Whooping cough makes a comeback

I agree with getting all the vaccinations for my daughter. I don't understand why parents are SO wary about getting their children vaccinated! Like you said, getting the disease is worse. Maybe they are hoping their child just won't get the disease...
Who knows, but I would like to have a better understanding from a parent with views on the other side of the fence.

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They poisoned my newborn with mercury. That's why I refuse to vaccinate. Her first shot was recalled because it was overdosing newborns with mercury. How can that happen? It was cheaper that way, and the pharm companies saved a few bucks.

She was sick after every immunization. It was never reported to the VARS database. Very little research is done before these poisons are considered mandatory.

see www.909shot.com for more details

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I can only speak of my reasons for holding off on Emerald's Vacc, and then limiting what she does receive. We decided after talking with some parents who were not vacc, with my Dr., and after reading some articles on the subject, that we would hold of on starting the process until she was 2 and then only getting the seriuos ones, like polio, tetnus, dipthiria, etc. Our reasons were that even though my Dr. was assuring us that they no longer use mercury in Calif. vacc, when she gave me the insert that comes to the office with all the manufacturing info and ingrediants, I found not only thiemresol (mercury), but formaldhyde as well as a few others that are listed as "hazardous". Mercury, as most know from warings about Tuna and other deep sea fish or broken thermometers, is a toxic heavy metal and is found in large concentrations in children diagnosed with Autism. Another reason was when asked, our Dr. told us that the same size dose is given to new-borns and 5 year old children. Now this worried me because Em was small, 5#11oz at birth, and even now at 18 months old she is only 17.5#. Then another factor that scared the beejezus outa me was that if she happened to get a "bad" dose (anything from contaminated to expired ingrediants), the pharmaceutical company cannot be held responsible. There is a government funded (tax-payer) relief for for families who have "damaged" children due to vaccine reactions. There was no accountability on the part of the Pharmaceutical company, who makes billions every year on vaccinations alone. And finally getting the vacc was not completely insuring her against catching these diseases anyways. Many of the people with things like pertussis were vaccinated. Also vaccinated people can spread the disease as well. So with all that info we decided to wait until she is at least 2 then weigh all the info again. In Japan they do not start vacc until 2 as a standard. Plus the recommended number of shots went from 7 in the 80's to now 13. I'd hate to suggest that the medical industry &/or the CDC would be influenced in any way by the HUGE pharmaceutical industry, but well, I guess I just did. So its not so much that I question the value of vaccines and their contribution to world health, its just that I question the safety-mindedness and ethics of the people making and pushing them.
PS Em has had 2 colds in her 18 months, both snot relatd, whereas our vacc. friends have had appx 10 in the same time. Weakened immunity systems due to battling things they shouldn't have to yet?

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1948-2004=56 years.

Yes.. now I see how little research must have been done... 50+ years wouldnt be proof enough for me either. LOL.

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I got whooping cough when I was 18 - I got it from my brother, who was 14 at the time. My guess was that our immunizations had worn off.

I wouldn't wish whooping cough on my worst enemy. It's dreadful. And I can't imagine an infant with it. How sad and horrible that much be! You cough until you can't cough anymore and then your throat closes up so you can't breathe in. Just dreadful.

It was easily six months before my respiratory system had recovered - just walking made me out of breath.

My daughter is definitely vaccinated against it - and will be again as a teenager.

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Even if you do not understand why some parents choose not to vaccinate, to delay vaccinations, or to only partially vaccinate, can you not respect that parentss have the right to make medical decisions for their children?

I would hope that you would be up in arms if your child were being forced to take ADHD drugs (like is happening to a commenter in the ADHD drug story posted today) You would be up in arms if someone forced you to take birth control pill, or even tylenol. Most of us are against forced c-sections, we agree that you should have the right to decline AIDS screening.

You may believe that vaccinations are as safe as baby shampoo, but can you not see that everyone has the right to make that choice for themselves or their children?

And you can argue until you are blue in the face that unvaccinated children are increasing the risks for vaccinated children, but how would you feel if you were forced to donate blood? To donate part of your liver, after all it grows back? Or even forced to donate organs after you die, even though there is no risk to you at that point. You can not be forced to undergo any medical treatment for the benefit of another (legally, though admittedly sometimes this is ignored), and only in very rare cases can the courts order you to undergo a medical test for the benefit of another.

If you are truly seeking to understand why one would choose not to vaccinate there are many reasons. Not the least of which is religious as vaccines contain many other questionable ingredients besides mercury and aluminium, there are fetal cells, blood products and animal products which are offensive to certain people’s religious views.

