Vaccinations / Vaccines

Hello parenting board! My baby will be here in less than a month.

And right now my concern is vaccines. There are two schools of thought on the subject. One is that they are needed and you should get them. This school of thought comes from the medical companies who make billions if not trillions of dollars off of the aforementioned shots.

And the other school of thought is that vaccines actual kill more than they save. And that they wreck havoc on your system. This idea is put forth mostly by parents whose children have died or had serious complications due to vaccines. And have then hired researchers…etc…to do studies. One study supposedly showed that un-vaccinated children are in general healthier than ones that have been vaccinated.

And please don’t respond with “My child is vaccinated and they are fine.” because to be honest…you can’t really guess how they would have been without the vaccinations…maybe their I.Q. would have been 20 points higher…and they would’ve caught colds half as much as they do now…who’s to say?

Anyway…a good friend of mine who is a doctor and graduated top in ALL of her classes (not exaggerating) refused to give her son ANY of the vaccinations…not one.

The website she recommended for me to check out is: vran.org

The two main things to check at that site are:

vran.org/docs/VRAN-Immunization- … eet-v6.pdf

And

vran.org/news-art/articles/need-know.pdf

But I also find the up to date scientific headlines along the side very interesting.

“May 2008 - Infant monkeys given standard doses of vaccines develop autism symptoms. Groundbreaking science supports the theory that vaccines can and do cause autism.”

Looking at individual info on the shots…I’m finding other interesting stuff. For example…a child who has been inoculated from small pox and still contracts it…is 5 times more likely to die from it than an un-inoculated child.

Considering one opinion comes from a corporation that makes it’s fortune on pumping chemicals into babies. And the other comes from concerned parents who have nothing to gain from all this…you can see which way I’m leaning right now.

Touchy subject that has been discussed here a couple of years ago, I believe. Before my son was born I had the same question and in my effort to find some answers came up against some heavy debates and interesting answers. There are very interesting books on the subject, a lot of websites with detail informations. I will try to link some of these books and websites if I can find them again.

What was your own personal conclusion after all your research?

I am convinced that many diseases, like the smallpox for example, have been nearly extinguished because vaccinations were given to almost all the children. Some of those diseases now gradually start to come back because more and more parents decide against vaccinations. We are lucky to be living in a world where vaccinations do exist, if everybody would stop getting them we’d soon have to deal with all sorts of life-threatening illnesses again.

Also, I think it’s necessary and more fair to have all healthy children vaccinated - so they can’t pass nasty diseases on to children who may have not been able to get vaccinated due to medical problems or conditions.

There are several things you can do to make the vaccinations less “dangerous” to your child.
Instead of having the 6 in 1 vaccine you can decide to have a 5 in 1 and then the hepatitis shot a few weeks later.
You can also strech the intervalls between the vaccinations, it’ll take longer to finish all of them but may be easier for your childs body to deal with them.

In my opinion it is very dangerous to decide against all the avccinations, unless you are a doctor and know exactly what you are doing, and are educated in alternative medicine like homeopathy for example.
I would never have my children NOT vaccinated only based on information I got from a book.

This is a great book on the subject.

amazon.com/Vaccine-Book-Deci … 190&sr=8-1

[quote=“starfish”]I am convinced that many diseases, like the smallpox for example, have been nearly extinguished because vaccinations were given to almost all the children. Some of those diseases now gradually start to come back because more and more parents decide against vaccinations. We are lucky to be living in a world where vaccinations do exist, if everybody would stop getting them we’d soon have to deal with all sorts of life-threatening illnesses again.

Also, I think it’s necessary and more fair to have all healthy children vaccinated - so they can’t pass nasty diseases on to children who may have not been able to get vaccinated due to medical problems or conditions.

There are several things you can do to make the vaccinations less “dangerous” to your child.
Instead of having the 6 in 1 vaccine you can decide to have a 5 in 1 and then the hepatitis shot a few weeks later.
You can also strech the intervalls between the vaccinations, it’ll take longer to finish all of them but may be easier for your childs body to deal with them.

In my opinion it is very dangerous to decide against all the avccinations, unless you are a doctor and know exactly what you are doing, and are educated in alternative medicine like homeopathy for example.
I would never have my children NOT vaccinated only based on information I got from a book.[/quote]

Did you read any of the info from the links I gave? They give some interesting info…for example some vaccines only work on about 50% of the people…so they hardly “wipe out” any of the diseases. And for the first time in human history we are becoming less and less healthy from one generation to the next…as more and more vaccines are being made.

