Just when you thought the debate on vaccines was over…
The author of the research that is discussed in this article is a former senior scientist at a pharmaceutical firm. While working for them, she was very limited in what she could research and write about. When asked why she chose to do this research and publish it, she said, “I’m retired now. I can write what I want.”
Thank God there are people who still have a conscience working in these companies, even if they are only able to relieve their conscience after they leave the company. The truth about vaccines is known and people like this author are slowly letting the rest of us know it too.
One of the most shocking parts of this article to me, is what Dr. Brian Strom says, a man who has served on Institute of Medicine panels that advise the government on vaccine safety. He is noted as saying “The prevailing medical opinion is that vaccines are scientifically linked to encephalopathy (brain damage), but not scientifically linked to autism”.
(Cue the music: “You say tomato, I say tomato…”)
Vaccines cause brain damage. Enough said.
As Dr. Lauren and I were getting ready to bring our firstborn son into this world, we were still wrestling with what to do about vaccines (we are adamantly opposed to them now). At the time, we knew that we should think twice about vaccines, but we didn’t know exactly why because we simply had not done our homework yet.
Eventually, I began to look at it from a risk analysis point of view. What are the risks associated with the disease itself? What are the risks associated with the vaccine?
For instance, let’s look at Measles. Measles is one of the leading causes of death in young children. Scary, right? But let’s look closer at some of the numbers. In 2009, there were 222,408 cases reported in the world and there were an estimated 164,000 deaths in 2008. Out of 6.7 billion people in the world, this averages out to about 24 people out of every 1,000,000 that will die from measles. Put another way, there is a 0.000024% chance of death from measles.
Are you scared yet? Wait, it gets better!
The World Health Organization notes that 95% of all Measles deaths occur in low-income countries with weak health infrastructure (I wonder if the advent of basic sanitation practices in the developed world had anything to do with this drop even before vaccines were introduced?). The United Nations in 2008 noted that 1.2 billion people live in “developed” countries, so this 5% (or 8,200) of deaths average out to roughly 7 people out of 1,000,000 or 0.0000068%. This is so small is almost too difficult to comprehend! (For the U.S., this would average out to about 2,100 deaths per year assuming all 307,000,000 of us live in a “developed” area.)
- Let’s compare these numbers to some known chances of death and see how it compares. According to the National Safety Council (www.nsc.org), the chance of dying from being legally executed is 10.3/1,000,000. The chance of being killed by lightning is 11.9/1,000,000. The closest number on the list is being killed in an earthquake, which ranks at 6.7/1,000,000. So, you have a better chance of being executed or killed by lightning than you do dying from Measles in the U.S. Just for more comparison, the chance of being killed via assault from a firearm is 466 times higher than being killed by Measles (1/306).
If you are able to look closer at even these Measles mortality numbers, you’ll see that the children who died from Measles in the developed world were children who also had other issues like congenital defects and immune disorders.
So, let’s compare this risk of the disease with the risk of the vaccine. According to The National Vaccine Information Center, 36 people died from the various Measles vaccines that are on the market (at least these are the ones that are attributed to the vaccine, many others could be noted other ways on the coroner’s report).
For us, the chance of even coming in contact with Measles was so remote, let alone dying from it, that is simply didn’t make sense to risk it. If this supposed risk is so great that many parents are scared into getting the vaccines by their family doctors, compare the risk of death from the vaccine compared to the disease which is about 2%. If the minuscule chances of getting the disease scare you, then 2% of that number should still scare you too. The point is, there’s no reason to be scared of this unless you know that your child has some immune disorder or congenital problems that place them at higher risk. In that case, the doctors will DEFINITELY scare you into getting the shots (at least do your research and know about all of the chemical additives and preservatives in these shots before subjecting your child to them against their will).
A much better way is to simply enhance your kids immune system by letting them experience diseases as a child and let their immune system do the job that it was designed to do: TO FIGHT DISEASE! If we squash ever fever and use cold medicine for every sniffle, our kids will never have a chance for their immune system to fully engage.
We’ve been watching this develop in our son who is now 3 years old. He gets sniffles every couple of months, and sometimes he’s got a fever and is lethargic, but he’s over these in a couple of days and they never get to the point where he is completely down and out. He still plays with his toys all day long even when he’s not feeling good and still has an decent appetite through it all. And the amazing thing is that after each of these instances, the next round of illness seems to go faster and faster. There’s no mystery to this; his immune system is getting stronger!
http://www.who.int/immunization_monitoring/diseases/measles/en/index.html – WHO info on Measles
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs286/en/index.html – WHO info on Measles
http://www.prb.org/Publications/Datasheets/2008/2008wpds.aspx – World Population Info
http://www.nvic.org – National Vaccine Information Center
http://www.medalerts.org/ – Med Alerts: Search database about vaccine events