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Vaccinations: Parents’ Informed Choice

By Lynne Born

Because the misinformation surrounding vaccination is so extensive, many parents don’t even question whether or not they should vaccinate their child, overlooking one of the most important decisions a parent can make. Since medical authorities say vaccination is safe, most parents simply go ahead with vaccination, completely unaware of the potential dangers and unable to recognize a serious reaction when it does occur.
And since government health departments and school authorities give the impression that vaccination is mandated for every child in the United States, most parents believe they are legally required to vaccinate their child. But in all 50 states, you are free to decline vaccination entirely, or adopt a partial vaccination schedule, an important decision about the health and welfare of your child.

However, parents face tremendous pressure from doctors, the media, schools and even other parents, to follow the standard vaccination schedule and subject their child to an ever-escalating protocol of multiple injections at various stages of their young lives, even including injections with several vaccines in the same shot.

Misinformation

Because vaccines are used predominately on our precious children, most people assume that the many vaccines have been subjected to thorough trials and rigorous studies proving that vaccines are safe and effective. Parents have been told that mass vaccination campaigns ended multiple epidemics around the world, that vaccines are effective at preventing the illnesses they are targeted against, that side effects are rare and generally consist of sore arms or mild fevers that pass quickly, and that the few serious negative reactions are carefully tracked and monitored, keeping adverse reactions to a minimum.

However, parents who take the time to dig deeper and pierce this veil of misinformation find that these assertions lack solid scientific backing. Not only has there never been a single long-term study comparing the health and welfare of vaccinated to unvaccinated children, multiple examples can easily be found of vaccinated children acquiring the very illness they have been vaccinated against. Furthermore, there is overwhelming evidence that vaccines can be extremely harmful, permanently disabling and even deadly to our children. And the current system for tracking and reporting adverse reactions to the FDA is sloppy, poorly executed and voluntary rather than mandatory, even when a child has been permanently disabled or killed by a vaccine.

Vaccination Prevents
Natural Immunity

When a baby becomes infected with a communicable disease, his immune system responds through a sophisticated web of interlocking reactions that can produce immunity for life to naturally acquired childhood diseases. These miraculous defenses exist, in part, to keep invading microbes and viruses from taking hold in the deeper systems and organs of the body.

But vaccines, which contain both live and dead viruses, killed bacteria, genetically engineered DNA and chemical preservatives, are injected directly into the bloodstream, bypassing the natural immune response. This deprives the body of the ability to naturally develop life-long immunity in all its multifaceted complexity to normal childhood diseases like measles, mumps and chicken pox. Mass vaccination is a manmade attempt to remove the natural infection response from human development and replace it with a series of artificially imposed infections and immune responses determined by the doctor’s vaccination schedule.

So Many Shots

Thirty years ago, children received a total of four vaccines, but today a fully vaccinated child receives a whopping 37-50 vaccines during the early, formative years of life, when his developing immune system is most vulnerable. Even an adult immune system would be challenged by so many vaccines given during such a short period of time. While unvaccinated children will never develop every disease for which children are given a vaccine, their bodies are forced by the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) vaccination schedule to respond to them all. Furthermore, the DPT vaccine forces an immune response to diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis on the same day, an event that would never happen in real life. Plus, there are virtually no studies or scientific research on the effects of multiple viral and bacterial vaccines given in combination or in close succession, and how they affect the human body.

Evidence of Vaccine Harm

The medical profession is extremely reluctant to acknowledge adverse reactions to vaccination, even when the reaction is instantaneous or occurs within a few hours, and even with adults who can clearly verbalize their negative reactions, which infants are unable to do. And since no studies have ever tracked negative effects that occur over the long term, reactions that occur days, weeks or years later are almost never attributed to the vaccine.

