Why not vaccinate?

[Visitor3]

.......

[Lulu]

Anna, I did try to discuss risk/benefits of vax/non with 2 separate Drs but they seemed unable to say much past what the leaflets (etc) said. I was pretty dissapointed esp with one of these docs being considered the one to go to for catch ups etc.
I had many questions ready and references to discuss but got nothing.

With the formaldehyde/additives etc - I understand that. I know where it might be, I gas off anything new I buy (furniture etc) outside for days before it comes inside.
There are heaps of chemicals we come into contact with - we have body systems (like skin) to help protect/process it.

I have a problem with injecting it directly into the body of a baby.

There are no safe levels for mercury to be injected into a live body yet it is.

[Mummato2]

Anna, I did try to discuss risk/benefits of vax/non with 2 separate Drs but they seemed unable to say much past what the leaflets (etc) said. I was pretty dissapointed esp with one of these docs being considered the one to go to for catch ups etc.
I had many questions ready and references to discuss but got nothing.

With the formaldehyde/additives etc - I understand that. I know where it might be, I gas off anything new I buy (furniture etc) outside for days before it comes inside.
There are heaps of chemicals we come into contact with - we have body systems (like skin) to help protect/process it.

I have a problem with injecting it directly into the body of a baby.

There are no safe levels for mercury to be injected into a live body yet it is.

I was just about to say the same thing.

It's different when it's introduced via environment - your stomach has acids to break it down if ingested, your skin has the ability to act as a filter - but directly injecting it into the bloodstream of a tiny infant is hardly the same

[Visitor3]

.....

[Trillian]

But the formaldehyde in a banana isn't a man made manufactured version is it? There are many chemcial substances that occur naturally in plants and edible plants, but they are completely different to what you would find in a chemists lab. Not only that prettybutterfly, you completely fail to mention that the 'formaldehyde' in bananas is actually methanol - which later converts to formaldehyde in the body but that humans have enzymes that break it down to be expelled from the body, and also that folic acid in fruits and vegetables protects against methanol toxicity, so mother nature knows what she is doing and to compare fruit with vaccinations is absurd

[Lulu]

Formaldehyde is formaldehyde no matter where it's 'grown' Trill - good points there on the fruits and veg!

PB, it's not just the one thing, it's the many that are in there and injected into the body...of a baby. I think that's a terrible shock to the system and with a boy on the spectrum somewhere I just couldn't take the chance.

However MY decisions won't affect your children any more than a vacc parent. Too many parents send their children to cc and school sick - vacc'd children can still catch CP (etc eg) and it's those with a false sense of security and bugger all understanding of the illnesses that can present just as much danger to your children.
Every single child I know that has had CP in the last 5 years or so was vacc'd against it.

Also - as tenar says, the chances of dying from these diseases is very low. Again, why do it when it's not always effective and not life or death?

I spoke to the Health Department when mine had the mumps. The lady I spoke with commended me on my knowledge of the disease and treatment, incubation times etc. Far more than the actual Dr I took them to...
At least I know what I'm up against and even if they were vaccd would never assume they are invincible because of that.

[Visitor3]

.....

[Trillian]

And that's all anyone can ever ask of you prettybutterfly.

[Inanna]

Respectfully I disagree Lu... Formaldehyde is a natural gas produced by living cells - however it is different in composition to the manufactured variety.

Also - I don't feed my new born baby bananans only breastmilk so it's not getting formaldehyde in any other form apart from the gaseous emissions from furniture, carpet, paint, pollution, other foods etc etc. Way too much formaldehyde than I am comfortable with... Let alone injecting into her body.

I think of a baby born in perfection - everything (usually) in perfect chemical balance - all the amino acids, gases everything in that body working perfectly. Then bang there is an onslaught of chemicals and additives that trigger an immune response. That to me is massive!

However PB if you choose to eat organic bananans you will not be eating any inorganic formaldehyde. (from bananas!) Bananas being very burdeoned in commercial farming with poisons being laden with formaldehyde are quite a toxic little yellow fruit...

And PB if: "your decision affects my children it's not on"... I wonder if you would feel so bland if the day comes that it is proven there is an issue... I wonder if you would feel so bland if your child had reacted as many of our children have. I wonder if you would make that statement as you held your child convulsing, mouth frothing and eyes rolling back in her head as my child did? Yes, her reaction is not "common" but it was my/her/our experience - an it was really tough.

Be careful about big bold statements as we never know what is around our corners in life. The turns and twists are so that we never really know what is going to be around the corner.

We all make our decisions with the knowledge (and hopefully) instincts that we have at the time. These sometimes change as time, maturity and knowledge grows.

However, my children personally haven't had any of these childhood diseases - that their immunised friends have. It's my experience that the immunised ones are actually more likely to pass it on to the unimmunised ones! Ironic hey? I keep them as free as I can manage of additives such as formaldehyde - which is a known carcinogen I might add! I worry when there is an outbreak - breathe a sigh of relief when it passes with my children untouched...

I haven't got global answers to this issue - however I do have some.

You or anyone else has no right to expect me or anyone else to inject into my childs body a substancde that has huge question marks over it. I have questions, fears and there are flaws to this vaccination and its schedule - from my perspective.

When you choose to immunise you do so because your perspective is different - your knowledge & instincts tell you something different. As I said above its my experience that immunised children seem to "catch" the diseases more readily than the unimunised ones - however I would never dream to tell you that it is you or any other parent that immunises that are putting MY children at risk.

