WHY YOU SHOULD AVOID TAKING VACCINES
By Dr. James Howenstine, MD.
December 7, 2003
NewsWithViews.com
December 7, 2003
NewsWithViews.com
Dr. James R. Shannon, former director of the National institute of health declared, "the only safe vaccine is one that is never used."
Cowpox vaccine was believed able to immunize people against smallpox. At the time this vaccine was introduced, there was already a decline in the number of cases of smallpox. Japan introduced compulsory vaccination in 1872. In 1892 there were 165,774 cases of smallpox with 29,979 deaths despite the vaccination program. A stringent compulsory smallpox vaccine program, which prosecuted those refusing the vaccine, was instituted in England in 1867. Within 4 years 97.5 % of persons between 2 and 50 had been vaccinated. The following year England experienced the worst smallpox epidemic[1] in its history with 44,840 deaths. Between 1871 and 1880 the incidence of smallpox escalated from 28 to 46 per 100,000. The smallpox vaccine does not work.
Much of the success attributed to vaccination programs may actually have been due to improvement in public health related to water quality and sanitation, less crowded living conditions, better nutrition, and higher standards of living. Typically the incidence of a disease was clearly declining before the vaccine for that disease was introduced. In England the incidence of polio had decreased by 82 % before the polio vaccine was introduced in 1956.
In the early 1900s an astute Indiana physician, Dr. W.B. Clarke, stated "Cancer was practically unknown until compulsory vaccination with cowpox vaccine began to be introduced. I have had to deal with two hundred cases of cancer, and I never saw a case of cancer in an unvaccinated[2] person."
There is a widely held belief that vaccines should not be criticized because the public might refuse to take them. This is valid only if the benefits exceed the known risks of the vaccines.
Do Vaccines Actually Prevent Disease?
This important question does not appear to have ever been adequately studied. Vaccines are enormously profitable for drug companies and recent legislation in the U.S. has exempted lawsuits against pharmaceutical firms in the event of adverse reactions to vaccines which are very common. In 1975 Germany stopped requiring pertussis (whooping cough) vaccination. Today less than 10 % of German children are vaccinated against pertussis. The number of cases of pertussis has steadily decreased[3] even though far fewer children are receiving pertussis vaccine.
Measles outbreaks have occurred in schools with vaccination rates over 98 % in all parts of the U.S. including areas that had reported no cases of measles for years. As measles immunization rates rise to high levels measles becomes a disease seen only in vaccinated persons. An outbreak of measles occurred in a school where 100 % of the children had been vaccinated. Measles mortality rates had declined by 97 % in England before measles vaccination was instituted.
In 1986 there were 1300 cases of pertussis in Kansas and 90 % of these cases occurred in children who had been adequately vaccinated. Similar vaccine failures have been reported from Nova Scotia where pertussis continues to be occurring despite universal vaccination. Pertussis remains endemic[4] in the Netherlands where for more than 20 years 96 % of children have received 3 pertussis shots by age 12 months.
After institution of diptheria vaccination in England and Wales in 1894 the number of deaths from diptheria rose by 20 % in the subsequent 15 years. Germany had compulsory vaccination in 1939. The rate of diptheria spiraled to 150,000 cases that year whereas, Norway which did not have compulsory vaccination, had only 50 cases of diptheria the same year.
The continued presence of these infectious diseases in children who have received vaccines proves that life long immunity which follows natural infection does not occur in persons receiving vaccines. The injection process places the viral particles into the blood without providing any clear way to eliminate these foreign substances.
Why Do Vaccines Fail To Protect Against Diseases?
Walene James, author of Immunization: the Reality Behind The Myth, states that the full[5] inflammatory response is necessary to create real immunity. Prior to the introduction of measles and mumps vaccines children got measles and mumps and in the great majority of cases these diseases were benign. Vaccines "trick" the body so it does not mount a complete inflammatory response to the injected virus.
