Maja Leibovitz and Patricia Papdopulous are two mothers at loggerheads with the city because they refuse to have their kids vaccinated against deadly diseases like polio, whooping cough and hepatitis B.
The state requires that children be fully immunized to attend school – and more than 99 percent of all city kids are – but Leibovitz refuses for religious reasons, and Papdopulous fears that the vaccines used are more dangerous than the diseases themselves.
“It’s not like we are in the 1800s anymore,” says Leibovitz. “Epidemics are a thing of the past.”
Leibovitz, a Christian Scientist, filed a lawsuit against the Board of Education last November after it barred her daughter, Jasmine, 7, from class. Two months later, she won a temporary injunction that allowed Jasmine to return to her Richmond Hill school.
Queens mom Papdopulous allowed her son, Jon, 12, to be vaccinated against polio, measles and mumps eight years ago, but now refuses to let him get a hepatitis B vaccine.
“Last time, he ended up in the hospital with heart complications,” says Papdopulous, who’s been home-schooling Jon since the city shot down her attempts to file a religious exemption to the immunization law.
“My doctor said there was no link, but it’s too much of a coincidence for me.”
The Board of Education was reluctant to discuss either case – and had no statistics available on the number of parents who refuse to immunize their youngsters.
New York doctors say the two New York mothers are examples of a growing trend in the city against vaccines – a trend they believe is misguided and absurd. They say that any parent who thinks diseases like polio, smallpox, whooping cough and mumps are extinct, and that their children are safe, are delusional.
“Today’s parents don’t remember a generation ago, when children were paralyzed due to polio or dying from diphtheria,” says Dr. John Talarico, medical director of the immunization program for the state Department of Health.
“But if we relax our vigilance at all, we’ll see the deadly effects of these diseases all over again. We could have full-scale epidemics on our hands.”
A disturbing study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that children who didn’t get vaccinated for measles, mumps or rubella were 35 percent more likely to contract the diseases than vaccinated children.
More frightening, recent outbreaks among nonimmunized populations – of polio in the Caribbean and rubella in Nebraska – suggest that these devastating diseases can all too easily return.
Immunization advocates point to outbreaks of deadly diphtheria in Russia in the first half of the 1990s and to last year’s London measles outbreak as examples of what can happen when vaccination rates drop.
But their voices are increasingly being drowned out by anti-vaccine activists who say the risks are underplayed.
“We get so many anecdotal reports from parents that their children are suffering high fevers, brain damage, even death from these vaccinations,” says Barbara Loe Fisher, executive director of the National Vaccine Information Center, which was founded by parents who say their children were harmed by vaccines.
But anecdotal reports don’t match up with recent studies that appear to prove that vaccines are safe. Two large-scale studies published earlier this month in the New England Journal of Medicine found no link between vaccines and multiple sclerosis.
And a study published several weeks ago in the British Medical Journal found no support for the belief that the sharp increase in autism is linked to the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella.
Internet sites run by anti-vaccine activists downplay such studies. They cite alarming “facts” and theories about the dangers of vaccines.
For Suzanne Walther of Murfreesboro, Tenn., a well-intentioned Internet search for information on the safety of vaccines for her new baby, Mary Catherine, turned into a nightmare.
“I found all these dreadful stories about children who had had reactions to vaccines,” she says.
She was concerned enough to postpone vaccinating Mary Catherine.
Then, days before her first birthday, Mary Catherine was stricken with meningitis, a disease that could have been prevented by a vaccination.
“It had been so many years since her pediatrician had seen meningitis that he almost didn’t recognize the symptoms,” Walther recalls.
“Luckily, his gut instinct told him something was seriously wrong, and he sent her to the emergency room. Another six hours and she could have died.”
Luckily, Mary Catherine, who’s now 18 months old, survived without suffering any of the disease’s complications, such as deafness or learning disabilities.
“I still can’t forgive myself,” says Walther, who had Mary Catherine immunized with a full range of vaccinations two weeks after the infant was released from the hospital.
Unfortunately, Walther isn’t the only parent who’s been turned against vaccines by the Internet propaganda.
A study in the medical journal Pediatrics last November found that 25 percent of parents surveyed mistakenly believe childhood vaccines can weaken their children’s immune system.
This alarms New York doctors, who say they are seeing more and more parents apprehensive about giving their children vaccines.
“There’s a lot of information out on the Internet from phony organizations that frightens parents,” says Dr. Steven Shelov, chairman of Pediatrics at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn.
“I’ve been in practice for over 15 years, and I’ve seen only a handful of minor vaccine reactions. But parents are still terrified.”
Long Islander Anne Attivissimo says if she could turn back the clock, she would not vaccinate her children – Dan, 15, Nicole, 12, and Andrew, 6.
“All three of them suffered adverse reactions,” Attivissimo told The Post. “Andrew went into shock after receiving the DPT [diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus] vaccine and was unconscious for 14 hours.
“My doctor told me he had reacted to the vaccine. He recovered, but now all three of my children are learning disabled.”
Are vaccines the cause? Nonsense, doctors say.
“Two years ago, you had parents walking in with their new babies, saying they were terrified their child would get diabetes. Now it’s autism,” says Dr. David Horowitz, a pediatrician at New York University Medical Center.
Horowitz says about 20 percent of the parents he encounters have fears about vaccinations.
“If they are very nervous, I let them delay it for a while, but, ultimately, I make it clear that if I am to continue as their pediatrician, their children need to be vaccinated,” he says.
“Most reactions are mild: redness, fever, swelling or high-pitched crying. Unfortunately, that can be terrifying to a new parent.”
The FDA receives about 12,000 reports of vaccine-related adverse reactions a year, of which 20 percent are serious enough to require hospitalization.
But in most cases, it’s difficult to confirm that the reported side effects were actually caused by the vaccine.
Under current law, physicians and even parents are asked to report any problem they believe may have been caused by a vaccine – no matter how far-fetched it may seem to be.
While critics like Fisher maintain doctors consistently underreport adverse reactions, advocates like Dr. Ben Schwartz, director of the National Immunization Program at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, insist the vaccine safety-monitoring system works.
He cites the June 1999 market withdrawal of Rotashield, a vaccine to prevent some diarrheal diseases, after it was linked to bowel blockages in babies.
“Rotashield was only on the market for 11 months because we quickly realized we were getting a number of complaints from physicians,” Schwartz says.
He adds that vaccines are constantly being modified to reduce the risk of potentially deadly side effects.
The oral polio vaccine, for example, resulted in five to 10 cases of polio each year. But three years ago, the numbers dropped down to zero when doctors switched to an injectable version that only contained proteins of the deadly virus.
Likewise, the DPT vaccine was replaced in 1996 by the DTaP [diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis) vaccine, which has resulted in much fewer side effects.
Another fear has centered around thimerosol, a mercury-containing compound used as a preservative in many childhood vaccines.
Activists claim thimerosol may cause neurological damage, a belief the CDC disputes. Nevertheless, the CDC has ordered all thimerosol-containing vaccines off the market by this spring until further studies prove they are safe.
Concerned parents can meanwhile ask their doctors to use thimerosol-free versions of vaccines.
Walther stresses that parents should make sure their children have all their vaccinations. Ignoring them can be lethal, she warns.
“I would tell every parent to get their child vaccinated and not to listen to bogus Internet stories,” Walther says.
“Even today, I’m still wracked with guilt. My ignorance almost killed my child – and I don’t want the same thing to happen to any other parent.”