My most recent post (“Dear parents, you are being lied to”) has sparked a very lively discussion. I encourage you to continue to share your thoughts on it, but I also want to follow up by asking for your reactions to one comment that I found particularly interesting. (I’ve edited it a bit for brevity)
As a pediatrician who’s spent extensive time working in the US and overseas and has seen children die from EVERY disease (except small pox) for which there is a vaccine I am appalled at the lack of education by the general public on the vaccine issue. This is my rant: I had two unvaccinated children in the US die from whooping cough, one from tetanus, and 2 from meningitis in the past few years. Perhaps this reflects our country’s generally poor understanding of math and science in general. A recent large study in the US showed that no matter how scientists try to educate US parents about disease and disease prevention, whether it is vaccines or hand washing, parents simply cannot follow the logic.
It’s devastating to see children die from preventable disease and despicable that it is happening here. I would like to know why those whose children end up in the PICU with tetanus or whooping cough now trust us to save the life of their child? Why do you run to a doctor when you are terrified your child has tetanus after refusing to vaccinate? Why am I now competent to save your child’s life when they have meningitis or epiglottis, but I wasn’t competent enough to keep them from getting sick? If there was no medical help for your unvaccinated child if they acquired a vaccine preventable illness would you think about vaccinating? If you’re not willing to run to your anti-vaccine friend, treat your child with advice from non-scientific sites on the internet, go to your chiropractor, or your holistic healer with your dying child perhaps you shouldn’t be taking their advice about vaccines. —Anonymous
To those of you who simply don’t trust the medical community’s use of vaccines, I am curious what you make of this physician’s point. Given your reservations about vaccines, do you trust an MD to treat yourself or your children for any medical issues at all? If so, why do you trust his/her education and experience on some points but not others?
I invite anyone, pro- or anti-vax, to share your thoughts on this. Please respect each other by following the commenting policies (and feel free to alert me if I miss a comment in violation of them).
Violent metaphors 
Okay, I know one of these commenters in real life and just a few years ago it was announced that the child’s autism magically “went away.” Now it’s back?
My son had a convulsion 1 hr after his first MMR shot. Needless to say he never had another shot or another convulsion. However he was tested for immunity to MMR before an international trip at age 20, and surprise surprise, he had 100% immunity from the one shot.
Anonymous,
As I understand it, you are making two statements:
A) the MMR caused his convulsion, and
B) the one shot provided him with immunity
How would you know if your conclusions about this incident are incorrect? How can you be sure that it was not a coincidence?
If I happen to see a meteor (common event here) and then it is followed soon after by a sudden torrential downpour (uncommon here), should I be convinced that the meteor caused the downpour?
Is there any other way that he could have developed immunity?
If I never had a chicken pox vaccine, and never known to have had chicken pox, can you conceive of how I might have immunity? My question is about what you understand about immunity.
BTW, I never had chicken pox, and never had a vaccine for it, and I continue to have immunity acccording to testing.
I do know how that came to be true, but I’d like to see if you can make an educated guess. This is not about whether you get the answer exactly correct, but about whether you are interested in thinking about immunity.
I had whooping cough (pertussis) when I was four; my one year old brother had it too. He had to go to the hospital. We both survived. When DPT shot came out, I vaccinated my children.
I had “hard” measles when I was 8. The same measles Helen Keller had which caused her blindness and deafness. I came through 2 weeks of high fever (103 for the worse 3 days part of it) and severe sickness with no disability. My kids got MMR
I had rubella when I was 9 (3 day measles back then). I was not badly sick. Fortunately there were no pregnant women around me whose babies would have been damaged.
I had chicken pox when I was 10. Fever and breaking out like I had poison ivy over my whole body. I exposed my kids as toddlers to chicken pox so it would be easier on them. No vaccine for it at that time.
My cousin had mumps at 10. The whole family was anxious for the 2 weeks they lasted that they might make him infertile.
I have given my children every vaccination available and penicillin for strep infections, so they wouldn’t have to go through what I and my cohorts did. I saw strep go into rheumatic fever. Penicillin wasn’t widely available until I was10. My aunt had rheumatic heart disease because of scarlet fever (which is a strep infection resulting from strep throat).
Thank God, my grandson will never have any high fever from childhood diseases and his parents will never have to take turns throughout the night staying awake to put cold towels on his body in order to keep his fever from reaching dangerously high levels. That is what my parents had to do.
Listen to a grandmother: Vaccinate your children, if they can be vaccinated!
Thank you for telling your story. We need more adults who weren’t vaccinated to tell their history so parents who choose not to vaccinate can see the danger of it
Forgot to put my name in. Don’t want to be anonymous, lol.
I am waiting for a landmark legal case to occur where a non vaccinated child sues their parent for abrogation of duty of care by allowing them to be disabled due to infection from a preventable disease. I think that after this, the anti fax community might actually engage in genuine education.
There is a case from court where a father successfully defeated the mother to ensure best care of his child would be given; the child through legal right, can now receive protection from these terrible diseases.
it is at best neglectful on the part of the parent
And if a parent vaccinated because of the bullying tactics, does that parent then get to sue you? Probably not. Why? Because it would be considered an acceptable loss. Unfortunately, not so acceptable in the eyes of the parent who now feels they weren’t the best advocate for their child. It’s a slippery slope you all suggest. Careful what you ask for. You might find that one day, your most basic rights are also removed simply because the masses didn’t agree with YOUR science.
I agree somewhat with Not Amused. These suggestions are delving into areas of social justice and rights of the child. If we are going to suggest making vaccines ‘mandatory’ for children then how can it stop there. As is pointed out in later posts, these diseases affect adults too. Shouldn’t vaccines for adults be mandatory too? I am not for or against either side of the debate. I do believe in a persons right to choose – adult or child.
I was born in India , raised in Africa and the UK and now live in California. I’m 68 and healthy despite having about 2 Polio injections in the 50’s and cursory vaccinations for changing countries. I had no vaccinations given to me as a child !
Then thank your lucky stars for vaccinations! Because that is the reason these diseases don’t continue to spread. You, are just lucky, you didn’t come in contact with any of them.
I live in Lagos, Nigeria. Every day on every street I see people with misshapen or missing limbs. I have to explain to my children why the man selling handkerchiefs on the side of the road, who we walk past and greet every day on the way to school, has to use a rubber cup instead of a shoe because his foot is so misshapen. This is Nigeria where there is no safety net, and where disability is not something people make allowances for. The guy on the skateboard because his legs are so withered has to rely on begging to earn enough to eat. I explain to my children that these people have had polio which is a disease which has destroyed their limbs like this, but that luckily for my boys they were born in a country and to a family where they were vaccinated against polio as a matter of course. I don’t think they’ll ever have any conflict about the benefits of vaccination.
Two years ago 3 nurses working on a polio vaccination programme in the north of the country were gunned down because a religious leader told his congregation that the vaccination was actually causing the disease. There was international outcry, there were loud condemnations of the power and ignorance of certain religious leaders. Yet, I can’t help but see a correlation between this and the voices of people who claim vaccinations are dangerous, they are also potentially causing deaths albeit less directly.
I think the Western world needs to remember what it means to live in a country where childhood vaccination is not the norm, only available to those with the money to pay for it. It means infant mortality rates of 12.5% in the under-5s (around 1 in 8 children) [Unicef statistic from 2012]. Yes, not all of those are from vaccine preventable disease, we have high rates of malaria, cholera and all those other diseases linked to poverty and lack of education. But we also had a meningitis outbreak 4 years ago, a chicken pox outbreak last year, measles two years ago, typhoid last year: and these are only the ones I am aware of, that would have threatened my children, who live in an affluent bubble surrounded by people who have been vaccinated. These are the ones that ‘jumped’ across the divide that wealth creates in this country. Imagine how many other outbreaks happened in the mainland communities where people have to live cheek by jowl with barely any sanitation and where there are few or no vaccination programmes.
Imagine living in a world like that, when you don’t know if a fever could mean your baby will die. I can afford to rush my children to the doctor every time their temperature spikes too high, they can have the results of a blood test and treatment within hours; but at least I can rule out polio, measles, typhoid, yellow fever, whooping cough and mumps, I only really have to worry about malaria. Even so, I do not have the luxury of ‘waiting to see’, letting the temperature run its course, I have to check every time. Is that the world people want to choose to live in?
Two months ago a security guard at my husband’s office lost his 5 year old daughter. One day she woke up sick, two days later she was dead. It wasn’t malaria because he would have automatically treated for that; he could afford to. We don’t know what she died of (childhood mortality is too common to warrant investigation after the fact as a matter of course), but I can be fairly certain she wasn’t vaccinated, as it would not have been offered to her family as a matter of course; and if you don’t know about something, why would you pay money you can ill-afford to have it? There is a reason that man and his wife did not know about the importance of vaccinating their child, lack of education and lack of availability or opportunity. What excuse is there for those of us brought up with the automatic right to literacy, with access to educational resources, and to the best that medicine can discover?
I think if any parent were faced with the reality of what it means to have that terror every time their child got sick, they might think again about the importance of vaccination.
Do you also explain to your children the role of proper hygiene, and basic physiology of a healthy lifestyle free of overcrowding and filth? Come on! Let’s compare apples to apples.
If Gill lives in a place where she “[rushes her] children to the doctor every time their temperature spikes too high”, where she feels that she “[has] to check every time”, what do you think the answer to your question is?
Insofar as the overcrowding thing, if you’re at a place where you can afford to just pack up and move across country borders, congratulations. Most people don’t. I live in the US, where our general education about math and science is severely lacking as a whole. I’d rather move to a place where people actually know what I mean and what I did mentally when I say something like “moving three times as fast only gets you there in a third of the time”. I mean, it’s a simple statement, but you’d be amazed at how many blank stares I get when I say something like that. I’d love to move someplace else, somewhere where I can get my child a decent education, for instance, but I can’t just get up and move. Nor could anyone in my town. Even in the big city about 20 miles from here, you’d still have to really look before finding someone who could afford to do that, even with a month’s advance warning.
So how do you expect Gill to be able to up and move out to someplace else if most of the world can’t really do that, eh? I mean, that *is* what you’re implying by mentioning a “lifestyle free of overcrowding and filth”, right? That she should leave where she’s at if she really cares about her kids? So what would be the plan, “Not Amused”?
If your answer is, “I don’t have one”, or anything similar that contains it, that’s exactly what I thought.
The point I was, rather long-windedly, making was that what we perceive as third world problems were problems in the first world a very short time ago. Polio is just one obvious example of something that was eradicated by vaccination programmes and people have forgotten what it is like to live with that danger. It is much easier to ignore the dangers of these diseases if you’re not faced with them daily.
Here is another anekdote that proves that not vaccinating children is harmful and most likely the cause of outbreaks. And in this case NOT an individual anekdote which says pretty much as much as “I ate an entire week pizza before my IQ test and got 120 points, so eating pizza must make you smart”, but an epidemiological anekdote.
In the Netherlands we have a high vaccination coverage for the MMR vaccine (BMR in dutch), since 2006 >95,4% in infants and >92,1% in children in primary school. (http://www.zorgatlas.nl/preventie/vaccinaties-en-screening/bmr-per-gemeente/). According to the scientific community these coverages would provide ‘herd immunity’ for the Dutch society.
Once about every 7 years though, a serious outbreak of measles occurs in the Netherlands. This occurs exclusively in the so called ‘Bible belt’. This is a region in the Netherlands where people have conservative religious beliefs and therefore choose not to vaccinate their children. This region can be seen in the source previously mentioned. The chart shows that some municipalities have a vaccination coverage <80%. This could bring enough people without immunity to measles into contact with each other to facilitate an outbreak. This is exactly what happens, as primary schools in the Netherlands are often being led from a religious belief, grouping unvaccinated children together in classrooms. This dramatically increases the risk for an outbreak.
Recently (2013-2014) there was an outbreak in the Bible belt region, which led to the death of 2 children. Check out the information and charts about the outbreak and compare it to the vaccination coverage chart, the charts overlap very very strongly: http://www.rivm.nl/Onderwerpen/M/Mazelen/Mazelenepidemie_2013_2014
This small epidemiological example shows how not vaccinating the population creates an opportunity for a disease to spread. Vaccinating the community is the only way to prevent these diseases. Yes, some people are allergic, yes some people may suffer complications, just as some people never got the black death even though everyone around them was coughing bacteria in their faces.
I can not stress enough the importance to look at the issue in an epidemiological way, because there the pros and cons of vaccination really show. Educate yourself!
J.P.M. Verhey,
Student Human Movement Science w/ minor Biomedical and Health interventions
You are an idiot.
What, no research? Such a disappointment.
But this is where the US will end up if the trend of anti-vax continues…
Oh I know. Swine flu, H1N1, terrorism, earthquakes, the Third Reich, it’s all so scary.
Thank you! I agree that the western world doesn’t have a clue whats going on. They think that things in Nigeria are just fine. They dont realize how serious these diseases are, and how badly it can leave you.
Hygiene, indoor plumbing and proper water filtration for drinking. will end polio outbreaks in third world countries. That is why it has ended here.
Oh, rubbish. Polio’s biggest year in the USA was 1952, and it had almost disappeared (because of the vaccine) by 1960. You think we had a big revolution in hygiene and water filtration in the mid-1950s? Of course not.
Charitably, you are confusing polio with cholera, which is a disease of contaminated water and poor sanitation. But more likely, you are buying into the anti-vax narcissism that they are too clean to get sick. With polio, that just wasn’t true, period.
You are so paralyzed by fear and you are spreading like a contagious disease. Fever is a good symptom. It destroys the pathogens. Polio was never eradicated just reclassified into several other diseases by changing the diagnostic material in 1954. http://www.slideshare.net/db61/exposing-the-myth-of-vaccination-essential-information-you-need-to-know-to-be-fully-informed-30978670 Read slides 41-44 on Polio and purchase Dr. Suzanne Humphries recently published book “Dissolving Illusions, Disease, vaccines and the Forgotten History”. slide 144. Here is the reality of injecting deadly neurotoxins (Aluminum, Mercury, MSG), formaldehyde. many other damaging chemicals and live viruses Oral polio caused 47,500 non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP) in India in 2011 researchers reported “…while India has been polio-free for a year, there has been a huge increase in non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP). In 2011, there were an extra 47,500 new cases of NPAFP. Clinically indistinguishable from polio paralysis but twice as deadly, the incidence of NPAFP was directly proportional to doses of oral polio received. Though this data was collected within the polio surveillance system, it was not investigated. The principle of primum-non-nocere [First, do no harm] was violated.” This was never on the evening news as are 99% of negative information on vaccines.
Reference: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22591873
Jonas Salk, inventor of the Inactivated Polio Virus (IPV), testified before a Senate subcommittee that nearly all polio outbreaks since 1961 were caused by the oral polio vaccine. “Crib death” was so infrequent in the pre-vaccination era that it was not even mentioned in the statistics, but it started to climb in the 1950s with the spread of mass vaccination against diseases of childhood.
Harris L. Coulter, PhD.
PhD in what? English lit? Your statement about Salk is a barefaced lie. Crib death is the 19th century name for SIDs you moron, why did they have a name for something that didn’t happen? Similarly your statement about polio being reclassified is also a barefaced lie. In this case anti vaccination lunatics are trying to reclassify diseases that a polio despite the fact they are unrelated conditions
If you have Granddaughters, I’d recommend the HPV vaccine as well. It’s become available quite recently, and my teenagers have been the first generation to get it through the public health system in our country.
A good friend lost his wife recently, age 26, to cervical cancer. It’s a horrible and painful way to die.
HPV vaccine – It’s for males also and recommended as the virus does not discriminate and causes male specific problems.
In regards to Gardasil.
For more information please see my power point http://www.slideshare.net/db61/exposing-the-myth-of-vaccination-essential-information-you-need-to-know-to-be-fully-informed-30978670
Interview and speech by Dr. Diane Harper in 2009, lead developer and researcher who was involved in the safety and efficacy trials for the Human Papillomavirus vaccine (HPV) Gardasil®, manufactured by Merck Pharmaceuticals.
