Vaccines -no vaccines -either way it's about the children

[Guest guest]

I know this is a much heated topic here. And...I know we are

emotional about how we view it as it involves our children no matter

what choice we make. Let's try to be open minded to listen to things

that we may disagree with. We may walk away with a better

understanding, we may walk away with learning something we do agree

with, but no matter what we should at least know that in general the

parents and professionals that are here are the type of people that

love and care about children or they wouldn't be here.

here's an archive which I hope shows that we need to be aware of

where someone is coming from before being too quick to type back. My

son Tanner is probably in the group of children that was injured by

vaccines -but I'm not 100% against all vaccines. I do however

understand where the anger comes from. On the other side - Jacqui

who is (was) one of our members was hurt by some of the responses

here against vaccines -but in her case she had to watch her son

suffer in horror for weeks. If you check the archives even after she

sent the following message there was more political views on vaccines

then just as parents support for Jacqui as a mom. That's what makes

this group great is that we can all share our views. And even if we

don't all agree -we can grow to embrace in understanding where the

other side comes from.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~start of archive

Jacqui how is your son now?

Hi Jacqui!

you wrote:

" While I do believe that vaccination schedules and ingredients DO

need to be revamped considerably, I believe every child should be

protected against some of these very scary illnesses.

My 11 year old is still recovering from Pertussis, yup, you heard it

right..........the worst part? He HAD his vaccinations on schedule

and I thank God that he has........otherwise this illnesses would

have effected him for worse than it did. For WEEKS I watched my child

struggle to breathe, turn blue, vomit uncontrollably, etc. "

I am so very sorry to hear you and your poor child and family had to

go through this for as you say WEEKS. And are still going through

this. Once he's better will it be gone for good? I don't know much

about whooping cough but did find this story:

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Whooping Cough

The baby was 9 months old, his birth weight was 8 lbs 5 ounces. At

six months he weighed just shy of 20 pounds. Today he weighed 15

pounds - he was a skeleton and he was dying.

Mom had brought him in after treatment by his naturopath had failed.

Constant coughing had made it impossible for him to take in adequate

nutrition and starvation, coupled with a raging bacterial pneumonia

were conspiring to shortly end his very short life.

We worked feverishly. Intubation, IV boluses, major antibiotics,

vasopressors. All futile.

At 9:03 pm, after 30 minutes of cardiopulmonary resuscitation we

pronounced him dead.

This boy had pertussis. His mother choose not to vaccinate him. I

won't enter that debate. Anyone who has ever watched a child die or

become permanently disabled from a preventable illness supports

vaccination.

From Pkids.org:

Babies may bleed behind the eyes and in the brain from coughing.

The most common complication is bacterial pneumonia. About 1 child in

10 with pertussis also gets pneumonia, and about 1 in every 50 will

have convulsions.

Brain damage occurs in 1 out of every 250 children who get pertussis.

Pertussis causes about 10-20 deaths each year in the United States.

I received an email today about the website Pkids and I urge you to

visit it. I've seen one death from pertussis and I hope to never see

another.

http://ernursey.blogspot.com/2008/04/whooping-cough.html

And to the rest of you!!! There are times when we need to stop and

look at where a message is coming from prior to us going into auto

mode of our own opinion. Jacqui is a parent just like us and watched

in horror as her 11 year old was so profoundly sick from a condition

that can be fatal -and a condition that is on the rise again. We all

have a right to our opinion but this mother is expressing her view

from a vantage point most if not any of us has been in. Show some

compassion and let's keep the politics out of it for now even if you

are pro or anti vaccine. This is about a child...her child -a child

from our group.

People do or don't vaccinate because they are on both sides scared

and doing what they believe best for their child. As most of you

know I don't mind taking sides and do -but on this I'm down the

middle of the road. I did vaccinate my children but believe it's

best to spread it out and wait till they are a bit older in

hindsight. I do believe that Tanner is a vaccine damaged child but I

don't believe it was just the vaccine -I believe that just put him

over the edge and it was also where we lived too that contributed.

Where I live now is very environmentally aware. It's so clean that

today my son's school had " coastal clean up " where we needed to walk

the beach and dunes and look for trash -and some parents went out to

the road looking the beach was so clean. The world isn't always that

sparkly clean and people/companies don't always think about what goes

into the

air, soil, and water...but it ends up guess where -in them and in us.

More from an archive on this topic:

No matter what you did you could feel guilty but truth be told nobody

knows what is causing the rise in apraxia. It could be viral.

Wouldn't that be ironic that in the future people would need to

vaccinate their infants to protect them from the viral form of

apraxia?!! I do believe that my son Tanner regressed into his

acquired apraxia at 11 months after 2 weeks of high fevers after his

3rd hep vaccine- which in 1997 still contained thimerosal- but I

don't feel guilty for a number of reasons. One because at the time I

did what I felt was best for him -didn't know anything about the

vaccine stuff back then. Another (and I posted about this quite a

few times) is that my sister in law works for a large pharmaceutical

in NJ as a chemist and has many medical friends. One of them has a

child that regressed into autism quickly after being vaccinated.

