Immunization

[Shannon]

My husband and I are 8 years apart in age. He has 2 adult children from a previous relationship. His oldest daughter has an 18 month old son and his son has a 1 year old son. We now have a beautiful 2 month old daughter. I just recently found out that his oldest daugter refuses to get her son (18 month old) any immunizations. My daughter just had her first round of shots 2 days ago. All this time, she has been bringing her son over to our house and I never knew that he hadn't had any vaccinations. Her pediatrician told her that she will need to find another doctor because he refuses to care for her son if she will not allow him to have vaccinations. I asked my pediatrician if I should be concerned about this and she told me that I need to take this very seriously and to do my best at keeping my daughter away from her son. She explained to me how dangerous it is to my baby to be around him. She told me that all of the doctors in her office would refuse care for any child who has not had their immunizations because they don't want these children in their waiting rooms to potentially infect other children. My stepdaughter is a very irresponsible and lazy person. She is not well kempt and she really does not take care of her son. I am not saying this to put her down, I am simply stating a fact. My husband would say the same thing. She is on government assistance and all of her sons medical bills are paid for by the government so it's not that she can't afford them. It's also not against her religion to get the immunizations. She's just the type that thinks she knows it all and there is no talking to her about it because in her mind she's always right. Her son is also a biter and I am concerned that he may infect not only my child but someone else's. This obviously is not something she tells people about. She is planning on getting pregnant again soon so that she can stay on government assistance and not have to get a job. My problem is that I don't know how to keep my baby away from hers. And if she has another baby soon, then I'll have an even bigger problem. Does anyone have any suggestions? I know that not everyone agrees with getting the immunizations but they are important to me. Brain damage or death of my baby is not an option if this can be avoided.

[New Resident Mom- Amanda]

Well, I understand to the mothers that are against immunizations, so I do not want to affend them...but I am all for getting all my children immune. If I was in your situation, I would politley tell your husband that your baby health/life comes 1st, and because his other daughter refuses, you do not need her child to potentially expose your preciuos baby girl life or sickness. If it was up to me, I would strongly put my foot down, and no one can talk me out of not getting any of my childern (and I have 4, preg with #5) getting their immune. I inderstand we all can still get sick, but my babies will have a fighting chance and I will protect them in all ways possiable. I can not tell you how to run anyones life nor I do not want to step in anyones toes but that is how I would handle it. Good luck!

[Becky]

We do not immunize. Well, technically, my 8 yr old son got all of his "original" shots, but no boosters, nor will he get any boosters. He received all of his vaccines on a VERY delayed schedule (most kids finished receiving the approximately 80 "regular" vaccines given by about age 2 1/2.) My son wasn't "fully" vaccinated until after his 5th birthday...over twice as long as the "typical" child. The baby that I am currently 35 weeks pregnant with will not receive ANY vaccines, period. It has nothing to do with religious beliefs, technically.

Here is some good to know info. Did you know that these ingredients are in vaccines?
* aluminum hydroxide
* aluminum phosphate
* ammonium sulfate
* amphotericin B
* animal tissues: pig blood, horse blood, rabbit brain, dog kidney, monkey kidney,chick embryo, chicken egg, duck egg
* calf (bovine) serum
* betapropiolactone
* fetal bovine serum
* formaldehyde
* formalin
* gelatin
* glycerol
* human diploid cells (originating from human aborted fetal tissue)
* hydrolized gelatin
* latex
* mercury thimerosol (thimerosal, Merthiolate(r))
* monosodium glutamate (MSG)
* neomycin
* neomycin sulfate
* phenol red indicator
* phenoxyethanol (antifreeze)
* potassium diphosphate
* potassium monophosphate
* polymyxin B
* polysorbate 20
* polysorbate 80
* porcine (pig) pancreatic hydrolysate of casein
* residual MRC5 proteins
* sorbitol
* tri(n)butylphosphate,
* VERO cells, a continuous line of monkey kidney cells, and
* washed sheep red blood

[Sandra Stehly]

You are a wonderful woman, educating yourself instead of being a sheeple, and I praise you.  Hopefully we can educate more people, save more lives, and let more young people live a long and healthy life without their bodies being injected with toxins and poisons.  Kudos to you!

