HEALTHMore parents refusing to get kids vaccinatedPhysicians are increasingly confronting parents who are concerned about the safety of childhood immunizations.By Kathleen Phalen Tomaselli, amednews correspondent. Feb. 9, 2004. Just the other day, a parent of an autistic patient asked Leslie Ellwood, MD, to delay the boy's measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and split the administration of the vaccines his 15-month-old sister was scheduled to receive into two a visit. "Given her concerns, we try to accommodate her," said Dr. Ellwood, a Kaiser Permanente pediatrician and vice president of the Virginia chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dr. Ellwood's experience is not unusual. Getting kids vaccinated is no longer automatic. An increasing number of parents express concerns about rumored ill effects like autism, autoimmune diseases, compromised immunity, learning disabilities, diabetes and paralysis, according to a recent University of Michigan study that surveyed by mail a random national sample of 750 pediatricians and 750 family physicians. Many suspect the upward trend in parental apprehension has been fueled by news stories, Internet sites, and word-of-mouth reports that allege deleterious effects. "We wanted to quantify the degree to which parents were refusing or expressing concerns," said Gary L. Freed, MD, MPH, the study's lead investigator and director of general pediatrics at the university's health system in Ann Arbor, Mich. "Our findings indicated to me that parental concern and refusal is a relatively common occurrence." In the Michigan study, published in the January American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 93% of pediatricians and 60% of family physicians said at least one parent had refused a vaccination for his or her child in the last year. Sixty-nine percent of the physicians said that the number of concerns had increased substantially over the past year. Pediatricians were twice as likely as family docs to say that refusals were rising. [...]Full text of American Medical News content is available to AMA members and paid subscribers.
Copyright 2004 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
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