It is a little-known fact that not a single study exists to prove that vaccines are safe over the long term. "It would be such an easy study to organize. Use three groups of children--the first group fully vaccinated, the second group partially vaccinated, and the third group no vaccinations. Then follow them for up to 10 years and we would be able to see the kinds of problems that are manifesting from these vaccines," says Barbara Loe Fisher, President of the National Vaccine Information Center.¹ However, evidence of vaccine harm is not really a secret-- hundreds of published medical studies have documented both vaccine failure and vaccine harm, even though most pediatricians continue to vaccinate and most parents remain completely unaware of these studies.²

One well known example of a long term negative vaccine reaction occurred with the polio vaccine used in the late 1950s into the early 1960s. This vaccine was later found to be contaminated with a monkey virus, SV40, which had tainted the vaccine during production. And even though the virus was discovered in 1960, the contaminated vaccine continued to be given to American children for three more years with the full knowledge of government health authorities, until it was withdrawn in 1963. Thirty years later, SV40 has been isolated in bone, brain and lung cancers of disabled and deceased adults. The SV40 vaccine debacle proves a direct connection between a vaccine and a slow-growing cancer which developed decades after the vaccine.³ Unfortunately, authorities made no effort to find and track adult recipients of the vaccine, study and catalog their health status, or note their rate of cancer, even though a clear opportunity exists to study long term effects of a vaccine in a very direct and concise way.

Delayed negative reactions have also been confirmed by the work of Dr. Viera Scheibner, who developed a baby monitor in an effort to prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Her monitor sounds an alarm if the baby stops breathing or shows patterns of stress breathing during sleep. In designing the monitor, she had no preconceived intention of specifically tracking vaccination reactions, as she had never conceived of the fact that vaccinations were in any way problematic or harmful.

In due course of tracking infant breathing at night, she recorded the breathing patterns of babies following the DPT injection. She found that the vaccine caused babies a great deal of stress and that this stress showed a remarkable uniformity, with stress flare-ups immediately following the vaccine on day 2 or 5, or delayed reactions on the 15-16th or 20-25th day in babies who recovered and those who subsequently died from SIDS. Scheibner’s monitor proved that death from the vaccine sometimes occurs weeks after the injection, in correlation with the stress patterns it identified. However, the longer time frame gives doctors and health authorities every excuse not to attribute it to the DPT shot.

Adverse Events
Not Reported Or Tracked

One of the great dangers of the current pro-vaccine mentality is the fact that negative vaccine reactions are very rarely reported to the adverse event reporting system, a system rife with problems. When a vaccine is released onto the market, post-marketing surveillance is supposed to track any negative reactions from the millions of people taking the newly released vaccine. However, not only is the adverse reporting system entirely voluntary, 90 to 99 percent of all adverse reactions are never reported, according to David Kessler, head of the FDA for most of the 1990s.⁴ And no oversight of any kind ensures that reports made directly to the pharmaceutical companies are then forwarded to the FDA--the process is run entirely by the "honor system."

A very clear example of the poor adverse event documentation occurred during President Bush’s recent Smallpox Vaccination Program of 2003. Before the program, the public was repeatedly told to expect death rates from the vaccine of one to two per million. In fact, there were three deaths (that we know of) among the approximately 36,000 civilians and few hundred embedded reporters who were vaccinated.⁵ This makes the actual death rate 80 times higher than that which the CDC told the public to expect. Serious adverse reactions such as brain swelling, heart inflammation, heart attacks, uncontrolled ulceration of the skin, among others, were one in 583, seven times higher than the CDC’s original guesstimate of one in four thousand. And yet medical authorities and mainstream news continue to use the old, inaccurate numbers rather than update the risk estimate as they should.

Even worse, these numbers were probably vastly underreported since, just as with childhood vaccination reactions, reporting adverse reactions during the smallpox vaccine was not mandatory and was also limited to an arbitrary and ill-defined time frame of 2-4 weeks. What was the rate of death and injury from the vaccine over the next few months and years? All of these important risks should have been studied and tracked for an honest assessment of the true risk of this vaccine, but researchers missed this valuable opportunity due to the usual shoddy and incomplete tracking system that reflects the poor science behind vaccine development.