[Caitlin O'Brien]

Honestly, I would explain to her (of course you would have to discuss this with your husband first) that you simply don't want your daughter to be around her son until her has those immunizations. 

I understand the risks you put your children under when you immunize them and I feel for the families that are in the percentage that recieve poor outcomes because of them but, ultimately, immunuzations save countless lives.  They keep children from spreading highly contagious and deadly diseases to one another.  The ingredients are unsavory but the combinations well tested (I encourage you to read up on each vaccine before you give it to your child and have a serious discussion with your healthcare provider).  My mother is a family care physician and I have talked to her countless times on this exact subject.  Immunizations do put your child at risk.  I won't lie and say otherwise.  But without them, your child is at much greater of a risk unless you live in a remote area with access to fantastic healthcare.  I believe that people who do not give their children immunizations are allowing their child to become a health risk for the rest of society and I can't condone hiding behind fear to pose a deadly threat to the millions of children an unprotected child will come into contact with.  I'm sorry if others don't agree but that is simply my opinion.

The honest truth is that if she doesn't get her children immunized, they present a very real risk to your child and any you may have in the future.  If you feel that immunization protects your child then, in my opinion, the safety of your child should be first and wholely insisted upon.

But in the interest of starting out nicely, you may want to mention that unless she feels like paying for private school and her own doctor, she will have to get her children immunized.  Public Schools (and most doctors that provide care under any state program) now require children to be immunized because otherwise they pose that real risk to everyone in the school and/or clinic.  You may want to encourage her to have her son immunized now when he won't remember, will still be covered under free insurance, and is nowhere near being denied access to school (or to her, free baby sitting).  It's sad that you have to pitch it to her that way but that may be the push she needs so that you don't have to get firm with the situation. 

If she still doesn't wish to have her children immunized, then I would not allow her children around yours.  Doctors reccomend these vaccines so strongly for a reason, which I believe you should speak to your provider about.  Usually, that reason is simply because they save lives on more than a daily basis.  Moreover, they reccomend them because if you want your child to live in mainstream society, they are necessary to not only their safety but that of everyone else.

I apoligize if this is long and biased but I do feel strongly about this issue.  If you do too, you should insist on doing whatever you feel is reasonable to keep your baby safe.

[Sandra Stehly]

No, vaccinations have never helped eradicate disease or "saved countless lives".  Do your research.  Every disease was gone or nearly gone when vaccines were introduced.  Salk testified in front of a senate subcommittee that his vaccine CAUSED more disease than it "cured".  All the major outbreaks have been in mass imunized populations (measles on east coast last year:  77% vaccinated, etc. etc.). 

 

 "...unless she feels like paying for private school and her own doctor, she will have to get her children immunized.  Public Schools (and most doctors that provide care under any state program) now require children to be immunized"  Again, more misinformation.  Every state in the United States has exemptions for every child to attend public schools and daycares without these dangerous vaccines.  And my doctor has no problem treating emergent care (because that's what doctors are there for, blood and bone injuries) without my child being vaccinated.  You prove your lack of knowledge when you repeat this myth.  Millions of children attend public schools without vaccinations.  It's our legal right to do so!!

 

 "Doctors reccomend these vaccines so strongly for a reason, which I believe you should speak to your provider about. "  Yes - ask them.  My guess is "mortgage payment".

 

VACCINES HAVE NEVER saved lives.  Ask your doctor to provide ONE - just ONE - double-blind placebo based study, the "gold standard" of the FDA for drugs, that shows vaccines are both safe and effective.  The catch?  The study can't be organized, performed, funded, or otherwise perpetuated by the people that will make a profit from the poisons (i.e, the pharmaceutical companies).  You will be waiting a long time - because there ARE NO STUDIES THAT SHOW VACCINES TO BE SAFE AN EFFECTIVE.  Surprised?  You should be... do your research before spouting off misinformation, please.

[Caitlin O'Brien]

Obviously you have very strong opinions about this based upon the research you have done.  I have spoken to my provider and many family members who are also physicians (all of whom are not paid based on how many treatments they dole out or how many people they see, but rather on a salary system) and they have all reccomended regular vaccinations, with the stipulation that any parent should wait for the vaccine to be on the market for at least 10 to 20 years before giving it to a child.  Based on this and information I have found in my own research, I have chosen to have my son vaccinated.  Just like you, I have been educated on the subject and simply came to a different decision.  It is narrow-minded to say that those who do not agree with you are uneducated 'sheep', when you do not know if that is truly the case.

