FYI, Ann, my son (now 21) suffered over 6 hrs of "high-pitched screaming", "stiffening and staring", and "collapse episodes" followed by 12 hours of "unrousable sleep" (all indicating "central nervous system involvement" ...i.e. encephalitic brain irritation, seizures and near coma) immediately following his first (and LAST) DPT shot at the age of 2 mths.
*All terms taken directly from the 50 years or so worth of peer-reviewed studies in medical journals I found afterwards documenting his "severe reaction" to the pertussis component of the vaccine and stating that such a reaction was a "contraindication to receiving further doses of the product".

But try obtaining a medical exemption sometime...the above reaction, documented for over 5 decades in the medical literature, was, in the '90s, downgraded by the government to indicate only a "moderate reaction" and reclassified as NOT a contraindication to further doses, lest too many kids escape the full run of doses. The whole-cell pertussis had long been known to be one of the most "reactive" of vaccines, and even the acellular version which replaced it (after years of official denials that anything was wrong with the old one;) remains highly reactive.

Despite the fact that subsequent doses are known to trigger even more severe reactions in reacting kids, to the point of permanent, severe mental and physical disability or death, keeping up the numbers of fully vaccinated (and bolstering public confidence in vaccines in general) is apparently more important to the CDC than the relative few who are maimed or killed in the process.

One girl my son's age whom I met about a decade ago reacted exactly as he had with her first dose. Her 3rd dose rendered her profoundly retarded and a paraplegic and she was awarded a VAERS settlement...small comfort to her mother who allowed the Drs. at the time to convince her there was nothing to worry about and to keep to the schedule.

Call me a dimwit if you like, but we chose to take our chances with whooping cough (which never manifested, ftr) rather than with the known risks associated with vaccinating our child again. When the "one in a million" is YOUR child, the risk/benefit ratio is profoundly altered.

For the record, the outbreaks of pertussis over the last decade or so in the U.S. have been the result of waning vaccine immunity in older children, teens and adults. In some cases, vaccine immunity is gone by middle-school. Past early childhood, pertussis often goes undiagnosed, as it presents in a much milder form and typically lacks the classic "whoop". As a result, infants under 4-6 mths of age (the population at most risk from complications or death from the illness due to their small airways) are at much greater risk of being unknowingly exposed by all the FULLY VACCINATED but no longer immune teens and adults who are the ones primarily (almost exclusively, in fact) spreading the illness.

This is why the teen/adult booster dose was added (after years of the "experts" pretending they had no clue WHY pertussis was on the rise and/or blaming the increase on un-vaccinated kids...they were lying; I read the same studies they did, and they knew exactly what was going on the whole time, but hey, they never miss a chance to play dumb about vaccine failures/risks and blame the un-vaccinated).

Your comments are a perfect example of the adage "a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing." You would do more of a service to public health if you advised your readers to "(re)vaccinate your damn SELVES" than you are doing by bashing and blaming people like me.

Gee, whom to trust... scientists, doctors, medical professionals, decades of scientific data,
or Raven333...?

Shouldn't that be "smack the shizzle out of the carizzle apizzle machizzle drizzle fizzle" of, "Bizzle"?

Just a thought experiment, not meant to be medical advice: If parents commit to not vaccinating their children, will they commit to treating those preventable diseases at home? If they don't buy into vaccinations, why buy into hospital treatments of those same diseases?

It sounds harsh, but think it through. If you don't vaccinate your child for measles, should you expect help from the medical community if your child gets measles?

Again, I'm not trying to be a shit, I'm just trying to understand why you aren't vaccinating your beloved child.

Vaccination or no vaccination; that charming little corner of Antarctica is starting to sound pretty nice.

"...scientists, doctors, medical professionals, decades of scientific data,..."

As I wrote, the first place I turned looking for answers after my kid's violent reaction to a vaccine WAS science. I got my ass to the library and tracked down every peer-reviewed study on the subject I could find. You know, studies representing "decades of scientific data" conducted and peer-reviewed by "scientists, doctors, medical professionals". Years later, I was able to use the internet to access studies much more conveniently.

