Viral provax posts often make the rounds but this week I was motivated to respond to one. The post’s message wasn’t new, it’s a narrative based on misinformation and logical fallacies that gets rehashed year after year. What really rubbed me the wrong way was the author’s attitude - egotistical, selfish, demanding, and vindictive.

“We advocate for vaccinating your children and yourself because science has PROVEN it's the most effective method of controlling the spread of disease and giving you and everyone around you the best chance of NOT DYING from something preventable.”

Flat out dogma. Megan advocates vaccinating our children because that’s what the health department orders her to do. She tells us vaccines are the most effective method of controlling disease because that’s what the health department orders her to say.

There’s a reason she doesn’t provide any studies to bolster her argument - because there aren’t any. There is NO proof that the overall benefits of vaccinating children outweigh the overall risks. There is no independent, fully-vaccinated vs non-vaccinated, long-term study analyzing the overall health of both groups. It doesn’t exist, and without it no person, no matter their station in life, has ANY credence insisting that vaccines are worth the risk.

“I take even more offense to anyone that would imply that a college educated professional, like myself, is incapable of 'doing the research.'"

“How can you go against what your doctor recommends, don’t you trust your doctor!?”

It seems a give-in that medical professionals know more than we ‘non-medical people’ about vaccines, right? Surprisingly it’s not always the case. Vaccinology, immunology, or epidemiology are specialties not included in general medical degrees – these specialties require additional training.

The stark reality is that med students are taught very little about vaccines. This is reiterated in the article, “Vaccines: What Your Doctors Know and Don’t Know”, which is in essence a compilation of quotes from doctors revealing what they have learnt about vaccines in med school. An excerpt: [1]

“Doctors learn a lot about diseases in medical school, but we learn very little about vaccines. … We don’t review the research ourselves. We never learn what goes into making vaccines or how their safety is studied. So, when patients want a little more information about shots, all we can really say as doctors is that the diseases are bad and the shots are good. – Dr Bob Sears”

In a recent discussion I was in a family doctor expressed concern over a recent article she read that touted, “doctors spend their lives researching vaccines”. The problem she had was that this simply isn’t true at all. The doctor explained that not only are doctors taught extremely little about vaccines in med school, they don’t routinely do ongoing research either – they would love to but simply don’t have the time.

She went on to say that the bulk of the recommendations doctors make are dictated to them by major health organizations. Doctors are told what to recommend to their patients, they don’t develop these recommendations after years of independent research. If you want to know what type of education most doctors receive about vaccines, read the latest handout from the CDC. Given the minimal education doctors are given regarding vaccines it wouldn’t take long to get to the point you know more than your own doctor on the subject.

But there’s more to it than just a lack of training, a lot of people have lost trust in conventional medicine because of poor treatment. A common scenario:

1. Parents are told, “there is absolutely nothing to worry about”, when they express concern over vaccinating their child.
2. They agree to vaccinate their child, but their child goes on to suffer a severe vaccine reaction.
3. Their doctor refuses to acknowledge the vaccine injury.
4. Their doctor kicks the family out for refusing to subject their child to more vaccines.

Experiences like this destroy trust in the medical establishment. That distrust isn’t based on irrational belief, it’s based on real life experiences. If you haven’t had an unfortunate experience with conventional medicine, then great, good for you, I’m glad it has been plain sailing for you so far. But for many it’s been rough, to say the least. They’ve learnt their lesson the hard way – doctors are human, they aren’t endless sources of information, they are fallible, and sometimes they get it very, very wrong.

It’s unlikely that people who don’t blindly trust their doctors opinion on vaccination are inadvertently saying they think they know better than their doctor – though given the vast medical literature available to us today via PubMed or Cochrane that could very well be a possibility. It’s more likely that these people can’t blindly trust that the vaccine their doctor is pushing as “totally safe and absolutely necessary” really is, because experience has taught them to be skeptical. Their child’s vaccine-induced brain damage is a constant reminder that they can end up paying a very high price if they choose to have blind faith in a doctor.

Research has confirmed that skeptical patients really do have a valid reason to be wary. Larry Dossey et al wrote a scathing report on the safety and efficacy of conventional medicine in which they found:

"...when you take your sick child to the hospital or clinic, there is only a 36% chance that he will receive a treatment that has been scientifically demonstrated to be either beneficial or likely to be beneficial."