Yes, every state has exceptions, that in my opinion are an incorrect method of upholding the mandate for vaccines which respond to a public health concern.  However, it is my understanding that most of these exceptions were intended to give people with religious conflict an exemption from this standard, not for giving parents who do not agree with the rules a way to just not follow them.  Those are the rules the school has set down in accordance with what has been assesed as a necessary and beneficial practice and should be upheld as such, in my opinion.  Every parent has the right to act in what they believe to be the best interest of their child, but if you don't want to follow the rules and can offer nothing more than a refusal to cooperate, you most likely should not have your children attending that school. 

It is also true that most doctors will treat EMERGENT care if a child is not vaccinated because that care is necessary at that time and obviously can not wait without serious negative impact to that child.  To ignore that child's need for emergent care would be immoral and irresponsible.  However, I do not believe that doctors are only there for emergent care.  I believe every child should have regular visits with their healthcare provider to provide preventative medicine which may identify early problems or issues that child may have. And it is that preventative care that I was speaking to when I referred to her doctors.  I apoligize if that was confusing.

Honestly, overall I believe you have been rude and pushy when you could have been helpful.  Everyone has a different opinion and you do no one any favors when you forcefully disregard a parents right to act in what they believe to be the best interest of their child and speak down to them.  If this issue was truly important to you so much that you felt others should follow your actions, perhaps you should encourage (rather than berate) them to seek out their own education on the topic and provide helpful sources, albeit you did provide one source to the original inquiry.

If you notice, I always left the decision open to this mother, encouraging her to seek out more information from legitimate sources (such as her physician, who graduated from a specialty school in order to make such reccomendations based on their assesment of the research), and only providing my OPINION and topics of argument I felt could be useful to her.  I'm sorry that you feel the need to be so forceful and rude for anyone to listen to you.

[Sandra Stehly]

So... I was "rude" in posting facts?  Where's the studies showing vaccines are safe and effective?  I won't hold my breath while you look for them.  They don't exist.  Period.

 

Exceptions were meant to give religious people exemptions but no one else?  Man, you need to do some research.  So people who hold the Bible close, where it says injecting the body with PURE POISONS (that don't prevent disease, because God made our bodies pretty darned perfect) is a sin, are okay... but because I know injecting the body with poison is bad, I'm a terrible mother?  WOWZA... this is better than stand up comedy!  There are three exemptions - medical (those bad bad kids with egg allergies who can't get these toxic vaccines - how DARE they show up at your school dripping diseases from their fingertips!  Shoot them all!), religious (praise God), and philisophical... that one is for parents who don't parrot what their doctor, mother, grandmother, or that pharmaceutical ad that's on during Doctor Oz says.  To say it is simply a way to "not follow the rules" is LUDICROUS. 

 

It's irresponsible for me to have my healthy unvaxed kids in school?  My children's immune systems are uncompromised - they haven't been poisoned with unnecessary and ineffective toxins, meaning they are healthier than their unvaxed peers (wow, my 3 year old has never even met the family doc - and my other kids haven't been ill in so many years I've lost count!).  And I'm certain you realize how ridiculous it is to think that unvaxed children are these filthy disease carriers, right?  That's amusing.  Your vaxed child is as likely - no, MORE likely (because their immune systems are SO weakened) to carry disease around.  Fortunately, my children are better able to fight it off.  Thank goodness that we're not afraid of statistically harmless and very beneficial childhood diseases!

 

And "preventative care"?  Isn't that eating healthy and exercising?  What is my doctor going to do about that - they're not nutritionists or fitness experts, so paying that co-payment does me no good.    Vitamin D, good food, playtime.  There's the best (and only) preventative maintenance around.  Send me a $50.00 copay check please.   I'll bill the insurance for the other $500.00.

[Sandra Stehly]

Oh, and again I ask - if you are so supportive of these vaccines and you think they work, why on earth would you be afraid to have an unvaxed child around your "protected" ones?  That's funny, actually...

