Why we've declined

My son is 4 months old. At this point in his life he should have received 13 inoculations according to the 2007 immunization schedule released by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He hasn’t received any, however, because my husband and I have chosen not to have him vaccinated. The short answer as to why we have made this decision is because we believe that the risks of vaccination outweigh the benefits. We continue to research and formulate our opinion on vaccination but thus far continue to find further evidence to support our decision and have not found reason to reverse it. What follows are some of the reasons that we see vaccination as a greater risk than a benefit.

According to the CDC fact sheet on the DTaP vaccine (which children are to receive 4 times before age 18 months), your child has a 1 in 14,000 chance of experiencing seizures caused by fever as a result of receiving that vaccine; and a 1 in 3,000 chance from the MMR vaccine (which a child is to receive twice before age 6)—that means your child is more likely to experience a convulsion from either of these vaccines than that they would die in a motor vehicle accident or by drowning (see childstats.gov). We do everything we can to prevent our child from dying in this manner (wearing seat belts and life preservers, only playing by the water when supervised, etc.) and yet we are willing to risk our children experiencing convulsions, which could potentially lead to life altering illnesses? According to a study on febrile convulsions published on pubmed.gov: “The results of this study indicate that even a single experimental febrile convulsion during infancy can exert a long-lasting, if not permanent, enhancement in seizure susceptibility.” Recurrent, unprovoked seizures are what define epilepsy, a chronic neurological condition that cannot be cured.

Additional potential side effects of the MMR vaccine include (as taken from the CDC Fact Sheet on the vaccine): fever (up to 1 person out of 6); mild rash (about 1 person out of 20); swelling of glands in the cheeks or neck; temporary pain and stiffness in the joints, mostly in teenage or adult women (up to 1 out of 4); temporary low platelet count, which can cause a bleeding disorder (about 1 out of 30,000 doses); and serious allergic reaction (less than 1 out of a million doses). The Fact Sheet goes on to say: “Several other severe problems have been known to occur after a child gets MMR vaccine but this happens so rarely, experts cannot be sure whether they are caused by the vaccine or not. These include: deafness, long-term seizures, coma, or lowered consciousness, and permanent brain damage.” It is important to note here that though the CDC makes the statement that “experts cannot be sure whether they are caused by the vaccine or not” (referring to the most life-altering side effects listed) there is apparently enough of a correlation that the CDC feels they should include the possibility in the list of side effects. That alone gives me great pause. In addition, many of the mild side effects that occur frequently such as fever or rash, are symptoms that are generally considered cause for visiting a doctor because they indicate illness, not something that should be considered temporarily “normal.” If the body is responding to a vaccination in the same way that it responds to illness, is the presence of the foreign material found in the vaccine really to the body’s benefit?

This question leads me to another primary reason that I question the benefit of vaccination specifically in regards to its role in causing immunity. As Tim O’Shea writes in The Sanctity of Human Blood, “We're programmed to think of immunization and vaccination as synonyms…In actuality, there's a big difference. Immunization means to make someone immune to something. Vaccination, by contrast, just means to inject something into the bloodstream…True natural immunity happens only after one recovers from the disease itself. With the actual disease, the microorganism had to pass through many of the body's natural immune defense systems in the nose, throat, lungs, and digestive tract before it ever gets as far as the bloodstream.” By bypassing the body’s natural immune response we are risking creating strains of disease resistant to the body’s natural defenses and compromising a healthy system with the injection of foreign material including but not limited to: disease strains from animals and other toxins such as formaldehyde, aluminum, and mercury. As Tim O’ Shea goes on to write, “The thinking behind vaccination is that if the person gets a "minor" case of the disease under the "controlled" conditions of vaccination, he will produce his own antibodies to the disease agent, and this will confer immunity, since his immune system will remember what the "bad bug" looks like. The next time the bug shows up, immune defense cells will be ready to kill it. Unfortunately there is no general agreement that this is what vaccination really does.”