Hepatitis B Vaccine At Birth

Let’s look at the hepatitis B vaccine as a way to examine problems with the development and introduction of any new vaccine.
Hepatitis B is primarily an adult disease transmitted through blood and body fluids. High risk populations include drug users, heterosexuals and homosexuals with many sexual partners, health care workers exposed to blood, and babies born to infected mothers. In 1996, 270 children under the age of 14 were infected with hepatitis B, with only 54 cases reported in the 0-1 age group.

In spite of the low risk for children in general, and in spite of the ability to target at-risk children by specifically testing their mothers before birth, the CDC added the hepatitis B vaccine to the recommended vaccination schedule in 1991, with the first of three doses to be administered on the very day of birth before leaving the hospital.
In 1986, Merck & Co. began marketing the first genetically engineered hepatitis B vaccine. A flagrant example of the poor science behind vaccination development, the FDA approved the vaccine for use after only 1636 doses of Recombivax HB were administered to only 653 children who were subsequently monitored for only 5 days after each dose.⁶ Since the vaccine is recommended for the first day of life, Merck was asked for safety data on newborns. They replied, "We have none. Our studies were done on 5- and 10-year-olds."⁷ Further, Merck admitted in 1996 that no data is "available for the simultaneous administration of Recombivax HB with other vaccines" even though children are routinely given other vaccines along with Recombivax HB vaccine.

Since the introduction of this vaccine, there have been hundreds of reports in the medical literature (mostly published in international medical journals outside of the United States) citing central nervous system diseases, multiple sclerosis, Guillain-Barre syndrome, arthritis, severe rashes, fever, chronic fatigue, and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) as a direct result of the vaccine. Parents have filed tens of thousands of adverse event reports with the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, including emergency room visits, hospitalization and deaths. A study in New Zealand reported a 60 percent increase in juvenile diabetes after a massive campaign to vaccinate babies from 1988 to 1991 with the hepatitis B vaccine.⁸ Even Merck itself admits to systemic complaints such as fever, joint pain, fatigue and weakness in up to 17 percent of all hepatitis B injections. And perhaps most telling of all, over 50 percent of the doctors surveyed in the UK refused to take the hepatitis B vaccine themselves, citing the known dangers from the vaccine, even though as medical professionals working in hospitals, they belong to a high risk group exposed to blood products and needles in the daily course of their work.

But most disturbing is the fundamental question of why this vaccine was recommended for infants in the first place. In 1996, there were 1,080 reports of adverse reactions among 0-1 year olds from the vaccine, including 47 deaths. If only 10 percent of the true deaths and injuries are being reported--an extremely conservative estimate--this means that there were actually over 10,800 adverse reactions and 470 deaths from the vaccine. Yet in that same year, there were only 54 cases of the disease reported in the 0-1 year old group. This frightful equation reveals that for every child that acquires hepatitis B, the vaccine kills 9 babies and injures 200.

Why subject tens of millions of infants to the known dangers of this vaccine when the few babies actually at risk for the disease can be identified by simply screening the mother?⁹ And finally, even if parents opt to include this vaccine in their child’s vaccine schedule, why is the vaccine given on the day of birth? Parents need time to get to know their child first, so they can compare the baby’s health status before and after vaccination, so any harm can be noticed, tracked and treated.
In addition to problems with genetically engineered vaccines, many vaccines--notably the MMR, chickenpox and Sabin polio vaccines--inject live viruses into the body. Various stabilizers and preservatives are added including formaldehyde, lead, aluminum and MSG. Unknown amounts of RNA and DNA from animal and human cell tissue culture have been found as well. And even though concerned parent groups have fought for the removal of the mercury-based preservative thimerisol from childhood vaccines, the pharmaceutical industry still uses mercury in flu vaccines, a new addition to the recommended yearly vaccination schedule for children starting at age 6 months. Additionally, the medical industry has continued to use old lots of thimerisol-containing vaccines until supplies are exhausted, rather than pull them from the market immediately, as they should.

