Health

Childhood Vaccine Safety Keeps Parents Concerned

It's a health controversy that won't go away: childhood vaccine safety.

The debate over the negative effects of vaccines is causing some parents to send their kids to school without the required shots.

Sargent Goodchild Jr. has never had his son, Sargent III, vaccinated, and he doesn't plan to change that.

"He might react to something that's in the vaccine, as a stabilizing agent, or a preservative," says Goodchild Jr.

Even though studies show otherwise, some parents believe vaccines cause illnesses, especially autism.

"I believe they're contributing factors to a lot of auto-immune, or immune struggles that we have as a society today," says Goodchild Jr.

Medical exemptions to vaccines require a doctor's signature and are generally hard to get, so some parents are claiming religious beliefs, whether or not they have them.

"I think it's shortsighted and I do think it does put their children at risk," says Dr. Mark Pasternack MGH, a pediatric infectious disease specialist. Pasternack says there's no statistical basis to show that childhood vaccines do anything but good.

"These are infections that have not disappeared, they've simply been depressed," he says.

Many illnesses prevented by vaccines are life-threatening.

"In countries like Japan and in Italy, and parts of Scandanavia where it became unpopular to give pertussis vaccine because of concerns about safety, the incidence of pertussis and all the complications from pertussis shot right up," says Pasternack.

But chiropractor Peter Martone, who practices homeopathic treatments, says not so fast.

"More research needs to be done to really show how vaccinations are working, and if they're effective," says Martone.

Still, with the debate raging on, doctors are getting nervous as more parents are saying no.

"I think you're going to see more and more people opting to do this," says Goodchild Jr.