Vaccinations

An area that has much opinion and debate about regarding our pets' health is vaccinations. For many years veterinarians have administered multiple annual vaccines with the understanding that they were providing an important preventative health measure for their client and patient. As decades have past, we have seen an increase in reactions to the administration of some of these vaccines. These reactions can be as subtle as just being "off" for a few days after the vaccines, to having allergic reactions causing hives, to the most life threatening anaphylactic reactions. Is there any connection or progression through these stages of vaccination reaction in our pets and should we not be paying more serious attention to the earlier signs to prevent the more serious reactions? There is also growing concern about vaccine preservative content and toxicity, quality of the different vaccines regarding safety and reliability of the companies producing the vaccines as well as the number of vaccines and antigens administered all at the same time. Any number of these very real factors can have an effect on your pet.

There are questions coming more to the forefront regarding whether these pets needs these vaccines in such a frequent and repetitive pattern. We receive many vaccines as children and maintain immunity for our entire life, so does this happen with our pets? Do certain factors reduce the efficiency of our pets immune systems and should these be more heavily evaluated as a part of making the decision to vaccinate or not? There is a simple blood test that can be done for most all of these vaccines to determine how much immunization memory is retained by the body weeks, months or years after vaccine administration. These are reliable tests used across the world to determine immunity for import and export of pets. Can these "blood titers" not be relied upon more heavily to evaluate the vaccination status of our pets?

While excellent original studies prove that the administration of these vaccinations provides adequate immunity against the diseases, there have never been any studies determining how long these vaccines may or may not last beyond the initial 12 months. The common thought is "it doesn't hurt so just revaccinate", but now concerns about the years and years of vaccines with more and more antigens in each vaccine and more vaccines given at the same time are coming to the forefront.

Many vaccine manufacturers are recommending less frequent vaccines, the veterinary groups are recommending each pet be evaluated to determine which vaccines are important, and the veterinary colleges are teaching the same thing. Laws have been passed to allow for medical exemptions if the pet is determined "not healthy." Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of vaccine titers have been run independently by veterinarians showing as much as 15 years immunity from a vaccine, yet these aren't considered evidence enough to force vaccine titers to the forefront of immunization determination. Just think; when a vaccine states it is "96% effective" this means that 4% of the HEALTHY pets administered these vaccines do not actually get immunized - their body does not do anything with the injected substance. Now add into the formula the number of animals immuno-compromised by disease or immuno-suppressed by medications. Add in the geriatric and the adolescent immunocompromised individuals and what could this number really be? Possibly staggering!

While the diseases are bad and to be avoided, could not a better long term assessment of immunity be checked instead of just re-immunizing? After all, we don't get our childhood vaccines again and again throughout life, but rely on our body's immune system to record and remember exposures from natural and vaccination and protect us FOR LIFE.

I believe each pet should be evaluated for risk to disease and state of health and lifestyle and the client and veterinarian should make the best decision for each pet. Also vaccines should be individually given to reduce stress to the body and provide maximum response with at least a month between any and preferably rotate by year or 3 year intervals and after several vaccines titers should be run. At this time, the titers are quite expensive due to the few done, as these machines are expensive, but if this became more the norm, the overall cost could be reduced.

Whatever your situation, make an INFORMED decision about your pet's health. YOU are the custodian of health decisions for your pet. Find a practitioner that shares your beliefs or at least respects your right as owner to make the decision while the veterinarian is you educator and advisor.

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