Washington – The Food and Drug Administration has approved a GlaxoSmithKline vaccine that protects children against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough and polio — the first to protect against all four diseases in one shot, the company said.
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Drug companies often try to bring vaccines to market that protect children against more than one disease, lowering the number of shots needed during their trips to the doctor. Currently, GlaxoSmithKline offers one vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough and another for polio.
The vaccines are usually necessary for children who attend school.
Well behaved child….
Is this shot free of mercury and unsafe preservatives
Of course! There hasn’t been mercury since 1999/2000.
“Of course! There hasn’t been mercury since 1999/2000”
Except for the flu vaccine.
And don’t think the drug co.s destroyed the mercury vaccines – they just shipped millions of doses to third world countries.
I do appreciate the progress are health care has achieved. But does that mean that we’ll be forced to give seven shots by our health care system or will it stay at four? The fact that we take a premature immune system of a young child and stuff them with all these shots makes me very uncomfortable as a mother.
Guess what !!??!
Every child needs only 4 Polio vaccines and 5 DTPs.
I purposely did not let my children get the Pediarix
(all 5 in one shot) because they did not need the extra Polio vaccine. It’s just better for the doctor’s scheduling,to have less injections, not better for the child !
another option, for those of us who feel less shots are better is to give 4- 5 in one shots, and one last dose of DTP on it’s’ own! (Did you ever consider?)
No one gets 4 or 5 pediarix vaccines, the maximum number is 3. The fifth vaccine in pediarix is Hepatitis B, of which only 3 doses are needed. This new vaccine would likely be used at age 5 or 6 when the fifth dose of DTaP and 4th dose of polio are generally given as 2 separate injections.
I’m glad that my kids have two arms and two legs. I’n no pediatrician but all I know is that when I go they get shots in every limb, plus the polio oral vaccine and I think that’s enough. Attention pharmaceutical companies enough with the economics let’s try having the children in min for once!
As anyone who has carefully studied the vaccine issue knows, vaccination is a double-edged sword–it is controversial.
Those who advocate vaccination, claim that giving a child a mild form of disease stimulates the immune system to fight back and creates a stronger immune system that will be prepared to ward-off the real disease, should it attack the child.
Those who oppose vaccinationation claim that they accomplish nothing and expose the child to a disease and to additives that may cripple him and even cause autism. As for the data showing a decline of disease when vaccinations began, they claim that there was a general worldwide decline BEFORE vaccinations started, even in countries that never implemented vaccination.
Regardless of your position on this issue, it is clear that a child’s immune system is stressed when he receives any vaccination. To give more than one disease to child means that his immune immune system has to fight on “many fronts.” This may be too much of a stress for many children.
To give four vaccines simultaneously, borders on the criminal.
Yes, that is why I’d prefer the DTP, on its own, every time,
and then, I’d prefer to come back again each month for the HIB, Polio, Hep. B, etc…