Oh Forget It

I totally agree with you! For the longest time I was right in the middle of the fence over this. Then I started reading nonfiction books on epidemic outbreaks. My children WILL be and ARE vaccinated! No, they do not have ALL vaccines, but the necessary and school mandated.

I'll make this short and sweet because I think most people on here know where I stand. I don't vaccinate. My children dont contract these diseases so they are not spreading them. (side note...We were exposed to H1N1, my husband and children didn't get it....my vaccinated body did...we do live in the same home, they cared for me)

This outbreak of measles is not coming from the responsible non vaccinated population, it's coming from ill people. The body WILL fight these things off with proper nutrition ( a must) and a healthy lifestyle. I was in and out of hospitals all my life. I know the medical community very well. I don't believe Jonas Salk was in it for the money however the pharmaceutical companies are not trying to save lives, they are trying to make money.

I am very willing to let you pick my brain and give you more information.

Best regards,
M.

PS Have you heard about the heart attack vaccine?

PSS To Revas point, which is my primary reason for not vaccinating....
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20049118-10391695.html

I've posted pretty extensively on this already because I have strong feelings about how vaccines have been misaligned for being blamed by the fraud and hoax of Andrew Wakefield when he claimed that vaccinations cause Autism. I'll just leave it at that for now.

Mommy 2-2 - I can't speak for other parents but here is my thought process: perhaps if the health care profession had not been evasive and arguably deceptive about vaccines in the 90's, I would be a bit more trusting about what you have to say.

To wit: the Hepatitis B vaccine. My child born in '94 started it at 2 months. My younger child born in '97 had it at birth. I don't even recall consenting to the vaccine in the hospital. I trusted my board-certified doctors completely. I never had HepB, and would have gladly been tested for it. What changed in that three years between my two kids? Nothing that I can see. Guess which of my kids was the sickest one? Guess which one had a terrible time breast feeding (and I was very comfortable breast-feeding)?

www.iansvoice.org . My younger child had a terrible rash after the HepB vaccine too . . . luckily he survived (unlike poor Ian).

What angers me the most is that this vaccine was not given for my child's benefit. It was administered in a broader public policy effort to wipe out HepB in a population that is difficult to reach by the health care providers. Research Michael Belkin's testimony to Congress. And even sadder to realize, it's my understanding that the vaccine may wear off so my child might not even get the benefit when he's an adult!

And what about flu shots? For many years my pediatrician (board certified) told me that my children did not need flu shots because they were not in a high risk group (asthma or diabetes). Now, suddenly, I'm supposed to believe that if they don't get them I am taking an extraordinary risk.

And what about chicken pox? My children received that vaccine and I was not told they would need a booster. Guess what - now they do or they risk getting chicken pox as an older teen or adult - which is much worse! Yikes!

The same thing for the meningitis vaccine . . . my ped told me don't worry about it until my kids go to college. Fast forward a couple of years - suddenly it's urgent for my tween to get it immediately! And guess what - it wears off so he would need it again before college!

C'mon . . . can you really blame parents for being frustrated? It's not that we don't care - we CARE TREMENDOUSLY. For God's sake - we've watched our kids suffer! How many "hits" for the team are my children expected to take?

As a health care provider, you really should read the recent USSC Bruesewitz decision - here is a link: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-152.pdf . Are you aware that the Supreme Court has ruled that you cannot sue vaccine manufacturers in traditional courts of law, even for design defect claims? As Justice Sotomayor put it so well in her DISSENT (this was not the majority opinion):

" [. . . ] the majority’s decision leaves a regulatory vacuum in which no one—neither the FDA nor any other federal agency, nor state and federal juries—ensures that vaccine manufacturers adequately take account of scientific and technological advancements. This concern is especially acute with respect to vaccines that have already been released and marketed to the
public. Manufacturers, given the lack of robust competition in the vaccine market, will often have little or no incentive to improve the designs of vaccines that are already generating significant profit margins."

As a health care provider does it bother you that you may not receive all the data from vaccine manufacturers? Are you aware of how many times pharma companies have gotten into trouble for suppressing negative data pertaining to drugs? Why is it any different for vaccines? Particularly when they know they can't be sued? Most pediatric vaccine injury claims must be pursued through the "vaccine court" - which is nothing like a traditional court of law. And even if you prevail, your claim is paid from a fund that is replenished by a tax on each and every vaccine (not from the company who made it).

And finally, my younger child received his black belt this past weekend. And would you like to know the tears that streamed down my face, knowing everything he has been through? This was a kid who could not WALK a mile, much less run two miles in under 16 minutes (which he was required to do to be eligible for his black belt). This was a child who visited the doctor on a monthly basis for every illness that came down the pike. A child who had a severe staph infection in his knee. Who has a severe visual processing disorder and now reads on a high school level.

