Mom had brought him in after treatment by his naturopath had failed. Constant coughing had made it impossible for him to take in adequate nutrition and starvation, coupled with a raging bacterial pneumonia were conspiring to shortly end his very short life.
We worked feverishly. Intubation, IV boluses, major antibiotics, vasopressors. All futile.
At 9:03 pm, after 30 minutes of cardiopulmonary resuscitation we pronounced him dead.
This boy had pertussis. His mother choose not to vaccinate him. I won't enter that debate. Anyone who has ever watched a child die or become permanently disabled from a preventable illness supports vaccination.
From Pkids.org:
- Babies may bleed behind the eyes and in the brain from coughing.
- The most common complication is bacterial pneumonia. About 1 child in 10 with pertussis also gets pneumonia, and about 1 in every 50 will have convulsions.
- Brain damage occurs in 1 out of every 250 children who get pertussis.
- Pertussis causes about 10-20 deaths each year in the United States.
56 comments:
Vaccine issue aside. What the hell!!How could a mother watch her poor child lose 1/4 of there body weight due illness and not seek medical attention. I dont get it! This is so sad and makes me so angry!
Oh My! That poor baby! Some people should not BREED!
Isn't this child abuse? Regardless of the vaccination issue, shouldn't this woman have sought medical attention earlier?? If nothing else she needs education before she breeds again.
Fucking hippies.
Stupid fucking hippies.
Of course, it will be the medical establishment's fault in their eyes...and they'll have more kids who will get sick and die, or get sick and pass on archaic, easily-treated illnesses to innocent children.
I don't know if it's a federal or state regulation, but in Washington our medical insurance is required to provide coverage for "alternative medicine." So this sort of child abuse is given a patina of respectability, regardless of the complete lack of science behind it. "If it didn't work, why would my insurance pay for it?" I hear idiots cry. What a great system.
I got it in my teens, and would never wish it on anyone, it was awful. How sad that people choose to be so ignorant at the expense of an innocent life.
Shauna (murgatr)
Pharmacy Tech RDC'06
Heart breaking.
My son had pertussis last year at age 11.All his immunizations were up to date.He missed over three months of school and it was rumored he was dead among his peers!.It is truly frightening to see your child cough to the point of emesis and suffer hypoxia to the point of loss of conciousness.As a health care professional I was at my wits and and was offered no real symptom relief even after multiple PMD, pulmonologist and biofeedback doctors!Over a year later he has a weak respiratory sytem and is fearful that any cough is the return of pertussis.
Yvonne ER RN
All morons who choose not to vaccinate their children should be forced to read this. I did a stint as a school nurse, and the hippies were allowed to say they chose not to vaccinate for "religious reasons"...no questions asked. Idiots!
CPS was involved but didn't do anything because it was related to a religious group and their beliefs - can you believe that?
Religious beliefs aside... vaccines work. Infectious diseases still kill. Sometimes it is sad that children don't have a choice - their parents make the decisions, however unwise.
I agree.. vaccine issue aside, it's criminal to have not brought the kid in for attention earlier. Deaths from pertussis can be prevented with good medical care.
I had pertussis once while I was on my peds rotation in med school. I know it's worse in kids (and potentially fatal in infants), but even when it's not particularly dangerous (otherwise fairly healthy adult), it's so miserable! Why would anybody put their child through unnecesary misery?
Just horrible. There is no excuse for that to happen in America today.
"My son had pertussis last year at age 11.All his immunizations were up to date".
So, let's see... your son's immunizations were up to date yet he still got pertussis? Makes you wonder about that vaccine...
Anonymous -- no, it doesn't "make you wonder about that vaccine." Only imbeciles expect vaccine efficacy to be 100%. But it shows the importance of high vaccine coverage in the population as a whole, so pertussis won't get a hold and a chance to spread further.
I wish we could use scare tactics in our clinic to get some parents to vaccinate their kids. We had one dad who didn't want to vaccinate his kid because he didn't believe his child would come in contact with any of the diseases that we vaccinate for. Can you believe that? Especially in Germany where we are right next to countries that don't necessarily vaccinate like the US does. Craziness....
