The Great Vaccine Debate and the Honest Truth

Yesterday, while looking at various vaccine related sites on the internet, I came across a site that listed the ingredients of each vaccine routinely given to American children. I was startled to find that among several other vaccines, the MMR contains the cells of aborted fetuses. The fact that any sort of dead baby cells--naturally dead or aborted by man--finding their way into a vaccine is disturbing. The fact that they use monkey, sheep, and calf tissue in them is also rather suspect in my opinion. After posting my surprise and shock in my blog, I received an onslaught of notes claiming that I was a terrible, irresponsible, and ignorant parent for forgoing vaccines for my children.

Ingredients are not the only reason I am choosing not to vaccinate child. It is much more complex than that. Don't assume that I am making a hasty decision. The amount of research I am doing about each vaccine, which is still on-going, is teaching me more than I could have ever imagined about the immune system, the way vaccines are made, those who approve the vaccines safety, and the diseases vaccines are created for. A vaccine is much more than just a tiny prick.

I have discovered that there are many, many myths floating around when it comes to the subject of vaccines. Quite a few of them were repeated over and over again in my notes.

You can still attend public schools if you are not vaccinated. Most areas allow medical or religious exemption.
^{I'm planning on homeschooling if possible, but if Rosie did need to go to public school, then she could. I checked.}

Those of us who do not vaccinate are not a danger to your vaccinated child, nor are we responsible for bringing back "dead" diseases. First of all, if you vaccinate your children because you believe that they will be protected from the disease, then how could an unvaccinated child carrying the disease effect your child at all? Use logical thought. Second of all, regarding "dead" diseases, the only illness that has totally died out in America is small pox. They no longer offer that vaccine here as a result. If a disease has died out, then how would not vaccinating against it bring it back? If it is gone from the population, then it is not there. Period. And someone mentioned polio being a dead disease--It isn't. Did you know that the only cases of polio in th US in the past ten years were caused by the polio vaccine? Unvaccinated children didn't bring about cases, it was the vaccinated kids getting sick.

Yes, if children aren't vaccinated against childhood illnesses like measles, mumps, rubella, and chicken pox then children will catch them. That is obvious. They will circulate more in the general population. If you raise a healthy child, you should not be afraid of illness. There will always be cases where someone has complications, but you have to look at the norm rather than the extreme. Fear mongering is a way to scare you into doing what they say without a second thought. Fear is not a good reason to make any choice, whether it is about vaccines or any other subject. Look at the actual statistics. Read them, and then read them again. There is truth in the numbers.

_{And beyond that--look around you. Have you seen huge outbreaks of mumps recently? All those children were most likely vaccinated. Have your children had whooping cough? Oh, weren't they vaccinated against that too? And before you point fingers at the unvaccinated children and the "ignorant" parents who choose to not allow their child to have vaccines, you might need to look at yourself. Had any vaccines in the last 5-10 years? Majority of Americans haven't, and unlike natural immunity, vaccinated immunity wears off or in the very least weakens over time. Yikes...looks like quite a few of us might as well be unvaccinated at this point! Better watch out, you could catch a deadly disease and fall over dead at any second! Panic, panic!!}

What defines a healthy child anyway? Certainly not the American food culture and the American way of life. High fructose corn syrup, artificial dyes made from tar and South American insects (yellow #5 and red #40--Google search it), extremely processed foods with long lists of chemical names for ingredients, preservatives rather than fresh foods, pesticides, and hydrogenized oils do not a healthy human being make. Combine that with hours spent behind a computer or TV screen and hours spent at a school desk in a stressful setting and what do you have? A child open to disease due to bad nutrition and a weakened immune system due to the poor nutrition and stress. If your child eats those foods and sits around all day then maybe it would be smart to vaccinate them. They probably will be the ones who suffer complications because they will not be able to fight off anything that comes their way without the proper health.

Why do you think Americans eat all of those unhealthy foods? Have you ever stopped to think about it? How did all that crap work its way into our everyday diets? Well, someone had to approve it. We do have institutions in our government set up to keep Americans safe and healthy, don't we? The FDA approves all of our foods and medications.

Why does the FDA allow those obviously disgusting and unhealthy foods to grace our dinner tables? Well, they are cheap, that's why! Pesticides may be shown to cause cancer, but you can hide those studies from the trusting, ignorant population. With the help of pesticides many more vegetables can be grown at a cheaper price. Without pesticides care must be taken, there is more of a loss of produce to bugs and blight, and loss of produce equals loss of money. Have you ever looked at a list of ingredients on your food and seen partially hydrogenaded oils? They hyrdogenize it to make it cheaper, make more oil and have to purchase less. Hydrogenaded oil is extremely unhealthy. They are trans fatty acids, which many studies have shown to cause diabetes, cancer, and heart issues. In Europe many countries are banning hydrogenated oils, but our trustworthy FDA does nothing and makes no statements.

Ignore all of your preconceived notions and just think with me for one second--if they believe that something as disgusting as dye made from tar residue is good for our people to consume on a daily basis,and that something proven to cause disease like hydrogenated oils is ok to put in every mass marketed food on the shelf of Walmart, then what else would they approve? Should you really trust them? You might see where I am going with this. The FDA approves all vaccines. The same FDA that is responsible for allowing Americans to become diabetic and obese due to our poor eating habits and bad food is also responsible for what is injected into your child.

