MSNBC.com has a nice collection of parent’s quotes in regards to their decision to vaccinate or not their kids, titled “Parents sound off on childhood vaccine divide”
They did a pretty good job at representing both sides of the coin. I will concentrate on some flawed reasoning coming from the antivaccination crowd. Now let me make clear that I am not a doctor, and have no specialized knowledge about vaccines. These are my thoughts based on what I have been able to gather by reading various sources. If I say something which is not correct please do point it out in the comments section.
I chose not to vaccinate my children after one child developed a severe reaction to the vaccination. Also, I believe we are inviting a destruction to our immune system by disallowing it to fight the natural childhood diseases that come along.
It is a big mistake to say that vaccines “dont allow the immune system to fight the natural diseases”. The whole point of a vaccine is exactly the opposite, to get the immune system to fight off a weakened version of the germ causing the disease, so that it would know what to do when the living germ gets into the body. The parent also committs the natuaralistic fallacy, by somehow implying that “natural diseases” should be allowed to exist. I don’t understand that. HIV, Cancer, Heart Disease, Strokes all of these are natural diseases. In fact I am not even sure what an unnatural disease is..
My 3 year old has some of his shots but not all. As parents we decided to go slowly on vaccinating him as opposed to flooding his body full of unnatural agents. When we heard about the measles outbreak we did get him a measles shot. I don’t have any second thought to our process with vaccines.
There goes the natural fallacy again. Vaccines are referred to as “unnatural agents”. What the hell is that? A chemical that does not exist in nature? I find it really hard to believe that there is anything in vaccines that cannot be found in nature. Furthermore, vaccinating after there is an outbreak is not only inefficient, but irresponsible too. There does not need to be an outbreak in order for your kid to become sick. This parent needs to have lots of second thoughts on the issue. Next time the kid may not be so lucky and get sick before there is a big outbreak. I mean how does this parent think an outbreak occurs anyway? It is an outbreak when large numbers of people get sick. And that large number of people could very well include her kid. Bad, bad reasoning.
Many of us who choose not to vaccinate are not totally opposed to vaccinations and the benefits they can provide, but rather we are just asking for a safer vaccination schedule and safer vaccines. I hope that one day it will be possible to protect our children from disease without the fear of a life long disability like Autism. I choose not to vaccinate my twins because if they got chicken pox, measles, or even pertussis it would not be nearly as devestating as Autism has been for our son or our family.
There is nothing, nothing, to relate vaccines with autism. Absolutely nothing. This person’s child was diagnozed with autism after receving his 15 month shots. Well, I have a 1 year old and I am personally aware of the amount of vaccines they get before 15 months. If vaccines do infact cause autism, why is it that it shows up so late? Why didn’t it show up earlier? Furthermore, in early stages vaccines are given at 3 or 6 month intervals. Regardless when a kid is diagnosed with autism, it is bound to be within a short period of time after getting some shot. What about the claim that it’s better if kids get other diseases rather than autism? Well given that vaccines have not been shown to cause autism, that is basically saying that in order to feel like we’re doing something to prevent a disease we don’t know how to prevent, we will forgo protection on the ones we do know how to prevent. Weird reasoning no? I won’t even go into a whole what’s worse autism or the other ones. Another parent shows clearly how bad the other diseases can be.
I’m old enough to remember life without vaccines for measles and chicken pox and I suffered the consequences of the diseases. Measles, both kinds, Red and German, ruined my eyesight. Chicken pox left me with permanent scars on my face and body. I was so sick with the Red Measles that I also came down with pneumonia and almost died at the age of seven.
Let’s move on to the next comment.
I have chosen not to vaccinate my daughter. My stepson has autism which could put my daughter at a greater risk for contracting it. Currently she has come down with Rubella (german measles) she had a high fever for 5 days, following a rash from head to toe. Was she sick? Yes, and miserable. However, would I choose two weeks of that over a lifetime of Autism. YES!!!! With the rate of Autism on the rise 1 in 150. And no known cause of it, why wouldn’t a parent whose child is at a greater risk decide to not put those poison’s into their child’s body?
Ok so what this person is saying is that “there is no known cause of autism” and at the same time saying tht if she vaccinated her daughter, she would have gotten autism, thus vaccines are a cause of autism. A bit contradictory, wouldn’t you say?
My children did have some vaccines BUT after my soon to be 3yr old regressed after a series of vaccines last yr I have stopped vaccinating them as I truly believe that all the poison in those shots caused his autism. I also wonder why unvaccinated children can be blamed for vaccinated people being at risk! IF the vaccines are supposed to be safe and protet them then those who are vaccinated should have NO reason to fear the unvaccinated children!!!
