Healthy Hearts, Healthy Homes: Vaccines

I apologize ahead of time for the length of this post, but this is such a hot topic and I wanted to try to do it justice (to do it full justice would have required another couple of pages). This topic will bring supporters on both sides to the front lines with their boxing gloves on. My opinion, even before I was pregnant, was that my generation survived with only a few vaccines, why should subsequent generations need more? Now keep in mind that I'm a cynic when it comes to how vaccine and drug companies (and food companies) make their money. If the vaccine industry can scare millions of people into fearing certain deadly diseases, then they will see their stock and profits rise exponentially. And of course nothing scares parents more than the fear that something might lead to their child's death. Needless to say, I was skeptical. Now when I had my son, I had decided to follow Dr. Sears' vaccine schedule and complete the vaccinations recommended, but just spread them out. However, from the moment I met my pediatrician (at the time), I felt somewhat pressured into keeping my son on the standard schedule. I was sleep deprived and a new mom and completely second guessed myself. So we started on the standard schedule, but at the 6 months appointment, I began to feel very guilty and had done even more reading and made the definitive decision to space out the vaccines. Again, the pediatrician gave me a hard time, but we proceeded. Our next appointment was at 7.5 months and, long story short, the nurses gave my son a duplicate dose of the vaccines he had already received at 6 months, specifically the shot with the polio virus in it. My son, crawling at 5.5 months, couldn't crawl or even put weight through his legs that night and the next day. He only wanted to be held and seemed to be in incredible pain. That was it. After being dismissed by the doctor's office, we switched to a naturopathic pediatrician and decided to only do one vaccine at a time (which is different than one shot at a time, so be careful here).

So that's my personal history with the subject. Now for the research. I'm mostly quoting the articles I've copied below, which are a compilation of other research. What is important to remember is that the greatest brain development occurs between the 3rd trimester and age 2; at that point the brain is 80% complete. It is proven that vaccines get into the CSF that surrounds the brain, so why are we exposing our babies to these chemicals? I want to make it clear that I'm not necessarily anti-vaccine, but I want to put the word out there that it's okay to question the status quo, that it's okay to challenge the current medical system, and that it's okay to trust your instinct as a parent. That said, there is literally so much out there questioning the safety of vaccines that I could never do it justice, so I'll try to highlight a few key points so that you don't have to read the articles if you don't have the time. However, they are very interesting, so I do recommend reading them if you do. For those of you reading without children or with older children, there's a few stats on the HPV vaccine that are also interesting. They are now trying to require boys to get it as well, but as I learned YEARS ago, it is a unnecessary vaccine that again (that cynic in me) makes me believe it's just a ploy for profit.

