Immunization Awareness Month is upon us which means we wake up the sleeping beast: the debate for and against vaccination. There’s a lot of hot feeling on either side of the debate which is only natural. These are our children we’re talking about and their lives are in our hands. As parents, it’s our duty to protect them.
But just try and read through all the medical mumbo jumbo on the web. Most parents are not doctors. We just want to understand what it is we need to know about immunization to make the right decision, for or against.
And then of course there’s the problem of whose “facts” to believe. How can you, as a parent without medical training, know which facts about immunization are true? Is the decision to vaccinate your child going to come down to a crapshoot, or perhaps, a leap of faith (to one side or the other)?
Let’s take a look at the facts, and the pros and cons of immunization, dumbed down:
Fact: Immunization Recommended/Not A Law
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says children up to age six should be getting 28 doses of 10 vaccines. But that’s only a recommendation. There is no federal law that says children must be vaccinated. In other words, the medical establishment says you should vaccinate your child, but you won’t go to jail if you don’t.
Fact: Immunization A Must For Public School Kids With Few Exceptions
All 50 states require some vaccinations for children going to public school. Almost every state offers exemptions on the grounds of medical or religious issues while some state allow exemptions for philosophical reasons. In other words, if your religion forbids vaccination or your child has a medical problem which means he can’t be vaccinated, you can get out of vaccinating your child. If you are against immunization for other reasons, you may be able to get out of vaccinating your child, depending on where you live. You can check what laws apply in your state HERE.
Pro: Immunization Is Safe/Reactions Rare
Bad reactions to vaccines are very rare. Experts don’t have an exact statistic, but agree that the odds are very small of having a severe allergic reaction (anaphylaxis) to a vaccine. Some say the number is one severe allergic reaction per every several hundred thousand vaccinations, while other experts say the chance of a bad reaction is one in one million vaccinations.
Con: Immunization Is Risky/Dangerous
Some kids do actually die as a result of getting vaccinated. While reactions to vaccines are rare, they do happen to an unfortunate few. Bad reactions to vaccines include seizures, paralysis, and even death.
Pro: Immunization Prevents Illness, Saves Lives
Those in favor of immunization say that vaccination is the greatest medical advancement of our time. Thanks to vaccination, smallpox, polio, diphtheria, rubella (German measles), and whooping cough have been wiped out, at least for now. These are diseases that have killed children in the past. Pro-immunization medical experts estimate that vaccines have saved millions of children’s lives.
Con: Immunization Unnecessary/Risk Not Worth Taking
Those against immunization say that a child’s immune system can fight against most diseases without any help from vaccines. They say that putting the substances of a vaccine into a child’s body can not only cause serious side effects but may be the trigger for a lot of the health problems and learning disabilities we see in children today, such as autism, diabetes, and ADHD.
Pro: Link Between Immunization And Autism Not Proven
Andrew Wakefield had a study published in 1998 in the Lancet, an important medical journal. The study showed a link between the Measles Mumps Rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. As a result of the study, many parents stopped vaccinating their children. They feared their children would develop autism as the result of immunization.
Wakefield’s study was small. There were only 12 children studied. Eight of them supposedly developed symptoms of what Wakefield called “regressive autism” within days of receiving the shot. The problem was that no one could replicate Wakefield’s results, though they tried again and again.
The results of a study are accepted only after others repeat the study and gets the same results. That just didn’t happen with Wakefield’s study. By 2004, people were getting suspicious and a reporter began investigating. Finally, Wakefield was called before a review board and in 2010, was exposed as a complete fraud. The Lancet withdrew the paper saying their experts been deceived, and Wakefield lost his medical license.
Even though Wakefield was proven a fraud, parents continue to claim their children developed autism as a result of immunization. Other parents may not have heard that Wakefield was a phony. They continue to believe that the MMR vaccine causes autism. You will see plenty of web pages that continue to insist there is a link between autism and the MMR shot.
The Wakefield study is believed to be the reason for the Disneyland measles outbreak in California. Parents stopped vaccinating their kids after Wakefield’s study was published. They were scared their children would develop autism.
While most parents in American vaccinated their children (at least until the Wakefield report), parents in poorer countries may not have had good medical care for their children. Children in those countries may be vulnerable to diseases like the measles, because they were not immunized. If a child with measles should come to visit Disneyland in America, and spends time with children who were not vaccinated, those children can get and spread the measles.
