Why SHOULDN'T and SHOULD I get vaccinations?

Question

I have read and heard various things about why i should and shouldn't get vaccines. What do you think about vaccinations? Do you all vaccinate your children?
~zlh~

Thanks so much for everybody's great answers.

I will be choosing a best answer soon. Thanks for all the great links to other websites!
~Audreyt~

Answer 1

First off, I would like to say that you are absolutely doing the right thing by looking for information first before vaccinating. Many people blindly trust what their doctors tell them. You need to research this subject thoroughly before making a decision.

Contrary to popular belief, vaccinations are not 100% safe. They are not 100% effective. There is no guarantee that your child will not get the disease that the vaccine is supposed to be protecting him/her for. There is also no guarantee that your child will not have a very bad reaction to the vaccine.

Also, contrary to popular belief, vaccinations ARE an option. They are not mandatory. Every state in the USA provides an exemption from vaccination. Refusing vaccinations is your legal right. You will need to look up your state law regarding specifics. Some states offer religious, medical, and philosophical exemptions. If you decide not to vaccinate, these exemptions will be needed to be admitted into school.

What are your options?

You have many options. You can either fully vaccinate, partial vaccinate, delayed vaccinate, or not vaccinate at all.

*Full Vaccination:
This would be if you decided to go with all of the recommended vaccinations at the recommended ages.
Your doctor's vaccination schedule may include additional vaccinations aside from the CDC.

The current vaccination schedule recommended by the CDC consists of 9 vaccines. Some of them are combined vaccinations. So it is actually 13 vaccinations in total. Many of these vaccinations will need to be administered in multiple injections. So, according to the CDC's recommendations, a child will receive at least 25 shots by the age of 4 years old.
Here is a link to the CDC's 2006 Immunization Schedule:
http://www.cdc.gov/nip/recs/child-schedule.htm

*Delayed Vaccination:
You can decide to do all of the recommended vaccinations at a later date. (Delayed Vaccinations) – For example – If you feel that a newborn or even a 6 month old child is too young, you can begin the vaccination schedule at 2 years old.

*Partial Vaccination:
Once you have researched the diseases and the vaccinations, you can choose to do some of the recommended vaccinations and choose not to do others. You do not have to do all of the recommended vaccinations. You can choose. Also, you do not have to administer them at the recommended age. You can choose to do delayed partial vaccination.

*No Vaccinations:
After researching the risks of the diseases and the risks of the vaccines, you may decide that the vaccines are not worth the risks. You can choose not to vaccinate at all.



***First and foremost, RESEARCH...

This is very important! Don't take anybody's word for it. Not your parents, not your doctor, not your friends, not mine. Don't limit your decision to a book that you have read. Don't limit your decision to a story that you have heard on the news. Take the time to do your own research. Many people will try to convince you to vaccinate or not to vaccinate. Many people will say that you are crazy for even thinking about not vaccinating. But you are not crazy. THEY are crazy for blindly injecting things into their children without first researching. Vaccinations or no vaccinations, an uninformed decision is always a bad decision. This subject is not one sided. There are pros and cons. To ignore the cons is just stupid. I will provide you with some more links at the end of my response.

*How to research?
It is important that you also learn how to research this subject properly. The subject of vaccinations is not an easy subject to research. It can become very mind boggling. The one thing that is the most important here is the facts. There are a lot of good facts out there. You just need to know how to find them. Unfortunately, many of the facts are twisted and manipulated in order to fit into the pro-vax or anti-vax agenda. What you will need to do is learn how to read between the lines.

***Research the risks of the diseases and the chances of catching the diseases. (One by One)

A good place to start would be the CDC’s recommended vaccination schedule.
http://www.cdc.gov/nip/recs/child-schedule.htm
Go down the list of diseases. One by one. For example, start with the first one on the list, Hepatitis B.

HEPATITIS B:
How is Hepatitis B transmitted?
* Occurs when blood from an infected person enters the body of a person who is not infected.
* HBV is spread through having sex with an infected person without using a condom (the efficacy of latex condoms in preventing infection with HBV is unknown, but their proper use may reduce transmission), by sharing drugs, needles, or "works" when "shooting" drugs, through needlesticks or sharps exposures on the job, or from an infected mother to her baby during birth.

I got that information from the CDC Fact Sheet:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/hepatitis/b/fact.htm

So, if you are not having unprotected sex with an infected partner and you are not an IV drug user, then your risk is VERY low of actually getting the disease.

*Lets take a look at who the CDC is recommending that vaccination for…Starting one shot at birth and another one at 1-2 months. Then, there are 2 more shots of Hep B after that.