Dr. Diane Harper states “The best way to prevent cervical cancer is with routine Pap screening starting at age 21 years. Vaccination cannot prevent as many cervical cancers as can Pap screening. Pap screening with vaccination does NOT lower your chances of cervical cancer – Pap screening and vaccination lowers your chances of an
abnormal Pap test. Gardasil® is associated with GBS [Guillian-Barre Syndrome] that has resulted in deaths. Pap screening using a speculum and taking cells from the cervix is not a procedure that results in death.” She further tells us, “Gardasil® can be offered along with Cervarix® as an option to prevent abnormal Pap test results in those
women who can make an informed decision about how much they value this benefit compared to the rare risk of
GBS. If a woman has no access to Pap screening, receiving HPV vaccines may help reduce cervical cancer IF the
vaccines last long enough. At this time, Gardasil® is proven to last for at least 5 years, and Cervarix® for at
least 8.5 years. Health policy analyses show that there will be no reduction in cervical cancer unless the
vaccine lasts at least 15 years.”
Reference: http://www.free-press-release.com/news-gardasil-developer-claims-vaccine-prevents-abnormal-pap-tests-not-cervical-cancer-1297697975.html
I’m 73 and in 1948, when residing in an orphanage w/my sister, contracted measles with high fever and hallucinations (my mother had died and we were only there a year but it was long enough for a lifetime). There was an epidemic and we were put in darkened rooms (at the time it was believed sunlight made measles worse) and were left alone for the most part; no nursing staff or doctors ever saw us; the only person I could remember was a young regular staffer coming into the room. My own children, born in 1959 and 1960, received every single vaccination they could get, but caught chicken pox in 1962 (I don’t think a vaccine was available then, just as there was no measles vaccine in 1948). My grandchildren, born in 1987 and 1990 have had every immunization out there and never caught any of those diseases, nor have my 2 great-grandchildren who get theirs, also. None have ever suffered an adverse reaction, apart from a mild fever when getting multiple shots that was short-lived, and none are “autistic”.
Vaccinate! You don’t want your children or grandchildren to go through 2 weeks of being extremely ill, or dying from a disease that could be prevented. It is regrettable and dangerous that there is so much distrust, misinformation, and just outright lying on the internet and elsewhere, but it is up to us to combat it, and especially so when celebrities use their positions to promote such trash on TV and elsewhere. I’ve never heard of any of those types having a medical or science degree of any type–so why would you trust what they say when they’re merely picking up “information” form those promoting their own versions of weird magick and non-scientific BS?
Thank you, Jennifer, for doing your part!
Vaccinations are necessary, no doubt. Just don’t let the shadow governments of the world get access to them. It has been proven that gays in New York, San Fransisco, etc. were vaccinated with tainted hepatitis vaccines. Yes they were indeed tainted with Aids. So it is not vaccines that need to go away but the people in high places making decisions as if we were cattle and not human beings. Just research people, that is all I ask!
Source please? Your statement without anything to back it up means nothing.
Also I would like to point out that you cannot taint something with AIDS. HIV is the virus that may lead to AIDS. You cannot “catch” AIDS.
There have been a lot of links to the Living Whole blog dropped here. The blogger there, Megan, is an excellent example of the manipulative dishonesty Jennifer identified in her Dear Parents post.
I called her out a while back for some specific false statements she made, including her lie that the vaccine court has “ruled” that evidence exists that vaccines cause autism. Rather than correct her error, she has edited her blog piece to double down and intentionally mislead her readers.
Since Megan does not permit critical posts on her blog (unlike Jennifer, obviously) I will probably not be able to show her readers how they are being tricked. But since a fair number of them seem to come here, or come from here given how much traffic the spammers are trying to redirect, hopefully they will read this duplicate of the comment I tried to leave there. (And hopefully, knowledge that she can’t prevent people from finding out about her deceptions will shame her into correcting her deceptive piece.)
This is just one error in a piece filled with them, of course, but we can’t be the editors to the world.
—–
Hi Megan,
I see you added a link to support your claim that the “the vaccine court has ruled that evidence of a causal relationship between autism and MMR exists.” But did you read that document? It does not support your claim. The OSM did not make any findings of fact regarding the evidence in that order.
It is a decision rendering judgment based on HHS’s concession that the claimant suffered a Table Injury. Under 42 U.S. Code §§ 300aa-11(c)(1)(C) and 300aa-13(a)(1), causation isn’t even an element of a claim for a Table Injury. If the claimant proves or HHS concedes that a Table Injury occurred, the court doesn’t reach causation.
In the case you cited, the claimant alleged things they didn’t need to prove, which is a very common practice in litigation. HHS conceded that the injured child suffered encephalitis, a Table Injury, within the necessary timeframe.
The document you cited does not support any claim that the vaccine court has ruled that evidence of a causal connection between autism and vaccines exists.
Given the opportunity to correct an error, you chose instead to double down. You are actively misleading your readers. I know the facts are uncomfortable for you on this point, but that’s not relevant to your ethical obligation to not lie to your readers.
I know that you take serious steps to delete comments that challenge your preconceptions. I fully expect you to delete this comment as well, but hope that challenging your ego will encourage you to leave it up in partial fulfillment of your ethical obligations. To that end, I will post a duplicate of this comment at Violent Metaphors, which does not censor content for ideological reasons.
How many vaccines have been given since inception? You want to consider one “documented” case, especially when you don’t know what other physical stressors that patient was under when they had a reaction? Let’s see millions of vaccines successfully administered compared to a handful of cases. Have you seen a case of smallpox recently? Guess what, medical professionals eradicated it through vaccines. I think you should start digging through a few more medical journals and look a historical evidence. Vaccines are the one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine.
How many vaccines have been given since the Act was passed? I could only guess–I’ve read about 10 million infant vaccines are given every year. Assuming that’s a stable number (it isn’t, I’m sure) and not counting adult vaccines, probably around a quarter billion.
The medical industry keeps putting posts and information out to the public that vaccines don’t cause autism and are for the most part not harmful. Someone on my FB was austercized for not citing sources when she made a claim against vaccines. Where is the emperical documentation from Doctors and the medical community to prove that vaccines do not cause autism and are not harmful? I haven’t seen any, ever. I only see posts that oppose and criticize people who like to do research and find evidence for ourselves that vaccines work or don’t work. I would also like to know if the recent outbreak of measles is because people were not vaccinated or is it people that were vaccinated? I don’t completely oppose vaccines and my son is vaccinated, but let’s be real here and tell it like it is…….we over vaccinate in this country.A great example of this is vaccinating a newborn with the Hep B vaccine. If Hep B is sexually transmitted I just don’t understand why it is given to babies. We are very fortunate to have a Pediatrician who educates us on vaccines and has recommended a few that are not necessary.
Hepatitis B is a serious disease especially for children. The most common way it is spread to them is the blood they come in contact during birth. It can also (in rare cases) be spread if the infected mother pre-chews food for the baby.
we are not cattle with clone genes. What affects one person will not necessarily affect another. The Allopathic community relies on double blind studies and calls that research. I beg to differ. They also talk out both sides of their mouth. On one hand they say Autism is presented from an error or duplication on the DNA chain and there is more than one gene involved, while not telling you that virtually EVERYTHING affects DNA, environment , exposure to toxins (that would include vaccines),and genetics. So it stands to their own scientic evidence that DNA will be affected from vaccines, and they do not know what those effects will be. Its a roll of the dice. Diseases come and go thruout history and smallpox was on its way out when they developed the vaccine for it. Check the history, please dont take my word for it. We now have genetically engineered small pox and if you think a vaccine is going to take care of that, keep drinking the koolaid. The problem with both sides here is the intimidation of the Allopathic community. They say they rely on scientific evidence, not true. When many drugs pass the FDA , the “scientific” studies have already been manipulated by the pharmaceutical industry. I would say that is a conflict of interest. So this leaves the Naturopathic community suspicious, rightfully so. What if Pharmaceutical waste in the water is causing Autism in some people? They cannot uncontaminate our water, so they dont address it. They circumcise male infants and tell you that it is a hygiene issue, noooo, soap and water is a hygiene issue. The more educated that people become, the more circumcision goes down. Mutilation and death for profit is obscene. 117 babies die every year from complications of circumcision. We do not do this to girl babies , so why to boys. Another case of lies from the Allopathic community. You see my point at this juncture. I do not know if vaccines cause Autism and neither do the “scientists”. What I do know is I grew up in the 1950’s, so I was among the first polio vaccine trials. I subsequently looked at the research, it is available if you care to look, 100 yrs of government experiments. Look at that record and tell me who to trust, and what information to believe. I think the Allopathic community should stick to what they do best, repair bodies. And leave the business of disease to people that understand it and do not have a conflict of interest, that conflict being that the Allopathic community education is directed to provide and push pills for everything instead of cures. Follow the money is the best advice I have been given in my life. BTW, I , as well as my friends, survived measles, mumps and rubella without incident with no. Vaccines. Vaccines do not prevent illness from occuring and there is a growing school of thought that it may actually lower resistance because toxins do that. I have been looking at the evidence for many years and I was also a Genetics student so I am not just talking from my a***.
Okay…so where’s your case studies? You cite a lot of factoids, but they’re just that, “an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print” (Merriam-Webster definition 1). If you just support your evidence, that’d be great.
I like how you tied in mutilation and death-for-profit into your post as well, trying to add them in like it’s going to validate your post.
There is one snippet I’d like to focus on, however: “Vaccines do not prevent illness from occuring and there is a growing school of thought that it may actually lower resistance because toxins do that.”
First off, it’s spelled “occurring”. Two “r”s.
Second off, when you say toxins, are you simply talking about anything dangerous in general, or actual chemical toxins, such as Strychnine (commonly used as pesticide for larger nuisances, such as rats and birds)? If you mean the second one, please tell us which chemicals are actually in the vaccines in such a form and amount to be harmful. If you mean the first, however, please note that if you take any drugs in any form (even Tylenol), by your own definition, you’re ingesting “toxins”. Take too much of any medication, and it’ll kill you. Hell, too much of anything will kill you. Fun fact, did you know oxygen is a toxin to many, many things in the universe, especially microbes? Did you know it will even kill humans at higher concentrations? (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2053251/?page=1) (link is to a British scientific journal, so yes, I actually do my homework)
Third off, you are correct in that vaccines do not completely 100% prevent the diseases they are meant to target. Even Jennifer stated as much in “Dear parents, you are being lied to” when she said, “First of all, vaccines aren’t always 100% effective, so it is possible for a vaccinated child to still become infected if exposed to a disease.” Yet, bear in mind, the same can be said of condoms and birth control. Yet, if you have kids, I imagine that you’ll educate them about contraception, yes? What about seatbelts? They don’t 100% prevent injury during car accidents, but they sure do help, yes? How about looking for a job when you don’t have one? That doesn’t 100% guarantee that you’ll have one that day, but you’re gonna do it anyway, right? Going to school doesn’t automatically mean you’ll be smart, but you went anyway didn’t you? If you’ve got kids, aren’t you putting them through school? Point is, none of these things are a guarantee, almost nothing is. However, that doesn’t mean they aren’t a good idea anyway.
You are an IDIOT too
I guess he’s run out of insightful pro vaccine studies of which they worship so highly.
Would it not make more sense to test the mom for hep b and only give the baby the vaccine if the mom tests positive?
Well no that doesn’t make sense. Hep testing doesn’t make money.
Neither does Hep B vaccinations, seeing as in most countries they are free or low cost.
Free to who? Maybe to the poor kid, but someone’s paying the manufacturer, I assure you.
There is a huge amount of documentation from the medical community regarding the issues you are asking about. A good place to start would be with all of the links in the original blog post the author references in the first sentence of this open thread. I will include one here for you, but you should really go back to the original post and click around for yourself. http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/48/4/456.full
Hep B isn’t just a sexually transmitted disease. It can be transmitted through any exchange of body fluids. Possibly even saliva, though that’s not a certainty.
As for empirical documentation about vaccines not being harmful: It’s all over the place. Unless you don’t know how to use Google I fail to see how you can’t find some. In the original “Dear parents, you are being lied to.” post there are numerous links to such studies. You’re failure to click on them and read the articles doesn’t mean they haven’t been posted. It simply means you don’t want to look at the evidence.
As for the measles outbreak, well let’s see. According to information I found from the CDC, before the measles vaccine was introduced we used to average over 500,000 cases each year here in the US. In 2013 there were 189 cases and that was considered extremely high. Since 2000 there have only been 4 years where we passed 100 cases. I’d say the vaccine does a damn good job.
Measles outbreaks will always happen regardless of the vaccine. The vaccine isn’t 100% effective, some people don’t vaccinate because their misled, others don’t vaccinate because of immune disorders. No matter how effective the vaccine you’ll still see cases of measles. It doesn’t mean the vaccine caused it.
so you rely on the internet for your facts, how interesting.
The research community has published a slew of articles disproving the link between vaccines and autism. The Institutes of Medicine (not “industry” as you say) published an extensive review of the literature: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK190024/
Read it for yourself
There is no increase in rates of autism since the advent of MMR vaccination. The evidence you seek is in the epidemiology data collected by your government, and is readily available to anyone who cares to ask.
READ THE LINKS PROVIDED INCLUDING THE ONE THAT SAYS IT WILL BREAK DOWN AND HELP YOU UNDERSTAND IN LAYMANS TERMS DUH. EV1 WHO SAYS SHOW ME OR I HAVE NEVER SEEN JUST SHUT YOURPIEHOLES AND READ READ READ AND USE THE BRAIN YOU WERE GIVE.
Whether vaccines “work” and whether they are “harmful” are two different questions. my understanding is that, for the most part, anti-vax proponents acknowledge that vaccines are effective (in general) to prevent the target diseases. That is, they work. Vaccination supporters, likewise, acknowledge that few vaccines are 100% effective.
Where opinions differ is on whether vaccines are dangerous in some way. There are, as far as I can tell, three areas of discussion: (1) a study that was revoked some years ago that indicated that vaccines may cause autism, (2) objections to thimerosal (which contains mercury) and (3) objections to aluminum. This last one may be linked to some studies several years ago linking aluminum levels in the brain to Alzheimers.
http://www.fda.gov/biologicsbloodvaccines/safetyavailability/vaccinesafety/ucm096228 All of the vaccines for serious childhood diseases and even the one for seasonal flu now come in versions with one microgram or less of thimerosal. There’s more mercury than that in any dental filling (which many of us have had in our mouths for decades). I’m not a big fan of mercury, but I don’t understand the continuing controversy over this issue.
The study linking vaccines to autism was revoked by its author many years ago, but it seems to have taken on a life of its own. A similar phenomenon occurred with a study linking overhead electrical wires to brain cancer. House values were destroyed, people moved. The study was revealed to have been based on falsified data and the author revoked it, but people STILL worry about overhead wires. And we are no closer to understanding what causes brain cancer. The tragedy is that there ARE studies showing real likes between autism and controllable factors (parental age, for instance) and these aren’t getting nearly the attention that’s been given to this lone, discredited “study.”
As for aluminum, this widely used material is a fact of life and no vaccine contains enough of it to produce a toxic effect, even when all the vaccines a child needs are added together.
There may also be a difference of opinion as to the severity of the diseases that vaccines are intended to prevent. That is, are the downsides of disease worth taking on the downsides of vaccination? Few parents of child-producing age have direct, personal experience of polio, measles and whooping cough. Because autism gets a lot of attention in the media, and because it is a dreadful condition that people can see around them right now, I guess it can be hard to weigh the perceived (though absent) risk of it against risks that are, for most of us, practically a matter of legend.
The willingness of anti-vax parents to allow their children to “free ride” on the immunity of others is, to me, a symptom of how insular and self-absorbed we have become and how we have lost our sense of community. Even if you are willing to risk your own child’s health, how are you going to look away when your child sickens, and perhaps kills, someone else – a neighbor, a grandparent, a fellow church member?