You cannot put the vaccination issue aside. It is at the core of this murder by a Naturopath and the mother who listened to the Merchants of Disease, Disability and Death. That is what anti-vaccinationists are.
You cannot put the vaccination issue aside. It is at the core of this murder by a Naturopath and the mother who listened to the Merchants of Disease, Disability and Death. That is what anti-vaccinationists are.
"Anonymous -- no, it doesn't "make you wonder about that vaccine."
Of course it does. Maybe not to you but is does to the thinking person.
"Maybe not to you but is does to the thinking person."
Nope. The thinking person knows that no vaccine is 100% effective. No vaccine maker or doctor claims that vaccines are 100% effective. Since this has never been a claim and any moderately intelligent person, or even basically literate person, is aware of that it's not necessary to "wonder about the vaccine".
It does, however, emphasize how important herd immunity is. If you don't know what that is I would suggest you google it - the first hit is probably Wikipedia and their explanation is probably a good enough introduction.
Hey, lay off the hippies! Most of the peace-loving hippies I know vaccinate. The anti-vaccine people I know, however, tend to be conspiracy nuts or religious fanatics, often both.
Even if he was up-to-date in terms of his DTaP vaccinations as an infant, had he received the Tdap booster at age 10 or 11?
Pertussis immunity wanes, and the Tdap vaccine is now routinely recommended for 11-12 years olds.
Anonymous: Right, and the fact that a great-uncle of mine died even after having a coronary bypass, means all "thinking people" should question the efficacy of open-heart surgery. :-P
Crankyprof said: "Of course, it will be the medical establishment's fault in their eyes...and they'll have more kids who will get sick and die, or get sick and pass on archaic, easily-treated illnesses to innocent children."
Too true. This "religious" mother just watched both naturopathy and modern medicine fail to cure her child of whooping cough. She will therefore conclude that both are equally effective/ineffective. Since naturopaths tend to be charismatic and able to explain away their every failure with plausible pseudo-science while simultaneously taking all the credit for healing that would have happened anyway, the mother will conclude that naturopathy is still the better choice for her kids.
Sigh...
I don't know about the rest of the world, but in Australia our vaccine recommendations have changed due to a study showing that most adults who'd had a full vaccination course as children (including 11 yo booster) had not much immunity.
So health care workers (and various others) now have to have adult pertussis boosters and they are recommended for everyone else, particularly those working with children.
Two of my fully-vaccinated-as-children friends have had pertussis in the last month. What's worrying is that because they weren't particularly sick, it wasn't clear that what they had could kill a baby.
I have seen many cases of pertussis. Properly treated, it's not a lethal disease except in very rare instances involving very small infants.
We have to ask ourselves how this family became so completely estranged from us. I'm guessing that the doctors they came in contact with would not listen to their ideas about alternatives in vaccine schedules and other aspects of medical care. They were probably shunned and possibly kicked out a pediatric practice for even wanting to discuss vaccines. I have seen this so many times that I'm no longer surprised by the narrow point of view most doctors have.
This certainly does not excuse the parents but one has to contemplate how they got to this point. I do agree that protective services should have a long hard look at the parents' role in this child's death.
Jay Gordon, MD, FAAP
Dr. Gordon, I am shocked that you, as a person who is well known for advocating "alternative" immunization schedules that result in children not being protected at the earliest possible age, have the nerve to come here and say that the fault lies with other physicians.
Even if the doctors this family saw *were* unsympathetic to their vaccine neuroses, that would not make them responsible for the child's death. The ones who *are* responsible are the people who go around insinuating that vaccines have hidden dangers. Like, um, you.
And what of your dismissive comment that pertussis is "not a lethal disease except in very rare instances involving very small infants"? So it's okay if the kids it kills are very small?
You can't make blanket statements about groups of people; cursing the "hippies" is absurd. There are crazy people of every ilk. Besides, Cranky, you don't know that the mother was a "hippie." She could just has easily have been a Christian Scientist, simply negligent, or just plain nuts.