*Treatment for Hepatitis B
OK… So what would happen if someone ends up getting Hepatitis B?
“According to Harrison's, in cases of acute hepatitis B "most patients do not require hospital care" and "95 percent of patients have a favorable course and recover completely" with the case-fatality ratio being "very low (approximately 0.1 percent)." Those who recover completely from hepatitis B infection acquire life-long immunity. Of those who do not recover completely, fewer than 5 percent become chronic carriers of the virus with just one quarter of these in danger of developing life threatening liver disease later in life, according to Robbins Pathologic Basis of Disease (1994)”
link: http://www.washingtonfreepress.org/62/hepatitisB.htm


***Research the risks of the vaccines for the diseases.

The first place to start could be the VAERS database. The CDC has a program called VAERS (The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System). Most people don’t even know that this website exists because doctors and nurses usually don’t mention it. It is a US Government run database.

The link below is a search criterion that I entered. This search shows you all reactions to the Hepatitis Vaccine. You'll have to scroll down past the page numbers to see the data.

If you want to run your own search, you can just go to the bottom of the page and click on "New Search"
http://www.medalerts.org/vaersdb/findfield.php?PAGENO=4752&PERPAGE=10&VAX=HEP

Those are facts. It is straight from the CDC. They are all adverse reactions that people have had to the Hepatitis vaccinations.

***Weigh the risks of the vaccine and the risks of the disease.

Once you have facts regarding the disease and the vaccination, you can determine if it is worth the risk or not. This needs to be done on an individual level. Some vaccines are multiple vaccines in one vaccination, (MMR for example) so you would need to look at the risks of Measles, Mumps, Rubella and compare the risks of those 3 diseases to the MMR vaccine.

Going back to my Hepatitis example:
1)There are many adverse reactions to the vaccine. The CDC VAERS database shows that some have died from it, some have become permanently injured.
2)Hepatitis B is contracted primarily by unprotected sex with an infected partner or IV drug use. So, it is safe to say that a young child is not at risk for catching this disease.
3)Most patients do not require hospital care and 95 percent of patients have a favorable course and recover completely.

By looking at those facts, I would feel confident to make the decision to skip the Hepatitis B vaccine.
Remember… the vaccine can be administered at a later date in life. So if you feel that the risk factors of the disease have changed, then you can always vaccinate later.


FYI: That was the information that I came up with personally. And the decision above is the way that I am interpreting the data. That conclusion is mine. I am just trying to give you an example of how I came to my decision regarding the Hepatitis B vaccine. In my opinion, the ONLY way that you can reach an informed decision is by comparing the risks of the disease itself with the risks of the vaccine for the disease.




So… To answer your questions:

“Why SHOULDN'T and SHOULD I get vaccinations?”

Only YOU can answer that question. This is a decision that you have to make. Whether you chose to vaccinate or not to vaccinate, you have to feel confident about your decision. They are your children. You are responsible for their health and well-being.

What do you think about vaccinations? Do you all vaccinate your children?

At this point and time, I personally feel that the adverse reactions of the vaccines are not worth the risk. The way that I came to this conclusion was by researching in the manner that I mentioned above. I also believe that a child’s immune system is not fully developed until at least the age of 2 years old. That being said, I feel that vaccinating a child before 2 years of age is putting an overload on their under-developed immune system. Even if we did decide to vaccinate our child, we would not administer any vaccinations until at least 2 years old. So, I am still researching vaccinations. I have plenty of time to continue my research. In the mean time, if something convinces me that it is worth the risk to vaccinate, then I will do so. But right now, I am not convinced.

Remember one thing… You can always add a vaccination at any age. But you cannot remove a vaccination that has already been administered. So, research it until you feel confident about your decision. That is my advice.
Here are some more links that you can start with to research aside from the links that I have included above:


Vaccine Ingredient List:
http://www.informedchoice.info/cocktail.html

Vaccination Forum:
http://curezone.com/forums/?v=174&o=1&q=0

This is a great vaccination forum. Many of the parents there do not vaccinate. They discuss many different topics such as vaccination risks. There are some very knowledgeable people on this forum.
http://www.mothering.com/discussions/forumdisplay.php?f=47

A story of a child damaged by a vaccination:
http://www.cindeegardner.com/shana.htm

The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) is a national, non-profit educational organization founded in 1982. Located in Vienna, Virginia, NVIC is the oldest and largest parent-led organization advocating reformation of the mass vaccination system and is responsible for launching the vaccine safety movement in America in the early 1980’s.
http://www.909shot.com/Default.htm

Here is an article titled Deadly Immunity by Robert F Kennedy Jr. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/7395411/deadly_immunity/



Here are some recent news articles:
Fully Immunized child dies of Meningococcal B
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10395401

In this recent article, the Polio vaccine actually CAUSED a Polio outbreak…
http://www.scidev.net/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=readnews&itemid=3062&language=1



Good luck!

Answer 2

I would have my children vaccinated and make sure they are protected.There are unfortunate incidents where children had bad reaction to vaccinations but overall,our nation has eradicated a lot of bad diseases because of vaccinations.
Unfortunately, prevention just doesn’t have the same news appeal. So, we clearly need to do a better job of communicating
both the benefits and the risks of vaccines and help all to better understand the diseases they so effectively prevent.
There is a lot of information out there about vaccines, but not all of it is scientifically correct and may feed into some of the misperceptions that we see.
The Internet is one means by which both good and bad information is spread. The Internet has had and will continue to have a tremendous influence on the practice of and perceptions about medicine. Patients now come into doctors’ offices with printouts from the Internet to discuss. An Internet search on “vaccine safety” will lead you to one of the top sites that states: “There is growing evidence that immunization may cause a large number of chronic diseases including diabetes, autoimmune diseases, allergies, asthma, cancers, and Gulf War Syndrome.” Another “vaccine safety” site claims that the World Health Organization’s neonatal tetanus immunization program is really a hidden birth control vaccine in disguise.

