Educate Before You Vaccinate

Useful links:

National Vaccine Information Center

Michigan for Vaccine Choice

Children of God for Life

Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge

Informed Consent Action Network


My Story

    I was not always a crazy anti-vaxxer. ;) In 2007 my mom was really worried that I would get some strange disease from an upcoming trip to Honduras, so I found the 'deadliest disease' that was lurking in the streets of Honduras, Hepatitis A, and got myself vaccinated for it. I hated getting shots and didn't go back to finish the series. My mom was satisfied that I wouldn't die and that was good enough for me.  But having to google "travel vaccines" brought up more information than I was expecting. And being a curious person I investigated a little, only to get the shock of my life. The very vaccine that I got from the Health Department was cultured on cells from an aborted fetus. Being overly pro-life, that turned my stomach.

   The Hep A shot that I got changed my life. Because of that shot, I decided to never get another shot again. And because of that shot, my husband and I decided early on we would not vaccinate our children. And because we don't vaccinate, what other recourse do we have when we get infections other than a strong immune system? Hence, our ultra crunchy lifestyle followed.

   When we found out we were expecting our first child, my husband didn't even blink when I asked him if it was ok if we didn't vaccinate. He didn't care a bit. And while I was firm on my resolution, I didn't want to make a decision that would bring our baby harm.  So I got out a notebook and spent countless hours searching the web for answers. I looked up the CDC schedule for vaccines, and from that made a list of each disease the vaccines protected against. Then I did a page long, side by side comparison of the risk/benefits of just catching the disease vs. vaccinating for it.  It took a long time. I had to scour the CDC website, Wikipedia, and VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Even Reporting System). Finally, I gave up near the end, there were about two vaccines I never got to. They were the alternative ones like flu and chicken pox which not every one gets anyways so those are more socially acceptable to skip.

   The results shocked me. First I had never looked up the ingredients of a vaccine before and I didn't realize mercury and aluminum were in some of them, much less residual DNA from aborted babies. Secondly, I didn't realize that most of these diseases were not deadly to normal healthy people. Which, if you watched shows from the 70's and 80's, it was not uncommon for measles and mumps to be the theme of a show.  I've got all kinds of books from the 60's - 90's that have their characters getting sick with these common illnesses.   I didn't realize that both the death rate and the morbidity had gone down dramatically (at least in the US, don't know about other countries) before the vaccines were in circulation.  And lastly, I didn't realize how common adverse reactions were, or that babies could even die after vaccination either from anaphylactic shock, intussusception, (when your guts get all jumbled and nothing can pass through, this is from the Rotovirus vaccine) encephalitis, or even die in their sleep the next day or even weeks after routine vaccination.  Reading through the VAERS reports were really shocking to me. This is the only public reporting system in the US for vaccine reactions, so if a report makes it there, it was probably a pretty serious reaction. Most parents don't bat an eye about a temperature or redness/swelling around the site of the injection. 

     I learned a lot of bad things about vaccines with my research, not a lot of good things. That's ok, I wasn't going to vaccinate anyways, right? But it just shocked me that everyone seemed to think vaccines were good and didn't have any risk involved. So I decided to share what I learned on the good ole' facebook, where anyone can share anything and it's ok. Right? ;)  Well, I'm sure most my friends are tired of reading the titles of my posts (vaccines AGAIN, does she ever think about anything else) but it seems the knowledge is endless on this one, people have been doing studies and writing reports since the 40's. We have just never had internet to have that easy access before.

    This is my story, and I'm sticking with it. To borrow someone's saying, "No one ever regretted not vaccinating, but a lot of people have regretted vaccinating."  However, I have always stood by my view that each parent needs to make the right choice for their children, meaning, if you want to vaccinate, go ahead. Every parent needs to follow their instincts when it comes to this matter. I followed mine and they led me in one direction, yours may lead you in another.  It is just my personal opinion that everyone should be educated on the choices they make, so please, educate before you vaccinate!!