Families "Compensated"
For Loss Of Their Child

Because of the dramatic increase in the number of injuries from childhood vaccines over the past decades, Congress enacted the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, setting up a fund to compensate parents for injured or dead children (as if a parent could ever be "compensated" for the loss of their child due to vaccination). Application to this fund is the first step parents must take when their child has been harmed; thus, the fund serves to shield the pharmaceutical company from all initial liability. To date, the fund has paid out over $1.2 billion to parents with over 12,000 reports made every year. This is a staggering number considering how many reactions occur that medical authorities refuse to attribute to the vaccine. And if David Kessler is correct and 90-99 percent of all injuries are not even reported, the true number of children injured or killed by vaccines would be 1.2 million or more per year.

The many excellent organizations¹⁰ that work to inform doctors and parents of the risks of vaccines describe the anguished phone calls they receive, recounting the devastation, guilt, confusion and distress that follow.¹¹ Parents describe babies who within hours or days of their vaccination, run fevers, become restless or listless, fall into deep sleeps interspersed with piercing screams, arch their backs strangely while they cry, fall into comas or repetitive seizures, twitch, jerk, or stare into space blankly. Or, parents describe a general decline in overall health with constant ear infections, sudden sensitivities to foods and food allergies, sleep disturbances, asthma, unexplained rashes, and loss of developmental milestones replaced instead with repetitive head banging or body rocking.

Many parents and doctors believe the staggering increase in chronic childhood illness is a reaction to the dozens of vaccines that are now part of the standard vaccination schedule. Fifty years ago, autism affected less than 1 in 10,000 families, but now 1 in every 68 families have an autistic child. The rate of schoolchildren with autism has increased 1700 percent nationally from 1992 to 2002, creating a huge drain on families, school resources and social services that can never be remedied if the root cause turns out to be vaccination as many suspect, and the true solution is never addressed. Childhood asthma, diabetes, attention deficit disorder, and obesity have skyrocketed as well. As the SV40 polio debacle proved what can happen, "We may be trading mumps and measles during childhood, for cancer and leukemia in adults,"says Barbara Loe Fisher.

Do Vaccines Even Work?

Even if parents find out about the risks of vaccines on their own, their doctors usually assure them that the risk is worth the almost certain benefit of freedom from infectious disease that their child receives. However, time and again, vaccines have simply not worked against the disease they are targeted to prevent. A 1978 survey of 30 states showed that more than half of all children who contracted measles had been fully vaccinated. Sweden abandoned its whooping cough vaccine after it examined 5,140 cases of whooping cough in 1978 and found that 84 percent had been vaccinated three times. A 1990 Journal of American Medicine Association article stated that "Although more than 95 percent of school-aged children in the US are vaccinated against measles, large measles outbreaks continue to occur in schools and most cases. . . occur among previously vaccinated children." The medical literature is filled with example after example of the failure of vaccination to furnish protection against common childhood diseases.

But rather than accept the premise that the entire system of vaccination is fundamentally flawed, the medical industry calls for "booster" shots and re-vaccination, without any solid, long-term studies to see whether immunity is actually achieved and, if so, for how long.

Vaccination Did Not End Epidemics

While we have all been taught that vaccination ended the world’s many deadly epidemics, an honest and careful review of original historical medical sources, publications and statistics from the past two hundred years reveals that infectious diseases declined 90 percent before mass vaccination was ever introduced.

