This is going to be brief as I am really wanting to go to bed, but I thought that I would report what happened at the pediatrician (in case anyone cares). I reread the chapter on the pnuemococcal vaccine in Dr. Sears book and reread the Dallas study and decided that I didn't think we should get the shot. Well, we showed up at the doctors office and the doctor was unhappy about our decision. She had read the abstract of the paper (I sent her the information 2 weeks ago as she was interested in it and hadn't heard about it, but doctors are busy and I don't think she got the chance to read it in full), and in the abstract it says that in Dallas the number of invasive (serious) pneumococcal cases had dropped 86% from 1999 (pre-vaccine) to its nadir (their word) in 2003. This is a true statement, but doesn't mention the fact (as shown in the plot that I put in the blog and which I showed the doctor) that the reduction between 1999 and 2005 (the last year for which there is data) is only 17% and that the non-vaccine types are rising steeply to the point that the number of invasive cases by now might well be much more than 1999.
Anyway, we spent far too long in the office with the doctor trying to convince me that this is a good vaccine and worth the risks (aluminum in the blood, seizures), and me feeling that this is a bad vaccine for the risks, for supporting bad medicine and science, and for its measured effects. Well, in the end Emmett only got polio, and I have decided that I will do a lot more research on this disease to see if we will end up giving him the shot (this is a good stall in some ways as waiting a couple of weeks puts a full month between shots with aluminum rather than the 2week/6week spread that the doctor had advocated for).
It is very unfortunate that there is so little scientific data on what is going on with this disease. This Dallas study seems the only of its kind, and in talking to a pediatrician who was at the new parents group that Andrea and Emmett normally attend without me (and which I got to attend because of the doctor's appointment getting me out of work), I learned that UCSF is now finally analyzing each invasive case of pneumococcal to determine what strains are causing the trouble. Without this kind of information the doctors are prescribing this vaccine blindly and without fully understanding the ramifications of its widespread use.
Anyway, this is the scorecard for those keeping count: the American Academy of Pediatrics says that by 2.5 months Emmett should have had the HepB twice, HIB, Pc, DTaP, Rotovirus, and Polio vaccines. Dr. Sears has DTaP and Rotovirus only with HIB and Pc at 3 months. Emmett has had HIB, DTaP, and Polio, so we are kind of in an intermediate position at present.
Luckily I have heard that immunization is that last hard decision we have to make before Emmett graduates high school.
Showing posts with label immunization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label immunization. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Monday, May 26, 2008
Over the river and through the woods
We just got back from spending the long weekend at my grandma's house, providing Emmett the opportunity to meet his great-grandmother and his great-uncle Matt (it was also E's first visit to Oregon giving him three states, or 6% of the 50, lifetime. At this rate he will have visited all fifty states by the time he is three-and-a-half).
This was our longest trip to date by any mode of travel, and Emmett used the trip to remind us that he likes riding in the car even less than his father does. To provide views into the multi-faceted child that is Emmett, I thought I would post a short video of Emmett expressing his feelings on car travel while traveling home from Oregon. This video is intended to be juxtaposed against this morning's video of Emmett's vocalizations. The astute video viewer might notice when comparing the two videos that there are slight differences in tone and frequency of vocalizations between the two. In order to prevent calls to Child Protective Services I preface this video by saying that I had been trying to calm him for some time previous (I was in the backseat with him while Andrea drove) and succeeded shortly after this. I figured that recording 30 seconds of Emmett's outburst is important both for posterity and for those who might be led to believe, via this blog, that Emmett is all smiles all of the time.
Speaking of happy, tomorrow is vaccination #2. Emmett is scheduled to receive the polio and pneumococcus (Pc) vaccines. Andrea and I decided that we would do the polio (Dr. Sears recommends it at 9 months, but the vaccine has very few side effects and as we are skipping a number of the early ones he recommends we figured we could slip it in here---I should say that we are not excited about the fact that it is made of monkey parts, but if Emmett is going to have any chance at the presidency we should give him this as the days of the press keeping the secret of a polio-stricken president are surely in the past). I am leaning toward Emmett not getting the Pc tomorrow for reasons I will elaborate below. Those who don't find their interests piqued by vaccine talk should walk away now.