Just 13% of treatments were scientifically proven to be beneficial.[2] Taking into account those numbers, it isn’t surprising that many patients have had disappointing experiences with conventional medicine.

It’s also worth noting that not every doctor or scientist thinks that vaccines are safe and effective. There is a wide range of opinions.[3-5] Some medical professionals have taken the time to research medical literature and question the recommendations they are expected to follow. Numerous doctors have spoken out with concern over the current and past vaccine schedule. However, whether a doctor agrees with vaccination or not, they are often bound by their workplaces policy to promote vaccination. If they dare speak out against vaccination they risk losing their job. Or worse, no one wants to be “Wakefielded”.

“What makes you think your “google research” is on par with medical professionals?”

It’s important to remember when we talk about vaccines, we are talking about a range of products. The question is how well these products perform when put to the test – that knowledge is available to everyone, medical professional or not, via medical journals such as the Cochrane Library or sites that collate scientific literature such as PubMed. The public have access to the exact same studies that medical professionals are using to form their opinions (well at least the medical professionals who actually have time to research vaccines). This information isn’t reserved for the ‘medical elite’, it’s available to everyone – so let’s make use of it.

How effective or safe particular vaccines are relies on continued efficacy and safety trials, studies, and post-licence analysis. Not only are new vaccines rolled out each year, but the microbial environment in which vaccines are hoped to have an effect on is also continually changing. Hence why we are seeing rising rates of once rare strains of infection due to vaccination – strains that the current vaccines don’t currently protect from [6]. So while someone may have intricate knowledge about the immune system or diseases, there is no guarantee they have read every study published about every vaccine on the market.

If you’re new to researching medical literature and finding it difficult to interpret study findings, here’s somewhere to start:
Interpretation of Epidemiological Studies
Introduction to Statistics Part 1
Introduction to Statistics Part 2

“What makes you think you know more than the doctors, scientists, and health organisations that recommend vaccines.”

When you do decide to dig in and start reading medical literature, you’ll find not all researchers are in agreement that all vaccines are safe and effective.[3-5] Since the dawn of vaccines there has always been diverse opinions and conflicting studies published by the medical community. Medical literature as a whole paints a much darker and more complex reality than the simplistic, black/white messages about vaccines we have traditionally grown up believing.

One of the more sinister elements are the rampant conflicts of interest which pollute medical research. Researchers are often influenced by conflicts of interest that can have profound effects on how they choose to conduct their studies and what they choose to publish. Medical journals, health organisations, and governmental policy makers too commonly suffer from conflicts of interest that deeply affect their decisions.[7-12]

In fact, the vast majority of doctors involved in establishing national guidelines on disease treatment have financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry that could potentially sway their recommendations and inappropriately influence thousands of other physicians.[7-12]

It’s not a matter of, “is this study author (or health organisation, policy maker etc) more knowledgeable than me?” But rather, “can I trust that this author (or health organisation, policy maker etc) is not influenced by conflict of interest?”

What it boils down to

When parents choose not take the path their doctor recommends regarding vaccination it’s not out of arrogance or ignorance. Without doubt, it is always out of genuine concern for their child’s safety. I’ve found it often comes down to these factors:

• Parents know their doctor has learnt very little about vaccines and isn’t in a position to be making absolute recommendations regarding vaccine safety. Parents know they can read the scientific literature for themselves to make an informed decision.
• Parents know that the vaccine recommendations they are given by their doctors are heavily biased to favour vaccine manufacturers, which puts their validity in doubt.
• Parents know the risks outweigh the benefits regarding vaccinating their own children because their own children have suffered adverse reactions that outweigh the calculated risks associated with vaccine preventable diseases.
• Parents no longer trust that their children will be safe if they follow traditional medical guidelines, because trusting those guidelines has let them down in the past - they have genuine reason to doubt medical opinion.

If the medical industry wants parents to vaccinate they need to take the above concerns very seriously. We want to see doctors educated more thoroughly, with knowledge of the risks involved in vaccinating, so that when parents quiz them (as they should) doctors can actually answer them properly. We want to see the vaccine manufacturers influence over vaccine recommendations removed, along with influence over safety and efficacy testing. We want to see vaccine injury taken seriously - when a vaccine causes harm, demand that manufacturers improve the formula.