I chose to fully vaccinate my son, with one exception(chicken pox), because, at the time, it was a brand new vaccine not offered (or required) in several states, and 2: my doctor felt that him just getting it would be better. As he grew older, and it became more widely available and more nut jobs pressed the issue, it became required at about the time he was 12, and he was not going to be admitted to school unless he was. We begrudgingly acquiesced, and almost immediately he was VERY sick, and it took an extremely long time to diagnose, meanwhile he missed nearly 6 months of school “preventing” some lunatic asshole parent, who send *their* children to school deathly ill all the time, but I’m supposed to be OK with that..In the end, my son was exposed to mononucleosis-DIRECTLY- from the “vaccine”. 3 years later, he ended up with Osteosarcoma, and survived. While these “vaccines” may have (and maybe not) prevented some disease, they spread even more. Dirty, mixed vaccines to “cheapen” them caused MUCH more harm than good. It’s not just children either; I had Tuberculosis 2 years ago and had ALL vaccinations as a child. So again, it’s the “fillers” and lack of hygienic practice to produce the vaccines I have an issue with, and have lived it both as a parent and as a regular person. I don’t need a study, a blow hard doctor, or a pharmecutical company with $$big money$$ to tell me what I know. And what I know is, they are all liars for the sake of the almighty dollar. The anti vaccine campaign was working, and they just can’t have that happen, period.
There is no vaccine available in the USA for TB so obviously you would not have been protected against it by any of the other vaccines you received.
What makes you say that your son’s Mononucleosis came from the vaccine? I know you want to believe it, but how can you be sure?
To whom did you turn when your son got Mononucleosis and Osteosarcoma, or when you got Tuberculosis? If all doctors are liars, then who instead helped you recover from those ailments? Who diagnosed those ailments? If all doctors were liars, it would be much more efficient for them to just lie to you and say that nothing was wrong with you or your son. So why did they give you useful information?
Absolutely brilliant. Took the thoughts out of my brain and the words out of my mouth. You should make this into a poster and hang it on the wall of every medical office.
It’s always harder to get healthy (or asymptomatic) individuals to agree to treatment. Why would they? They feel fine?
RNs and physicians find similar reluctance in treating hypotension. Individuals who feel healthy are more aware of side effects and are less likely to tolerate any discomfort. It’s incredibly difficult to control this condition when individuals will not reliably take medications for blood pressure (such as diuretics) when they feel that they are healthy.
People think differently about medical treatment when they are well (or asymptomatic) than when they are ill.
I meant “hypertension”. It appears I cannot edit my comment.
That’s ok, hypotension’s fun too. 🙂 The orthostatic hypotention I get every time I stand as a result of my beta-blocker is a fun tradeoff for not dying from ventricular fibrillation.
Well, I’m going to do both sides a favor. I understand the importance of citing peer-reviewed articles. I really do, when I actually see it. Many people who reads these comments will think, “hey, that’s evidence, so it must be true”. I believe the scientific process should be used to educate and not thrown around to win an argument. Do readers wonder why, with such controversy, that many researchers and scholars do not chime in this debate? It’s because they are most likely educated in evidence-based medicine or literature interpretation. (http://www.cebm.net/) Why is this important? It is important because although the “peer-reviewed” has been thrown around a lot, it has been used incorrectly. Even links containing peer-reviewed material have been interpreted incorrectly. If you have time, please go to the provided address and educated yourselves in evidenced-based medicine and literature.
Just because a paper has been published, and “peer-reviewed” does not mean the paper is of quality. Please reference the CEBM level of evidence. As you can see, “expert opinions” are ranked very low, while randomized double-blind controlled studies, systematic reviews and meta-analyses are ranked high. Why do you suppose that is?
Now, should you have educated yourself in how to correctly interpret scientific literature – to include biases, trial types, p-values, affect size, etc., please look at all the studies for PRO and CON vaccination. Who has the stronger evidence? Is it overwhelming? I will let you answer that.
Should anyone be curious, I’m pro vaccine. However, I do not think lesser of anyone who is not.
I’m trying to be informed on this as I’m seeing arguments from both sides and see both arguments so bare with me if I seem “uninformed” as I know this can be a polarizing subject. I’ll use smoking as an example. Smoking is terrible for a persons health, we all know if the problems that come from inhaling all the chemicals but scientifically, it has not been proven to cuase cancer. There is an extremely high correlation to smoking and cancer but no direct links are shown scientifically that smoking cuases a person to get cancer. Much like all the studies show vaccinations do not cuase autism. However, if you read the packaging insert for mmr it does show a side effect is swelling of the brain, which is also an effect of autism. Therefore, is it to out of the realm to also assume that a vaccination can have a correlation to autism. Has this study been performed? To many, any risk is not worth vaccinating, considering many of the “outbreaks” occur with vaccinated individuals. The concept that an unvaccinated child is a risk for vaccinated children only leads me to assume that clearly the vaccination doesn’t work so therefore why inject a child to begin with? To that point, vaccinated individuals can carry the viruses and though they show no signs of illness cuase other vaccinated and unvaccinated to get sick. I guess my issue is the concept that by chosing not to vaccinate somehow those that did vaccinate are at risk, so what does the vaccine due? Again, looking to be informed and not stir the pot. I personally have never recieved a booster shot, flu shot, tetnis shot, or any vaccination since I was maybe 12. I’m 30 now and rarely do I get sick. I also see family members around me getting the flu shot every year and see them get sick every year. I had the chicken pox so I don’t get why there needs to be a vaccination against it, I eat peanuts but my vaccinated niece has a peanut allergy which, when I was a child, was unheard of. Obviously something has changed but no one knows why autism is so frequent and why PB&J can’t be brought to schools.
Thanks Rob…I just read your comment above mine.I agree with you,very well said.
Now I know why my child got so sick with brain swelling from the MMR.I will not be giving her any boosters!
And therein lies the problem. For one parent, reading a comment by an anonymous poster on the internet about the warning label on a vaccine is enough to convince her to withhold boosters. Despite whatever educated, trained medical professionals will tell her and have been telling her for years. Why does any random voice of dissent automatically negate educated recommendations and empirical evidence? There is a deep mistrust of the medical community in this country. Is it because people have had such negative experiences with managed health care?
It seems to be a thing with the anti-vaxxers…. all it takes is one persons horror story. It is beyond frustrating. I am BLESSED that my children’s immunity is not compromised and COULD be vaccinated or I would constantly be worried that they would get sick. Too many pro’s out weigh the cons on this one.
Yes
YES!!!!!!!!
u better homeschool
Ok lets imagine there is an outbreak of measles (for whatever reason). Lets take a population of 100 where 90% of the population is vaccinated, 10% not vaccinated. Lets say that 10% of vaccinated people develop the disease and 50% of non-vaccinated people get the disease, that’s 9 people vs 5 people. So yes, more people who were vaccinated got the disease than non-vaccinated people but it’s just numbers – more people are vaccinated so of course the numbers will be higher in that group! I’m deliberately not looking at WHY the vaccinated people got the disease – that’s a whole different story and you can look it up (it’s not as sinister as you think).
Based on your response, you clearly know nothing about numbers. Maybe this is part of the cause of the anti-vax movement in America. People are woefully ignorant in math and science.
I’m fairly certain Tanya isn’t anti-vaccine. She’s explaining why there might be more people who are vaccinated with a disease simply because there are a far higher number of them. More people probably get killed in car accidents while wearing seatbelts than not, but again, that’s simply because there are a lot more people who wear seatbelts.
Hi. To my understanding, viruses may have more opportunities to mutate when virulent and thus ‘easier’ to gain access and infect hosts, vaccinated or not. You can see how this can be a public health issue. Also as per your smoking analogy, you’re absolutely correct! There is a high correlation by scientific definition, but no causation. That, however, can be explained. There has been no accepted causal research. Why? 1) It’s hard to recruit subjects. 2) Research must pass an ethics board. No ethics board will approve of research to intentionally inflict harm on patients. Think of the “Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment”. Moving forward, vaccines have had numerous human trials, to include subjects to the tens of thousands.
Isn’t vaccination like the ultimate in homeopathy? “Like treats like”? It’s not a force field, vaccination just gives the immune system a ‘heads up’ so that if you come across the bug you don’t have to wait for the immune system to develop antibodies to fight as they are already there, primed and ready to roll! Thereby enabling the body to overcome the bug before the bug can overwhelm the body.
Brain swelling (cerebral edema) is not an effect of autism. Those are two unrelated conditions.
Vaccinations are not 100% because you are given a weakened or dead version of the virus. This way, if you do come in contact with the virus, your body is able to respond quicker and fight the virus on contact before it becomes serious, like becoming blind, deaf, or dead from measles. It is because your immune system is prepared for it. When you are not vaccinated, your immune system will take 3 or more days to start fighting back, and by this point, it may be too late to even try to beat the virus before it is serious. Especially in children. In other words, you get the lesser version of the virus when your vaccinated, and when you are not vaccinated, the disease can become serious. Same goes with the flu shot, you may get the lesser version of the flu. But, with the flu shot in particular, it is a best prediction of what flu is coming during the next flu season, the DNA of the virus changes, so unfortunately you can’t always guess right with the flu shot, so that is why some still get the flu. Now, for being 30 and never having any of the viruses we’re vaccinated for- polio and measles where completely gone from our country, due to vaccinations. With mostly everyone being vaccinated, it was like a group immunization to the virus, and so the virus cannot become strong enough to survive. Now with having so many people not vaccinated some years later, the viruses such as polio and measles are surviving and spreading again in our country. Quickly. These viruses can easily catch a plane ride from another country, and now the viruses have good hosts here, in those that are not vaccinated, and can now survive in and reproduce and spread from host to host (humans). So those that never had their vaccinations have been protected by the group immunization of those that are vaccinated. Until now that is, because the viruses that were once gone, are now coming back. My great uncle died from the measles at the age of 2. Helen Keller became deaf and blind from measles. Those are only two expamples of people that caught this virus before the vaccination for the virus existed. As for the autism link, please google Andrew Wakefield. He is the screw ball that started this theory, and unfortunately Jenny McCarthy believed him and spread the word. It was a scam for him to make money off of the information he was selling. He has since lost his license and can no longer practice. There has been much research done in this autism and vaccination link, and it has been proven false time and time again. I hope this helps or at least urges you to start looking into the facts. Always research the credentials of who you get your info from, is it fact or someone’s personal belief? Look for bias in all articles, no matter what side is being fought for.
*were* completely gone. Sorry, I can’t edit it.
these are very good questions that Allopaths have no answer to yet we are supposed to trust them while they are blindly offering up poisen for profit. I also have never gotten a flu shot, at 65, and I have only been sick one time in 18 years, which was essentially my own fault. I have not become sick with anything since. I would not take the flu shot on a bet and most people I know that have gotten the shot have been sick multiple times in the season. So, there you are.
So you call that evidence? One case of personal experience, without any systematic data gathering or comparison? What do you think that shows? Are you sure you’re not taking special note when someone who’s been vaccinated gets ill, and ignoring other cases? It takes a lot of effort to get reliable evidence– by your account, you haven’t made anything like the required effort, but you’ve decided to rely on your own casual, statistically meaningless impression instead of the data the medical community has systematically gathered on a huge scale. Silly and irresponsible, I’d say.
Well said. I keep looking for the “like” button for some of these posts, lol.
Dude. Holy cow, you’re using it wrong, you need to understand the difference between “to” and “too”.
Also:
“Therefore, is it to out of the realm to also assume that a vaccination can have a correlation to autism. Has this study been performed?”
Uhm. Yes, it is. That’s like saying, “Getting a stomach bug from eating a bad egg makes you have a fever, but so do tumors. Therefore, is it out of the realm to also assume that bad eggs can have a correlation to tumors[?]” (yes, I corrected your mistake of not using a question mark, too) See how that sounds kind of…ridiculous? There’s a reason for that.
You’ve also *completely* ignored most of the links Jennifer gave in “Dear parents, you are being lied to” as well as the video attached to it.
“I had the chicken pox so I don’t get why there needs to be a vaccination against it”.
So did I, and I almost died from it, actually. Slept for 26 hours straight, they thought I might just die in my sleep. I’m giving my kid a vaccination, if her pediatrician thinks it’s a good idea.
“To many, any risk is not worth vaccinating, considering many of the “outbreaks” occur with vaccinated individuals. The concept that an unvaccinated child is a risk for vaccinated children only leads me to assume that clearly the vaccination doesn’t work so therefore why inject a child to begin with?”
As Jennifer stated in the afore-mentioned article, “First of all, vaccines aren’t always 100% effective, so it is possible for a vaccinated child to still become infected if exposed to a disease.” So clearly, you didn’t read the article, didn’t read the whole thing, or did, but you weren’t paying attention. One of the three, anyway. They’re like condoms, vaccines. Not 100% effective, but boy do they sure help.
“There is an extremely high correlation to smoking and cancer but no direct links are shown scientifically that smoking cuases a person to get cancer.”
http://annonc.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/5/996.full
Wrong, actually. There’s quite a few, and there’s even research institutes devoted completely to the subject. Do a little research.
I could go on, but you’ll probably have stopped reading at this point. It’s a reflex for people who are wrong and know that they are to grasp at anything and everything they possibly can to help themselves prove that they’re right. Kinda like the scene in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast where Belle is tending Beast’s wounds and he goes for anything he can possibly get to get the last say.
Anyhoo, have fun with your factoids (Google that, you probably don’t know what it actually means)
Wow! and the anonymous doctor snarkily says take your kids to your Chiropractor(like they’re all quacks?)All I know is my best friend has two (not one) Autistic NON VERBAL Boys who were vaccinated with Hep B and MMR before 2001 (when there was Themerisol in the vaccines).Her eldest boy spoke before the MMR.
My teen was just vaccinated back in Sept.and for two evenings after 10 days she got so sick that I was up holding her head for 4 hours because it felt like it was in a vice! I almost rushed her to the Emergency room but I was to busy holding her and icing her head.She was racked with pain, fever,and chills.When I called the pediatrician,the nurse was kind enough to explain to me that some people have a bad reaction to the MMR.The pediatrician was very skeptical and argued with me that it was not from the vaccine! There is a whole floor at U.C.L.A. for children with reactions to vaccinations!
Maybe if they were not so many preservatives and goodness knows what else in vaccinations people would not be so anti-vac.We have so many more then when I was a child.They do not even know if Hep B Vac will be effective when children get older and are sexually active?(I know blood to blood-got it)The same with Chicken Pox.So why vaccinate at 3 months?Yes, we should vaccinate. But so many when they are infants?
I take my child to the Chiropractor by the way.Instead of drugs for a headache.
We vaccinate children early because for the first few months of their life they have their mother’s antibodies, and continue to recieved some through breastfeeding. If we wait until they’re a few years old, then for an for an extended period they will have no antibodies to most of the diseases that are vaccinated against, while being young enough for most of those diseases to have a far greater risk of having serious side effects. Whooping cough will kill an infant, while a 5 year old will likely just be miserable (although there’s a risk or far more serious consequences even if they’re older). Preservatives are placed in vaccines because… bad things happen when vaccines go bad: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/112/6/1394.full
“Preservatives are used in some vaccines to prevent bacterial or fungal contamination. The requirement for preservatives in vaccines arose from many incidents in the early 20th century of children who developed severe and occasionally fatal bacterial infections after administration of vaccines contained in multidose vials.1 For example, in 1916, 4 children died, 26 developed local abscesses, and 68 developed severe systemic infections after receipt of a typhoid vaccine contaminated with Staphylococcus aureus.1 As a consequence of this and similar incidents, preservatives have been required for vaccines contained in multidose vials (with some exceptions) since the 1930s.2”
You seem to be very knowledgeable about the preservatives put in the vaccines. So please educate me on how many preservatives can they add to the vaccine before it has to go back to the food and drug administration and be retested for safety? The facts that I have heard seem to suggest that with or without preservatives there are dangers. Either from the vaccine going bad or the amount of preservatives that are added. Simply the parent has no idea, Merek is the only one that really knows. Also the la Leche League was advocating Breast Feeding for at least the first two years and there is no better medicine than that. So maybe we vaccinate once they can no longer get what they need from their mother.
