Whooping cough, a disease that killed as many as 10,000 people a year in the pre-vaccine era, is making a dangerous comeback, striking babies before they have had a chance to be fully vaccinated, researchers report today.
I will never forget the tiny little girl I saw in a pediatric ICU. She was maybe two or three months old, and had a very serious case of pertussis. She was on an oscillating ventilator, which shoots thousands of tiny puffs of air every minute in and out of the patient's lungs, the better to keep the lungs inflated. The oscillation jiggled her a little bit, so her head rested on a gel cushion to keep the friction from the sheets from chafing the back of her head.
The acellular pertussis vaccine is one of the safer vaccines out there, and is not made with aborted fetal tissue cell lines (unlike many other vaccines). I personally have no objection to DTaP vaccines, but I am greatly concerned about the huge quantity of immunizations that are foisted upon our children.
BTW, pertussis is easily treated with macrolide antibiotics (erythromycin, azithromycin) IF it is diagnosed in time. One unfortunate side effect of mass vaccinations is that most docs have no clue how to diagnose pertussis, measles, rubella, etc - and they actually don't even consider the possibility of these diseases until it is forced upon them.