Are vaccinations bad?  More to the point, can they be bad for your pet?  Veterinary medicine is gradually waking up to the fact that the answer isn't always a resounding "NO!".  The answer is that the vaccinations our pets typically receive can be either good or bad, depending upon the pet and that pet's general health at the time of the vaccination.  Moreover, we now know that not all all pets require vaccinations every single year of their lives.

There is little question that vaccines have saved many lives.  Without the effective vaccinations we have for canine distemper and parvovirus, we'd be back to the days Dr. Mitchell remembers from vet school, where it wasn't unusual to lose 15-20 dogs a day at the animal shelter where she worked.  Without effective vaccines for calicivirus and panleukopenia, two common and potentially deadly kitty viruses, we'd still be losing entire litters of kittens (and many adult cats) to dehydration and starvation.  And while few pets are likely to develop rabies, the public health risk certainly justifies vaccination for this disease, especially since it's rapidly infecting wildlife in the eastern USA and is expected to reach our area in a few years.

However, there is also little question that vaccines are overused.  Despite the vaccine companies' recommendations to vaccinate all pets every year for a wide variety of diseases, there is NO evidence that vaccines magically stop working after just one year - or that all vaccines work well!  In fact, research has shown that adult pets may be protected against some diseases for years after a vaccination.  Moreover, over-vaccination has been shown to be associated with a number of serious health conditions, such as kidney disease, cancer, diabetes, thyroid disease, skin disorders, seizures, and immune disease.

While we now know that vaccines typically last far longer than a year, and in some cases may protect for many years, what we don't know is how long a vaccine lasts in a given pet.  Nor do we know which pet can be vaccinated without problems and which pet might develop health problems as a result of the vaccine.  So what can we do to protect our pets from disease, without having them develop vaccine-related problems?

The first answer is to have your pet thoroughly examined by a veterinarian every single year, so that any health problems can be detected early.  Think of how much your own health can change in one year, and remember that your pet ages far faster than you!  At the exam, we can tell you whether your pet should be vaccinated or not.  Healthy pets can (and many should) be vaccinated against the diseases that can be life-threatening, such as rabies, parvovirus, distemper, and the feline respiratory viruses.

For pets without disease exposure, for elderly pets, or for pets with existing health problems, it is best to minimize vaccinations as much as possible, and to separate the vaccines when more than one is required.  There are also several options to all those vaccines.

For safety's sake, we can run a TITER to see if the last vaccine is still working.  This is a blood test and is the same test used by the vaccine companies when they test to make sure their vaccines are working.  If a titer comes back "positive", that means that the last vaccine is still working and your pet doesn't need to be re-vaccinated.  You've been hearing us talk about titers for several years now at our hospital and you're going to hear more in the future, as these tests become more common.  Just this year, titer checks were recommended by several national veterinary panels investigating vaccine-related diseases.While their efficacy is still under investigation, NOSODES may be a choice for ill or elderly pets who are at risk of disease but who aren't good candidates for vaccination.  A nosode is a type of homeopathic preparation that may help protect against disease; it is also often used in conjunction with vaccines, to help minimize the side effects that can occur in some pets.  While the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association is evaluating nosodes, there are no clear answers yet on how much nosode to use, how often, or how long they may last.

Finally, SPLITTING the vaccines up, instead of giving them all at once, may be the safest choice for some pets.  Each time a vaccine is given, it causes a certain stress to the body.  That stress can be multiplied when several vaccines are given at once.  Some veterinary researchers have suggested that giving fewer vaccines at one time can help reduce the risk of vaccine-related side effects and disease.  For example, a pet might get a distemper vaccine in January, a parvo vaccine in March, and the rabies vaccine at another time, instead of all the vaccines at the same time.  Or, a pet with a very low risk of disease might get the only rabies vaccine one year, distemper only the next, and parvo only the third year.  Titers could be used to test whether the protection from the other vaccines not given that year is still present.

The bottom line: You'll hear us mention titers when we think they are appropriate for your pet.  You'll also hear us sometimes recommend that your pet not get a certain vaccination that you may have asked for in the past.  Or, we may recommend that you split your pet's vaccines up instead of giving them all at one time.  And you'll hear a greater emphasis on what you can do to keep your pet healthy so that it can fight off disease effectively, rather than hearing us simply tell you to vaccinate to protect your pet.