Pc can be pretty bad stuff, causing things like pneumonia, meningitis, etc., so somebody thought it to be a good candidate for a vaccine. The vaccine developed and in use gives immunity to 7 strains of Pc and has been very effective in reducing these strains since vaccination started around 2000. However, the first catch with this vaccine is that there are 90 known strains of Pc (7 of 90 is 7.8%, so the vaccine is 1.8% closer to total immunity than Emmett is to total visitation of all of the states in the USA...hmmm). The second, more important, catch is what has happened since that time. The photograph below is of a plot from a paper that I picked up tonight at UCSF which Dr. Sears references in his book (Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal 26, pp. 461-467, for those interested). The gray bars show the number of cases of Pc at a Dallas hospital which were infections of one of the seven strains in the vaccine, and the number has clearly decreased since the vaccination started in 2000 (good). The black bars, though, are the number of cases for Pc strands not in this group of 7 strains, and it is clearly going up with time. Take home message: we are improving with the 7 covered types, but are paying for them with the non-covered types. Worse yet, since the introduction of the vaccine there have been reports (cited in this article) of increasing anti-bacterial resistance of at least one of the non-covered types which is also rising in frequency. All this gives me pause as to whether the bunch-of-seven is the best vaccine approach to this problem and if we are not, perhaps, losing ground as a result.
It would be so great if we could make some sort of a numbers argument to decide if we should have Emmett get this vaccine. Estimates for the number of "severe" cases have a wide range of 400 to 60,000 per year in the US (pre-vaccine with the latter, and "severe" loosely defined), so with ~4,000,000 newborns each year in the US this gives probabilities in the range of 1 in 10,000 to 3 in 200---- however, seizures as a side effect occur with a frequency of about ~1 in 20,000....plus there is the presence (again) of aluminum with its semi-unknown side effects, so the numbers don't tell a whole lot.
Things we have working for us not getting the vaccine are the facts that it is much more prevalent in child-care facilities and with non-breastfed children, so our chances of occurrence should be a bit lower (how much??? who knows??). Right now I am leaning toward not getting the shot and I am hoping that we get a chance to talk with the doctor pre-poke (though I am pretty sure I know her opinion already). I will give the paper and Dr. Sears another read pre-appointment and will report back with our final decision. Also, I have a copy the paper if anyone wants some light reading.
This was our longest trip to date by any mode of travel, and Emmett used the trip to remind us that he likes riding in the car even less than his father does. To provide views into the multi-faceted child that is Emmett, I thought I would post a short video of Emmett expressing his feelings on car travel while traveling home from Oregon. This video is intended to be juxtaposed against this morning's video of Emmett's vocalizations. The astute video viewer might notice when comparing the two videos that there are slight differences in tone and frequency of vocalizations between the two. In order to prevent calls to Child Protective Services I preface this video by saying that I had been trying to calm him for some time previous (I was in the backseat with him while Andrea drove) and succeeded shortly after this. I figured that recording 30 seconds of Emmett's outburst is important both for posterity and for those who might be led to believe, via this blog, that Emmett is all smiles all of the time.
Speaking of happy, tomorrow is vaccination #2. Emmett is scheduled to receive the polio and pneumococcus (Pc) vaccines. Andrea and I decided that we would do the polio (Dr. Sears recommends it at 9 months, but the vaccine has very few side effects and as we are skipping a number of the early ones he recommends we figured we could slip it in here---I should say that we are not excited about the fact that it is made of monkey parts, but if Emmett is going to have any chance at the presidency we should give him this as the days of the press keeping the secret of a polio-stricken president are surely in the past). I am leaning toward Emmett not getting the Pc tomorrow for reasons I will elaborate below. Those who don't find their interests piqued by vaccine talk should walk away now.
