Needling Questions: Immunizing Kids
If you choose not to have your child vaccinated against measles, mumps, chicken pox, and other infectious diseases, does your responsibility end there?
It’s a debate that continues as the trend for not vaccinating children increases.
Parents who believe that vaccinations are linked to autism, or who object for religious or other reasons, balk at government regulations that bar their unvaccinated children from attending school if they don’t have the required shots. One anti-vaccination group calls forced vaccination “a violation of human rights.”
But those on the opposite side of the argument say not vaccinating violates the rights of others. According to officials at the Centers for Disease Control, “The decision not to vaccinate is a decision for your child but also a decision for society.” They say that unlike other medical issues where refusing treatment affects only the patient, refusing vaccinations puts others at risk as well, including newborns and people with suppressed immune systems.
Parents of unimmunized children rely on the vast majority of kids who do get their shots, figuring there’s little polio, measles, chicken pox or other pathogens to be found among so many protected kids. But with recent measles outbreaks in four states, that protection may not be enough. “We are seeing outbreaks that look different, concentrated among intentionally unimmunized people,” says an immunization official. “I hope they’re not the beginning of a worse trend.”
Tell us what you think: When it comes to vaccinations, do parents have a responsibility beyond their own children?
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Blind Faith in Studies
When I was at Stanford, in grad school, I had to take a full load of graduate statistics classes. One of my classes consisted of medical journals on our desks and the assignment: find the fraud. It was always there. The manipulation of numbers, the wording of everything from the hypothesis to the conclusion, we always found dirty research. We also found clean research. Don’t bet the farm on PubMed being all nice and sweet research. Some of it is, but some is statistical bamboozlement hoping you and others will never know.
“A basic question of justice is whether any harm can knowingly come to an innocent group member for the good of the group.” in other words can we sacrifice a child to what you assume is for the good o the community? The weakest will develop autism, asthma, ADD or perhaps die? For what? A communal good? This is eugenics. Do we eat someone in a lifeboat? Who? Don’t check your ethics with your common sense when you decide PubMed has all the answers. It has all the monied players.
Ann | 1 year, 8 months ago
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resources
There is a book by Dr Sherri Tenpenny called Vaccines: The Risks, Benefits, Choices. She also has DVD’s available.
I talked to several health care professionals & did research before my child was born about the risks from vaccines and decided I would not put my child at risk from all the side affects. I enjoy the debates on vaccinating our kids, because they only make our case not to vaccinate stronger because most people who are for vaccinating can’t produce facts to contradict the reasons not to. The only thing they have is the fact that they are scared or bullied into doing it. I know this first hand as I listened to my child’s ped, all but call me a bad mother because I was refusing vaccinations. He told me I was basically sentencing her to death or some other major illness if I didn’t do it. She doesn’t have any health problems and she will be 10 in a few months. Unlike her best friend who has a mild form of autism, her cousins with allergies, asthma, ear infections, etc. But had I not been so informed on the risks of vaccinations, I would have given into the doctor’s bullying and who knows what health problems she would have now. Because she has a strong immune system she didn’t even get the chicken pox when she had been with 4 other kids who all had the vaccine but they got them.
caringmom | 1 year, 8 months ago
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Yeah, my second daughter got the beginning stages of chicken pox after she got her shots. I woke in the middle of the night to find that she had a temp of 105.4 and the doctor told me that it couldn’t have been from the shot – it had been too long after and that if it were going to happen it would have happened before. Then but then told me that it probably was what had happened.
Grace | 1 year, 8 months ago
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Garbage in, garbage out
Kevin –
You are certainly entitled to your point of view; after all, certain children really are born with Autism as a genetic “syndrome.”