See, it is exactly the lack of basic understanding that makes people affraid. They are litterally scared because they lack knowledge. Vaccines are not 100% effective, in fact some wear out and you need booster shots. Because they are not 100% effective, there is a small chance that you could get sick, even if you get the shot. However, if everyone got shot, there would be much less of a chance for the germ to survive in the “herd” and thus risk infecting that small portion of unlucky vaccinated people. Long answer short, herd immunity is affected as more and more people don’t get vaccinated. To illustrate that point:
While I vaccinated my child with everything the government advises, my child still got whooping cough because so many parents don’t (or won’t) vaccinate their children. The diseases mutate and become stronger and healthy children who’s parents have taken every precaution get extremely sick. My child was horribly sick for an entire summer and no matter how many times we went to the doctor they couldn’t figure out what was causing her cough because doctor’s don’t think to look for illnesses that children have been vaccinated against. Only after my child had become better did we learn that there had been an outbreak of whooping cough in our area. Shame on the parents that think they are doing their children a favor by not immunizing them. Not only are you endangering your childs life you are endangering every person that your child comes in contact with!
Let’s keep going:
Vaccinating children is stupid and reprehensible. We have absolutely no way of knowing what goes into vaccines. As recently as ten years ago they contained mercury derivatives which could cause ppermanent harm to anyone taking them. I inquired upon a visit to the county health department and was shocked and horrified upon ten minutes of searching to see it openly admitted (albeit in the smallest fine print) that these rumors were correct. If the government doesn’t mind putting mercury in your children who knows what else the CDC may consider an ‘acceptable risk.’
Ok, there goes the unavoidable conspiracy idiot. He’s not even a parent apparently, so I don’t know what his comment is doing in an article about “parents”. Too juicy to be passed over by the journalist I guess.
We choose not to vaccinate our children. Childhood diseases are not getting better, they are just changing. Vaccinations may happen to lower the original diseases, but they have opened up a whole new world of childhood diseases. We choose to keep our children safe and clean. If they happen to get sick then we know the Doctors are very capable of helping them through their sickness. We are certain there are risks with vaccinations and we are not willing to put our children through that. It is wrong for a government or any other group of people to tell us what is best for our children. This is not neglect or abuse. We are sincerely interested in the health and well being of our children. We are not ignorant or illiterate.
No, not ignorant or illetarate, but misguided and scared probably. Childhood diseases are not getting any better? Really? Where are their statistics coming from? Whose research about childhood diseases before and after vaccines are they relying on? Very weird statement indeed. Sounds like a sentence that had been copied and pasted from so woo master’s website without a second thought to it. They choose to keep their children “safe” by denying them the protection of vaccines? Something is not quite right there. So the doctors are very capable of helping the kids when they do get sick, but apparently they ar not capable enough to prevent the diseases thay can treat. Dubious reasoning no? And how does it make sense to say that it is wrong for any group of people to tell parent’s what’s best for their children. By any group do they mean experts such as the able doctors they refer to? How is it wrong for a group of experts in a field to advise a group of non-experts about the right choice?
My son has not been vaccinated for several years. He had convulsions and quit breathing after every vaccination and now suffers minor learning diabilities. It scares me, because I certainly dont want to lose him to measles, or hepatitus… or the vaccine.
I feel for this parent. It is obvious that her son has some sort of allergic reaction to the vaccines, and the parent is rightly worried about the missed protection these vaccines could offer her son. I hope this never becomes an issue for their family.
To close it off there’s nothing I could say that would sum it up better than what another parent had to say:
Parents of kindergarteners today never had to deal with childhood disease as a certainty. In the ’50’s & ’60’s, it was so certain kids would get measles, mumps and chicken pox, that parents would make all their kids sleep with the first one who contracted a disease, so to “get it over with”. Young parents weren’t around to see children in iron lungs, and leg braces, wobbling on crutches regularly. They have never had to almost lose their hearing or suffer such after-effect from mumps or measles. They have never had to worry that they might contract measles while pregnant (because they most likely have been vaccinated for measles). They have no idea of what can be the new reality if fewer and fewer children are vaccinated. Young parents of today have benefited from the availability of vaccines and the requirements that school districts and state health boards had previously made. I shudder to think that our society cannot seem to learn from history, and since every generation seems to know it all better than any previous, we are doomed to repeat our history as well.
Let’s hope she’s not right about the repeating history part. Let’s really hope.
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