According to the CDC, vaccines protect children by working with their body's natural defenses to help them safely develop immunity to some serious diseases. The diseases that vaccines prevent can be dangerous, or even deadly—especially in infants and young children. Vaccinations are one of the best ways parents can protect their children from 14 diseases before the age of two.
Listen as Dr. Paul Horowitz, pediatrician and member of the medical staff at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital discusses the importance of childhood vaccines and why keeping to the recommended schedule is an important part of protecting your child from potentially fatal diseases.
Selected Podcast
The Importance of Childhood Vaccines
Featured Speaker:
Paul Horowitz, MD
Paul Horowitz, MD is a pediatrician with Henry Mayo Hospital. Transcription:
Melanie Cole (Host): Vaccines protect children by working with their bodies natural defenses to help them safely develop immunity to some serious diseases. These diseases that vaccines prevent can be dangerous or even deadly, especially in infants and young children. Vaccination is one of the best ways parents can protect their children from 14 diseases before the age of two. My guest today is, Dr. Paul Horowitz, he’s a pediatrician at Discovery Pediatrics, and a member of the medical staff at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. Welcome to the show, Dr. Horowitz. So, let’s start with vaccine and vaccine safety. Some parents worry about vaccine safety, and if we still need vaccines for some of the diseases that we don’t see anymore.
Dr. Paul Horowitz (Guest): Well, thanks a lot for having me on the show, Melanie, and I think that the vaccines, when we look back at the big revelations and healthcare, and things that have really made a difference for people, and their health, and their wellbeing. You find that sewage is number one and vaccines are close behind that. So, these vaccines are protecting against multiple diseases that many of which can be horrible, horrible diseases, and they’re more important now to protect against than ever.
Melanie: So, what about some of the fears of vaccines and the importance of keeping to the schedule because some parents have this fear of the vaccines and getting to many, but there’s a reason that this schedule has been set by the AAP, and the CDC, yes?
Dr. Horowitz: Sure. So, the vaccine… the recommended vaccine schedule is a scientifically proven, appropriate schedule, regardless of risk factors, especially in the first several years of life. That protect against a myriad of diseases, and when you deviate from that vaccine schedule, you are basically rolling the dice on whether certain vaccines will be effective. So, we get families in our office all the time, who want to deviate from the regular schedule, and we need to tell them that they’re taking a chance. They’re a taking chance that the vaccine that they give according to a sort of fabricated schedule, that they’ve dreamt up or that they’ve pulled from online, is going be as effective as the scientifically proven, effective schedule.
And the second point is that by deviating from the schedule, you’re essentially delaying the administration of some of these vaccines that protect against horrible diseases, and putting the child at risk for longer. We sometimes get families who say, “We’ll hold off on vaccines until the child is two or three years of age”, because they’re worried that the vaccines are going to overwhelm their immune system, but there is no evidence that anything like that ever happens, number one.
And number two, the diseases that we’re protecting against, for the most part, are much more dangerous when you’re much younger, and so, to delay vaccinating because you’ve dreamt up some other schedule, or to delay vaccines because of any other reason, put the child at risk for longer. And you’re taking a chance that the vaccine schedule that you’ve dreamt up won’t result in as much protection as they otherwise could get. And what I mean by that is, we know that there’s some vaccines you can give together on the same day, but if you try to space them out by a week, then the one that you give a week later, you don’t get a very good immune response to. So, the problem is that you need to wait at least if you don’t give them together on the same day, and while that is known in the case of MMR, and varicella vaccines, for instance. Every possible permutation of the standard recommended schedule, has not been analyzed, and so, whether the vaccines are effective when you deviate from the recommended schedule is a big question mark that families often don’t consider.
Melanie: And before we get into specific vaccines, and when and how many, please just clear up because some parents hear about vaccines and a link to autism, which has been discredited so many times, but they’d like to hear it from the pediatrician’s mouth, Dr. Horowitz, and with the measles outbreak, and things like that. Some parents are choosing not to vaccinate at all. Please reiterate the safety of vaccines.
