Testimonials

The surprising thing for me is that [the argument for three-year vaccines] has become so mainstream, yet it's based on very thin data. If they can establish that we're causing a problem or problems, within reasonable scientific certainty, then my opinion will change. But now it seems to be more of a socio-political thing rather than a science thing.

Even in just the 12 years I've been practicing, I have patients that live significantly longer now than they did when I started. And during those 12 years, annual vaccinations have always been a big part of that. My patients are living longer under the system we have in place, not shorter.

I guess my greatest fear is that we'll start seeing some of these diseases that we've been vaccinating against begin to reoccur. That's happened with leptospirosis. Many practitioners felt the vaccination was useless until we started to see more cases of it in this area.

If you have a system that works, don't fool around with it. The science to justify changing the vaccine protocol is simply not there. There is no accumulated data that can tell what is going to happen between every one year, every two years or every three years.

I've really not seen enough evidence to convince me to go to a three-year protocol. I don't think they've used enough dogs and cats in the studies that have been presented. And in the field, the diseased dogs and cats that I see are usually from unvaccinated animals or animals that are not up to date with their vaccines.

If you vaccinate every three years versus every one, you're going to spend less money on vaccines. But the question is whether you are going to spend more on treatment of those diseases that you're trying to protect against because you're not vaccinating enough.

There's not data that I feel comfortable with that supports the three-year protocols, especially on leukemia, bordetella and other vaccines. It's still just popular opinion. And at this point, from a cost standpoint, it's still cheaper to go ahead and vaccinate than to do titers. And the titers are controversial as to what level would be protective.

Most people think that when you vaccinate for leptospirosis, you get six months to a year of immunity. But when people talk about these vaccines lasting three years, they're really only talking about a few of them. No one says leukemia lasts three years. No one thinks bordetella lasts for three years. So you're still going to need to come in.

It comes down to economics. Does it cost a veterinarian less to vaccinate you for just leptospirosis versus leptospirosis, distemper and parvo? The answer is not really. And the owner may say, `Well, are these vaccines causing problems?' And initially, we thought possibly. Cats can sometimes get tumors in the injection site, but it's from any injection site, not just vaccines. That part gets left out a lot. Whether it's a shot of penicillin or a vaccine, it doesn't seem to matter.

I'm sticking with exactly what I've been doing for all these years. I've been at it for 41 years. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I've got a high-end group of clients that take very good care of their animals, and I don't see disease like I used to. We used to see problems, but I started early in practice vaccinating every year, two years, whatever is appropriate, and if we have a break with the vaccine or if we see any of the diseases we're talking about in cats and dogs, I would probably see them almost instantly, and I don't. I just don't see that. And we do a lot of testing; not titer testing, we do a lot of testing for various cat viruses to make sure they don't have any problem before we vaccinate them.

Keeping the population vaccinated, that's what I feel like I'm doing, so I can tell people, you're probably in one of the safest areas in Seattle, because everybody down here is vaccinated.

I tell clients that the manufacturer's recommendation is for yearly vaccines and that we would like to follow that. I also tell them that I feel the risk of the disease in most cases is worse than the risk of the vaccination. The incidents of vaccination reaction are very small, as opposed to the risk of not giving the vaccine.

If they're still concerned, then I suggest taking a titer, usually a distemper and a parvo titer, just to make sure we're at appropriate levels. But the problem is that even though there's a normal level recorded by the laboratory, I'm not sure anybody has definitively decided what a protective level of titer is. We have a guideline, but I'm not sure it's protective.

I haven't read anything at this point to convince me of [a relationship between immuno-stimulation of vaccines and disease]. I would have to see a firm scientific study showing a direct correlation between vaccines and immune-mediated diseases before I changed my mind.

My concern is that if we start becoming more selective with our vaccines or discard them or lengthen the intervals, I think there may be a very distinct possibility that we're going to start seeing disease outbreaks that we haven't been seeing.

If more and more people are going to a three-year protocol, I want to make sure that we don't see any breaks with diseases returning. I want to make sure that the research is there to support this as a correct move.

We've had a few people interested in the debate as to whether a vaccine holds for longer than a year. And our position is, we can't really say it does, because to my knowledge, current vaccinations haven't been tested for periods longer than that. If a person is willing to assume the risk, obviously they can do whatever they choose to do. We will inform them of the risk, and if they want to go with a multiple year vaccination program, then as long as they understand the risk, that's fine with us.

We would very much like to see more studies that prove the duration of immunity of these vaccines last longer. I know Fort Dodge is addressing that.

If a vaccine manufacturer can tell me that its distemper or parvo or Lyme vaccine is good for three years, then that's what we're going to use, because they've done the testing. But if they can't tell me that, I'm not going to use it.

You can do titer testing, but how do you know when the titer level goes below threshold? You have no idea. It could be two weeks, eight months, there's no telling. Public education on this is very important.

[A colleague] indicated to us that a clinic in our area has seen a resurgence in leptospirosis because veterinarians don't believe that the animals need to be vaccinated against it. As far as length and duration, we need to leave it with the scientists and not just make a decision that we're not going to vaccinate, for whatever reason. We should vaccinate by fact, not by opinion. If the manufacturer recommends annual vaccinations, we should do that.

In canines, I haven't seen a case of parvo here for probably well over a year, and I directly attribute that to vaccination. There used to be days when there would be six to eight cases of parvo in this hospital, and when you've got that going on, you know something's not working very well. We were all scampering for vaccine years ago. Now that we have a successful vaccine, people are talking about cutting back on it.

I'm an older vet, and I remember when every other dog that came in had parvo, and every third dog that came in had distemper. And I think that there's been enough years from when those kinds of things happen that most veterinarians don't appreciate what can happen if you have breaks like that again.

At this point, I'm sticking with a one-year protocol on the annual vaccines for a couple of reasons. One, there hasn't been any definitive evidence that I can measure a titer and tell accurately whether the animal is protected. The second reason is that the manufacturers recommend one year and they back it if it's given annually. If I don't give it yearly and something happens to the animal and it comes down with a disease after I recommended vaccinating every three years, then that would be my responsibility.

Human medicine doesn't put much stock in what an antibody titer is, except to indicate exposure or vaccination. I'm not willing to risk my license by not protecting the pets I see, particularly given the reservoirs of diseases that we have out there in the wild animal population.

The more frequently the vaccine is given, then the risk factor diminishes drastically. So, if a certain individual decided not to vaccinate his dog or cat in this environment, the dog or cat would probably be pretty safe because everybody else had vaccinated dogs. But there was an old story back in Ireland; all the farmers vaccinated their animals for black leg year after year, but they thought the vets were taking advantage of the vaccine protocol to make money. So, two of the big farmers stopped vaccinating their cattle against black leg, and their whole herds were wiped out inside a year.

My feeling is that because of the vaccination protocols that have been in effect for many, many years, we don't see many cases of these diseases. So until it's proven that the duration of immunity is for three years, five years, ten years - whatever is ultimately determined - I think we should continue doing the annual vaccines. That's what we've had a tremendous amount of success with thus far.