It's important not to confuse the official position of the CDC or other agencies with a deeply vested agenda of promoting the nation's mass vaccination program and "reassuring parents" with the actual science/data regarding the typically rare adverse reactions and occasional major screw-up (i.e. polio vaccine contaminated with the cancer-causing simian virus SV40 which was given to an estimated 98 million Americans and transmitted via sex, birth, transplant or transfusion to millions more; the 1976 outbreak of Guillain-Barre syndrome caused by influenza vaccine which affected over 500 and killed 25; the epidemic of autism, ADD, ADHD and other neurological disorders strongly linked to ethlymercury/thimerosal in childhood vaccines, including the doses of thimerosal containing flu vaccine, incl. a PRENATAL dose, added following the "removal of thimerosal from childhood vaccines" which more than replace previous exposures; the recent European swine-flu vaccine cluster-fuck in which 800 kids developed narcolepsy as a result of an immune reaction to a surface protein in the vaccine, etc...)

Those charged with keeping uptake high very understandably downplay or even deny such risks, and their motives can be argued to be noble, but their over-reaching goal is to ensure as many children are vaccinated as possible.

The overriding goal of the scientist/clinical researcher is demonstrating causation or association and, if it's found, understanding the mechanisms behind the relatively rare adverse events involved.

If you get all your information from the handouts and press releases disseminated by the CDC, the public health department and the family doctor, rest assured you will only be getting strongly biased, incomplete, and in some instances downright inaccurate information; the dumbed-down, carefully scripted version for the general public. Likewise, if you only get your information from strongly biased "anti-vax" web-site/sources (although some can be excellent starting points when it comes to sourcing peer-reviewed studies for further examination) you are getting the idiot's version of the truth.


"It sounds harsh, but think it through. If you don't vaccinate your child for measles, should you expect help from the medical community if your child gets measles?"

Wow, that's a slippery slope. I guess if you feed your kid crap and he gets sick or if he is injured BY a vaccine you're shit out of luck too, huh?

One thing to consider is that by the time vaccines came on the scene (in both Europe and the U.S.) mortality from measles and the other "vaccine preventable" childhood illnesses had already declined by 80-96%.

The declines were, according to medical historians and the CDC itself, the result of dramatic improvements in living conditions, nutrition, hygiene, public sanitation and access to medical care for complications, even in the pre-antibiotic period.

What vaccines did was sharply reduce INCIDENCE (morbidity), but by the time they were in widespread use, measles (for example) had become a common, typically self-limiting illness of middle childhood, akin to chicken-pox (a loaded comparison, given that since the addition of the CP/varicella vaccine to the schedule, this once ubiquitous, almost always benign childhood rite of passage has morphed, in the perceptions of many, into a deadly scourge. FTR, in my years working with young children, I saw literally thousands of cases of CP, including in my son. Only 1 required any medical attention, and it was in a child with other health issues).

Over the years, my kids have been almost preternaturally healthy (esp. when compared to the "average" child who, according to the AAP, experiences 9-12 colds per year...mine, perhaps 1, despite being in group settings).

The only "VPD" either of mine has ever had was a mild case of CP in my son at age 3 and a case of flu in my daughter at 13 (that I know of; it is quite common for these infections to pass unnoticed. The only way to know for sure if you or your child has had them and gained immunity is to have titres tested. One large study done prior to the vaccine found that almost all (over 96%) of adult subjects had natural immunity to chicken-pox, even if they had no known history of the illness. The same has been shown for several other illnesses, incl. mumps and rubella).


"I'm just trying to understand why you aren't vaccinating your beloved child."

No, I don't really think you are (trying to understand). But that's ok. It's not necessary for you to.

Raven, you sure love junk science. Much of Portland seems to have a boner for it. And to those people, I show this. http://www.socialsmiling.com/image/asset/6…