Vaccines and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome SIDS
The incidence of Sudden Infant Death syndrome SIDS has grown from .55 per 1000 live births in 1953 to 12.8 per 1000 in 1992 in Olmstead County, Minnesota. The peak incidence for SIDS is age 2 to 4 months the exact time most vaccines are being given to children. 85 % of cases of SIDS occur in the first 6 months of infancy. The increase in SIDS as a percentage of total infant deaths has risen from 2.5 per 1000 in 1953 to 17.9 per 1000 in 1992. This rise in SIDS deaths has occurred during a period when nearly every childhood disease was declining due to improved sanitation and medical progress except SIDS. These deaths from SIDS did increase during a period when the number of vaccines given a child was steadily rising to 36 per child.
Dr. W. Torch was able to document 12 deaths in infants which appeared within 3½ and 19 hours of a DPT immunization. He later reported 11 new cases of SIDS death and one near miss which had occurred within 24 hours of a DPT injection. When he studied 70 cases of SIDS two thirds of these victims[6] had been vaccinated from one half day to 3 weeks prior to their deaths. None of these deaths was attributed to vaccines. Vaccines are a sacred cow and nothing against them appears in the mass media because they are so profitable to pharmaceutical firms.
There is valid reason to think that not only are vaccines worthless in preventing disease they are counterproductive because they injure the immune system permitting cancer, auto-immune diseases and SIDS to cause much disability and death.
Are Vaccines Sterile?
Dr. Robert Strecker claimed that the department of defense DOD was given $10,000,000 in 1969 to create the AIDS virus to be used as a population-reducing[7] weapon against blacks. By use of the Freedom of Information Act Dr. Strecker was able to learn that the DOD secured funds from Congress to perform studies on immune destroying agents for germ warfare.
Once produced, the vaccine was given in two locations. Smallpox vaccine containing HIV was given to 100,000,000 Africans in 1977. Over 2000 young white homosexual males in New York City were given Hepatitis B vaccine that contained HIV virus in 1978. This vaccine was given at New York City Blood Center. The Hepatitis B vaccine containing the HIV virus was also administered to homosexual males in San Francisco, Los Angeles, St.Louis, Houston and Chicago in 1978 and 1979. U.S. Public Health epidemiology studies have disclosed that these same 6 cities had the highest incidence of AIDS, Aids related Complex (ARC) and deaths rates from HIV, when compared to other U.S. cities.
When a new virus is introduced into a community. It takes 20 years for the number of cases to double. If the fabricated story that green monkey bites of pygmies led to the HIV epidemic, the alleged monkey bites in the 1940s should have produced a peak in the incidence of HIV in the 1960s at which time HIV was non existent in Africa. The World Health Organization (WHO) began a African smallpox vaccination campaign in 1977 that targeted urban population centers and avoided pygmies. If the green monkey bites of pygmies truly caused the HIV epidemic the incidence of HIV in pygmies should have been higher than in urban citizens. However, the opposite was true.
In 1954 Dr. Bernice Eddy (bacteriologist) discovered live monkey viruses in supposedly sterile inactivated polio vaccine[8] developed by Dr. Jonas Salk. This discovery was not well received at the NIH and Dr. Eddy was demoted. Later Dr. Eddy, working with Sarah Stewart, discovered SE polyoma virus. This virus was quite important because it caused cancer in every animal receiving it. Yellow fever vaccine had previously been found to contain avian (bird) leukemia virus. Later Dr. Hilleman isolated SV 40 virus from both the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines. There were 40 different viruses[9] in these polio vaccines they were trying to eradicate. They were never able to get rid of these viruses ontaminating the polio vaccines. The SV 40 virus causes malignancies. It has now been identified in 43 % of cases of non-Hodgekin lymphoma[10] , 36 % of brain tumors[11] , 18 % of healthy blood samples, and 22 % of healthy semen samples, mesothiolomas and other malignancies. By the time of this discovery SV 40 had already been injected into 10,000,000 people in Salk vaccine. Gastric digestion inactivtes some of SV 40 in Sabin vaccine. However, the isolation of strains of Sabin polio vaccine from all 38 cases of Guillan Barre Syndrome[12] GBS in Brazil suggests that significant numbers of persons are able to be infected from this vaccine. All 38 of these patients had received Sabin polio vaccine months to years before the onset of GBS. The incidence of non-Hodgekin lymphoma has"mysteriouly" doubled since the 1970s.