I know plenty of seemingly normal, well-educated parents who have bought into the vaccine paranoia. I wouldn't describe them as hippies or nuts or negligent. They're just misled and badly misinformed.
About the herd immunity... More adults should be vaccinated against pertussis. The current thinking is that adolescents and adults, whose immunity has waned, can get a milder case of pertussis and then pass it on to small children who can get really, really sick. DTP is not usually given to babies under 6 months, yes? So that's a lot of infants who are vulnerable.
I'm not around kids very much and don't see myself as a big threat, pertussis-wise, but I recently decided to get a TDaP booster vaccination. You just never know.
Well thank you Dr Gordon for one of the most clueless reply's I have ever read from a doctor. I wouldn't bring my household cockroaches to you let alone a human being.
I think criminal charges should be brought against the mother and the naturopath. Not seeking medical help for a baby that obviously sick, that near death, merits manslaughter charges.
I don't think there should be religious exemptions for getting vaccinations, or medical care for a child to the point that he dies.
First, E Nursey, my condolences. Loosing the little ones is always horrible. I know how badly you feel, as do many who read your blog, and I wish you and your colleagues the very best. You are a damn good nurse, and this child was fortunate to have you and other capable, caring people fighting for him right to the end. It is not your fault that the disease had progressed too far before you had a chance to take it on. And yes, I know, that doesn't make you feel any better. Perhaps knowing that many of your readers have been there, and that we cry with you, may.
It is not coincidental that the anti-vaccine crowd consists mostly of middle and upper class citizens of modern, affluent, Western countries. The cold, evil, mechanistic "allopathic" medicine of which they are so suspicious (and so utterly ignorant) has improved public health to the point that they can be stupid and, usually, get away with it. Because vaccination is so effective, few parents in North America or Western Europe will ever watch a child die of these terrible diseases, allowing them to continue to be misinformed and make bad decisions, and usually get away with it. They are fortunate to live in societies where most of us vaccinate our kids, which greatly reduces the chance that their kids will die. However, if the ignorant hacks prevail, that will change (see "herd resistance," mentioned above).
Re: "makes you wonder about vaccination;" no, it does not. Read history. Before widespread vaccination, as many as fifty percent of children died of infectious disease before reaching adolescence. Holding a terrified child in ones arms while he or she suffocated to death was a common experience endured by many families, and periodic epidemics where a routine part of community life. Since the widespread use of vaccines, these deaths are rare; except in countries that do not vaccinate, in which the childhood death toll continues to be about fifty percent.
Don't "wonder about vaccines." Read history, and wonder at the number of reasonably intelligent people who do not have a clue how to evaluate scientific information, or apply critical thinking to emotionally charged issues. Then, morn for the children who will pay the price for their incompetent decision-making.
My son as a baby had this even though he was vaccinated. He survived because he'd had the vaccination and his case was not as bad. This was over 25 years ago when people were sceptical about the safety of vaccinations. I am so pleased we chose to vaccinate. My son was so ill. He would not have otherwise survived.
Is there a better illustration for the dangers of CAM? What utter stupidity, that the parents of this poor child decided to listen to the advice of their "enlightened" naturopath. What an incredible education this naturopath must have received to believe that vaccines are evil and have no place in the modern world. This kind of story makes me absolutely sick.
The thing that really boggles me is the parents who don't vaccinate their kids and then do a lot of international travel with them. Because if the world is your herd, it ain't immune.
Where I live in San Diego, we recently had a measles outbreak that began as a souvenir from an international trip from a couple of unvaccinated children. Since they went to the local ZOMG-let-no-chemical-come-in-contact-with-Precious magnet school with a >10% unvaccinated population it quickly spread, including to several babies too young for the MMR vaccination who were seen at the same pediatric office as the two kids who first got it (since it took a couple days for the index cases to be diagnosed).
All of the kids were ultimately fine, thank goodness. Our ped said she liked it when things like this happened because she always gets a flock of parents who had decided not to vaccinate their kids who change their minds and vaccinate them. While I see her point and I'm glad that more kids are vaccinated, my heart goes out to the parents of the babies who were too young to be vaccinated who got sick and were in the hospital for days. The heartache (not to mention the financial toll) they suffered as a result of people they didn't even know who did stupid things is terribly unfortunate.
