Vaccinations Not Immune From Critics

Eleanor and Mark Tremblay have trouble looking at their son, Oliver, who is 8 years old and severely autistic, without saying to themselves, "if only...."

As they play the videos showing how Ollie was before, they think, if only they could just rewind their lives; if only they could skip that shot: the measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations they believe caused their son's autism, although there is no conclusive evidence.

Dr. James Dale, a professor of medicine at the University of Tennessee's health science center in Memphis, has spent more than 30 years working to perfect a vaccine to prevent streptococcus, the infection that causes strep throat and, in its more virulent forms, so-called flesh-eating disease and rheumatic fever.

"There is risk with vaccines, but the benefits far, far outweigh the risks," Dr. Dale told Sunday Morning correspondent Martha Teichner. "If we can reduce the incidence of acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease by half in the world, that's where the real personal payoff would come."

On one side you have Dr. Dale, determined to save millions of children - and on the other, the Tremblays, heartbroken over the fate of one boy. Between them you have the story of vaccines: The greater good versus the risk, no matter how small, to the individual.

It's a debate that began in this country nearly three hundred years ago over smallpox.

"It was a disease that would sweep through cities and infect, you know, tens of thousands of people at a time, and it would kill 20, 30, 50 percent of them," said journalist Arthur Allen, the author of "Vaccine, the Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver."

"The first form of smallpox vaccine came from China and India where it was used for centuries and it entered the U.S. in 1721. Cotton Mather actually brought it to the United States."

Mather was a hellfire and brimstone Puritan preacher from Boston. His house was firebombed when he urged Bostonians to try scratching live smallpox infection into their skin.

In 1796, British country doctor Edward Jenner confirmed that milkmaids, exposed to a much milder cowpox virus, were immune to smallpox. Millions of people finally dared to be vaccinated with Jenner's cowpox serum. The term vaccinate comes from the Latin word for cow, vacca.

"Confidence in vaccines and mistrust in vaccines goes in waves," Allen said. "And also, another element is really the seriousness of the disease. I mean, when the polio vaccine came out in 1955, it came into a country that was petrified of polio."

The conquest of polio became a national crusade.

"Millions of Americans participated in the March of Dimes," Allen said. "They literally sent their dimes to the White House."

In 1955, the announcement was made that Jonas Salk's polio vaccine worked. The fact that 200 people were paralyzed after getting the shot and ten died, was overlooked.

"Jonas Salk, you know, was a god," Allen said. "Church bells were ringing around the country. People were embracing in the street. It was a moment of unmitigated jubilation around the country."

Now they're protesting. Last month, there was a rally in Washington against the new human papilloma virus vaccine to prevent cervical cancer.

"We have one of the most highly vaccinated child populations in the world and yet we have children who are increasingly chronically ill and disabled," Founder of the National Vaccine Information Center Barbara Loe Fisher said at the rally. "One in 150 children in America is autistic, one in six is learning-disabled."

Fisher, author of "A Shot in the Dark," is one of many Americans who think there's a connection even though the medical establishment says no.

"What we have to do is not discount the reports of parents that they are taking healthy, bright children in to their pediatricians to be vaccinated, with now, by age 6, 48 doses of 14 vaccines that the government recommends, and many of them are taking home children that then they watch regress," Fisher said.

Fisher says her son, Christopher, suffered brain damage within hours of getting his fourth DPT - diphtheria, pertussus and tetanus - vaccination. Thanks in large part to her pressure, the manufacturer of the DPT vaccine made it safer and Congress was forced to pass the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act which included money for compensation - proof to Fisher that parents should be wary.

"The idea that some can be sacrificed in service to the rest is very dangerous," Fisher said.

Nobody actually knows how many vaccine injuries occur but 17,000 were voluntarily reported in the U.S. last year. The true number is believed to be much higher - but how to weigh that against the benefit of vaccination?

"We forget about the paralysis that plagued our towns years ago," Dr. Jon Andrus said. "We forget that our mothers said, 'Don't go to the pool for more than two hours, because you'll get polio.' We forget about what measles have done. We forget that children in Africa die of diarrhea and pneumonia."

Dr. Andrus has spent nearly 15 years running immunization programs around the globe for the World Health Organization. One of his proudest moments was his involvement in India's polio eradication campaign - 125 million children were vaccinated in one day.

"We live in a global community," Andrus said. "We would not want our children left unprotected as long as virus is circulating throughout the world. Polio is a very good example; the last three outbreaks of polio in the U.S. were all due to importations."

Even though Mark and Eleanor Tremblay blame vaccines for Ollie's autism, they said they are not against vaccines. They just wish they'd known what to ask about the risk.

"Well, we just did, you know, what parents are supposed to do, what the pediatrician tells you to do," Eleanor Tremblay said.

The Tremblays are among more than 4,700 families who are suing the federal government claiming that the mercury preservative in certain vaccines caused their children's autism. The trial, set to begin in June, is likely to have enormous implications, no matter what the outcome.

"We're definitely the unlucky ones," Eleanor Tremblay said. "Without a doubt."

"We're not alone, though," Mark Tremblay said.

Not alone in the search for an answer to the question, if children are soldiers in the war against infectious diseases, was their child a casualty? A victim of friendly fire?