Consider vaccines carefully
Recently, the biggest government entity, the Department of Health and Human Services (governing the FDA and CDC) finally settled one of many claims by families whose children have been damaged by vaccines. This came after years of dodging and denying that Thimerosal (containing mercury) may cause autism.
This is some of the evidence documenting a connection between mercury and autism: 1. Published studies from the U.S. and France showing that urinary porphyrins, a biomarker for mercury, are elevated in autistic patients. 2. A published Harvard study that found twice as much mercury and oxidative stress in the brains of autistics as in normal brains. 3. A U.S. study showing that increasing blood mercury levels are linked to increased risk of autism diagnosis. 4. Many published papers by independent researchers showing links between mercury exposure from vaccines and autism diagnosis. 5. Several papers showing that even low levels of Thimerosal in eye, brain, blood, immune, liver and/or muscle cells poison cellular mitochondrial pathways and causes cell death. In 2003, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Government Reform Committee concluded a 3.5-year investigation, linking Thimerosal to our autism epidemic. The committee said the FDA and health authorities were guilty of “institutional malfeasance” in covering it up.
Flu vaccines containing Thimerosal are banned in Europe and limited in 7 U.S. states. Most of the U.S. is still administering these vaccines to pregnant women and infants, and I have found ascertaining whether Thimerosal is in any specific vaccine to be difficult at best. My pediatrician did not know. Be careful and wise in your decisions about vaccines.
I am hesitant to give my teenage daughter the HPV series. Any comments on this? I am in my fourties, never had the vaccine and am fine. Thoughts?
Deb
How do I keep them from vaccinating my children anymore? My son has issues and is getting better, but he is suppose to be ‘caught up’ with all these shots and everything to enter into a special day class for kindergarten. It is a class with autistic and other special children. Just wondering.
Also, about that flue shot. My husband had that shot several years ago and did NOT have the flu. He didn’t want to get sick. At the time he didn’t eat well. Guess what? He got the flu from the flu shot and got severly ill and it turned into pneumonia. Stay away from shots!
Depends on your state law. Here in Utah, you go to the county health department and sign a waiver. Then you turn the waiver in to the school in lieu of the vaccine schedule proving your kid had the vaccines.
No one should get the hep B shot; this I feel confident enough about to make a strong stand. Girls get hep B from drug needles or sexual contact, and the immunity from the shot given at birth wears off by the time a girl could be shooting up or becoming sexually active. That campaign makes no sense.
I was required to get a flu shot in grad school years ago, when I did a residency on the children’s unit of the state mental hospital. I have never been sicker in my life than I was that year–I think I got the flu 7 times. Never again.
HPV: very new, lots of controversy about it. If she’s not sexually active, her risk of HPV is nil anyway (it’s the girls with multiple partners who have high risk).
HPV: It’s a little scary that girls as young as 14 (younger even) are recommended to get a vaccine for a virus that comes from multiple sexual partners-isn’t it kind of the same thing as handing them a condom and saying ‘you watch yourself out there’?
My doc was also pretty critical of the chicken pox vaccine (pretty much every young mom i know has given it to their kids)-saying that the vaccine might be helpful for a certain strain of the virus, but leave your kids susceptible to the more dangerous ones-and make it easier to get it when you’re an adult. We’ve never done that one, or the flu shot-so many people have told horror stories of flu shots!
Autism and vaccines-I was under the impression that mercury was removed from these vaccines years ago and yet the numbers have continued to increase-even despite many parents opting out of vaccinating their kids?
I have been mulling over this whole issue of vaccinating children and have found it to be a rather complex issue. There are no easy answers. I had been vaccinating my children dutifully and on schedule until I started researching illness and nutrition in January of this year. Vaccination cropped up as a rather contentious issue. At that point, I stopped all vaccinations. After considerable thought, I decided to finish off the vaccinations that were in series. I brought Elise in and talked to the nurse. She was a passionate vaccination supporter and I found myself on the receiving end of a lengthy tirade. The nurse was frustrated by all the misinformation on the internet and in the media about vaccinations. She pressed me to find out when I was going to continue with the rest of the vaccinations. I told her that I was not necessarily against vaccinations, but that I wanted to be intentional about this process. Finally, I just interrupted her and asked for the shot that I had come in for. She made a note on my file (aka wacko parent alert) and then proceeded to impart her wisdom. Of course, I was using a flouride toothpaste for Elise; uh, no. Then, make sure to give her Homo milk to supplement my breastmilk as I begin weaning her. I just didn’t respond to this but I would have LOVED to see the look on her face if I had told her about the green smoothie. That would have been priceless – but there is a time and place for everything and this was not it.
“Homo” milk cracked me up for a while until I figured out you meant homogenized, and the wacko parent alert . . . wouldn’t you love to grab the file and see what she wrote? Great story.