P.S. All the unvaccinated kids who had come in contact with a kid with measles were quarantined for a long time, so while it was too late for the vaccination to get them out of the quarantine, a lot of the parents of the unvaccinated kids got their kids vaccinated just due to the annoyance of the quarantine.
-Anon 9:47am
I can't understand why these practitioners (and parents) are against vaccination in the first place. Let's see, introducing a minute amount of a pathogen to prevent a disease that would be caused by larger amounts of that pathogen... gee, doesn't that sound like, umm,...
homeopathy???
Yet it's verboten. Can't see why.
That being said, DTwP was nasty. Thank G_d they've delicensed that one in favor of DTaP. I can still feel the spot in my arm where I got the DTwP vaccination on 10Jan75... Given that my mom had pertussis as a girl and missed 4 months of school, though, I think I'll deal.
I cannot add any more than what the previous posters have said. So darn sad.
I cannot add any more than what the previous posters have said. So darn sad.
I'm tempted to say "well, at least he didn't get autism from all the vaccines". But that would be cruel and heartless.
Poor kid.
I'm not going to weigh in on the vaccination debate.
I *will* say, however, that I think it's DAMN STUPID to give a baby who's barely had FIVE MINUTES in this world a... HEPETITIS VACCINE??
Give the body a chance to develop, geez! It certainly didn't kill ME not having a hepetitis vaccine. :P
I live near a lot of the Colorado City folk, for those of you who are not familiar, think Texas, FLDS church, polygamy, pioneer gear, and you have the general picture. Anyway, about 99% of them chose not to vaccinate their children for anything, and the pertussis rate in Colorado City is sky high, as well as the mortality rate of children and infants. The infant/children graveyard out there is larger than the adult one. If ever there were a convincing picture for vaccinating your children, that would be it.
The post states that the mother took the child to a naturopath. This is different than a naturopathic physician. Anyone can call themselves a "naturopath" regardless of education. It is naturopathic physicians who have attended a four year accredited medical school. these physicians would certainly have either used a treatment that worked, followed up more closely and/or saw the danger signs that would lead them to send the parent to the ER. This is why every state needs laws licensing naturopathic physicians so that people desperate for alternative care don't get duped by so-called "naturopaths".
-dr. sheryl wagner
Non vacinatoors are the same ones who claim they are so smart about vaccine preventable dieases and boast trying to spread them and infect their kids to "boost" their immune systems and yet all the "natural remedies did nothing but prolong her babies suffering how infuriating but I am sure the non vax community already has their excuses and no doubt they will say it was the medical attention that killed him grrrrrrr.
So freaking sad wonder if that mother will choose to vaccinate in the future, infuriating.
"introducing a minute amount of a pathogen to prevent a disease that would be caused by larger amounts of that pathogen..."
Except with the real religious nutjobs, the "minute amount of a pathogen" is not the problem.
The problem that most people have is with injecting their children with a mixture containing, according to the CDC website, Aluminium, Formaldehyde, MSG, and Thimerosal, among many others.
You don't want them in your food, you wouldn't want to breathe them in, you wouldn't let your kid play with them (would you?), but you're perfectly willing to accept that it is absolutely necessary that they be injected into your small child's bloodstream, and that there is simply no other way to carry out vaccinations but to put these things in them.
Amanda US, you are mistaken.
- Aluminum is used in some vaccines as an adjuvant. It is not a pollutant. There has never been any indication that it is harmful.
- Formaldehyde is a natural byproduct of metabolism. The amount of it in a vaccine is trivial compared with what is already present in the human body.
- MSG? WTF! http://photoninthedarkness.blogspot.com/2005/06/msg-not-as-toxic-as-people-who-claim.html
- The last thimerosal-preserved childhood vaccines were manufactured in 2001 and expired by 2003. There are barely measurable amount of thimerosal remaining from the production process in some childhood vaccines, but per the FDA, these amounts are so small as to have no biological significance.
