Every parent experiences a unique mix of emotions when caring for a newborn baby. You’re filled with an overwhelming sense of pride, love, and awe for this tiny, precious person in your arms. There are also feelings of nervousness and anxiety at the sudden responsibility of new parenthood. And, of course, you’re exhausted. There’s no instruction manual to refer to, but you’re in charge, and you’re immediately faced with lots of decisions. And people online are more than eager to tell you what to do and how to do it.
I know this feeling well. I’m a parent myself, but I’m also a pediatrician who has talked to thousands of parents navigating their first days and months with a new baby. After caring for children for more than 30 years, what I can say is that one thing hasn’t changed: Every parent wants to do what is best for their child.
What has changed is the amount of information parents have to navigate, and not all of it is reliable. Unfortunately, federal leaders continue to make this problem worse, not better. A White House event this week promoted numerous misleading, false, and long-disproven claims about vaccines.
Watching this, I immediately thought of the new parents coming to their pediatrician’s office. At a time when they need clear, calm, and evidence-based advice, our federal leaders are stoking fears, sowing confusion, and exploiting the desire that all parents share to keep their children safe and healthy. Parents, and children, deserve better.
As federal leaders remain in their offices in Washington, D.C., pediatricians are out in communities across the country, continuing to answer parents’ questions. We’re making it clear that there are no new research studies or data that warrant drastic changes to the childhood immunization schedule. We are reassuring families that all the vaccines that were available last week are still available this week and will continue to be available and covered by insurance.
Pediatricians are explaining how dozens of studies involving thousands of children have concluded that vaccines have nothing to do with autism. The myth that they’re somehow linked stems from a single report from England involving just a dozen children that was later found to be fraudulent and unethical and was forced to be retracted. We are explaining how there is no medical reason to “separate” the MMR vaccine into three shots. It would take years or even a decade before these shots could be available in the United States, if at all, and in the meantime, measles cases are on the rise.
We are explaining why U.S. recommendations are different from those in other countries, such as in Japan, where the mumps vaccine is not routinely recommended, and large outbreaks still occur. Or Denmark, where rotavirus vaccination is not routine, and about 1,200 children are hospitalized with rotavirus dehydration every year. Since the U.S. adopted the rotavirus vaccine in 2006, we have essentially eliminated pediatric rotavirus hospitalizations.
We’re explaining to parents how babies’ immune systems are exposed to thousands of immune-triggering substances every day and are more than capable of handling multiple vaccines in the same doctor’s visit. We’re referencing both our personal experience and studies that show delaying and spacing out shots is risky because that leaves children’s immune systems vulnerable to dangerous illnesses.
Above all, pediatricians are reminding parents that vaccines not only prevent disease and promote lifelong health in the individual who receives the vaccine, but they also decrease the spread of the disease to others, keeping the whole community healthier.
We take these discussions seriously because of our obligation to our patients and their families. We’re ready to give advice when parents have questions about feeding, sleep, baths, rashes, and fevers. It’s no different with vaccines.
We welcome parents’ questions. We understand their concerns and anxiety —it’s part of being a parent. But this is a particularly unsettling time for parents trying to make the best decisions for their children, subject as they are to a flurry of unreliable messages from our federal officials.
Luckily, families are not alone. The American Academy of Pediatrics will continue sharing our evidence-based vaccine recommendations. We will continue to fight against misguided, dangerous policies coming out of Washington that undermine our ability to protect children’s health, even when it takes us to the courthouse.
The bottom line is this: Pediatricians are here for families. We will work together to cut through the chaos and keep your children healthy. You can depend on it.
Andrew D. Racine, M.D., Ph.D., is president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
