vaccine_thumb[1]

This post reflects the research and concern that I have about vaccines.  It doesn’t represent my opinion of people who choose to vaccinate.  Please know that, while we have made this decision, we respect the right of all parents to choose to vaccinate if they feel this is best for their child.  I don’t have all the answers.  Most of us don’t.  We’re all in the same boat in that we need to make the best decision we can with the information we have.  And, ultimately, I believe that God is in control – His will will prevail, no matter our decision.

Some years ago now, I began to look a little deeper into the question of immunisation vaccinations.  I admit that, from the very beginning when we had our first child, I felt uneasy with the stories milling around about autism and other dreadful things that parents linked to vaccines.  But, I soldiered on with vaccinations, trying to make the best decisions with the information that I had. I gleaned most of my information from health practitioners who traditionally support vaccinations.

But then I started to become increasingly suspicious of these practitioners’ expertise on the subject when one doctor lanced my daughter’s BCG boil, another doctor was appalled, saying that the vaccine had been rendered useless and still another vaccine-administering clinic nurse couldn’t remember that the first polio vaccine is given to the child while still in hospital.  I began to wonder just how much these so-called experts really knew.

By the time I was pregnant with my fourth child, five years later, I had picked up snippets of vaccine information along the road of parenting.  Some in favour.  Some against.  I was beginning to feel increasingly ambivalent about the practice of vaccinations.

In 2008, I came across an article about the Hannah Poling case.  I was amazed to read that America’s federal authorities had conceded that there was a link between autism and vaccinations in a case that was settled in the Poling family’s favour.  I was also amazed to read that her case was one of 5000 families with autistic children seeking damages through the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.  While the article that I read indicated that leading scientists were not conceding a direct link, it still admitted that there was something wrong somewhere, with vaccines stuck in the middle of it all.

That article started me on an intensive search into vaccinations.  The more research into the subject I did, the more convinced I became that vaccinations were not all that they claimed to be, and were, possibly, quite a lot worse than I ever suspected.  As a result, and in discussion with my husband, I’ve chosen not to vaccinate our children anymore.

Here, in a nutshell, is why:

  • Vaccine ingredients are potentially dangerous: many of the vaccines contain neurotoxic ingredients such as mercury and aluminium; carcinogenic (cancer causing) ingredients such as formaldehyde ; antibiotics known to have serious side effects; bovine-, monkey- and aborted human foetus-cells that have been linked to cancers (never mind the ethical issues) and preservatives that are poisonous.  This is the number one reason why I’m concerned with vaccines.  While childhood illnesses can be awful, and in very rare cases deadly, most of the time they pass by uneventfully.  Death as a result of these vaccine-able diseases is rare and has been since before vaccines were introduced.  But, overwhelmingly, there is more and more evidence pointing to links between ingredients we find in vaccines and cancers, neurological diseases and, more immediately, debilitating allergies (eczema and asthma) and illnesses (chronic ear infections – for which, ironically, there is now another vaccine).   In fact, studies in the last 10-15 years show numerous people contracting a type of cancer that carried a virus found only in monkeys – SV40 virus.  This SV40 virus, a known human carcinogen, has been traced back to the live attenuated polio vaccine. (see this article published in the Albany Law Journal of Science and Technology)
  • Vaccine trials are not double-blind placebo-controlled: most medical experts will agree that a truly unbiased and medically ethical clinical trial needs to be a double-blind placebo-controlled trial.  In other words, neither the doctors administering the drugs, nor the recipients of the drug have any idea whether they are administering/receiving the real drug or the placebo (saline/sugar pill substitute for the real thing) drug.  In vaccine trials, the “placebo” drug is actually(often and, potentially, most often) another vaccine that has already been produced.  In fact, not one vaccine trial is double-blind placebo-controlled.  I’ve never been able to uncover a ethically plausible reason for this.  I’ve since read of some vaccine trials that were truly double-blind placebo controlled trials.  But, I’m still concerned that the majority of the vaccines that our kids in South Africa get are based on results of studies that use an earlier version of the vaccine as the so-called placebo.
  • Pharmaceutical propaganda and emotive journalism is suspicious: increasingly, pharmaceutical companies are pushing for vaccinations – advertising is highly emotive – playing on parents’ desire to protect their kids and laying on the guilt heavily.  Perhaps this would be understandable if there were world wide epidemics of truly vaccine-preventable diseases where children are dying in their masses.  But there are not.  And, increasingly, the vaccines being punted for children are for diseases they MAY only encounter as adults.  Doctors I know personally, and others I’ve “met” online, are very disillusioned with the manner in which pharmaceutical companies do their work – they say that that pharma is an iceberg of corruption.  While I don’t know, I don’t like their propaganda and I do get suspicious when pharmaceutical companies start punting vaccines aimed at preventing side effects of other vaccines!  (Preventative medication should be without side effects)
  • There is some serious doubt about the efficacy of vaccines.  Vaccine trials prove only research efficacy (able to evoke an antibody response) and not clinical efficacy (able to prevent infection); yet the public is made to believe the latter rather than the former.
  • I am distrustful of the “stats”: vaccine advocates will claim that vaccine introduction caused eradication of diseases in some cases, and a massive suppression of disease in others.  However, every single childhood disease that is currently vaccinated against showed a rapid on-going decline for decades before vaccines were introduced.  After vaccines were introduced, the decline of disease is minimal compared to the massive decline in the pre-vaccination years.  Interestingly, unvaccinated diseases, such as scarlet fever and typhoid, show very similar decline rates to vaccinated diseases, although we don’t hear much about these diseases today – especially in the first world.  See for yourself: these two graphs below show a comparison in decline between scarlet fever (unvaccinated disease) and measles (vaccinated disease) in Australia.  More detailed information and other graphs can be found at the Child Health Safety website.

While childhood illnesses can be awful and in some rare cases, life threatening,  I am not convinced that immunisaton vaccinations actually do what they say that they do and don’t do more harm than good.  Even if they do prevent infection, there is still the question of the toxic ingredients.   In the best of circumstances the decision boils down to risk taking.  I can either risk the childhood illness and its side effects.  Or I can risk the vaccine and its side effects.  For the reasons above, we’ve chosen to go with the “devil we know” rather than the “devil we don’t”.

Australia Diphtheria Mortality Rates 1880 to 1970

Australia Measles Mortality Rates 1880 to 1970

Recommended reading:

Hayes Happenings posts:

Additional recommended sites:

(Last updated: 23 November 2010)