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Subscribe to RSSHow easy is it to avoid getting your kid exempt from school shots? Too easy -- if the epidemic of preventable diseases sweeping through many states are any indication.
It's nearly August and that means the start of school and important vaccine shots for kids entering kindergarten, elementary school or day care. Free, back-to-school immunization clinics are opening up nationwide to provide shots, depending on the state, against a whole range of diseases, including mumps, measles, rubella (German measles), diphtheria, Hepatitis A, pertussis (whooping cough), tetanus, flu and polio.
What you may not know is that a scary number of these diseases are at epidemic levels in the United States. Whooping cough, an illness that many Americans over 30 thought had disappeared, is at the highest rate among children in the US in fifty years. At least 18,000 cases have been reported in 2012, more than twice as many cases as there were at this time last year. Nine infants have died from whooping cough this year. In addition, an estimated 214 children contracted measles last year in the US, the largest outbreak of a nasty infectious disease in 15 years.
Part of the problem is, too many parents are refusing to get their kids vaccinated against whooping cough and the other horrible diseases that have returned, sickening, disabling and killing children.
There are school requirements for vaccination and, undoubtedly, vaccine rates for most children are still very high. But all states permit exceptions. Two states, Mississippi and West Virginia allow parents to opt-out only on medical grounds -- if the child has an immune disease or is violently allergic to eggs. That seems reasonable.
Other states allow vaccine exceptions for parents who claim religious reasons. While there are few religions that are specifically against vaccines, some states, including Maine, Colorado, Washington, Texas, Vermont, Arkansas and Minnesota, allow parents to say “no” to vaccines for any reason, using a so-called "philosophical" exemption. That is a problem.
California, which has had its own miserable experience the last few years with disease outbreaks and deaths in babies, has one of the easiest vaccine opt-outs in the nation, allowing parents to refuse vaccinations for their children because of personal beliefs. Recently, Democratic state representative, Dr. Richard Pan, proposed a law that requires any parent who wants to send a child to school without the required vaccines to document that they have had a face-to-face conversation with a health care provider about vaccine risks and benefits.
That's a pretty simple law that raises the bar a bit on what can be deadly vaccine exceptions. The bill is in committee, but anti-vaccine groups are buzzing like hornets, looking to get it defeated, as they did with similar efforts in Vermont earlier this year.
In fact, in the name of personal freedom, anti-vaccinators have been pushing to make it easier for parents to opt-out of vaccines in a number of states.
The United States is paying the price in death, disability and misery of allowing anyone who wants to, for no reason supported by medical science, deny vaccines for their children. Vaccine refusers put every other kid, baby and immune-suppressed adult at greater risk of getting infected. Freedom of choice is a great thing -- except when that choice leads to a possibly fatal outcome for your child.
Arthur Caplan is the head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center.
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Natural Selection - the world is getting too crowded anyway. Make sure yourself and your children are vaccinated, then let these dumbf*ck parents do whatever the hell they want. The stupid genes will hopefully end with their unvaccinated family line.
Anecdote: When pertussis (whooping cough) swept through my son's school, I called the nurse. "How is this spreading if all the children are vaccinated?" She answered, "The vaccine does not prevent the illness; it shortens duration and lessens severity. In fact the outbreak started with a vaccinated child."
When big money is not behind vaccines, when parents are fully informed about the effectiveness and safety of vaccines, when the government is no longer standing behind shoddy, biased research, I will feel better about vaccines. As is--with the recent debunking of the research that showed no link between autism and mercury in vaccines (it is no longer used, btw), I can only wish that I had not done the full run of vaccines on my daughter--who does show autistic traits.
You - and your school nurse - are f.ucking idiots. Pertussis has been shown by dozens of reputable health organizations to be highly (not 100%, but nothing is) effective at PREVENTING pertussis.
Yes, Carter, I'm sure her school nurse was lying to her. It's that hard for you to believe that vaccines are not perfect. You're the idiot.
Umm..at least he can read. Carter stated explicitly that vaccines are not 100% (ie, perfect)
We need to find a test that can screen for vaccine related complications. We should probably not allow children to attend day care or public school if they dont receive vaccines except in the case of religious exemption. I believe that people should have a choice to vaccinate or not vaccinate but not use public services. I think delaying vaccines should be an alternative to forgoing them completely.
Great, who pays for that test research, considering 10 people would be helped by it?
There is something inherently wrong with forced medical procedures. Just say'n.