And how did he achieve these things? Was there any thanks for my mainstream, board certified ped (who is a very nice guy btw)? Absolutely not. It was thanks to a terrific integrative MD who actually helped us get to the SOURCE of our child's problems, and heal them! And of course, it was thanks to my son's tremendous heart and courage.

So you'll have to forgive me for my skepticism. While I'm not anti-vaccine (I do think certain vaccines are "worth it" in certain situations), I will NEVER, ever again, accept the status quo explanation when it comes to my children. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

I am also a medical professional. I hold a BS degree and a MS degree in medical fields. I come from a family full of medical professionals. My father and grand-father are also pharmacists and know how the vaccines are made. I do not vaccinate my children. My doctor does not vaccinate her own children and refuses to vaccinate other children. I am not 100% aganist vaccines but I am against vaccinating babies and young children that have developing brains, immune systems and spinal cords. I am also completely opposesd to vaccinating babies aganist things that they absolutely do not need such as Hepatitis. Those vaccines are strictly to make the pharmaceutical companies money and that is so wrong!
Many of the diseases that we vaccinate for are not deadly and it is so much better for the health of the person to contract that disease and have life long immunity. A good friend of mine who did not vaccinate her children has a son that recently entered the army. Instead of shooting him full of vaccines they pulled titers and he was immune to all the diseases but was never really that sick as a child. He had naturally come into contact with those diseases and developed immunity to them and will have that for life!
I personally think there is a lot of danger in vaccinating the young children and I refuse to put my children in that sort of danger. We will re-visit the issue when they are older and if needed such as travel to other countries. Also through my own research I believe that the immune system of babies and children that are not pumped full of vaccines from the get-go are much, much stronger than there fully vaccinated counter parts.
Also the argument about vaccines not being available in 3rd world countries and how much death they have from illness etc does not hold any weight because you are not taking into account that those countries also do not have clean water, healthy food, and availability of other medical resources.
You are reading articles about "herd immunity" and I am reading articles about how they are starting to think that there maybe a link between the hepatitis B vaccine given to babies and SIDS.
Like I said I am not against vaccines, I am against giving babies and young children 40+ vaccines in the first years of life.

We choose to delay and selectively vaccinate. I don't think vaccines are evil, but I do get frustrated with the "one size fits all" mentality pushed by the majority of medical professionals. They would prefer that consumers never ask questions and just take what Big Pharma and Big Doc think is best at every turn.

Sorry, I just don't think they always have our best interests at heart. They have abused my trust far too much, and have done nothing to earn it back.

Thanks for your post. I agree with you.

In Britain -- where the whole bogus "vaccines cause autism" scam got started, by just one doctor, with just one totally unprofessional "study" that has never been replicated -- they have already had serious problems with outbreaks of measles because of lack of vaccinations by families who sadly believed this widely publicized, anti-scientific scam. Kids are paying the price for the lack of herd immunity.

Our generation has simply forgotten that measles, mumps and rubella all can be fatal to both kids and adults. Yes, autism is serious and profoundly affects families' lives forever. But vaccinations don't cause it. Better to spend all that energy and anger on finding more effective ways to treat kids who have autism right now than to spend that energy and anger on blaming vaccines.

Many people choose to not vaccinate, or delay vaccines, for other reasons besides autism. I do not agree with the "one size fits all". i also do not agree with giving a one day old a shot for HepB. I dont know any babies having sex or shooting up drugs!
I believe that vaccines can save lives. I believe that some are unneccesary.
50 years ago, doctors said it was safe to smoke while pregnant, or that smoking didn;t cause cancer. My parents drove me home from the hospital on their lap in the front seat.
things change. doctors are not God.
We all do what we think is best for our children.

Sigh, I know exactly who's going to answer already, and exactly what they're going to say, same as last week, the week before, the week before.....

Maybe if OPRAH did a show on why YOU NEED TO VACCINATE YOUR CHILDREN they'd let go of the conspiracy theory?!

:(

it's not just about the vaccination concept; it's the INGREDIENTS in the vaccines that are part of the problem. have you read them? i highly encourage it. you will be horrified.

and when it comes to the question of conspiracy, it might make more sense when you research how much money people make off of vaccines. HPV vaccine? for little girls that are not even sexually active? yuck! tell them to wear condoms to avoid sexually transmitted diseases! and all of a sudden, there is a brand new advertising campaign targeting young BOYS for the HPV...chaaa-chiing!!! and a chicken pox vaccine? FLU vaccine? please, people! what's next? so there's ABSOLUTELY an element of deceit involved here, which is pretty much always present in a multibillion dollar industry.

so make your choice, continue the debate (at least we're talking about it, right?), withhold judgement, and be very careful that what you put in your child's body is actually necessary.