After research and discussions her and her husband decided not to

vaccinate their second child at all. Their second son has autism as

well -and much more severe than the first.

Right now both in the US and around the world there are many that

feel guilty about not having the ability to vaccinate because they

are impoverished. Not saying autism and apraxia aren't frustrating -

but having a son who has overcome apraxia even though he's still

working on it -doesn't begin to compare to death. And for those who

say we don't have these diseases here- we are starting to see

diseases that we haven't seen in years and I pray none of you that

don't vaccinate have to deal with any of them. The only reason the

recent epidemic of mumps in the US wasn't worse is because most kids

get the MMR -but to those that didn't -mumps can (again) be way worse

then apraxia.

" However, Offit doesn't think the 2006 outbreak is reason enough to

change the current two-shot vaccine policy. " It's been two years

since the outbreak, and there hasn't been a similar outbreak. So, I

don't think any changes in vaccine policy need to be made at this

time, because it will be based on a single outbreak, " he said.

But not getting vaccinated at all is taking a risk, Offit said. " The

choice not to get vaccinated is not a risk-free choice. It's just a

choice to take a different risk, " he said. " I think the choice not to

get a vaccine for a child is a bad one. Mumps is not a benign

disease. "

While mumps in children is usually mild, complications can include

loss of hearing, meningitis and encephalitis, which can be fatal. In

adult men, mumps can result in sterility. "

http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/healthday/080409/mumps-

outbreak-in-midwes\

t-could-have-been-worse.htm

AP Interview: Wife of Mandela urges push for greater child

immunization

" BARCELONA, Spain: Longtime child rights campaigner Graca Machel said

Thursday a push to immunize children in the developing world against

killer diseases has saved millions of lives. But she urged the world

to do more.

Machel, the wife of former South African President Mandela,

said the multibillion- dollar effort begun in 2000 has had

unprecedented success. It has brought together wealthy donor

countries, multinationals, the pharmaceutical industry and developing

nations, she said — part of an effort to cut infant mortality by two-

thirds by 2015. "

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/04/24/news/Spain-Child-

Immunization.php

As this article says " fear the disease, not the protection "

" Here's a smoking gun, but it points the other direction: Five years

or more after thimerosal left the scene, autism rates continue to

rise...

The diseases speak for themselves: polio, measles, mumps, rubella,

chicken pox, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis A and B, rotavirus,

pneumonia, sepsis, meningitis, diphtheria, influenza, cancer of the

cervix.

The irony: Because immunizations have succeeded, we no longer fear

the diseases they prevent. When the whoop of Pertussis rings across a

community or the contortions of tetanus find their way onto YouTube

or a child dies after a " measles party, " perhaps the vaccine skeptics

will refocus their fears.

Conversely, if a credible body of scientific evidence emerges against

vaccines, I will eat my words and work tirelessly to repair the

damage. It would be the perfect ending to this conspiracy thriller.

As it stands, though, the plot is little more than pulp fiction. "

http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/huff/wb/157283

I'm not " pro " nor " anti " vaccine. If I decide (with my husband) that

my children need to be vaccinated it's because I've looked at all

sides. The celebrity person that we are outreaching to right now had

a stroke which led to verbal apraxia due to meningitis -which can

also be deadly. death (again) is worse than apraxia. Look at the

following statistics:

" Before the Hib vaccine was approved for young children in the late

1980s, Hib was the leading cause of bacterial meningitis in U.S.

children under 5. Every year in the United States, roughly 20,000

children under 5 developed severe Hib disease. About 1 in 4 of those

children suffered permanent brain damage and 1 in 20 died.

Thanks to the vaccine, the number of cases in kids under 5 had

dropped to 259 by 2003 — a decline of more than 98 percent. The cases

that still occur are mostly in children who haven't gotten all their

shots or are too young to have been immunized. "

And here's a quote from Sallie Bernard from the archives (Safe Minds,

Cure Autism Now)

" Some people feel that low birth weight could increase the risk of

having an adverse reaction to low doses of mercury. I think there is

some literature on prenatal steroid use contributing to neurotoxicity

on its own but I need to confirm that. Still, the risk from premature

lung development was probably greater than risk from steroids, I

would guess but not sure. "

Perhaps that's the best way to look at this. Weigh the decisions you

make. This probably doesn't make you stop feeling guilty -but at

least you know that you made the decision you did to do what was best

for your child. If you went back and did it again and did it

different -the outcome could be the same...or worse.

Visit http://www.safeminds.org for balanced information. Sallie who

is behind this site is not anti -vaccine -she advocates education,

awareness, and safety.

One other thing actually -our hero for our children is Helen Keller-

and we all know why Helen was deaf and blind.

" Although the world is full of suffering,it is also full of the

overcoming of it. "

~ Helen Keller

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