My question regards the preservatives. I understand their function but not the need. From what I understand these bacteria fungal outbreaks occured from “multi-use” jars, where they would insert the syringe multiple times drawing out doses for many people instead of the single use vials they use now. So did we try just using the single dose vials with no preservatives and it failed or did we just automatically add the preservatives in for good measure? Btw, I have three children all of which have been vaccinated.
you are wrong. An infant breat fed will continue to receive antibodies from his Mother, and will develop antibodies from exposure with or without the vaccine, but the poisen in vaccine may compromise his natural and healthy immune system.
No, you do not produce antibodies from receiving antibodies. Breast milk provides only temporary immunity. You still need to be exposed to the disease or to the vaccine to get lifelong (or long term) immunity.
Watch the video at the bottom. You’re obviously one of those people who read this continuation, but didn’t actually read the original article.
Snippet:
“Humans try to make sense of the world by seeing patterns. When they see a disease or condition that tends to appear around the time a child is a year or so old, as autism does, and that is also the age that kids get particular shots, they want to put those things together. Parents watch kids more carefully after they get shots. Sometimes they pick up on symptoms then. Just because two things happen at the same time doesn’t mean that one caused the other. This is why we need careful scientific studies.”
They go on after that, so watch the whole thing, please, before responding to this post.
Dear Jennifer,
Your post was one of the better ones I’ve seen on how to read a scientific article. Then you post an editorial or opinion piece from someone claiming to be a pediatrician describing the heroic events of his profession. I read with agreement and enthusiasm until Dr. Anonymous, in so many words, discredited my profession and then signed the rant, Anonymous.
Obviously, Dr. Anonymous has failed to read any of the scientific publications regarding the many positive studies on chiropractic. There are volumes of good studies that follow the criteria you speak about in your article. In fact there are probably more articles on the efficacy of chiropractic treatment of low back pain than any other profession. Then he has the audacity to assume that the whole of the chiropractic profession disagrees with the evidence regarding vaccinations, which I find distasteful and unprofessional. Well shame on him and shame on you for printing this vial presumption, signed anonymous. I have practiced for over thirty five years and have spent many hours describing the functions of the immune system and the benefits of vaccination to my patients and their children. You may find it hard to swallow but I am also a member of the American Public Health Association and they have a Chiropractic section of doctors of chiropractic nation wide. So let’s not be hypocritical when posting such an obscene excuse of an article with no signature and stick to the science as you propose.
Gregory Mills, D.C., M.A., M.P.H.
To whom are you referring to as “he” above? “Dr. Anonymous” as you label them included their name a post down from the quote as Aprylle, stating they did not wish to remain anonymous. Is Aprylle a man’s name? Or do you infer that if an individual is a doctor, that they are also male? That is what your post suggests.
Holy cow, dude. Prescribe yourself something to relax.
Here’s what I read:
“I loved your website until you posted this one thing. NOW I HATE YOUR WEBSITE, SHAME ON YOU AND SHAME ON YOUR CONTRIBUTORS, WHY DON’T YOU BACK THIS OPINION UP WITH FACT, HUH?”
Here’s the thing, love; there’s nothing to back. There’s no study to be had about this. If you want your proof, then go to a freakin’ hospital and watch all the people going into the ER.
This is the main point of the whole thing:
“Why am I now competent to save your child’s life when they have meningitis or epiglottis, but I wasn’t competent enough to keep them from getting sick? [(Here meaning the vaccines)]”
Your response:
“So let’s not be hypocritical when posting such an obscene excuse of an article with no signature and stick to the science as you propose.”
…what science? This was a question for people who did something, then something else that went completely against their first action.
When Dr. Anonymous posted the snippet about chiropractors, they were obviously (in my opinion, anyway) talking about the ones who are totally “all natural everything” and are actually a bit silly, not the ones who practice for more…serious, actual medical reasons. I’ve met both kinds, and it’s rather like differentiating between a doctor and a hippie. You’ll know them when you meet them.
So let’s not be hypocritical when posting such an obscene excuse of a comment with a BIG PROUD MANLY SIGNATURE and stick to the events at hand, yes?
Dr. Jace Hellstein III Esq, PhD, MD, DC, GED, ABC, XYZ
(Did I do it right?)
Baaaaaa….follow along little sheeple, follow along.
I hate this connection – “sheeple” is a blend of people x sheep, yes? Sheep are fairly smart, so I don’t quite understand why a moderately intelligent animal is being used to correlate stupidity by “following along.” The reason sheep “follow” each other is to keep them safe; that IS their defense against predators. The sheep that strays is the one that gets eaten. In other news, I automatically assume people who resort to vague insults don’t have anything more intelligent to offer. Try using reasoning/logic/evidence to defend your claim or persuade others. Name calling generally isn’t helpful.
If I’m a sheeple because I follow science and sound reasoning, then I guess I’m a proud sheeple.
Thank you for such a great blogg. I’m a paediatric nurse and a parent and it frustrates me the stupidity of some people. I often work in the children A+E where I see first hand the sometimes tragic effects not immunising children. I have also listened to parents demanding a private room for their children as the have chosen not to immunise them. However well meaning these parents are it is the children that are put at risk and unfortunately pay the price. I also am a parent and my youngest son is autistic and I (and he) find it insulting that some attribute this to vaccinating. In the past people put homosexuality down as something to cure whereas most enlightened people nowadays are appalled by such thinking. When will autistic people have the same respect? When I read about some of the strange ‘cures’ some people inflict on their children it chills me to the bone. How about support and social awareness for a start.
The schools could put a stop to people that ignore the requirements for entering school, they supposedly have to have their vaccinations up to date to be able to go to school!! I bet if this was enforced people will comply. The parents will not be able to homeschooling, because they are obviously illiterate themselves, and I doubt private schools are any different on this common sense protection for everyone in the school system! I would even volunteer to help enforce this requirement.
If your child is vaccinated, how Is an unvaccinated child a risk? If you look into any talking points on how to handle people who do not vaccinate, most refusers are well educated. It sounds like you’re saying vaccines don’t work…
Vaccines are not 100% effective, and not everyone can get them. Effective herd immunity requires a 90-95% effective vaccination rate to prevent the spread of most viruses. We’re concerned about keeping the vaccination rate high because one, we care about your kid too, and not vaccinating them is an incredibly stupid and potentially harmful thing for you to do, and two, we don’t want them lowering the vaccination rate and putting those who either can’t get a vaccination, or those who’s vaccination wasn’t effective being put at higher risk due to decreased herd immunity.
You like using that term “Herd Immunity” don’t you? It sounds all prolific and Utilitarian. Goodness, you’re such an advocate for humanity.
Did you have a point, or is your only objection to the phrase? It’s an important part of how vaccines work, and why the anti-vax parents aren’t constantly at their doctor with cases of measles & mumps.
Wow, you seem to have the solution to everything! *sarcasm* You’re a special kind of stupid aren’t you?
I’m not amused by your ignorance and inability to form a logical argument.
There are people who are generic. They make generic responses and they expect generic answers. They live inside a box and they think people who don’t fit into their box are weird. But I’ll tell you what, generic people are the weird people. They are like genetically-manipulated plants growing inside a laboratory, like indistinguishable faces, like droids. Like ignorance. Is that better?
Oh, yup, you are a smarty pants. Who appears to deny all things scientific.
IIRC, there’s a section in the Site Polcies mentioning what you’re doing, hun. Number 2. The comment I’m replying to, as well as the following one go against it.
“There are people who are generic. They make generic responses and they expect generic answers. They live inside a box and they think people who don’t fit into their box are weird. But I’ll tell you what, generic people are the weird people. They are like genetically-manipulated plants growing inside a laboratory, like indistinguishable faces, like droids. Like ignorance. Is that better?”
Point?
–“Not Amused April 10, 2014 at 1:29 pm”
–Point?
That you’re an idiot, a troll, and someone who lacks manners.
There, I did it too.
I don’t feel better about myself…so I guess I don’t make a good troll 🙂
Wow! You seem very hostile. Did you not read that there are children with immune systems that cannot handle the vaccinations? There are also children allergic to some of them. There are reasons people make this choice and it is not because they are illiterate. Private schools are mandated by the same rules that public schools are so that is not a concern either. Some people also choose not to follow what modern medicine is dishing out until it is proven effective or not. Can’t blame someone for being cautious with their most precious child. You may have all of the answers but not all of us do. Let’s face it, this is a very heated debate so there must be two sides to this story. By the way, it isn’t vaccines vs no vaccines. It is vaccines vs. unsafe preservatives. That is the real fight right now.
For some one whose choose to not vaccinate your child I dare you to look of photos of a child in an iron lung. Suffocating because they can not breathe. Meet an adult who has brain damage from a raging fever from contracting scarlet fever. My grandfather was that child in an iron lung. His legs damaged from the horrible effects of polio on the human body. There are millions a round the world who grieve ever year from the loss of a child or baby. I dare you to confront the pictures amd images that are influenza, whooping cough, polio, rubella. You will cringe at what you see, but you need to see the truth. Please do not make the wrong choice for your child, other wise you maybe condemning some one like my 2 year old niece who is on chemo for ALL to die needlessly.
So people like Megan are allowed to give false information. I’m old enough to remember no vaccines. I have friends who are legally blind from measles, others crippled by polio. When they were testing the polio vaccine in the 50s I was part of the study. My parents were so excited to see something finally done to save their children from these diseases. None of us developed autism, none of our children. Explain that, Megan. You obviously hate children and are using this approach to kill them
Wow. You are being LIED to. How is that approach any different from what you protesting against? Look folks, kids don’t come with a manual. From the moment you know you’re carrying a baby straight through early adulthood MANY MANY sources will inform you of what you are doing wrong, what you can do better and what the EXPERTS say. Your job is to weed through the mound, educate yourself, talk to people you trust and then follow your gut. If you think the doctors and the government agencies care about YOU over DRUG companies, well, I have a nice piece of property I want to sell you. Get real. Do what you think is best for your child. Try to stay as natural as you can, the body is intelligent; and try to do no harm. We live in a toxic environment; mercury in our fish, GMO soy, corn and wheat, sugar in EVERYTHING, air pollution (chem trails anyone?) and so on. For the record my kids were not vaccinated except for HepC because their dad is a chiropractic physician who works with sick people, and tetanus because we have horses and live on small acreage. Within hours of their home births, they were gently adjusted by their father and had no ear aches, or colic and grew beautifully although the breast feeding may have had something to do with it. They are now 19 and 21 and healthy and thriving despite breaks, illnesses, school, sick family members and the usual ups and downs of life. Thanks for the chat. Now go make yourself a nice whole food, unprocessed meal and thank goodness for the blessings in your life!
There is no vaccine for Hep C.
As a biochemist who researches hepatitis C I would like to second that- there is no vaccine for Hep C.
Hey guess what! My siblings and I (all 7 of us!!) were ALL fully vaccinated and none of us ever got sick! We still don’t as adults. Guess what that means? Absolutely nothing. Your anecdote and mine are both equally worthless.
I don’t think the government would be honest about anything and I don’t trust a thing they say and not any entity that makes a profit for vaccinations. I do know first hand the chicken pox vaccination is a fail. My daughter is 13 and she gets chicken pox about every 4 years. Even her doctor said its better for healthy children just to get the full blown chicken pox and get it over with. What’s going to happen when she’s old enough to have children and the possibility of getting chicken pox while pregnant. I know one that that absolutely will happen and that’s a law suit against the pharmaceutical company that made and continues to make billions experimenting on our children!!
Good Point!
I had chicken pox as a child. My mom dutifully brought me to the neighbors to get it, and get it over with during school vacation. So fast forward 24 years, I’m pregnant with my first child and NOT immune to chicken pox so says a blood test. Also I had no immunity to MMR even though I got all the shots and boosters. So in one person, two failures of immunity one from natural contraction, one from vaccines. Nothing is 100%.
Oh for God’s sake, you people are all a trip. All this back and forth and where has it gotten you? NOWHERE! Why? Because you’re all going to believe what you want to believe and you’re going to find whatever “evidence” you need to make yourself feel all warm inside. “This study shows this, that study shows that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah!” You’re studies don’t prove anything because it can’t be proven. THERE IS NO ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION! Vaccinate, don’t vaccinate…..it doesn’t matter because it’s all a crap shoot! Pick your poison and move on. I’ve worked 22 years in medicine and do you want to know the 2 things that I have NEVER seen? I’ve never seen a child die from chicken pox, and I’ve never seen a child die from vaccinations. You want to know what I have seen? I’ve seen children die from car accidents, murder, drug overdoses, and abuse. I’m guessing because their idiot parents were on the internet arguing about nonsense instead of spending time with them. It’s all crap! You know why? Because none of you are going to die from either. Why don’t all you “scientists” find something relevant to argue about……..like something that’s actually going to kill you!
Complaining about arguing on the internet by arguing on the internet. To use the phase you used above, you’re a special kind of stupid, aren’t you? Yes, chicken pox is unlikely to kill you. But it’s odd that you don’t mention pertussis, polio, measles, or any of the other vaccine-preventable illnesses that carry a far higher risk of death, disability or other serious complications.
Yeah, but I also said vaccinations aren’t likely to kill you either Einstein. You want to vaccinate your kids, go for it, I dint have a problem with it. I also don’t have a problem if you don’t. What I’ve noticed on here is that for every study, or story that you point to saying one thing is good, someone counters with a story that says it’s bad. So what makes you right and them wrong? Is your pity story about your grandma getting polio more meaningful than the lady whose child had a severe allergic reaction to a vaccine? Not in my eyes it ain’t. All you people have proven to me is that you know how to search the internet for some study, blog, or Doctor that agrees with you. So what, I could that all day long too, for either side of the issue. Why don’t you quit wasting your time and go advocate for something that can really be proven, like the poverty in this country, the amount of homeless that die in the streets, or the obesity epidemic. I can guarantee you that you and your children are much more likely to be affected by any of those than whether or not they get vaccinated for measles.
Ok, you missed the point. You picked one of the mildest diseases which is vaccinated against to put forward that it’s not necessary, and ignored the serious harm the others could do. As for how you can figure out who’s right and wrong….
Studies can be read, rather than simply being cited after looking at another blog page. It’s not terribly hard to pick out problems with a lot of the studies that do show a link between vaccines and autism or other harmful effects. Jennifer put together a helpful post in how to read and pick apart studies a few months ago:
Many of them have very small sample sizes. Others have insufficient controls to isolate the cause. Some are simply misread by those who are criticizing vaccination. Others are unable to be replicated. Larger, well controlled trials have repeatedly confirmed the efficacy of vaccines and their safety compared to the risk of contracting the disease in question. All of which you can see without being an expert in the field. Is this equivalent to peer review, no, of course not. It won’t find all the problems with a study, but it will help you weed out ones that don’t demonstrate what is claimed. Peer review serves a different purpose, certainly requires experts in the field, and is far more in depth. And any comments on a study should also be read before you decide whether it’s credible or not. At the same time, peer review often won’t find the “problems” with some studies because they’re not problems as far as the journal is concerned. For example, an initial study with a fairly small sample may get past peer review simply because it’s intended as an initial study, and makes no definite claim other than requesting a further, larger study. That’s fine, and happens all the time. That same study shouldn’t be used as proof of an effect though, because it was never intended to and the sample size is far too small.