To understand why some choose not to vaccinate/delay or partially vaccinate you need to try to find trust worthy sources and look at the vaccination schedules in other countries, their rates of vaccine preventable diseases and their general health particularly infant mortality, SIDS and auto-immune diseases. You need to find references to medical textbooks from before vaccination and compare the information about the frequency, severity and treatment of vaccine preventable illnesses.

I could provide some links, but to be honest, it is something you must do for yourself. You must weigh the information against the quality of the source and its bias. You have to see what the conspiracy theorists and complete lunatics say. You need to look for the little bits and pieces in the studies that the media doesn’t report (like that study recently that showed formula fed babies are not less intelligent than breastfed babies, when in fact what it showed was that babies who are exclusively breastfed for a very short time and those who receive formula supplementation are similar to exclusively formula fed babies, but that there was some difference in babies who were exclusively breastfed for longer periods of time (like beyond 6 months). You need to have an interest in understanding how studies are conducted and how statistics are created. I don’t think it is a one time decision or that you can base your knowledge on just a few sources or scary stories.

I wish that to vaccinate or not were an easy decision for me. I wish I could take what doctors and the drug companies say at face value or that I could take what the fanatics on the other side who say that vaccination causes everything that is wrong with the world. I even wish that I were a true believer who could take comfort in knowing that my decision was following God’s will. But that is not the way I see the world. So far I have only decided not to vaccinate before two years and to very, very carefully weigh my decision for each vaccination; I will revisit my decisions often and always strive to keep an open mind. I think that an open mind, a desire for knowledge and a respect for others decisions and their right to make them is all you can ask from anyone.

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I actually dont think that there should even be an option here... it isnt like donating anything or taking an ADHD drug... It is a matter of public health and it shouldnt be a parental decision it should be a requirement that should be hard to bi-pass. No, I dont respect someone else's decision to put my child at risk. I just dont think that everything should be up to the parent.

So, you, too, could argue until you are blue in the face but there will be no reason short of a doctor suggesting that the particular child wait that will be reason enough to allow someone the "freedom" to make decisions that affect public health. Especially in this case where the vaccine has been used for over 50 years with proven results...

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A vaccine requirement to attend school or day care does not force a child to undergo medical treatment to benefit another. It simply makes medical treatment that also benefits other kids a requirement for recieving certain services. If you don't want to vaccinate your children, that's fine. You can home school them and and not send them to day care. Just don't put your unvaccinated kids into crowded classrooms with my son. I won't appreciate it.

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Ooops forgot the link to the CDC:
http://www.cdc.gov/nip/vacsafe/research/ap.htm

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"how would you feel if you were forced to donate blood? To donate part of your liver, after all it grows back? Or even forced to donate organs after you die, even though there is no risk to you at that point."

Actually, while I'm not the OP, I still feel that mandatory blood donation and organ-donation-after-death (excepting for religious reasons) would be a Good Thing.

Try a better false analogy, 'k?

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You don't want to vaccinate your kids? Fine by me. It's a free country. I just pray that your kids never contract any of the diseases they're not vaccinated against.

Sure, there might be a slight chance of side effects from some vaccines. But there's a much, much higher risk of paralysis from polio, blindness from measles, birth defects from German measles, not to mention the children that don't survive their bouts with those diseases. And as this article proves, those diseases are still out there.

So many people these days grew up in an era where vaccination is the rule. They've never experienced the horror of infectious diseases and they don't understand how terrible they can be. Ask anyone who was a child in the 50s about growing up with the threat of polio. Ask anyone who's worked with children in third world countries. Maybe then you'll begin to understand why infectious disease is so terrifying.

Mass vaccination is one of the most effective, important public health programs ever implemented. Period. Millions upon millions of lives have been saved. Millions of children have been spared a lifetime of paralysis. Millions of babies have been spared birth defects. It's utterly insane not to vaccinate.

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Sad story two years ago while I was working on a show three of us in the cast caught whooping cough we are not sure who infected whom, but the three of us did have our shots as children, I will say none of us had it as bad as one of the cast members teenage son who never had the shot and is still on the road to recovery the thing that bothers me is another member of the cast who never showed symptoms "passed" (we're still not sure of the path of the virus) to her 4 month old whom she had chosen not to Vac and the poor sweet child died... still breaks my heart.....

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We had our child vaccinated with mercury-free shots. I'm sure they don't have that option everywhere, but it's worth asking for it or perhaps organizing a patient advocacy group. The benefits far outweigh the risks beyond that IMO.

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