However, if you wish to convince the “hystericals” that vaccination is the holy grail, then you’ll have to do much better than a study that is a “literature review” of literature written only in a short time period (2000 – 2006), which only looks for inclusion of the PCV7 vaccine and completely disregards whether it was administered singly or in the company of one or many other vaccines, does not consider that age or developmental stage at administration, and offers zero window into whether this (or other concurrently administered) vaccine(s) caused any “collateral damage,” as the only point of the review was to see if disease prevalence was lower (and does not take into account any number of reasons why the rate of infection (as WRITTEN ABOUT) might have varied; merely assuming that vaccination is the only logical explanation (and you accuse us of poor science).
Further, that 17 year old boy actually died of pneumonia, NOT the measles. Since vaccination causes the shedding of measles virus, one can’t even be certain his measles were not a case of vaccine strain measles caused by touching the bible at church after a newly vaccinated parishoner had used it. Further, it is speculated that the boy was unvaccinated, not stated as a fact; so vaccine failure might be partially responsible for this boy’s death; did he believe he was immune and purposely contact a friend who was sick with the measles?
Just so you are aware, the formaldehyde used in vaccines is listed as toxic, mutagenic, carcinogenic, and destructive (http://msds.chem.ox.ac.uk/FO/formaldehyde.html). Further, just because an ingredient is put into a product that is sold to ignorant consumers, this does not make it “safe” for consumption. The MSDS for propolene glycol states this can cause hemoglobinuric nephrosis and changes in surface EEG (http://www.sefsc.noaa.gov/HTMLdocs/PropyleneGlycol.htm). But, the “antifreeze” ingredient in a number of vaccines is actually 2-Phenoxyethanol , which the MSDS states , “Carcinogen, mutagen, reproductive hazard, toxic. Severe irritant. Sensitizer. Toxic by inhalation, ingestion and through skin contact. Moderate levels (0.1% or less) may rapidly be fatal if inhaled” (http://msds.chem.ox.ac.uk/ET/ethylene_oxide.html). Polyethelyne glycol IS, in fact, used in the manufacture of the vaccine, but since is it not an “additive,” it is not listed in the vaccine’s ingredients – this is why certain vaccines are now claiming to be “thimerosal free,” because the thimerosal is used during the manufacture of the vaccine (and is difficult to remove using chelators like EDTA from the vaccines, just like from the human body, so is often left in unknown quantities in the final vaccine product), rather than added at the end (additive). Since only adjuvants, stabilizers and preservatives (additives) are listed as “ingredients,” one never really knows what is being injected. In actuality, manufacturers are not required to disclose all the ingredients nor full details of the manufacturing process thanks to Government protection of the manufacturers’ “proprietary rights,” upholding their right to secrecy denying the public complete disclosure of the ingredients — argue there is no Big Pharma all you wish, but the triad of medical professionals, pharmaceutical corporations, and our Government’s collusive effort to strongarm injection of unknown and known poisons into our babies says otherwise.
Also important to note, aluminum occurs in breast milk as a result of environmental exposure of the mother. It is no way nutritious or beneficial to the baby, certainly, adding to any child’s aluminum burden is NOT beneficial. This is like a parent allowing their child to have a drop of Draino because it is only a little bit more of the bleach already floating around in their bloodstream.
To convince me and other “hysterics,” you need a much more compelling and cogent argument.
Mother Maynot | 1 year, 8 months ago
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No child is an island
Deciding not to vaccinate is not a personal choice, it’s a public health choice. It’s not about, “I am willing to risk my child getting diphtheria or measles.” It is think like this, “I am willing to risk my child getting diphtheria or measles (or polio, chickenpox, rotavirus, meningitis, etc) and I am willing to let my child be a breeding site for these germs likely spread them to others who may die or become seriously injured from them, or merely pass on the germs to another child who then passes them on to an infant or immune compromised person who then dies or is seriously injured.”
Vaccinating is not a private choice. It’s a choice you make for other people, too, not unlike smoking in an elevator.
