This post got me thinking.

I get the thing about too many vaccinations but I had to wonder which ones SHOULD a parent make sure their child gets?

The first that came to mind was smallpox. It was one of the first ever created and is not an injection, just some tiny pinpricks on the arm to barely break the skin. Most all of still have the faint scar from this. I believe this one is quite safe.

The only argument I can think of against this is that smallpox (the disease) was pretty well eradicated from the entire entire earth long ago so that the chances of getting it today are almost nil. It was probably the most successful inoculation program in history.

Another vaccination I would consider retaining is polio, although I would want to research the many methods first and pick the best one. Of course polio shares with smallpox the fact that it has been pretty well wiped out over the many decades so, again, the chances of contact with the virus in real life are also very low. Maybe not as low as smallpox, but very low.

I am not sure about all the others. From my own experience I would not wish my child to ever get whooping cough. I had it when I was a child and it was absolutely the worst sickness I ever had; it was a total nightmare for many days. I also have heard that there has been a resurgence of whooping cough in recent years. Of course this is just a personal thing from my terrible memories of bad and traumatic whooping cough was. I recovered of course an no doubt gained some immunity in the process.

That brings up the question of gaining immunity by the process of having the illness. That simply happens by nature's laws and I never heard anybody suggest we try to eliminate THAT. (!) The invention of vaccines was just an attempt to trigger that natural process. (Dr. Edward Jenner pricked the skin with cowpox and found it gave protection against smallpox).

My point here is that one need not just jump on the bandwagon of the current anti-vaccine movement but that it is something to think about seriously and study and use discrimination to decide WHICH vaccines to give or not give. To simply say "all are bad" doesn't seem very smart.