Dr. John Martin, Professor of Pathology at the Univ. of Southern California, was employed by the Viral Oncology Branch of the Bureau of Biologics (FDA) from 1976 to 1980. While employed there he identified foreign DNA in the live polio vaccine Orimune Lederle that suggested serious vaccine contamination. He warned his supervisors about this problem and was told to discontinue his work as it was outside the scope of testing required for polio vaccine.
Later Dr. Martin learned that all eleven of the African green monkeys used to grow the Lederle polio virus Orimune had grown simian cytomegalovirus from kidney cell cultures. Lederle was aware of this viral contamination as their Cytomegaloviral Contamination Plan[13] clearly showed in 1972. The Bureau of Biologics decided not to pursue the matter so production of infected polio vaccine continued.
In 1955 Dr. Martin identified unique cell destroying viruses termed stealth viruses in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome. These viruses lacked genes that would enable the immune system to recognize them. Thus they were protected by the body's failure to develop antiviral antibodies. In March of 1995, Dr. Martin learned that some of these stealth viruses had originated from African green monkey simian cytomegalovirus of a type known to infect man.
The Lederle vaccine experience suggests that the higher-ups are not concerned about sloppy and dangerous preparation of vaccines. Animal cross infection is a huge unsolved current problem for all vaccine manufacturing. If this vaccine production sounds like an unbelievable mess to you, you are right.
The influential Club of Rome has a position paper in which they state that the world population is too large and needs to be reduced by 90 %. This means that 6 billion people must be reduced to 500 to 600 million. Obviously, creating famines and genocidal wars such as wrecked havoc in Africa, and loosing new laboratory-created diseases (HIV, Ebola, Marburg[14] , and probably West Nile virus and SARS) can help reduce the population. Other elitist groups (Trilaterals, Bildenbergers) have expressed similar concerns about excess people on planet Earth.
The company that was projected to produce the new smallpox vaccine in the U.S. was in serious trouble in England because of unsatisfactory quality of operations before setting up their facility in the U.S. Why would their performance here be any better than it was in England?
If there are important powerful groups of people that are determined to reduce the world population, what could be a more diabolically clever way to eliminate people than to inject them with a cancer-causing vaccine? The person receiving the injection would never suspect that the vaccine taken 10 to 15 years earlier had caused the cancer to appear.
Other Dangers From Vaccines
In the March 4, 1977 issue of Science Jonas and Darrell Salk warn, "Live virus vaccines against influenza or poliomyelitis may in each instance produce the disease it intended to prevent. The live virus against measles and mumps may produce such side effects as encephalitis (brain damage).
The swine flu vaccine was administered to the American public even though there had never been a case of swine flu identified in a human. Farmers refused to use the vaccine because it killed too many animals. Within a few months of use in humans this vaccine caused many cases of serious nerve injury (Guillan Barre syndrome).
An article in the Washington Post on Jan. 26, 1988 mentioned that all cases of polio since 1979 had been caused by the polio vaccine with no known cases of polio from a wild strain since 1979. This might have created a perfect situation to discontinue the vaccine, but the vaccine is still given. Vaccines are a wonderful source of profits with no risks to the drug companies since vaccine injuries are now recompensed by the government.
The steady escalation in the number of vaccines administered has been followed by an identical rise in the incidence of auto-immune diseases (rheumatoid arthritis, subacute lupus erythematosus, psoriasis, multiple sclerosis, asthma) seen in children. While there is a genetic transmission of some of these diseases many are probably due to the injury from foreign protein particles, mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde and other toxic agents injected in vaccines.
In 1999, the rotavirus vaccine was recommended by the Center for Disease Control for all infants. When this vaccine program was instituted several infants died and many had life endangering bowel obstructions. Prelicensure trials[15] of the rotavirus vaccine had demonstrated an increased incidence of intussusception 30 times greater than normal but the vaccine was released anyway without special warnings to practitioners to be on the lookout for bowel problems. Children's vaccines are often not studied for toxicity possibly because such study might eliminate them from being used.
A large study from Australia showed that the risk of developing encephalitis from the pertussis vaccine was 5 times greater than the risk of developing encephalitis by contacting pertussis by natural methods.