My daughter is not vaccinated. This has been a sore issue in my house for a while. My husband is a chiropractor, and probably the most highly intelligent person I know. That's not just me bragging, I've had some of his professors tell me that he should be teaching the class not them. He spent hours and hours of research finding everything he could on vaccines, I guess what he found scared the hell out him. I, at one point, had him convinced to do an altered schedule. After his research, he flat refused. I really wanted to have the pertussis vaccine done, he found several reports that stated 1 in every 1,000 babies given the pertussis vaccine suffered from irreversible brain damage. To him that number was too high.

You mentioned that you understand why people who's kids have bad reactions discontinue the vaccines. But once the reaction is had, it's too late, the damage is done. That makes people wonder if it is worth it in the first place.

We did give our daughter the meningitis vaccine. Secretly I hoped that my daughter would react well to the vaccine and I could convince my husband to do a few more. Sadly she didn't, she was feverish (which is normal I know) and lethargic. I knew that these are common things, however her level of lethargy was extreme, and scared me badly. It took several days for her get back to normal. Her doc had us come in and check her out, she was a bit concerned herself. I think we were lucky.

I still worry everyday that I made the wrong decision. If she contracted a disease that could have been preventable, I don't think my marriage would survive it. However, the reverse is true to. Had I gone against my husbands wished and she had had a irreversible reaction, we would be divorced now. So please don't think that every parent who doesn't vaccinates skips along with out a care. It's not true, we struggle with the same doubts as other parents do.

I chose to vaccinate because I didn't want MY children to have to try and work through polio or whooping cough.....

I don't buy into the autism from vaccinations....I know there are side affects that stem from vaccinations - I chose to spread my kids out over time and not do all at the same time...my pediatrician respected my wishes and we spread them out.

I believe that autism has been around for MANY MANY years and because people have this desire to LABEL something - BLAME something - it got lopped into the vaccinations are the cause of it.....

Most diseases were eradicated here in the U.S. BECAUSE of vaccinations...now with illegal aliens and people coming in from all over the world - things that SHOULD NOT be a problem are....

I'm with you on this one! As special education administrator in a public school system it is very scary to think about the potential wide-spread illnesses that could occur. Illnesses that were once considered "erradicated" are popping-up again. In graduate school, I had to do an extensive research project on an area of school law and researched vaccination laws (ended up published) and there is no actual scientific evidence that vaccines "cause" illness.

The "Autism" theory was debunked many years ago and there is no evidence that vaccines "cause" Autism and no one in the medical field would support that theory. Autism is highly heritable (look back in the old family tree... you'll find it there in one form or another) and has been around much longer than vaccines- we just called those children "crazy" and locked them away in group homes. Beyond that, it is simply a coincidence of timing that most children start to demonstrate the behavioral and linguistic symptoms of Autism around age 2, which is also a big "shot time". This is a correlational relationship, NOT causal... meaning that they occur at the same time, but are NOT related!

This is coming from extensive research (not Googling) and years of medical research.... and from someone who lost a young nephew b/c of an error in vaccination. As the FDA & medical examiner explained to my niece... my great-nephew had a pre-existing neurological condition (which the pediatrician was aware of) and he should NOT have received the vaccine, as it was clearly contraindicated on the lable in bright red. His death was NOT because of the vaccine, it was due to human error.

Thank you Mommy for being the voice of reason.

I find it interesting that the non-vaccinating mom trend is in direct proportion to the change in the USA finally having to wake up and become AWARE of their own health care management due to the fact that with HSAs, etc and the general decline of trust in the "Big Papa Healthcare System" that used to be where no O. "had" to think twice ("My BC/BS covers everything..." mentality) and blindly took the advice of their pediatricians and patients weren't really aware that they were being charged $20 for a Tylenol during a hospital stay.......

Well some huge percentage of the population believes that the JFK assassination was a conspiracy, that Obama was born outside the US, that Echinacea is effective against the cold virus and that fossils were planted deep in the ground to test people's faith that the earth is 4000 years old. Why are you surprised?

Fortunately the mainstream scientific and education communities can at least agree on required vaccinations for public school. Infants are just on their own I guess.

This should help:

http://www.quackwatch.com/03HealthPromotion/immu/immu00.html

I love the quackwatch website. Poke around and I'm sure you'll enjoy it too!

I am 100% with you on this one. I think parents need to bother to inform themselves either way, but ultimately, we choose to vaccinate our kids because of the reasons you have mentioned above. I refuse to use my kids as lab rats for some non-conformist ideology or anti-BIG-HEALTHCARE rhetoric. That's just sad.