Dr. Horowitz: Well, vaccines have been proven over the years to have no connection with autism. Autism is a very, very difficult disease, and challenge to deal with, and so, the families who are dealing with children who have autism are particularly vulnerable. And so, it makes sense that when a paper came out many years ago in the Lamp Sit, that, as you said, has been completely discredited, and actually removed from the medical literature. When it came out, there were people who really felt strongly that, yes, the vaccines must have been the cause of their child’s autism, but that has been completely discredited, disproven. And there’s probably a genetic component to autism, we know that. There is almost certainly a environmental that causes autism, and we don’t know what that environmental exposure is, but we know that it is not vaccines. And we have multiple papers to support that claim that there is no connection between autism and vaccines.
Melanie: As well as better diagnostic tools now, so it’s a little to pick up. Now, let’s get into these vaccines. When our babies are born, what are they getting right away, start with Hepatitis B, or what are they getting right away?
Dr. Horowitz: Well, the first vaccine that’s offered routinely is a Hepatitis B vaccine at birth, and sometimes I get questions about that. Why is it that we’re a Hepatitis B vaccine, when it’s either a blood-born… it’s a blood-born passage in the spread by, IV drugs of abuse, or sexual exposure. And so, I’m not worried about my newborn having a risk factor for Hepatitis B for a long, long time. What’s it doing here at birth in the hospital being offered? And the answer is, there are few points about that.
Number one, Hepatitis B vaccine is first anti-cancer vaccine, and by anti-cancer, I mean, a certain percentage of children who… or people who get Hepatitis B, go on to get Hepatocellular carcinoma, and by preventing them from getting Hepatitis B, you are essentially preventing from getting a horrible form of liver cancer. So, that’s number one.
Number two, we know that we want them to get the Hepatitis B vaccine series, and before they become sexually active, and that’s not going to happen for quite some time. And so, when that vaccine originally came out, it was recommended for junior high school entry, but it turns out that we weren’t getting the public health benefits of the Hepatitis B vaccine, as it was promised because junior high school students don’t come to the doctor enough to get a series of three vaccines, that at least they will when the Hepatitis B vaccine first came out. And if you don’t get the full set of the three vaccines, then you’re getting the full efficacy of that vaccine, and so, the studies were done to determine whether it would be effective and safe to administer as part of the newborn series of vaccines.
And something further that came from that, was that by giving Hepatitis B vaccine to newborns, you protect them and reduce their chances of a mother who has Hepatitis B giving that vertically. We call that vertical transmission to their baby. So, in addition to giving a different kind of special antibody to babies whose mothers had Hepatitis B, that by giving Hepatitis B vaccine, there also we’re able to further reduce the chances that those babies will get Hepatitis B.
So, the Hepatitis B vaccine is offered at birth. There are significant public health benefits to doing that. If they don’t get it at birth because family decline, it can be given anytime up until they’re a couple of months old, and we get them back onto a regular schedule, where the children are generally fully covered by it for Hepatitis B, by the time they’re six or 12 months of age.
Melanie: So, let’s jump to some of the very important… they’re all important, but DTaP and MMR, when are they get these and how often? And how many doses do they need?
Dr. Horowitz: Well, no vaccine is a 100% protective, and some of them are better than others at getting a good immune response. And so, the DTaP vaccine, which is covering against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis. The cause of whooping cough is given at two months, four months, six months, and then again at 15 to 18 months, and again at four to six years, and then they generally get it every five years as part of a regular tetanus shot.
The MMR vaccine is given at 12 to 15 months, and then again between four and six years of age, and these are totally different from one another. The MMR covers against mumps, measles and rubella. The DTaP against those diseases that I mentioned before, and all of these diseases are… they could potentially be fatal, and so, to not administer or to choose not to administer vaccines for whatever reason, means that you’re taking a chance on your child getting a vaccine preventable disease.
Melanie: So, what about the flu vaccine? How young can a child get that flu vaccine? And how often should we get it?
Dr. Horowitz: Flu vaccines are recommended every year, beginning at six months of age, and that actually brings up a really important point. Under six months of age, these newborns are particularly vulnerable to influenza, and the best thing you can do to protect a child from getting the flu is protect the people around that newborn from influenza by giving them the vaccine. You basically create a cocoon for the baby because if the babies not exposed to anybody carrying influenza, then she’s not going to get influenza, but the first time they can get it is beginning at six months of age. And I recommend for that everybody, from six months on, up. And they only need it once a year, unless it’s your first year getting the influenza vaccine, and you’re under nine years old.