[Sandra Stehly]

If you think your vaccinations work, why are you afraid of being around unvaxed kids?  I mean, isn't that why you got the shots?  You have nothing to worry about, right?

 

My two younger children are not immunized because I educated myself.  After realizing that the toxins that I injected into my older children will never eradicate or prevent disease, but contribute to a life-long risk of illness and early death, I have protected my younger two from those dangers.  Please educate yourself and don't just parrot what you're being told by the doctor in a white coat.  Check out www.nvic.org:  that site has loads of information to help you make an informed decision.

 

Also, by taking away the ability for your children to contract STATISTICALLY HARMLESS CHILDHOOD DISEASES, you put them at greater risk for illness and death later in life.  Do you know that by allowing your child to get mumps, her chance of cervical cancer later in life is reduced by more than 60%?  Or that by getting chicken pox, you will avoid the risk of brain swelling and death by shingles?  Our bodies were made perfectly; we screw them up by injecting formaldehyde, mercury, detergents, antifreeze, aborted fetal matter, and more, all in the name of "prevention".  It's BS.  It's all about money, honey.

[AnnieD]

I'm not getting into my opinions on immunization because I do believe that every parent has to make that decision for themselves. The fact of the matter is, if the vaccinations work the way we are told that they do then it doesn't matter that her child is vaccinated. Your child is, therefore is not at risk, correct? The same goes for children the child comes in contact with in the general public. If those kids are vaccinated then coming in contact with a child that
isn't won't make them sick. Even coming in contact with an infected
child wouldn't effect them if they were immunized. Not being vaccinated doesn't make the other kids sick, having a disease would make the other kids sick. The children who are at risk for getting diseases are the ones who are not vaccinated and that is a risk that all parents who choose not to immunize have to be aware of. Why would you have to keep your baby away from hers? You said yours is vaccinated so you don't have anything to worry about, right?

[natalie lanna]

We. too looked up all the stuff in the vaccines- and were shocked!!! Not to mention that the monkey kidney tissue is from the same monkey that transmitted the AIDS Virus to the humans. And Thimerasol is believed to have something to do with the increase of Autism!
Unfortunately we do not have a choice but to get our son vaccinated, because no daycare would take him. I wish it was different! I do not understand, why they don't let the parents decide what to put into our children's bodies. I come from Germany and there is no such law!
We prepared our son with homeopathic remedies before he got the vaccines and requested the thimerasol-free vaccines that are available! Lets hope that the vaccines don't harm his little body more than they do good!
We definately did not feel good about this!
But I have to agree with Brittany Passons. If the other child is not sick, there should not be any risk of infection, anyway. Think about how your upbringing was. When I grew up, the mother's actually took their kids to the sick ones in the neighborhood (measles, chickenpox etc.) because it was believed that it is easier for the children to handle it when they are younger (no infants!). I had all of the common deseases, and so did my friends (sometimes at the same time ;o)! )- and we all turned out fine. And if your child got the vaccinations, it should be immune, anyway! I also think that the chances of getting these deseases are so low, nowadays, because most kids are immunised, anyway. Don't worry too much! Let your family enjoy their children, together!
I have noticed, too, that a lot of doctors over here tell you, what you want to hear or what the masses believe. When I talked to my pediatrician about the first solid food my little one should get, she first told me rice-cereal. In Germany, however, we start them with vegetables such as carrots. She then told me, that that is actually better and that rice-cereal (if not whole grain) is actually believed to cause diabetes (of course not in all cases). So, why do they promote it, if they are aware of health problems?
Think about what you believe and know, what the real health risk for your little one could be. Don't always believe in everything that the doctors tell you- get informed yourself and make the choice that best suits your knowledge, then.

[shaelene bremer]

I choose to immunize my son but that was due to the fact that neither me or his father where vaccinated until we were older and made the decision ourselves and if we potentially carry any deseases that are vaccinated for he could in fact get those deseases because we don't have the antibodies for them, that has been proven that if you don't carry the measles antibodies your child could contract it from you with out you even showing signs, we didn't do all vaccines only ones that we thought he should be vaccinated for like mmr and the pnumonalcacal, sorry can't spell that, and rota as well as whooping cough due to that we live in california and there is an outbreak. So I think you should educate yourself about what your giving your child then you shouldn't worry about what others think