*snore* Yeah, thanks for proving my point……and for providing me with an unscheduled nap. Listen, I appreciate the workshop on research. Fortunately for me, I happen to be a health professions professor at an esteemed regional research university. So your fluff talk means nothing, as research is my business. Which brings me back to my original point. I’ve personally researched vaccinations. Quite frankly, one could spend a lifetime enforcing and/or debunking either argument on this issue. So your point is invalid. As I said in my original post….its a crap shoot. Roll the dice, I don’t care. I for one will never be the smuck, so arrogant in his beliefs, to force someone to make a choice that could have dire consequences. Are you telling me that you can guarantee my child won’t have a debilitating reaction to a vaccination? I don’t think so. No more than I can guarantee that they won’t die from measles. So until you can make that guarantee, quit peddling your mainstream propaganda, because guess what? Believe it or not, most of us can see through the agendas and actually have the intellect to make our own decisions without you preaching.
I don’t understand how someone could get a job at an “esteemed regional research university” and not understand the benefits of vaccination and the risks of not doing so, or consider the odds to be even. Fortunately I don’t have you teaching any course I’m taking.
Apparently there’s a lot you don’t understand. Keep at it, it’ll come to you.
And can I have your name and place of work? I’m sure the department head would love to know that one how their professors considers an argumentum ad populum to be logically valid for the purposes of their research.
I am the department head……and no you can’t. I don’t mix business with pleasure. My business is research. My pleasure is belittling your rhetoric. Besides, if you truley knew anything about academia, you would know your efforts would be futile. The whole basis of tenure is that you cannot be ostracized for questioning the status quo. You claim to use emperical evidence to prove your point. But it is the process of that emperical inquiry that stimulates progression and truth. Your mere attempts to descredit someone who thinks unlike you is the very reason on which the academic paradigm had been built.
If that is truly the case, fyi, you come across as a 2nd rate researcher who is evidently based at a 2nd rate research facility – just sayin’.
Methinks you give him or her far more credit than he or she is deserving.
Well, usually when someone doesn’t follow the masses simply for the sake of “everybody is doing it” that is usually what the masses will think. Fortunately for me and my children, I choose water over Kool-Aid.
I like your style. Life is a terminal STD; you have it from the day you’re born until the day you die.
The bitch of it is that medicine, as you know, has to practice medico legally. What about the poor bastard who is sued for not vaccinating, when it was a parental not professional decision?
Actually, a story about someone’s grandma getting polio is MUCH more meaningful than a story about someone’s child having an allergic reaction to a vaccine, because severe allergic reactions to vaccines are rare, and negtive reactions to polio are nearly universal (I’m sure some people have a natural immunity, just as some people don’t react to poison ivy, but they are the exceptions–in the main, polio is a crippling, potentially fatal disease). Also, an allergic reaction is treatable, which is why you’re supposed to stay in the waiting room for 10 minutes following a vaccine, so that a nurse can run out and jab your baby with an epi-pen if he/she starts gasping for air following an injection. But I can go further than that–if you or anyone in your family has an egg allergy, doctors/nurses (here in the UK, at least) actually take greater precautions when administering vaccines to your kids, and everyone gets asked (each time they bring their kids down to be vaccinated) whether or not there are any known allergies in the family, to any foods or medicines. Calling it a “crap-shoot” whether or not your child reacts badly to a vaccine ingredient is quite a stretch, under those circumstances; equally, whether or not diseases are dangerous is not a “crap-shoot”. They are. Vaccines, for most of us, are not… and it’s not random chance that determines who will react badly to a vaccine; it’s largely due to genetic factors, which you MUST know, if anything you’ve said about your credentials is true. Please stop deliberately misleading people.
Again *snore* You’re all talking in circles. If you believe that severe allergic reactions cannot kill or result in severe debilitation, and that all it needs is “a nurse with and epi pen” then I believe I’ve made my point. You are uninformed and naive. Mute kool-aid anyone? You go ahead and keep thinking modern medicine has the answer for everything, let’s see how that works for ya. Band-aids eventually run out. Then you have to fix the cause.
Not Amused – so you are in effect saying forget about having the epi-pen on-hand or a full allergy screen panel should be run on every person to identify their reactions to whatever they may encounter? I believe it’s better to be pro-active rather than reactive in regards to the choice between either administering a vaccine or treating disease symptoms.
No, what I’m really saying, since you ask, is that you all will believe anything if it comes all wrapped up in a pretty little bow called rhetoric. You think everything is so black and white. This study said, that study said, this doctor said, as if it’s indisputable truth that requires no additional thought. Well I hate to burst your apathetic little minds, but it’s never that simple. If there’s one thing that history has shown us it’s that all our problems can’t be solved with aggressive intervention. In fact, it usually exacerbates the issue. Here’s a novel thought……how about we just leave shit alone and let evolution do it’s thing? Instead we all buy into this social belief that we need to fix it. And when you look at the results from a distance, all we’ve done was make it worse. You think of that view as radical, but only because you’ve been brain washed your whole life to think that. We all have. But if you remove all programming, what you’re left with is the basic truth that we’ve adapted throughout the history of man to tolerate exposure to pathogens. It’s a natural process. There was a time that the thought of filling your body full of man made synthetic chemicals would have been radical. But today you give that perspective little consideration. You simply continue to buy into the idea that such a practice is normal, expected, required, simply because you read some study that was performed by an imperfect human being that most likely had an agenda to find those results to begin with. I implore you…stop buying into it! “In the name of science” is not always the answer. We’ve seen that time and time again. Just look at the things that we’ve done to ourselves in recent history, that was propagated and justified by research and so called objective science. Research has its place, but not when it goes against all things rational. We’re evolving and dynamic beings. Bioengineering is not going to fix that…..it simply won’t. Belittle this post all you wish. In fact I know you will because you refuse to acknowledge the truth in it. Because to you it’s quackery. But put our two arguments on paper side by side and seriously compare the two. Billions of years of organic evolution that has continued to succeed, or an almost diminutive campaign in turns of time to manipulate that process. Now who is being radical?
It wouldn’t be humane to let another Black Death event happen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death), allowing hundreds of millions of people to die, just so that we can feel proud of the survivors for eventually developing a “natural” resistance to it.
Wikipoopia huh? Yeah, there’s science. Why don’t you go find me another one of your peer-reviewed sources, like a Fox News story about how the swine flu is going to decimate the population. If you do find some true science on “The Black Death” you’ll find that most if not all of those epidemics were created because of the very institution of unatural living off which I speak. The only things in history that have truely wiped out disease, is natural immunity. And please don’t puke up your examples of polio vaccines. That dog won’t hunt no more. Even your research has shown polio to be on the decline well before vaccines. If your going to rely on garbage sources, at least respect us enough to find garbage that disputes it.
Didn’t the Simpsons do a quality peer reviewed scientific presentation on any of this?
So you are “the departmental head/health professions professor at an esteemed regional research university”? I am surprised that a scientist of your standing has such poor spelling that, inter alia, he does not even know how to spell “empirical”.
Now you wouldn’t be telling porky pies would you?
I find it comical that when it’s one of your “experts” they’re to be revered as the next diety. But when someone eludes to the fact that they may have the credentials to think for themselves instead, they are suddenly beat down to be an illegitimate quack with no credibility. Or perhaps, I’m swyping on my phone between doing something productive instead of sitting in front of my computer hanging on every post and salivating at the opportunity to belittle those that don’t agree with me. Go ahead and scrutinize my auto-correct skills. Because you certainly haven’t been successful at proving anything other than your ability to spell check.
Alludes*, that is. Unless, of course, you meant to say that you’re running away from the facts, in which case, I apologize.
And you’ve responded how many times to this post? Right. You’re the posterchild for personal restraint.
I’m not necessarily against vaccinations as a whole but I certainly don’t think 20 vaccinations by 6 months of age is safe. And having watched a family torn apart due to vaccine injuries that were instead attributed to child abuse, I believe that some major changes are needed in the healthcare industry. Emergency medical personnel need training and education as well as the public. Once that accusation is put out to the public, even if a parent is lucky enough to have a lawyer that knows how to defend them and they’re found not guilty, the public is then “outraged” that the parent “got away with murder”. Lives are ruined. There are significant risks to both sides of this coin and until all risks are acknowledged, studied, and analyzed by unbiased scientists without conflicting interests we will forever be in this debate. Until then, parents have to decide which risks they can accept.
When my grandfather spoke of his first child Mary Francis he had a deep sadness even after sixty years. Mary was born before vaccines for measles. Well my grandfather’s brothers – in – law came for a visit before they were quite over the measles. Mary, a sweet natured baby just over a year old caught measles and died within days. My grandfather had that deep sadness for the rest of his life and every time the subject of getting vaccinated came up we once again heard the story of Mary Francis. Because of my grandfather’s insistence I always made sure to keep up to date with my own children’s vaccinations. My son was born with two heart defects and we were warned that any disease would be life threatening and better to get vaccines. So the years passed and we watched others to become very ill with the flu, chickenpox but our son and his sisters sailed by strong and healthy. Please get your children vaccinated. Don’t take chances with the lives of your children or mine.
I think the problem lies in that even you allow there are children and people who should not have vaccines because of auto immune disorder. My family and many others have a genetic predisposition to incorrect auto immune response. Even you can admit that contracting a virus can trigger incorrect auto immune response, and so can receiving a vaccination.
Where science is failing our children is that they start assaulting our children at birth, without ever knowing if they have the predisposition to an incorrect auto immune response…. and that is where I have advocated for my grand children not to receive early vaccinations. I’m losing the fight because school and science have brainwashed my children into believing they have a bigger responsibility to “the herd” then they do to their own child. So meanwhile I will pray that getting these doses of virus do not cause their body to respond incorrectly.
If “science” would be willing to test children and identify children with potential for auto immune and not assault them within hours of birth with their first potential injury, I would have a greater willingness to believe the BS they feed us.
We have ADD, ADHD, ASD, Aspergers, Diabeties, IBS, Anxiety, and other issues in our family. I delayed giving my youngest the HIB shots when they were new and she was so tiny. I don’t personally know a single person with Hepatitis so also didn’t feel it was a huge priority. When she was enrolling in school, they insisted she must have those shots. Not long after we finished that panel she was diagnosed with Diabetes while in Kindergarten. You used to rarely see children under 5 diagnosed. Now with vaccinations beginning at birth, there are months old children being diagnosed. What’s changed? Auto Immune issues are arising at earlier ages because we are exposing our children to triggers many of them in the vaccines at younger and younger ages.
I was horrified to learn they assaulted my granddaughter right after birth without knowing anything about her or the family history, its just routine… even though it may compromise her health.
Tell them to stop telling parents the vaccines are safe for ALL children, they are not safe for children with auto immune disorders. They should wait until they know which children are in danger before sticking another needle in a newborn baby.
Great Thoughts! Maybe Merek should start putting research into children and what vaccines and preservatives will affect which child. They have enough stupid tests for the pregnant women. I can’t wait in 50 years when reports that ultra sounds are bad for babies some out. Holy Cow, why can’t these moms just let their babies grow and mature. How about a small blood test to say, your child will not have adverse results from this or another vaccine. Do you know why you can find test results for and against vaccines? Because all different types of children are tested. I don’t know what causes autism, maybe in some children a preservative in a vaccine can cause it, maybe in another child it is the garbage they put in food, maybe they are just born with it and it chooses one reason or another to come out. Let’s stop arguing about vaccines and get scientist to do tests that make a difference. Not to mention stop putting more preservatives in the vaccines then the actual vaccine. They don’t need a shelf life of 5 years. How about one month and throw them out.
sorry but way too much credible evidence out there against vaccinating
I agree with Kevin in the fact that there is evidence that toxicity could occur with high doses of some of the ingredients used in vaccines and there is no scholarly source I have found that proves that injections of all current inoculations prevent all the diseases inoculated against, nor aid in the overall health of a child. Instead, proper nutrition, botanical pharmacology, and a chemical-free, clean environment is the best defense against infectious diseases. My household is a living, breathing, healthy example of that.
And you can thank all the parents that do vaccinate their children for your healthy children. There is no legitimate science to prove your claims.
To my understanding, science doesn’t like to say that /anything/ is ever “proven”; it’s always “to the best of our understanding”, basically. Gravity hasn’t been proven, but you don’t see people starting a “jump out of windows” campaign.
In fact, if you see any supposedly scientific opinion which claims that it “proves” anything, you should be suspicious of it.
If there is so much credible evidence, please post a link to some of it.
I scanned the article as I have read many like it before. One sentence sticks out the most. That anti-vaccine advocates are lying in order to profit from their alternative remedies .I laughed so hard. You obviously have no idea what holistic health is all about and I can tell you right now it has nothing to do with money. No one is getting rich by telling parents not to vaccinate. Pharmaceutical companies however, quite the opposite, and time and time again they have been caught in lies and deception for profit. I went to pharmacy school, but the manipulation and deception I saw was too much. And now I work with children with autism, because though I was making phenomenal money at 24 years old, the lack of morality I saw in the pharm industry was appalling. I am not making a lot of money, but I can sleep at night. Educate yourself.
Thank you for saying this. I completely 100% agree with you.
Oh look, another butthurt sap that couldn’t get into medical school, then flunked pharmacy school instead…how cute.
And see this is usually where these debates go when one can no longer intellectually argue their nonsense. “Oh yeah….well….well…..well….you’re a big poopy head, so there.” Great comeback Anon. You’re brilliance continues to elude us. “Butthurt sap?” Come up with that one yourself, or did you find that in your medical journals?
I want to meet this “not amused” bloke. He’s so angry that it’s funny… I am now scrolling through just to read his comments. It’d be great to take him camping with some friends, and for us all to get wound up over something…. important or trivial, doesn’t matter. Snappy retorts and cynicism are all that matter!
There are problems with both sides of the argument and it’s tragic that people resort to name-calling and bullying so quickly. (How on earth do we expect our children to not bully others when adults set such a poor example? Calling someone ignorant IS BULLYING and adults need to stop it!!!)
Vaccine makers need to advertise clearly when vaccines do not contain mercury. This would reassure parents. (Are the makers afraid to publicize that they used to put a neurotoxin in vaccines? Of course! They are afraid of being sued. But they need to come clean on this for the sake of children.)
Also, recent reports indicate that the vaccine-associated illnesses may have been due to painkillers given at the same time. Tylenol is the latest villain; it turns out to be unsafe for small children just as aspirin did. Some researchers postulate that it may bring on the onset of autistic symptoms! So if painkillers are a cofactor, scientists need to make sure that parents are aware of this. (Again, makers of these products will fear being sued, as will the physicians who routinely recommended them to parents.)
Parents desperately want the truth but for now they are frightened. A few dozen scary personal stories can be more powerful than dry statistics, and more convincing than claims made by science people who are (quite frankly and perhaps rightfully) not trusted by consumers who long ago learned that “cigarette science” is all too common.
Where are the results on the children that have been vaccinated compared to the ones that haven’t?
What happens to the extra “stuff” that is left in your bodies after being injected? does it dissolve and disappear? Or does it clog up and become some form or something like cancer?
This whole argument would be going the other direction if only- the natural way to live was the right way.. Science and doctors would be bagged out continuously, trying everything in their power to be heard but everyone would say “no don’t listen cause they have created poisons in which they want to inject into your natural healthy body”. And the funny thing is everyone would listen because it would government approved.. funny that.
I am 21 and have never been vaccinated.
I have never had measles, chicken pox, whooping cough or any of those horrible diseases mentioned… my sister and brother also never been vaccinated, unfortunately my little brother got meningitis at a few months old but he was strong and survived after being hospital for approx 4-6 months.
I work with children and have been surrounded by children with infectious diseases and I have not caught one…
It’s all based on how strong the immune system.
Look each to their own but I don’t trust everything I have heard just because it is socially acceptable and “the right thing to do”.
Consider yourself lucky, then, that you have not gotten sick. You may be blessed with a stronger than average immune system, or you just haven’t gotten exposed to those diseases.
When you mention extra “stuff” from vaccines being left in your body, you demonstrate a lack of understanding of our basic biology and of vaccines themselves. Vaccines are mostly water, with a small amount of the active agent, and maybe a small amount of preservative. You excrete the water like any other water, your immune system breaks down the vaccinating agent and your kidneys filter it out, as happens millions of times a day when you are exposed to everyday germs, and you metabolize or excrete the preservative. And what is a “preservative”? It’s not the stuff you find in Oscar Meyer wieners, but some kind of agent which prevents bacteria or fungus from infecting the vaccine.
