Vaccinations - Are They For The Young International Traveler?

We are torn. 

On one hand are the greeners, trended by eco-drip showers, fruitarians, and yurt dwellers.  On the other hand are the pollutionists, branded by water-wasters, fast food regulars, and gas guzzlers.  Our position falls somewhere in the light green spectrum: home-cooks, herbal remedy practitioners, gardeners, and recyclers, but we don’t drive an electric car or use our pee to power small electronics.  Above all else is our desire to know exactly what goes into our bodies and the bodies of our children.  Our inability as parents to control the composition of vaccines and the CDC’s “recommendations” for child travel immunizations are concerns for our family of international travelers.  There are currently no options for “clean” immunizations, explanations of the added fillers are vague at best, and obtaining these recommended vaccines for young children is no easy task.  A middle ground must be reached - one where parents have a readily available, effective, and clean vaccination alternative for our youth.

What exactly is in these vaccinations we routinely and without question inject into our bodies and those of our children?  According to the CDC’s vaccine additives page: aluminum, formaldehyde, and thimerosal (mercury-containing preservative) are among several chemicals added to vaccines to prolong shelf-life and increase potency.  Neither of these reasons are appealing or desirable to a family in search of a cleaner, safer option.  Dosing practices, especially in combination vaccines, continues to be a loose practice and lacking in explanation.  My wife once jokingly asked a nurse administering an oral vaccine to my infant son what happens if he spits up part of the vaccination.  She laughingly replied, “Well, that’s why they put so much extra in.”  Is this concerning to anyone else?  We want an option between preservative-filled and loosely administered immunizations and “hippie” homeopathic remedies.

As if the decision to vaccinate isn’t hard enough, try finding a doctor or pharmacy who has ever vaccinated young children for international travel.  Many legs of our journey take us through less industrialized, third-world countries requiring certain vaccinations for entry.  Take the typhoid vaccination for example, recommended by the CDC for all seven of the countries on our list.  Getting this relatively common vaccine for our 2.5 year old son proved extremely difficult.   My wife spent nearly a week on the phone calling half-a-dozen different clinics in our area, requesting more information on which type of typhoid vaccine (oral or injected) he needed and confirming the age requirements.  Not one nurse or clinic provided congruent information and zero clinics in our area offered the vaccine we needed.  Some clinics said they only offered typhoid to children 12 years and older while others said they didn’t even stock it.  Our advice, if you’re planning on traveling internationally with children, start the process months in advance and don’t assume just because a travel vaccine is recommended by the CDC that your local doctor or pharmacist is equipped to administer it.  One provider even asked us to vaccinate our son at her facility because she had never vaccinated a child that young and she wanted to see if there were any side effects. 

Ultimately, we still had a decision to make: vaccinate and deal with the laundry list of additives, selectively vaccinate based on risk, or don’t vaccinate at all.  As we were gathering information about our different options, my wife expressed her concerns about having our oldest son, age four, receive his “kindergarten” immunizations so early (CDC recommends these vaccinations for kids ages 4-6).  However, a healthcare provider posed a simple question to us: would you let your child go to kindergarten without his shots?  If your answer is no, then why would you let him go to a third-world country, where most of the children haven’t had their shots?  Even though we homeschool, it was a valid point, presented from a simpler perspective, and one that finally tipped the scale for us in favor of immunizations for the family, both routine and travel. Yes, the amount of formaldehyde in a 2-month old infant’s blood is ten times the amount in any vaccine and baby carrots contain chlorine.  The difference is the first is naturally occurring and the second I can control.  This is less of an argument about chemicals or more about a parent’s lack of cleaner immunization options.  Therefore, in the absence of a preservative-free option, we unwillingly resigned ourselves to traditional vaccinations. 

The four year old – 4 shots, 1 doctor, 0 tears

Not only was there not an alternative, but recent events in California forced our hand.  If a small measles outbreak can occur in the US, where the vaccine is affordable and available, then how can we protect our children in a continent where most vaccines are neither affordable nor available?  If a parent’s right to choose is enough to put 100 people and counting in the hospital, then we choose to do what little we can to prevent something similar from happening to the five of us.  Neither of us like the idea of filling our kid’s bodies with the stabilizers and preservatives; however, the alternative was a risk we weren’t willing to take. 

When are we going to see a change?  As responsible and discerning parents, we want a pure and readily available vaccination option for young, traveling families.  We live in an age of sheer medical genius, there must be an alternative to injecting mystery chemicals into our kid’s bodies or risking severe illness or death by not vaccinating.  It shouldn’t have to be a choice between our ideals or our children’s safety.