Let's lay off the blame and guilt. It takes a great deal of courage to not immunise when it is pedalled as the only safe way by our health system..

[Visitor3]

.....

[Arcadia]

Re: delaying vaccinations. I thought the point was to stop babies and small children dying from diseases. If you're pro vax, why not vax a baby?

[Traveller]

Re: delaying vaccinations. I thought the point was to stop babies and small children dying from diseases. If you're pro vax, why not vax a baby?

My own person opinion is that the volume of chemicals in a vaccination is too much for a small child to take, it is too much of a chemical overload for their system. The dose does not change as you get bigger, so hence there is less vaccine per kg for the body to deal with and IMHO it seems more able to cope without side effects.

[melbel]

My only comment to add to the discussion is this: A few people have spoken about the fact they believe that you need to think of the community' rights when considering vaccination. I think you actually need to think of the communitys right to health by quarantining. We rely far too much on the supposed effectiveness of vaccines and unless every child was tested we would never know exactly which child had had a positive reaction to the vaccines (keep in mind vaccines are one average only effective for 60% of the people innoculated). This has been made so clear to me in recent months as I had to take very high doses of immunosuppresant drugs for the first 16weeks of this preganancy so that the baby would survive my own immune system. As a result I became a virtual recluse unable to go to shopping centres because irresponsible people and their childre think noting of going out with colds flus and other germs, sneezing and coughin all over the place, workers and ship assistants who go to work when they are unwell again sneezing and couging etc...kids in shopping trolleys hacking up a lung. If we as a society became more responsible for the spread of disease by isolating ourselves when we were sick, the spread of disease in all its forms would be far far less.......but we dont....we live in a world of false security and it's someone elses problem not mine.......

Even now I break out in a sweat when out doing chrissy shopping and I hear someone cough....it's not right......

[suse]

Someone asked earlier in the thread about vaccines becoming natural or organic. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as that.

To touch on something Winter said earlier, often the term 'chemical' is used inaccurately. Every substance that exists has a molecular (or atomic) structure. A chemical is another term for a complex molecule - that is, a substance containing more than one type of atom. Hence, water (one hydrogen atom, two oxygen atoms) is a chemical, ozone (three oxygen molecules) is a simple molecule.

A chemical can be naturally occurring, nature identical and synthetic. When many people refer to 'chemicals' they are really referring to synthetics. Nature identical refers to a substance that is synthesised but has the identical chemical structure as a naturally occurring substance. And synthetics are substances that have no direct analogue in nature (although this does not mean that it is impossible for it to occur naturally). It might sound like pedantry, but the distinction is really important.

It's also not accurate to conclude that synthetic = bad, natural = good. For a start, a nature identical synthetic has the exact same chemical structure, and therefore behaves identically to its naturally occurring analogue. In a given application, a synthetic may have properties that are more beneficial than what a similar substance that is naturally occurring can provide - inertness or stability is a good example. It may be identical to a naturally occurring chemical but without a particular irritant or allergen. Others are synthesised from more viable source materials. On the same token, some naturally occurring chemicals are superior to their synthetic counterparts (but may be more difficult or expensive to source), and some synthetics are sourced from non-renewable resources such as petrochemicals. There are too many factors involved to say that one thing is inherently 'good' and the other 'bad'.

In the case of vaccines, the true concern is not that carrier materials are 'inorganic', but that they are not inert - that is, they can be passed through the body without impact. This does not necessarily mean that to be inert they should be natural or organic. However, using organic or inert carrier media would potentially impact on the ability of the (usually live) organism to be utilised by the body (in water, for example, it is likely to be passed through the body without any effect), or is likely to otherwise impact upon the efficacy or stability of the vaccine. So it may mean that a larger amount of the virus is required to have the same effectiveness as when other substances are used. This may have a more profound impact on the immune system than what the use of current carrier materials have on the body in general.

It is also fair to say that given that the aim of mass vaccination is to eradicate a virus through herd immunity, that cost and the ability to mass produce and disseminate is always going to be a factor. Should suitable inert carrier substances be found, there would likely be a much higher cost of production.

There are a huge number of factors why alternatives to existing vaccination methodology are desirable, but are not foreseeably viable. This is not to say that research should not be continued into the efficacy of vaccination, the effect of its component parts on the human body, and whether these can be improved.

[Lolli]

Dm, I chose to vaccinate my ds. (note the word vaccinate,as we've all been using- very important- the word immunisations is misleading I think, it seems to imply a child is completley immune when we know they are not). The mitigating factor for me was that at the time I was working in a children's hospital. I did my research, and weighed up my risks- it was the fact that I would regularly come into contact with people who were possible infectious that swayed my desicion.

Having said that, it's not been such an easy descion with dd because I am no longer working there. However, I decided that because we regularly go to daycare, playgroup, swimming, etc- we are in contact with other kids at least 4 days a week- I'm using that as my justifcation for vaccinating dd.

It's not an easy desicion to make. I am happy with the descions I've made, but I still feel a lot of trepidation reading threads like this- the risks of vaccinating are real, and quite scary.

Just with the Hep B vac- I decided not to do it at birth. The main reason behind that was that if an adult was being vaccinated against Hep B, they would get 3 needles, but for some reason we give little children four. My mw tells me it's because there are a lot of people choosing not to vaccinate, so they try to 'catch' people before the baby leaves hospital.