Creationism vs Darwinism….
I have been doing research on vaccines for years, the following is one of the best articles I have found to date. If you don’t read it all or watch the videos, at least listen to the last video. This lady says it how it is!! I guess you could say I’m “on the fence” so to speak, when it comes to vaccinations. I am not saying nor have I ever said, do not vaccinate! We DO NOT want all those horrible diseases coming back. We must learn to vaccinate wisely!! http://healthimpactnews.com/2014/is-flu-vaccine-causing-increase-in-h1n1-outbreaks-5-year-old-boy-dies-from-h1n1-virus-even-though-he-was-vaccinated-month-before/
I have one question, and if anyone genuinely wants to answer my email is callumrolls93@gmail.com
So my question is this; let’s say in 100 years or so, they find out that vaccines and penicillin are found to be the causes of certain mutations in bacteria and viruses, will my un-vaccinated lineage be allowed to turn around and blame every mother father wife and husband who did have their kids vaccinated? I am 21 years old, never had any shots, except for tetanus when I was 3. Cut myself several times with rusty Stanley’s, and lino cutting tools, never have I had any issues with being REALLY sick, bar the time I had quincy(which I can thank smoking and large tonsils for)
Has nobody else noticed the increase of children with allergies, deformities, and who knows what else. Maybe it’s nature’s way of reminding us that “nature is our master, and we will never win.
Thankyou to all who read, and even more to those who at least try to understand where I’m coming from…
Perhaps you should go on a holiday to Nigeria. And then see how nature is going to protect you. But perhaps that is Darwin at work then: only the strong (or is it : smart ?) ones survive?
It’s rich Cindy. Only the rich survive.
But only the poor who breed, so, over time the rich will be overcome.
And have you researched on those “alternative” ways to cure? I mean, for example HOMEOPATHY it’s MEDICINE and SCIENCE, and it’s not ALTERNATIVE AT ALL. Alternative medicine is a way in which hippies cure their kids with energy or stuff like that, LOL.
I think the first mistake is saying what is right and what is wrong, humans are organic organisms, each person should decide how it wants to be cured, so please stop this way of saying what is good and bad for a person. Also, have you thought about VACCINES AS A PHARMACEUTICAL MAFIA? think about it…
Get a duck liver and heart. Add it to water, and then dilute the water in a 100-1 ratio. Repeat the dilution 200 times. Realize that the effective dilution is 10^400-1. Realize that there are less that 10^100 particles in the universe.
What am I describing? Describe the method by which the final dilution would cure influenza.
There isn’t a shred of scientific evidence that homeopathy is anything but junk science. http://www.1023.org.uk/
Parents who have not chosen to educate themselves or listen to health promotion sessions etc, I agree are risking the health of their own children and those more vulnerable members of society who cannot have vaccinations. Herd immunity is VITAL and needs to remain at 95% + to keep us all safe. The human body can only do so much to protect itself. Natural immunity of course helps but it is not guaranteed to protect us totally. Babies need to begin vaccinations at about 2mths as that is when the immunity they have received in utero begins to weaken… Rant over
Here’s the issue. Those anti-immunisation nutjobs will take one look at this page and run for the hills. Its the same reaction you get when you tell a religious person that the worlds was made over millions of years and not 7 days
Whoever you are. FYI
The Earth was refurbished for human habitation in six days.
Those six days have nothing to do with “the worlds”.
It appears, your blindness causes you to not even see what is written; or is it as I’m suspecting, you’re simply repeating what someone else wrote. (Or said)
And Where did you get it that religious people run from Your uninformed and bias OPINION.
Have you considered that your views and opinions are based on This Fact; You believe what was written (in another book) by other writers.
And you have Made Yourself Their Messenger.
I’m not running; so respond and let’s see if your misguided repetitions of those other blinded writers views; can stand in the light of truth, and not stay hidden in the darkness of assumption often called science.
Anonymous – Your post made no sense at all.
Our youngest daughter had all the vaccinations she could get. Only the whooping cough she didn’t have because she could get a feverish convulsion the doctor said.
When she was 18 months old she got whooping cough. Our family doctor didn’t recognize the situation. It took a few days before things got worse and we had to go to the emergency room. When she was in hospital she got a feverish convulsion during 2 hours. After that they made a CT scan the conclusion was she was blind. and there were multiple areas of small damages diffusely distributed over the brains as a result of the oxygen deficiency. Now she is 18 years old. She is blind, can’t talk , can’t walk without help is incontinent and regular has epileptic seizures despite medication against it.
So when people ask me ….. PLEASE DO vaccinate your children against all these diseases, when possible.
How is that the author of the first article is anonymous and even the doctor you are quoting from?? It says alot on how credible this is.
The author of the previous blog post is Dr. Jennifer Raff. This is her blog. Her info is found by clicking the “about me” link at the top of the page. Unlike anti-vax conspiracy theory nonsense, this is all out in the open, if you just look.
Facts are true weather you believe in them or not. The problem is we have never known all the facts and maybe we never will. Science is the understanding of all the known facts, so science can only be true if you know all the facts and you can never know if you do. What scares me is any person who tells me they know all the facts, because I know they don’t no one does.
Hi, first of all, I would like to say I definitely approve of most vaccines. They have brought down many vicious diseases and they definitely deserve to be used. I think contesting this is just based on non scientific facts & discourse mixed with fear.
That being said, I’d like to point out that there are many modern vaccines that have very limited efficiency or higher side effects, and have been hugely marketed by big pharmaceutical companies. One example would be the (seasonal and non-seasonal) influenza vaccines, or the HPV vaccines.
Finally another thing I believe could be reduced is the number of injections, which are in the US higher than anywhere else in the world. This is nothing more but fearmonging in the other way, pushing to “more is better”.
I believe there is a middle ground between “OH GOD VACCINATE AGAINST EVERYTHING” and “OH GOD VACCINES CAUSE AUTISM”
Have you seen this post? I think you’ll find this very interesting, especially the lady at the end! It’s 15 mins long, but well worth the viewing!! Have a great night! http://healthimpactnews.com/2014/is-flu-vaccine-causing-increase-in-h1n1-outbreaks-5-year-old-boy-dies-from-h1n1-virus-even-though-he-was-vaccinated-month-before/
The federal government has established a special fund that will help compensate parents of children who have received vaccines and have suffered adverse side effects. This alone should raise some flags and suggests this issue is not as simple as either side (pro-vaccine vs anti-vaccine) makes it out to be. There are really 2 questions, (1) whether the benefits to the individual is greater than the risks to the individual; and (2) whether the benefits to society are greater than the risks to the individual.
It is extremely difficult to prove a vaccine injury or death. Most cases are denied at the initial application. Unless you can afford a lawyer you are out of luck. Most families give up. These VIS(vaccine information sheets) make it seem like you just call a 1-800 number,file a claim, and are compensated.
Doctors will blame your breakfast before they say a vaccine caused injury or death!
For vaccine compensation claims, the government provides a lawyer for you. There is even a list of injuries that require payments automatically. If most cases are denied, then it would be because people could not prove they were harmed by the vaccine (like autism).
http://www.livingwhole.org/dear-parents-are-you-being-lied-to/
Hi Talulah,
If you look around this thread and the other, you’ll see we’ve been spammed with that link quite a bit. I think it’s an excellent example of what Jennifer was talking about: anti-vaxers lying to parents.
This is not the only or the most important flaw in the article you linked, but as a case study of lying to parents it’s particularly good. What makes that author, Megan, a particularly good example is (a) how simple it is to show her deception, (b) the objective nature of that deception, and (c) her reaction to people trying to correct her deceit. The last is the most important, since it shows that she’s actually trying to spread false facts about vaccines. I’m thinking of writing a longer piece on this one, so forgive me if I use your comments to organize my thoughts.
1. Megan’s article originally claimed, “Even the vaccine court has rule that evidence of a causal relationship between autism and MMR exists . . . .”
2. That claim is objectively false.* While it is theoretically possible that such a ruling exists, I have been unable to find it and anti-vaxers, who would love for such a ruling to exist, haven’t either. (In fact, the vaccine court ruled in the omnibus proceedings that the evidence was overwhelmingly against such a link.)
3. The article also claimed that “vaccine inserts, and countless court cases have confirmed this link.”
4. Those claims are also objectively false. I’m aware of one vaccine insert that states that autism has been reported as an adverse event, but such VAERS reports are not confirmation of a causative link—VAERS specifically requests that reports be filed even where the reporter doubts causation.
5. When I attempted to leave a comment explaining the errors in (1) and (3), and requesting a citation to some evidence if I was wrong, the author deleted it. (There are comments from others on this forum complaining about similar deletions, so apparently the author was busy purging her comments. I only know for sure about the contents of mine, though.)
6. The effect of these deletions was to prevent her readers from understanding that they were being lied to. One commenter to her article, named Ashley, remarked that the Hannah Poling was a case in which the vaccine court ruled there was a causative link between vaccines and autism.
7. Ashley was wrong. The court in the Poling case objectively never held that there is a causative link between autism and vaccines. The author deleted comments explaining this mistake, taking affirmative action to keep Ashley misinformed. She eventually allowed a short note saying only that Ashley was wrong, but not how or why. This preserves the illusion that there is an actual question of fact on this point, when in truth it’s open-and-shut.
8. The author, without explanation as far as I know, then edited the piece to include a link to a vaccine court ruling to create the impression that there was an actual document supporting her claim.
9. There is no feasible way that a competent lawyer (the author claims to be an attorney) could have read that document and thought that it made a finding regarding any causative link between vaccines and autism—it is a case in which the plaintiffs did not need to prove causation (for legal reasons) so the issue was not before the court.
10. The author again deleted comments explaining the facts in (9), but soon thereafter deleted the misleading link and reverted the piece back to how it read in (1). (It still reads that way, but the author may change it at any time.)
11. Consequently, anyone who read the article while the deceptive link was up would have no idea that they were being lied to, and would believe (similar to Ashley’s mistaken beliefs about the Poling case) that the case the author cited supported her contention.
12. And of course, anyone who reads the article now, if they trust the author, would believe the objectively false statements that (a) the vaccine court has ruled that there is evidence of a causative connection between autism and vaccines, (b) that vaccine inserts acknowledge such a link, and (c) that multiple courts have found the same.
* You could argue, although not persuasively, that “evidence . . . exists” only means that some evidence technically exists somewhere. Under the strict legal definition of “evidence,” that’s probably true—just the fact that someone says so could be evidence in that sense. Under that definition, evidence that a race of lizard people rules the world from caves under the California desert exists. The author obviously didn’t mean the statement so broadly, as (a) it wouldn’t have made the point she was trying to make, (b) it would not have required concealing contrary information regarding the court’s rulings, and (c) the ruling she temporarily tried to use to justify this claim is not consistent with such a reading. And in any event, there still doesn’t seem to be a vaccine court ruling that makes this finding.
I use the word “lie” sparingly and hesitantly. I think it’s only appropriate where someone has actively tried to deceive another person. That’s clearly the case here. Megan, the author there, wants people to believe that vaccines cause autism and that the courts, as neutral arbiters, have found there is good evidence of that link. And she wants people to believe that vaccine makers admit it in their package inserts. She may have honestly believed these things were true when she wrote the piece; she doesn’t seem terrible well educated on the issue, so she could easily have assumed the facts supported her preferred beliefs. But she obviously knows now that they aren’t true. If she could support her claims, she’d be doing that instead of scrambling to prevent people from reading the facts.
Perhaps it was a mistake. What matters most is what she did when she learned that she was wrong. When someone pointed out the error, she didn’t acknowledge it or correct it. She deleted the comments pointing it out, then doubled down by linking to an irrelevant document in such a way that non-lawyers would think she had proof of her claim. And when someone pointed out that was a lie, she again deleted the comments. Then she reverted the article, but without acknowledging the change so that someone who read it while that link was up would continue to be misled.
The real test is what she did when one of her commenters expressed a mistaken belief about the Poling case—she took active steps to prevent anyone from correcting that person’s mistake.
The Living Whole author’s goal is not to get at the truth or inform her readers about the real facts. She has a story about vaccines that she wants parents to believe—that they’re scary and awful and wrong, and that even the neutral courts agree. When her story and the truth diverge, she chooses the story. Her intent, measured by her actions, is to deceive her readers.
This all matters because of how easy it was for the Living Whole author to lie to parents. This writeup is long and complicated, but from her perspective all she did was tell a little lie and delete some comments. Consequently, lots of readers (thousands hit her blog from these comments alone) read false facts, and many of them walked away believing those lies. That’s not incidental to the Living Whole piece—she’s actually trying to spread misinformation about vaccines.
Just as Jennifer said, anti-vaxers are lying to parents. Living Whole is a great example of it.
Oh, and please see my recent piece about the article you linked to.
IN YOUR OWN WORDS.
“Read about Andrew Wakefield, and how his paper that claimed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism has been withdrawn, and his medical license has been revoked.”
Now I Say;
Of Course; SILENCE THE CRITICS.
Anonymous – or how about this: withdraw the paper because it was BS and the loss of license because it’s not a good thing to falsify research results in a study that could have a far- reaching impact.
“vaccine are dangerous” is a conspiracy theory, designed to make people afraid. Those theories are very difficult to refute, because they are a perfect example of “circular reasoning” whatever argument you give to get them of their train of thought, they use to prove their point (or when al arguments fail you are just “one of them (big pharma”).
Well, I have an other nice conspiracy theory: the anti-vaccination lobby is part of the Bilderberggroup, and they are, as everybody knows, out to kill half of the world population, to “cure” the planet from overpopulation. And please, PLEASE, read this comment with irony.
Greetings from
Cindy
Belgium, Antwerp,
You should really have links to all the “they say” parts. Otherwise it’s a bit weaselly (and strawmannish).
I have lived through the nightmare of vaccine injury. If you want to vaccinate that is your choice, but given my experiences I will decline them.
I have no interest in our family being used by either side. Respect our position(and families such as mine) by atleast acknowledging that vaccine injury and death do occur. Inserts acknowledge it, but doctors deny it when it does occur.
All medications have the potential to harm. Acknowledging that and increasing safety would be the prudent thing to do, but it seems to be an all or nothing-one side or the other.
My mom was vaccinated and as a young adult contracted diphtheria. Sometimes vaccines protect. Sometimes vaccines do not protect. Sometimes vaccines injure. Sometimes vaccines kill.
Sometimes you just have to make a choice and hope for the best.
Brilliant insight. Simple, concise, truth. Thank you.
I would like to add two things. However, in the spirit of full disclosure, let me first say that I am a paediatrician and strongly pro- vaccine. I was lucky enough to do my Peds training in the late 1990s. We were taught over and over about epiglottitis, and meningitis from Hemophilus influenza type B. However a vaccine had recently been added for that bacteria. Despite all of the training I had on those illnesses, I have never seen that bacteria cause epiglottitis.
As a Peds resident, I did admit a 9 month old baby to hospital, and looked after him when he had meningitis. I remember one night when I was on call. I spent most of the night at that child’s bedside, as he had seizure after seizure. We had to be very careful with how much fluid he could have, so he was thirsty. In between seizures, he would try to suck on his IV line to get the fluid out of it. He had a bad headache, but due to how sick he was getting, all he could have was Tylenol. The PICU resident kept coming by to see how things were, and if he needed to o to intensive care yet. His mom had gone home, and arrived back in the morning. After I filled her in on how the night went, I just looked at her and said “why didn’t he get his shots?” She replied that they had made their choice and were living with the consequences. I told her that no, her baby was living with them. All of hat could have been prevented with a shot.
When I was 11, I got chicken pox. No big deal, everyone gets them, right? Well, I sure got them, inside and out. I had blisters in my mouth and throat, which then got infected. I also got pneumonia. I spent days with a fever of 104 which just didn’t break. I was in hospital. I was incredibly sick. I wish there had been a vaccine then!
