Public-health officials are afraid of what could happen next.
The small but increasingly vocal number of critics claim that particular vaccines have caused everything from autism to multiple sclerosis to sudden-infant-death syndrome. They contend that the U.S. government, in concert with the pharmaceutical industry, is trying to cover up the problems.
Cathy Kolakowski is among the disbelievers. The Harrisburg mother thinks the hepatitis B vaccine killed her month-old son. She found the baby dead in her arms one morning last January after falling asleep nursing him. The unexplained death occurred five days after the baby got his second hepatitis B shot, she said.
Kolakowski said the baby's doctor did not believe the vaccine had anything to do with the child's death. An autopsy and tissue analysis by five pathologists found no damage to the liver, which might have been expected if the hepatitis B vaccine had killed the baby, said Dr. Wayne Ross, the Dauphin County pathologist. Still, he said he couldn't rule out that the vaccine was implicated. The baby's doctor did not return calls requesting comment.
Kolakowski said it was County Coroner Graham Hetrick who first suggested to her that the vaccine might have caused the death. Hetrick, an elected official with no medical degree, said in an interview that he had based his suggestion solely on the fact that the baby died days after getting the shot.
Health authorities say there is no scientific evidence to support such heart-wrenching stories as Kolakowski's. And they worry that parents will become so fearful of vaccines that they won't get their children immunized - opening the door to lethal diseases that Americans have long forgotten.
"Without vaccines, epidemics of vaccine-preventable diseases would return, resulting in increased and unnecessary illness, disability and death," Surgeon General David Satcher warned during a congressional hearing on vaccine safety in August.
