This is rare for me: I read a borrowed book. This only happens a few times a year {because I live nowhere near the library that is only open a couple days for a couple hours each week anyhow}. I borrowed this book because I was asking my chiropractor’s opinion on exposing my children to wild chicken pox. I think perhaps my oldest had one of the varicella shots, but other than that they are clean. So my question was whether I should make sure they get it before they get to the age where it can be dangerous.
She was sort of ambivalent about it also, so she handed me Childhood Vaccinations: Questions All Parents Should Ask and told me to read it.
Here are a few of my thoughts on the book.
Preface to the 2010 Printing? Boo hiss.
I really, really didn’t like the preface. It contained a lot of the straw man fallacies I encounter among anti-vaccination voices. By the end of the book, I understood why he said some of these things, which tells me that I would have accepted it much better as an afterward.
I keep hoping I’ll find a book on vaccinations that decides to do away with logical fallacies and examine the evidence. This book attempts to examine the evidence, but the sloppy reasoning at the beginning of the book discredited it for me, and it took some time to earn back my ears.
And we don’t even vaccinate! Imagine if I was thinking about this for the first time!
Understanding Infection
For a long time, I have wanted to know more about the competing theories of disease from the time of Louis Pasteur. I am aware that Pasteur was a voice surrounded by dissent {from the likes of Claude Bernard, Rudolf Virchow, Rudolf Steiner and Max Pettenkofer, according to the book}, but I never understood what the opposing theory was. I won’t go into explaining it here, because it would take over the entire post, but suffice it to say I felt like it was a good primer on the issue, and I have a foundation to stand on when I finally get around to reading the dynamic history of the intellectual battle between Pasteur and Bernard.
Excellent Questions
The author is obviously inquisitive, and I think he has a great supply of questions missing from the vaccine debate at large. He brought up a couple that, in retrospect, seem so obvious, but I had never thought of them before. For instance, his first question is, Are vaccinated children healthier than non-vaccinated children? Well, that is an excellent question, but I’d never thought about it that way.
Looking around my own house, I’d have to say that the unvaccinated children are healthier by far. In fact, I cannot even begin to compare the difference in the first three years of life. While my vaccinated children had repeated ear infections and constant colds and flues {my older daughter doing three rounds of antibiotics before her first birthday}, my unvaccinated children have never taken antibiotics, or even a Tylenol. They rarely get sick, and when they do, they fight it fine on their own. The scariest sickness we’ve had with an unvaccinated child was food poisoning.
But my “evidence” is hardly scientific. My oldest child had severe vaccine reactions, so it should not be surprising that vaccines made him less healthy. {Or perhaps he was already less healthy, and that is why he reacted…it is hard to tell when we vaccinate them in the first week of life, no?} But I think that’d be an interesting study. For instance, the book quoted one doctor that claimed he had never treated a childhood cancer in an unvaccinated child.
Ever.
Again, it’s anecdotal, but I think it’d be an interesting research project!
Other interesting questions include, Do vaccines cause SIDS?, Can vaccines cause cancer or fertility problems?, Are there benefits to a child having acute infectious childhood diseases?, What about polio?, and How do vaccines work on a cellular level?
What surprised me was how many times throughout the book the answer was “we don’t know.” Did you know that there has never been research done on whether or not vaccines are carcinogenic? Now, we know that they contain a number of carcinogenic ingredients, some over and above the recommended “safe” level, but research has never been done on vaccines themselves. Did you know that there are no longitudinal studies on vaccines in existence?
Or so the author tells me.
The author also pointed out something I found in my own research when we were making our decisions about vaccination: that most {if not all} of the vaccine studies do not use an unvaccinated control group. I certainly have never seen one that did. So, for instance, a study might compare a fully vaccinated child who receives an experimental vaccine to a fully vaccinated who does not receive an experimental vaccine–or even to a child who received a different experimental vaccine! In most of the studies I read, I found that the research only proved that one vaccine was slightly safer, or equally risky to, another vaccine. The research never proved that being vaccinated was safer than being unvaccinated.