But you survived. As we all do. Discomfort is not a good enough reason for ME to get a vaccine. I too had chicken pox. In every orphus of my body. And my sister and I still laugh about bathing in a kiddie pool of calamine.
Anonymous – bad assumption about all surviving chicken pox. Prior to the introduction of the vaccine, there would be 100 – 180 deaths per year (mostly adults), several thousand hospital admissions and several million infected overall in the USA annually per the CDC.
According to the CDC, there are over 30,000 adverse reactions to vaccinations reported every year, 15% of which lead to permanent disability or death. However many are not reported.
And many have no causal link. The 10-15% for permanent disability, hospitalization, life threatening illness or death, not just disability or death. It’s interesting that you excluded the middle two. VAERS reports can be completed by anyone, the form is available online. They also don’t establish a cause and effect relationship.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/activities/vaers.html
http://wonder.cdc.gov/vaers.html
“Data Limitations and Cautions A major limitation of VAERS data is that VAERS cannot determine if the adverse health event reported was caused by the vaccination.”
Right on cue. Now do you see how this continues to play out Joe?
1. Pro-vaxxer uses CDC numbers to illustrate how many people are affected by no vaccinations.
2. Anti-vaxxer counters with CDC numbers to illustrate how many people are affected by vaccinations.
3. Pro-vaxxer states that those particular CDC numbers are not reliable.
You responded exactly as I knew one of you would. This is exactly what prompted my very first post on this whole subject yesterday. There is never going to be a consensus on this topic as long as those steadfast in their beliefs continue to only legitimize the research that enforces their position. As soon as someone suggests anything that opposes it, it is immediately discredited; even when it comes from the same source.
“Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.” ~ Mark Twain
Who said vaccines had no risks or effects? I didn’t. I’m just calling you out on your bullshit. If you’re going reference something, do it honestly. I would think that as a department head a respected regional research university you would know to do that, but apparently you don’t. You highballed the number, excluded effects in order to maximize scare factor of what you cited, and didn’t acknowledge and of the caveats that the CDC listed in their data.
Go ahead and pretend to be all smug, it won’t change the fact that you’re intentionally being dishonest about the facts.
You’re seriously insinuating that if I had included “life threatening illness and hospitalization” it would have made the point less scary? Are you for real? You just keep dancing because you’re not fooling anyone with your diversion of the truth. You talk of smug. You people toss around hyped-up, vague CDC numbers of chicken pox in a feeble attempt to belittle the original poster, and then in the same breath discredit CDC numbers as unreliable because they didn’t include “caveats?” You disgust me with your reeking hypocrisy and shameful attempts to belittle opposition to your weak ass beliefs. There’s a big difference between being informed, and just being opinionated. You mock me as a professional in my field as if I have no right to dispute your bullshit arrogance, but have yet to divulge what makes you so fucking qualified to pass judgement. Please share Doctor Seatter. What is it that The Great Joe Seatter excels at that makes him such an authority on research, statistics, vaccinations, and condemnation on us less qualified. A mere fucking troll would be my guess.
Have you wanted to kill yourself yet because of the searing spin of your shingles?
I certainly don’t have a problem with the information given, it’s the tone it’s written in. Its’ a while since I’ve read such a blatantly patronising article
As a Parent of two healthy children and one autistic this issue has caused my wife and I a lot of stress. First Doctors are unwilling and down right rude when asked about vaccines. As a parent you either do what they tell you to do or find someone else. This is what pissed me off more than anything. A concerned parent looking for options and 8 “doctors” in a row told us “either your child is vaccinated or I don’t see them.” We were looking for someone with qualifications to have a discussion with and help us with real risk versus benifit information. No one was willing to help or even have a conversation. We don’t follow anyone blindly and it took a move to a different part of the state before finding a real doctor willing to take the time to talk to us. All of my children are vaccinated. We chose the extended option, breaking up the MMR into three separate visits and increasing the time between each set of vaccines. Knowing vaccines are helpful, we feel the blind factory assembly line type of vaccinations is reckless. Does not take each individual into account, assessing if the child is at risk or if there are alternatives.
We knew at birth something was different about our second child. It was this difference and all the testing that raised our questions about risks for vaccines. I thought doctors cared about the people under their care, I guess those days are gone.
One other thing – if parents chose not to vaccinate it is there right, right wrong or indifferent. The bully tactics the school system and doctors use are just wrong. I had to print state and federal statutes and hand them to school authorities threaten a law suit before they listened.
Put simply, they wouldn’t talk to you because they didn’t have the knowledge. All they could do was point to the same agenda driven propaganda that the brain-washed droids on this forum buy into. But don’t suggest that on here, because apparently these doctors are exempt from criticism. Well, at least until you suggest that there is a physician out there that questions vaccines, and then their immediately discredited. How convenient.
Not Amused – pure and utter BS – and as others have noted, your spelling is atrocious for someone that is supposedly a department head at a major research university; or haven’t you figured out how to use your spell-check function?
If aww yu gots as ah argument is spellun errers an claims of BS, then ya aint got much!
Eric, you’re wrong about a parents choice to vaccinate or not-unless, by not vaccinating they isolate themselves and their children from the balance of society. Unvaccinated people are disease vectors, both to those for whom the vaccine didn’t “take” and to those whom are unable to be vaccinated – the immunosurpressed, the allergic, cancer patients. By not vaccinating, they put others at risk. If they only put themselves at risk-it would be a fine way to clean the gene pool.
Scott, no one can tell me or my family what to inject into our bodies. Nor should anyone/government ever be given that power.
The over all point is, we wanted someone to talk to us and we were shocked at the response when questioned the norm.
Didn’t you try speaking to a nurse regarding info on the vaccines being administered? Also, Vaccine Information Sheets are available for each vaccine that is administered and they have to be made available to anyone receiving a vaccine.
“no one can tell me or my family what to inject into our bodies. Nor should anyone/government ever be given that power”
As long as you walk around with a public health warning clearly visible, I don’t have a problem with that.
I also have rights, and I want to know who has chosen to override accepted medical opinion and avoided vaccination. It is my right to choose not to put my kids at risk by exposing them to unvaccinated people unnecessarily. No one has the right to deny me that choice.
Why do you think those doctors would not treat your family?
Reley don’t know, they wouldn’t even talk to us. It was an absolute mandate, non- negotiable stance on their part. One doctor told us to leave when we asked about their stance on vaccines.
I wish they’d taken the time to explain it to you–they might have been able to persuade you to listen to the science. Here are some articles about why pediatricians are increasingly unwilling to take anti-vaxers as patients:
https://www.utmb.edu/newsroom/article8830.aspx (UTMB is a medical school)
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/family/2014/03/measles_outbreak_in_new_york_city_should_pediatricians_treat_unvaccinated.html
Colin – we did vaccinate, just modified the the time between shots and separated the MMR into three individual shots.
Eric, I work in a low vaccination area. I am extremely happy to discuss things the way you asked. The first barrier I have is the unavailability of uncoupled vaccines to facilitate acces for parents of your genre. I cannot give most of our vaccination schedule in separate / individual injections.
The second problem I have is the litigious nature of society forcing evidence based, medico legal “cover your arse” type medicine. The consequence for me personally is that my family could lose our home because a parent elected to not vaccinate and that at the time of decision, they were notionally under my professional jurisdiction; if I agree to support a decision or approach that does not comply with evidence founded guidelines, I will be deemed negligent by the courts. If the courts can award that a dr is “negligent” because they asked the patient to return for care rather than providing a knee jerk reaction blood test for a throw away comment made by the patient as they are exiting the consultation room (as happened in South Australia recently), then you can appreciate that for doctors there is a huge amount of fear in discussing things that fall outside “best practice” protocols developed from quality scientific research articles. I think if people could own the responsibility for their decisions that this conversation would be easier to obtain for parents like yourself.
Hope this helps.
I’m a vaccinator and I agree with 99% of what you said. The only thing that is slightly misleading, is that Thimerosal, however trace is still being used in Flu and a few other vaccines…this is per the FDA website…which was updated this past month http://www.fda.gov/biologicsbloodvaccines/safetyavailability/vaccinesafety/ucm096228
Proper hygiene and sanitary drinking water are what I eradicated these diseases. And measles, chickenpox, rubella, pertussis, mumps and diphtheria are normal childhood diseases. Just because the author says “they’re not” after listing them, doesn’t mean she’s right. The proof is in my 94 year old grandparents, my grandfather who died at 84, all their siblings who lived healthily with a QUALITY of life WELL into their 80’s and beyond. That’s the proof. They got it and took the TIME to heal. People want to take a pill so they can be back to work next day. The REALITY is that it takes 6weeks to recover from Rubella. IN BED. Not running around as usual. The problem is society, not our immune systems. The problem is that there is no real food to be found. The solution is not a poisonous vaccine. I don’t know who “agent 666” is as I am not a conspiracy theorist but the only thing that I do respect in this article is that she didn’t bring up Jenny McCarthy (thank God) and for the record MY reason for not vaccinating my child (and wishingr my parents knew then what we all know now) is NOT because of autism. It is because I do not trust the healthcare INDUSTRY ( and that IS what they are) and anyone who has something to gain (especially financially). I believe that the human body is able to heal beyond our comprehension of we respect it and full it with good things. Also, I am NOT an ANTI vaxxer as that would denote that I am AGAINST vaccines. Which I am not. I believe that every parent should have the right to choose what they feel is best for heir child. And if my country imposes laws on me Andy family to vaccinate. I would immigrate. That is he first step to a tyrannical society or dictatorship. It’s a form of sterilization and population control in some countries. So if you support the choice being taken away from the people, be ready for a slippery slope. Human rights for all, not for some. I am only arguing for the right to choose and not be judged or especially called negligent or threatened with the law. Drugs are recalled all the time. Thalidomide, depo provera, countless drugs piled from shelves that were once thought safe. I believe in the glorious human body and it’s abilities to heal itself. Not so long ago “alternative medicine” was the ONLY medicine and it worked. Then we relied on others and not our own intuition and knowledge. The body IS science (biology, no?). That’s just my 2 cents. I am not trying to change anyone’s mind. I’m just trying to live my life how I see best for my family and I 🙂
Love it. Undeniable truths. Thank you for showing some reasoning and practical thought. Something this forum is sorely lacking.
Agreed.
My complaint is that if you make a decision, you own the decision. If your decision doesn’t work out and things get tough, you can’t back out of owning your decision, you can’t take things to the lawyers to shift the blame off yourself. I commented very early on in this blog about an interest in how attitudes will change once this matter hits the courts, and I would put money on the scenario being a child with a disability from a preventable illness taking their parent to court; the parent will blame shift the matter to the doctor of the time; the scientific literature will cause the judge to rule the doctor as being negligent; doctors will refuse to attend to non vaccinated children due to fear of litigation because some simple bastard couldn’t cope with being responsible for making the decision not to vaccinate his/her child.
Whatever decision you make, YOU OWN, and YOU have to live with and manage the consequences of your decision, whatever they may be.
Sorry for the autocorrect fails. New IPhone. I really am literate, I swear! 🙂
This is a common misconception among anti-vaxers. The facts do not support it; hygiene and sanitary drinking water empirically do not eradicate these diseases. The data show just how strong an impact vaccination had.
FYI, if it’s your intent to leave your country if it imposes mandatory vaccinations, that would be emigration. Immigration is moving to a country. (I’m not trying to be snide, it’s a common mistake and no one should hold anyone to high standards of spelling or grammar in an internet comment. Just an interesting word pair to my mind.)
Anonymous – and those “normal” childhood illnesses killed or disabled children in various forms such as blindness, deafness, mental impairment, etc. My paternal GGrandmother had 11 children, 3 of whom died in infancy and 1 at age 6. Most children survived (including most of hers) and went on to live healthy productive lives, many did not and this was why the vaccines were developed – for the future % of children that would not recover successfully. Proper hygiene, sanitation systems and clean drinking water certainly played their part in eradicating disease but formed a part of the total picture given that these practices were largely being followed but still didn’t prevent another highly contagious disease from killing thousands during the early part of the 20th century – the so-called “Spanish Flu.”
I believe it was Friedrich Nietzsche who proclaimed that people would rather have ANY explanation (re: autism) no matter how far-fetched, than no explanation at all.
Okay, I’m done beating you all up about your views. But I do like a good debate. Right up to the point that a pro-vaxxer starts calling people “butthurt saps.” Then I know we’ve come to an impasse. So yeah, I think this has truly fizzled out, as this topic usually does. But I do want to switch it up a bit, simply for the purpose of promoting another perspective that perhaps we haven’t considered. Has anyone ever seen the move with Will Smith called “I am Legend?” If I’m not mistaken, doesn’t that whole thing start with what they thought was a cure for cancer? Now of course I know that it’s a movie, but I detected a rather interesting political statement in there. I’m not saying that we’re all going to turn to zombies, but I think there is merit to the metaphor. So I really want to ask this question with sincerity. No name calling, no belittling, no studies; just your personal thoughts. At what point does it all become too much? Or, will it ever? I see a lot of claims on here that vaccinations are harmless, the ingredients are harmless, there’s more of this and that and breast milk than vaccines, yada, yada, yada. Okay, so let’s say that the pro-vaxxers have made your point without argument. Today, we’re going to vaccinate the whole world against all the heebee geebee’s that we’re at risk of contracting. But then what? Do we just keep doing that for every little risk that presents itself? At what point do we say “Hey, you know what? This is too much.” When DOES it become too much aluminum, or too much mercury, or simply too many dead pathogens that we’re injecting into our children? Does that point come when the science shows without a doubt that it is too much and babies are dying? Unless you’re just completely in denial, I don’t think that anyone on this forum can dispute that eventually it will just be too much for our bodies to handle. What are your thoughts on that? Is it then that we just decide to abandon vaccinations, or do we then get to pick and choose what risks to take? All points of view are appreciated. Unless of course you’re simply going to call me a butthurt sap. 🙂
“At what point do we say “Hey, you know what? This is too much.””
When the evidence supports that position.
But who decides that when it does?
Parents have to decide for themselves, obviously. But since the vast majority of parents don’t have the experience, time, resources or education to be personally familiar with the research that test the evidence, I’d hope they’d listen to the people who do–the community of experts engaged in studying the question.
I hope you realize what you just admitted there. “Parents have to decide for themselves, obviously.” Do you realize you just went full circle? What is going to make a parent qualified to decide then, if they aren’t qualified to decide now?”
I’m not sure you read my comment all the way through. Parents have to decide for themselves, because no one’s making that decision for them. But since they typically don’t have the time, resources, experience or education to be personally familiar with the balance of scientific research into whether vaccines are safe and effective, they should make that decision based on input from the community of people who are: the experts. In this case, the scientists studying the safety and efficacy of vaccines. It’s true today, and it’ll be true tomorrow.
I think I did understand. But again, what you’re saying is that it’s not my choice as a parent until the “experts” say it’s my choice. So as I understand it, eventually I’ll get a choice, just not today. So then explain at what point do all the experts agree? Gosh I hope you see where this is going. Your argument just continues to bring us back to where we are now.
I’m sorry, but we’re not communicating. I did not say, and did not intend for you to understand, that it’s “not [your] choice as a parent until the ‘experts’ say it’s [your] choice.”
I think you’re arguing with what you expect to hear, rather than what I’m writing.
My apologies. I guess I misunderstood. So you are saying that I do have a choice today as a parent?
Yes.
Thanks for the input Colin, I appreciate your perspective.
And what are our choices WHEN it does?
Not to vaccinate — is it a trick question?
Again, circles. So you’re insinuating that there is going to be this magic moment when all agree that parents can now decide “not to vaccinate?” I just don’t agree that it will ever be that simple. There is always going to be opposition saying “My study proves good, my study proves bad.”
Yes, there will. There is never perfect consensus on any scientific question–there is literally a geocentrist documentary coming out. So parents have to make a decision based on the balance of research, and be smart about their sources.