Some parents who stopped vaccinating their children because of the Wakefield report thought their children were safe from the measles, because vaccination had for the most part wiped out the disease in America. They thought: “Why vaccinate our children when there is no measles in America? Why risk autism or worse, when the disease has been mostly wiped out?”
The problem is, so many parents had this thought, that many American children ended up getting the measles as a result of contact with a tourist at Disneyland. The Disneyland outbreak brought more hot debate about immunization, both for and against. The media scrambled to cover it all.
One media story did a lot to explain how immunization works. The father of six year-old boy, Rhett Krawitt, asked school officials not to let kids come to school who were not vaccinated because of their families’ religious or personal beliefs. Rhett is getting over leukemia and it would be dangerous for him to get the measles vaccine. His system is too weak and the vaccine could make him actually get the measles. Because he is so weak, measles could be especially dangerous to him and might even kill him.
Since Rhett cannot be immunized, his parents feel it is dangerous for him to be around healthy children who have not been vaccinated. They fear that with the all the measles outbreaks, Rhett could be exposed to the measles from these children. It seems unfair to them that their child has to stay home from school because of parents who refuse to vaccinate their healthy children.
There are many other issues around the immunization debate. For instance, some people say that vaccines are unethical because some of the ingredients of the vaccines are animal byproducts, while other ingredients may cause cancer. Part of the debate on immunization has to do with government: should the government force people to get vaccinated or would that take away peoples’ basic freedoms.
A good website for reading more about the pros and cons of vaccination is the webpage on vaccination at ProCon.org.
About Varda Epstein
Varda Meyers Epstein serves as editor in chief of Kars4Kids Parenting. A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Varda is the mother of 12 children and is also a grandmother of 12. Her work has been published in The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, The Learning Site, The eLearning Site, and Internet4Classrooms.
It’s good to learn all of the arguments for and against immunizations. It’s good to know that vaccines don’t actually cause autism. That was the only thing I was worried about, so now I think my kids need to be immunized, just in case.
Vaccines might not cause autism but there are zero studies that confirm that they do NOT contribute to autism and other autoimmune diseases. There have been no studies that compare unvaccinated to vaccinated. There have been zero placebo studies. There haven’t been enough safety studies done for me to feel confident that my child will be safe. I hope that the Pharma companies decide to do these studies and publish the outcomes. But hey… they make Billions of dollars a year on these mandated vaccines so why would they…
Do I have to do studies to determine if ice cream/football/watching tv doesn’t contribute to autism and other autoimmune diseases? I have no idea why anyone thinks we have to do studies to determine what diseases or conditions a given substance does NOT cause. Seems pretty silly to me. There is ZERO reason to think that vaccines contribute to autism or autoimmune diseases.
Oh please. Stop it. Science is not on your side. Now, with all the outbreaks in 2019, I hope you are a believer in vaccination.
Yes. To do anything else is irresponsible.
Varda.
You are doing a bigger injustice with your writing than any other pro vaccination writer. You come across as if you are fairly bringing both sides of the debate to the table. From the end of your neatly scripted article, your underlying agenda is clear. I know where you are coming from because i once used to be there as well, and i will share with you my story.
I was a very strong proponent of vaccination, outspoken and sure of it, with no doubts. Luckily, at some point i felt i should have real facts to be going on instead of just believing what i was always inherently sure of. I had no reason to doubt what i had grown up on and been assured of by most everyone, i just felt like it was all really grandfathered into my thinking making my opinion of it based on belief more than anything else. So i wanted to supplement it with real facts. When i began my research, i was initially shocked at a couple discoveries i made. They didn’t succeed in changing my opinion, I was somehow able to reconcile them in my mind thanks to my very strong belief. At some point later, i found myself reassuring a friend that there was nothing to be concerned of and vaccines are safe and effective… then and there and very subtly my conscience begin nagging me. Was i so sure? Enough to take responsibility for someone else’s children’s health? I started feeling that i needed to know more. And that is when i realized that my real belief was rooted in faith. And it dawned on me that there is no reason or place for Faith in the medical and science realm. There is trust in science but that should be based on fact only. So i decided that i need to look closely at the science to get down to the truth. The safety science is largely non existent but to someone who knows nothing it could sound impressive and authoritative. On the other hand there is an overwhelming numbers of studies done (without funding from within the CDC or Pharmaceutical companies) proving just how dangerous they really are.
