Moms Who Vax: There's an Anti-Vaccine Movement?

By Katie Ellis

It's no secret that I have always been science-minded.  My entire life, I wanted to become a doctor.  I took AP science courses in high school, entered college majoring in biology/pre-medicine, and enjoy reading scientific journal articles "for fun." It was no surprise, therefore, that, as a microbiologist whose work focuses on vaccines, I never questioned vaccinating my children.  I knew how great of an achievement vaccines were for the history of science, and the profound enhancements they have made to public health.

Katie Ellis, mother of two

My son was born in 2009, and he was vaccinated per the CDC and AAP recommended schedule.  I knew I was making an informed, intelligent choice to protect him from deadly childhood diseases. I had heard all of the hype with the Andrew Wakefield fraud incident, but knew that it was nonsense, and never doubted my vaccination choices. At this point, I was obviously pro-vaccine, but had never given a thought to advocating for the use of such vaccines.

Soon after this, Dr. Paul Offit spoke at my place of employment.  The topic of his talk was the anti-vaccine movement, which intrigued me – I didn't know there was a big enough group of people against vaccines to form a movement.  After hearing Dr. Offit speak, I felt a multitude of emotions. I felt fascination, for Dr. Offit was such a dynamic speaker who clearly had vast amounts of knowledge about vaccines and infectious diseases.  I felt anger, that parents in this country had access to life-saving technology and were not utilizing it.  More than that, parents were not vaccinating due to fear, uncertainty and doubt spread by Playboy models, geologists and other parents who have graduated from the "University of Google."  Mostly, though, I felt a spark of passion to become an advocate for the safety and efficacy of vaccines.

This spark was further stoked when I became pregnant with my daughter. I began to read about outbreaks of whooping cough that occurred in California, in which ten babies (not yet old enough to be fully vaccinated) perished. I read about the anti-vaccine movement, and how it grew by scaring new parents with absolute lies.  I started to peruse pro-vaccine blogs, such as Shot of Prevention, and Facebook pages, such as Vaccinate Your Baby and Nurses Who Vaccinate.  Amazed by the depth of knowledge of the active pro-vaccine advocates on those pages, I was deeply inspired – and my passion grew.

When my godmother was diagnosed with whooping cough and sent to the hospital for two weeks, just months before my daughter was due, it was the final straw.  Right before her diagnosis, my family – including my godmother – had all been gathered at the hospital.  We were visiting my grandmother, who was sick with uterine cancer.  Not only was my grandmother at extreme risk, but so was my unborn child and I.  I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to fully protect my child when she was born and was too young to be vaccinated.  Thus, my passion grew to the point that I began posting comments on pro-vaccine blogs and pages.  As I posted more, the more I learned, the angrier I became, and the more passionate I became.  I now have confidence to post on anti-vaccine pages and blogs and new articles; I feel comfortable writing letters to members of Congress.  I am a greatly passionate vaccine advocate, and very proud of it.

Katie Ellis is a mother of two, who works full time as a microbiologist specializing in vaccines. She loves spending time with her family, running, baking, and being active.

What Middle Ground?

By Karen Ernst

This morning OCWeekly published an article about self-declared vaccine expert and pediatrician to the stars, Dr. Bob Sears. The article, titled “Dr. Robert Sears Takes on Both Sides of the Great Vaccination Divide: The author of 'The Vaccine Book' presents his own alternatives to the CDC-recommended schedules,” is mostly a discussion about reasons that Dr. Sears promotes his own vaccine schedule, available in his book. 

The problems with the article and with Dr. Sears reveal themselves in the headline.  We absolutely cannot allow the media to portray vaccination as something with a “divide” or “middle ground.”  While he-said, she-said journalism works for enticing readers and create buzz, it does an incredible disservice to public health.  So, while the article notes, “For years, the issue seemed to be black and white—moms and dads either gave kids all their shots or were ostracized by doctors and their communities. But now concerned parents are discovering what they see as refreshing middle ground,” this middle ground is, in fact, not refreshing.  This is ground that is risky and fraught with consequences, such as potential illness and additional procedures in the case of emergency. 

