Parents can easily be bombarded by conflicting messages about vaccines a dozen times each week. One side argues that vaccines are a necessary public health measure that protects children against dangerous and potentially deadly diseases. The other side vociferously maintains that vaccines are nothing more than a sop to pharmaceutical companies, and that the diseases they allegedly help prevent are nothing more than minor annoyances. An ordinary parent may have no idea where to turn to find accurate information. Your Baby's Best Shot is written for the parent who does not have a background in science, research, or medicine, and who is confused and overwhelmed by the massive amount of information regarding the issue of child vaccines. New parents are worried about the decisions that they are making regarding their children's health, and this work helps them wade through the information they receive in order to help them understand that vaccinating their child is actually one of the simplest and smartest decisions that they can make. Covering such topics as vaccine ingredients, how vaccines work, what can happen when populations don't vaccinate their children, and the controversies surrounding supposed links to autism, allergies, and asthma, the authors provide an overview of the field in an easy to understand guide for parents. In an age when autism diagnoses remain on the rise, when a single infectious individual can help spark an epidemic in three countries, when doctors routinely administer an often bewildering array of shots, and when parents swear their babies were fine until their first dosage of the MMR, the authors hope this book will serve as a crucial resource to help parents understand this vitally important issue.
Foreword 1: Who we are and why we wrote this book 2: The Edward Jenner Story: A brief history of the first vaccine. 3: How Vaccines Work 4: Of Bananas and Formaldehyde or What the Heck IS in Them? 5: A Real Mother: The World Before Vaccines 6: The Worst Case Scenario: True Adverse Reactions 7: Vaccines And Autism: The Creation Of A Modern Myth 8: Autism: A Brief Discussion Of The Facts 9: The Geiers and Other Autism Myth-Makers 10: Asthma, ADHD, and Allergies: More Medical Myths 11: The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly: The Online World 12: Other Vaccine Myths and Facts 13: Modern Developments in Vaccine Technology: The Story of the HPV Vaccine 14: Parenting's Easiest Decision Notes Bibliography