Naturally acquired immunity by illness evolves by spread of a virus from the respiratory tract to the liver, thymus, spleen, and bone marrow. When symptoms begin, the entire immune response has been mobilized to repel the invading virus. This complex immune system response creates antibodies that confer life long immunity against that invading virus and prepares the child to respond promptly to an infection by the same virus in the future.
Vaccination, in contrast, results in the persisting of live virus or other foreign antigens within the cells of the body, a situation that may provoke auto-immune reactions as the body attempts to destroy its own infected cells. There is no surprise that the incidence of auto-immune diseases (rheumatoid arthritis, subacute lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis, asthma, psoriasis) has risen sharply in this era of multiple vaccine immunization.
Vaccine Induced Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus
Dr. John Classen has published 29 articles on vaccine-induced[16] diabetes. At least 8 of 10 children with Type 1 (insulin needing) diabetes have this disease as a result of vaccination. These children may have avoided measles, mumps, and whooping cough but they have received something far worse: an illness that shortens life expectancy by 10 to 15 years and results in a life requiring constant medical care.
Dr. Classen has shown in Finland, the introduction of hemophilus type b vaccine caused three times as many cases of type 1 diabetes as the number of deaths and brain damage from hemophilus influenza type b it might have prevented.
In New Zealand, the incidence of Type 1 diabetes in children rose by 61 % after an aggressive vaccine program against hepatitis B.. This same program has been started in the U.S.A. so we can now look forward to many cases of Type 1 diabetes in children. Similar rises in Type 1 diabetes have been seen in England, Italy, Sweden, and Denmark after immunization programs against Hepatitis B.
Toxic Substances Are Needed To Make Vaccines.
Vaccines contain many toxic substances that are needed to prevent the vaccines from becoming infected or to improve the performance of the vaccine. Among these substances are mercury, formaldehyde and aluminum.[17]
In the past 10 years, the number of autistic children has risen from between 200 and 500 percent in every state in the U.S. This sharp rise in autism followed the introduction of measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in 1975.
Representative Dan Burton's healthy grandson was given injections for 9 diseases in one day. These injections were instantly followed by autism. These injections contain a preservative of mercury called thimerosal. The boy received 41 times the amount of mercury which is capable of harm to the body. Mercury is a neurotoxin that can injure the brain and nervous system. And tragically, it did.
In the United States the number of compulsory vaccine injections has increased from 10 to 36 in the last 25 years. During this period, there has been a simultaneous increase in the number of children suffering learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder. Some of these childhood disabilities are related to intrauterine cerebral damage from maternal cocaine use, but probably vaccines cause many of the others.
Many vaccines contain aluminum. A new disease called macrophagic myofasciitis causes pain in muscles, bones and joints. All persons with this disease have received aluminum containing vaccines. Deposits of aluminum are able to remain as an irritant in tissues and disturb the immune and nervous system for a lifetime.
Nearly all vaccines contain aluminum and mercury. These metals appear to play an important role in the etiology of Alzheimer's Disease. An expert at the 1997 International Vaccine Conference related that a person who takes 5 or more annual flu vaccine shots has increased the likelihood of developing Alzheimer's Disease by a factor of 10 over the person who has had 2 or fewer flu shots.
When we take vaccines we are playing a modern version of Russian Roulette. We not only get exposed to aluminum, mercury, formaldehyde and foreign cell proteins but we may get simian virus 40 and other dangerous viruses which can cause cancer, leukemia and other severe health problems because the vaccine pool is contaminated due to careless animal isolation techniques. Congress has protected the manufacturers from lawsuits, so dangerous vaccines simply increase profits at no risk to the drug companies.
U.S. children aged 2 months began receiving hepatitis B vaccine in December 2000.No peer-reviewed studies of the safety of hepatitis B in this age bracket had been done. Over 36,000 adverse reactions with 440 deaths were soon reported but the true incidence is much higher as reporting is voluntary so only approximately 10 % of adverse reactions get reported. This means that about 5000 infants are dying annually from the hepatitis B vaccine. The CDC's Chief of Epidemiology admits that the frequency of serious reactions to hepatitis B vaccine is 10 times higher than other vaccines. Hepatitis B is transmitted sexually and by contaminated blood, so the incidence of this disease must be near zero in this age bracket. A vaccine expert, Dr. Philip Incao, states that "the conclusion is obvious that the risks[18] of hepatitis B vaccination far outweigh the benefits. Once a vaccine is mandated the vaccine manufacturer is no longer liable for adverse reactions.
