The risk is if you wait until they are 2 years old or so they will develop pertussis or something more severe because the decision was made to wait.
I agree with the whopping cough and that's one that needs to be done early. It's the example that's often used by the CDC themselves to promote vaccines at a very early age:
"For example, pertussis vaccine is recommended in the United States beginning at 2 months of age to protect infants. That timing saves lives that would otherwise be lost to the disease if vaccines were not given at a very young age."
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/patient-ed/conversations/downloads/vacsafe-acip-color-office.pdf
But in looking at the others, I didn't see the same risks vs. benefit. For instance, "in 1994 Canada was certified as being free of wild poliovirus by the World Health Organization. More recent cases of paralytic polio in Canada have been associated with importations of wild poliovirus and the use of OPV."
Poliomyelitis Vaccine - Part 4 - Active Vaccines - Canadian Immunization Guide - Public Health Agency of Canada
OPV (which is the oral polio vaccine) was stopped being used in Canada 1996 and in the USA in 2000. That's because, as stated above:
"
More recent cases of paralytic polio in Canada have been associated with importations of wild poliovirus and
the use of OPV."
I am only quoting from the CDC and the Canadian equivalent to show you my concerns as a parent of young children doing my own research right around this time, when my children were very young. Certainly you must be able to see the concern? The CDC did and for this reason it stopped using OPV in 2000 (which was too late for some unfortunate children). But I don't blame the CDC. They do excellent work and should be commended. I am just showing you my concerns and why, as a parent, I made the decisions I did.
The people at the CDC are very smart and don't profit from the vaccine sales so have no reason to doubt their recommendations.
Yes, they are very smart. However, it is not true that they don't profit from vaccine sales, except to say that they don't directly profit from them of course. But they do profit from the drug companies that make the vaccines. The CDC knows and admits that and therefore puts rules in place in an attempt to avoid a conflict of interest. You can read them at the first link above, bottom of the first page. I will only quote this part:
"However, because ACIP members are experts in the vaccine field, they may be involved in vaccine studies. Therefore, ACIP members who lead vaccine studies at their respective institutions may become ACIP members but they must abstain from voting on recommendations related to the vaccine they are studying."
So we have a group of 15 experts who are voting members and are responsible for making vaccine recommendations and who are funded in their research by drug companies. Granted, they can't vote on their own vaccine studies but they perhaps all know each other and perhaps put in recommendations working together.
I think there is a good reason that pharmaceutical companies spent $900 million on lobbying between 1998 and 2005, which is more than any other industry, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics. It probably has no effect on the vaccine schedule, but it certainly caused me to raise my eyebrows and do some further investigations.
. By bringing this ancient thread back to life (with an off-topic post, no less), you will garner a lot of discussion that has the opposite effect of what you were intending.
