An In Depth Analysis Of Why We Chose Not To Vaccinate Our Third Child
By Roger Stark
The vaccine topic has been very hot lately and heavily debated. There are a lot of short one sided arguments to both sides, so I wanted to explain in depth the reasoning behind why we chose to not vaccinate our third child. I don’t have a specific goal in mind writing this, it is just something that has weighed heavy on my heart and mind for a long time and I felt the need to share the information I’ve learned over the last year and a half. I guess my main purpose is to give people a better understanding of how we came to our decision and the logical reasons why.
Background
I got married to my wife three years ago. When we first met, she had two children ages 4 and 6 from a previous marriage. These children were both vaccinated at birth, but not totally fully vaccinated to the current recommended vaccine schedule. Both of these children have had what is considered the “normal” constant ear infections, food allergies, irritability, and other miscellaneous health problems. When my wife and I decided to have a child together, she brought up the vaccine topic during her pregnancy and asked me what my thoughts were. I honestly didn’t know anything about vaccines at the time and didn’t even know it should be something to look into. This is when I started to go down a rabbit hole that consumes me to this very day, a year and a half after first investigating the topic, and one year after the birth of our daughter.
Pro Vs. Con
I am a big pro vs. con kind of guy. I do this in pretty much any kind of major life decision. I considered vaccinating our daughter one of these major life decisions. So I then started to look into the pros and cons of vaccines, as well as the diseases they are meant to protect us from. I think we can all say that nobody wants their children to get a disease. That should go without saying. So why is there even a question of whether to vaccinate or not. It should be a no brainer right? Well that’s where things get complicated. If you research pro vaccine or anti vaccine articles, you will find a ton of biased and theoretical articles explaining why you should or shouldn’t vaccinate. With conflicting views and data, we had to look at each of the theories and debate topics behind vaccination and determine which route we wanted to go based on the information provided.
The Debate Topics
There are several opposing views on the vaccine topic. One reason I believe the topic is so heavily debated is because there’s such a limited amount of actual scientific proof to back up many of these topics. Or if there is scientific evidence, some people will choose to ignore it. So what are the debate topics and what are both sides of the argument? To keep this at a reasonable length, I am not going to go into extreme detail on either side of the topics. I just want to give a general outline of what we found during our research, along with our thoughts and perceptions on each subject, and how they influenced our decision.
Debate Topic #1: Vaccine Induced Immunity vs. Natural Immunity and Herd Immunity
Pro Vaccine View:
I’m sure most of you have heard the term herd immunity. Just a quick note of what that means on the pro-vaccine side, is that a very high percentage of the population, roughly 90%, must be vaccinated in order to achieve protection for the entire country. This is vaccine induced immunity. There is the belief that the more people that don’t vaccinate, the greater the risk is to the herd because the unvaccinated are more susceptible to disease that will then spread.
Anti-Vaccine View:
On the anti-vaccine side, the only way to achieve true herd immunity is when a population contracts a disease, recovers, and then gains natural immunity. This is the only 100% guaranteed lifetime immunity, and vaccines can’t provide this.
How This Topic Influenced Our Decision:
After looking into the vaccines themselves, percentage of effectiveness, and duration of protection, we found that different vaccines offer different time periods of protection. This particular theory was not a major influence in our decision not to vaccinate, but I did have an interesting thought. Since vaccines have a finite period of protection, do we really know how much of the population is currently protected to meet the requirements of vaccine induced herd immunity? Can anyone accurately answer this question?
Debate Topic #2: Vaccination Effectiveness and the Disease Timeline
Pro Vaccine View:
If you ask anyone on the pro-vaccine side how we know that vaccines are effective, one thing they will show you is the disease vs. vaccine incident timeline. If you strictly look at this timeline, one would think it is obvious that vaccines were the cause for the eradication of many diseases.
Anti-Vaccine View:
The anti-vaccine view of this theory is that diseases were already declining and vaccines are not the cause of the eradication. People will often times show the death rate timeline, instead of the incident rate. The death rate of these diseases had majorly declined prior to the introduction of vaccines. Some of the more common charts showing these declines are for the measles, diphtheria, and whooping cough. Another popular argument is that some diseases were eradicated on their own without a widespread vaccination such as scarlet fever and typhoid fever.
