The Myth – Infants are too young to get vaccinated.
The Truth – It’s very important to make sure that infants are fully immunized against certain diseases by the age of six months.
Children need to be immunized during the first few months of life because a number of vaccine-preventable diseases could otherwise infect them. Fortunately, young infants are surprisingly good at building immunity to viruses and bacteria.
About 95 percent of children given DTaP, Hib, and hepatitis B virus vaccines will be fully protected by six months of age.
Some of the diseases for which young infants need protection include pertussis, Hib, meningitis, and hepatitis.
Consider these facts:
• Pertussis (whooping cough) infects about seven thousand children and causes six deaths every year in the United States. Almost all of the cases occur in nonimmunized children less than one year of age.
• Unvaccinated children under two years old are five hundred times more likely to catch Hib meningitis than an immunized child if someone with an Hib infection is living in the home.
• About 90 percent of newborns whose mothers are infected with hepatitis B will contract hepatitis and go on to develop chronic liver disease, cirrhosis, and possibly liver cancer. Some will die.
You can read more about vaccine myths in my book God’s Design for the Highly Healthy Child.
Here are other blogs in this series you might find useful:

• Radio Listeners ‘Angry as Hornets’ About Dr. Walt’s Comments on Childhood Vaccination
• Doctors Debate Delayed Vaccine Schedule
• More on the Risks of Not Vaccinating Your Children
• Separating Swine Flu Myths From Facts
• Vaccine Myth #1: Vaccines Cause Autism
  • Special court rules against families who claim vaccines caused autism
• Vaccine Myth #2: Vaccines Don’t Work
• Vaccine Myth #3: Vaccines Aren’t Necessary
• Vaccine Myth #4: Vaccines Are Unsafe
• Vaccine Myth #5: Infants Are Too Young to Get Vaccinated
• Vaccine Myth #6: It’s Better to Be Naturally Infected Than Immunized
• Vaccine Myth #7: Vaccines Weaken the Immune System
• Vaccine Myth #8: A Preservative Contained in Many Vaccines Harms Children
• Vaccine Myth #9: Vaccine-Preventable Diseases Occur More Often in Vaccinated People Than in Unvaccinated People
• Vaccine Myth #10: Vaccines, If Administered during the First Two Years of Life, Can Cause Diabetes
• Vaccine Myth #11: The DTP Vaccine Caused Deafness in the 1994 Miss America Beauty Pageant Winner
• Vaccine Myth #12: The Polio Virus Vaccine Is Contaminated with a Virus That Causes Cancer
• Vaccine Myth #13: Vaccinations are made from aborted babies
  • Doctors and Families Asked to “Just Say no to New Aborted Fetal Vaccine