You've gone 0 for 4 here...care to throw out a few more urban legends?
yea this vaccine is necessary
okay the problem with the vaccines is that these new babies are getting 7 vaccines simultaniously, and that is not good for there immune system. The preservatives in them are contributing to other problems like autism. This is also scary for many parents, the real issue is not should these children be vaccinated because they all should be, but the medical professionals need to spread them out more so that these little bodies are not being overloaded with so many vaccinations at the same time. jenny mcarthy and jim carey have a website too many too soon that you should google and it will give you more info. on it. There is no excuse for these children to suffer because of parents ignorance, vaccines save lives that is the bottom line and a compromise in needed so that parents are not concerned about causing harm by vaccinating as well.
Anyone doubting the value of vaccination should be living with us right at the moment. My (stupid) son and daughter in law did the "homeopathic innoculation" despite many prompts from us to follow the regular vaccination regime. At just 1, my granddaughter has contracted whooping cough and has been hospitalized twice - a week in intensive care in one case and 3 nights the second time around. They are now living at our place (big city, good facilities etc as opposed to their out in the bush hippy place!) and to listen to the poor little poppet whooping away and occasionally going blue in the face is absolutely scary in the extreme. We have hired Oxygen with the paediatrician's support and take it everywhere with us now. The DIL said last night that vaccination looks like a good idea - duh!
i am searching net for answers my 2 month old baby is in hospital now with her mum she has whooping cough i am so affraid something is going to happen to her so is so sick please vaccinate i am one distressed father thanks from gold coast australia
I have pertussis right now. I have been sick since November 20th. I have never been sicker, yet I don't have a fever. The health care folks can't even control my cough. Any parents that don't vaccinate obviously don't check their sources and don't have a brain in their head. I am out of sick days at work and am hoping that my school district will allow me to access the sick leave pool so I don't lose a ton of money for getting a disease I contracted from kids I teach...
"I *will* say, however, that I think it's DAMN STUPID to give a baby who's barely had FIVE MINUTES in this world a... HEPETITIS VACCINE??"
Thank you!! I was thinking the same thing. I am all for protecting my kids from things like whooping cough and diphtheria and even the mumps which can cause sterility in young boys measles and rubella which can cause severe birth defects if a pregnant woman gets them and polio I've known people who had polio. Babies don't need chicken pox vaccines or especially hepatitis unless of course your baby is an iv drug user or promiscuous etc.
This is why it's important to vaccinate newborns against hepatitis B:
"Some parents wonder whether it is necessary to give the hepatitis B virus vaccine to newborns. They ask: "How is a baby going to catch hepatitis B?" But, before the hepatitis B virus vaccine, every year in the United States about 18,000 children less than 10 years of age caught hepatitis B virus from someone other than their mother. Some children catch it from another family member, and some children catch it from someone outside the home who comes in contact with the baby. About 1 million people in the United States are infected with hepatitis B virus. However, because hepatitis B virus can cause a silent infection (meaning without obvious symptoms), many people who have hepatitis B virus infection don't know that they have it! So it can be hard to tell from whom you could catch hepatitis B virus. Worse yet, many people don't realize that you can catch hepatitis B virus after casual contact with someone who is infected (for example, sharing washcloths).
(From the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, http://www.chop.edu/consumer/jsp/division/generic.jsp?id=75743)
Additionally, acquiring hepatitis B virus as an adult is not such a big deal (still not good, but not likely lethal); however, if you get it as an infant, you have a very high risk of later developing cirrhosis or liver cancer. The hepatitis B vaccine is very safe and there is no reason to take a chance by skipping it.
Dr. Gordon is right that many parents are estranged from medical professionals. Some of the comments made here only serve to alienate the middle-class, mainstream anti-vaxers even more. Calling people "stupid, morons," or "imbiciles" or presenting information to prove them wrong will not persuade parents to trust you with their children's health, regardless of how many years of school you have or the number of letters that follow your name. If you truly desire to serve people, you will acknowledge that many of their concerns are indeed valid and seek a compromise that best suits the concerns of all parties. If however you act like medical lords and rulers, you will only promote distrust and people will continue to essentially revolt against the medical community.
Post a Comment