Perhaps the most important of all these concerns is to re-establish trust with the patients harmed and treated so poorly by the medical industry. Without patient trust, doctors will get nowhere. Central to re-establishing trust is having the courage to take responsibility when a vaccine causes harm instead of pretending it doesn’t exist.





References:

Growing up I thought the prevention of measles was simple - you vaccinate. Everyone did it, I did it, I had no reason to question it. It wasn't until I was plunged into parenthood with little ones depending on me that I took the time to seriously read up on the topic. There was a different opinion floating around every corner so I decided to get some definitive answers by looking at the medical research. The problem I found was the further I dug into the research, the more problematic and unsettling the topic became.

Vaccines... they don't work quite how you think
One of the more startling revelations the research revealed was that most vaccines, including the measles vaccine, don’t protect against contracting infection but will often reduce or prevent symptoms of infection [1-7].

"Many vaccines are primarily intended to prevent disease and do not necessarily protect against infection." - Andre et al. World Health Organization, 2008 [7]

Andre et al go on to state that just two vaccines, the HPV and Hep A vaccine, may have the ability to prevent infection.

This fact is NOT widely known, not only because it's virtually never mentioned publicly, but also because medical terminology can be a little deceiving. When we read that "vaccines prevent disease" we equate the word "disease" with "infection", but that's not the case in medical literature. "Disease" is defined as a state causing symptoms of ill health, however you can easily have an infection without symptoms of ill health. Disease and infection are two very different terms.

So, we can say that vaccines prevent disease, because they can (though not always) prevent the symptoms of ill health, yet they commonly don't stop infection or its transmission. We can also say that vaccines can prevent the spread of the disease, because without symptoms such as coughing the infection is less likely to spread, though it is still present in saliva and nasal secretions.

Disease prevent is NOT just about vaccines
The big issue I have with the current strong push for measles vaccination (and all vaccination), is that it's just one of the methods that reduces the symptoms (and therefore spread, of infection). There are many, many more methods of disease prevention besides vaccination that are proven in medical literature.

Breastfeeding is one such highly underrated disease prevention method that stands out. It is shown in studies to dramatically reduce the rate of symptomatic infection in babies [8]. The protection is known to continue against certain types of infections for up to 10 years [9].

But it doesn't stop there. Breastfed children are...


(See this post for stats related to not breastfeeding and a list of references.)

Those are some serious stats showing breastfeeding has the ability to prevent not just one, but a multitude of illnesses, and without the risk of side effects.

Why the hysteria over MMR?
With that in mind, let’s look at the recent MMR vaccine publicity. The measles rates are within a normal range compared to recent years [10], there have been no measles associated deaths, and measles is well known to be a benign illness in most individuals [11]. Yet the current measles hysteria seems even worse than the recent Ebola scare.We have articles calling for non-vaccinating parents to be sued if their child infects another child, to be put in jail, their children taken away and forcibly vaccinated, and addresses of non-vaccinators to be made public. Then there's the vitriol spewed through social media with commenters labelling non-vaccinators child abusers, vile monsters, and ignorant science-deniers, along with threats of violence and death.

Are we enforcing a double standard on parents?
Let's pretend that treating non-vaccinating parents this way is acceptable for a moment (it's not). If this is the way we've decided as a society to treat parents who choose not to adopt specific disease prevention methods for their children, tell me where are the witch hunts calling for parents who refuse to breastfeed to be sued if their child infects another child, for non-breastfeeders to be put in jail, their children taken away and forcibly breastfed, or addresses of non-breastfeeders to be made public?

We know that breastfeeding reduces a myriad of infections, including pneumococcal disease which can progress to dreaded meningitis [12]. We're not talking about a little possible benefit, we're talking about real, tangible prevention of disease and death through breastfeeding. Studies show breastfed babies are 5 times less likely to be hospitalized for infection - we are talking about the prevention of hospitalization for thousands of babies [13].

Parents have been prosecuted for not vaccinating their child who consequently died from a "vaccine preventable disease" [14]. Should the same be done to parents who refuse to breastfeed, whose child consequently dies from a "breastmilk preventable disease"?