From the way you are writing, its obvious that you did superficial research that should be called “REassureSEARCH” your opinion is not up for possible change, you just need enough info to convince people and yourself that you are giving them the correct educated guidance.
Since I made the realization that i had been doing that, and in turn (And believe me it was not easy to disconnect my first impressions) and to allow myself to be honest when researching, i have seen and accepted that i was gravely mistaken. I have since gone back to that parent (The one i had tried to convince as i had been convinced) and explained to him what i had learned and apologized for giving him bad advice. He began to read up on it and arrived at the same conclusion. As a matter of fact every person i know who ever decided to put beliefs on the side and research for real ALL HAVE COME TO THE SAME CONCLUSION!
I do realize though that for regular people its asking too much to expect them to be able to disregard what they passionately believe in, and instead to absorb information candidly. And that’s where you come in. If you have taken it upon yourself to give information to people out there you had better know what you are talking about before you say it. If you just endangered your own kids by being a believer and staying ignorant, maybe no one can expect more and maybe its forgivable. But what will be your answer for convincing masses as a knowledgeable person of something you don’t know from knowledge? Why not tell them the truth? That you are simply convinced since it was told over to you as an innocent little child that believes what they hear from people like teachers, doctors, and parents. And that on growing up, you haven’t checked it out so you are giving them your intact 6 or 7 year old judged impressions…
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No idea why you think I haven’t researched the topic. I also have no idea what you’re trying to say about vaccination, as you haven’t actually said anything.
I think i was clear. I think that your knowledge boils down to faith in a system and that’s just the opposite of what it should be. Research means without any blind beliefs.
You should be in tune to parents and their testimonies. I am not referring to one or two. There are so so many and they are found in every community. If you somehow feel that the industry (Which nets billions of dollars a year, and its individuals that receive in the millions, all of that being made off of you and the rest of the believers) is more trustworthy than a parents (Who don’t stand to gain anything besides being unpopular) with intimate knowledge and familiarity with their children, and those parents (Thousands and thousands and continuing to come up incessantly for over many years) testify to the fact that their children have become autistic (and many other debilitating life changing sicknesses) from vaccination, even if you still tend to believe the industry, IT IS DEFINITELY SOMETHING THAT NEEDS TO BE CHECKED OUT! there are many medical studies that prove it besides Wakefield and much more modern ones. There are Medical Doctors who attest to it and even Doctors who’s expertise is autism have made the connection. There are child care personnel and teachers that attest to it on their students as well. There are also cases that were recognized and paid for by the USA vaccine court. All of this information you wont see on the billboards or anywhere. Those parents are left to cry for the rest of their lives unheard. You need real research to uncover it. And if you didn’t think it warrants looking into my advice is that you do it now anyways. Because by the time it becomes public knowledge and people will realize it, it will be too late. You already will have given the wrong advice….
Yes. You were clear: you think I didn’t base my article on research, that my knowledge boils down to blind faith. You speak of testimonies, but do not offer any. You appear to reject scientific studies. Very clear. Thank you for your comments.
I posted my answer to your question but i don’t see it here. Any particular reason….?
Yes. Comments are moderated, and I’m just reviewing your comments now.
Are you still moderating my last reply? If you are busy looking for the safety studies done on aluminium in the vaccines which have it, don’t knock yourself out. They don’t exist. They were never done.
It is just one sample of what I meant when i said the studies largely do not exist. Instead i am ready to direct you to testimonies and information that can only be found with research beyond what is being fed to you all day by the biased media and dishonest vaccine industry. (And by the corrupt CDC which under the guise of protecting us from diseases, works directly with the vaccine companies to actuate their agendas mandating any and every vaccine that is produced, causing hundreds of new diseases and terrible sicknesses in our children)
Yes, its a bombshell to the ones not yet aware of it, but if you really care about Kids it is something you need to first seek out, and then even more intimidating, to accept and admit. (It’s only hard until the decision to be truthful is made) Once you have gotten to that point you can help people for real by informing them correctly.
