The Blog

Posts tagged vaccines

At least 10% of parents of young children skip or delay routine vaccinations, often out of concern that kids are getting “too many shots, too soon.”

A new study finds that children who receive the full schedule of vaccinations have no increased risk of autism.

“This is a very important and reassuring study,” says Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer at Autism Speaks, who wasn’t involved in the new paper. “This study shows definitively that there is no connection between the number of vaccines that children receive in childhood, or the number of vaccines that children receive in one day, and autism.”

Read More

I currently have a patient who’s father is doing everything possible to avoid his children from being vaccinated? The father has never allowed the children to have ANY vaccinations of any kind, and claims to have legal documents stating his children are exempt due to religious reasons, as well as so he can avoid them from “being shot up with mercury and synthetic garbage only to be brain damaged” — I kind of felt insulted when the patients father said this, as he did not believe in me, or the healthcare industry.

A few months ago, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal, that stated 20 to 30% of physicians have reported kicking out patients from their practices because of vaccine refusal — I don’t think that this is the correct way to deal with things. I mean sure, I understand bringing an unvaccinated child to a pediatricians office can spread diseases to other children, and even be fatal to some — but we can’t just fire our patients. We have to show the strong evidence for vaccine safety, and educate them about the frightening consequences of infection with meningitis, hepatitis, measles, polio, and other vaccine preventable diseases.

As a physician-in-training — the only thing I can do is try to explain why I believe the children should be vaccinated, and educate the patients families on why vaccines are important, not just to them — but to the rest of population as well. 

First off — vaccines have been so successful at eliminating childhood infections that parents no longer see these infections as a threat. Ironically, the very success of vaccines has allowed the anti-vaccine movement to sway so many people.

Now, let’s get down to the facts — vaccines do not cause autism, nor do the ingredients in vaccines — scientific studies involving hundreds of thousands of patients support these conclusions. 

Anti-vaccinations claims on the internet started when Andrew Wakefield published one small study of 12 patients, now retracted, which claimed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Investigations later revealed that he was paid a large sum of money to recruit patients for a lawsuit against vaccine makers, and that he did not reveal these payments to his co-authors or patients, and that he manipulated the data itself.

Ever since then the anti-vaccine movement has exploded and we have experienced multiple outbreaks of measles, mumps, and other illnesses linked directly to unvaccinated children.

If we’re going to avoid a return to the era when children routinely died from infections, we have to keep trying..

This has been a long suspected outcome of the anti-vaxxers refusal to vaccinate their children; the return of childhood illnesses such as measles.

A 4 year old boy called Landon was living in a homeless shelter when he first became ill. He started with a fever of ~40*C, then proceeded to develop a rash on his forehead. The rash then spread to his mouth and throat, so swallowing was torture. He began vomiting and developed a cough that nearly choked him. He was rushed to the emergency room and hospitalized for five days.

Landon is one of at least 152 cases of measles diagnosed in the USA so far this year — twice the number seen in a typical year and the biggest outbreak in 15 years, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Half of patients have had to be hospitalized.

For the doctors and nurses caring for patients like Landon, the return of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles — a viral illness that once killed 3,000 to 5,000 Americans a year — is both frightening and all too predictable.

Not to mention a waste of time and resources that could have been spent elsewhere on other patients. Instead we have preventable diseases clogging up the healthcare system, potentially putting others lives in danger 

In the past three years, doctors also have seen outbreaks of other vaccine-preventable diseases, such as mumps, whooping cough and a life-threatening bacterial infection called Hib. All can be deadly. 

Although overall vaccine coverage remains high, 40% of parents say they have deliberately skipped or delayed a shot for their children.

Read More

In a 6-2 decision, the Supreme Court voted to protect pharmaceutical companies from liability when their vaccines cause debilitating injuries and death. The high court majority considers vaccines “unavoidably unsafe” and was worried about drug makers being sued and obligated to compensate their vaccine victims.

Instead of opting to protect children, the Supreme Court chose to safeguard the financial interests of the multi-billion dollar vaccine industry.. 

Seriously!? Wow, just wow..

Read more at: Natural News