Pc can be pretty bad stuff, causing things like pneumonia, meningitis, etc., so somebody thought it to be a good candidate for a vaccine. The vaccine developed and in use gives immunity to 7 strains of Pc and has been very effective in reducing these strains since vaccination started around 2000. However, the first catch with this vaccine is that there are 90 known strains of Pc (7 of 90 is 7.8%, so the vaccine is 1.8% closer to total immunity than Emmett is to total visitation of all of the states in the USA...hmmm). The second, more important, catch is what has happened since that time. The photograph below is of a plot from a paper that I picked up tonight at UCSF which Dr. Sears references in his book (Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal 26, pp. 461-467, for those interested). The gray bars show the number of cases of Pc at a Dallas hospital which were infections of one of the seven strains in the vaccine, and the number has clearly decreased since the vaccination started in 2000 (good). The black bars, though, are the number of cases for Pc strands not in this group of 7 strains, and it is clearly going up with time. Take home message: we are improving with the 7 covered types, but are paying for them with the non-covered types. Worse yet, since the introduction of the vaccine there have been reports (cited in this article) of increasing anti-bacterial resistance of at least one of the non-covered types which is also rising in frequency. All this gives me pause as to whether the bunch-of-seven is the best vaccine approach to this problem and if we are not, perhaps, losing ground as a result.
It would be so great if we could make some sort of a numbers argument to decide if we should have Emmett get this vaccine. Estimates for the number of "severe" cases have a wide range of 400 to 60,000 per year in the US (pre-vaccine with the latter, and "severe" loosely defined), so with ~4,000,000 newborns each year in the US this gives probabilities in the range of 1 in 10,000 to 3 in 200---- however, seizures as a side effect occur with a frequency of about ~1 in 20,000....plus there is the presence (again) of aluminum with its semi-unknown side effects, so the numbers don't tell a whole lot.
Things we have working for us not getting the vaccine are the facts that it is much more prevalent in child-care facilities and with non-breastfed children, so our chances of occurrence should be a bit lower (how much??? who knows??). Right now I am leaning toward not getting the shot and I am hoping that we get a chance to talk with the doctor pre-poke (though I am pretty sure I know her opinion already). I will give the paper and Dr. Sears another read pre-appointment and will report back with our final decision. Also, I have a copy the paper if anyone wants some light reading.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Cry, baby, cry
I am going to do my best to avoid a long rant about vaccines here this time. What I will say, though, is that Emmett has been crying significantly more since the shots, and I really don't think that we are just noticing it more. There is more intensity and there were some pretty tough nights, but it seems that he is starting to settle back into his old routines and crying less. More intense crying is a typical side effect of most immunizations so there is nothing to worry about, but it is no fun to have a crying baby who won't settle for any of the ol' standby tricks.
Last night Andrea talked me into trying this thing that she heard about through some other mothers called "dream feeding" or some other name along those lines. Basically what it is is a trick to get your kid to sleep more by putting a bottle in their mouth while they are asleep. They start eating without really waking, get their belly topped up, and as a result sleep longer without waking for hunger. It was about midnight last night when she tried to talk me into this (she can't do it because a mother is not supposed to feed by the bottle and breastfeed at the same time as it might confuse that young, 25th percentile head), and after a little consideration I figured I would give it a try (I was working on a talk for today---anything to get out of work). I snuck into the room, bottle in hand, and what do you know: that kid will eat while sleeping, and eat quite a lot. While feeding him I had these grand plans of to do a little "dream feeding" to Andrea to see what she thought of it (not believing it would work), but as I was thinking about this ploy I was reminded of a basketball trip in high school when Jay Garnier fell asleep with his mouth open and someone kept feeding him food which he would promptly chew up and swallow---so dream feeding is not just for kids. Luckily, for Andrea, she sleeps with her mouth shut. Oh, net result: Emmett didn't sleep any more than normal. Dream feeding gets zero stars for results but four stars for strangeness.
It was hot, hot, hot here in SF today. Andrea, Emmett and I just got back from a trip at dark to the store where we were all dressed in short pants and t-shirts. The city is really alive with many people on their stoops after dark, so Emmett has to have his white noise machine extra loud tonight.
I will do my best to post with pictures next time and avoid any topics that cause me to rant.