So, a four-year-old getting a flu vaccine for the first time, will get one at time zero, let’s say November first, and then they’ll get the second one, December first. They get two vaccines, one month apart, if they’re under nine-years-old getting it for the first time, and then they get it once a year. And we recommend it every year. Especially for the very young, especially for the very old, and anybody who is pregnant because those are three times you’re most vulnerable to having problems related to influenza.
Melanie: And the last vaccine that I’d like to ask you about is the human papilloma virus, the HPV vaccine, and parents have questions, and now it’s given to boys and girls in their early teens. Explain just a little bit about that particular vaccine.
Dr. Horowitz: So, I mentioned the way Hepatitis B vaccine was the first anti-cancer vaccine. The HPV vaccine is the second one because by preventing young women from getting cervical warts, you prevent them from getting cervical cancer. If you prevent penial warts and anal, peri-anal warts in young men, you virtually eliminate the chances that they are going to get penial cancer or peri-anal cancers. And so, it’s an extremely important and valuable vaccine. It is recommended beginning at 12 years of age, and we routinely vaccinate with the HPV vaccine for all of our patients and for our own children.
Melanie: So, wrap it up for us, Dr. Horowitz, if you would with your best advice about vaccinations. What do parents ask you every day and what do you tell them about the importance of vaccinating their children?
Dr. Horowitz: Vaccines are a real success story in modern civilization, and we have prevented countless exposure to… countless contraction of horrible diseases and prevented a lot of deaths and disability, by giving routine immunizations. They are as safe as ever. They, although we protect against more diseases than we did 25 years ago, those vaccines are made in a much more purified fashion. So, although we’re protecting against more diseases, we’re injecting children with less protein and purer contaminants. We have ability to give combination vaccines that reduces their exposure to more of the preservatives that are in vaccines just to keep them safe and effective, and give them a shelf life. And so, it wouldn’t make sense to flit up vaccines because you’re exposing the children to even more of the preservatives, for instance. And so, vaccines are tremendously valuable. They are probably the most important thing that we do in a pediatric office, and I’m proud to protect so many children from so much disease and potentially death and disability down the road.
Melanie: Thank you so much, Dr. Horowitz, for being with us today. You’re listening to it’s Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. For more information, you can go to, HenryMayo.com, that’s HenryMayo.com. This is Melanie Cole, thanks so much for listening.
Melanie Cole (Host): Vaccines protect children by working with their bodies natural defenses to help them safely develop immunity to some serious diseases. These diseases that vaccines prevent can be dangerous or even deadly, especially in infants and young children. Vaccination is one of the best ways parents can protect their children from 14 diseases before the age of two. My guest today is, Dr. Paul Horowitz, he’s a pediatrician at Discovery Pediatrics, and a member of the medical staff at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. Welcome to the show, Dr. Horowitz. So, let’s start with vaccine and vaccine safety. Some parents worry about vaccine safety, and if we still need vaccines for some of the diseases that we don’t see anymore.
Dr. Paul Horowitz (Guest): Well, thanks a lot for having me on the show, Melanie, and I think that the vaccines, when we look back at the big revelations and healthcare, and things that have really made a difference for people, and their health, and their wellbeing. You find that sewage is number one and vaccines are close behind that. So, these vaccines are protecting against multiple diseases that many of which can be horrible, horrible diseases, and they’re more important now to protect against than ever.
Melanie: So, what about some of the fears of vaccines and the importance of keeping to the schedule because some parents have this fear of the vaccines and getting to many, but there’s a reason that this schedule has been set by the AAP, and the CDC, yes?
Dr. Horowitz: Sure. So, the vaccine… the recommended vaccine schedule is a scientifically proven, appropriate schedule, regardless of risk factors, especially in the first several years of life. That protect against a myriad of diseases, and when you deviate from that vaccine schedule, you are basically rolling the dice on whether certain vaccines will be effective. So, we get families in our office all the time, who want to deviate from the regular schedule, and we need to tell them that they’re taking a chance. They’re a taking chance that the vaccine that they give according to a sort of fabricated schedule, that they’ve dreamt up or that they’ve pulled from online, is going be as effective as the scientifically proven, effective schedule.