Dr. W.B. Clarke's important observation that cancer was not found in unvaccinated individuals demands an explanation and one now appears forthcoming. All vaccines given over a short period of time to an immature immune system deplete the thymus gland (the primary gland involved in immune reactions) of irreplaceable immature immune cells. Each of these cells could have multiplied and developed into an army of valuable cells to combat infection and growth of abnormal cells. When these immune cells have been used up, permanent immunity may not appear. The Arthur Research Foundation in Tucson, Arizona estimates that up to 60 % of our immune system may be exhausted[19] by multiple mass vaccines (36 are now required for children). Only 10 % of immune cells are permanently lost when a child is permitted to develop natural immunity from disease. There needs to be grave concern about these immune system injuring vaccinations! Could the persons who approve these mass vaccinations know that they are impairing the health of these children, many of whom are being doomed to requiring much medical care in the future?
Compelling evidence is available that the development of the immune system after contracting the usual childhood diseases matures and renders it capable to fight infection and malignant cells in the future.
The use of multiple vaccines, which prevents natural immunity, promotes the development of allergies and asthma. A New Zealand study disclosed that 23 % of vaccinated children develop asthma , as compared to zero in unvaccinated children.
Cancer was a very rare illness in the 1890's. This evidence about immune system injury from vaccinating affords a plausible explanation for Dr. Clarke's finding that only vaccinated individuals got cancer. Some radical adverse change in health occurred in the early 1900s to permit cancer to explode and vaccinating appears to be the reason.
Vaccines are an unnatural phenomena. My guess is that if enough persons said no to immunizations there would be a striking improvement in general health with nature back in the immunizing business instead of man. Having a child vaccinated should be a choice not a requirement. Medical and religious exemptions are permitted by most states.
When governmental policies require vaccinations before children enter schools coercion has overruled the lack of evidence of vaccine efficacy and safety. There is no proof that vaccines work and they are never studied for safety before release. My opinion is that there is overwhelming evidence that vaccines are dangerous and the only reason for their existence is to increase profits of pharmaceutical firms.
If you are forced to immunize your children so they can enter school, obtain a notarized statement from the director of the facility that they will accept full financial responsibility for any adverse reaction from the vaccine. Since there is at least a 2 percent risk of a serious adverse reaction they may be smart enough to permit your child to escape a dangerous procedure. Recent legislation passed by Congress gives the government the power to imprison persons refusing to take vaccines (smallpox, anthrax, etc). This would be troublesome to enforce if large numbers of citizens declined to be vaccinated at the same time.
Footnotes:
1 Null Gary Vaccination: An Analysis of the Health Risks- Part Townsend Letter for Doctors & Patients Dec. 2003 pg 78
2 Mullins Eustace Murder by Injection pg 132 The National Council for Medical Research, P. O. Box 1105, Staunton, Virginia 24401
3 Gary Null Interview with Dr. Dean Black April 7, 1995
4 de Melker HE, et al Pertussis in the Netherlands: an outbreak despite high levels of immunization with whole-cell vaccine Emerging Infectious Diseases 1997; 3(2): 175-8 Centers for Disease Control
5 Gary Null Interview with Walene James, April 6, 1995
6 Torch WS Diptheria-pertussis-tetanus (DPT) immunizations: a potential cause of the sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) Neurology 1982; 32-4 A169 abstract.