Last night Andrea talked me into trying this thing that she heard about through some other mothers called "dream feeding" or some other name along those lines. Basically what it is is a trick to get your kid to sleep more by putting a bottle in their mouth while they are asleep. They start eating without really waking, get their belly topped up, and as a result sleep longer without waking for hunger. It was about midnight last night when she tried to talk me into this (she can't do it because a mother is not supposed to feed by the bottle and breastfeed at the same time as it might confuse that young, 25th percentile head), and after a little consideration I figured I would give it a try (I was working on a talk for today---anything to get out of work). I snuck into the room, bottle in hand, and what do you know: that kid will eat while sleeping, and eat quite a lot. While feeding him I had these grand plans of to do a little "dream feeding" to Andrea to see what she thought of it (not believing it would work), but as I was thinking about this ploy I was reminded of a basketball trip in high school when Jay Garnier fell asleep with his mouth open and someone kept feeding him food which he would promptly chew up and swallow---so dream feeding is not just for kids. Luckily, for Andrea, she sleeps with her mouth shut. Oh, net result: Emmett didn't sleep any more than normal. Dream feeding gets zero stars for results but four stars for strangeness.
It was hot, hot, hot here in SF today. Andrea, Emmett and I just got back from a trip at dark to the store where we were all dressed in short pants and t-shirts. The city is really alive with many people on their stoops after dark, so Emmett has to have his white noise machine extra loud tonight.
I will do my best to post with pictures next time and avoid any topics that cause me to rant.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Shots for E
One of the first days of Emmett's short life that we have truly dreaded is now coming to a close: the first vaccination. Yes, the day was complete with him held down by his parents and him looking us in the eyes with the but-I-trusted-you look as his cries shifted another degree in intensity with each poke. It is now late and I have written a long, ranting post below with plenty of frustration interspersed. So, for those that don't have interest in a long, boring vaccine discussion I give you the short of it. Emmett got only two shots (DTaP and HIB---our choice) of the AAP recommended batch of 4 shots+1 oral vaccine. It was really sad to be the source of Emmett's tears, but a little feeding afterward got him to perk up nicely. The good news from the day is that he is still growing (or at least was before the shots): 23 1/2", 12 pounds, 4 ounces (75th percentile each---25th percentile head...I can't remember the size. At least he is not going to tip over from being top heavy).
That is the short, fun part...here is the long, boring rant. Beware all ye who enter.
Andrea and I have known for some time, obviously, that this day was coming. I believe that I have mentioned it here before, but I have been reading Dr. Sears' "Vaccine Book" trying to educate myself as to what we should do. Yes, I do understand the argument that vaccines can be a good social policy and can actually eradicate disease (e.g. small pox, polio (mostly), etc.), but I feel that there has been a shift to immunize on diseases that probably do not need this level of attack: chicken pox, whooping cough, rotovirus. The result, I think, is that we have come to the point that immunizations are being developed and approved for second-tier (at best) diseases at rates that outpace long-term clinical trials for potentially problematic components (e.g. oft-quoted mercury, monkey cells, etc.), and as a result these new-found effects are casting doubt on immunization in general which we will most result in a resurgence of first-tier diseases once held at bay such as polio. Our pediatrician, who we still really like, said that further doubt is being cast on doctors as the populace is now starting to believe that doctors push so many immunizations so they can make more money, and she informed us that they at best break even on the shots. However, in the examination room was a poster alerting us that a pertussis (whooping cough) immunization is also available for adults, and this poster was provided as a "public service by Sanofi Pasteur" who just so happens to make a pertussis vaccination---the one the doctor's office uses. It is really hard to feel that our best interests are being kept in mind and that the vaccinations are truly necessary when our public service messages are provided by the person who pockets payment for their use.