Do you know how they go about approving a vaccine? We all know, or rather assume in our ignorance and blind trust, that they do experiments and run trials to test a vaccine before they use it on the general public. Did you know that the FDA typically does not run these trials? Guess who does. The pharmaceutical companies do their own trials, and then they hand the results to the FDA and the FDA purchases the vaccine from them. Interesting, isn't it? Does anyone else see potential black holes? It throws up red flags for me. Of course the pharmaceutical companies want their product to look good, that's just good business sense. Our FDA, however, trusts these trials run without any independent parties with out a second thought. Everyone makes money, everyone is happy.

Furthermore, do you know anything about how these trials are run? They are often not very scientific. I did better projects than these people in elementary school, honestly I really did. When researching this further I found that when testing a new vaccine the company carefully selects the participants in the study. Babies who receive the new vaccine must meet a list of strict guidelines. For example, they cannot be premature, have had any cold or slight illness in a certain number of weeks prior, not be born to mothers who have diabetes or gestational diabetes, and must be of utterly perfect health. The vaccine is then tested on those babies, and the studies are taken from those results. Then the results, studies, and vaccine are sold to the FDA. The FDA gives this vaccine to all babies. That's right, they will give the vaccine to your child if they have the sniffles and if you have diabetes and if your child was premature even though they haven't done a single test or long term study on what effect the vaccine could have on a child with a weakened immune system. Parents accept the vaccine without a second though because after all, vaccines are perfectly safe, right? You know, there is so much scientific research proving their safety...

As a side note, I want to add that in Europe they use many of the same vaccines and take the approval of our FDA as a good enough word. I can't totally speak for other countries, because I don't live there and have never been, but from reading I've gotten the general idea that a lot of things are quite similar to America.

I've spent quite a few months reading up on vaccines. I've even started reading medical journals. I learned some very interesting facts from those medical journals. Did you know that scientists and doctors really know very little about the immune system? They are taking shots in the dark, no pun intended. Recent (not widely publicized) studies have shown that vaccines can alter the way the immune system works. Right now as it is understood, the immune system has two parts. The first part is the part that are the soldiers (cells) that are sent out on a search and destroy mission. An intruder is detected in the body and the soldier cells are sent out to kill the intruder along with all it's minions. These cells are responsible for stopping bad viruses and bacteria from multiplying and taking over our bodies. The second half of the immune system is made up of the commanders. The commanders tell the soldiers when to stop destroying, and then they make note of the identification of the intruders so that next time they come around they can be stopped in their tracks before they even have a chance to sicken one single cell. Vaccines play off of the immune system. They are designed to stimulate the soldiers to fight off the "bad guys" even though the bad guys are really inert and harmless, and then the commanders should tell them to remember those bad guys next time they come around. That way when the real illness shows up the body will recognize it and already know what it is so it can be stopped right away before it does any harm. For some reason, since vaccines are not natural, they can skew this natural immune response. I don't fully understand this yet, but they can cause the commander half of the immune system to become confused and not work properly. That is, they can cause the soldier half of the system to keep fighting battles rather than listening to the commanders and stopping when they bad guys have been fought off because of the way the vaccines have attempted to trick the immune system.

It is speculated that this can result in allergies and asthma as well as other illnesses that are common today, like arthritis and fibromyalgia. The body gets busy attacking every little thing, including itself, and we suffer. Have you noticed how just about everyone suffers from some sort of illness like this? Allergies are very common, asthma in children is on the rise, many adults suffer migraines. Children suffer from behavior disorders, autism, retardation, childhood cancer...so many things like that are very common today and becoming more common all the time. I'm not saying that vaccines are totally responsible for this, but I do believe that they are a part of the big picture. We hear all the time on the evening news about how terrible things are in America. We are suffering a health crisis. No one seems to know why. It's a terrible cycle that we succumb to. We allow medicine to interfere with nature, and we are obviously suffering from it. Yes, medicine has saved many lives, but it has also ruined many others. There is a line that has to be drawn, we can't keep eating chemicals and injecting unknown things into our children and expect to stay healthy. It seems as if there are many big companies out there just looking to make money without the slightest regard to the health of the general population. Before you ask your doctor about vaccines take a look around their office. If you see a clock on the wall with a pharmaceutical company's name on it, ten pens with drug names on them, and posters about vaccination supplied by a pharmaceutical company then...well...what do you think your doctor will tell you? All of those items are advertisements and nothing more, because they want you to use their product. Notice any vaccine commercials on TV recently? Check out the fine print at the bottom. The pharmaceutical companies pay for those ads. Yes, they advertise vaccines just like they do TV's, fast food, and cars.

The above is just the short of my thoughts on vaccinations. I am still learning more, reading more, and still thinking hard. Whether you choose to vaccinate your child is a personal decision. I am not going to say you are wrong if you do it because I am not you, I am not part of your family, and I do not know what goes on in your head. But, before you do judge anyone who decides not to vaccinate perhaps you should take a look at all of the facts. I mean all of them, not just that little paper that the doctor hands to you before they inject your child. I have no tolerance for ignorance. True informed consent is every patient's right, and in order to get that you must look beyond the basic doctor's office facts. After all, if you were going to buy a TV you wouldn't do it without reading reports and reviews, and you certainly wouldn't just ask the TV manufacturer if their product was good, would you? Of course not. Why should vaccines be any different, especially when it is your child's life that is at stake.