I could devote an entire blog to this subject, but I'll try to keep it as brief as I can. That will be hard.
Why did we choose not to vaccinate?
When I was pregnant with my first child, I started reading a lot of books on the subject of pregnancy and childbirth. During that time, we decided to do homebirth. Our Bradley instructor and my midwife suggested we wait till our baby was at least 6 months old to vaccinate, to give their immune system some time to develop. That was about all I had learned about it.
When Cody was 3 days old, we took him to the pediatrician for a well check up. They wanted to give him the Hepatitis B shot. I questioned the nurse and asked if he really needed that at just 3 days old. She explained that Hepatitis is contacted through sexual contact or sharing needles. I was pretty sure he would not be getting into either of those at 3 days old. She then said he could get it from restaurants, day cares, or anywhere and it was very dangerous and he needed to be vaccinated for his protection. I was kind of leary, but let them do it. (By the way, by the time I had my third child, my doctor was no longer giving this shot at birth. The nurse actually told me that giving a vaccination to a 1 day old newborn was dangerous to the baby's health so they don't do it anymore - they give it later. Thank you for testing that out on my child.)
At his two month check up, he also received shots. I was still not sure about it, but they again talked me into it, using their scare tactics and giving you that look and tone of, "Oh, honey. You're so young and naive. You don't know what's best for your baby...we do."
By his next check up, I had decided to look on the Internet to get more information on vaccines and their safety. In my gut, something just didn't feel right. (This is your God-given mommy instinct. Listen to it!) One other big reason I had questions about vaccine safety was because of a woman at my Dad's company. This is the sweetest woman you will ever meet. She has a 30-year old son with severe autism who is living in an institution. Her son was developing fairly normally with just a few oddities, but nothing alarming.
One day when he was 5, he woke up one morning and he had lost most of his speech and has never been the same since. She was told he had autism. I asked her if she thought it was from the vaccines, and she said she did think that had something to do with it because he did get the MMR vaccine around that time.
I had another friend who had just told me that her co-worker had two sons with autism and she thought it was from the vaccines. This was in the year 2000, when rumor had just started to spread about the MMR vaccine possibly causing autism. I didn't have to spend much time contemplating this one. It just seemed like common sense to me. I knew too many people or had heard of too many people with kids with autism, and I knew not one child with polio, measles, mumps, or rubella.
Even if my child did come down with some of the things they vaccinate for like chicken pox or the flu, I didn't feel there was a high likelihood that they would die or develop a serious, life altering disorder like autism. We have advanced medical care here in the U.S. The people that die from these diseases today are often dying because they live in third world countries where they don't have the access or money to get to a doctor for treatment. They also often are not able to practice good hygiene which would prevent the attaining of and spreading of these diseases because of severe poverty.
Polio has almost been eradicated. At the time of this writing (2009) , the last case of polio was in 1993 in Peru, and the man who got it, caught it through someone who had received the polio vaccine. Children in the U.S. today are at an extremely low risk for polio so why continue vaccinating them when the risk of autism is much higher (like 1 in 150!)? My doctor even told me when my son was a baby that they may stop vaccinating for polio soon.
It just seemed to me that my kids had a greater chance of developing autism or of having a bad reaction to a vaccine than they did of acquiring one of these diseases they vaccinate for. If they did happen to get one of these diseases, the chances of them having serious or life threatening affects from them were low.
So I began to research. I read books on the subject as well as researched online. I came across the Illinois Vaccine Awareness Coalition (IVAC) web site - www.vaccineawareness.org.
The site had some very helpful information that helped me make my decision to no longer vaccinate. The stats alone were astonishing. These stats came straight from the CDC (Center for Disease Control). This alone blew my mind. Why hadn't my doctor shared these statistics with me? Why did he only show me vague information which claimed these vaccines were "safe?"
The information I saw on the CDC's web site was straight from the horses mouth. The same government that was trying to force me to vaccinate my child was telling me how many kids died from each vaccine (some vaccines more than others oddly) and how many more suffered severe reactions. These are not the stats your doctor is going to share with you.
