The Vaccine Decision

There is no decision that has caused me more anxiety as a parent so far than that of whether or not to vaccinate my son. A wrong decision either way could have grave consequences, but who is to say what a wrong decision is?

The medical community will, of course, tell us that vaccines are necessary, that we would be crazy not to do something that could prevent our children from having serious illnesses.

But is it possible that their motives aren’t entirely pure? Is it possible that they are driven by a pharmaceutical industry that is making HUGE amounts of money? Is it also possible that the Center for Disease Control may know that they are at least partially wrong about vaccines and their consequences, but wouldn’t dare admit it because doing so would result not only in massive lawsuits, but also in a public distrust in them, in parents not vaccinating their children at all and the potential return of epidemics to our country that had previously been eradicated?

There is a lot of hype involved. I noticed this about the flu vaccine long before I became a parent. Every year there is some crisis, such as a “shortage” of the vaccine, so everyone must hurry and get theirs before it runs out. (Amazingly, they never do.) Or perhaps the flu will be a particularly deadly strain this year, and we must get vaccinated right away or risk certain death. But, whew, in the end enough people got vaccinated to keep it from spreading and we dodged another bullet. But next year . . . Interestingly, the only person I knew who had the flu last winter had actually gotten the vaccine (but of course, she was told, she had a milder case of it than she otherwise would have, had she not gotten the vaccine).

I’m not sure, but I believe doctors may take a drama class in medical school. They are prepared for parents like me who suggest that maybe vaccines are not the best option. “WHAT?? You would consider not vaccinating your child? Do you know what the consequences could be if you don’t?” Like they’ve never heard of such a crazy idea.

In a doctor’s defense, they constantly have the risk of a medical malpractice suit hanging over their heads. If my doctor were to agree with me that yes, choosing not to vaccinate your child is a valid option, and then my child were to acquire some illness that a vaccine might have possibly prevented, then I could easily slap a huge malpractice suit on my doctor. So that, of course, is a driving factor in their dramatic presentations.

We are led to believe that vaccines are required by law. They are not. We are told that children must be vaccinated before attending a public school, but in truth, you are allowed to “opt out,” based on your own philosophical reasons.

For many years, everyone just accepted their doctor’s word. If the doctor said their child needed a vaccine, they got one. But now we are in the information age. We have the Internet, where articles on virtually every topic in the world are available to anyone and everyone. Now we can find out all we want to know about vaccines, not just take our doctor’s word for it, though we have to realize that just because something is on the Internet, it isn’t necessarily accurate. We have to also use our common sense and get our information from a variety of sources.

But why would I NOT want to vaccinate my child? There are a multitude of reasons, but you have to dig to find them because the above-mentioned entities do not want to you to even be aware of them.

Vaccines can have side effects. They are hard to prove, and when you’re fighting such huge organizations, the little guy usually loses. But the parent whose 2-month-old baby dies of “SIDS” (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) within a few days after receiving a series of vaccines, or the parent whose healthy toddler gets his MMR shot and suddenly develops full-blown autism can tell you that these things are real. And then it is too late to do anything about them. And the medical community generally won’t admit that there is a connection. Incidentally, the United States comes in 46th for their infant mortality rate for children under one year of age. That means 45 countries have less babies dying, including far less developed countries. After all those vaccines we give to our infants. . .

There is a lot about vaccines that doctors won’t tell you. Did you know that many of them are made from tissue from aborted fetuses? Did you know that they contain poisonous materials such as mercury, something you would normally keep your child from ingesting at all costs, yet in vaccinating, you are injecting it directly into his body? It is also speculated that this unnatural way of forcing these foreign substances into the body can actually harm the immune system rather than build it up. What’s more, vaccines are not always even effective against the viruses they are designed to prevent.

“But the risks are much lower than the risks of getting the viruses,” they will tell a parent like me, who dares to question. Are they?? Do you know anyone whose baby has died of SIDS? What about a child with Autism? Both of these are currently “unexplainable.” A doctor will assure you that they’re not associated with vaccines, but how can they prove that, if they can’t tell you what did cause them? The SIDS rate is highest between 2 and 4 months of age, right at the time babies get their first rounds of vaccinations, often 6 or more at one time. Other things have been associated with vaccines too, including ADHD and more, even possibly diabetes and some types of cancer.

Medicine is a science. Everything is an experiment. If things work time after time, they are generally considered true, but there are always exceptions. Everyone’s body is different and reacts differently to things. Some things have long-term effects; it may be years before we see those effects and even longer before we can unquestionably associate them with certain causes.

The currently recommended number of vaccines given to infants under one year of age is approximately 26, beginning with Hepatitis B in the hospital within hours of their birth (this, by the way, is an illness generally spread through sexual contact or by sharing used hypodermic needles, which the majority of babies hopefully never encounter). This number has increased dramatically in recent years as more vaccines are being developed. So have the number of Autism cases. Hmmm. Some of them are for diseases that are really not all that serious (isn’t chickenpox just a rite of passage in childhood?). And there is currently discussion about adding 4 doses of a Meningococcal vaccine to this schedule.

So, what is a parent to do? Danged if you do; danged if you don’t. I wish I could conclude this article by telling you the right answer. I wish I knew it myself and could confidently take my child in for his routine vaccines, knowing that I am doing the best thing I can do for him. Or not vaccinate him at all with full assurance that he will never contact any of the illnesses.

But I can’t do either of those things. I have prayed about this. A lot. And I have yet to feel a complete peace about any of the options available to me. I have talked to a number of other parents, ranging from those who are adamant that their children shouldn’t have any vaccines, to those who completely trust their pediatrician and agree to give their children every vaccine recommended. And others, like me, who just don’t know what to do. I have even talked to a couple who feel certain their children were affected by their vaccines, one suffering seizures and another, Autism.

My current plan is to follow Dr. Bob Sears’ selective vaccine schedule. He has a program for spreading out the most important infant vaccines (so they don’t get so many at once) and then waiting on the others, or putting them off indefinitely. I’m not sure my husband is in total agreement, but he will admit that he doesn’t have all the answers either. My pediatrician may balk (some would treat me like a complete idiot; mine isn’t quite that bad), but I’m really trying to do the best thing, based on prayer, my research and my own maternal instincts.

If you want to read more about this, here are some websites that may interest you:

Dr. Bob Sears
Center for Disease Control Vaccine schedule
Infant mortality rate - Wikipedia
Aborted fetal cells in vaccines
National Vaccine Information Center
Mercola - Meningococcal Vaccine article