Interesting, Hm?
In all, I was struck by what we don’t know about an accepted medical practice. But we did not make our decision on vaccines based on research that we may or may not understand, or which may or may not be accurately represented in the summaries and abstracts. Our decision was based on morality. We simply couldn’t get past the use of aborted fetal tissue in the development of vaccines, and it is hard for me to believe that an industry based on so much destruction of human life could really make us flourish as a people.
I know that, for the most part, the vaccines are perpetuated using tissue from past abortions, and do not require new abortions to maintain them. Some folks can rest easy in that. There are no new deaths necessary. I am reminded of how important it is that we do things in faith. Some folks have faith for this, and surely I do not condemn them! I simply do not, mostly because I am suspicious of sin. I think it taints everything it touches. And that is why I can’t say I was surprised that researchers and scientists wrote a letter to President Bush in 2001 which used this past vaccine practice to push for fetal tissue and fetal stem cell research. The past, in the minds of these men, at least, exists as a set precedent to justify even more destruction of human life.
And that is why our family just can’t do it. Well, that’s why we just can’t do most of the vaccines. There are a number of vaccines that are ethically produced using egg cells or yeast cells or even the cells of endangered African green monkeys.
Ahem.
I didn’t mean to go into this much detail. I suppose reading this book brought back a lot of old feelings, especially the feeling of being betrayed by my doctor. It turns out, she was only ignorant.
27 Comments
Just thought I’d chime in & say that my vaxed 12 yr old boy got pertussis, gave it to my unvaxed little girls. He had it just as bad as they did. The school district here was riddled with it. Holly
Rachel R., I totally didn’t take you as snarky, so please don’t feel bad! 🙂 Thank you for the video link. I wonder if that video is available on Netflix so that I wouldn’t have to pay for it…hmmm…
In reading back over it, I realize that my question sounded pretty snarky – or something. I’m sorry! It just took me by surprise, I think, that those questions were not “everywhere” in the vaccine debate. (Just goes to show how our exposure varies!)
And I suppose that we have arrived at the issue from almost the opposite direction as you. While I’m aware that there are ethical issues with some vaccines, I can’t recall which ones and (at this point) it doesn’t really matter to me – since we’ve decided we’re not using any of them, anyway. 😉 So I’m not sure about the pertussis vax as a treatment, ethics-wise. But it would definitely change the risk-benefit balance to use it as a treatment vs. a preventative!
Dr. Tenpenny apparently has a number of videos. This is the one I saw: http://www.amazon.com/Vaccines-Benefits-DO-Sherri-Tenpenny/dp/B0007QQW5E/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1296089670&sr=8-3
Rachel R. (since we have two Rachels in this discussion!), 🙂
I actually think the first question (Are unvaxed children healthier than vaxed chidlren?) is the most obvious question, and yet I really don’t think that I have heard it asked before.
I think I came at the nonvaxing position from a different direction than a lot of folks, and that might be why. Since I arrived at it during a period of time that I was thinking through my Beyond ProLife series (which was in itself a result of some study my husband was doing at the time), nonvaxing has always been part of my belief in protecting life. Even though I knew that my son and daughter had both had vaccine reactions, my son’s being especially severe, it really wasn’t a health issue for me. Because of that, I spent a lot more time reading statements from the Vatican on the medical ethics behind vaccination rather than books documenting the debate. Even when I first thought through the health issues, I did it by reading all of the studies I could find on the actual vaccines, and all of the literature the drug companies were required to give out (which is actually quite a lot). So I was reading primary sources and asking my own questions rather than reading literature from the debate, which is both good and bad, because I was limited by my own abilities but perhaps unbiased or at least less biased.
It is only in the last few years, when our different doctors have offered that we could borrow books, or when I was reading books on recovering our oldest from Asperger’s, that I have deliberately thought through the health aspects of vaccination addressed by members of the debate.