Experts attribute the cessation of epidemic diseases not to mass vaccination, but to a major sanitation reform movement that swept Europe during the 1800s. These reforms included moving human waste out of streets via plumbing systems; regularly cleaning streets and stables of horse manure and human waste; improving roads so that meats, vegetables and raw milk could be distributed in cities while still fresh; and upgrading water distribution systems to prevent bacterial contamination.¹²

All the old terror diseases of plague, black death and cholera responded to these reforms, and epidemics declined throughout the 1800s, long before the advent of vaccination. Even the CDC reported in 1999 that infectious diseases declined in the past century due to improvements in sanitation, water and hygiene. Vaccination against whooping cough, diphtheria, measles and polio all occurred only at the very end of the life cycle of each epidemic, exposing the fallacy of the claim that vaccination ended epidemics.¹³

The only exception to this decline in epidemic disease is smallpox, which, contrary to all we have been taught, actually increased with the advent of mandatory vaccination and decreased only after an organized uprising by parents and doctors forced European governments to end their mandatory vaccination programs.¹⁴ Even though the World Health Organization claims credit for the eradication of smallpox worldwide through vaccination, the fact is that smallpox declined in countries around the world whether the population had been vaccinated or not. As Dr. Glen Dittman said in 1986, "It is pathetic and ludicrous to say we vanquished smallpox with vaccines, when only 10 percent of the population were ever vaccinated."

Big Business Creates
Pressure to Vaccinate

The children of the United States represent the most highly vaccinated population in the world. Millions of dollars are provided by the multi-national pharmaceuticals to create front organizations like "All Kids Count" and "Immunization Action Coalition," groups with friendly, neutral names that disguise the pharmaceutical funding behind their mandate to promote vaccination. Vaccines produce billions of dollars a year for the drug companies, in part because the federal government funds massive vaccination drives by buying vaccines with our tax dollars and then giving state health departments millions of dollars with the goal of achieving 100 percent vaccine compliance. If they fail, the money can be withdrawn from the state. The result of all of this money available to state health authorities is enormous pressure applied to the schools, which in turn pressure parents by requiring proof of vaccination for entry into school at every level of a child’s development.

Resistance

Yet resistance to the mandatory vaccination schedule is growing and millions of parents are questioning both the underlying science of vaccination and expressing concerns about side effects. A 2003 study found that 93 percent of pediatricians and 60 percent of family physicians reported at least one family that had refused a vaccine for their child.
When a parent chooses to limit or opt out of the vaccination schedule, a wide variety of official responses have been reported ranging from no difficulties at all, to the opposite extreme, official threats of medical child neglect charges. It is an unfortunate fact that parents who decline vaccination have been thrown out of their doctors’ offices and children have been refused entry into school. In extreme cases, officials have charged parents with medical child neglect and forced them to go to court to retain the right to raise their child.¹⁵ Parents receiving benefits such as welfare, food aid and medical care risk the loss of such aid when they wish to opt out of vaccination.

Yet it is also true that many parents experience no resistance from authorities with their right of vaccination refusal unchallenged, as long as they follow the various state laws for exemption.

How To Opt Out

Since this short article cannot examine every vaccine, if you have questions about a specific vaccine, please see the footnotes and recommended reading list at the end of this article to help you decide which, if any, vaccines you feel are safe for your child. While vaccines may be "mandated" by the CDC, they are not "legally required." No one has the legal authority to vaccinate your child against your wishes.
If the birth will take place in a hospital, you can amend the medical treatment forms or your birth plan, and clearly state that you do not want any vaccines for your baby while in the hospital. You should also communicate your request verbally with the staff on all shifts, either yourself or by having your spouse or advocate communicate your wishes clearly and directly.