The IVAC web site states that these numbers are likely MUCH higher in actuality because many reactions are not reported by the doctors, and still many more have reactions or fatalities and don't realize they were vaccine related.
I couldn't believe how high the numbers were and how little I had heard of it in the news. If all these kids are having reactions and even dying, why haven't we heard about it? Why aren't we being warned when we question the safety of these vaccines in our doctor's office? (I've heard they may be working on making this a requirement finally).
When I finally did tell my doctor we were no longer going to vaccinate, I got to listen to a speech about why vaccines are necessary and how they basically thought I was crazy for not giving them, and how they don't cause autism. I told her all the research I had done on vaccines, and how I didn't feel they were safe.
My doctor then gave me a ONE page flyer trying to convince me otherwise that basically said, "Vaccines are safe and necessary." No stats. No mention of serious side effects. No mention of the number of kids who have died from these vaccinations. No mention of the number of kids who have been diagnosed with autism after receiving vaccinations. No mention of where these vaccines come from and how they are made. No mention that they contain deadly toxins like mercury and aluminum.
If a glass vile of a vaccine is accidentally dropped in a doctor's office, it is considered hazardous material and must be carefully disposed of, yet we inject it into our newborns? Do the doctor's merely not know any of this information? If by chance they don't know, I think it's time they educate themselves for the sake of their patients and get their information from sources other than the American Academy of Pediatrics or the pharmacies who are making billions of dollars making these vaccines.
So where do vaccines come from?
Many of the vaccines are made by growing a live virus such as measles in a living organism. They can use aborted fetuses (this can be a major issue for Christians against abortion), cows (some of these could have had mad cow disease), or monkeys and apes (who could have various diseases as well including HIV/AIDS).
I saw on the news a couple of years ago that they had linked a large group of people who were now in their 50's all coming down with the same rare disease that had only been seen in a group of monkeys. This group of monkeys was the same group that was used to make a polio vaccine that this age group had received when they were younger. So, it took them how many years to discover that this vaccine that thousands of kids received was tainted? How long will it take them to figure out the very vaccines we are giving our children today are causing problems (such as autism, ADHD, childhood diabetes, seizure disorders, severe food and environmental allergies, asthma)?
In order for a vaccine to recieve FDA approval, they only have to watch for negative side effects for the first 20 days. 20 days! They are not required to do any studies to watch for long term effects. Isn't it the FDA's job to protect us? Don't count on it. It's your job as a parent to protect your child and no one else's. The government looks out for the best interest of the country as a whole, not the individual, and most decisions are money driven. What's good for the whole is not always what's best for the individual.
Take vaccine injury lawsuits for example. They put a cap on how much you can sue Big Pharma for vaccine injury related deaths - $250,000. On certain vaccines, they recently blocked any lawsuits from being filed. Why? Because they knew there would be lawsuits, and that if they allowed them, the pharmacy that made them would go bankrupt and the government would have no company left to make the vaccines that they need for military personnel and to protect the country from biological warfare. That doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling about vaccines or the government's job of protecting us.
Ever seen those signs at your doctor's office about a shortage in tetanus or flu shots. Why is their a shortage? Because there are only one or two pharmaceutical companies left who will make the vaccine. The others stopped making them because they were no longer profitable because of all the lawsuits and probably their high cost of insurance to make them. I'm sure the government backed the last company left who are making them.
Think vaccines no longer contain mercury? Think again.
At minimum, the flu vaccines still contain mercury. As for the other vaccines, the pharmaceutical companies merely received a suggestion from the government to stop adding thimersol (mercury) to the vaccines, but it was not mandated, and some still do contain mercury. You can check with your doctor on the ones they have in their office, but I would not take their word for it. Ask to look on the vile yourself if you choose to vaccinate.
So what if the mercury is not in the vaccine you choose to give your child? It's OK then right? Wrong. They still use aluminum to preserve the vaccines, which is just as toxic as mercury. Aluminum combined with mercury is extremely toxic, and one vaccine may contain mercury and one aluminum, and the two shots are often given on the same day. Some studies have shown that aluminum is just as toxic as mercury. We've all heard that aluminum has been shown to cause Alzheimer's Disease.
