Losing a child is the worst possible thing that can happen to a parent. Take joy in Caleb. Continue to love Micah and Judah.

Vaccines are actually based on this same model. We administer a dose of the virus so the immune system generate antibodies ahead of time. The only difference is that the virus is dead and the specific dose is known.

I am sympathetic to the worry that parents have over the shear number of vaccines that are recommended these days. It’s pretty high. But I think that what is seriously distorted for people is the lack of awareness about the diseases we are talking about. I had a conversation with a parent a couple of years ago who mistakenly thought that chicken pox was eradicated. … No dear, that was small pox….

diseases that we vaccinate against have serious complications. Diphtheria causes a membrane to grow over your wind-pipe and choke you. Tetanus causes muscle spasms and is rarely survived. whooping cough causes months of coughing fits that suck the wind right out of you – to the point that you vomit. IT kills very young and very old. Measles leads to secondary illness – a major killer in the developing world. Mumps can cause sterility. Rubella causes heart disease. Polio causes paralysis. We just don’t see these diseases, but they are still alive and well in this world. The more people travel between the US and developing world and vice versa, the more chance we have of bringing them back here.

when vaccines were discovered it was a miraculous thing – something I’m sure that many people praised God for. I think it’s a shame that they are now trivialized.

Chicken pox, I admit, seems much more trivial to me. But if you are immune to chicken pox, you will never get shingles. That’s pretty nice.

I appreciated the mother in Ashland that discussed with the doctor each vaccine, the pros and cons and just decreased the number rather than blanketly rejecting them all.

The same thing is going on about circumcision. (As you well know)

For some reason first-time parents are prone to this fad stuff and I’m glad to see you’re taking a pass on this one. When we had our first kid there were TONS of parents in our church who believed that staying home was the only way to raise a child. The family pastor even published a manifesto backing the movement… even though his wife worked PT at the church.

We really felt like the phenomenon was fueled by high-powered, highly educated moms who gave up their big career jobs to be stay-at-home moms. They were bored and put all of that energy into child-rearing. Play dates became events to manage. The child’s schedule became more important than the couple’s health, on and on.

Since our kids are so spread out we have gotten to see these trends play out, come full circle, and just become laughable. Most are just silly. (Like the extreme feeding scheduling that was popular around 2000.) But the anti-vaccine thing has serious health risk.