How This Topic Influenced Our Decision:
There is another interesting point I’ve heard but is not really talked about much. If you look at the measles and number of cases timeline, the cases went down after the vaccine was licensed in the 1960’s. But if you look at the timeline for when we started to improve our sanitation and hygiene, one could very easily use this as a similar timeline and say that improvements such as clean water, proper hygiene, sewer systems, etc. were the cause of the disease decline. How do we truly know if it was vaccines or sanitation that was the cause for disease eradication? Or was it both? If it was both, what percentage of each one contributed to the eradication? These are questions nobody has been able to give me an answer to. People treat me like I’m crazy for even thinking it might have been something other than the vaccines that caused the disease reduction. All of the above is theoretical in my opinion and did not play a major role in our decision not to vaccinate. It is all just interesting to think about, and you have to take looking at a timeline with a grain of salt. Nobody considers the cause and effect of diseases. If you look at the Cutter Incident in the 1950’s, there was a batch of the polio vaccine that actually caused several thousand cases of polio. Notice how nobody will mention that in their disease incident timeline.
One thing I think is very deceiving is how that they measure vaccine effectiveness. That is by population studies. For example, they will study a group of unvaccinated people against a group of vaccinated people for a particular disease. Let’s say the group size is 10,000 people on each side. Now let’s say that over a certain period of time that 6 people of the unvaccinated group contract the disease, and 3 people of the vaccinated group also contract the disease. The jump from 3 people to 6 is 100% more people. So this is basically how they determine the vaccine is 100% effective. Saying the vaccine is 100% effective is a very misleading number. It makes it sound like you are basically guaranteed immunity from the disease if you receive the vaccine. The reality is that you probably weren’t going to get the disease anyway. Another way it could read is that you have a .0003% chance of getting the disease if you are vaccinated, and a .0006% of getting the disease if you aren’t vaccinate. This is just one way that they can twist the numbers to make vaccination sound more appealing.
Debate Topic #3: Autism and Neurological Conditions
Pro Vaccine View:
There are no peer reviewed studies that show that vaccines cause autism or neurological conditions. The studies that do show causation are either not peer reviewed, or have been debunked or retracted. (They like to use the words “peer reviewed” and “debunked” a lot)
Anti-Vaccine View:
There is study after study that link vaccination to autism and neurological conditions. Big Pharma and other agencies are too big and powerful, and will stop at nothing to discredit these studies.
How This Topic Influenced Our Decision:
There are so many studies out there linking vaccines to autism and other neurological conditions that it’s hard to ignore. Surely there must be some truth to them. But I wanted to dig deeper. So how could I find more information that wasn’t just pro or anti vax? I decided to take the word vaccine totally out of the equation, and just start looking into what we know the individual ingredients are doing to our bodies. I mainly researched aluminum. Aluminum is a known neurotoxin. There have been actual autopsies done on people with Alzheimer’s and guess what they found in the brain? ALUMINUM! Where did this aluminum come from?? Nobody has had a definite answer for this. I think it would be silly to deny the possibility that aluminum from vaccines couldn’t at least be contributing to neurological conditions, if not solely causing them. We decided the risk of injecting these ingredients is not worth the risk to our child.
Debate Topic #4: Injected vs Ingested Ingredients
Pro Vaccine View:
Injected ingredients such as aluminum and mercury are ingredients found in everyday things and you will ingest more of these ingredients than you will receive from a vaccine. There are only “trace amounts” of these ingredients in vaccines and they are safe.
Anti-Vaccine View:
These ingredients that are injected intermuscularly will not leave the body the same way as the same ingredients ingested. When you ingest these ingredients, your body will flush them out through the kidneys and digestive tract. But when they are injected, the ingredients will not leave the body the same way or even at all, and can go to the brain.
How This Topic Influenced Our Decision:
The science is not clear enough for us to determine that these injected ingredients can be determined as safe. We are not only avoiding these heavy metal ingredients from vaccines, but are also avoiding them the best we can in foods and water as well. We are also learning how to detox from heavy metals
Debate Topic #5: The Best Interest of the People vs. Big Pharma Profits and Media Control
Pro Vaccine View:
Vaccination is for the best interest of the people and it is the single greatest protection against disease.