7 Collin Jonathan The Townsend Letter for Doctors & Patients 1988 abstracted in Horowitz L. Emerging Viruses Aids & Ebola pg 1-5
8 Harris RJ et al Contaminant viruses in two live vaccines produced in chick cells.J Hyg (London) 1966 Mar:64(1) : 1-7
9 Horowitz Leonard G. Emerging Viruses AIDS & Ebola pg 484
10 Vilchez RA et al Association between simian virus 40 and non-Hodgekin lymphoma Lancet 2002 Mar 9;359(9309):817-823
11 Bu X A study of simian virus 40 infection and its origin in human brain tumors Zhonghu Liu Xing Bing Xue Zhi 2000 Feb;21 (1):19-21
12 Friedrich F. et al temporal association between the isolation of Sabin-related poliovirus vaccine strains and the Guillan-Barre syndrome Rev Inst Med Trop Sao Paulo 1996 Jan-Feb; 38(1):55-8
13 Horowitz Leonard Emerging Viruses: Aids and Ebola pg 492
14 Horowitz Leonard G Emerging Viruses: Aids & Ebola pg 378-88 Tetrahedron Inc. Suite 147, 206 North 4th Ave. Sandpoint, Idaho 83864 1-888-508-4787 tetra@tetrahedron.org
15 Null, Gary Vaccination: An Anatysis of the health risks-Part 3 Townsend letter for doctors & patients Dec. 2003 pg 78
16 Classen, JB et al. Association between type 1 diabetes and Hib vaccine BMJ 1999; 319:1133
17 Brain 9/01
18 Incao, philip M.D. Letter to representative Dale Van Vyven, Ohio House of Representatives March 1, 1999 provided to www.garynull.com by The Natural Immunity Information Network
19 Rowen Robert Your first consultation with Dr. Rowen pg 20
© 2003 Dr. James Howenstine - All Rights Reserved
Dr. James A. Howenstine is a board certified specialist in internal medicine who spent 34 years caring for office and hospital patients. Curiosity sparked a 4 year study of natural health products when 5 of his patients with severe rheumatoid arthritis were able to discontinue the use of methotrexate (chemotherapy agent) after trying an extract of New Zealand mussels for the therapy of severe rheumatoid arthritis.
Dr. Howenstine is convinced that natural products are safer, more effective and less expensive than pharmaceutical drugs. This research led to the publication of his book 'A Physicians Guide To Natural Health Products That Work'. This book and the recommended health products are available from www.naturalhealthteam.com and by calling 1-800-416-2806 U.S.A.
Dr Howenstine can be reached by E-Mail at jimhow@racsa.co.cr
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Public health nurse Wanda LeGrande injects Brandie Kidd, 11, who was at the Knox County Health Department last month getting vaccinated for tetanus, chicken pox, meningitis and hepatitis A. Public health officials say many adolescents don’t get the immunizations they need. The shots are offered free to county residents at the health department
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Related documents.State form for religious exemption from vaccination
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When Laura Beeler's son, Zeke, 9, was a baby, she didn't think twice about having him immunized.
But when her daughter Leah Kate, now 5, was born, she gave vaccination a little more thought.
"I was more concerned when she was born because of all the media (coverage) and all the things I'd heard about autism" from friends, said Beeler, a Powell hair stylist. "I hadn't even heard of (those concerns) when Zeke was born."
Ultimately, Beeler had an in-depth conversation with her pediatrician, who was able to allay her fears.
She prayed about her decision.
And then she had Leah Kate immunized, although "we spread the shots out a little bit more so than we did with Zeke," she said.
Beeler isn't unusual. West Knoxville pediatrician Dr. Stephanie Shults said that as many as a quarter of the parents who come through her practice, Shults Pediatrics, have questions about vaccines.
Once the province of parents outside the medical mainstream, those questions are now being asked routinely. And there aren't any easy answers. While science has yet to find concrete evidence that vaccines damage children, the medical and pharmaceutical industries also have yet to win back the trust of wary parents.
Parents worry about a shot changing their child permanently, while public health professionals worry about the re-emergence of truly awful diseases that once killed or maimed huge numbers of children.
Pediatricians are caught in the middle, sympathetic to parents but strong in their own convictions that childhood immunization remains the best way to protect large numbers of the population from now-rare diseases.
Nationally, more than 80 percent of babies are still immunized. But even among them, how and when they get the shots are changing.
Set against shots
Melissa Cox decided before her children were born that she wouldn't vaccinate them. Cox, who lived in California at the time, visited a chiropractor while seeking relief from migraine headaches. The chiropractor was staunchly against vaccinations, and after giving Cox "a stack of research" that led her to do her own reading, she said, he had a convert.
Cox, of West Knoxville, now feels so strongly about her decision not to vaccinate Easton, 3, and Makenlee, 18 months, that she carries cards advocating for the Florida-based Vaccine Injury Coalition.
