I speak to many people about health issues, mainly because we always show up in the statistics (so many kids with asthma, autism, ADHD etc) and we have to watch B’s diet carefully to avoid multiple different reactions. Anyway, as I talk to people the conversation will often veer off course to vaccinations. Full disclosure, both my kids have had most of their vaccinations, if I had to choose again then… well I don’t have to so it doesn’t matter what I say now. Over the course of the years I certainly noticed multiple reactions after each doctor visit. G particularly always hit a super high temperature afterwards, both would be lethargic, have red eye circles, pain in the injection sites, and after the chicken pox vaccine B didn’t utter a single sound for over a week! Disconcerting to say the least, but I always kept going thinking that I was doing what was best for our kids.
When we get talking about the vaccine subject, many folks will start to get angry about the parents who choose not to vaccinate their kids. This kind of irks me I admit. It’s at this moment, sometimes, I like to play devil’s advocate and dare to ask if they agree that a woman’s body is her own to do with as she likes, that only she has the right to choose what happens to her body, including choosing whether or not to keep a baby incubating in there. So many, in fact more often than not, many, many of the folks who disagree with another parent’s choice not to vaccinate their kids, interestingly find that their own doctrine of a woman’s right to choose is unfailing. Strikes as such a dichotomy to me.
It makes me wonder though how many of them would really utter these sentences if they had the whole story! “Me, well hell yes I have the right to choose to let a baby grow in my body, and if I choose to keep it, sure I would let someone in a white coat tell me to stick vaccinations in them year after year. If the government and doctor tells me my kid needs them, who am I to question their training?
Of course if anything bad happens I will totally consider myself one of the unlucky ones. I also know and totally accept that I have no means of real compensation, but of course I will indeed happily spend the rest of my life (and retirement fund) caring for a child who will never mentally be more than 9 years old or … add your own side-effect here.
Right on – Sign me up! Seriously all you people who choose not to vaccinate are just scared little selfish sheep, scared of your own shadows! Yes, please go ahead stick my kid now, and guess what – actually you don’t even have to tell me about it! I TRUST YOU! I totally TRUST you are doing this for my own good! I mean lets face it, my kid hasn’t got the same right to choose as me and I am educated and smart and trusting because pharmaceuticals have been proven safe, time and time again right?!”
All I am saying is educate yourself, really educate yourself. Don’t walk into a healthcheck without knowing exactly what you are putting in your child. Whichever side of the debate you fall on, it’s always wise to get information from both sides before making an informed decision, and if you still choose to vaccinate then at least you can say honestly you chose wisely with all the information you had at your disposal.
Dr. Mercola has this article “Health, Liberty and Forced Vaccination” including the video from the National Vaccine Information Center on his page. Very informative and worth spending 14 minutes of your life watching, if nothing else to only validate you argument against people who choose not to vaccinate.
He cites the following “… After 50 years of heavy prescription drug and vaccine use, Americans are waking up to the fact that they are not healthier, but are sicker than ever before. And they are asking a lot of questions.
More of us are wondering why doctors inside and outside of government are insisting that every child get 70 doses of 16 vaccines starting on the first day of life and why that list includes expensive new vaccines for mild diseases, like chickenpox, and for diseases you can’t catch in a classroom, like hepatitis B.
More of us are asking why we have to get a flu shot every year and why health care workers are losing their jobs if they don’t.
More of us are looking at vaccine studies published in the medical literature, many of which are paid for by drug companies or public health agencies promoting one-size-fits-all vaccine policies, only to discover that a lot of those studies are the best junk science that money can buy. More of us are watching doctors paid by Pharma persuade journalists to demonize anyone asking questions about vaccination so other people are afraid to speak up because they know they will be targeted for humiliation and persecution. …”
I don’t care one way or the other if you vaccinate your child. I truly believe that’s totally your choice, but it should be your choice not someone else’s who has a vested economical interest in your child getting that vaccine. Before you choose to allow that needle in your child’s arm, read what’s in that vaccination, what are the side-effects, what should you watch out for, is this something your child really needs today? Don’t take my word for it, I don’t have a medical degree, but I do know that sometimes profit comes before, well, most things. Just being informed so when the nurse goes to stick your child with 3 live vaccines at a time in one sitting you will know what to say, how to say it and WHY you are saying it. Don’t lose your right to choose how and what medical decisions you make when raising your child because today you might agree with their decisions but tomorrow …
I am now 67, when I was young I lived in a very big, dirty, industrialised city, I didnt know any kids with, for example, asthma, most kids were digustingly healthy, we played outside, got dirty and had very few vacinations. Now I hear all the time of kids with repeated problems, what has gone wrong with our lives, we spend more time at the doctors and are less healthy, something is very wrong.