Clearly untrue. See, for instance:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22001122/
https://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/GACVSsymposiumTrack1-Safety-issues-reviewed-during-early21st-century.pdf?ua=1
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301891952_Aluminium-adjuvanted_vaccines–a_review_of_the_current_state_of_knowledge
https://www.obgproject.com/2017/10/03/aluminum-vaccine-safety-evidence/#:~:text=Aluminum%20in%20vaccines%20has%20an,and%20Drug%20Administration%20(FDA)
https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-ingredients/aluminum
Sooo…. I asked you to show me the safety studies that the pharmaceutical companies relied upon for those vaccines containing aluminium before marketing them, and what studies the CDC used to ascertain their safety before mandating those vaccines for everyone.
You have not shown me any such thing.
Of your 5 links, none were studies done at all.
1. the PubMed page from 2011 speaks of a up-to-date (In 2011) ANALYSIS of the safety of aluminum adjuvants. This is not a safety study done in real time to test the effects and dangers of the aluminium in the vaccine. Rather it simply compared the aluminium level that is normal and considered safe (Being less than the minimal risk levels (MRLs) established by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry) with the amount found in the first year of the (then) current vaccine schedule. And since the vaccines contain less than the minimal risk levels (MRLs) then it must be safe….
Here’s what you don’t realize.
They used MRL which is for is for ORAL EXPOSURE (Check out the ATSDR chart to see it clearly yourself https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/mrls/mrllist.asp) to say that that a similar amount is safe to be INJECTED into the body! You don’t need to be a scientist to realize there is no comparison! Normal amounts of aluminium contained in food we all eat, it leaves the body with the waste as quick as it came in. Injected aluminium, on the other hand, goes into the muscle tissue where it is absorbed by the body to stay for good and increase with every vaccination.
2. The GACVS “situation paper” is also not a study or a proof, only the opinions of the different authors in their articles. As the disclaimer there reads, “The authors alone are responsible for the views expressed in this draft situation paper and they
do not necessarily represent the views, decisions or policies of the institutions with which they are affiliated.”
On aluminum adjuvants the writer discredits three actual studies that each prove the dangers of aluminium in vaccines. (Developmental delays and other
adverse neurological outcomes [Willhite et all 2014; Tomljenovic 2011]. and autoimmune inflammatory syndrome induced by
adjuvants (ASIA) and myalgic encephalomyelitis also known as fatigue syndrome [Gherardi et al 2019])
The author after saying that those studies were seriously flawed (but bringing no explanation) mentions two “studies” as proof for the safety of aluminium in vaccines. One is the same ANALYSIS mentioned by the Pub Med webpage. The other is a study done only in 2018. Aluminium is in vaccines for over 60 years) That “study” proves nothing and is refuted by scientists and doctors who have brought out the dishonesty and irrelevance of it. (Its not relevant here but we could go into those details if you ever want.)
3. Researchgate is a website featuring a REVIEW of the current state of knowledge regarding aluminium in vaccines. again just opinions of the writer and not a study.
4. the OBGproject website also contains no studies (besides a mouse study whos outcome is disputed. it contains what was seen in the first links we just discussed and also mentions what is an article [No Study] found on CHOPs website.
5. That same C.H.O.P. website page which is no more than a vociferous statement that aluminium in vaccines is safe, quoting again the comparison of aluminium from food to the aluminium being injected. No new studies mentioned there either.
You prove my point. The prudently necessary science is not there and was not done when it should have been. Yet people like you are convinced it exists somewhere, you really think what you found is safety studies? At what point will you stop believing with faith? When will you stop being one of the many useful idiots of the multi billion dollar industry which has brainwashed the population and corrupted governments into doing its work?
If you want testimonies from parents why don’t you start with the website VAXXED.COM. If you get tired of those let me know i can direct you to other places too.
Wrong. The studies I referenced are studies based on metadata from studies on aluminum. You said there were no studies. Now you’re saying there are no new studies, as if a study from 2018 is “old.” As if metadata is somehow invalid. Also, you’re changing the goalposts from comment to comment. Before you said I had to show you studies. Now that I did you’re saying they have to be studies later than 2018.
I am not interested in reading anecdotes. Science is what interests me and is what I used as the basis of my articles. You are, of course, welcome to believe whatever you wish.