Wow I'm really impressed by how many people believe we should be forced into vaccinces to protect our children. Because it's what's best for the child that matters. I hope none of you smoke anywhere near your children and I hope everyone is assuring their children get proper nutriotion, because we certainly wouldn't want asthma and childhood diabetes to become "epidemic". Who gets to decide which choices parents make are going to be regulated?? I find it sickening that people smoke with kids in the car...no rule against that and we ALL know the long term consequences of that. How about the rise of childhood obesity...no rule against what (or how much) a parent feeds their kids...again..we know the consequences of that too. Some parents are ok with their kids getting sick, fat or developing life long health problems, you can't try and control just one area.
You forgot to mention one thing: your unvaccinated child could cause my unborn baby birth defects or even miscarriage. Your kid could sicken and kill my sister who no longer has an immune system due to chemotherapy. NOW do you think your kid's lack of immunity might concern me???? Think about it -this is called PUBLIC HEALTH, it's not about you and your SELFISH IGNORANCE. How would you feel if someone gave your fetus, your infant, your sick and elderly family members a dose of death because they weren't vaccinated? The risks are very real, much greater than any risk from vaccines.
"You forgot to mention one thing: your unvaccinated child could cause my unborn baby birth defects or even miscarriage"
You do know a vaccinated child could do the same right?
"Your kid could sicken and kill my sister who no longer has an immune system due to chemotherapy. NOW do you think your kid's lack of immunity might concern me????"
So unvaccinated children do not have natural immunity? Vaccinated children won't spread disease?
" Think about it -this is called PUBLIC HEALTH, it's not about you and your SELFISH IGNORANCE."
Explain that to a parent whom had their child die or become disabled by vaccination injury.
"How would you feel if someone gave your fetus, your infant, your sick and elderly family members a dose of death because they weren't vaccinated?"
Probably the same as if they got the disease from a vaccinated individual.
" The risks are very real, much greater than any risk from vaccines."
Yeah the risks of vaccination injury just don't matter. They do to those whom had their child permanantly injured. But I guess that is their problem, not yours.
Nope. Not happening. It appears that you are talking about a specific virus and/or specific vaccine. Would you care to expound on the absolute risk of that happening? Did you realize that you were generalizing about all vaccines and disease. Would HPV cause your unborn baby birth defects? What about tetanus. It's not contagious?
And weren't you vaccinated for all of the diseases that you were taught to be afraid of? Who taught you this? Who taught you to illogically blame your neighbor?
Your sister has medical induced immune suppression. Sorry but I'm not taking pharma products for something they did. Someone with severe immune depression could die from any virus like a cold virus which would make all of the vaccines worthless. It wouldn't change the end outcome. The illusion of herd immunity fails in this case. You can't kill every virus/bacteria.
Also you are assuming my child is infectious just because of the fact that they are not vaccinated. This is a common fallacy but it's not true. This line of erroneous thinking is causes unnecessary emotions of fear and anger. Exactly what mass vaccine compliance nazi's want. They don't care about science, risk, or informed consent. They just want compliance by any means necessary.
Vaccines = Medicine
Anti-vaccines = mumbo jumbo witchdoctor superstition.
Parents dumb=afraid to vaccinate
government honest=get shots
vaccination injury=can't prove it
Some parents are morons. They don't know what "deadly disease" means and don't bother to find out. I can guarantee one thing - they have never watched a child die. If they had, they would do ANYTHING to prevent their child from danger.
AUTISM
Epidemiologic Evidence
The committee reviewed one study to evaluate the risk of autism after the administration
of DTaP vaccine. This one study (Geier and Geier, 2004) was not considered in the weight of
PREPUBLICATION COPY: UNCORRECTED PROOFS
Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
Adverse Effects of Vaccines: Evidence and Causality
DT-, TT-,
AND AP-CONTAINING VACCINES 469
epidemiologic evidence because it provided data from a passive surveillance system and lacked
an unvaccinated comparison population.
Weight of Epidemiologic Evidence
The epidemiologic evidence is insufficient or absent to assess an association between
diphtheria toxoid-, tetanus toxoid-, or acellular pertussis-containing vaccine and
autism.
Mechanistic Evidence
The committee did not identify literature reporting clinical, diagnostic, or experimental
evidence of autism after the administration of vaccines containing diphtheria toxoid, tetanus
toxoid, and acellular pertussis antigens alone or in combination.
Weight of Mechanistic Evidence
The committee assesses the mechanistic evidence regarding an association between
diphtheria toxoid-, tetanus toxoid-, or acellular pertussis-containing vaccine and autism
as lacking.
