I got this from my friend, who also happens to be my La Leche League leader (not that that has anything to do with vaccinations), this morning. I found it so interesting that I ran it up my virtual flag pole, just to see who would salute. I also came out publicly with the fact that Chai 100% vaccine-free. I found the comments I got very interesting.
Most of all, I was very pleased that nobody told me I was endangering Chai by not vaccinating him yet. As you can see in the article, even this very pro-vaccine immunologist states that babies can't even produce the antibodies that vaccines are meant to stimulate production of, when they're under a year old, so vaccinating prior to a year is really pointless. Seeing that I got absolutely no "You suck at life and you're crazy!" comments (of which I usually get at least a few on my more controversial posts), shows that everyone at least read the article, and that was my point in posting it anyway.
What I did get were a lot of questions about whether I would vaccinate Chai after he was a year old. These, I answered very frankly, that I am working on choosing a vaccination schedule I can feel confident in, and am currently considering using the Finnish vaccination schedule, but that my understanding of this issue is a work in progress.
Vaccines are sort of my Achilles heel as a parent. I have a very solid understanding of a lot of topics, but the vaccine issue troubles me, and always has. Even when Erin was a baby, before I knew it was my right to refuse vaccines, or to make my own schedule for them, I didn't feel right about the whole thing. I felt like there had to be a better way. Even then, my gut feeling was telling me that it wasn't right to give all these vaccines to tiny little babies. When Erin was 1, I started to refuse some of the vaccinations, most notably, the chicken pox vaccine. I thought to myself, "Why would anyone bother to vaccinate for chicken pox? That's not even that bad an illness."
That brings me to my next point. Some of the comments I got were from people telling me that they knew someone who had Measles, Mumps, Hepatitis A, or Tuberculosis, so they were vaccinating on that basis. Fair enough, but even with my understanding of the vaccine issue not being quite where I want it to be yet, I see a really notable flaw in this reasoning.
First of all, the US does not administer a TB vaccine. Canada does, but we don't. The TB test that the doctors do here is not a vaccine against TB. People need to understand that even with every vaccine on the US market coursing through their veins, they are not immune to tuberculosis. I don't blame these people for their lack of understanding. I blame vaccine marketing for making people believe they're invincible because they got a needle in their arm.
Second, let's look at the other diseases mentioned above. They were measles, mumps, and hep a.
Click here for a list of measles symptoms from the Mayo Clinic.
Click here for mumps symptoms (this is also from Mayo).
Click here for symptoms of hepatitis a (Mayo again).
Of those three, Hep A is the most severe, but still not this black plague of death that people would have us believe it is. What's more, it's a rather uncommon vaccine to get, and is only routinely given in certain regions (like where I live). The MMR vaccine is pretty much ubiquitous here in the US, and in many other countries, and has been connected to all kinds of horrible health consequences, yet the diseases it immunizes against really aren't that bad. What the hell?
THIS is why I stopped vaccinating until I can make some sense of this whole issue. We are pumping our kids full of all kinds of horrible chemicals, including known carcinogens, to prevent them from getting diseases that really weren't all that bad in the first place. What's more, we're doing it when they are so young that they are particularly vulnerable to these toxins, AND the real kicker in that is that the things don't even work at that age!! So we're pumping our kids full of toxic sludge for NOTHING, and then for minimal benefit, with unknown risk. No thanks.
Will I vaccinate again in the future? More than likely, yes. I want to be sure I know what I'm doing with it, though. I don't want to get pushed around by a pediatrician like I did when Orren was a baby, and I attempted a delayed and selective vaccination schedule. I want to get it right this time, and until I do, nobody in this family is getting vaccinated against anything.
I leave you with two thoughts. First of all, the other night, a commercial came on the radio, the goal of which was to scare parents into vaccinating. At the end of it, it said, "A message from the American Academy of Pediatrics, sponsored by Synofi Pasteur." Do you see what I see? The people who make the product teamed up with the people who get paid to administer the product, to use fear mongering, to hawk the product to the masses. This is why I'm skeptical of doctors. It's an industry. They are in it to make a profit, and they are way too linked in with the pharmaceutical companies. Can I get an honest message that WASN'T paid for by somebody who's going to try to sell me something in a syringe?!!
And finally, this.
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