And the second point is that by deviating from the schedule, you’re essentially delaying the administration of some of these vaccines that protect against horrible diseases, and putting the child at risk for longer. We sometimes get families who say, “We’ll hold off on vaccines until the child is two or three years of age”, because they’re worried that the vaccines are going to overwhelm their immune system, but there is no evidence that anything like that ever happens, number one.
And number two, the diseases that we’re protecting against, for the most part, are much more dangerous when you’re much younger, and so, to delay vaccinating because you’ve dreamt up some other schedule, or to delay vaccines because of any other reason, put the child at risk for longer. And you’re taking a chance that the vaccine schedule that you’ve dreamt up won’t result in as much protection as they otherwise could get. And what I mean by that is, we know that there’s some vaccines you can give together on the same day, but if you try to space them out by a week, then the one that you give a week later, you don’t get a very good immune response to. So, the problem is that you need to wait at least if you don’t give them together on the same day, and while that is known in the case of MMR, and varicella vaccines, for instance. Every possible permutation of the standard recommended schedule, has not been analyzed, and so, whether the vaccines are effective when you deviate from the recommended schedule is a big question mark that families often don’t consider.
Melanie: And before we get into specific vaccines, and when and how many, please just clear up because some parents hear about vaccines and a link to autism, which has been discredited so many times, but they’d like to hear it from the pediatrician’s mouth, Dr. Horowitz, and with the measles outbreak, and things like that. Some parents are choosing not to vaccinate at all. Please reiterate the safety of vaccines.
Dr. Horowitz: Well, vaccines have been proven over the years to have no connection with autism. Autism is a very, very difficult disease, and challenge to deal with, and so, the families who are dealing with children who have autism are particularly vulnerable. And so, it makes sense that when a paper came out many years ago in the Lamp Sit, that, as you said, has been completely discredited, and actually removed from the medical literature. When it came out, there were people who really felt strongly that, yes, the vaccines must have been the cause of their child’s autism, but that has been completely discredited, disproven. And there’s probably a genetic component to autism, we know that. There is almost certainly a environmental that causes autism, and we don’t know what that environmental exposure is, but we know that it is not vaccines. And we have multiple papers to support that claim that there is no connection between autism and vaccines.
Melanie: As well as better diagnostic tools now, so it’s a little to pick up. Now, let’s get into these vaccines. When our babies are born, what are they getting right away, start with Hepatitis B, or what are they getting right away?
Dr. Horowitz: Well, the first vaccine that’s offered routinely is a Hepatitis B vaccine at birth, and sometimes I get questions about that. Why is it that we’re a Hepatitis B vaccine, when it’s either a blood-born… it’s a blood-born passage in the spread by, IV drugs of abuse, or sexual exposure. And so, I’m not worried about my newborn having a risk factor for Hepatitis B for a long, long time. What’s it doing here at birth in the hospital being offered? And the answer is, there are few points about that.
Number one, Hepatitis B vaccine is first anti-cancer vaccine, and by anti-cancer, I mean, a certain percentage of children who… or people who get Hepatitis B, go on to get Hepatocellular carcinoma, and by preventing them from getting Hepatitis B, you are essentially preventing from getting a horrible form of liver cancer. So, that’s number one.
Number two, we know that we want them to get the Hepatitis B vaccine series, and before they become sexually active, and that’s not going to happen for quite some time. And so, when that vaccine originally came out, it was recommended for junior high school entry, but it turns out that we weren’t getting the public health benefits of the Hepatitis B vaccine, as it was promised because junior high school students don’t come to the doctor enough to get a series of three vaccines, that at least they will when the Hepatitis B vaccine first came out. And if you don’t get the full set of the three vaccines, then you’re getting the full efficacy of that vaccine, and so, the studies were done to determine whether it would be effective and safe to administer as part of the newborn series of vaccines.
And something further that came from that, was that by giving Hepatitis B vaccine to newborns, you protect them and reduce their chances of a mother who has Hepatitis B giving that vertically. We call that vertical transmission to their baby. So, in addition to giving a different kind of special antibody to babies whose mothers had Hepatitis B, that by giving Hepatitis B vaccine, there also we’re able to further reduce the chances that those babies will get Hepatitis B.