Causality Conclusion
Conclusion 10.6: The evidence is inadequate to accept or reject a causal
relationship between diphtheria toxoid-, tetanus toxoid-, or acellular pertussiscontaining
vaccine and autism.
http://naturalnews.com/files/Adverse-Effects-of-Vaccines-Evidence-Causality.pdf
"Unfortunately, I am burdened by both reality and evidence. I am not wildly paranoid like you. I don't believe in secret conspiracies between manufactures of vaccines and the US govt to profit and poison americans, when there is no proof of anything outside of your imagination"
A typical response from the pro-vaccine crowd. Some parents are called conspiracy theorists because their child was vaccination injured. Called paranoid and ignorant. This is because the only proof they have is their disabled child whom had a serious reaction to a vaccination.
I especially like how this response implies that the U.S. government and vaccination manufacturers are honest and looking out for the good of the citizens of the U.S.. Cmon man, it's 2012. We're dealing with big pharma and the government. And I'm the conspiracy theorist.
Vaccination is an absolute fraud. There is in fact no scientific evidence to show that vaccines have ever prevented anything, apart from health, sanity and common sense. As far as I am concerned, vaccination is an organised criminal enterprise dressed up as disease prevention by means of junk science. In my opinion, the entire vaccine industry needs to be shut down for good to keep us and our children safe.
Art Caplan is a lying sack of @!$%# who wants to see people damaged by vaccines. Nobody who studies this issues actually thinks vaccines don't cause autism, spontaneous miscarriages, SIDS, ADD, speech delays, mental retardation, diabetes, asthma, allergies, Alzheimer's and more. We've known the truth for a long time and liars like Art Caplan keep writing their foolish gibberish to try to browbeat people into taking these inane but profit rich vaccines. We cure autism by removing the mercury from vaccines that wound up in our kids' brains and damaged them. And here we have this @!$%# telling us to shoot more mercury into our kids. What the @!$%# is wrong with you, Caplan?
Mostly, mercury is only injected into adults. Really, injections of peanut oil and other allergens, aluminum, and formaldehyde... along with fetal cells used for virus/bacterial cultures... is what is really disturbing. While the correlations between vaccines and autism, specifically, are not clear cut, there are much more direct correlations between vaccines and infertility rates (concurrent increases, relative to the increased vaccine schedule), and potentially fatal peanut allergies.
There has been ongoing research in Europe regarding the sudden increases in adolescent and young adults "developing" narcolepsy, suddenly, following the vaccine given for the "Swine Flu."
There is also a study underway, currently, of an isolated tribe in the Amazon, who have apparently, despite virtually no contact with modern society, developed immunity to rabies after many generations of repeated exposure via "vampire" bats.
We have been heavily conditioned in this country to look at the issue of "side" effects in pharmaceuticals as a relative non-issue when in fact EVERY effect of a drug ingested/injected is a effect. Period.
Part of the problem with "autism" is that is encompasses a very wide variety of disorders. Until very recently, there was very little in the way of research into non-specific HFA (those of us with not-Aspergers high functioning autism spectrum disorders) outside of social and educational experiments. A lot of these experiments were carried out in relatively uncontrolled environments and sold to our parents in somewhat dishonest terms. To this day, the parties that organized the research refuse to answer questions as to what their objectives were, and whether or not they achieved said objectives. Rest assured, however, that much damage was done, behaviorally, socially and emotionally to those of us involved (20 plus years ago), and it continues to go largely unacknowledged. I know that this may seem off the subject, but the point is that the understanding of autism is very much in it's infancy despite the picture often painted by the media.
John Best, you do know that some of the things you listed like ADD/ADHD and Alzheimer's can and are inherited and they are not necessarily caused by vaccines? How do I know this, because my birth mother (I am adopted) had ADD and I also have ADD. If the mom has something like a mental disorder then it is really likely that she will pass on that same disorder to her child. Also allergies and asthma can pop up any time regardless of vaccination. I was vaccinated as a child and so were my parents (meaning my adopted parents). Until I was like 10 my mom and I both developed allergies to cats. Growing up I had an indoor/outdoor cat, she had kittens, kept one of the kittens (also indoor/outdoor) and then it wasn't till after the second cat died and we got a third cat that both mom and I developed cat allergies. I am now deathly allergic to cats. It is also amazing that my mom and I have a lot of the same allergies (my dad does not) and I look exactl like my mom. If you saw my mom and I together then you would never now that I was adoted. Also very late in life, around the time I went to college I developed asthma.
