Putting Science Behind Vaccination
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| Willow, an Honor Golden |
In January 2015, several hundred vets made a commitment to end over-vaccination of dogs and cats.
That’s a really big deal … because most pets are vaccinated too often … and now we finally have a way to put an end to this practice in a way that’s affordable for us and acceptable for vets.
If you don’t know what a titer is and how it can save your pet’s life, do him the favor of reading this article. It can literally save his life.
Why Your Dog’s Vaccine Can Harm Him
Every pet owner fears infectious disease.
Parvovirus and distemper can be debilitating and even deadly for our pets, so we want to protect them. So we vaccinate.
But very few of us know that this protection comes at a cost.
Vaccines can be just as harmful to our pets and can cause a wide range of health problems that range from minor fever to anaphylactic shock and cancer (scroll down to the bottom of this article for a list of common vaccine reactions). So it’s vital that we vaccinate our pets only when necessary.
The whole idea of vaccination is to protect our pets from harm – and that means protecting them not only from infectious disease, but also protecting from vaccine-induced damage.
I’m going to ask you to do something at the end of this article, so please remember that vaccines can both save lives and take lives.
Why Vets Are Still Over-Vaccinating
Twenty years ago, a very important research piece was published.
Veterinary immunologist, Dr Ronald Schultz studied every major vaccine in over a thousand dogs and every study he did delivered the same conclusion, every time:
“Vaccines for diseases like distemper and canine parvovirus, once administered to adult animals, provide lifetime immunity.” “Are we vaccinating too much?” JAVMA, No. 4, August 15, 1995, pg. 421.
At the time this study was released, vets were vaccinating dogs and cats every year – not because they needed annual boosters, but because the makers of those vaccines only tested them for a few months.
Nobody knew how long vaccines really lasted …
But thanks to Dr Schultz’s work, the major veterinary associations now knew that the core vaccines were extremely likely to protect dogs and cats for life. So in 2003, they changed their revaccination guidelines.
Now this might sound like a great step forward, but there were two problems with this.
First, the AAHA and AVMA only changed their recommendations from annual to every three years.
Dr Richard Ford, Professor of Medicine, North Carolina State University, a member of the AAHA task force, said this was just a compromise. “It’s completely arbitrary…I will say there is no science behind the three-year recommendation…”
So the veterinary associations are still allowing vets to vaccinate more often than necessary, based on research.
This problem is compounded because the revaccination guidelines are merely recommendations. This means vets can vaccinate whenever they feel is necessary.
And according to a major vaccine manufacturer, 60 percent of vets still vaccinate annually.
“Profits are what vaccine critics believe is at the root of the profession’s resistance to update its protocols. Without the lure of vaccines, clients might be less inclined to make yearly veterinary visits. Vaccines add up to 14 percent of the average practice’s income, AAHA reports, and veterinarians stand to lose big. I suspect some are ignoring my work,” says Schultz. “Tying vaccinations into the annual visit became prominent in the 1980s and a way of practicing in the 1990s. Now veterinarians don’t want to give it up.”
So we pet owners are up against it …
How do we protect our dogs and cats from infectious disease while limiting their risk of vaccine damage?
Titer Testing: Putting Science Behind Vaccination
The first step is to realize that, until recently, vaccine schedules have been based on nothing more than speculation.
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