by all means, lets poison the fetus. Where are the long term studies showing the safety of doing such a thing to a pregnant woman? And by long term, i mean studies that have followed women who were vaccinated and then studied the children for learning disabilities, etc, for a period of years thereafter. ???anyone???

Grabbing the popcorn to watch the vaccination debate

My son contracted pertusis at 3 months old. He spents weeks in ICU and was miss diagnoised for a month. He was sick for years after a long and difficult recovery. One shot to protect a child and family is nothing compared to what he went through. If you had an experience like ours you would not think twice about getting a booster. Make an educated choice and save your child from the risk of this deadly disease. My son is 15 now and doing well although he has learning disabilities due to lack of oxygen as an infant with pertusis.

MSNBC tells promotes the pertussis vaccine for pregnant women and includes Dr. Paul Offit urging compliance. Offit is described as "a pediatric infectious disease expert at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia" without any mention of his role developing a rota virus vaccine. As someone who's personally made millions of dollars from the recommended vaccine schedule, he's hardly an independent expert.

Mothers need to look into this critical issue. Just as with the flu vaccine, recommended for pregnant women at all stages of pregnancy, the manufacturer's package insert for the pertussis vaccine clearly stages "animal reproductive studies have not been conducted" on this vaccine and it's not known if the vaccine "can cause fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman or can affect reproduction capacity."
See SafeMinds:
See Huffington Post:

Just as with any medical procedure, vaccination involves a risk. Mothers should be made aware that if they or their unborn child is harmed by a vaccine, they can't sue either the doctor or the vaccine maker. A special vaccine court is their only recourse. Since 1986, the federal vaccine court has paid out over 2 billion dollars for severe damage, including death, resulting from vaccines.

For more information, see the National Vaccine Information Center and the new book, Vaccine Epidemic by Louise Kuo Habakus and Mary Holland.

Anne Dachel, Media editor: Age of Autism

 This is a really good recommendation, but I really can't stand the commercial they have going on for it.  I don't know what it is, but the lady and her baby just annoy me.  I change the channel any time they come on.  (I'm not a mother and have no babies around me, so I'm free to complain.)

Definitely, though, I agree that they should take preventive methods to protect against diseases like whooping cough.  Whatever can help spread a further outbreak of once- well-controlled diseases would be great.

I obtained an ingredient list of this vaccine when the local school district required all students to receive it again or not be allowed to enroll. It did not contain mercury, but it did contain formaldehyde and lead. The presence of these two items alone would cause me to choose not to receive the vaccine were I pregnant.

Why not just wait and vaccinate breast feeding mothers? Antibodies are transferred but these harmful substances are either prevented from being passed along or are greatly reduced.

An IRB is not likely to approve a double-blind study where mothers and children are given placebo vaccines, due to the ethical issues of exposing kids to a slew of diseases you would not otherwise find here in the first world. The surprising relapse of a variety of old diseases is coming out of a preference for antibiotics over vaccines, and now that we are rationing antibiotics to suppress the prevalence of XDR bacteria...

My daughter had seizures the day she received her Pertussis vaccine.  She is now brain damaged and can't even sit up.  She's 2.  So, if the mom is vaccinated and the fetus arrives in the world with disabilities, we'll just blame the parents for having bad genes because surely, vaccines are safe and harmless. It's a risk, don't take it.