Doctor urges parents to vaccinate children

Mesude Erşan – ISTANBUL

A Turkish medical doctor working at a children’s hospital connected to the American Stanford University have told parents “not to be scared” to get their children vaccinated.

The myths about vaccination as being “harmful” to children have been debunked by many scientific evidences, said Işıl Arıcan, the director of the Ambulatory EMR Services at the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford.

Arıcan said that the compound of thiomersal, which is used as a preservative is some vaccines, has no “side effect,” in contrary to the arguments of anti-vaccination activists, who say that the mercury in thiomersal causes autism in children.

“It has been taken out of vaccinations [except the flu shot] due to pressure created by the anti-vaccination lobby, even though today, after analyses on thousands of children, it has been proven that the thiomersal compound has no side effect whatsoever,” she told daily Hürriyet.

Another argument the anti-vaccination lobby consults is the use of aluminum compounds in many vaccines.

Arıcan said that although various researches show that when taken in high amounts, aluminum has toxic effects for humans, the aluminum amount taken with vaccines is “way below” the critical level.

“A significant amount of aluminum - from the air we breathe to the water we drink, in many places and even in many food substances - gets into our bodies every day. So far it has not been determined that the low amount of aluminum taken with vaccines has a negative effect on human health,” she said.