I started out as the sort of mom who did what the doctor suggested because he suggested that I do what “everybody” does. Vaxing is just what people do, right? I was fairly insecure about questioning doctors in my early 20s when I first had children.
So all of that to say: yes, some of these questions are new for me, and I’ve actually never seen them addressed all in one place before.
With that said, I will definitely look into this Dr. Tenpenny you mentioned! 🙂 Also: I find it fascinating that vaccines might be used as medicine! Though some of the ethical issues would still be there (not all vaccines are unethical, I admit), I would be much more likely to give my child a shot if they actually had a disease and it was a treatment.
Sometimes I also wonder why vaccines are handled the way they are. In Dr. Denmark Said It, the author says that Dr. Denmark was instrumental in the development of the early pertussis vaccines. At some point, there’s a quote from Dr. Denmark, where she’s talking about the testing of the vaccine’s efficacy. They apparently tested it by administering it to someone who had pertussis and watching him recover quickly.
I don’t know about you, but I would be far more inclined to give the pertussis “vaccine” to my child as a treatment than as a preventive! It makes me wonder why they didn’t just work on developing the thing as a medicine (along the lines of antibiotics), rather than a vaccine.
Most of those are not new questions to me; have you really not seen them addressed before?
Are you familiar with Dr. Tenpenny’s vaccine video? I’m not sure if she has a comparable book, but I thought her video was a wonderfully evidence-based one. (Of course, she is also pretty anti-vax, and so are we, so I might feel differently if I were new to this. I don’t know.)
Our primary reason for not vaccinating – at least very young children – is that vaccinations “rewire” the immune system. As we believe that God knew what He was doing when He created our immune systems, completely revamping them seems the height of foolishness to us. Who are we to think we know better than God how our bodies should function?! (That is not intended to pass judgment on other parents who have arrived at different conclusions – just our take on the issue, for us.)
I also believe that routine childhood vaccination as a society has altered the average age at which people contract these diseases to times when they are far riskier.
I am, however, interested in reading this book if for no other reason than the explanation of disease theory that you mentioned!
Rachel, my friend, this is why I love you! You are really forcing me to think through this. 😉
Here are my thoughts:
1. I completely agree with you that we cannot always protect our children, and I’m not even sure we should try. Safety has become way overemphasized in our culture, so I think we are on the same page with that.
2. I think it is debateable whether negative vaccine impact is rare. Children today are very sickly. They have asthma, allergies, ADD, ADHD, autism, Asperger’s, learning disabilities, sensory disorders, constant ear infections and/or respiratory infections, digestive issues, diabetes, and I could go on, and the rates of the worst of these things are skyrocketing. Something is causing it, and other things are probably contributing to it. I’m not saying vaccines are at fault, but I am convinced that we do not actually know what a vaccine does at a cellular level, where it goes, and all the various parts of the body it impacts. Until we know that, we cannot know whether we have traded measles for autism and chicken pox for diabetes.
3. This means that I agree with you that, if vaccines work (and I think some of them, at least, do), then IF they can be exonerated from being at least a contributing factor for the major health crises of children today, then I would say that they are the best option in a general sense. As it is, I think all parents should question them. We have eliminated diseases while simultaneously creating a very unhealthy populace.
4. It is hard for me to get past my own children’s major, damaging (and we were blessed that they were reversible) vaccine reactions, and I admit that. 🙂
I agree with Rebekah that with issues that are not clearly black or white in Scripture (the “gray areas”), the best we can do as parents is to pray about decisions like these and trust that He will give us the guidance we need to make wise decisions regarding our children. (Wow, how’s that for a run-on sentence!?) I understand why you feel the way you do about vaccinations and why you are “concerned”.
However, as is the case with anything in life, there are always pros and cons. Life is FULL of risk! And I can’t protect my child from every danger in life. To a certain extent, one has to look at the bigger picture. You are right that you don’t know whether or not YOUR child will be the one negatively “affected” by vaccines, but I think the examples of vaccines failing or causing more harm than good are rare. There are so many MORE examples where the vaccines are completely effective and have caused no side effects whatsoever. As far as I understand, that is by far the majority.