Anyway, recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics at the two month visit are HIB, Pc, DTaP, Rotovirus and Polio (four shots, one oral) with the same repeated at 4 and 6 months. Dr. Sears recommends what I see as a more reasonable schedule where things are spread out with two vaccines at one month intervals so as to lessen the vaccine load on the baby at any one time. Sears recommends DTaP and Rotovirus at the first visit. DTaP stands for Diphtheria, Tetanus, and Pertussis, and (get this) the only one that poses any real threat to an infant is the third. Can you get a shot of just the third, though? No, but Pertussis is serious enough that we opted to get this shot. One shot, three vaccines, two unnecessary (at least until older), but Sanofi Pasteur is looking out for us. Rotovirus is basically bad diarrhea (more EC practice!!!) and causes ~50 infants to die each year from it, which sounds serious, but they die of dehydration which means bad medical care (what does that say about our medical care if 50 children dehydrate each year from something that can be taken care of by inserting an IV). I went in thinking we didn't need it and our doctor agreed arguing that we are fortunate enough to have medical care that would insert an IV if this set in, so we were down to one.
At this point, however, the doctor threw me for a loop by saying that since we were only doing one vaccine we should add another, and I didn't come fully prepared for her recommendation: HIB (Haemophilus Influenzae Type B). HIB can lead to bad meningitis, so I was fine with him getting the shot under the one condition that it not also be a shot that has aluminum in it.
Aluminum is being added to many vaccines to increase the efficacy (they say), but brilliantly they have never tested the long term effects of aluminum injected through muscle. Surely if it is in the shots it is safe, right---that mercury thing was just an accident. There have been studies that have shown that elevated levels of aluminum in infant's blood can cause long term learning problems, etc. at amounts/body mass levels lower than they inject with these shots, but zero studies looking at the effects of muscle introduction (questions like how fast does the aluminum in muscle get moved to blood, what densities in blood are reached, etc. remain unanswered). As there are some vaccines for which no aluminum-free options exist, Sears recommends not taking more than one aluminum-containing shot at a time...again, what seems to me a reasonable approach to minimize an unknown risk. I believe that we did this, but I will need to check as I left the brand list/aluminum content at work (you would think this would be on the packaging the doctor's office uses or that they would have easy access to the information...I thought that and I was wrong).
Side note: there are three DTaP immunizations of increasing amounts of aluminum, so one might make the easy choice of the lowest, but to throw the whole thing for a curve the one with the lowest aluminum also uses mercury (and you thought mercury was out of children's vaccines?!?). We took the next lowest (Daptacel by Sanofi Pasteur, which also has formaldehyde, a known carcinogen----so you literally get to chose your child's poison). Shots are fun!!!
This whole process had me really frustrated. We, as patients (or worse yet parents of patients) are supposed to make decisions between immunizations that have preservatives or other elements that are known to be harmful or even deadly and try to determine, without real scientific studies having been performed, which vaccine will give us the best chance of defense with the least risk. And what does it say about our FDA that potentially unnecessary immunizations are filled with components whose effects are not fully known (mercury in flu shots for example---mercury-free are becoming more prevalent but at least up to last year the average flu shot had mercury in it). Who are we to trust in making these decisions? Our pediatrician whose walls, pens, post-its, and booklets are decorated with "public service" notices or actual advertisements for the brands the doctors use asking us to assume that they will present an unbiased scientific opinion? The American Academy of Pediatrics, an organization of pediatricians whose offices are decorated in similar fashion? Who?
Sure, a free market is great but it is hard to go through this process and feel that the free market medicine solution is really taking us along the correct health track. In the free market system, what (besides one of their products catching the public attention by being shown to cause harm) is going to drive Sanofi Pasteur or GlaxoSmithKlein to invest in comprehensive testing or re-engineering a vaccine on which they are already making a bunch of money? Why invest in testing when post-it notes and clicker pens are much more fun?
That is the short, fun part...here is the long, boring rant. Beware all ye who enter.