Medical companies make trillions of dollars on these drugs. If they were found to be 100% harmful…we’d still all be receiving them regardless. Because once that kind of money is involved…change is next to impossible.

I simply gave you my opinion, based on the information I gathered while I was pregnant (from books, pediatricians and fellow mothers).
To be honest I didn’t read any of your links as I stopped reading about vaccinations once I made up my mind.
There’ll always be websites that state some vaccinations don’t work in 50% of the people or give the babies autism, and you’ll find other ones where you get reasons why it’s important and life-saving to get vaccinations.

I don’t believe we’re getting less and less healthy from generation to generation, where did you get that from? Your links? We do live a lot longer than people did 150 years ago and more and more children survive their first year of life, unlike in former times.

But I must tell you, we did give it a lot of thought and decided for our children not to have all the recommended vaccinations, we left out some of the not-so-necessary-to-get ones.

Just because they’re making millions doesn’t necessarily mean the vaccines are bad. Are the anti-vaccine lobby really thinking of our health, or are they in fact against the money grabbing drug companies? Are they scare mongering to sell a few books? There are several sides to that coin.

Maybe it depends on the disease.
Rubella is a vitally important vaccination for a girl. Hepatitis is quite rampant in Taiwan. Those diseases are worse than the vaccination.
Measles and mumps were just a week off school and then right as rain.

Some good and some bad I guess, you can’t tar them all with the same needle.

Polio no longer exists in the modern world, and Smallpox has been completely wiped out due to vaccinations.

“Juvenile diabetes is up 104% since 1980. Autism, once regarded as having a purely genetic etiology, increased more than a thousandfold in less than a generation. The incidence of asthma is up nearly 75%. Life-threatening food allergies doubled in the past decade. The prevalence of allergies increased nearly sixfold. Almost one in 10 children—between four and five million kids—have been diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder.”

More than a thousand fold…and then there’s this: “May 2008 - Infant monkeys given standard doses of vaccines develop autism symptoms. Groundbreaking science supports the theory that vaccines can and do cause autism.”

You put those two quotes together and they equal…Vaccines Create Mental Retardation.

Not bigger diets and artificial additives to food then?

It’s a bit vague. What vaccines? How many monkeys? It seems to suggest 100% which I find hard to believe.

Whilst I have no doubt that the drug companies are biased. The website you posted is not unbiased either. And I bet it’s not hard to find a doctor that approves of vaccination to counter yours that doesn’t.

Try to stay objective and not get caught up in emotional scaremongering. The truth lies somewhere in between. Get the opinion of several doctors.

And the Smallpox “statistic” is well dodgy too, the last known case was 30 years ago, since which I’m sure vaccine technology has improved a lot.

You seem to have made your mind up from one doctor and one website. This is not enough to make a informed decision.

Like the MMR vaccine, which was claim to have caused at the most 12 cases of autism. The original claim was withdrew after investigations proved it was bollocks, he is now being investigated for receiving funding from anti-MMR law cases. But many people were distrustful of the vaccine and believed it caused autism. There’s dodgy information, bias, and bare faced lies from both sides.

Yep, the people who started the anti-MMR scare were taking money from the anti-vaccine lobby. Are the vague unscientific studies you mentioned so innocent and truthful?

Take a quick look through this: briandeer.com/mmr/lancet-summary.htm Skip to the bottom for quick who-paid-who summary.
That’s only about one study on one vaccine, it says nothing about if others are safe or if other studies are valid. See how I’m keeping an open mind there? Just keep an open mind.

Here is the monkey link: safeminds.org/pressroom/infa … study.html

My problem is that I find more often than not the “conspiracy theorists” are correct. For a much lesser example…99% of the populous believe that if you break a new engine in gently it will last longer. When in fact after reading the less followed way of thought…I’ve discovered the best way to break-in a new engine is 1/4 mile sprints…for 20 miles…then change oil and you’re done. Which is so against the popular method of thought that people just laugh at you and call you an idiot when you say that’s the correct way to do it.

And it wasn’t that long ago that doctors were bragging about the health benefits of smoking. And the companies that made the cigarettes were saying they were neither physical addictive nor cancerous.

