To Vaccinate or Not
In 2011 a parent wrote to a journalist who had made comments about vaccines. The parent gives the reasons why she didn’t vaccinate her child. She has just given me a copy of that letter. Whether or not you agree with the dad, you have to agree he was responsible enough to think about and research what was to be injected into his baby. Her letter is quoted below:
Can I make a few comments you made in your Oct 6th comment on what parents should do and the medical profession should do regarding vaccines?
False Conclusions about Vaccination
The first big mistake you make is a common one made in the sciences; you assume without asking the basic question! You say three children died from measles in 2000. This is true, I remember this – they were all from Dublin. But you assume they were unvaccinated when they became infected but you don’t question this. The truth is that they had all been vaccinated! Not only that, but these weren’t your ordinarily healthy children because at least two had serious problems, possibly a heart defect and Down Syndrome, and the third had either a health issue or a difficult background soci-economically. This had all been researched by a UK journalist from the Daily Mail who came to Dublin specifically to research those deaths. His findings were never rebutted (to my knowledge). The vaccine failed them and the medical professionals were guilty of deluding their families into a false security – an argument often used against practitioners of alternative medicine.
The paediatric physician teaching at the Royal College of Physicians at the time wrote a one-sided article on the front page of the Sunday Times trying to frighten parents (not a rational or scientific argument but an emotive one) into vaccinating but failed to tell the truth about those kids.
The Royal College of Physicians of Ireland
Another journalist tried the same method in the Sunday Independent about the same time. But hers was totally illogical. She used the case of a child who developed pneumonia, as a sequel to measles, to try to frighten parents into vaccinating. However, in her article (which seems to have been written before the period which is available online) she then went on to tell us that this child who ended up in Temple Street hospital had been vaccinated! Not much of an argument, but wait for it; she went on to tell us that his younger brother didn’t end up in Temple St despite contracting measles and this sibling had not been vaccinated because, at 13 months, he was too young. Surely more an argument against vaccinating?
The main study to refute Dr Wakefield’s “findings” was done in Finland. It was the largest study but was carried out by drug companies, so I would question the objectivity.
You also make another assumption; that autism is the only question mark over vaccines and that that question mark is only in relation to the MMR. I would argue that people who promote vaccination sometimes have a blind spot.
Failings of Vaccines
You make no comment about the failings of the vaccines. As an example, how about the generation of students who had been vaccinated yet still got mumps the summer before last? The lady doctor who was a spokesperson for the HSE didn’t deny this on Pat Kenny’s radio programme when she revealed her plans to revaccinate those students. But why did she revaccinate? Those kids had had two doses, it’s a double dose vaccine and she took it upon herself – without scientific research into its safety as a triple dose vaccine or its effectiveness? And if it didn’t work the first two times why give more? A UTV programme about Andrew Wakefield, at the time of the controversy, called The Big Story, said that there were “no safety trials into double dose vaccines.”
I wonder how responsible you are in passing over the side-effects too glibly. How many women miscarried and (pregnant women who were given the mercury-free vaccine) developed facial paralysis and how many kids developed asthma? One child at my daughter’s school developed asthma after the first dose. So, to insist on the second dose, the child was taken into hospital, as often happens in such cases, and given his jab with a team of doctors holding insulin and cortisone injections at the ready to counter another possible reaction! Surely something that threatens a child like this can’t be good for them? Do you remember about 1993 when the MMR was taken off the market and the MR given instead because the mumps component caused encephalitis?
You claim that millions of vaccines provide effective protection. This is wrong. No doctor would make this claim. In fact vaccines can make you more susceptible to the respective disease. I’ll give you an example from last years epidemic of mumps. Two mothers (one a GP) told me that they each had two third level children who got mumps. In each family one child had one dose of the vaccine and the other child had had the two doses, yet both women could tell me that the child who had only one dose faired better than the other child who had been given the two doses, that the kids with two doses were extremely sick. The GP said her daughter’s face was a “foot wider”. The vaccines regularly fail, particularly whooping cough, mumps and measles.
The reason the Americans gave the chicken pox vaccine was not due to the frightening effects of the disease but so children would not lose time at school. Another vaccine for a common diarrheal infection used in the U.S. has since been taken off the market.
According to medicine, the only people in the developed world who acquire polio are the parents when changing their vaccinated child’s nappy – as with the man in the midland’s whom I remember suing his GP for not advising him properly. I remember it from the news about 1994.
Vaccines and Isopathy
One problem with modern vaccines and why they cannot be the big success you assume them to be is because they are isopathic prescriptions. Isopathy was disproven at least 200 years ago. Only a homeopathic prescription can prevent and treat effectively. You remember Jenner’s realisation that cowpox prevented smallpox? Two totally different diseases but similar in symptoms. One prevented the other because they were homeopathic to each other. Hahnemann pointed out that others had found the cough of measles so similar to the cough of whooping cough that measles immunised against pertussis. Likewise, people who worked in copper mines didn’t get cholera because, as Dr John Henry Clarke pointed out, the symptoms of copper are similar to cholera, i.e. copper symptoms are homeopathic to cholera. Somewhere along the line somebody made a total unjustifiable leap to isopathic prophylaxis, which will work sometimes only. Do you remember the German cameraman who died in the late nineties in Africa? Initially there was great excitement when it was assumed he had Ebola but then it turned out to be yellow fever, against which he had been immunized, according to his family! The story quickly died a death too.