The cards list a bevy of unsavory ingredients in various vaccines - including formaldehyde, aluminum, lead, sulfates, yeast proteins, and tissues from chickens, monkeys, dogs, cows, pigs, rabbits, sheep and human fetuses - and urge, "Educate Before You Vaccinate."
"I think a lot of vaccines are unnecessary," Cox said. "I think there are too many - way too many."
Cox sees skipping them as one more way to keep her children healthy, along with keeping their diet "clean" and avoiding medications when possible.
She did worry, when Easton began preschool, whether his being unvaccinated would be a problem. Tennessee law requires proof of vaccination before a child can be enrolled in school; it allows parents a religious exemption, but not a philosophical one. Children can also have medical exemptions.
Cox believes vaccines go against her religious tenets, in part because some were made with human embryo stem-cell lines (derived before harvesting stem cells from embryos became illegal). But her nondenominational Christian church doesn't take a stand on vaccines. However, she learned that Tennessee requires only that parents sign a form from the health department; they no longer have to provide a letter from clergy.
Cox also worried about finding a pediatrician. More than one Knoxville practice openly refuses parents who don't vaccinate.
Cox's pediatrician, Dr. Michael Green of Trinity Medical Associates at Fort Sanders West, said he tries to address parents' concerns about vaccines, but he won't discharge their children if they decide not to vaccinate. Instead, he works on building a relationship of trust.
"My goal is that every patient I have that's a child be fully vaccinated," Green said. "I may have an altered view on approaching that, but I don't have an altered view on vaccination."
That's because he's seen just about all the diseases he vaccinates children against, with the exception of polio.
"When you see a child in the ICU with chicken pox, who has encephalitis or is about to lose an eye because of an infection, then you look at the parents and you think, 'Where's the vaccine?' " he said. "Almost 100 percent of the time, that would have prevented the worst-case scenarios. And you feel horrible. … You almost wonder, what will it take before people start to realize that we're not just playing around, these aren't just 'what color outfit am I going to dress my kid in?' These literally can be life-and-death decisions."
The re-emergence of almost vanquished diseases is a key argument for proponents of vaccination.
Earlier this year, the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 131 cases of measles, the most reported in more than a decade. They found 95 of those infected could have been vaccinated but weren't - 63 of them because of their parents' philosophical or religious beliefs. Only 17 people picked up the disease overseas; the rest were infected in the United States.
Public health officials argue that getting children vaccinated is for a greater good because it protects those who can't be vaccinated - young babies, people with immune-system problems and children undergoing chemotherapy, to name some - as well as the 5 percent to 15 percent of the population for whom the vaccines don't work.
"If most everybody is vaccinated, it's going to protect the weaker ones," Shults said.
Green admits to some frustration when a patient's entire appointment is spent discussing vaccines, leaving no time for other important topics. At the same time, he's not unsympathetic.
"There are times when people say, 'OK, I think I'm going to do it today,' and you feel for them, because you feel the anxiety that they're about to do something they are really unsure about," Green said. "You want to say, 'Gosh, I've done my own kids, we do tons of kids. This is not like sending your kid over Niagara Falls in a barrel. We do this all the time.'"
When she began practicing pediatrics 14 years ago, Shults said, "it was so easy. Basically we told people what they needed, and they got it. Somewhere along the line, the trust between the medical profession and the lay people has collapsed."
'You just kind of lose them'
Debate over a vaccine-autism connection is partly to blame.
Cox, who once worked in public schools with special-needs children, believes there is a link. Though Easton is not autistic, he has been diagnosed with speech delays and sensory issues. Cox believes that had he been vaccinated, Easton might now be autistic.
Science has failed to find a link between vaccination and autism definitive enough to convince doctors and the government. The question divides even parents of autistic children.
Maryville mother Shaina Cutler believes her son, Brant, 9, had a genetic predisposition to autism, and that heavy metals, such as aluminum and mercury, in vaccines he got when he was between 18 and 24 months of age taxed his immune system to the point of permanent damage.
Cutler said Brant was a bright and bubbly baby, but that with each shot, he ran a high fever and was "glassy-eyed and lethargic" for days. By the time he was 2, she said, no trace of the happy, alert baby remained.
"You just kind of lose them," she said. "They're more distant. They don't look at you. They don't hear."
