don't have it, there's no way she's getting this STD, so it seemed unnecessary. Second, there's a vaccine for the chickenpox, and it's just really easy to laugh it off when we all lived through it just fine. (Although I realize that shingles in old people is a really bad thing, so I don't want to scoff too much.)
The Vaccine Book by Dr. Bob Sears seemed to be the best unbiased source for us to learn more about vaccines. You can read the introduction to it here. I didn't want to read a book that was just going to scare me into refusing vaccines altogether. I liked that he was explicitly not anti-vaccine, but still willing to walk parents through all the vaccines that are out there. He realizes that there are going to be parents who want to do things differently, so instead of just saying no to all vaccines, he provides alternative approaches.
After reading a chapter about each individual vaccine, I felt pretty confident in getting four of them (HIB, Pc, DTaP, meningococcal) and in not getting four others (Hep B, Hep A, HPV, flu).* I was and remain uncertain about the last four (rotavirus, polio, MMR, chickenpox). If I had to guess, our child(ren) will eventually end up getting them, either because of our pediatrician's recommendation (or because many offices only order combo shots, so for example we'd get polio along with DTaP and HIB by default) or because they'll need them for school.
Speaking of school, why not just wait on all of the vaccines until kindergarten rolls around? Because several of the diseases are more of a risk for babies, so we do want to make sure our kids are protected from those. As for the other shots, a big part of the reason we personally feel okay in delaying some of them is because our children won't be in daycare (less exposure) and we're hoping to breastfeed for quite a while (more natural immunities).
My husband and I never had physical problems with vaccines, and really don't expect our children to. However, in looking back at my immunization schedule (do you still have yours?), I realized I only got three vaccines (DTP, MMR, and polio). Children now are scheduled to receive 12. That seems like quite an increase, though children are actually exposed to fewer antigens now, and despite the (in)famous theoretical estimation that children could receive 10,000 vaccines at once and be fine.
I really appreciated Sears' discussion of aluminum in vaccines. While it has not been proven to be harmful, no one has actually done the necessary studies to determine this. Partly because of this, we'll be erring on the side of caution and following his delayed schedule of vaccines. This requires you to go to the doctor's office more often for shots, but at this time we're willing and able to do that. (We just have to find a doctor who is, too!)
Sears actually offers two different schedules for vaccines - one that is "selective" (for parents who were leaning towards getting no vaccines - this at least has them get the least theoretically risky ones) and one that is "alternative" (for parents who want to get all the vaccines but are still worried about the theoretical risks). These two schedules are exactly the same for the first 8 months, so at this point we plan to follow that and then decide from there.
And those are our thoughts on vaccines. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts, whether you agree or disagree and whether you're passionate or indifferent, as long as you're charitable!
* I should stress here that these were simply our conclusions, and not those of the book.
As usual, I didn't receive any sort of incentive to review this book. Just sharing what I read!