It didn't take me long to come to the conclusion that I was never going to give my son another vaccination. I would highly recommend if you have young children or are thinking about having children, that you educate yourself before getting to the doctor's office or before your baby is born.
Do NOT go into the office saying, oh I'm not sure. I think I'll "discuss" it with my doctor. You will not get a biased answer and I believe they are required to tell you that vaccines are safe, whether they believe it or not. Dentists can lose their license if they tell a patient that the mercury in amalgam fillings are not safe, even if they believe they are not. So much for freedom of speech in America.
If you do choose to vaccinate, you need to take the proper precautions. These are just off the top of my head. The best precaution of course is not to vaccinate at all.
1. Do not give your child vaccinations if they are sick. The viruses and toxins in the vaccines, on top of the virus or bacteria they are trying to fight off, will be WAY too much for their immune system to handle. If your child is sick all the time, this should be a clue to you. Stop vaccinating.
2. Do not give your child Tylenol either before or after the vaccinations. I had never heard this before recently. Tylenol lowers glutathione levels in the body. Glutathione is necessary to help the body remove toxins (such as live viruses and mercury). If the body cannot remove the toxins from the body, they can cause devastating effects. One of the many causes of autism is toxin overload. Glutathione gel is one of the treatments for autism.
3. Do not give vaccinations if there is a history of autism in the family, or especially if there is a history of developmental delay in the immediate family. Some kids are born with mitochondrial dysfunction or immune system dysfunction, sometimes passed on to the child from the mother. If you add vaccinations to the mix, you too often get autism. Many vaccines are given so early in a child's life, that it's hard to determine whether they were born that way, or if it was caused by the vaccinations themselves. If you notice your child is not meeting developmental markers or is not talking age appropriately, stop vaccinating.
4. If your child has had seizures, stop vaccinating. Many of the moms with kids with autism have kids with seizure disorders as well. One mom told me she looked back at her child's health records, and all of his febrile (fever induced) seizures took place within one week of his vaccinations. Vaccines CAN cause seizure disorders to develop in children. I've read and have been told by my doctor that children usually outgrow seizures by about 5-6 years old. Hmmm. That's just about the same time when they stop giving a bunch of vaccinations. And many moms report seizures starting when the child is several months old - around the same time when they are bombarded with vaccines. If your child has seizures, note when they occurred in relation to when they received their vaccines.
5. Ask for the MMR vaccine to be given as three separate shots instead of one and don't give them all on the same day. This vaccine is notorious for attributing to autism.
6. If your child misses some vaccines when they are younger, do not give "catch up" shots for Kindergarten. Read about the Hannah Poling case. This is what her family did. She was a neurotypical child. When she was 5, she was given 9 shots in one day in order to catch her up for missed shots so she could enter Kindergarten. She got very sick over the next few months, developed a severe seizure disorder, and within a few months, developed severe autism.
Her parents sued and won! This is one of the few cases of vaccine injury that has won in court. There are 65 other similar cases in the Supreme Court today awaiting trial. The reason this is so important is because they were able to prove that before her shots, she was completely normal, had full speech, no behavioral issues, no seizures. After the shots, she changed. (This is what parents of kids with autism have been screaming for years. If you have a baby who has been vaccinated since at least 2 months old or from the day of birth, it is almost impossible to prove that they weren't born with autism.
However, so many parents have said that after their 18 month MMR vaccination, their child became a completely different child, lost the speech they had, lost interest in things, and sunk into their own little world, never to come back.) They tested Hannah and discovered she had mitochondrial dysfunction which when they added the vaccines, it triggered autism. This is often the case. A child usually has some kind of issue going on to begin with and when you add vaccines, you completely aggravate the issue, causing them to spiral into autism.
It is difficult to tell as a newborn if your child has any issues yet, but there are some tests you can do, and researchers should look into that aspect before suggesting that every child should be vaccinated. Not every child can handle the onslaught of junk that is being injected into them. That is why it is important that if you already have a child with issues, you do not vaccinate your other children. There can be a genetic predisposition there that you don't want to take any chances with. There are many cases of autism, where the parents decided not to vaccinate their next child at all, and that turns out to be their only child without issues. Go figure.