Adopting pro-vax rhetoric we could conclude non-breastfed kids are a threat to our children, and the rest of the community. They are more likely to carry disease, they could infect vulnerable newborns, elderly folks, or chronically ill patients. They should not be allowed to go to daycare or preschool, or at least must be sent home when there is an outbreak. Doctors who don’t enforce mandatory breastfeeding for their patients should lose their licence. In fact, anyone who advocates that breastfeeding shouldn’t be mandatory should be publicly shamed. Parents who don’t breastfeed are irresponsible, neglectful, stupid, and anti-science. They literally want to their child to die. (Yes, these are word-for-word comparisons of pro-vax rhetoric.)

Sounds hideous when you attack mothers about not breastfeeding doesn’t it? Something like propaganda spread by a dictatorship.

“Dictatorship, form of government in which one person or a small group possesses absolute power without effective constitutional limitations… Dictators usually resort to force or fraud to gain despotic political power, which they maintain through the use of intimidation, terror, and the suppression of basic civil liberties. They may also employ techniques of mass propaganda in order to sustain their public support.”
- Encyclopaedia Britannica 

“Propaganda, dissemination of information—facts, arguments, rumours, half-truths, or lies—to influence public opinion.”
- Encyclopaedia Britannica

While we’re at it…

“Bullying, intentional harm-doing or harassment that is directed toward vulnerable targets and typically repeated. Bullying encompasses a wide range of malicious aggressive behaviours, including physical violence, verbal mockery, threats, ostracism, and rumours spread either orally or by other means of communication, such as the Internet.”
- Encyclopaedia Britannica

How do you think someone who couldn’t breastfeed would feel hearing the above statements? Imagine breastfeeding (like vaccines) did have major risks, and a parent had a child who severely reacted to breastmilk resulting in permanent brain damage. The family doctor refused to admit that the breastmilk caused the reaction and insisted the child continue to be breastfed. How scared do you think the parent would feel when faced with the possibility of mandatory breastfeeding? How heartbroken and disillusioned do you think she would feel hearing someone call her “neglectful” or “stupid”?

These tactics - whether used against those who don't breastfeed or don't vaccinate - are cruel, unfair, and unethical.

Disease prevention is a lifestyle
There’s plenty of analogies that can be used for vaccination besides breastfeeding...

• avoiding people when sick
• washing hands
• not sharing drinks or food
• eating a healthy diet
• getting enough exercise
• not smoking
• not drinking alcohol

All of these life style choices are shown in studies to have a profound impact on the immune system. Best of all these don’t carry the risks that vaccination does.

Why are these factors not gaining more attention in the fight against not just communicable disease but all disease? Why is the public not rabidly demanding that others be forced to adopt these lifestyle changes like they are for vaccination? After all if people don’t avoid others when sick, don’t wash hands, share food and drink with others, eat an unhealthy diet, get no exercise, chain smoke, and binge drink, they could well become a cesspool of disease - in theory they are a risk to the public. 

So why the double standard when it comes to vaccination?

Protecting individual choice
At the end of the day we do have a responsibility to try to prevent disease in our community. But it must be recognized that there is more than one way to prevent disease - vaccination is not our only hope. The combination of prevention methods that is right for one person may be wrong for someone else. Insisting that we know what is right for others is naïve, arrogant, and dismissive of individual variability. Medicine has never been a "one size fits all" regime.

As "safe" as vaccines have been touted, we can never guarantee the benefit outweighs the risk for someone else. It won't be us (or the doctor or the pharmaceutical company) paying the price if the vaccine backfires, it will be the individual. Given the seriousness of possible consequences and lack of vaccine safety testing/monitoring, the choice to vaccinate MUST remain with the individual.


Sources:

Once in a while something shared on the internet comes my way that I feel moved to write about. The below is one such internet gem, a meme shared on Facebook that is frankly, an angry, misinformed rant.


On the surface the meme can seem convincing, but if you spend a little time trying to find studies to back up these statements, it soon falls flat.

So piece by piece I’m going to break it down so that by the end of it, we’ll all have learned some valuable scientific information about vaccines, and understand why the above meme constitutes bogus, manipulative, propaganda.

So let's dig in:

“The diseases haven’t gone away. They are just held in check because sensible people vax their kids.”

While the aim of vaccines is to keep VPD's (vaccine preventable diseases) in check, the stats just don't add up. Despite extremely high and stable vaccination rates, death from infection has actually increased dramatically since the 1970’s – an era when we received over 4 times less vaccines [1-5].