And Dr. Bob's waiting room is a prime example of the risks associated with delaying and skipping shots.  Dr. Bob's waiting room was ground zero during a measles outbreak, which originated with one of his unvaccinated patients who had brought measles from a vacation in Switzerland. (Click here for a photo of a child with measles, a disease whose seriousness anti-vax activists and fringe celebrity practitioners like Dr. Jay Gordon have consistently downplayed.) Yet, half of Dr. Bob's patients remain in this risky middle ground, according to this OCWeekly article: “Roughly 25 percent of his patients do not vaccinate, and another 25 percent partially vaccinate.”   

Clearly, Dr. Bob does as good of a job talking patients out of vaccinating as he does talking them into it.

Why does he continue to endanger the health of his patients?  “Sears sees his role as a bridge between the medical community and those skeptical of it, declaring that vaccinations don't have to be an all-or-nothing decision.”  However, how does one reconcile the idea that vaccines are bad, but I can do some of them?  Or that the CDC doesn't know what it is talking about, except with these vaccines that Sears, as someone with no background in immunology, likes? 

When asked about vaccines, Dr. Bob does not seem to describe them in a positive light: "There are chemicals such as formaldehyde. MSG is in some vaccines. There are chemicals that are very similar to antifreeze. Some flu shots actually have a spermicide used as a preservative. But they're all in tiny amounts, and I believe they're probably safe because they're in such tiny quantities."  He has an addendum at the end about the quantity of various ingredients, and most people with a basic understanding of chemistry know that the dose makes the poison.  However, he equivocates this position, claiming they are “probably” safe.  This statement is utter falsehood.  The ingredients found in vaccines, as well as vaccines themselves, have been studied exhaustively and proven safe.  Thus, his suppositions about ingredients fall into the category of fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

The ingredients are not Dr. Bob's only issue, though. "He also had an issue with the way vaccines are approved by the government. When a medical manufacturer makes a vaccine, a panel of doctors at the Food and Drug Administration must decide whether to approve it. Doctors on that panel might own stock in the vaccine manufacturers or even work for the vaccine manufacturers.”  This point may seem valid, if the FDA were the only check in place for vaccine safety.  However, the CDC and the ACIP also review vaccine data and studies, and they are the ones who make the schedule we all follow, which is supported by the AAP and the AAFP.  The system of nepotism that Dr. Bob alludes to is simply nonexistent, unless millions of doctors--uncompensated, by the way-- are in on it.


You would suppose that Dr. Bob just wants to give parents information and let them decide for themselves what to do.  However, “he continues to be an advocate for parents who want choices, and at the moment, that includes fighting against Assembly Bill 2109, which would require parents to obtain a doctor's signature before they can enroll their child in public school if they wish to skip one or more vaccines.”  In other words, he would rather have parents self-educate than seek appropriate information about medicine from an expert in medicine.

Dr. Bob's advice, as always, is to hide in the herd. "Right now, enough people are vaccinating that the herd immunity of our nation is not being compromised yet," he claims. However, he may have missed that vaccine preventable diseases, like measles and pertussis, are coming back.  He may have forgotten the measles outbreak of 2011, but 222 people who contracted it, and the third of them hospitalized with measles, have not forgotten.  Highly contagious diseases like measles and pertussis are merely signs of what is to come if we do not raise our vaccine rates.

"You can argue with these parents that the decision they're making to not vaccinate is bad for public health, but most parents are trying to make a medical decision that's best for their baby," Sears says. "I think we're all selfish when making any decision for our own children. I can't fault parents for thinking that way."  That true, Dr. Sears.  But I can blame you for supporting and promoting this way of thinking.

Karen Ernst is a mother, teacher, and vaccine advocate. She is the co-founder of Moms Who Vax.

Note to Peds: They're Looking For You

The other day I did a search on "Moms Who Vax" to see how this blog was coming along in the fight to get pro-vax resources higher up on the virtual totem pole during a blanket search for "vaccines" and came across something interesting. Again and again my search results delivered forum posts from vaccine-hesitant parents who were querying their online communities for pediatricians who would accomodate delayed vaccinations. Below are just a few examples of what I found.

In Missouri: http://community.babycenter.com/post/a34766113/delayed_vax_friendly

In Texas: http://www.dfwareamoms.com/forums/showthread.php?t=156243
(The questioner says she "thought she had a pediatrician but apparently she isn't taking new patients"--which made me smile--good on ya', doc!)

In Washington State (Seattle): http://community.babycenter.com/post/a34977484/recommend_obs_who_support_natural_birth_and_pediatricians_who_do_delayed_vax

In Michigan (Grand Rapids):
http://community.babycenter.com/post/a31949621/delayed-vax_pediatrician

And then this epic thread from Berkeley:
http://parents.berkeley.edu/recommend/medical/Pedi/alternative.html#0312

This is just a sample of the number I came across during a casual search. It reminded me of how I found my children's new pediatric clinic (I left my previous pediatric clinic after a child with measles exposed children in the waiting room, along with a pregnant pediatrician, to the virus). I had done a search looking for pediatricians in the Twin Cities area who were actively turning away anti-vax parents or parents who skipped a lot of vaccines for their children. Some pediatricians in Colorado and New England have begun doing this out of concern for their newborn patients. Alas, I had no luck finding such a practitioner in Minnesota, but I did locate a forum post in Mothering.com where a Twin Cities woman was looking for a practitioner who would be open to delayed vaccination. A couple women replied with the name of their pediatrician at a highly respected pediatric clinic.

I don't know why, but I felt moved to write the clinic a letter, along with a copy of this forum exchange, to let them know that this information was being spread on the internet and likely attracting anti-vaccine parents to their clinic, putting their patients at risk. Dropped it in the mail and did not include a return address for reasons I have no grasp on to this day! Anyway, I later found out that another of our fearless Moms Who Vax proudly claimed this clinic as hers--she drives her children all the way across town to see the pediatricians here. She was appalled by what I had found, and in true pro-vax mama style, printed off the pages of the forum exchange herself and showed them to her pediatrician, whose response was grim-faced silence. He was clearly very disheartened (he was not the pediatrician in question, by the way).

About three weeks later, I returned to the clinic's website to find it had put on its front page a clear, almost blunt statement about its policy on vaccines. While they were not turning anyone away, they were also making no bones about the fact that they encouraged and recommended vaccines, that a discussion about vaccines would be a part of every well child visit that would include immunizations, etc. I was so impressed by this that I scheduled an appointment with one of the doctors--and we are now patients of this clinic. Further conversations with the pediatricians have convinced me that they are 100% pro-vaccine; I am not sure what became of the pediatrician in question, however.

I bring this story up because I happen to know that the pediatricians at this clinic were completely blindsided by this online discussion about their practice. They did not want to be known as a place where anti-vax parents could seek safe harbor, where parents who were delaying vaccines could find a sympathetic ear and a willingness to enable a parent to put a child, and other children, at risk. I wanted to highlight this online discussion because it's taking place all over the Internet, perhaps below the radar of medical professionals who probably have never considered doing a simple Google search with terms like "moms who vax" (which seems to turn up a lot of "No-Vax Moms?" and "Slow-Vax Moms" threads). But chances are they will be surprised to find that one of their pediatricians is being held aloft by anti-vax parents as a person in the mainstream medical community who will accomodate their unscientific beliefs about the dangers of vaccinations. The question now becomes how these pediatric clinics will fight back so they do not become gathering places for non-vaccinating parents, which could become a public health nightmare.

I think a good start, at least for this blog, will be to post, from time to time, the forum posts that mention such doctors by name. I choose to believe that the vast majority of them have no idea they have been identified by the non-vax community as their champions. My guess is that they accomodate these parents in the hopes of changing their minds; that is the reasoning behind most clinics accepting non-vaccinating parents. We have more of a chance of getting them vaccinated than we would if we kick them out and have them all gathering at the naturopath. But it's time to bring this underground discussion out into the light so non-vaccinating parents have fewer and fewer mainstream medical practitioners who will be warm and fuzzy in regards to their decision not to vaccinate; to help doctors get a better handle on how they and their practices are perceived when it comes to the vaccine question; and to help clinics and practices see how accomodation can often turn around and bite them in the rear end.

In the end, we'll have to face the fact that anti-vax and the so-called "slow-vax" parents utilize the kind of obfuscation and machination that would make members of the the Tudor court blush (this exchange on a forum post for example: "Here's an idea--when you go to your appts, just say no to more than 1 vaccine at a time. They cannot force them on you. Then you can just say that you'll do more next time you come in. Keep playing it that way.") But pediatricians can, with just a little casual Google research, at least get a handle on what's being said about their views on vaccination.

Moms Who Vax: Nicholas's Mom

Editor's Note: Nicholas' Mom is a Catholic work-at-home mom who lives in the Northeast with her husband and their six children.  

"Are any of them twins?"

And there it is again.  It's not an unreasonable question with so many children so closely spaced together, but every time it comes up I have to pause and loosen the lump in my throat, smile and say that no, none of the children standing with me are twins.  One of them, my littlest girl with the pigtails and impish grey eyes, should have been a twin though.  And she was a twin until Fall of 2009 when I caught H1N1 influenza.

We hadn't even been trying to get pregnant, so when those two pink lines showed up we felt pretty stunned.  However, my husband and I quickly wrapped our hearts around the fact that we would be welcoming our 5th child and were so excited to see him or her on ultrasound.  In the darkness of the ultrasound room at first I didn't know what I was looking at and wondered why there was something else in my uterus next to "the baby" until the tech pointed out very clearly "so, there is baby A and there is baby B."  I asked if she was sure.  I had to stop driving a few times on the way home to collect myself, muttering under my breath "one baby... and another baby.  Two babies?!?!!"  I hadn't expected to be pregnant at all and here I was, extra pregnant with a couple of stowaway twins.  I called my husband who quickly started calculating how we were going to afford a full size van.  I called my midwife, and a nurse friend who had two year old twins and started figuring out how to try to have the healthiest multiple pregnancy that I could have.  I wasn't sure how all of the logistics were going to work out, but we are a Catholic family and decided to place our trust in God and to walk by faith.  

For weeks I took belly photos, counted grams of protein, devoured any book on multiple pregnancies that I could and consulted with my doctor and my midwife about how to plan for pregnancy, birth and life with twins.  I felt amazing and was so excited about my babies. I cherished listening to baby A and baby B's heart beats, so distinct from each other, one much faster than the other.  Living in a house that would barely have accommodated one more baby, we started looking at finding a bigger home in our area and price checked on eBay to see what kind of car that would fit our family we could afford with our tax return that year.  

When the first cases of H1N1 started popping up in Mexico I barely noticed.  I thought the idea of "pandemic flu" sounded so overblown.  When my friend told me that natural immunity was better than the vaccine and there were miscarriages associated with the flu vaccine, I took what she said seriously the same way I trusted her about what size shirts I was going to be in by the end of my pregnancy.  I was afraid to get the vaccine.  Ultimately I wasn't sure whether I was more scared of the disease or of the terrible things my friend told me could happen if I got the vaccine, but I decided to trust my health care providers and signed up for the very first vaccine clinic for pregnant women in my county.  Beyond that I went about my daily life and just waited for the vaccine to become available in my area since there was such a severe shortage in our area.  I never thought that anything bad could or would happen to me.  I was in my mid 20s, ate a healthy diet with lots of vitamins, tried to lead a more natural lifestyle and I worked too hard to have a healthy pregnancy for anything to possibly go wrong.  I worried about how I might get pneumonia if I caught H1N1, but beyond that it never occurred to me that my babies could be at risk.

I was the first in my family to show symptoms.  At first I felt slightly off and then I spiked a fever that evening. Through the night I slept fitfully, slipping in and out of hallucinations and for the first time in my life truly afraid that something worse could happen to me from a virus than just being miserable for a few days or weeks.  My doctor saw me first thing in the morning while my husband and then our kids started showing symptoms, and immediately prescribed Tamiflu.  I realized how serious my condition was when my doctor gave me the "if you start turning blue, don't try to get to the hospital.  Call 911 immediately" discussion.  Within even a few hours of getting the Tamiflu on board I started feeling not exactly better but like I wasn't getting worse.  I was still weak and took time to recover fully, but I was certain that the worst of it was over.

But what bothered me in the weeks that followed was that I only heard one range of heart tones.  Before there had been two, even as recently as the day before I was sick.  They were still in two different places and I measured ahead enough that my midwife had no concerns, but I couldn't shake the feeling that something was off.  I put it down to being the normal jitters of a mother who had had previous pregnancy losses and trusted that everything was ok even if it didn't feel ok.  After all, the worst was over, so I waited for my 18 week ultrasound to find out whether my babies were boys, girls or one of each.  We brought all of our kids with us to see the babies on ultrasound, the day after Thanksgiving that year.  It was clear as soon as the tech's face changed from excitement to concern that something was very wrong.  She kept looking but finally had to tell us "right now I'm only seeing one baby."   With those words my heart sank through the floor.  I had children in the waiting room waiting excitedly to find out whether they were having brothers or sisters.  I had no idea how I was going to tell them what had happened.  The radiologist came immediately and confirmed what the technician had found and life would never be the same again.

Through so many phone calls to be made, emails, Facebook updates I felt numb and wondered what I had done wrong.   I took all of my vitamins, I was healthy and working so hard for a healthy pregnancy.  As much as I looked for things I should have done differently or better, I kept coming to the bewildering conclusion that there was nothing.  I had done everything right and my baby, my daughter's twin, still died anyways.  There was no rhyme or reason.  There was no missing piece of the puzzle that if I had just done that one missing thing, everything would have been ok.   The only thing that would have made a difference was the vaccine, and no amount of wishing was going to change the fact that there was a shortage and that I got exposed during that delay.  I am so thankful to still have my daughter, that she was able to survive, but loving her doesn't change the knowledge there is someone who isn't here who should have been.  

No one looks at my family and sees that empty space where the lost child we named Nicholas should be.  No outside observer sees the missing fingerpaintings, hears the missing voice in the crowd, or notices the muddy footprints that aren't left alongside his brothers and sisters.  But I see them.  I see them in my daughter's eyes and wonder whether Nicholas' would have been blue, brown or grey like hers are.  I see them at Thanksgiving when my beautiful little girl sits so proudly at the table and I know exactly how old Nicholas should be this year.  These are the invisible losses, these are the hidden pains that I will always carry because of what H1N1 did in my life.  And I will spend the rest of my life wondering what would have happened if I had been able to get the flu vaccine.

The question still comes up every so often even now that we have our 6th child:  are of my children twins?  No, and yet yes.  My daughter will never know her twin and I will never have that baby, that precious child in my arms.  But I carry him in my heart and in my life just the same.  I remember him with every vaccine that my children get as soon as they are eligible to receive it.  I remember him with every stranger or friend I help to research vaccines so that they can feel comfortable in the safety of immunizing their children.  I remember him with every step of immunization advocacy that I take, every time I share his brief life with others.  This is his legacy.  This is his life, and how I honor it by remaining Nicholas' mom.

Editor's note: Flu vaccine is strongly recommended for all pregnant women. It is safe for both mom and baby, and will provide the newborn added immunity through its first few months of life.

Taking Back "Informed Consent"

Pediatrician Richard Pan also happens to be the California state legislator responsible for introducing AB 2109, which will make getting a vaccine exemption for philosophical reasons a touch more difficult (the bill will require a parent to get a sign-off from a health provider indicating that the health provider outlined the risks of not vaccinating).

The uproar among California’s vociferous but small anti-vaccine community has been predictable, but one thing Dr. Pan mentioned in a wonderful conference call Every Child By Two set up last week has stuck with me. He said it’s time for the pro-vaccine community to “take back the term ‘informed consent.’” I was thunderstruck by his comment.

Yes, I thought to myself, of course! Anti-vaxxers tell new parents that immunization laws trample on their rights as parents to make medical decisions, without mentioning that their choice not to vaccinate their children tramples on the rights of everyone around them to a healthy life. The code word for their opposition to vaccines is often “informed consent.” So what is informed consent? A simple Google search will bring up articles and web pages from a number of very official-sounding websites, which are actually anti-vaccine organizations (National Vaccine Information Center, Vaccine Information Center, etc), and there you will learn that doctors like to jab kids full of toxins at every well-child check and they like to keep the contents of those shots super secret. Therefore, the parents are not informed.

This claim is, of course, without merit. Vaccine ingredients are publically available, and the Vaccine Information Sheets (VIS) provided at well-child checks, along with supplemental sheets each provider may choose to give parents, contain transparent information about what is contained in each shot. The same cannot be said of other injections regularly given during doctor’s appointments, like antibiotics for children suffering from illness, for example. Of course the anti-vaccine activists don’t make mention of this fact.

The truth is that the raising the flag of “informed consent” with regard to vaccines is like American women marching in the streets in 2012 demanding the right to vote. We already got it. Only the anti-vaccine activists have misapplied the term to their desire to not vaccinate their children and put the community at risk.

But there is one scenario in which “informed consent” has not been fully implemented, and it has nothing to do with the ingredients of a vaccine. It has to do with informing parents of what can happen if they choose not to vaccinate. And telling them in clear, transparent language. Informing parents that not vaccinating their children can lead to serious illness, disability, and even death. As a new parent, I was not informed of this. I did not hear the words “risk” from my pediatrician except in describing the “risks” of the vaccine itself—fever and soreness. What if I had been “informed” that not vaccinating my child could put my child at risk of developing a potentially fatal illness, or even a long hospital stay? What if I had been told that not vaccinating my child would put the kid down the street with leukemia at serious risk? Or the one in my playgroup with a gelatin allergy? Maybe I would not have delayed my son's MMR vaccine for three months. Maybe, after each well-child check, I would have run to my social network and reminded my fellow parents why vaccination was so crucial.

In fact, the failure of informed consent is not that doctors and vaccine manufacturers do not inform parents about what is in vaccines and the risks of the immunizations. The failure is that parents have not been adequately informed of the risks of not vaccinating. And so Dr. Pan is right. It’s time to take back the term informed consent and apply it to something real: the risks of not vaccinating.

Moms Who Vax: Kristen's Story

By Kristen Robinson

Kristen and her children

When my daughter was born three years ago I never questioned her having to be vaccinated. I read through the book What to Expect the First Year a million times and would always just sort of skim past that whole chapter. I didn't question her need for them, I was pro-vax, and I knew she needed the vaccines to stay healthy—although back then I would not have called myself pro-vax. I didn't even know there was such a thing as being pro or anti-vax! I just thought everyone vaccinated their children. I had no clue how heated of a topic vaccinations could be or how strongly people’s opinions on the subject could be.

When I was pregnant with my son, who is now eight months old, I knew I would vaccinate him as well. Or so I thought.

I did not have a great pregnancy. I did not enjoy being pregnant and just wanted it over with. So I can only equate my feelings of guilt over the way I felt about my pregnancy as to why I suddenly was having doubts about vaccinating. I was suddenly terrified something would happen to him.

I am "friends'” with a woman who is against vaccinating, so I reached out to her and she seized on my hesitation. She began sending me all types of emails and articles begging me to at least think of spacing the vaccines. When she saw that tactic wasn't working very well she started mentioning how a friend of hers has a little boy who had a reaction to the MMR at thirteen months, a reaction I happened to know was a 1 in 10 million doses kind of adverse reaction. Still, the thought that something could possibly happen had been planted in my head. I was starting to cave, and she knew it.

The final anti-vax article she sent to me was over the top, but I will admit that I read it and got scared, which the whole intent of the article and the woman who sent it. She knew what my weakness was and she preyed on it. I knew as I read it that it was fear mongering at its best, but I couldn’t stop reading. Then, after sitting there digesting it, I read it again and I started to see the flaws. There was nothing scientific or factual backing up any of the claims in this article. Nothing. In fact, it was purposely written to scare moms just like myself who are on the fence. It made me sick.

I turned completely in the opposite direction and I picked up the phone and made the appointment for my son to get his two-month shots. He has had all of his shots since. I now have this enormous feeling of gratitude towards this "friend" every time my son gets his vaccines because if she had not sent me that final article I would have in all likelihood joined her on the dark side and decided not to vax. Now, the thought of NOT vaccinating scares me much more than anything that could ever be written about adverse reactions or any of the other fear-inducing thoughts anti-vaxxers try to put into our heads as parents. 

I know that there are many, many other mothers out there just like myself who have a fear of vaccines. I hope by writing this that I have helped them know that they are not alone. My hope for every parent is for them to be informed by reliable information, to be presented with facts not fiction, and to feel confident and supported, not made fearful by claims that have nothing to back them up.

Kristen Robinson is a stay-at-home mom to a little girl, Presley, who is three, and her little man, Kadena, who is eight months.

Civility and the Vaccine Discussion: Found!

UPDATE: Well, unfortunately, I may have spoken too soon. The course's discussion board has been infiltrated by anti-vaccine folks and followers of Age of Autism and I'm now totally depressed because the open discussion about science and vaccinology has become dominated by dialogue reminiscent of Bigfoot hunters arguing with Loch Ness Monster proponents. Sigh.

I just started taking a free online course on vaccines taught by Paul Offit, through an outfit called Coursera. The site offers a number of free online courses on a large number of topics, all taught by some of the top academics of the world, from Princeton to Stanford to Harvard, and beyond.

The course material for Offit's course is basic, which is great for folks wanting to learn a little about the history of vaccines, how they work, how they are made, and so on (though some people may be put off by Offit's straight-talk--I, of course, am enamored). But what I've found most exhilarating is the depth and breadth--and civility--on the discussion boards. A large percentage of the students come from outside the United States, interested in understanding the efficacy of vaccines so they can pass that information along to communities within their home country. Others are vaccine-hesitant parents, as I once was, who want to know more about vaccines. And there are several parents who have described themselves as living in communities with high vaccine-exemption rates and feeling like "fish out of water."

Of course I waited to post about this until after the course had started and enrollment was closed so we don't get an influx of anti-vaxxers--we have a handful of them in the course already but even they seem muted. The point is, in this vaccines course, even when we disagree, the dialogue is civil and open-minded. The students in the course are honestly curious about vaccines, and questions have been raised about why the pertussis vaccines seems to lose effectiveness so quickly, which is not interpreted as an anti-vax comment; why chiropractors seem, as a group, to be anti-vaccine, which is an honest question not an indictment; whether directly confronting anti-vaccine parents works best or if a softer approach is better, and so on. There are no agendas. I could turn cartwheels right now. Paul Offit's Vaccines Course, where have you been all my life?