7. Help your child's body fight off the viruses that were injected into them by supporting their immune system. Give them Vitamin C, plenty of rest, lots of water to flush out the toxins, epsom salt baths, glutathione gel, etc. Treat them like you would if they were sick. Their immune system just got dealt a huge blow and they will be trying to fend off the invaders (the viruses and the toxins like mercury and aluminum), whether they appear sick or not. How would you feel if you came down with measles, mumps, rubella, polio, and hepatitis all in the same day? Oh, and throw in one of the most dangerous substances on earth - mercury. Now imagine you weigh just 10 to 20 pounds.
8. Before you vaccinate, educate! Educate yourself on vaccines and their safety before you get to the doctor's office or before your first child is born.
Some good books:
What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Children's Vaccinations by Dr. Stephanie Cave
Don't Vaccinate! Before You Educate by Dr. Mayer Eisenstein
The Flu Hoax by Dr. Joseph Mercola
A good DVD Documentary: The Greater Good
9. Pray that your child does not have a negative reaction to the vaccines.
10. Pray before you vaccinate and ask God for guidance on your decision and ask Him to reveal to you if you should not vaccinate.
One more reason why we don't vaccinate and why I have little fear for my children catching one of these diseases: faith in God. God is in control of everything first and foremost. I'm not against doctors and medicine. There is a time and a place for man-made medicine. But, I believe that God gave us all that we need to prevent, treat, and heal our bodies through food, herbs, and everything else on this earth. I don't believe he would put us here without the means to properly take care of ourselves. That would just be cruel, and God is a loving God.
Many of the times that we need modern medicine is because we have failed to properly care for our bodies, and for the earth for that matter. Sometimes we can do all that we can personally, but the earth is so polluted, we are still bombarded with toxins. If we took care of our children's health and maintained proper health, especially with the way they eat, I don't believe our kids would be at serious risk for these diseases.
I have faith that God will protect my children from these diseases because we have chosen to honor God in our decision to not vaccinate. We do not choose to willingly inject into our children something that we KNOW is harmful. We are responsible before God for their well being and safety and we believe we are protecting them from some very harmful toxic substances.
These diseases were already on the decline when vaccines were introduced. Why? Because of hygiene and better living conditions, not because of the vaccines themselves. Doctors used to never wash their hands in between seeing patients. Some doctors worked on dead bodies, then walked over to a delivery room and delivered a baby. The woman would contract an infection and die. That is why only the poor delivered their babies in hospitals. The rich delivered at home. They were afraid of getting infections from the hospital. They had no idea that if the doctor would just wash his hands, they could prevent the spread of infections and prevent deaths.
How simple, yet the man who first suggested this was laughed at and considered a fool in his time. Some discount the idea that vaccines could cause so many issues and so many cases of autism, but I believe it is only a matter of time before they realize all these moms and DAN! (Defeat Autism Now!) doctors were right. But this will be at the expense of too many innocent children and families.
But, think about vaccines. In order to try to stop the spread of a disease, we are going to intentionally inject our BABIES with the disease, so that their bodies will create an immunity to it and they won't catch the disease.
That so called "immunity" only lasts for so long (which is why kids get more than one dose of a vaccine), and it is not 100% effective for preventing the disease. The flu vaccine is an example. Dr. Mercola wrote a book on it called The Flu Hoax. Rarely does the flu vaccine prevent you from getting the flu, or even a "lesser degree" of it. There are tons of strains of flu and they never know which is going to be going around the next year when they make them. They guess! Many of the flu vaccines also contain mercury.
How Would My Child Go to School Without Shots?
Mine do. The laws vary by state. In California, a parent just needs to sign a waver that they don't want to vaccinate. How nice. We live in Illinois. Here, you must write a letter to your child's school claiming religious exemption or you can get your doctor to sign a note saying that it would be a health risk to vaccinate your child.