Taking medication is never without risk. I believe you shouldn’t medicate if you don’t have to, but vaccines are preventative medicine. And as I stated before, the reason our children now-a-days don’t die from these diseases is because of the vaccines that have more or less eliminated them from our society. Frankly, I’m really thankful for that!
Are there a whole bunch of possible side effects written in the fine print?? Of course there are! As is the case with ANY drug you may choose or choose not to take.
I can’t comment about the ins and outs of the current laws, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, etc. I don’t know anything about any of that, but from pure, simple logic, I respectfully, remain unconvinced.
Anonymous (#2), The Vaccine Injury Compensation Act which created the so-called “Vaccine Court” was passed because there were so many lawsuits against the makers of the DTP shot that it was believed they would stop manufacturing it. The result was that lawmakers essentially protected vaccine manufactures from legal liability while simultaneously making the taxpayers liable instead. My own pediatrician has assured me that the DTP shot was very dangerous (he has been practicing for decades), and that the best thing that ever happened was when they discovered that acellular pertussis could be used instead, hence the now-common DTaP vaccine which has been substituted.
I agree that lawmakers were concerned with the supply of the DTP vaccine itself, but I think it is a very narrow view to say that it was not to also protect the pharmaceutical companies, for that is exactly what occured. This issue (that the Act protects pharmaceutical companies from liability) has become so dynamic that in April of last year, the US Supreme Court agreed to decide whether or not to overrule the law and once again allow pharmaceutical companies to be sued.
Personally, I believe that developing a special “Vaccine Court” is unconstitutional and does not follow the normal rules of a Court in our country, and should be eliminated for that reason, regardless of whether or not it has technically miscarried or upheld justice for these families.
Anonymous, Agreed: innoculating against liberalism would be helpful indeed. 😉
Kimbrah, thank you for confirming I am not crazy. Or perhaps we are crazy together!!
Rebekah, Although I am wary of the phrasing “special revelation” because I believe in a close canon, I definitely agree that the Lord leads and guides his people. Scripture tells us that if we ask for wisdom, He will be faithful to supply it. I also believe that God gave mothers instincts in regard to their own children. Most of my major mistakes have been when I went against that instinct!
The national vaccine compensation program was created to promote vaccinations; not to protect the companies. They compensate for possible injury very liberally, which is why you will see so many vaccines involved. The criteria are not strict. This is done intentionally and not because they found a definite correlation between the partiular vaccine and the injury involved.
I borrowed this book and read it about a year ago. I have to admit that I was left with the exact same impression as you, Brandy. It was disappointing, but on the other hand it really got me thinking and questioning. I have been meaning to do more research, but I just haven’t gotten to it yet. I don’t know why. 🙂 Thanks for another great post and for confirming my feelings about the book. 🙂
I believe in one vaccination completely. Every parent should vaccinate their children against liberalism, because that will eventually affect their soul.
I know this comment may conflict with some but I’ll say it anyway.
In my faith we believe we have the right to personal revelation from God. If we are prayerfull and faithfull he does know if our children will be at greater risk and he can let us know too. I think we need to educate ourselves the best we can and then pray and listen for answers. I have a friend who used to live in Utah, she used this principle and did not vaccinate her children while there. But when her family moved to an Alaskan village they knew that was the time to vaccinate (though not all vaccines). I definately trust God more then the government or for profit big businesses.
Mystie, WOW! Your mom was ahead of her time!
Rach, That would be a fun debate. 🙂 If you’re ever in the United States, look me up! 🙂
What you said completely echoed what Linda told me a couple nights ago. A mutual friend’s mother (who is older) said that the conversations among mothers today are so different from what she had with her friends. She said that they were so terrified of those diseases that they were literally lined up to get the vaccines.
I really don’t know if I would have done any differently if I had been a young mother in that era.