Had she made a connection between Brant's withdrawal and the shots earlier, she said, she would have stopped them. But Cutler had never heard of autism before her son was diagnosed. She now believes her daughter's onset of attention-deficit disorder also might have been hastened by vaccines.
Yet Cutler is on the board of the East Tennessee chapter of the Autism Society of America, which holds the position that there is no evidence of a link.
"I don't suggest that anyone not vaccinate their children," she said. "You don't want rampant disease … because everyone got scared and didn't vaccinate. I do have the opinion that they need to spread out the vaccinations."
If Cutler had a younger child, she would space out the shots, or perhaps wait until the child was 4 or 5 years old to start them, she said.
Many parents are finding such a "delayed schedule" to be a compromise between wanting the protection of vaccination and fearing the vaccines.
Taking more time
Jessi Blessinger of Farragut follows a modified version of Dr. Robert Sears' suggested "delayed schedule," never getting more than one shot per visit for her 15-month-old son, Leo.
Blessinger's husband, a physicist, travels overseas to Asia, South America and Central America frequently. Blessinger, though she has reservations, sees vaccination as the best way to protect her son from some diseases that his father, who has been vaccinated, might be exposed to. So she read about each vaccine and its purpose, choosing the ones that were "nonnegotiable," including pneumococcal and Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type b), which she felt strongly enough about that she took Leo to the health department to get it because a shortage left his pediatrician without it.
Some other shots she decided to skip, including the vaccines for rotovirus ("still too new") and chicken pox (she worries that immunity would wear off when Leo is older and set him up for a more severe case than he would have had as a child).
"At the end of the day, everybody's going to do what works for their family. At least if you know people are putting thought into the decision … then you know that a good decision was made for that family," Blessinger said. "I'm probably never going to be 100 percent sold (on) either (position), but for now, this is what works for us."
Blessinger's pediatrician, Dr. Mark McColl of Trinity Medical, agreed to follow the Sears schedule because, he said, late vaccination is better than no vaccination. But he thinks the worry that too many vaccinations at once might "overload" a young child's system are unfounded.
"A child can come in and get six shots - at most, three needles worth of stuff," he said. "The likelihood of being exposed to 10 times that amount of stuff going to Walmart is a guarantee. You sit in my waiting room, you're going to be exposed to more things than I'm going to give you in that needle."
Parents sometimes balk at the newer "combo" shots, which have several vaccinations in one needle. Doctors like the combo shots for two reasons, Shults said: First, the child is injected fewer times, and second, it's easier to get the shots done early, and thus better protect the child.
It is possible, but not usually practical, to give individual vaccines instead of combo shots. For example, though drug company Merck, which makes an MMR combo shot, still makes individual vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella, they have to be ordered in bulk. Most doctors don't have enough requests to justify the cost, and insurance won't always pay for the individual shots.
They're not always easy to find, either. Though a Merck customer service representative said the company hasn't discontinued the individual vaccines, none is currently available.
The newer vaccines are often better, Shults said. Polio and DTap are two; older versions of both more often caused adverse reactions.
"When I first came out of residency, we'd call back everybody (whose child had a shot) the next day and make sure they were OK," she said. "We don't have to do that anymore. They may run a little fever, and they may be a little fussy, but for the most part, 90 percent of the kids are going to tolerate them very well."
McColl, Green and Shults all say they've reviewed anti-vaccine information parents have brought them. They also keep up-to-date on studies from sources they trust. Nothing they've seen so far sways their conviction that the risk of vaccination is smaller than the risk of not vaccinating.
Vaccines "changed the way I do medicine," Shults said. "Take (pneumococcal): When we had a kid with a 104-degree fever, we told you to go to the ER. You couldn't leave that kid sitting at home with strep pneumo - they could be dead the next morning. A perfectly healthy kid.
"We don't do near as many blood cultures, inject as many antibiotics, or have as many ER visits. Then the rotovirus - oh, my goodness. In my practice alone, we used to send five or six kids to the hospital each year with rotovirus. Last year, I didn't have one."
Kristi L. Nelson may be reached at 865-342-6434.
© 2008, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/dec/07/vaccination-debate-parents-choice-or-public-health/