Some people aren’t sensible; they don’t vax their kids. Yes, I’m looking at you, sunshine – you with the Ph.D from Google U and the post-doc from Whale.to.” “

Vaccines have the ability to cause severe, permanent injury, and death [6-8]. While some screening is recommended, infants commonly receive vaccines without any testing and minimal to no screening to verify whether they will react badly. The CDC recommends administering ALL the vaccines a child is eligible for at the same doctors visit – up to 9 vaccines at once [9,10]. This practice has never been studied for safety [11]. This is NOT sensible, it is reckless.

“Because your little cherubs are un-vaxed they are far more likely to catch the diseases. 23 times more likely for whooping cough, 35 times more measles for example.” 

While it's true that unvaxed kids are more likely to show symptoms of VPD's, there's very few studies that show unvaxed kids are more likely to actually contract or transmit VPD's compared to vaxed kids.

That's because there's almost no vaccine shown to protect recipients against INFECTION. Studies show vaccines can reduce symptoms of infection in many recipients, but not ensure protection against contracting or transmitting infection. [12].

“Your kidlets are much more likely to be exposed to the diseases, because anti-vaxers like yourself hang around with other anti-vaxers.” 

This is an assumption that comes with no actual data. Vaccinated individuals are still likely to contract diseases, likely from other vaccinated individuals, because when exposed they may still become infected and pass on the infection – albeit with minimal or no symptoms [12].

While there are some studies that show unvaxed kids are likely to have more VPD's (or at least show the symptoms of VPD's) it's usually in babies too young to be vaccinated anyway, so it doesn't really count in this situation. These limited studies also don't take into consideration the overall health of vaxed vs unvaxed populations, they only test for VPD's. What about all the other diseases and illnesses we face which vaccines are implicated in causing?

Non-communicable diseases including cancer, autoimmune diseases, and neurological disorders have now overtaken communicable diseases as greater threats to our populations health. This is why advocacy groups have been calling for an independent, saline-control, vaxed vs non-vaxed study analyzing the overall health of both groups. So we can understand once and for all whether the benefits of vaccinating outweighs the risks.

“Your little darlings then spread their vile viruses and bacteria to innocent children who are too young to be vaxed. Those innocent children get sick with killer diseases spread by people silly enough not to vax – like yourself.” 

"Vile viruses and bacteria” are more likely to be found in the vaccinated population. Many outbreaks of disease occur almost entirely or exclusively in vaccinated populations. As we know, vaccinated kids are still likely to contract and pass on infections to vulnerable individuals because most vaccines DON'T protect from contracting or transmitting VPD's. [12]

Additionally, vaccine recipients can spread disease when shedding vaccine viruses after being vaccinated with live vaccines [12]. Vaccinated kids are a danger to vulnerable individuals, just as unvaccinated kids are.

“No vaccine is 100% effective; some vaxed kids will also catch your revolting diseases. We need high vax rates for herd immunity.” 

"Revolting diseases" don't belong to unvaxed kids anymore than they belong to vaxed kids. The only difference between a vaxed and unvaxed child is that when the vaxed child contracts a "revolting disease" they likely won't show symptoms. But it doesn't mean they don't have the infection lurking inside them, unknowingly spreading it everyone around them - which makes them possibly even more dangerous than an unvaxed child. At least when unvaxed kids get a VPD they'll likely show symptoms so their parents know to keep them at home.

Also, we've had extremely high and stable vaccination rates for over a decade, it has not stopped epidemics [1,2]. If a vaccine isn't effective enough, the answer isn't forcing EVERYONE to get the vaccine, risking side effects possibly even worse than the VPD the vaccine was trying to protect from. The answer is to make the vaccine more effective, and safer while you're at it.

It's also worth repeating that death from infectious disease has increased dramatically since the 1970’s – an era when we received over 4 times less vaccines.

“Infect enough children and some of them will die, more of them will suffer permanent disability, and all of them will have experienced an unnecessary and unpleasant disease.” 

What about death, permanent disability and unnecessary and unpleasant experiences caused by VACCINE INJURY? Because the necessary studies comparing the overall health of non-vaccinated vs vaccinated populations have not been done, whether the benefits of vaccines outweigh the risks is still unknown. Forcing parents to take that gamble is totally unethical.

