Vaccine Camps and How I got to Mine

Dr. Mom, over at Confessions of a Doctor Mom, posted an article recently regarding her take on the vaccine debate.  She is both a mother and a pediatrician so I was quite interested in hearing her point of view.

I found her vaccine “camps” to be an interesting springboard for discussion.  I will say (and I’m sure she’d agree) that dividing us all into three camps is probably oversimplifying things a bit.  But if we didn’t do that, we’d have yet another book on the subject on our hands, wouldn’t we?

I started my Mommahood in camp #1.  I’m perfectly willing to admit that I was there because I knew absolutely nothing about vaccines beyond that they were “good” and “what’s best” and that I’d had all of mine growing up (which I believe, to date, possibly as little as half of what they are giving kids now).  That said, I am one of those really annoying parents that ask lots of questions of doctors, especially when it comes to my kids.  So when the nurse came in to vaccinate my hours old infant my first question was “Why?  You want to vaccinate my 16hrs old baby girl for a disease that is transmitted via sex or needle sharing?!  WHY?  I was given a pamphlet much like the ones I’ve seen in peds offices since.  It can be summed up as this: “Vaccines are safe.  They save lives.  They have eradicated diseases and are Safe. Safe, Safey Safe safe.  Don’t worry, we know what we are talking about, vaccinate your children.  Hep B sucks a lot so vaccinate the baby.  The End.”

I know, I know, I’m exaggerating a bit but the sad truth is that uh, not really.  Throw in a few “The CDC’s” and “AAP’s” and it gave the impression of being very official and making me feel like I’d done my job becoming informed before making a decision.    The impression I got from the nursing staff was that asking such a question was just silly and that All Good Mothers Sign The Form.  So I signed it and allowed my oldest daughter to be vaccinated against my gut instinct because I thought it was the right thing to do.

A few weeks later a well meaning friend of mine sent me a few links about vaccines and asked me if I’d ever heard some of the stuff she was reading.  In short: no, I certainly had not.  Some of it was downright alarmist but some of it was reeeaaaallly interesting.  Out of curiosity, I kept researching on my own…for months.  I only allowed my daughter to complete her Hep series and get a pneumococal before I told my ped we were stopping until I’d learned more.  Why did I do that? Because the most stunning piece of information that I had learned at that point was that I knew nothing about vaccines…and neither did my kid’s doctor.  His only defense of them to me, aside from telling me three times in one conversation that “They’re important!” was that if they weren’t safe, they wouldn’t be recommended.  I asked him if he was aware of the overwhelming body of literature confirming the fact that fluoride causes cancer.  He said that he was.  I asked him if he still drank his tap water and saw his dentist regularly for fluoride treatments.  He *blushed* and told me he saw my point.  Upon asking him for information about what was in the vaccines and how they protected my infant daughter he admitted to me that he didn’t really know that any more than he knew the process for producing antibiotics!  He pointed out that he was a pediatrician, not a pharmacist.  He had a basic idea of what vaccines were about but that the only thing he could say for certain was that he was convinced they were relatively safe and that they made the world safer for the people that lived in it.  Beings as he was from Pakistan, I made a mental note of his perspective.  After all, I can’t ignore the fact that industrialized nations tend to fare better against diseases and vaccines are considered to have played a major role in that.

Over the years I’ve done a lot of reading.  I spent weeks painstakingly reading through various resources and got so frustrated with the extreme bias on either side of the fence that I gave up, went the manufacturers websites and started reading the published inserts.  I read through how vaccines were made, exactly what was in them and the testing procedures they went through before being marketed to the public.  I think I spent more time looking up technical and pharmaceutical terminology than anything else.   Actually looking up the various chemical names and whatnot in the ingredients list is very eye-opening.

I went from being in camp #1 to firmly in camp #2/3.  Dh was in camp #3 for a long time.  Part of our reasoning was that after all the research we’d done, we knew there were a lot of unanswered questions.  The fact is that some of the very serious questions most of us have about vaccines don’t have any answers, yet.  And neither one of us felt that our kids, who were not in daycare or school at the time AND were fully breastfed, were exposed to enough diseases to warrant us risking a decision based on a lack of pertinent information.