And then you’ve got 99.999% of the people believing we’ve walked on the moon. Nasa is at present planning to have people on the moon by 2020…so we supposedly were there in 1972…we never once went there again…and now it’s gonna take us another 12 years to get back. And people believe it’s something we already did. Not to mention that Neil Armstrong has refused to talk about his “visit” to the moon since coming back. He’s never given an interview about it. He’ll give conferences on other topics…just not his “moon walk”.

I know I’m getting way off topic here. It just seems…that the majority…is always…always…wrong. Heck, America’s presidential choices should be proof enough of that.

Anyway…I’m tired…it’s been a long day. G’nite all!

So the 5 people who funded it were pure evil and had vengeance on the brain? I guess that’s possible. I also guess that an evil conglomeration would seek to discredit the people that were trying to make it loose some money.

I’m trying not to be biased here…especially since my child will be forced to get at least some of these vaccinations considering I hear they won’t allow him into school without them. But it seems like I should trust concerned parents and doctors over the drug producers.

Yes, that’s because they found huge alien glass structures on the moon. Which they didn’t because they didn’t go there in the first place.

They need to redo all the technology because 1972 technology kept blowing up. Apollo 1, Apollo 13, Challenger, Columbia et al. Massive rethink. And they can take their time because they’re not racing the Russians. And it’s going to be twice as big.

Most people think that the central passage way in a church is called an aisle, of course it isn’t, noone ever walked down the aisle while getting married, that would look silly. Everyone thinks you have to steer in the direction you want to go on a motorcycle. But people aren’t always wrong. Most people now think that smoking is bad for you, might change again I suppose.

Keep doing that research and get as much info as possible :thumbsup:

Yes, you should. Especially doctors, plural. Parents have a tendency to get over emotional and link things that aren’t linked.

I’m not arguing with you. Just saying you need to get all the info and don’t make any rash decisions. I’ve heard arguments and studies on both sides, so I don’t really know which one is right.

Hey there Mordeth, My boy has been vaccinated and he is OK…
OK, just mucking you about. He is OK though… Haven’t seen you in the bike forum for a while or down the track, what’s been happening… Welcome to the parenting side :discodance:

Disease is out there. If there is a vaccination against it, I feel it is better to use it. I would hate for my boy to get one of those diseases and well whatever happens when you get them. Sure there is a chance of a reaction to the vaccination, as you are being exposed to the disease so you can build antibodies against it. You can also die from recieving anti-venom for a snake bite, but without the anti-venom you may surely die. I don’t think you can take the vaccine to help cure the disease once you contract it and some childhood diseases can kill or severely hanidcap.

Maybe have a look at what diseases are more common in where you are going to decide to raise you kid, “here” or “there”, then look at the seriousness of those diseases and if it is worth risking catching and then make a choice which vaccinations to let your kid recieve. And while some may say the vaccine might not work anyway, it definately won’t while it is sitting on the shelf of the doctor’s office.

I’m talking with two different doctors on the topic. Here are both their responses.

well, i still am in the camp that believes it is better to vaccinate than not, for all the obvious public health benefits that full vaccination brings. I do agree that getting all vaccinations in one shot could be a bit excessive, but I don’t agree that any single vaccination is too much for a baby’s immune system to cope with, far from it. in fact, one’s immune system is CONTINUALLY getting inoculated with foreign material, every single day, all the time.

I am a little wary, too, of sites like that vran site, where the only research they quote is the little that is done where researchers do claim a link between vaccination and neural damage. looking closer at their data, the studies are really small, they are not very well controlled, and if you check most of the research presented, it is presented at conferences (which are not peer-reviewed, meaning it is less trustworthy) rather than being accepted for publication in mainstream journals (where most good science ends up, including that which is first presented in preliminary small-scale form at a conference.

it is true that there has been an increase in autism, and that vaccination rates have increased too, at the same time. but autism is now much better recognised than ever before, and the definition has also widened to include less severe forms of the disease, which accounts for a lot of the increase. massive longitudinal studies have still not shown any good link between vaccination, in single of multiple form, and autism. perhaps there is some link between thiomercury and neural damage, but the connection is still poorly demonstrated.

drug companies do exist to make money for their shareholders, it is true, but they do that by making medicines that cure people, and prevent disease. vaccinations have successfully eliminated smallpox (last cases in the early 1970s), have nearly eradicated polio, and are being developed for malaria and other diseases that together kill millions of people worldwide every year. there is good evidence that measles and mumps will also be eliminated by vaccination programs. the total benefit to societies that favour vaccination is still considered to far outweigh the autism danger, especially since that is not at all proven.