With that said, I’m not completely convinced of the efficacy of vaccines. When I was in college, one of the local elementary schools had a measles outbreak, and it was completely indiscriminate. There appeared to be no difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated children as far as infection rate (of course, more vaccinated children got the measles, but that was because more of the children were vaccinated).
I have a cousin who is permanently disabled by vaccine damage. He got GBS as a result of the flu shot. He will never be the same. My sister’s good friend got MS as a result of the varicella shot in adulthood, and she will never be the same. It costs her family over a thousand dollars a month for her care. I also spent years recovering my two older children from the negative effects of vaccines. Stopping the vaccinations ended up being our first step in getting healthy. I’m not saying that vaccines are necessarily a danger to all people–I’m not ready to make such a bold statement. But I do think that we can’t know whether it’ll be our child at risk.
What I do know is that the US government has protected the companies that produce the vaccines from any liability by setting up the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and has paid out a TON of money to parents as “compensation” for their dead or permanently injured children. If you read the list of vaccines and associated injuries (and these are just the ones they are willing to pay for, not all the ones listed on the drug information for the vaccines themselves), I think you’ll understand why I am concerned.
Brandy, you and I need to have a conversation about this topic someday. 😉
I have two fully vaccinated children and they are healthy, healthy, healthy. They RARELY get sick and I think whether they did or not probably has nothing to do with whether or not they were vaccinated (since I also know plenty of other children who are extremely healthy & rarely get sick and were vaccinated as well!).
I’ve always kind of struggled with this issue, but I think my grandfather’s words to me one time about sum it up. He said to me once (in not so many words), “If you lived long ago during a time where one of these childhood diseases that we now vaccinate against were to come sweeping through your neighborhood . . . you better believe you’d vaccinate your children. It would be that or watch them die.”
Now, I’ll be the first to admit it, I am VERY ignorant about all the ins and outs, pros & cons, etc. of the vaccination debate, but my grandfather’s words have haunted me ever since. The reason our children now-a-days don’t die from these diseases is because of the vaccines that have more or less eliminated them from our society.
Heather, It just dawned on me that years ago I wrote a series called Childhood Illnesses Up Close. I don’t even know if I still agree with myself, but for what it is worth, here are the links if you are interested:
tetanus
pertussis
HiB
diphtheria
chicken pox
I always meant to go through more of them and I guess I just forgot. Maybe someday. There is only that much research I can do before my brain pops! 🙂
No, actually, my mom was the one ahead of her time. My youngest 4 siblings weren’t vaccinated at all, so that was my default. 🙂 My mom also noted that her unvaccinated kids had very, very few ear infections, while her vaccinated (3) kids had lots and the unvaccinated kids were generally more healthy as young children than the older (but I think being in a large family might have been a factor as well).
Oh, and let me know what you decide to do about chicken pox. We’ve exposed the boys a couple years ago, but they didn’t get it. My husband had it at 15 and has the scars to prove it. But our naturopath doesn’t keep the chickenpox vaccine, so we’ll have difficulty getting it if we end up having to go that route.
Heather, Interesting about the possibility that Pasteur’s recantation might be nothing but an urban legend! That is the first I’ve read of it being mythological, though I have wondered once or twice if perhaps his words were taken out of context or misunderstood in some way.
Good luck with your reading and research. I don’t pretend this is an easy subject!
Mystie, You make me laugh.
I’m tired of being fringe, just let me be normal.
Look on the bright side: our fringe is becoming the new normal. I cannot tell you how many mommies with oldest children under three I have met who are refusing or delaying vaccination. Instead of fringe, think of yourself as ahead of your time. 😉
With that said, I have actually never read a pro-vaccination book, though I’ve read chapters on vaccination in larger health-type books, etc. But I’ve never read a book trying to convince me to vaccinate, so I find it interesting that the logic on the other side is poor also. Perhaps our culture just has a fallacy fetish. 😉
I totally agree with you that we just. don’t. know. In fact, when Siah was in the hospital, it struck me that his best doctors were the humble doctors who admitted when they didn’t know and seemed to have a quest for knowledge. When I wanted to put a “weird” supplement in his feeding tube, they were the ones willing to read the documentation and research I brought to them…and then decided to allow it! These same doctors did not seem to be swallowing whole everything coming out of the pharmaceutical companies.
