
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, April 19, 1993                   TAG: 9304190249
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

VACCINES HAVE WORKED MEDICAL WONDERS

I WAS ANNOYED at the amount of space (March 27 letter, "Immunizations against diseases may cause health problems") given Colleen Redman, "a Floyd writer who has been involved in nutrition, self-health care and herbal studies for 20 years." She apparently is also a self-styled medical expert on immunizations, though never having attended medical school.

I practiced family medicine for 35 years prior to my retirement, and saw the wonders that vaccines can work.

Has she ever been involved in a polio epidemic? Has she seen children dying with this disease? Has she seen a beautiful 16-year-old girl in an iron lung who will never walk again because of bulbar polio? Has Ms. Redman ever seen a 4-year-old with diphtheria whose life was saved by an emergency tracheotomy done in the child's bedroom? I also wonder if she has seen a child die with red measles or end up with severe brain damage because of uncontrollable fever of 108 degrees-plus?

I saw all of these things before vaccines became available. I have not seen a case of polio since the epidemic of 1954, nor have I seen red measles since the live-virus vaccine was introduced.

Ms. Redman states that most of the diseases for which we immunize were on the decline before the introduction of immunizations. I wonder how she explains the eradication of smallpox worldwide? This was not done by eating roots, nuts, berries, and drinking herbal tea. It was accomplished by using the smallpox vaccine.

Her other contention concerned side effects of the vaccines. I might remind her, and others, there are no 100 percent safety guarantees in life, or in medicine. The side effects of vaccines are rare, and when balanced against the good they do, the odds are overwhelming in favor of the vaccines.

If she wishes to subsist on her herbs and nutritional supplements, so be it, but let's not accept her ideas as the answer to infectious childhood diseases. FREEMAN W. JENRETTE, M.D. BEDFORD

by CNB