This is a no brainer .. if others are going to put their children at risk, let them, you get your kid the shots. Study after study has shown there is no danger from mercury in the shots and the possible contraindictions are small compared to the benefits.
injecting mercury, in any form, into babies has not been shown to be safe in a randomized controlled trial.
Please show what peer reviewed literature you believe shows this outstanding safety falsification. Please show where mercury was tested and approved by the FDA for use in little babies.
http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/05/02/08.php
My personal experience with my boys: My first born received the chicken pox vaccine. He ended up getting chicken pox a few days later passing it onto his infant brother, infant cousin and toddler cousin. The same boy got the MMR vaccine and had a very bad reaction. About an hour after the vaccine he cried like I was killing him for about 4 hours. He slept and woke up acting like a baby doll instead of my son. His eyes were vacant, his smile was gone and he just laid there. He was later diagnosed with autism. My children are vaccinated partially for a few things because I'm not willing to risk my other children. My brothers kids are fully vaccinated and are ALWAYS at the doctor. My kids are rarely at the doctors office and usually don't even get things like colds or flus. There are ppl out there that are totally into vaccinating their children but, not me. My children will NEVER be fully vaccinated as long as they are with me. Think what you like but, there are parents out there who personally know that vaccines are not 100% safe.
A bioethicist should be concerning himself with the fact that there is no fulfillment of the informed consent tenet of the Nuremberg Code when it comes to vaccination. The National Institute of Health defines the post-licensure, mass administration of a vaccine as the final stage of clinical trial. The public vaccination of children, then, is literally still part of fact-gathering, to determine what are the long-term consequences of the vaccines; it is literally ongoing research, and as such falls directly under the auspices of the Code, ethically. Informed consent should be at the top of the list of procedures to fulfill for every vaccine administrator, yet it is virtually never fulfilled. Few Americans, percentage-wise, realize that every vaccine has the potential to brain damage or kill the recipient, or are aware of the hundreds of thousands of reports of adverse reactions.
Bioethicists should concern themselves with the mantra, correlation doesn't equal causation, used by public health officials and doctors to assuage the fears of parents who are aware of the reported reactions, when, without knowledge of the individual cases, they have no right to make such statements, since they are based purely on assumption. Spouting those assumptions, they use the bully pulpit of the societal status they enjoy to urge parents to uptake the very vaccines that historically trigger chronic illnesses and autoimmune disorders, and in so doing cross a broad ethical line.
I have read many newsvine boards on this issue and the one thing that I would like to know is how many of you posters (especially those of you who are against vaccines) had gotten vaccinated when you were young. I bet the majority posting here had. Seeing how you all survived with vaccines if you could would you go back in time and tell your parents not to vaccinate you? Do you get flu shots? What about shots that you are supposed to get if you go to another country? Would you anti-vaccine people refuse to get shots that would prevent melaria that is common in a country that you want to visit?
I know I was vaccinated and glad for it. Nothing bad happened to me, I am 27. I get the flu shot every year (one big reason, among others, is that if I got the flu or whooping cough I could be put in serious danger, espeically anything that would cause problems to my respertoy system. This is because I have asthma, and because I have asthma I am put at a higher risk). I also know that if you just got the flu shot you could easily get the flu a few days after the shot because it takes a week or so for the flu shot to start working. I know this because my mother is a nurse practitione.
I also know that if a person wants to attend a private college they would then need to get vaccinated, if they were not. I had attened a private college and had to show my medical records showing that I got all my Measles, mumphs, and rubbella shots. The college says that without those shots then you can't attend. I am sure they have a policy for medical and probably religous reasons.
Also why is it just now (in the last few years) that all of the sudden people are so anti-vaccine?
Plus you do need to be carefull what you read online. I once looked up how animals were treated at fur farms and it took me to the second webpage (using google search) to finally find a real unbiased article about how minks are treated. Contrary to what many web postings about the animals being abused and not taken care of, they are actually very, very well taken care of. Even more so than some other animals that we eat. The better carred for the minks are the better their fur is. They are also safely and humainly uthinized. Plus there are other good reasons minks are used besides harvesting their fur. (For information about this go to http://www.montanatrappers.org/management/fur-farming.htm). I know I got off topic there but my point of that was there was more biased information about fur farms than were actual unbiased and fair reporting. This is most likely the same thing when searching for how safe vaccines are.