Once your child is born, the pressure to vaccinate comes from two sources--medical authorities and school authorities. Medically, you are free to make any decision at any time you feel is best regarding your child’s vaccination schedule. However, if you opt out of vaccination, many doctors may lie about vaccines being mandatory or frighten you with exaggerated statistics about the dangers of not vaccinating and refuse to treat your child. Unfortunately, the "bread and butter" of pediatric practice are the many "well baby" visits that include vaccination throughout your child’s development.¹⁶

However, it is the entry into day care or school that triggers the need for legal exemptions. There are three types of exemptions--philosophical, medical and religious. There are medical exemptions in all 50 states, religious exemptions in all but two states (West Virginia and Mississippi), and philosophical exemptions in 16 states. You can check the laws for your particular state at www.thinktwice.com or www.909shot.com/state-site/legal-exemptions.htm

Private schools have their own rules and may reject children that have not been vaccinated. Public schools, however, are required by law to accept your exemption, when properly prepared according to the laws of your state. Home schooling sidesteps the issue entirely.

Once you check the laws for your particular state, you can choose the exemption type that is best for your situation. It is very important to submit the appropriate paperwork to the school so that your refusal to vaccinate cannot be interpreted as parental neglect. A philosophical exemption generally requires a short letter simply stating that you object to vaccination. The religious exemption also requires a letter, but some states stipulate that you actually belong to, and are a practicing member of, a religion that specifically objects to vaccination. The medical exemption is usually the most difficult to obtain because doctors are subject to review and censure by state medical authorities when they grant exemptions. In some cases medical exemptions may be obtained from the school nurse--and are often easier to obtain than from a physician.

Happily, simply signing and submitting the exemption is generally all that is needed. Some exemption letters must be notarized or drafted as a signed affidavit. And some School Immunization Records have an exemption section on the form itself, that you simply fill out. Here is an example for California: www.dhs.ca.gov/publications/forms/pdf/pm286b.pdf. For examples of exemption letters for all possible scenarios and all states see www.vaclib.org/pdf/exemption.htm

When discussing your decision to opt out, it is best to remain calm, courteous and diplomatic, even in the face of ignorance or resistance from authorities. Do not enter into arguments with authorities and draw attention to your decision. There is no need to attach documents to your exemption proving evidence of the problems with vaccination or explaining your reasons for opting out--you simply want an exemption for your child. If you encounter belligerent or arrogant authorities who intimidate you with threats of sending you to jail or taking your child away, try to sidestep their resistance in a non-confrontational manner and leave the situation as soon as possible. If you run into this kind of resistance, you should put your wishes in writing, escalate your exemption request to someone above that official, and demand a written response. You’ll be surprised how quickly resistance from authorities can fade once they must put their illegal statements and intimidations in writing.¹⁷

Above all, remember that no authority has the legal right to vaccinate your child without your permission. Should they do so, they open themselves up to legal liability and you have all the resources of the law behind you. While you may experience resistance, they are breaking the law, not you. Do not be coerced or intimidated into vaccinating your child--it is your choice and your right to do what you feel is best.

Naturally Derived Immunity

Those of us involved in the Weston A. Price organization have an intimate understanding of the lies and distortions that various government and corporate forces use to control our food choices. The grassroots Campaign for Real Milk started with research into the facts of the situation, analyzed how the media and agribusiness distorted the true history of raw and pasteurized milk, the organized a drive for freedom of choice, and supported the farmers committed to producing raw milk.

It is these same kinds of distortions and propaganda regarding drugs and vaccines that are sometimes overlooked in the natural food community. The doctor who tells parents that raw milk will give their child TB is the same doctor who assures parents that vaccines are safe, effective and nothing to be concerned about.

We know that children of the many cultures that Weston Price studied needed no vaccination--they grew up vibrant, healthy and strong, able to fight off infectious disease as long as they maintained their original, native diets. Should a child be in any danger from an infectious disease, we have many powerful tools available to us--nutrient-dense healing foods along with homeopathy, acupuncture, herbalism and naturopathy, all systems of earth-based healing that take into account the full well being of the whole person to restore and maintain true health.
The recent avalanche of drug scandals exposing death and injury from drugs fully approved by the FDA demonstrates harm far greater than specific problems with individual drugs. Western medicine operates under the assumption that synthetic, genetically engineered drugs and vaccines heal the sick and protect the young from disease, an assumption that parents are expected to accept without question. But when it comes to your child, you are the expert most qualified to decide what is best for your child, using your intelligence and common sense in the same way we fight for our right for real food.