“All of that suffering will be YOUR fault for not vaxing your rugrats.” 

No, it won't. Trying to blame non-vax parents for the fall-out of ineffective, dangerous vaccines is truly despicable. If you want someone to blame, the blame lies squarely and solely with vaccine manufacturers.




References:

It’s been 10 years since I first delved into the topic of vaccination. With hopes of finding definitive answers, I combed through thousands of studies and articles written by a wide spectrum of authors – some heavily pro, some deeply against, and many in between.

Ten years on I’ve learnt a lot, knowing there is always so much more to learn, but I find myself disillusioned with what should be a straight forward, logical topic. I know many others feel the same. I’ve found I can’t enter into the topic of vaccination without being inundated with insults, lies, and hypocrisy (hence the title of this post).

While I’ve seen people on all sides of this debate guilty of it to varying degrees, the majority of it seems to stem from the staunchly pro-vax camp. I’m not talking about the average parent who feels vaccinating is best for their family, more power to you.

I’m talking about the rabid pro-vaccine advocate who believes they have the right to FORCE each and every one of us  to vaccinate. They believe vaccination is a black and white topic, they believe those who disagree with their opinions are the enemy, and they believe you shouldn’t get to choose what is injected into your own or your children’s bodies.

One thing’s for sure, I’m sick of hearing and seeing it; it needs to end. Here's a taste of what I'm talking about:

People use pictures and stories of sick or dead children to expose the reality of the diseases we vaccinate for, but they downplay or dismiss pictures and stories of children who become sick or die due to vaccine injury, calling them ‘scare tactics’.

Baby Ian's reaction to Hep B Vaccine

It's mind boggling that it has to be said: no death or injury, whatever the cause, should ever be callously disregarded. When parents are told by their family GP, “vaccines are perfectly safe, your child will be fine”, only to have their child injured or die as a result of vaccination, the trauma is particularly painful. The trust they invested in the medical profession is destroyed.

The anguish is made worse when medical professionals refuse to even acknowledge the vaccine they administered was the cause. Instead of being comforted in their time of need, these families feel shunned. Imagine being in that position, hearing people disregard your child's injury or death?

Hear this well: our children’s lives aren’t anyone else's to expend as collateral damage for ‘the greater good’. Those who think they are should be utterly ashamed. No one gets to force anything into us or our children, ever.

People herald parents who speak out about their child’s sickness or death due to the diseases we vaccinate for as brave heroes, but they disbelieve and insult parents who speak out about their child’s sickness or death due to vaccine injury, labelling them ‘liars’, ‘scum’, ‘anti-science’, etc. 

Nurse Julie speaking out in the #hearthiswell campaign

The cruelty in this debate is both heartbreaking and enraging. There is much, much worse said to these parents I won’t mention here [1-3]. Grieving parents of sick or dead children no matter the cause, who speak out in the hopes of saving others the misery they had to endure, deserve a listening ear and a shoulder to cry on;  not insults and ostracism. Any human being should inherently understand this, but somehow this debate turns usually decent people into vicious assholes at the flick of a switch.

Hear this well: no one else gets to tell parents what did or did not happen to their child; we didn't witness it, we don’t know their children. Have some respect.

The above two examples are the two that irk me the most, more so because my own son suffered a severe vaccine reaction. But there’s plenty more…

People call parents who choose not to vaccinate due to fear of adverse reaction ‘uneducated’ and ‘irresponsible’, but these same people choose to vaccinate their own children due to fear of adverse reactions to diseases we vaccinate for.

Fear of injury or death is the common denominator driving the decision to vaccinate or not vaccinate, so if one side is deemed ‘irresponsible’ for letting fear for their children’s lives determine their decision, then so must the other. It boils down to: what poses a greater risk to my child, vaccinating or not vaccinating?

There is a wealth of evidence in support for both. For our family, the experience of brain injury our son suffered after vaccination made it abundantly clear vaccines posed a greater risk than the extremely small risk of disease complications he faced [4-22]. I cannot guarantee another family will not suffer the same fate our family did, or worse, because there is so little recognition of vaccine injury [23-26] or research regarding which children are most susceptible to vaccine injury [27].

