The true dollar cost of the anti-vaccine movement

Enlarge (credit: CDC/NIP/ Barbara Rice)

Two years ago, a 6-year-old boy playing on his family's farm in Oregon cut himself. His parents cleaned the wound and stitched it, and everything seemed fine-until, six days later, he began having muscle spasms, arching his back, and clenching his jaw. The boy had tetanus, the first case in a child to occur in Oregon in more than 30 years.

Tetanus is rare because a routine childhood vaccine prevents it. The boy's parents had elected not to vaccinate him. A case report written by a physician who treated him along with staff members at the state health department and published this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention relates what happened next.

The boy was airlifted to a university medical center and given immunotherapy and the first dose of the vaccine regimen he had missed. His spasms were so severe he could not open his mouth or breathe, so he was admitted to an intensive care unit, placed in a medical coma, and put on a ventilator. His body couldn't regulate itself; his heart rate sped up and his temperature soared and dipped, so he had to be pumped full of IV drugs to keep his vital signs under control.

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