I was asked recently what my position is on vaccines. This is what I know: I am not an expert! I don't have a lab where I can do my own experiments to verify data others are presenting me with. All the reading and documentary-watching in the world won't change that. I am going to have to trust someone else's advice here.
And that actually makes my decision pretty easy.
There is the pharmaceutical industry and the government on one team. And the other team is the Weston A Price Association and Dr. Mendelsohn.
I don't trust the government at all. Nor the pharmaceutical industry. And when it comes to these two, I am extremely wary of possible hidden agendas, especially financial ones.
Following the advice of the Weston A Price Association cured my husband's hair loss, my acne, my menstrual cramps, and gave me a beautiful, healthy baby who never had cradle cap, crusty eye, or spit up. And that's just in my immediate family. I could go on and on about the evidence I have seen with my own eyes about the benefits of following their diet for my family and friends. The Weston A Price Association does not profit from telling me to not vaccinate. (They do profit from telling me to take cod liver oil, but this post isn't about that.)
Following the advice of Dr. Mendelsohn, who wrote my favorite medical book, How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor, has saved me from a ton of parental worry, many pointless trips to the doctor, for not just my son but my husband and me too. Moreover, my grandfather was a doctor, and he gave this book to my mother in the 1980's. He said the medical industry was headed in a bad direction and no longer to be trusted. Dr. Mendelsohn and my grandfather have no hidden agenda that I can imagine either.
When it comes down to the only decision I get to make – which set of experts to trust – what decision I should make is clear.
It's terrifying – I want my son to be vaccinated against every horror life has to throw at him! And it's hard to reconcile my identity as a science-whorshipper with that of an unvaccinator. So I have to constantly remind myself of what Ayn Rand warned: Science isn't the science I love unless it's done on the free market. The meme that unvaccinators are anti-science is just advertising from two untrustworthy sources – big pharma and the government.
Personal anecdote: My vaccine free child is now six years old. He has had one fever in his entire life (when he was one and teething), he had diarrhea once that lasted a day when he was two, had a cough that was very slight and lasted a few weeks when he was three ... and that's it. He is gorgeously healthy. I don't worry when he plays with sick kids because I know he wont get sick, or if he does it will be nothing more than a runny nose. He also doesn't have any strange issues that doctors excuse as genetic, like eczema. I have two vaccinated nephews on my husband's side that have eczema (it runs in his family). My son's pediatrician - who suffers from eczema herself - says that she believes vaccines are a major trigger for eczema and that if you have eczema in your family, you should not be vaccinated.
Note: I studied nutrition pretty intensely for five years before I considered myself qualified to judge who to trust in that arena. Here is a link to a series of posts I wrote about my path to determining that Weston A Price diet is the one to follow:
http://roslynross.blogspot.com/2011/08/thinking-womans-pregnancy-before.html
And that actually makes my decision pretty easy.
There is the pharmaceutical industry and the government on one team. And the other team is the Weston A Price Association and Dr. Mendelsohn.
I don't trust the government at all. Nor the pharmaceutical industry. And when it comes to these two, I am extremely wary of possible hidden agendas, especially financial ones.
Following the advice of the Weston A Price Association cured my husband's hair loss, my acne, my menstrual cramps, and gave me a beautiful, healthy baby who never had cradle cap, crusty eye, or spit up. And that's just in my immediate family. I could go on and on about the evidence I have seen with my own eyes about the benefits of following their diet for my family and friends. The Weston A Price Association does not profit from telling me to not vaccinate. (They do profit from telling me to take cod liver oil, but this post isn't about that.)
Following the advice of Dr. Mendelsohn, who wrote my favorite medical book, How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor, has saved me from a ton of parental worry, many pointless trips to the doctor, for not just my son but my husband and me too. Moreover, my grandfather was a doctor, and he gave this book to my mother in the 1980's. He said the medical industry was headed in a bad direction and no longer to be trusted. Dr. Mendelsohn and my grandfather have no hidden agenda that I can imagine either.
When it comes down to the only decision I get to make – which set of experts to trust – what decision I should make is clear.
It's terrifying – I want my son to be vaccinated against every horror life has to throw at him! And it's hard to reconcile my identity as a science-whorshipper with that of an unvaccinator. So I have to constantly remind myself of what Ayn Rand warned: Science isn't the science I love unless it's done on the free market. The meme that unvaccinators are anti-science is just advertising from two untrustworthy sources – big pharma and the government.
Personal anecdote: My vaccine free child is now six years old. He has had one fever in his entire life (when he was one and teething), he had diarrhea once that lasted a day when he was two, had a cough that was very slight and lasted a few weeks when he was three ... and that's it. He is gorgeously healthy. I don't worry when he plays with sick kids because I know he wont get sick, or if he does it will be nothing more than a runny nose. He also doesn't have any strange issues that doctors excuse as genetic, like eczema. I have two vaccinated nephews on my husband's side that have eczema (it runs in his family). My son's pediatrician - who suffers from eczema herself - says that she believes vaccines are a major trigger for eczema and that if you have eczema in your family, you should not be vaccinated.
Note: I studied nutrition pretty intensely for five years before I considered myself qualified to judge who to trust in that arena. Here is a link to a series of posts I wrote about my path to determining that Weston A Price diet is the one to follow:
http://roslynross.blogspot.com/2011/08/thinking-womans-pregnancy-before.html
The other thing that makes me lean on the "no vaccines" side of the fence is this study (link below) showing that 12% of children in Ulster County, NY have eczema, but only 1% of unvaccinated children from there have eczema. 8% of children have allergies, but only 2% of unvaccinated children...
It's not this study itself that makes me question vaccines. It's that these studies aren't done all the time by interested scientists. If vaccines were about real science, the scientists would be passionate about finding out whether vaccines are actually ideal or not. They would be open to questioning. They would be open to being wrong.
Businessmen wanting to make money, on the other hand, are not interested in learning more about vaccines and their consequences for human health, they are only interested in convincing/coercing you to buy their product. My experience with vaccines has been all the latter. This makes me think that vaccines studies are done by $cientists, not scientists.
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