About the Author

Lynne Born has been an alternative health care activist, writer and independent medical researcher for over 20 years. She is a longtime member of the Weston A. Price Foundation and enjoys a diet based on homemade full-fat foods, bone broth, raw milk and fermented foods.

ENDNOTES

1. Barbara Loe Fisher, National Vaccination Information Center, http://www.909shot.com. Nevada County, California, has the highest percentage of unvaccinated children in the state of California, providing a perfect setting for this simple study. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/05/25/CM171959.DTL.
2. For their excellent collection of hundreds of peer reviewed, published articles on the dangers, side effects, and inefficacy of vaccination, see Vaccination: 100 Years of Orthodox Research shows that Vaccines Represent a Medical Assault on the Immune System, by Viera Scheibner, Ph.D., 1997. Available from New Atlantean Press, 505-983-1856. See also any of the excellent books by Neil Z. Miller, including Vaccines: Are They Really Safe and Effective?, 2002. Check his website for additional books, http://www.thinktwice.com.
3. Even Dr. Jonas Salk who developed the first polio vaccine admitted under oath that most cases of polio in the USA since 1961 were actually caused by the vaccine.
4. David Kessler, " Introducing MedWatch: A new approach to reporting medication and device adverse effect and product problems," Journal of American Medical Association, July 2, 1993, 269(21): 2765–68.
5. As the deaths followed one after another in March and April 2003, headlines read "First death: Nurse dies after smallpox vaccination"; "Second worker dies of heart attack after smallpox vaccination"; and "Coroner rules [smallpox] vaccinations contributed to reservist’s death." (An internet search easily reveals these articles.) Yet, by June 2003, mainstream media articles were not only ignoring the earlier deaths, they continued to use the old, inaccurate figures of one or two deaths per million rather than the newly updated, more truthful numbers that had become apparent during this vaccination program.
6. Merck & Co. 1993 product insert for Recombivax HB.
7. 1997 Illinois Board of Health hearing, The Congressional Quarterly, August 25, 2000, pg. 647.
8. Barthelo Classen, M.D., CEO of Classen Immunotherapies Inc. Epidemiologic study in the New Zealand Medical Journal, 1996.
9. See http://www.909shot.com/History/Newsletters/hepbnlr.htm for more detailed information about the dangers and risks of the Hepatitis B vaccine.
10. National Vaccination Information Center, http://www.909shot.com; Think Twice Global Vaccine Institute, http://www.thinktwice.com.
11. See http://www.thinktwice.com/stories.htm, http://www.mothering.com/articles/growing_child/vaccines/wake.html.
12. The concept that epidemic diseases were ended by sanitation reforms is reinforced when natural disasters destroy sanitation systems and roads, bringing epidemic diseases with the collapse of the infrastructure. Vaccination does not end these epidemics – only the restoration of basic services restores health.
13. See charts showing the decline of epidemics in my article "Smallpox Vaccine has the Pox", http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Aug2003/born0803.html, July/August 2003.
14. For an in-depth study of the unscientific and fraudulent development of the smallpox vaccine, see my article referenced in footnote 13.
15. See Immunization, The Reality Behind the Myth, by Walene James, 1995, Chapter 10 "Appointment with Tyranny" for a story of a court battle over the right to not vaccinate in 1981.
16. See How To Raise a Healthy Child In Spite of Your Doctors, by Robert Mendelsohn, M.D. for an excellent resource on parenting without vaccination.
17. Dr. Joseph Mercola has written an excellent article that details how to handle resistance in your state: How to Legally Avoid Unwanted Immunizations of All Kinds, http://www.mercola.com/fcgi/pf/article/vaccines/legally_avoid_shots.htm.