So, the Hepatitis B vaccine is offered at birth. There are significant public health benefits to doing that. If they don’t get it at birth because family decline, it can be given anytime up until they’re a couple of months old, and we get them back onto a regular schedule, where the children are generally fully covered by it for Hepatitis B, by the time they’re six or 12 months of age.
Melanie: So, let’s jump to some of the very important… they’re all important, but DTaP and MMR, when are they get these and how often? And how many doses do they need?
Dr. Horowitz: Well, no vaccine is a 100% protective, and some of them are better than others at getting a good immune response. And so, the DTaP vaccine, which is covering against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis. The cause of whooping cough is given at two months, four months, six months, and then again at 15 to 18 months, and again at four to six years, and then they generally get it every five years as part of a regular tetanus shot.
The MMR vaccine is given at 12 to 15 months, and then again between four and six years of age, and these are totally different from one another. The MMR covers against mumps, measles and rubella. The DTaP against those diseases that I mentioned before, and all of these diseases are… they could potentially be fatal, and so, to not administer or to choose not to administer vaccines for whatever reason, means that you’re taking a chance on your child getting a vaccine preventable disease.
Melanie: So, what about the flu vaccine? How young can a child get that flu vaccine? And how often should we get it?
Dr. Horowitz: Flu vaccines are recommended every year, beginning at six months of age, and that actually brings up a really important point. Under six months of age, these newborns are particularly vulnerable to influenza, and the best thing you can do to protect a child from getting the flu is protect the people around that newborn from influenza by giving them the vaccine. You basically create a cocoon for the baby because if the babies not exposed to anybody carrying influenza, then she’s not going to get influenza, but the first time they can get it is beginning at six months of age. And I recommend for that everybody, from six months on, up. And they only need it once a year, unless it’s your first year getting the influenza vaccine, and you’re under nine years old.
So, a four-year-old getting a flu vaccine for the first time, will get one at time zero, let’s say November first, and then they’ll get the second one, December first. They get two vaccines, one month apart, if they’re under nine-years-old getting it for the first time, and then they get it once a year. And we recommend it every year. Especially for the very young, especially for the very old, and anybody who is pregnant because those are three times you’re most vulnerable to having problems related to influenza.
Melanie: And the last vaccine that I’d like to ask you about is the human papilloma virus, the HPV vaccine, and parents have questions, and now it’s given to boys and girls in their early teens. Explain just a little bit about that particular vaccine.
Dr. Horowitz: So, I mentioned the way Hepatitis B vaccine was the first anti-cancer vaccine. The HPV vaccine is the second one because by preventing young women from getting cervical warts, you prevent them from getting cervical cancer. If you prevent penial warts and anal, peri-anal warts in young men, you virtually eliminate the chances that they are going to get penial cancer or peri-anal cancers. And so, it’s an extremely important and valuable vaccine. It is recommended beginning at 12 years of age, and we routinely vaccinate with the HPV vaccine for all of our patients and for our own children.
Melanie: So, wrap it up for us, Dr. Horowitz, if you would with your best advice about vaccinations. What do parents ask you every day and what do you tell them about the importance of vaccinating their children?
Dr. Horowitz: Vaccines are a real success story in modern civilization, and we have prevented countless exposure to… countless contraction of horrible diseases and prevented a lot of deaths and disability, by giving routine immunizations. They are as safe as ever. They, although we protect against more diseases than we did 25 years ago, those vaccines are made in a much more purified fashion. So, although we’re protecting against more diseases, we’re injecting children with less protein and purer contaminants. We have ability to give combination vaccines that reduces their exposure to more of the preservatives that are in vaccines just to keep them safe and effective, and give them a shelf life. And so, it wouldn’t make sense to flit up vaccines because you’re exposing the children to even more of the preservatives, for instance. And so, vaccines are tremendously valuable. They are probably the most important thing that we do in a pediatric office, and I’m proud to protect so many children from so much disease and potentially death and disability down the road.
Melanie: Thank you so much, Dr. Horowitz, for being with us today. You’re listening to it’s Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. For more information, you can go to, HenryMayo.com, that’s HenryMayo.com. This is Melanie Cole, thanks so much for listening.