- Sherri Tenpenny, DO, AOBNMM
In 1983, the vaccination schedule from birth to eighteen years of age included 24 doses of 7 different vaccines: polio, MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) , and DTP (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis). It is now recommended that children receive 70 doses of 16 different vaccines by the time they graduate from high school.
Parents have begun to question the necessity of so many vaccines. An ethical tug-of-war has arisen between the people’s right to choose what is injected into their bodies and the presumed benefits of vaccines to society as promoted by health officials.
Discussions about the right to refuse vaccination can become contentious, even hostile. Those who firmly believe that vaccines are safe, protective, and mostly harmless stand a chasm apart from those who have had a different experience with vaccination, involving serious injury, chronic illness, and even death. The debate has intensified, and so have the stakes. As more parents investigate and weigh up the risks and benefits of vaccines, many have chosen to opt out. These parents have decided to take personal responsibility for the health of their children, refusing to accept that health must come through a needle. Every vaccination has potential side effects and many parents feel that the risk of the vaccine is unacceptably larger than the risk of a particular illness.
Moreover, scientists cannot prove the efficacy of a particular vaccine in a particular individual to a specific pathogen. Parents know of children who have remained well without being vaccinated and of persons who have contracted the illness even though they received their respective shots. Public health officials downplay reports of outbreaks among the vaccinated, fearing the value of the vaccination paradigm would be called into question.
With more individuals refusing vaccines, alarmed health officials are concerned that the unvaccinated will cause a loss of “herd immunity” – a vaccination level assumed to provide community- wide protection. They point to outbreaks of chickenpox, mumps, and pertussis over the last few years as a proof of waning herd immunity. Officials have lodged blame for these occurrences squarely on unvaccinated children, even though most of the children who contracted the illness were fully vaccinated.
Vaccine makers and medical professionals claim vaccines were responsible for eradicating a large number of diseases, but official statistics clearly document vaccine-preventable illnesses were on their way out or, in many cases, nearly eliminated prior to the widespread use of the vaccines designed to prevent them.
However, scientific facts rarely seem to change the perspective of either side. Reasons for vaccination choice often reside in personal convictions. Many individuals insist that the separation between their person and the state begins at their skin. They have strong convictions that mandatory injections are an infringement of personal rights. The question, then, is whether society has a right – or perhaps a duty – to override personal choice for the good of the whole country. This argument has sparked debates for more than a century.
A fact that cannot be debated, however, is that we have a national (worldwide) epidemic of sick children. Today, parents schedule occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech therapy into their weekly routines, as though these activities were as ordinary as soccer practice or piano lessons. Paediatricians have started to say, “two years of age is when kids get asthma”, or “children get autism before age of three, as though these were typical growth milestones.
Is there a common factor contributing to the epidemic of illness among children today? It’s not genetics: Different families have different genes. It’s not exercise: Some kids are athletes, others are couch potatoes. It’s not environmental exposure: Some sick kids live in unhygienic public housing projects, some live in pristine gated communities. It’s not food: Some eat only organic, some eat mostly fast food. What touches almost all children today and likely contributes to the plethora of chronic illnesses are 70 doses of 16 vaccines – which include measurable amounts of chemicals, excipients, detergents, adjuvants, and heavy metals – by 18 years of age. Science has not proven these chemicals to be harmless as administered. Why do we accept that vaccination cannot be a contributor to illness and poor health?
We have come to accept asthma, allergies, eczema, chronic ear infections, and learning difficulties as “normal” childhood conditions. In our zeal to eradicate a few infectious diseases, we have traded typically mild illnesses of childhood, such as chickenpox, mumps, and measles, for a lifelong diseases, disorders, dysfunctions, and disabilities. A chronic illness held in check by medication is not health. Society must gauge the well-being of children by more than high vaccination rates and low infection rates caused by a specific short list of pathogens.
If a patient is allergic to a substance in a vaccine, the medical literature advises that it is safe to administer the vaccine as long as it is “under supervision of a physician” – as though the mere presence of a doctor in the room will eliminate a serious, possibly deadly, side effect. Doctors must adhere to their promise to first, do no harm. If medical doctors will not stand behind a patient’s right to refuse vaccination, then patients must stand up for themselves.
Parents simply do not want to be told what to do. Many parents who inquire about vaccine safety are often more familiar with the ingredients and the potential side effects than their doctors. Some doctors perceive this involvement as opposition, and many do not like having their authority questioned. Unfortunately, most physicians know little about vaccines beyond what they are told by the pharmaceutical sales representatives who sell them. Even paediatric residencies focus on only the perceived benefits of vaccines, how to administer them, and how to catch children up if doses are missing.
In the rush to vaccinate and marshal patients through time-limited office visits, doctors do not discuss other options. In fact, when parents want to discuss non-standard paediatric vaccine options, paediatricians are encouraged to charge patients an extra fee to compensate for their time!
Infectious diseases come and go. With an immune system supported by clean water, exercise, adequate sleep, decent living conditions, reasonably good food, and a 25-hydroxy vitamin D level of greater than 60 milligrams per millilitre, few will be at risk of dying from an infection. In fact, most won’t get sick at all.
Health, after all, does not come through a needle!
Numbers speak for themselves:
0.5 parts per billion (ppb) of mercury kills human neuroblastoma cells
2 ppb of mercury is the US EPA’s limit for mercury in drinking water
20 ppb of mercury destroys neurite membrane structure
25,000 ppb of mercury is the concentration in the hepatitis B vaccine administered at birth
50,000 ppb of mercury is the concentration in multi dose DTaP and Hib vaccines
(The same vaccines that are being injected into children, if spilled onto the floor, would trigger laws requiring immediate evacuation of the building and clean up by hazmat teams)
(This is an excerpt from a book “Vaccine Epidemic” edited by Louise Kuo Habakus, M.A. and Mary Holland, J.D.)