Your brain has its own specialized immune system, separate from that of the rest of your body. When you are vaccinated, specialized immune cells in your brain, the microglia, become activated. Multiple vaccinations spaced close together over-stimulate the microglia, causing them to release a variety of toxic elements -- cytokines, chemokines, excitotoxins, proteases, complement, free radicals -- that damage brain cells and their synaptic connections.
In 1983, before the autism epidemic began, children received 10 vaccinations before attending school and the autism incidence was 1 in 10,000. Today they are receiving 24 vaccines before 1 year and 36 by the time they attend school and the autism rate is now 1 in 150 births. Medical “experts” have provided no other explanation for this dramatic and sudden rise in autism cases. It has been claimed that it's genetic, but geneticists were quick to respond that genetic disorders do not suddenly increase in such astronomical proportions. It has been claimed that it's because of better diagnosis, despite the fact that the diagnosis is obvious in virtually every case and that the criteria officially accepted for diagnosis has become more restrictive not less.
It has also been demonstrated that methylmercury (from fish) and ethylmercury (in thimerosal) are both powerful immunosuppressants and are associated with a high incidence of autoimmunity.¹¹ In this study, researchers found that thimerosal (ethylmercury) initially caused immune suppression and then strong autoimmunity.
A recent study looked at the immune reaction in newborn infants up to the age of one year who had received the HepB vaccine to see if their immune reaction differed from adults getting the same vaccine.²⁷ What they found was that the infant, even after age one year, did react differently. Their antibody levels were substantially higher than adults (3-fold higher) and it remained higher throughout the study. In essence, they found that the babies responded to the vaccine by having an intense Th2 (immune) response that persisted long after it should have disappeared, a completely abnormal response.
The MMR vaccine contains live measles viruses and recent studies have shown that immune suppression after vaccination with this virus suppresses immunity in a profound way that last as long as six months.^36-41 The CDC recommends separating this vaccine from other live virus vaccines to prevent viral overgrowth (Yet, they combine it with two other live viruses-rubella and mumps viruses). They never address the obvious question – wouldn’t this vaccine also make the child more susceptible to other naturally occurring infections such as influenza, measles, chicken pox, etc? This has been strongly suggested by a number of studies.⁴²
Studies have also shown that vaccines that cover only a few strains of a virus or bacteria that naturally have a great number of strains (some have over a hundred strains), can cause a shift in strain dominance so that the strain not included in the vaccine then becomes the dominant disease causing strain. We see this with the meningiococcal and pneumococcal vaccines.^43-45 (my note: this has also been seen with the flu vaccines)
When combined with mercury, which is also an immune suppressing substance, the effect is compounded. Fluoroaluminum, formed in fluoridated drinking water, also interferes with immune function, as do many insecticides and herbicides used around the home.⁴⁶
It has now become obvious that the vaccine injury compensation program is so fatally flawed and broken it should be repealed – something Barbara Loe Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) is strongly advocating. During the program’s 22-year history, two out of three individuals applying for federal vaccine injury compensation have been denied. Despite that, the program has still paid out about $1.8 billion in damages. But it didn’t cost the vaccine makers anything.The system is funded by a surcharge on each dose of vaccine sold. The doctors pay the tax initially when they purchase the vaccines, which is then passed right down to the parents of the child. So not only are the vaccine manufacturers shielded from potential lawsuits, they are not even responsible for paying one cent of the claims filed against them -- you are.
Dr. Donald Miller, a cardiac surgeon and professor of surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle, came up with this user-friendly vaccination schedule back in 2004, and it is leaps and bounds ahead of the CDC’s “one-size-fits-all” schedule: 1. No vaccinations until your child is two years old 2. No vaccines that contain thimerosal (mercury) 3. No live virus vaccines 4. The following vaccines should be given one at a time (not as a combination vaccine), every six months, beginning at age 2: Pertussis (acellular, not whole cell), Diphtheria, Tetanus, Polio (the Salk vaccine, cultured in human cells). This schedule takes the best interests of the individual into consideration rather than what the government judges best for society.
In the case of the HPV vaccine (Gardasil and Cervarix) the choice is clear. It has a high rate of risk and the potential benefits are unproven: In more than 70 percent of cases, HPV clears up on its own within a few weeks or months. In over 90 percent of cases, it's gone within two years, causing no symptoms or disease. Only about 26 percent of girls and women ages 14 to 59 have been exposed to any HPV strain at all; and only 2 percent have been exposed to strains 16 or 18 – the two that Gardasil and Cervarix protect against – meaning this vaccine is completely unnecessary because HPV infection very rarely leads to cancer. Women whose partners wore condoms during vaginal intercourse are 70 percent less likely to become infected with HPV. That's a FAR greater level of protection than you can get from this vaccine!
There are still outstanding questions about whether HPV is or is not the direct cause of cervical cancer. The FDA knows there are many other co-factors involved with the development of cervical cancer, and as of 2003 acknowledged that "most infections (by HPV) are short-lived and not associated with cervical cancer." The same news release also states that "with proper screening, cervical cancer is avoidable, and if caught early, curable." And according to the National Vaccine Information Center, the incidents of miscarriage and still birth events from Gardasil supersede the same event from all other vaccinations.
For years, researchers suggested that millions of vials of polio vaccine, contaminated with SV40, infected individuals between 1953 and 1963 and caused human tumors, and by 1999, molecular evidence of SV40 infections were showing up in children born after 1982. Some experts now suggest the virus may have remained in the polio vaccine until as late as 1999. This research was unrecognized by the FDA.
Just like Gardasil may well increase your risk of cervical cancer rather than reduce it, the live polio vaccine has also been found to cause polio. And, in rare instances the virus in the vaccine has even been known to mutate into a much deadlier version. As reported by MSN News in 2009, genetic analysis has proven such mutated viruses have caused at least seven separate outbreaks in Nigeria.
According to the CDC the last case of wild polio in the US—meaning polio caused naturally and not due to the live polio vaccine—occurred in 1979. From 1980 through 1999, there were NO wild polio cases in the US. Instead we had 144 cases of vaccine-associated paralytic polio (VAPP) caused by live oral polio vaccine.
Published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology in April 2005, that looked at the health outcomes of children who are fully vaccinated, who are partially vaccinated, and who are not vaccinated at all. All the investigators asked the parents to do was to report atopic illness. Atopic illness means allergies, asthma, eczema, hay fever. The investigators were blinded, meaning they didn’t know which category the participants belonged to. When they assessed the data, they found that the largest number of reports by parents of children with atopic illness were in the kids who were fully vaccinated. The second highest reports were in the families who are partially vaccinated. And the lowest number of reports was in the children who were unvaccinated.
One issue that is frequently ignored is the potential harm from the synergy of combinations of vaccines, which have never been studied. No one knows whether there’s interaction between the bacteria and the viruses in the vaccines administered as part of the childhood vaccination schedule, or if there is interaction in the trace thimerosal (which is still in some of the multi-vials of certain vaccines), or the large amount of aluminum that is in many of them.