I think that if informed parents are choosing to customize their children's vaccine schedules, that's wonderful. We don't have to do something just because doc tells us to. After all, who is HE listening to? But, in my opinion, I think that parents who choose to NOT vaccinate are acting downright irresponsibly.

Thank you.

Personally, I am 45 and was not vaccinated because I was an increadibly sick infant. I feel fortunate that I grew up in the age of vaccinations, and that I didn't contract any of the awful illnesses that vaccinations prevent, in spite of not having the vaccinations. And that my not being vaccinated did not cause problems for other children, as it certainly could have.

Not being vaccinated as an infant or child has caused me a LOT of hassle as an adult. Going to college, traveling to Thailand, and even getting married turned into bigger hassles because I had to vaccinations and/or blood work to prove I had antibodies for several diseases, including polio, MMR, etc. So, as each event has come up, I've had vaccinations as appropriate, but not with ease. To get my polio vaccination, I had to argue with my doctor and the medical group he was associated with. I had to have blood drawn, receive the first dose of the vaccination, go back to have another blood draw to determine how well my body had reacted to the first dose, and then go back again for a second dose. MMR in college was the same thing. And to get my marriage license in Indiana, I had to have a certificate from my doctor indicating I had antibodies for MMR, which involced yet another trip to the lab for a blood draw. ARGH!

I hope you have received some replies that will help you. I applaud you for putting your question forth, and in such a well thought-out way.

Please, everyone, vaccinate!!!

My children have had all of their vaccines. I did a "delayed" schedule for the kids. I didn't let them get more than one vaccine at a time and made sure there were at least 6 months between each vaccine. My kids are all healthy and happy kids.

I agree that some of these parents who choose not to have any vaccinations are risking their kids lives with some of these diseases. I don't understand it either and hope that they seriously consider what they're risking.

I agree with you, so I cannot give you the other side of this. I am interested to know what percentage of people don't vaccinate their children? Does anyone know this? I assume it is a small percentage but I have no idea exactly what it is.

Hello hornet's nest!! Oh yeah, you will probably get some feedback on this one. But I am with you, I am thankful for vaccines and the diseases they prevent. I talked a lot with my pediatrician about the vaccines he used and he assured me there was no mercury in any of them so I was good to go. I feel so blessed to know my baby won't contract whooping cough or my older child will not get the measles. My mom had a classmate die of the measles when she was 13, it is more serious than people think. You know I think that not vaccinating isn't so much intentionally selfish as something that people are truly afraid of. They are more afraid of the vaccine than the disease it prevents. Remember H1N1, I was very happy to get my vaccine at 7 months pregnant, but I know some who would have never considered it. I do know some people have had bad experiences with vaccines as you mentioned and I know that bc my kids had excema as babies they can't have anything with thimerisol in it, but other than that they are all good. I just vaccinate, pray for my kids and have had no problems. I do believe the man who released the initial article about a link between autism and vaccines has been shown to be inaccurate and actively falsifying information. I read an article about it on CNN, it's been a while but it was quite the uproar. I have always felt that the vaccine autism link was shaky at best bc there are many things that have changed in society since the uprise in autism not just how many vaccines kids get and the fact is we have always been vaccinated. However I never debate it with anyone who has lived with autism bc I haven't been in their shoes, I just do what I think is best and move on. I think it is good you put this out there from a medical standpoint, maybe it will make some think about the true risk of not vaccinating. Thanks :D

I 100 % believe in spreading out the vaccines and even cutting out some, such as chicken pox and Hepatitis B...but vaccines are lifesafers and if someone considers to not vaccinate their children, play Russian roulette... and contributing to letting these life threatening illnesses to never die out...

Everything Mimi said..and www.thedoctorwithin.com ! We had h1n1 and were directly exposed to whooping cough and didn't get it, just a fever for a day. Our doctor says my kids are the healthiest he k ows and that we probably wouldn't get it. The non-vaxed kids I know including mine are the healthiest kids I know! Many people in these outbreaks are fully vaccinated. My friends who don't vaccinate have done a ton of research, and most are highly intelligent, educated people..many are doctors themselves!

Is it not close-minded to give us your opinion on why people should vaccinate, hear the opposition's responses (which you solicited), then come back and say "never mind"? There was no discussion. Just opinions offered, you're the one that is shutting down. I hope if you do go back into the field that you are open to hearing what others have researched and know and not just that the way you think is right, which is why some of us don't trust all doctors, no matter what they've learned in school they are all still just humans with thoughts and opinions as well.

http://www.facebook.com/notes/kevin-donka/my-response-to-...

http://www.lowellsfacts.com/herdimmunity.html