I also have concerns to the validity of vaccines serving to protect the population. According to a publication in Pharmaceutical News in May 2005: “The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, estimates there were almost 20,000 pertussis (whooping cough) cases in 2004 - the highest number of reported cases in more than 40 years.” And yet the pertussis vaccine has been around since the mid-1940’s and the DTaP vaccine specifically has been used readily since 1991. Other evidence also comes directly from the CDC in an article related to the mumps outbreak in Iowa in 2006. According to the article, of the individuals whose vaccine records could be assessed, 65% had been fully vaccination against mumps, while only 6% had not been vaccinated at all. How can one claim that vaccines are eliminating these diseases or at minimum, immunizing against them, with statistics like these direct from the primary proponent of vaccination?

Finally, I question whether it is the responsibility of my child to protect the population from diseases that result from lifestyle choices such as Hepatitis B and HPV? According to the CDC fact sheet on the Hep B vaccine, Hepatitis B is spread by “having unprotected sex with an infected person, sharing needles when injecting illegal drugs, being stuck with a used needle on the job, or during birth when the virus passes from an infected mother to her baby” and yet we administer this vaccine to children 3 times before the age of 6 months. I don’t know about you, but my four month old is not having unprotected sex or using illegal drugs. And the newly released HPV vaccine is another example. According to the CDC website: “Abstaining from sexual activity (i.e., refraining from any genital contact with another individual) is the surest way to prevent genital HPV infection. For those who choose to be sexually active, a monogamous relationship with an uninfected partner is the strategy most likely to prevent future genital HPV infections.” Perhaps instead of spending tax money passing laws that require all women to have the HPV vaccine we should spend our money educating people about the risks of risky behavior? We cannot eliminate immoral behavior or the consequences of that behavior by vaccinating an entire population.

As I mentioned earlier, these thoughts are gathered from the research that we have begun in earnest regarding vaccination. We intend to continue seeking information for and against vaccination and will continue to formulate our opinion as we grow more educated.


References:

Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2006). MMWR Weekly: Mumps Epidemic --- Iowa, 2006. Retrieved 22 April 2007 from http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5513a3.htm.

Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Immunization Program (2001). Diphtheria, Tetanus, & Pertussis Vaccines: What You Need To Know [Electronic version]. Retrieved16 February 2007 from http://www.cdc.gov/nip/publications/VIS/vis-dtp.pdf.

Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Immunization Program (2001). Hepatitis B Vaccine: What You Need To Know [Electronic version]. Retrieved 16 February 2007 from http://www.cdc.gov/nip/publications/VIS/vis-hep-b.pdf.

Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Immunization Program (2007). Human Papillomavirus [Electronic version]. Retrieved 24 April 2007 from http://www.cdc.gov/nip/publications/pink/hpv.pdf.

Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Immunization Program (2003). Measles, Mumps & Rubella Vaccines: What You Need To Know [Electronic version]. Retrieved 22 April 2007 from http://www.cdc.gov/nip/publications/VIS/vis-mmr.pdf.

Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Immunization Program (2007). Recommended Immunization Schedule for Ages 0-6 Years, United States, 2007 [Electronic version]. Retrieved 22 April 2007 from http://www.cispimmunize.org/IZSchedule_Childhood.pdf.

Forum on Child and Family Statistics (2006). America's Children in Brief: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2006 - Child Mortality. Retrieved 16 February 2007 from http://childstats.gov/americaschildren/hea8.asp.

McCaughran JA Jr, Schechter N. (1982). Experimental febrile convulsions: long-term effects of hyperthermia-induced convulsions in the developing rat. Retireved 16 February 1007 from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/

O’Shea, Tim. (2001). The Sanctity of Human Blood excerpted from the third edition of The Sanctity of Human Blood: Vaccination Is Not Immunization by Tim O'Shea. Retrieved 22 April 2007 from http://www.mercola.com/2001/may/30/vaccine_safety.htm

Pharmaceutical News. (2005). Vaccine for whooping cough in teens. Retrieved 16 February 2007 from http://www.news-medical.net/?id=8476.