Anti-Vaccine View:
The vaccine business is a multi-billion dollar industry and big pharma is in this for the profit, not for the good of the people. The media and CDC control how most of the population views vaccines by mass advertising and targeting anti-vaxxers.
How This Topic Influenced Our Decision:
I truly believe that big pharma is corrupt in more ways than one, and they are in bed with the media. It makes me sick to my stomach every time I hear an HPV advertisement. The way they talk about it, they try to guilt parents into getting the vaccine for their teens or they’re going to get cancer if they don’t. There has been way too much harm reported from this HPV vaccine.
Also notice how the media covers “outbreaks” by blaming the anti-vaccine movement. They covered the recent Minnesota measles cases, and used that as a tool to fight against anti-vaxxers and promote vaccination. What you won’t hear in the media is that all of these people fully recovered, have no serious long term health problems from getting the measles, and now have lifetime natural immunity.
Debate Topic #6: Vaccines are Safe vs. Vaccines Cause Injury
Pro Vaccine View:
Vaccines are completely safe and there are no studies to prove otherwise. The reports to VAERS are not casual and can’t be proven to be caused by the vaccine. (Some of the pro-vaxxers that I’ve talked to actually do believe that some of these adverse reactions are occurring from vaccination, but disease would be way worse. So they’ve justified the injuries as being ok for the greater good of the people. This view makes me sick by the way. Nobody’s vaccine injury or death is ok for any reason, including the illusion of what people believe to be the greater good.)
Anti-Vaccine View:
Vaccines have toxic ingredients and there are studies that show the dangers of vaccines. The list of possible side effects are listed right on the vaccine inserts, and there are thousands of incidents reported to VAERS, including death. The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has paid out billions of dollars due to vaccine injuries.
How This Topic Influenced Our Decision:
I absolutely believe that a parent knows a change in their child after they receive a vaccination. My heart goes out to all parents that have had a vaccine injured child. I hate the fact that CDC can continue to say these adverse reactions are not caused by the vaccines. The science is there showing vaccines have the potential to be unsafe, but it’s just not their science. Unfortunately in our world, politics gets in the way of science.
I asked my mom for a copy of my immunization records recently. I was shocked to see right on the chart is says “NO MORE PERTUSSIS, SEIZURES.” I also was diagnosed with neurocardiac syncope shortly after my 1996 MMR immunization after having several fainting episodes. Of course nobody has linked this to condition to anything, but it sure makes me wonder… I have a friend whose daughter had temporary paralysis of her legs for a week following the MMR vaccine. She said this reaction was not reported to VAERS. This is a reason I think we don’t have an accurate understanding of the actual number of adverse reactions from vaccination due to either people not knowing to report them, or people not reporting because doctors claiming this is a “normal” side effect and nothing to worry about.
Conclusion
Our biggest reason for not vaccinating out of the above topics is that we truly don’t have an understanding what vaccines are doing to our health in the short or long term. I don’t believe there’s enough scientific proof that vaccines are safe. Population studies are not science. Also there is such a low risk of our child getting a disease, and even a lower risk of complications from the disease, that the risk of harm from vaccination seemed much greater than the risk of getting a disease. This was a very difficult decision for us to make and has been heavily criticized by many friends and family members. But ultimately it did not matter to us what people thought, or for us just to go along with the popular choice. What mattered to us was giving our daughter the best possible health she can have and for her to develop a strong immune system naturally. We decided the best way to do this was by not vaccinating her. We will be giving her proper nutrition and exercise, and we are absolutely confident she will grow up healthy. And IF, which is a big IF, she does contract a disease, we will give her any medical treatment she needs, along with rest and fluids, and she will be able to fight the disease and recover with her natural strong immune system. Our daughter is now one and she has been completely healthy, happy, and free of disease!
Another reason I wanted to write this is because I am completely and whole heartedly against any kind of mandatory vaccination. Unfortunately our country, and world, is trying to go that direction. You have the right to choose what you think is best for your child’s health, whether you think that is to vaccinate or not. Nobody has the right to take that choice away, and I will fight to keep that freedom that until the day I die. People must speak up about their legitimate concerns of vaccine safety.
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