but these successful programs depend on near universal vaccination, which is why vaccination is encouraged, not because they make drug company profits. in fact, drug companies make most of their money from things like cancer drugs, viagra and blood pressure medication, and vaccines are effectively just a break-even product that they would truthfully have little incentive to make were it not for govt health programs twisting their arms. not vaccinating your child can make him or her more at risk of measles and mumps and rubella and hepatitis, all of which are of much greater proven danger to your child, and the choice not to vaccinate also lengthens the time that vaccination is still necessary for the diseases we vaccinate against. once measles and mumps are actually eliminated, there will be no need to vaccinate against them, just like we no longer vaccinate against smallpox.


And this is in response to the above:

I very much agree with your friend’s response. Even I find the choice to immunize or not to immunize a difficult one. We all want to do what’s best for our children’s health. Here are a few points that I think are key however…

First, as your friend accurately points out, a child’s immune is system is continually getting inoculated with foreign material. However, there is a BIG difference between natural inoculation (ie. natural exposure to disease, be it bacterial infections or common childhood viruses such as chicken pox), and artificial inoculation, (ie. multiple vaccinations injected directly into the blood stream at regular intervals very early on in a child’s life). Secondly, there are NO good studies as to the long-term adverse effects of vaccine combinations. We are literally experimenting on our children based on the well-studied success of eradicating specific diseases, but at what cost- we really don’t fully know. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, a frightening percentage of vaccine reactions are NOT documented. As a doctor, I have seen many, many cases of vaccine-damage in children and not a single one has been formally documented as such with Manitoba Health. This is a kind of health research where the benefits, (and I’m not disputing the benefits of vaccines), are extremely well studied and documented but the damaging effects are are virtually ignored. There is a good reason for this however, because it it easy to ‘prove’ the positive effects of vaccination, but virtually impossible to ‘prove’ with certainty the negative effects. Such was the case with smoking and cancer as an example of the problems stemming from the framework of traditional medical studies. Because health is so infinitely multi-factorial, it is still virtually impossible to claim with certainty in any one case that smoking ‘causes’ lung cancer. The same is true for adverse effects of vaccination. Are there side effects? Absolutely! What are they? It depends. Are there long-term effects? Absolutely! What are they? We don’t really know for sure. But I can tell you from my personal experience with vaccine-damaged children that side effects of vaccinations absolutely exist and these effects are profoundly underrepresented in public health studies because they cannot be directly linked to vaccines, no matter how immediate or severe the reaction. Long-term effects are even more difficult to link directly. In any choice, it is so important to look at both sides of an argument. In this case, there is a vast difference between the studies looking into the benefits of vaccination versus the studies looking into the risks associated with vaccination.

Vaccination is, obviously, your own choice. However, if you want my honest opinion, I would recommend immunizing your child, but do so prudently. Do you really need to add the flu shot to an infants vaccine schedule? Is chicken pox really something that is worth immunizing? These are questions that only you can answer. I recommended VRAN because it is a well-informed group that offers a voice to the other side of the vaccine question, a voice that is not usually heard in mainstream medicine but that I think parents should at least be aware of before making health decisions regarding their children. I personally chose not to vaccinate because I have access to alternative medicine and feel confidant that I can treat my son and support his immune function in an effective, yet natural way. But it is still a choice that comes with its own set of pros and cons. I still to this day wonder if I am doing the best thing for him. I don’t know what kind of access you have to naturopathic or homeopathic medicine. A lot of my patients chose to immunize their children in conjunction with homeopathic treatment in order to offset and/or prevent the side-effects associated with vaccines. Ultimately, only you can decide what makes the most sense for you and your family.

Remember folk…a child who is inoculated against small pox and still gets it…is 5 times more likely to die from it than a child who hasn’t been inoculated.

It’s facts like that that need to be studied.

But yeah…looks like I’ll still be getting some of the vaccines…but I’m going to get fewer than most people…and I’m gonna try to hold off on getting them. I don’t think a 1 month old baby who’s brain is still being formed should have foreign animal matter being pumped directly into its blood circulatory system…that’s something that would NEVER happen naturally.