In contrast, there has been abundant research regarding who is most susceptible to the diseases we currently vaccinate for. We know what makes people more likely to suffer complications of infectious diseases (eg. poor diet, nutritional deficiencies, immune deficiencies, chronic diseases, multiple simultaneous illnesses, excessive stress, not breastfeeding, smoking, alcohol consumption, exposure to toxins and pollutants, obesity, lack of physical activity, unsanitary or overcrowded living conditions, age very young or very old, etc [28-50]).

People proclaim vaccine injury is extremely rare and not reason enough to avoid vaccination, but they promote extremely rare complications from the diseases we vaccinate for as a reason to vaccinate. 



The fact that vaccine injury is grossly under-reported is ignored [51], along with the fact that doctors often refuse to acknowledge vaccine injury, never mind report it [23-26]. Vaccine injury is often missed or passed off as coincidental by parents and GP’s. When concerned parents ring their doctors office to report their child has a high-pitched, prolonged cry indicating encephalitis – a brain injury that can result in chronic seizures, mental retardation, and death [52-54] - they are told this reaction is normal!

It might be such a common vaccine reaction that today’s medical staff now consider an encephalitic cry ‘normal’, but the reality is encephalitis is a serious, life threatening reaction, often resulting in permanent neurological impairments. I shudder to think how many children whose parents were told their child’s reaction was, “normal and nothing to worry about”, went on to suffer neurological and developmental disorders.

If only these children had been medically tested and treated for encephalitis, just maybe the severity of permanent injury could have been reduced. If only more research was done to determine which children are more susceptible to vaccine injury, maybe the vaccine injury could have been completely avoided altogether.

People claim that there is ‘abundant’ evidence to show that  ‘vaccines are safe’, but they ignore the fact that the vaccine schedule in its entirety, or vaccines in their various combinations, have NEVER been tested for safety [55], nor has there ever been a safety study comparing unvaccinated children with vaccinated children.

The only survey of unvaccinated children with vaccinated children was done by Generation Rescue in 2007 which found that, “vaccinated boys had a 155% greater chance of having a neurological disorder like ADHD or autism than unvaccinated boys”. [56]

People claim to have done ‘extensive scientific research’ on vaccination, but they go on to state the only study linking vaccines to autism was, “that one fraudulent Wakefield study”, and they only share information from biased websites. 

There have been numerous studies since Wakefield associating vaccines with autism, but you won’t find them on websites whose sole purpose is to promote vaccination [57-77]. We can’t claim to know everything on  a topic by only reading material from one sided sources, in fact we can never claim to know everything on any topic. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt about the vaccination debate it’s that there’s always more to learn and nothing is written in stone. Always be ready to change your mind and be proven wrong.

People promote heavily flawed research funded by pharmaceutical companies, and organisations that have been exposed by their own employees for manipulating data [79-89], but they call any research showing the harms of vaccination ‘junk science’ authored by ‘quacks’. 

Neuroscientist Russell Blaylock is one example of a study author who has found evidence of harm due to vaccines [59]. Because his research was critical of vaccination he is disregarded by many vaccine advocates without any evidence to justify it at all. Unlike many CDC or pharmaceutical industry study authors you won’t find evidence of fraud or twisting of data in Blaylocks research, but for the sake of keeping their beliefs about vaccination intact people pretend researchers like Blaylock aren’t worth listening to.

People present only research that backs their personal opinion, then ignore all other research presented to them that contradicts their own narrow research, dismissing it as nothing more than ‘cherry picked studies’. 

They think their own ‘cherry picked studies’, however, are all they need to form a scientifically sound opinion. Tossing out contradictory evidence to keep their own beliefs intact.

People dismiss research showing a link between vaccines and injury, claiming, “correlation does not equal causation”, but they go on to claim the correlation between vaccination and disease decline is evidence of causation. 

They ignore the fact that historical records show disease rates were already declining when vaccines were introduced, many by more than 90%, due to improved sanitation, nutrition, housing etc [90]. Instead of acknowledging these time-tested methods of disease reduction, they attribute the decline of disease entirely to vaccination! How can a vaccine that wasn't invented yet be responsible for a 90% decline in disease and mortality?