Even if the scientific data does not support these conclusion these sites usually contain powerful anecdotes from parents who believe their children were harmed by a vaccine.
That’s very believable to another parent. And these stories get spread from parent to parent, neighbor to neighbor until the story becomes a fact and people assume that they MUST be true.
IWe need to do everything we can to get the best information to all who want and need it, more and more parents are going to continue to get the wrong messages.

We know that until a disease has been eradicated, a decline in immunization rate provides fertile ground for an outbreak. We’ve seen it happen over and over. In the 1970s and 1980s, large outbreaks of pertussis
returned to those countries that rejected the pertussis vaccine because of concern about safety. The hypothesis that the MMR vaccine causes autism began in Britain. In the last few years, acceptance of the MMR vaccine has dropped significantly there. In an even more bizarre twist, some parents have become so fearful of the vaccine that they are hoping to get their children invited to a “measles party” to intentionally expose them to the disease first. I wonder whether they know that 1/1000 children who contract measles suffer encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain, that can leave them permanently disabled?
We don’t have to look to other countries to learn these same lessons. ”
So while some parents say, "Look, there's not much disease in my community, so my kid isn’t likely to get sick. Why should I risk a complication from being vaccinated?” The answer is that the risks and consequences of getting these diseases are far greater than the small risks associated with the immunizations. The decision not to immunize one’s child is a decision that places that child and others at risk.

Answer 3

Well, I am not looking to enforce my beliefs on anyone. Your asking, I'm telling.

When my son who was 21 months at the time and my daughter was almost 4years. He was up to date with all his shots. So was my DD. He got his MMR, and everything went downhill. He completely changed. Now before everyone says oh another MMR story. Wait I don't think it was TOTALLY just the MMR shot. I think it was the culmination of the build up of all the toxins from all the shots in his body PLUS he was on antibiotics for an ear infection!

Anyhow, after that he was a totally different child. And has not gotten a shot since then. I have spent my time from age 2 until now and he is 7 bringing him back.

We have since had another child. A girl. They say that autism is less prevelent in girls. However, she has not recieved any shots.
She is very healthy.

The decision of wether or not to immunize in this country is left up to the parents. Although we are told that immunizations are totally safe, we are not priviy to all the information that the drug companies know.

I am in the medical field now. I have worked with autistic kids and there families. Autism knows no race, no fiscal boundaries.
The phone calls from parents worried about recent dx kids, not knowing what to do. Where to go? Will their child talk?
It's hard! Remember. The doctor and the vaccine company CANNOT be sued for AUTISM. Even if a link is found. (Thanks to Bush, and the bill he signed when we went to war with Iraq)

It's your choice, but it's your child's life!

Answer 4

You should because the benefits outweigh the risks. Smallpox had been eradicated in developed countries because of vaccinations. There were so many diseases our ancestors lived in fear of that we don't even think about. Polio, measles, mumps etc.

Of course, with everything, there are risks. You can develop side effects from vaccinations. People can even die, but it is really rare. The odds are in your favor to get the vaccination.

I don't have kids, but when I do, they will be vaccinated. I don't want to worry my child could die from an easily preventable disease.

Answer 5

of course you should get vaccinations. there are many diseases out there that we are know immune to in this country due to vaccinations. for example, epiglotitis, croup, MMR, DPT, etc. mainly these illnesses occur in children and can be fatal to someone with out an matured immune system. there are third world countries out there that aren't on vaccinations and children face these conditions. so in a nut shell, vaccines are a positive thing.

Answer 6

The best web site I know for vaccine related information is the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC)
http://www.909shot.com

You should get as much info as possible before taking your decision. There is no such thing as safe vaccination.

Answer 7

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Fatigue
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Fatigue
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If you think you have diabetes i think you should have a checkup and speak with your doctor just in case.

Answer 8

I would only because that medicine is there, why not take advantage of it. I rather have to go through a two second shot than deal with a week long sickness, or worse. Personally though I haven't gotten a lot of my shots, but I seem fine, I guess its that whole 'I'm an invincible teen' stage of my life.

Answer 9

There's not much argument against them. If you consider the risk of getting the infection if you DON'T get the vaccine..

Answer 10

I held off on my youngest until I "HAD" to get them for her to start school. It kinda creeps me out to know that they can actually get what they are being vaccinated for with a vaccination.

Answer 11

i would as they are a "dead" virus and that way your body develops immunity. but dont like getting kids to get shots. then you have to take into account that to get into college you have to have your immuninization records. if not you have to get them and bring proof to the admissions office