No Immune Response
Vaccines raise questions in many ways. A vet told us not to vaccinate the dog for a few weeks because it may interfere with the mother’s antibodies. It reminded me of a surgeon who used to be in town here who said ‘a vaccine is meant to stimulate the immune system but a baby doesn’t have an immune system; so how can you stimulate an immune reaction?’ He didn’t vaccinate his last child.
I know you are telling parents what they should do but I think parents, if they are to be responsible, authentic and autonomous human beings should would be better to make an informed decision. This is at odds with the blind faith in vaccines many suggest.
Reasons Responsible Parent Refused to Vaccinate Child
So, what to do? Here’s what I did twelve years ago with my own child. I happened to be in London on holiday when she would have been due her vaccines. The headlines in London that week were about Merck who had broken the government guidelines for eleven years by using bovine spinal tissue to make the MMR vaccine (and you’d like me to entrust the welfare of my baby to them!).
Many people have been infected with CJD including in the west of Ireland where those victims have been quietly forgotten. One mother told me recently that she suddenly got a phone call from someone in the Department of health who casually told her her daughter was one of those injected with one of the possibly infected vaccines. “Goodbye”, the official said and put down the ‘phone. No help, no advice and certainly no compensation. Her GP told her, ‘Don’t worry about it for 20 years.’ While it’s easy for him to say that, I’m glad I didn’t give my child that vaccine
BCG
A doctor told one mother I know, when she brought her child to him with a badly suppurating arm and joint pain after the BCG, there was no need for this BCG programme. TB seems to be more associated with immigrants and the immune-compromised and as well as that, the TB expert in Cork wrote to the Dept of Health and the Royal College of Physicians requesting that they do not reintroduce the BCG as it would cause a surge in TB. Incidences of TB had decreased since it was stopped in the early 70s. Neither acknowledged his letter, according to the Sunday Independent. So, no BCG for my child! (Subsequently, in 2006, the Oireachtas debated the increased incidence of TB. The vice-chairman asked: “I noted that Cork and Dublin have the third and fourth highest incidence of the disease. Therefore, other factors must presumably pertain because respiratory physicians are found in both cities. Is there any other explanation for the incidence rates in these cities?”)
Further, when I arrived back home from that trip, the BCG hit the news here. It wasn’t potent we were told; get an extra shot. The UK denied there was a problem with the production of the vaccine by Powderject in Liverpool, according to the Financial Times (Unhealthy Business). The labour government were happy for all to keep faith in it because the chairman of Powderject had made two £50,000 donations to the Labour party. And one day walking round Tesco I heard s girl ask her mum, “Why are my joints sore since the vaccine on Monday?’ It reminded me of what one doctor said, ‘Even milk injected into the bloodstream is toxic”’ and another, ’If you are in perfect health, then something that changes your health status can’t make you more than perfect.’ (HIQA has since recommended ending the BCG programme, side-effects was cited.)
Polio
Why was the preparation quietly changed from the sugar lump?
DPT
There’s no chance of Diphtheria here. The Russian epidemic some years ago was somehow linked to the polio vaccine. Pertussis is the least effective and often doesn’t work! Tetanus is very rare and my child didn’t play in soil much.
German measles
It’s acknowledged that it would be better to get this harmless disease as a child, therefore giving lifelong immunity, instead of the vaccine which wears off by the teenage years whenwhen they need it.
Hepatitis B
Many nurses will tell you that it doesn’t work even after four doses the titres don’t come up – but often allergies do. Yes, side-effects aren’t rare but how does one know if it takes months for a reaction to evolve? I didn’t give it to my child because she wasn’t an intravenous drug user or promiscuous homosexual – those most susceptible to Hepatitis
Hepatitis B is given in America “Not because they [children] are susceptible but because they are accessible” according to a one time head of the American Pediatric Association.
Hib
Hib doesn’t protect against the serious meningitis infection.
Meningitis C
I’ve seen some awful reactions, not many but some awful ones
Flu jab
“Dad, why does nanny get the flu jab when it gives her the flu?” It’s a lie when we are told it doesn’t give you the flu. A drug can only protect insofar as it causes similar symptoms. Last year my mother, her sister and brother-in-law all developed intense coughs after the flu jab. My father coughed for six weeks after his flu jab and pneumonia jab – even though the flu season was over! (Doctors are paid twice remember, by the government and then charge a “consultation” fee, even though the nurse may administer it).
There seems to be a lot of confusion over vaccines too. There shouldn’t be a need to change the flu jab yearly. If it works it’ll immunise against any flu because the symptoms are similar (“crossover” effect). If a drug (vaccine) is close enough in the symptoms it can produce (its pathogenesis) to the disease it is to prevent, then it should be able to cover all strains of that disease, e.g. if cowpox can prevent smallpox a ‘flu jab should prevent any ‘flu?
The government medical advisor in Britain who was responsible for bringing in the mercury-free vaccines from Canada had financial links with the manufacturer. He was a professor of medicine at Birmingham – which raises more questions doesn’t it? Ends
Further Information
In a short video the head of Finlay, a Cuban vaccine manufacturer, explains how homeopathic vaccines helped prevent disease in Brazil.
Image: Wikipedia