If you have a child already with autism, you can try to get your doctor to sign one if they're willing, but it's easier to write a religious exemption letter. In Illinois, you must be specific in using certain words like "spiritual" or "higher power" at least 3 times, and other phrases. It's kind of ludicrous.
I got an example off of IVAC's web site. Below is the letter we have used at about 8 different schools - public and private, churches and preschools. No one has questioned it. I have been told that if a case of one of these infectious diseases goes around, they may require our child to stay home for a time. They think that because our child isn't vaccinated, they will catch the disease and spread it to others. This makes no sense to me, because it's most likely that whoever has the disease WAS vaccinated, so why did they get it? They believe that we would be putting other kids at risk, but if all the rest of the kids are vaccinated and if vaccines are effective, why should they be at risk at all?
Religious Exemption Letter
To Whom It May Concern:
As parents, based on our personal religious beliefs, we object to the following vaccinations, including but not limited to, Dtap/DPT, HepB, Hib, Tetanus (TB), MMR, Polio, and Varicella (Chicken Pox), for our child, ___________.
Our child’s body is the temple of God. Our family’s personal religious beliefs prohibit the injection of foreign substances into our bodies. To inject into our child any substance which would alter the state into which he was born would be to criticize our Lord and question His divine omnipotence. Our faith will not allow us to question our Lord and God, nor to challenge His divine power.
I Corithians 6: 19-20, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? …Therefore honor God with your body.”
II Corinthians 7:1, “…let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.
Our objection is based on our lifelong, deeply-held spiritual beliefs based on scripture.
The vaccination of our child violates laws put forth within us by a higher force at the time of conception.
Our personal religious beliefs include our obedience to God’s law, the Holy Bible, and we believe that we are responsible before God for the life and safety of our child, created by God.
Respectfully,
Your name
One thing that I was surprised to find when we started the GFCF diet was how many parents of kids with autism believe that vaccines were a huge contributing factor to their child's development of autism. I would say it's close to 100% of the people on the GFCF forum and close to 100% of the parents attending Autism One conferences where Jenny McCarthy speaks.
My daughter was never vaccinated, but I believe if she was, she would have severe autism. She also has a severe egg allergy. Some vaccines are made from eggs. If she were vaccinated, she could have had a severe allergic reaction. If my son Dylan was vaccinated, I can't imagine how much worse his seizures could have been, and he may have suffered seizures much earlier than 12 months old, when he may not have been so lucky to survive them.
Some people in the spotlight like Jenny McCarthy will say they are not anti-vaccines. I'm not afraid to admit it - I'm anti-vaccines. I don't think there is a way to "green" our vaccines. Without using potent toxins like mercury and aluminum to preserve these vaccines, they are no good. I don't believe they know of any other way to preserve them.
I also think that the reason some of the people in the spotlight say they are not anti-vaccine is so that people don't discount them completely. Jenny says in her book that if she ever had another child, she would not vaccinate them. She did stop vaccinating her son, Evan when she started biomed. She's also under attack from big pharmacy companies and others who make literally billions of dollars off vaccines and don't like her speaking out against vaccines. She now has a body guard.
Vaccines may cause 70% of all cases of autism. Here's a staggering statistic of a recent poll: Of those parents who have recovered their children from autism, 99% stopped vaccinating after beginning biomed treatment. Of those kids that were not responding to biomedical treatment, 79% of them were still vaccinating. This shows a strong link between vaccines and autism.
In Amish communities where they don't vaccinate, there is almost no autism. In the U.S. population, as of 2009, 1 in 150 children has some form of autism). What's the stats for children with Hepatitis - like 1 in a million, if that? You do the math. I'll take my chances with those instead and trust God.
I could go on forever. There is so much information out there on the safety (or non-safety) of vaccines. There's even more info out there today than there was in the year 2000. You owe it to your children to at least research it before you decide to vaccinate. Don't get your information from your doctor either! Your doctor will not give you the facts and it requires longer than 2 minutes in your doctor's office to gather all the information about vaccinations. How long did it take you to read this post? And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Related Posts:
Vaccine Q and A
Vaccine Letter of Exemption
Labels: Why We Don't Vaccinate