Concerned Mother | 1 year, 8 months ago
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Concerned Mother
I guess you’ve never read the vaccine literature that comes inside of the box with the vaccine. Be sure to check it out next time you are at the doctor’s office. A person vaccinated with a live-virus vaccine poses a contagious threat to pregnant persons, infants, and immune-compromised individuals for up to 6 weeks. Now, if you want to shoot your kids up with known neurotoxins (not just mercury), be my guest. Keep my children out of it. I will tell you this: I will be quite upset when my child eventually goes to kindergarten only to find that they have “dumber” down the curriculum yet again to accommodate the rest of society and their neurological challenges.
Dawncrim | 1 year, 8 months ago
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Your children's disease status is the community's
I guess some of us have never looked at how viruses and bacteria kill and damage humans and animals? They do this by producing known neurotoxins in uncontrolled quantities. You choose for your neighbors whether or not they will die from exposure to known neurotoxins when you leave your child unvaccinated and encourage others to do the same. This is the >>responsibility project<< blog. Just look up at the top of the page. It’s about being responsible to your family and your community. Spreading anti vaccine lies and downplaying the dangers of known neurotoxins produced by viruses and bacteria is irresponsible. A person who has been vaccinated with a live virus vaccine can rarely pass that virus on to someone else, but get this, because it’s the important part.
Live viruses in vaccines are not the same as the wild viruses. They are attenuated. It means weakened. So if a person gets the live virus (not likely) from a vaccinated person, he is much less likely to be harmed than if he gets the live virus from your unvaccinated child. See your unvaccinated child could be responsible for the death of a person with a weak immune system. Or your child could infect another child at a measles party, for instance, and if that child has an undiagnosed problem that child could die. That child’s parents couldn’t sue you. But if something goes wrong with a vaccination in a DOCTORS office (Remember doctors? they get years of training, that’s why they get to put MD after their names and we don’t) then a parent has a recourse, they can get compensation from the vaccine court. If we stop all vaccinations now, there will be masses of numbers of deaths and the any surviving anti vaccine propagandists will walk away happy, knowing that they accomplished what they set out to accomplish, to cull the herd of the undesirable and weak. Anti vaccine insanity with it’s ties to conspiracy theorists, white supremacy and survivalist movements needs to be investigated, through.
Concerned Mother | 1 year, 8 months ago
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Wrong
The gang from the Evidence of Harm Yahoo! group who has been encouraged to descend on this blog to spread anti- vaccine lies and hatred are wrong. Julie Gerberding didn’t admit anything of the sort and Bernardine Healy is a political hack who has had years of selling her soul to the tobacco companies saying smoking is not unhealthy. There is no connection between vaccines and autism outside of the fevered, greedy imaginations of a handful of angry anti vaccine parents many of whom are litigants hoping to cash in on a vaccine lawsuit.
Concerned Mother | 1 year, 8 months ago
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Read the evidence
There is no evidence that vaccines have a way of causing autism in anyone at any time. Please Google “omnibus autism” to read the transcripts of the big Federal autism and vaccines trial that is now nearly complete. The parents who are in litigation and spreading falsehoods about vaccines had their chance to present the evidence. There was no evidence presented that vaccines cause autism. The lawyers for the parents presented evidence of flim-flam doctors and fraudulent “experts” testifying to things that they could not begin to support scientifically. It’s a sham(e).
Concerned Mother | 1 year, 8 months ago
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a comparison: the US vs the World
First of all, the US doesn’t use the same formularies in their vaccines most of the world do — ours are far more likely to cause reactions, everything from the MMR to DTPs. US vaccines are simply not proven safe.
Secondly, most of the cases of measles have been traced to Japan, India, Switzerland, and other unvaccinated nations, where kids are NOT dying by the droves — they are being made stronger and acquiring a life long immunity. Here, the shots wear off, some people die or are injured by the shots, and the immunity period varies from person to person.
ONE GERM here can cause an epidemic, in part because we are so germ phobic that we kill off the PROTECTIVE stuff.
I hate the idea of vaccinating the way the US does it. It is just flat out irresponsible.
Anita chiquita | 1 year, 8 months ago
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