As for vaccine injury, many vaccine injuries are documented by VAERS, with 83% of those reports coming from doctors and pharmaceutical company employees, not the actual victims [90a]. However, VAERS states these reports are greatly under-reported [90a]. We truly don’t know the real number of serious, debilitating, sometimes fatal vaccine reactions that have occurred. Additionally, because pharmaceutical companies refuse to test their vaccines with a proper control population (a group of individuals who only receive a saline injection and has never been vaccinated, compared with a group who receives a vaccine) it becomes more difficult to conclusively pin down vaccines as a cause of injury.

Many people are happy to refute reports of vaccine injury as 'coincidence', but any other report of a drug that someone reacts to is taken much more seriously. Pharmaceutical companies have marketed vaccines so successfully that they seem to be considered by many as untouchable, beyond criticism.

Nobody dares criticize or even hint that vaccines have the ability to cause injury, or they'll be deemed an 'antivaxxer' and an 'enemy of the people' in a very Stalin-esque manner.


People promote the use of vaccination to try to prevent disease despite the risk of adverse reaction, but completely ignore other scientifically proven disease prevention methods that DON'T carry any risk of adverse reaction.

Credit: Shutterstock

These include healthier diets, monitoring and correction of nutritional deficiencies, reducing exposure to toxins and pollutants, reducing stress, reducing poverty, unsanitary living conditions, and overcrowding in homes, higher breastfeeding rates, not smoking, reducing alcohol intake, losing weight if obese, more education about prevention, monitoring, and treatment of illness, and stricter disease testing and quarantining in airports [28-50][91-93].

People claim that an unvaccinated child is a risk to their child, but they ignore the fact that their child is statistically more likely to be infected by themselves or a member of their own immediate family [94]. 

They ignore the fact that most vaccines DON'T stop infection, they only reduce symptoms, making vaccine recipients silent disease carriers [95]. They ignore the fact that their vaccinated child poses a threat to those around them when their child receives live vaccines that can shed and replicate to full strength, causing disease epidemics instead of preventing them [95].

People claim disease epidemics have returned because of low vaccination rates, but they ignore the fact that vaccination rates are at an all time high and have remained stable over the last decade [96-97]. 

US Vaccination Rates

The logic is lost on them, or wilfully ignored. Any increased rates of disease obviously have little to do with the tiny percentage of people who don’t vaccinate, and everything to do with vaccine failure.

People tell us they were vaccinated as children and they’re ‘fine’ as if it’s proof vaccines are safe, but they scoff when someone else says they had a disease we vaccinate for as a child and they’re ‘fine’ too. 

Often people ignore the fact they were likely injected with half the amount of vaccines that children are injected with today; their childhood experience with vaccines is not an appropriate comparison to the vaccine schedule today [98-99]. They also ignore the fact that a lot of us AREN'T ‘fine’. In the US 1 in 6 people now suffer from autoimmune disease [100], 1 in 5 children have a developmental and/or behavioral disability [101], and 1 in 42 boys have autism [102] – all of which are documented as adverse reactions to vaccination . That’s NOT a great definition of ‘fine’.

People claim that children are  no longer exposed to mercury from vaccines, but they ignore the fact that pregnant mothers are now recommended flu shots containing mercury [103], inadvertently exposing fetuses who are the most susceptible to mercury toxicity of any population. 

Additionally, childhood vaccines that are supposed to contain no mercury have tested positive for mercury contamination [104]. They ignore the fact that multiple vaccines containing the neurotoxin aluminium have been added to the childhood schedule, with levels grossly exceeding EPA guidelines [105-106]. Meaning the risk of neurological injury that was once posed by mercury laden vaccines, has now been replaced by aluminium laden vaccines.

I could keep going, it doesn’t end there. Jessica over at the Gianelloni Family blog has written an excellent piece called ‘Dear parents, you are being lied to’ that I also recommend reading:
http://gianelloni.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/dear-parents-you-are-being-lied-to/

Bottom line: don’t take anything at face value. If someone makes a statement about vaccines verify it by researching the studies to prove it, or disprove it – whatever the evidence ends up being. I wish I could say that after years of research I knew all the answers and that I felt at least something in this debate was proven 100%. But sadly the research that desperately needs to be done just hasn’t been done.

Unless we fiercely demand that the required research be done (ie. independent non-vax vs vax studies), it's likely no government agency will ever do it of their own accord. It’s up to us to bring it to the forefront of the media, the public, and our politicians.


References: