As a nurse, I had just assumed that everything we had been asked to do was based
on good, solid science. But the gaps in the science are, frankly, what we’re still
dealing with now. —VICk Y DEBOlD, RN, PHD

bacterium associated with food poisoning and diarrhea. 46 Parents in Minnesota who had their children vaccinated against Hib before the recall were unknowingly injecting their children’s bodies with a potentially contaminated product.

For a vaccine proponent such as Paul Offit, who downplays the dangers of vaccines, the choice to vaccinate is the only one to make, and the death of even one child from a vaccine-preventable disease is unacceptable. But for the hundreds of thousands of parents whose children have been damaged by adverse reactions to vaccines, there is no way to quantify which child’s life is more important. “You cannot put a greater value on the life of a child

who is injured or dies from a disease than the life of a child who is injured or dies from a vaccine reaction,” says Barbara Loe Fisher.

Vicky Debold, RN, who also has a PhD in Public Health, has had firsthand experience with infants who have died as a result of Hib infections. When she worked as a pediatric nurse in an ICU in the early 1980s, she saw two infants die of Hib, and worked with the grieving parents. Partly because of that experience, Debold was a staunch proponent of vaccines, and thought that people who were skeptical of them were ignorant and misguided. But in August 1998 when her own son was 15 months old, following a routine round of vaccinations,

Above: Vicky Debold, at home with her son, Sam, 11, who was diagnosed with autism shortly after receiving a routine round of vaccinations

Impressions (2009): 95; www.michiganlawreview.org/ firstimpressions/vol107/gordon.pdf. 43. Ibid.: 96. 44. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Invasive Haemophilus influenzae Type B Disease in Five Young Children— Minnesota, 2008,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 58 (Early Release, 23 January

2009): 1–3; www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ mm58e0123a1.htm. 45. One child had received t wo doses of the Hib vaccine, in accordance with the CDC recommendations for a five-month-old, another child had received two doses of the Hib vaccine, but no booster shot, per CDC recommendations at the time. Given that vaccinated children far outnumber the

unvaccinated, the fact that three of the five children who were infected were unvaccinated suggests that the unvaccinated are overrepresented among those getting sick. 46. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Vaccines & Immunizations, “Questions and Answers about Hib Recall” ( 27 December 2003): www.cdc.gov/ vaccines/recs/recalls/ hib-recall-faqs-12-12-07.htm.