Quite a while ago I put out a piece called "A Little About Vaccines." I spent a lot of time talking about how difficult this issue is to navigate and how much I believe in parental rights- which is true. I deeply believe that, except in extreme and unusual cases, parents are the only people who have the love, commitment, and investment in their children that would qualify them to make the final decision about what gets injected into their new little bodies. Note I did not say the medical expertise, or the proper education. Medical expertise is good and helpful information that parents should carefully consider. Properly educating oneself on the relevant information for such decisions is clearly a parental responsibility. But, make no mistake, those things do not supersede a parent's decision. A doctor can think that the risk of harm to a patient from a vaccine is too slim to merit consideration, but in the case of a side-effect with permanent debilitating consequences it is not the doctor who will have to live with those effects (not to mention the financial and emotional burden) on a daily basis- it is the patient and his/her parents. Alternatively, if the child comes down with a "vaccine-preventable illness," whether or not they were vaccinated against that disease, it will still be the patient and parents who are really affected.
And yet, I have continued to study and learn a great deal since that first vaccine post. And the more I learn, the more I lean away from vaccines. The more I learn about the two parts of our divinely designed bodies' immune systems [Humoral Immunity and Cellular Immunity], and how little we know, let alone understand, of immunity at all, the more hesitancy I feel about the ways we may be irresponsibly manipulating it. The more I learn about the history of vaccination, the more concerned I am about the dogmatic allegiance government and industry alike demonstrate for vaccination.
I have really struggled with how to tackle this subject, how to organize what I have found (...and where it is since I have misplaced most of my links), and how to really express my feelings accurately. But in a recent conversation I started to get some ideas of where to start.
For those who are looking into vaccines, but don't have a particular starting place in mind I have a few suggestions. Whenever anyone questions vaccines, one of the most common angry retorts you will hear is "Vaccines eradicated smallpox and saved us from the scourge of polio!" But, is that even true?
1. Watch the video below (also available here). It is a presentation by one of my favorites- Dr. Suzanne Humphries, MD. She is one of the authors of Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and the Forgotten History. This presentation reveals a whole new world of information on polio and the polio vaccine. I would apologize for the length (the video is over an hour long), but I honestly wish it was longer- I don't get tired of Dr. Humphries (in fact, I listen to her radio interviews).
If, after watching this lecture on polio, you decide that you too enjoy Dr. Humphries' style, I have good news! Just recently, in August of 2014, a 4-part youtube series of a full vaccine seminar Dr. Humphries gave in Sweden. I have linked the series on my vaccine videos post.
2. Then read about the less well-known history of smallpox. Then, perhaps, an even more in-depth look at smallpox, history, and herd-immunity.
The history of smallpox and polio are so fundamental to the defense of vaccines- if that history has been misrepresented, what else don't we know?
3. Read Vaccines: a peek beneath the hood by the authors of Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and The Forgotten History which I also highly recommend.
4. Begin the quest of true Herd Immunity understanding by reading Herd Immunity: Can Mass Vaccination Achieve It? by Tetyana Obukhanych, Ph.D and “Herd Immunity” The flawed science and failures of mass vaccination, by Dr. Suzanne Humphries
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If you have read and watched all of that and you are hungry for more... I have more. A lot more. This is a list of some of interesting stuff I have read and watched, in no particular order. Start with whatever you want. Don't feel obligated to check out all of it... I just can't seem to stop.
-Learning about the difference between cellular immunity (also called innate immunity) and humoral immunity (also called adaptive immunity) is fascinating direction to go. Oddly, this Dog Magazine Article contains a fairly good intro.
-Learning about original antigenic sin is also important.
-Dr. Tetyana Obukhanych earned a PhD in immunology and is the author of Vaccine Illusion and the accompanying website. The first time I visited the site there were links on the side with great articles and information. The links on the homepage are gone, but the pages still exist, I have linked them below. The video below is a presentation she gave in March 2013.
-Introduction
-My Story
-Herd Immunity
-Why We Must Preserve the Freedom of Informed Vaccination Choice
-Immunity
-Maternal Immunity
-Measles
-Influenza
-Whooping Cough
-Antitoxin
-Immunologic Memory
-Chickenpox & Shingles
-Tetanus Protection, Tetanus in Adults, Neonatal Tetanus
-Hepatitis B
-Polio & Rotavirus
-HPV
-FAQ
-Useful Resources
-Also, this is was a really great article she wrote on Tetanus
-Below is a presentation she gave on measles:
-This video with Dr. Tenpenny is 1.75 hrs long (and drags at times) but has a lot of info (much of the info is good, but I believe some of it is outdated, and there were some statements that conflict with some of my other sources)
-A Shot Never Worth Taking: The Flu Vaccine a very worthwhile piece, not just on the flu vaccine but more importantly the mindset of the mainstream parents. One powerful quote "I understand, now, that, my collection of PubMed articles substantiating concerns about inefficacy, neurological, autoimmune, and fatal risks of these poorly conceived and anachronistically relevant immune modulators is not meaningful to someone who is not interested. The questions raised by this information are not provocative to someone who needs, above all, to believe that the government, the CDC, and doctors mean well, are doing their due diligence, and that they are holding themselves to a basic standard of ethical delivery of healthcare. They are not meaningful to someone who needs to outsource their power."
-Side note, this study is a very intriguing example of why true vaccinated vs unvaccinated studies don't get done by pharmaceutical companies (this one was done in Hong Kong and was a relatively small study with only 115 children). The statistics and conclusions are striking. This study suggests that the flu shot seriously increases risk of other respiratory infections including Coxsackie and Echovirus. Because this study was not done in the US and was done with a relatively small sample size (but it did make it into The Oxford Journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases), I would prefer to cite a bigger more prestigious study, but there are none.
-While we are on the topic of the flu shot, the misleading citing of manipulated statitsics regarding the danger of contracting the flu is really buggin' me. This article breaks it down quite well
-Shawn Siegel wrote an article called The Great Divide: spanning the chasm between truth and egregious lies which I rather appreciated. The great divide he speaks of is the time that most often lapses between the injecting of a vaccine and the negative reactions. As he puts it "If after a vaccination your arm immediately atrophied, folks would get the point."
-If you are interested in more videos and radio interviews, I have a whole post dedicated to a list of links to both called "Videos Regarding Vaccines"