Two nights ago, I made dinner for my college students and their dates/spouses. These particular students don’t know me very well, as we’re on the block (not semester) right now, and I bailed for two weeks on vacation, leaving my class with my T.A. In one conversation I was in, my students were all holding court about crazy vegetarians and how they’re raising malnourished kids. I looked over at my T.A. who knows me and my philosophy well, both of us trying not to crack up, and he said to me, quietly, “Be the bigger man.” (That made me just lose it.)
Then tonight, at a family dinner (DH’s family), a brother-in-law said, when discussing the dismal state of dental health in most parts of the world, “Why can’t Utah get fluoride in its water?!”
In neither case did I get on the soapbox. Like Darlene says, there’s a time and a place, and nobody wants to listen to a self-righteous sister-in-law or professor hold court–at a party.
“No one should get the hep B shot; this I feel confident enough about to make a strong stand. Girls get hep B from drug needles or sexual contact,”
Uh, you guys are forgetting about the girls and women who carefully keep themselves away from any kind of sexual contact before marriage and whose husbands kindly expose them after marriage, either through affairs or from previously undisclosed pre-marriage wild days.
You may still choose not to get the vaccine or to give it to your daughter – I still haven’t gotten it and don’t plan to – but please don’t assume that a girl or woman can protect herself from HPV exposure by sexual inactivity before marriage to a person she believes will be a faithful partner.
Yeah, but my objection is to giving INFANT girls the vaccine. It wears off by the time they are 15. Unless you’re in a cult, you’re not going to marry your daughter off that early, right? Adults should make decisions relative to their lifestyles, but giving an infant child (per APA recommendations, now) an HPV vaccine makes no sense and is based solely on the fact that drs. have access to baby girls.
–Robyn
Well, the CDC is currently not recommending the HPV vaccine for infants, but I don’t doubt they would try to do that in the future. Right now it’s recommended for girls 11 years+.
Good to know they’ve changed the protocol, probably as a result of the massive public outcry. About the time my last child was born, due to APA recommendations that virtually all pediatricians follow, they were pushing the shot on newborns.
Ok, we’ve got ourselves all mixed up here. Someone asked about HPV (Human Papilloma Virus), so my mind was on that. Then Robyn said something about Hepatitis B. Then she said something about HPV, and others commented on HPV. In my 10:01 am comment, I meant to quote Robyn’s response about HPV, not Hepatitis B.
The protocols haven’t changed, we’re just mixing vaccines in our comments
Hepatitis B is still mandated for all newborns. HPV is currently recommended/semi-mandated for 11-26 year old girls/women.
Also, I would highly question that they are “pushing the shot on newborns”. In my recollection, they don’t “push” it, they just do it! I suppose it is covered under the blanket consent form that a woman signs when she checks in to the hospital. Which is one of the myriad reasons hospitals just aren’t safe for birthing
Ohhhhh you are so right . . . while I was writing (too quickly), I was thinking, something I am saying here is not right. I was mixing up HPV and hep B. Everything K. (“anonymous”) is saying above is exactly correct. Sorry sorry sorry. I haven’t had a baby in almost 8 years, and I think they’ve gotten more aggressive–I did have to STOP them from giving my last son Hep B, or they would have done it (didn’t ask my permission).
I had my first son in the hospital in 2001, and they did not explicitly ask permission to give the Hepatitis B vaccine. The baby just disappeared for an hour or so after the birth while I paced the room. (It sickens me now to think that this is how babies and mothers are routinely treated.) I suppose he was vaccinated during that hour. In fact, the hospital stamped off that the Hepatitis B vaccine and the DTaP vaccine were given. When this was noticed a few weeks later, the pediatrician said it was definitely a mistake. I sure hope so. I didn’t even allow myself to think about it since there was no way to find out for sure, and nothing I could do about it if it was given. I assume that DTaP shots are not even kept in the nursery, since there would be no reason for them, so hopefully it was just a clerical error. I vaccinated him on schedule until 9 months. He received everything except varicella and MMR at the 12 month visit. He hasn’t had any vaccines since. My youngest two children have had no vaccines. I rethink that decision constantly, but for now that’s where we are.
Robyn,
Please help – I am 37 weeks pregnant and looking for a pediatrician that won’t crucify me/banish me for not vaccinating my kids. How do I find pediatricians like this in Utah Valley? please email…
Brin
Thanks. She is not accepting new patients.
The search continues. I’ve heard of a few others that I’m hopeful for. My plan also is to avoid the Dr as much as humanly possible. I, myself, have never been vaccinated and could count on one hand the number of doctor’s visits I’ve had in my life. I hope to continue this tradition with my kids, too. A pediatrician is a necessary thing to have with a newborn, though… Thanks anyway for your help.
Brynn, Melissa Kendall at Utah Valley Pediatrics won’t. She’s my pediatrician. My pediatrician we never go to.
Unless we need a Scout physical.