By the time we got the letter, my son was already excited about sixth grade and going to middle school. He had been through a wonderful weeklong orientation, met his teachers, found his locker, and felt like he already fit in. He loved the sixth grade team (so did I) and couldn’t wait to play drums and join the band. Fifth grade had been miserable with his beloved teacher leaving and a bully who made it his daily mission to get my son in trouble.
Then we received the letter stating, “all incoming sixth graders must get the pertussis (whooping cough) booster before the start of school.” I found it odd that only the sixth grade was mentioned. There were two other grades there that all interacted in the halls, gym, etc.
My first call was to the school nurse. She assured me it was mandatory and necessary due to an outbreak of whooping cough cases in the school system. The outbreak was believed to originate from a child in middle school who had not been vaccinated for religious reasons. The only way to opt out was to obtain a medical exemption from my pediatrician.
Call number two to my pediatrician led to what I have come to learn is the “standard” for most practices: Vaccinate or find another pediatrician—no exception. You will not be allowed back into the practice. My pediatrician’s office is fifteen minutes away, but in another state. They did not require this booster—but insisted that I had to follow the health department guidelines in mine.
Call number three to another nurse at the health department again confirmed that indeed it was mandatory and there were no exceptions. There are two states in this great big world that have no religious or philosophical (personal belief) exemptions and I live in one of them!
The choice to vaccinate my child came down to this: vaccinate and attend school and be able to participate in all school activities or lose my trusted and loved pediatrician and homeschool my son through grade twelve. While I am a big fan of homeschooling and did it before, there are lessons that only middle school friends of all types and caring educators like the sixth grade team can teach. Adversity and social skills help you grow and become and find the lesson in everything. I believe every child has unique gifts to share. Friends matter. The band instructor was awesome. My son would never be allowed back in the school system to attend anything until he was vaccinated. Perhaps they were going to brand him with a big scarlet U. How else would they keep track of him? I didn’t want him to feel like an outcast. Would they let him in church? The supermarket? I didn’t want to lose my beloved pediatrician. The decision was difficult for me as a naturopath, but I chose to vaccinate. At the same time, I chose to detox.
At this point, my nursing and intuitive skills kicked in and I called the health department once again. If there were no exceptions to the vaccination rule—then how did an unvaccinated child due to religious beliefs get in the school to begin with? The nurse I talked to at the health department said the child in question had been vaccinated. The reason I had to vaccinate my child was not to protect him from getting whooping cough—but to prevent him from spreading it to someone else. There was fear of an epidemic if the disease kept spreading. If he did contract the disease, it would be milder and less severe. One more question (I ask a lot of them!). Why only vaccinate one out of three grades that all attend and interact daily at the same school? The other two grades had the “option” of vaccinating if they were worried about getting the disease. I found out that only some of the seventh and eight grade students got the letter. I had a difficult time comprehending this. I was not one of those “anti-vaccination” people. I was just trying to do what I felt was best for my child.
The logic escaped me. In fact, it seemed completely illogical. Natural immunity is a process. Vaccinations are injections. There is a difference. The body has a miraculous system of defenses beginning with your skin. When you forcefully inject pathogens, toxins, and “adjuvants” through its delicate matrix, you allow those things direct access to your blood stream and a free passport to lodge and take up residence anywhere; bypassing the first line of protection—and entering your bloodstream too rapidly for your body to produce anti-bodies–which is the purpose of vaccines.
In order to produce anti-bodies, you must have some semblance of an immune system. There are two populations that have limited ability to produce anti-bodies—infants and the elderly. If you can’t produce anti bodies—then the purpose of vaccination would be pointless. The purpose being—inject a pathogen and produce anti-bodies against it. I get that.
When a child is born, his/her gut is sterile. Nothing has ever passed through the mouth. No munching nachos in utero—only what is passed through the umbilical chord from the bloodstream of the mother. It doesn’t take a village (in case you missed the book)—but it does take at least six months to build an immune system in that magical immune factory aka your gut or small intestine. It also ideally takes breast milk from the mother to pass along natural immunity. One drop of breast milk contains about a million white blood cells. Commercial baby formula has none. Until immunity is established—a baby can’t produce antibodies. Even after the first six months, a child’s immune system is very immature until at least the age of two. That’s assuming he/she was breastfed. Elderly people suffer from years of compromised immune systems as well—infections, chronic illness, medications, poor nutrition, declining hygiene, emotional loneliness—all take their toll. Ironically—the two most heavily vaccinated populations are infants and the elderly. How logical is it then to expose babies to 24 vaccinations by the time they are 2 years old? And be sure to get your flu shot grandma!
Oh snap! It didn’t work this year remember?
“Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit”
Another population with a compromised immune system is anyone undergoing cancer treatment. One of the first things real life MD’s warn them about is being around anyone who has had live-virus vaccinations. These viruses shed for as much as four weeks and can have devastating implications to an already immunocompromised cancer patient. Family members of these patients are allowed vaccine exemptions. Here is one of many package inserts:
“Shedding of vaccine viruses within 28 days of vaccination with FluMist was evaluated in (1) multi-center study MI-CP129 which enrolled healthy individuals 6 through 59 months of age (N = 200); and (2) multi-center study FM026 which enrolled healthy individuals 5 through 49 years of age (N = 344). In each study, nasal secretions were obtained daily for the first 7 days and every other day through either Day 25 and on Day 28 or through Day 28. In study MI-CP129, individuals with a positive shedding sample at Day 25 or Day 28 were to have additional shedding samples collected every 7 days until culture negative on 2 consecutive samples.”
http://www.medimmune.com/docs/default-source/pdfs/flumist_pi.pdf
It wasn’t so much the pathogens that bothered me. It was all the toxins and adjuvants. What’s an adjuvant? Well, let’s say you wanted to throw a rock at someone. An adjuvant is a slingshot. When I talked to my pediatrician about the mercury and thimerosal in the whooping cough vaccine, she assured me the amount of thimerosal was less than what she puts in her eyes every day with her contact lenses. She assured me—it was a good and necessary vaccine. I completely trust her judgment. The idea of my son wheezing and violently coughing until he turned blue from lack of oxygen and then throwing up scared me. I prefer my children pink colored and breathing!
It wasn’t until this past year that I learned of the other troubling ingredient in vaccines; long lasting cell cultures called cell lines. These cultures are obtained from aborted fetuses. I was stunned. Have I been living under a rock? Am I the only person who didn’t know this? And if everyone knows this why are they not outraged? Validating research proved even more disconcerting. Two fetal cell lines currently in use were taken from aborted fetuses way back in the 1960’s:
* “Dr. Stanley Plotkin, who developed a Rubella vaccine using WI-38, addressed a question at an international conference as to the origin of WI-38. Dr. Plotkin stated:“This fetus was chosen by Dr. Sven Gard, specifically for this purpose. Both parents are known, and unfortunately for the story, they are married to each other, still alive and well, and living in Stockholm, presumably. The abortion was done because they felt they had too many children.”
* The origin of the MCR-5 cell line, created in 1966, is documented in the journal Nature by three British researchers working at the National Institute for Medical Research. They wrote, “We have developed another strain of cells, also derived from foetal (fetal) lung tissue, taken from a 14-week male foetus removed for psychiatric reasons from a 27 year old woman with a genetically normal family history and no sign of neoplastic disease both at abortion and for at least three years afterward.”
* There is a more recent cell line, PER C6, developed in 1985, which is being used currently in research to develop vaccines to treat Ebola and HIV. The origin of PER C6 is clearly documented. In direct testimony before the Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, Dr. Alex Van Der Eb, the scientist who developed PER C6, stated:
“So I isolated retina [cells] from a fetus, from a healthy fetus as far as could be seen, of 18 weeks old. There was nothing special in the family history, or the pregnancy was completely normal up to the 18 weeks, and it turned out to be a socially indicated abortus, abortus provocatus, and that was simply because the woman wanted to get rid of the fetus.”(5) http://www.rtl.org/prolife_issues/LifeNotes/VaccinesAbortion_FetalTissue.html
Vaccines were developed long ago to boost natural immunity. They were created based upon the knowledge of the time. They were developed during a time of poor nutrition, poor sanitation, and questionable water sources. Edward Jenner is credited with inventing the first smallpox inoculation in 1796. He took liquid from the blister of someone infected with cowpox and injected it into another person’s skin. This was referred to as “arm-to-arm” inoculation. Notice there were no additives like: MSG, guinea pig cell cultures, embryonic lung cell cultures, fetus remnants like retinas, formaldehyde, aluminum, monkey kidney cells, chick embryo cell cultures, detergent, canine kidney cells . . . all for the “greater good.”
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/b/excipient-table-2.pdf
The early vaccines were given only for the communicable disease of the time to boost the child’s immunity for that single disease. It made sense then. In the early fifties children received one shot per visit for a total of 5 shots by the age of two. Now children can receive up to 5 shots per visit and up to 24 injections in 2 years (24 months)! It makes no sense now to vaccinate a child who is bottle-fed and can’t make antibodies. Is it just me—or could it be possible that all of those injections combined could overwhelm an immunocompromised baby, or elderly yearly flu shot devotee; and maybe—just maybe— some of those adjuvant vaccine components (like aluminum) could wind up in the brain causing encephalitis, encephalopathy or Alzheimer’s?
So I end where I began. Who owns the Rights to my body, mind and soul? Who gets to decide what I put in the earthly temple of my eternal soul? Who decides what is best for my children?
Did my Creator skip the chapter on creating the immune system? I think not.
Please do your own research. Help us all keep our right to choose.
Resources:
http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/school-immunization-exemption-state-laws.aspx
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Well%2C+butter+my+butt+and+call+me+a+bisquit!
http://www.rtl.org/prolife_issues/LifeNotes/VaccinesAbortion_FetalTissue.html
http://www.drugs.com/dict/adjuvant.html
http://www.livingwhole.org/god-does-not-support-vaccines/
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/B/excipient-table-2.pdf
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/encephalopathy/encephalopathy.htm