Vaccines are an amazing idea.  The hope that we have reached a point in understanding how the human body fights disease so well that we can give it a boost and protect ourselves and our children is something most parents are excited to grasp on to.  I know I certainly am!  However, I’ve done and continue to do a lot of reading on the subject and I still have a lot of concerns.

Vaccine reactions, for example, are a reality.  They are such a reality that the government has a fund set aside to compensate families who can prove that their dead or permanently injured children are a direct result of having been vaccinated.  That’s a scary thought.  This isn’t some extreme concern from ignorant parents, this is a government recognized problem.  It’s under-reported and hard to get “proof” but it’s not a secret- it’s a reality.  The really concerning thing, though, is that in so many cases, we don’t know *why* these children are having such devastating reactions!  True, out of all the human beings vaccinated throughout the world, a relative few will have these devastating reactions but for those who do, the implications are life long, if they survive them!  The other disturbing truth is that even “officials” suggest that the reactions are under-reported and poorly recognized.  This means that improvements on the vaccines and understanding that might help eliminate this problem will be a long time coming.

The most significant question that landed us so firmly outside of camp #1, though, was the complete lack of information regarding the long term effects on our immune system.  I have found there to be a concerning correlation between vaccine introduction (and addition of more and more vaccines to the schedule) and the rise in recognized auto immune disorders.  I’m not a doctor or a researcher, so please don’t take what I’m saying as gospel, but I assure you I’m not the first person to wonder about this and there are articles out there asking questions about it.  Vaccines would not be the first big OOPS coming from the medical community and I am not out for blood.  Medical researches are trying to help us and I believe it is our responsibility as parents and consumers to keep asking these questions and to use our common sense when utilizing what modern medicine has to offer us.  I know six different women with MS.  Four of them are my age.  That doesn’t take into account the people I know with other A.I.D’s, just MS.  This is purely anecdotal, and I know that, but when I ask around I find that I’m not alone in this.  I have to wonder if there is a connection!  There is no way for me to know right now, though, is there?  My point is that when even members of the medical community are asking about this, it’s not outrageous or ignorant to question it myself.

Vaccines contain a lot of things that in any other context would be considered poison.  I’m not talking about mercury.  It’s true that many vaccines contain a mercury derivative, but after the outcry against it, MOST do not.  Even so, there were never any studies that directly linked thermerosal to devastating effects.  The concern was that it was so similar to the mercury that we KNEW was horribly dangerous that it was reasonable to question it’s use.  However, my concerns lie in other ingredients.  The use of aluminum, for example, a metal that has been linked more than once to the Alzheimer’s.  

People have often questioned the ethics of being in these camps.  The herd immunity argument comes up a lot and I’ll touch it, if briefly.  ”Herd Immunity” is a bunch of crap.  It’s a marketing gimmick, guys.  This is easily verified when you consider that ALL vaccines are 50-90% effective, approximately, and not even the manufacturing companies will tell you different.  They know perfectly well that sometimes they seem to provide immunity and sometimes they don’t. Nobody knows why or who is going to be “fully protected” and who isn’t and there is NO way to prove it anyway as currently, there are absolutely NO studies being done that prove their effectiveness!  The bottom line is that if you’v been vaccinated for, say, the measles, and you’ve never gotten the measles, the assumption is that the vaccine worked.  If you’ve never been vaccinated against the measles and you don’t get it the assumption is that herd immunity worked for you.  If you’re unlucky enough to have been vaccinated and still get the measles, the assumption is that some jerk didn’t get vaccinated and you ended up with it despite the miracle vaccine.  Nobody is monitored for vaccine effectiveness and no long term studies exist to look at the effectiveness of these vaccines.

The problem is that if the vaccine was 100% effective than those who were vaccinated wouldn’t get sick even if exposed to a non-vaccinated, infected person.  Herd immunity would ONLY be a valid argument IF vaccines were 100% effective.  I’m not criticizing people getting them, understand, what I’m saying is that arguing with mothers like me for being ignorant and knowingly putting other people’s children at risk is simply demonstrating a lack of knowledge about what vaccines actually are and how they currently work.  Well, that and I do vaccinate, just much later than most people.  Morgan didn’t start until she was in school and Abby as well (well, we’re getting her ready for school).  Ethan will not start until he’s approaching school-age, either.

What are your thoughts? I’m interested!