It’s not really any different than any other decision we make. I’m no electrician. If my wires start smoking, I’ll call an expert because I don’t know enough to figure the problem out myself. If ten electricians tell me to get a new transformer, and one tells me to rub olive oil on my wires, then I’ve got a he-said-she-said problem just like you describe. But I’m not helpless to figure out which side is probably right.
Okay, point well made. I completely understand your analogy and I agree. So then what is the magic number? Is it when I get 5 electricians on each side of the issue, or do I have to wait until there is a majority? Because what you’re saying is that at the point it is 9-1, then the 9 are obviously right, and the 1 is obviously wrong.
There is no magic number, either in my analogy or in the real world. But the situation in which the experts are 50-1 in favor of vaccination is obviously very different from the world in which there’s an even balance of opinion, even if there’s no discrete point at which the balance shifts.
Well I would certainly agree that a 50-1 ratio would definitely be difficult to argue. But I am highly skeptical that this indicates a true ratio of pro vs. anti vax. But who knows, maybe you’re referring to numbers you’ve seen somewhere. I think there are other sub-debates that are to be considered of this reasoning though. Has history shown us that an expert majority has always turned out to be the right course of action? Should one be allowed to utilize variables such as personal experience, personal concern, or fear of mass medicine? I think much of the dissent we see from anti-vaxxers comes from the shell shock of some of the travesties that modern medicine has caused us in the past.
I don’t know what ratio of doctors would agree that parents should vaccinate, but I would bet that 50-1 is a conservative estimate. I did just a little bit of research and found a survey that reported over 80% of responding physicians agreed not just that vaccines are safe enough to use, but “that vaccines are one of the safest forms of medicine ever developed.” More experienced physicians were more likely to agree with that statement. (Caveat, I haven’t read the original study, just that news report.)
I would guess that of the 20% who don’t think that vaccines are “one of the safest forms of medicine ever developed,” a significant majority still recommend vaccination. But that’s just my personal guess.
No, the expert consensus isn’t always right. But it’s right a lot more often than the voices in the wilderness. From a cost/benefit perspective, you’re much, much safer trusting medical experts than anti-vax opportunists.
Colin, is anyone studying the effects collective risks 27 vaccines?
I think you’re asking if anyone is studying the effects of multiple vaccines in concert? The answer is yes. I’ve linked to this report a lot, because I think it’s a good overview of the literature: http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2013/The-Childhood-Immunization-Schedule-and-Safety.aspx
“This report is the most comprehensive examination of the immunization schedule to date. The IOM committee uncovered no evidence of major safety concerns associated with adherence to the childhood immunization schedule.”
No, you’d have to examine every disease you’d plan to vaccinate against. How many people does it infect, how serious are those infections, is the virus or bacteria stable enough to effectively vaccinate against, or is it or does it mutate rapidly like influenza, limiting the effectiveness of a vaccine? Are there any other approaches which would be equally effective? If it’s something like rabies, which you can be vaccinated against, there are better approaches. It’s been effectively controlled for years by vaccinating pets and wild animals, and treating animal bites promptly. Others, like salmonella, can probably be effectively vaccinated against (there’s a vaccine in development), but like rabies, they’d be of limited use because other controls can be completely effective: most food-borne pathogens can be eliminated by preparing food properly. Or again, like rabies, poultry could be vaccinated instead of humans. Measles, Pertussis, etc. can’t be dealt with in the same way – hand washing will only get you so far, and masks and quarantines aren’t feasible for most cases, and the disease can’t be eliminated by targeting animals- and so humans are vaccinated instead. So yes, new vaccines will be developed, and will likely be added to the schedule. Others, like polio, may be withdrawn in a few decades if the disease is eradicated like smallpox was. But not every disease will be vaccinated against, even if it is possible. There are other cost effective ways to control some of them, and others infect few people and a vaccination program would have little benefit.
I appreciate the detailed response. And I guess I agree that that is what is going to need to happen. But I’m not sure that we’ll ever be able to come to the point that we’ll agree on when exactly a “vaccination program would have little benefit.” I mean, why in the future and not today? Why do I have to vaccinate across the board today and wait for indisputable evidence to tell me that it’s no longer the most effective route? Why can’t I rely on evidence I see today that “there are other cost effective ways to control some of them?”
Are you really looking for the evidence? There are many vaccines that are not used today in the U.S., for example yellow fever, typhoid and polio. Vaccines for those exist- I was given them years ago due to military service, foreign travel, and age, respectively. Those vaccines are given in other countries because their diseases are endemic there, but not here. The recommended schedule of vaccines is pretty carefully done, mainly on the basis of safety and need, though cost:benefit enters into it as well.
That said, I have to say that I have been highly unimpressed by your reasoning in your comments. For a teacher and a scientist, you paradoxically seem to have some major gaps in your acceptance of the scientific and medical methodologies, your understanding of statistics (especially misunderstanding relative chances of harm from disease versus vaccines) and especially your ethics (advocating acceptance of widespread death due to non-vaccination by choice). As far as your credentials, I will take that on your word, but I’m not impressed by them either. I’ve got several grad bioscience degrees and a few research publications done at a, shall we say nationally known organization, but so what? What really counts in this discussion is knowledge (or lack thereof) of issues relating to vaccines (immunology, epidemiology, public health), and your credentials don’t seem to be in those areas. Look up Dunning Kruger effect, it applies here.
Thanks for the response Jerry. I certainly appreciate the first paragraph and can only assume that your answer to my question is the insinuation that vaccines will come, and vaccines will go; and that all are carefully decided on need and cost effectiveness. Is that correct? If so, then I can respect that reply. I guess the only argument would continue to be, as it has been above, the argument of “need” and “cost:benefit” which I’m not sure added any real depth to my question, since that’s been the debate from the beginning. But thanks again for the reply.
In regards to the rest of your reply, I’m not sure that your response proves anything besides the fact that we disagree. Simply saying that you’re “unimpressed” doesn’t make your argument any stronger. As far as the question, “am I looking for the evidence?” I’m afraid that you’ll have to be more specific. Am I supposed to be looking for evidence that injecting pathogens into my children works? Yes, I have in fact looked at quite a bit of evidence, and frankly have found nothing remarkable when all variables of the studies were carefully scrutinized. But it begs the question: why should I even need to look for evidence to prove something I don’t buy into? Should I also be looking for evidence that running backwards cures ulcers? Thankfully I don’t need to because I don’t have ulcers. Frankly, I’m getting a little fed up with being told that I need to prove why I shouldn’t do something unnatural to my body. You seem to be the one who needs evidence to live your life. I simply live it as nature intended and seem to have been fine. In any case, I think many have provided evidence on both sides. So what? If you truly are so highly decorated in “bioscience” then I would suspect that you of all people recognize the limitations of scientific studies, as well as their continued need to be reviewed and continuously questioned. Or are we done doing that? Is all research now fact and there is no further need for inquiry? Guess I missed the last research symposium then. All anyone has done so far on this forum is shown that they believe one study, but not another. And all you’ve done is continue to say I’m wrong by claiming things like I’m “advocating of widespread death” while failing to provide me with anything more than imperfect studies done by imperfect people. How about you you take your studies, and I’ll take my happy life free of tyranny, and let us both be content in our future.
And yes I am well aware of the work of Dunning and Kruger; mainly because it is often brought up in these discussions when pro-vaxxers such as yourself need a quick way of discrediting someone on their beliefs. Am I an expert on vaccinations? No! But I’m not sure why I would need to be when I have no plans of allowing them into my body. And just to be clear so there is no misconception for future debates, I am also not an expert on astronomy, marine biology, or psychology. I assume that is okay since I never have plans to be in space, under the ocean, or inside your head. Or wait, should I expose myself to dead Box Jellies in the unlikely event that I will someday be stung by one? Such a dilemma. Would you mind providing me with that “evidence” please. I would certainly hate to advocate widespread death by jellyfish because of my “gap” in acceptance of science and sea creatures.
Jerry, again…thank you for your insight and reply, as I do enjoy debating, and I truly mean that. But your attempts to discredit my expertise or my ability to think for myself has no bearing in this respect. Fortunately for us, everyone in this world does not need to be an immunologist in order to maintain the right to refuse your dead viruses. We just do.
And thank you also for your military service.
Thank you, Not Amused, for your polite response (more polite than I was, I’m sad to say). I disagree that you have, as you think, made a logical and rational choice. As you report, your choice seems to have been made on an emotional and ideological basis, justified after the fact by your intelligence. Many people do that. The emotional aspect is clear from the way you call vaccines “pathogens”, when in many cases they are not. Vaccines are often purified proteins or inactivated viruses, closer to food than infectious agents. The weakened virus vaccines are borderline pathogens, but their weakened state makes them a much lower threat than the un-weakened viruses. You are not using your intelligence to note that the chance of harm from even the weakened virus vaccines is 1/1,000 times less than the chance of the same harm from the viruses they protect against. Your ideology comes through from your comment about tyranny. Do you think you and your unvaccinated family have no obligation to other human beings in your neighborhood? That seems… so libertarian of you. What about other people- do they have an obligation to you, i.e. should people who know they are sick keep away from your unvaccinated kids? Or does their freedom extend to risking your children’s deaths? You have rationalized your choices, but that does not make them *informed* choices. The reason why I asked if you were an expert in the field of vaccines or public health is because yes, indeed, you are mistaking your education as being adequate to the task of overruling the informed professional opinion of medical boards and public health experts, which you are not. I urge you to think about, well, your thinking. In this case, outside of your field, you are not as right as you think.
Jerry, you have me spot on. My choice does have much emotion and ideology. But I’m not sure how that proves me to be incorrect in my choice. After all, are these not components in all our choices? Is there no “personalization” if you will to your choices, or are they all scientific based and 100% grounded in scholarship? If so, is that not ideology at its core? Perhaps you’re not quite as versed in the definitions of such moral concepts as ideology and libertarianism as you suspect. I think you’ll find these characteristics in both sides of the argument. Please don’t follow this with a workshop on moral tenets, I’m not interested.
Furthermore, I never claimed to be an expert in immunology. I only claimed to have the aptitude and education in which to look at evidence objectively and make an informed decision without being influenced by mass acceptance. And yes, even though looked at objectively, there is personal bias included. But I suspect your choices follow the same design. It’s true, perhaps I have no business debating this subject with an immunologist, or a virologist. But let’s ask ourselves, if we have a plumber come to our house and we smell a rat, do we not ask questions and explore alternatives, or do we just accept his recommendation as gospel because we are not plumbers? I think in this case it is even more prudent that we do so because a quick and uninformed decision can have dire results.
And Jerry, I am afraid you are just wrong about pathogens. Yes, pathogens are viruses and bacteria, but they are also microorganisms. Most of the components of all vaccinations are microorganisms, whether dead, alive, protein, whatever. Again, please don’t try to educate me on the trivial definitions of the words you have attempted to use against me. It just makes your argument all that much weaker.
Finally Jerry, as much as I appreciate your suggestions of evaluating my thinking and becoming “informed” I must assert that where you have truly faulted is to presume that I am “not as right as (I) think I am.” To claim that there is a right or wrong answer to a debate of which there can be no facts, only opinions of the observations, you have ultimately shown that you are guilty of the very things of which you have accused me.
Jerry, thank you for your reply. Again, the civility and comprehensive nature in which it was produced is much appreciated; albeit no more successful of proving anything further than the fact that we disagree.
I’m sorry, Not Amused, but I can’t let things drop at your comment. I’ve been researching the structure of pathogen proteins nearly my whole career. Your paragraph about pathogens and microorganisms was so confused that I no longer can accept your credentials on faith. I’d give it a D or less if I were still grading undergraduates. Your attitude about opinions versus facts is certainly not what I would expect of a scientist, even though you’ve made a point of it. If Dr. Raff will agree, then I propose we both send our CVs to her. She can leave a short comment on which one of us or both are actually working in a science field.
Lol! This JerryA dude is obviously being schooled so he can’t let it go. Man, do I wish I had been involved with this debate back when it started. It’s been amusing going back and reading all the ignorance on both sides of the issues. Sorry JerryA, this Amused character seems to know how to point out your shortfalls, while all you’re doing is trying to discredit his credentials. I think his logic is spot on. If someone doesn’t want to do something unnatural to their body, why does it become their burden to prove why they shouldn’t. You’ve apparently proven in your mind why you should, and that should be enough. Why not just leave people alone and let them live their life how they see fit? You don’t agree, so what! If your proof is so concrete and without fault then why isn’t it law? Let me tell you why JerryA, because there is no proof. It’s all debatable and it should be left to each to decide for themselves. Good luck JerryA, hope your CV gets you far.
LOL! This anonymous dude (my apologies if you are a dudette, but I’m going to take the grammatical shortcut) has absolutely nothing to offer except to wish that he could have explained it all to us from the beginning, relgardless of the fact that nothing Jerry A has written could be contradicted by anyone whose ever had any advanced education in biology. Luckily Anonydude had the time in his busy schedule to throw down the undefeatable logic that the facts of immunology are not facts and this is clear to him because it’s not a law. Before now, I had never realized that legislation followed unswerving logic.
I’m presuming if you had some other point or argument, you would have made it. So…
Wait, what? There are laws? There are laws that say kids (and medical students, by the way) can’t get into school unless they show proof of immunization?
Oh, I guess Anonydude means that they are ineffective laws that permit parents who don’t understand the danger to others’ children to simply Lie about their religious convictions (since almost no major religion actually condems vaccines) in order to circumvent a law meant to protect innocent children.
Wow! Thank you, Anonydude. And please come back to our fair city the next time an evil professor attempts to teach us something we didn’t know.
Anonydude, let me explain the preceeding paragraphs:
That’s sarcasm.
That’s when I write the opposite of what I mean.
You can look it up on the google machine. Ask you niece.
Here is another anekdote that proves that not vaccinating children is harmful and most likely the cause of outbreaks. And in this case NOT an individual anekdote which says pretty much as much as “I ate an entire week pizza before my IQ test and got 120 points, so eating pizza must make you smart”, but an epidemiological anekdote.
In the Netherlands we have a high vaccination coverage for the MMR vaccine (BMR in dutch), since 2006 >95,4% in infants and >92,1% in children in primary school. (http://www.zorgatlas.nl/preventie/vaccinaties-en-screening/bmr-per-gemeente/). According to the scientific community these coverages would provide ‘herd immunity’ for the Dutch society.
Once about every 7 years though, a serious outbreak of measles occurs in the Netherlands. This occurs exclusively in the so called ‘Bible belt’. This is a region in the Netherlands where people have conservative religious beliefs and therefore choose not to vaccinate their children. This region can be seen in the source previously mentioned. The chart shows that some municipalities have a vaccination coverage <80%. This could bring enough people without immunity to measles into contact with each other to facilitate an outbreak. This is exactly what happens, as primary schools in the Netherlands are often being led from a religious belief, grouping unvaccinated children together in classrooms. This dramatically increases the risk for an outbreak.
Recently (2013-2014) there was an outbreak in the Bible belt region, which led to the death of 2 children. Check out the information and charts about the outbreak and compare it to the vaccination coverage chart, the charts overlap very very strongly: http://www.rivm.nl/Onderwerpen/M/Mazelen/Mazelenepidemie_2013_2014
This small epidemiological example shows how not vaccinating the population creates an opportunity for a disease to spread. Vaccinating the community is the only way to prevent these diseases. Yes, some people are allergic, yes some people may suffer complications, just as some people never got the black death even though everyone around them was coughing bacteria in their faces.
I can not stress enough the importance to look at the issue in an epidemiological way, because there the pros and cons of vaccination really show. Educate yourself!
J.P.M. Verhey,
Student Human Movement Science w/ minor Biomedical and Health interventions
There are sensible reasons not to trust doctors and the governement and these must be seriously examined and addressed. Of course there are serious reasons to get your kids vaccinated, but by no means it should be compulsory in such a climate of distrust. All the side-to-side flaming makes it difficult to communicate properly so someone who wishes to help people make the best decision should not have knee-jerk reactions to any kind of argument on any side.