Vaccination foes needling doctors

CEDAR HILLS — Kara Davis is a staunch believer that you shouldn't give cocktails to babies, especially if a newborn is injected with one in the arm or foot before ever leaving the hospital.

But while Davis and a growing population of like-minded parents share their concerns out loud and on the Internet, others, including a majority of hospital doctors, say those "cocktails" — also known as vaccines — are crucial to saving lives.

Davis, 53, although not an expert, recently persuaded her son not to allow his newborn to receive a hepatitis B vaccine, which is normally administered within the baby's first 48 hours. Davis did allow her six children to be vaccinated when they were young, but that was before she started doing research that generated her ill feelings toward the common shots.

A quick Web search on "vaccination risks" will gather a variety of Web sites on the subject. One of those sites is www.909shot.com, which is published by the National Vaccine Information Center, a nonprofit organization that advocates reform of the "mass vaccination system," according to the Web site.

Other sites, however, such as one published by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, www.cdc.gov, have links to information that favors immunizations.

"I haven't felt good about vaccinations since my last child was born 20 years ago," Davis said. "I did have my kids vaccinated. I just had a really strong feeling that it wasn't good, but I didn't know why."

Davis said she doesn't feel comfortable with vaccinating children because she believes vaccines typically contain formaldehyde and mercury as preservatives. She also says babies are not susceptible to hepatitis B if their parents aren't carriers of the virus.

Because she believes that vaccines can be harmful to human health, Davis said she is skeptical of a system that heavily promotes their use.

"I believe doctors are trained in their medicine," Davis said. "They believe that a drug can cure anything, and that's just how they're trained. I don't blame them and I don't put them down, but I don't think they've been educated in any other way."

According to Diane Chipman, immunization coordinator for the Utah County Department of Health, vaccines are constantly being improved.

For example, Chipman says vaccines created after 1999 for infants no longer use trace amounts of mercury. Vaccines have a shelf life of about 18 months, Chipman said.