Andrea and I have known for some time, obviously, that this day was coming. I believe that I have mentioned it here before, but I have been reading Dr. Sears' "Vaccine Book" trying to educate myself as to what we should do. Yes, I do understand the argument that vaccines can be a good social policy and can actually eradicate disease (e.g. small pox, polio (mostly), etc.), but I feel that there has been a shift to immunize on diseases that probably do not need this level of attack: chicken pox, whooping cough, rotovirus. The result, I think, is that we have come to the point that immunizations are being developed and approved for second-tier (at best) diseases at rates that outpace long-term clinical trials for potentially problematic components (e.g. oft-quoted mercury, monkey cells, etc.), and as a result these new-found effects are casting doubt on immunization in general which we will most result in a resurgence of first-tier diseases once held at bay such as polio. Our pediatrician, who we still really like, said that further doubt is being cast on doctors as the populace is now starting to believe that doctors push so many immunizations so they can make more money, and she informed us that they at best break even on the shots. However, in the examination room was a poster alerting us that a pertussis (whooping cough) immunization is also available for adults, and this poster was provided as a "public service by Sanofi Pasteur" who just so happens to make a pertussis vaccination---the one the doctor's office uses. It is really hard to feel that our best interests are being kept in mind and that the vaccinations are truly necessary when our public service messages are provided by the person who pockets payment for their use.
Anyway, recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics at the two month visit are HIB, Pc, DTaP, Rotovirus and Polio (four shots, one oral) with the same repeated at 4 and 6 months. Dr. Sears recommends what I see as a more reasonable schedule where things are spread out with two vaccines at one month intervals so as to lessen the vaccine load on the baby at any one time. Sears recommends DTaP and Rotovirus at the first visit. DTaP stands for Diphtheria, Tetanus, and Pertussis, and (get this) the only one that poses any real threat to an infant is the third. Can you get a shot of just the third, though? No, but Pertussis is serious enough that we opted to get this shot. One shot, three vaccines, two unnecessary (at least until older), but Sanofi Pasteur is looking out for us. Rotovirus is basically bad diarrhea (more EC practice!!!) and causes ~50 infants to die each year from it, which sounds serious, but they die of dehydration which means bad medical care (what does that say about our medical care if 50 children dehydrate each year from something that can be taken care of by inserting an IV). I went in thinking we didn't need it and our doctor agreed arguing that we are fortunate enough to have medical care that would insert an IV if this set in, so we were down to one.
At this point, however, the doctor threw me for a loop by saying that since we were only doing one vaccine we should add another, and I didn't come fully prepared for her recommendation: HIB (Haemophilus Influenzae Type B). HIB can lead to bad meningitis, so I was fine with him getting the shot under the one condition that it not also be a shot that has aluminum in it.
Aluminum is being added to many vaccines to increase the efficacy (they say), but brilliantly they have never tested the long term effects of aluminum injected through muscle. Surely if it is in the shots it is safe, right---that mercury thing was just an accident. There have been studies that have shown that elevated levels of aluminum in infant's blood can cause long term learning problems, etc. at amounts/body mass levels lower than they inject with these shots, but zero studies looking at the effects of muscle introduction (questions like how fast does the aluminum in muscle get moved to blood, what densities in blood are reached, etc. remain unanswered). As there are some vaccines for which no aluminum-free options exist, Sears recommends not taking more than one aluminum-containing shot at a time...again, what seems to me a reasonable approach to minimize an unknown risk. I believe that we did this, but I will need to check as I left the brand list/aluminum content at work (you would think this would be on the packaging the doctor's office uses or that they would have easy access to the information...I thought that and I was wrong).
Side note: there are three DTaP immunizations of increasing amounts of aluminum, so one might make the easy choice of the lowest, but to throw the whole thing for a curve the one with the lowest aluminum also uses mercury (and you thought mercury was out of children's vaccines?!?). We took the next lowest (Daptacel by Sanofi Pasteur, which also has formaldehyde, a known carcinogen----so you literally get to chose your child's poison). Shots are fun!!!
This whole process had me really frustrated. We, as patients (or worse yet parents of patients) are supposed to make decisions between immunizations that have preservatives or other elements that are known to be harmful or even deadly and try to determine, without real scientific studies having been performed, which vaccine will give us the best chance of defense with the least risk. And what does it say about our FDA that potentially unnecessary immunizations are filled with components whose effects are not fully known (mercury in flu shots for example---mercury-free are becoming more prevalent but at least up to last year the average flu shot had mercury in it). Who are we to trust in making these decisions? Our pediatrician whose walls, pens, post-its, and booklets are decorated with "public service" notices or actual advertisements for the brands the doctors use asking us to assume that they will present an unbiased scientific opinion? The American Academy of Pediatrics, an organization of pediatricians whose offices are decorated in similar fashion? Who?