I also don’t think I’ve read any vaccine related book on either side that I’ve been impressed with. A couple years ago I borrowed a new pro-vaccine book from the library and my mindset going in was, “I’m tired of being fringe, just let me be normal. I want to be convinced it’s not a big deal and I should just do it all.” And I just couldn’t. The reasoning is just done so poorly.
On almost all health-related issues I get the feeling that nobody actually knows the whole truth, but everyone is spouting off about their nugget of truth. My biggest problem is that practically no one will say, “We don’t know.” But given how many different theories and practices there have been over even just the last couple decades, it seems pretty clear to me that we just don’t know as much as we think we do. That, and everyone has their agenda that they are pushing; most research does not seem to be done in a spirit of humility and truth-seeking, but in profit-seeking.
Thank you, thank you for writing about this topic. We have 3 kids, one vaccinated and two not, except for the newborn eye drops and whatnot done at birth. Obviously, my vagueness shows my ignorance, although I think I did know at one point in time.
I need to read and understand what we should do about the two youngest, both girls. They are 3 yrs. and 18 months. I was waiting for the two year old mark for the 3 yr. at the advice of a Christian doctor who has turned to alternative med. later in life. Obviously 2 has come and gone and I have yet to get her shots started. I don’t know what I should do about the girls or about the chicken pox for our oldest.
This book isn’t available in our library system, but I can look second hand. I plan on reading the post you wrote previously on this issue.
As an aside, I have checked into Pasteur recanting on his deathbed back when I heard Joel Salatin relate the story in a talk he gave at a Christian college. I’m not sure where the truth lies in all this, but not everyone is in agreement with that version of Pasteur’s deathbed words.
http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/pasteur.htm
(The writer is clearly expressing his opinion but I thought the biographical quote was interesting.)
I apologize for the length of my comment, but I see I have a lot more reading and research to do on the issue of vaccinations.
Thanks for comiserating, Jen. 🙂 I think if I owned the book and was going to lend it out, I would suggest they skip straight to Chapter 1, and THEN go back and read the preface, intro, etc…or maybe just skip it entirely! 😉 I wish I had a book on vaccines that I really thought I could suggest to others, but so far I don’t. 🙁
I really do think you’ll like the questions he asks in the rest of the book. There are far fewer illogical moments, and I thought it refreshing to see him repeatedly answer “we don’t know; the research hasn’t been done.”
Thanks for this post, Brandy! Dr. Linda must have more than one copy… because I have one borrowed from her sitting on my nightstand right now! However, I also started with the preface and haven’t picked it up since. Good to know it gets better! I was not impressed… and I, too, was going into it already on his “side”. No way was I going to suggest it to family & friends who are more on the pro-vaccination side to begin with! However, after reading your post, I think I need to actually read the whole book before coming to any conclusions on it.
Rebekah, The book definitely provokes some thought, that is for sure! Someday, I want to figure out what I really think about health. What I mean is: is it the terrain, or is it the microbe? My hunch is that it might be both, and then a lot of things are probably poisoning (which actually might be the case with vaccines).
I was telling some friends last night about the book, and I found myself admitting that if I was a really good reader, I’d have read it in front of the computer and tried to read the journal articles and studies he sited whenever they were available. I spent a lot of years taking my doctor’s word for it. Isn’t it the same to just take his word for it? I think it might be…
Thanks for the link; I’ll hop on over and check it out. 🙂
Sound like another book I’ll have to check out. As I read this it brought to mind some articles about medicine in general recommended from this blog:
http://handmaidenkitchen.blogspot.com/2011/01/two-excellent-articles-on-whats-wrong.html
All interesting food for thought.