RECOMMENDED BOOKS AND WEBSITES
Vaccines: Are They Really Safe and Effective? by Neil Z. Miller, 2002. Check his website for additional books, www.thinktwice.com.

National Vaccination Information Center, www.909shot.com. Check www.908shot.com/ResourceCenter/ResourceCenter.htm for recommended reading.

Immunization, The Reality Behind the Myth, by Walene James, 1995.

Vaccination: 100 Years of Orthodox Research Shows that Vaccines Represent a medical Assault on the Immune System, by Viera Scheibner, PhD., 1007, New Atlantean Press, (505) 983-1856.

How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctors, by Robert Mendelsohn, MD.

MERCURY IN VACCINES AND AUTISM

The mercury-autism connection has surfaced to the public’s attention with the publication of "Deadly Immunity," by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in the July issue of Rolling Stone magazine, simultaneous with publication in Salon. Kennedy describes a Center for Disease Control and Prevention meeting held June 2000 at which CDC epidemiologist Tom Verstraeten presented evidence to industry and government officials that thimerosal, the mercury-based preservative in vaccines, was responsible for the epidemic of autism in America’s children. Instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the attendees spent the rest of the meeting discussing ways to cover up the damaging data.

Subsequently, powerful friends in Congress have tried to protect vaccine manufacturers with legislation to shield them from more than 4000 pending lawsuits. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $837,000 in contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, quietly slipped a rider known as the "Eli Lilly Protection Act" into the homeland security bill. The measure was repealed by Congress in 2003 but earlier this year, Frist slipped another provision into an anti-terrorism bill that would deny compensation to children suffering from vaccine-related brain disorders. "The lawsuits are of such magnitude that they could put vaccine producers out of business and limit our capacity to deal with a biological attack by terrorists," says Andy Olsen, a legislative assistant to Frist.

More than 500,000 children suffer from autism, with 40,000 new cases diagnosed every year. The disease was unknown until 1943, when it was identified and diagnosed among eleven children born after thimerosal was first added to baby vaccines in 1931.
The CDC counters parental anger and negative publicity by citing studies that vindicate thimerosal, studies opponents claim are doctored and highly suspect. "You couldn’t even construct a study that shows thimerosal is safe," says Dr. Boyd Haley, one of the world’s authorities on mercury toxicity and head of the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky. "It’s just too darn toxic. If you inject thimerosal into an animal, its brain will sicken. If you apply it to living tissue, the cells die. If you put it in a petri dish, the culture dies. Knowing these things, it would be shocking if one could inject it into an infant without causing damage."

Internal documents reveal that Eli Lilly, which first developed thimerosal, knew from the start that its product could cause damage. Yet the lure of profits proved greater than the company’s concern for the public. Thimerosal enables the pharmaceutical industry to package vaccines in vials that contain multiple doses. The larger vials cost half as much to produce as smaller, single-dose vials, and are needed to make in mass vaccination programs cost effective.

The introduction of thimerosal into vaccines coincided with an increase in the number of vaccines given to children. Infants who receive all their vaccines, plus boosters, by the age of six months are exposed to levels of ethylmercury, injected directly into the bloodstream, 187 times greater than the EPAs limit for daily exposure to methylmercury, a related neurotoxin.

Kennedy describes a burgeoning scandal that has the potential to bring down the pharmaceutical industry. To read his article, see www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/7395411.

IF YOU MUST VACCINATE

• Wait until the child is at least 2 years old.
• Do not give more than one vaccination at a time.
• Never vaccinate when the child is sick.
• Be sure that the vaccines are thimerosal-free.
• Supplement the child with extra cod liver oil, vitamin C and B12 before each shot.
• Obtain a medical exemption if the child has had a bad reaction to a vaccination before or if there is a personal or family history of vaccine reactions, convulsions or neurological disorders, severe allergies and/or immune system disorders.