Sure, a free market is great but it is hard to go through this process and feel that the free market medicine solution is really taking us along the correct health track. In the free market system, what (besides one of their products catching the public attention by being shown to cause harm) is going to drive Sanofi Pasteur or GlaxoSmithKlein to invest in comprehensive testing or re-engineering a vaccine on which they are already making a bunch of money? Why invest in testing when post-it notes and clicker pens are much more fun?
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Shots and grub
Sadly I don't get to post anything exciting about Emmett as I haven't even seen him awake yet this evening. He is sleeping away in bed while Andrea and I have been up reading---kind of nice, but kind of sad, too. Andrea picked up "The Vaccine Book" by the famed Dr. Sears (or one of the Dr. Sears-es at least, I think there are about 5 all together) and I have been reading up in preparation as we are supposed to start the whole vaccine process at our upcoming two-month appointment. So far I have made it through HIB (seems reasonable) and Pneumococcal (which to me doesn't as much) and am halfway through tetanus and diptheria. Fun stuff, indeed.
This book showed up just in time as I just finished reading "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan today, which I feel, though far from perfect, should be read by every person that has or will have children (and definitely worth reading for those who won't, too). In the book he makes a very compelling argument that, while in the past culture and parents have served as the primary guides in determining what we should eat, in the post-WWII era this role has been taken up by nutrition scientists whose troubled reductionist methods (e.g. study the effects of vitamin A separate from the carrot) have set new standards what we should eat (e.g. get essentials regardless of source, such as fortified sugary cereals) and it has lead to a myriad of health problems; and that the only way to reverse this trend is to (in my interpretation) educate a new generation of parents who can pass on the practice of dining on whole foods in order to reverse our country's terrible health trends. Like everything, though, the switch back to actually preparing food rather than buying packaged-prepared food-like products is not without effort and some cost, but all evidence points to nutrition science not making us healthier in the last decades and returning to eating real food (something we, as a species, have been doing for every century of our existence except the last) probably would do us some good.
Though I feel pretty confident that the great majority of Emmett's meals from us are not going to come out of a box, single serving package, or the like, I still fear what it is going to be like when he is introduced to the ultra-convenient, temptingly-sweet processed food world and realizes that sugar-coated, marshmallow-filled, extra-crispy, chocolate cereal (with 9 essential vitamins!!) is more fun to eat than sorry-old-dad's steel cut oats. Even when I add raisins it still can't compete.
This book showed up just in time as I just finished reading "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan today, which I feel, though far from perfect, should be read by every person that has or will have children (and definitely worth reading for those who won't, too). In the book he makes a very compelling argument that, while in the past culture and parents have served as the primary guides in determining what we should eat, in the post-WWII era this role has been taken up by nutrition scientists whose troubled reductionist methods (e.g. study the effects of vitamin A separate from the carrot) have set new standards what we should eat (e.g. get essentials regardless of source, such as fortified sugary cereals) and it has lead to a myriad of health problems; and that the only way to reverse this trend is to (in my interpretation) educate a new generation of parents who can pass on the practice of dining on whole foods in order to reverse our country's terrible health trends. Like everything, though, the switch back to actually preparing food rather than buying packaged-prepared food-like products is not without effort and some cost, but all evidence points to nutrition science not making us healthier in the last decades and returning to eating real food (something we, as a species, have been doing for every century of our existence except the last) probably would do us some good.
Though I feel pretty confident that the great majority of Emmett's meals from us are not going to come out of a box, single serving package, or the like, I still fear what it is going to be like when he is introduced to the ultra-convenient, temptingly-sweet processed food world and realizes that sugar-coated, marshmallow-filled, extra-crispy, chocolate cereal (with 9 essential vitamins!!) is more fun to eat than sorry-old-dad's steel cut oats. Even when I add raisins it still can't compete.
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