It’s admirable that you have decided to carefully research this decision, and your sharing it with us. I am disappointed, however, when you make statements like how drug companies make “trillions” of dollars off of vaccinations. Outlandish statements like that hurt your arguments: on one hand, you talk about the importance of facts, and at the same time, you make absurd statements about the motivations of pharmas and their lobbyists.

I used to work in Commercial Strategy at one of those firms - one of the largest vaccine companies, in fact - and even traveled to our global vaccines headquarters for the internal launch of our cervical cancer vaccine (targeted teenage girls, not infants). This product was hailed as a savior internally because of it’s vast potential: for profits as well as for the protection it is believed to offer. I won’t deny the interest of pharmaceutical companies to make a buck - but if you ignore that there is also a real interest in the industry to make products that actually make a difference to patients (ie. protect infants), then you have already made your decision about whether to vaccinate

I just want to re-iterate what one of your doctor friends above mentioned: that (infant) vaccines are NOT a major source of profits for drug companies. For one, they are high risk investments - the manufacturing processes for vaccines are easily contaminated, see the debacle that forced Chiron to sell itself to Novartis when their flu inventory was scrapped one season. And two, they are so hard to supply because they are so difficult to make - for relatively small markets like Taiwan, we are always in short supply of vaccines, which risks our losing face to government and key customers (hospitals)

Infant vaccines barely make any profits and are dismissed as commodities. I’ve heard arguments that the main reasons why my company hung on to it’s vaccine division was because (a) there are so few interested in getting into the vaccine business, it had grown into a major player by attrition and (b) vaccine supplies are great leverage when talking to governments, who are the real customers for vaccine makers (the “private” vaccine market is the segment we target with campaigns that produce vaccine advertising meant for parents - this is a small part of what a major drug company spends on and is concerned about)

As another poster here noted, once you make your decision, it seems prudent to stick with it and not look back. After all, if you choose to vaccinate, you won’t be able to do anything to change that decision afterwards

Be well

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All good posts. I’d like to add that babies are designed to survive. They can survive the vaccines. The point in vaccinating so early is to prevent a longer period of unprotected exposure to some serious diseases.

I think it’s great that you’re taking your parenting so seriously and that you’re making trully informed decisions. I waited a little longer for some of my son’s immunizations against the advice of the docs. I didn’t wait long though. Just giving him a chance to be a little more developed. He was a month early, after all. Also, we waited a little while for some because he was born just before the SARS outbreak and we just didnt’ take him out of the house.

Also, my son’s had the vaccinations they give in Taiwan, and those given in the States, as well. They’re not all the same in both places. I won’t allow him to have a second Pneumonia vaccine, as he had a terrible reaction to it. It’s pretty new. His doc reccomends it, but isn’t pushing for it. He’s now had all of them he’s going to have 'till he’s 10.

I talked to a nurse about this when my boy was little and she said, “Your grandmother would have walked 10 miles in the snow, up hill both ways, and without any shoes to have your mom vaccinated so well.”

BTW–I LOVE the vid!

“After thousands of vaccinations, a new U.S. report shows few suffer serious adverse reactions to the live chicken pox vaccine. The American Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) received more than 6500 reports of suspected adverse reactions to the live varicella vaccine from 1995 to 1998. Most of the events were minor, and 4% of the reports were declared serious. The most frequent reports were rashes, possible vaccine failure, a reaction at the injection site, herpes zoster and pneumonia, anaphylaxis shock, arthropathy and neurological syndromes such as meningitis, convulsion and ataxia. (loss of muscular coordination as a result of damage to the central nervous system.) There were 14 deaths associated with the varicella vaccine.”

An associate professor of pediatrics and child care health at the University of Manitoba, Dr. Barbara Law, stated, “I think this is reassuring. All of those things are things that either occur with chickenpox or occur following a foreign substance. None of them are happening in amounts that are significantly concerning. It is not unexpected and it is not surprising.”

There you have it… someone entrusted to safeguard the health and well-being of a child, considers 14 deaths to be reassuring and par for the course! And I guess she probably figures that the 12 deaths and thousands of serious adverse reactions reported from the Gardisil vaccine to be a positive sign as well. It should come as no surprise that doctors have one of the highest rates of any profession for avoidance of vaccines.

Odd how people still think that injecting yourself with mutated DNA, potentially contaminated animal tissue, aborted fetus cells, mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde and a host of other deleterious substances, is the best way to increase one’s health.

“Doctors give drugs of which they no little, into bodies of which they no less, for diseases of which they know nothing at all.” – Voltaire