The Vaccination Question
Ok, ok, I’ve procrastinated long enough. I’m finally just going to open this nasty can of worms and write about my thoughts on vaccination. I’m not lazy, mind you, I just know how contentious this issue is so I’ve been dreading the backlash that will surely follow but here goes…
I really worried about vaccinating my child. I did a lot of research. I learned a LOT about vaccinations. I chose not to vaccinate my child and I’m not going to change my mind. I don’t believe vaccinations are safe and I also believe we are being grossly mislead about the efficacy of vaccinations.
There. I said it. Now you can yell at me or call me a bad mother or whatever you need to do to justify your stance on the vaccination question. You can throw the “science” at me, the so-called “research”, the “facts” and then you can finish me off with the “you’re lowering the herd immunity response, you’re irresponsible and inconsiderate to the rest of society because of your alternative hippie viewpoint” speech.
I know, I know, I’ve heard it all before. I used to believe that myself until I really started reading and researching and finding out for myself. There is a lot of information out there supporting both sides of this debate, fair enough. However, we are most often only shown or told one side. We are most often fed a party-line of “safety” and headlines proclaiming that the “mercury-autism link has been disproven” so we believe what we’re told by the medical professionals and the newspapers and we carry on injecting our precious children with heavy metals and other neuro-toxins.
We continue to trust that the people who create, test and research these vaccines have our children’s best interest at heart, that they don’t care about money, profits, control, and power, that they don’t have vested interests in promoting their vaccines that they have spent billions developing and precious little actually testing properly. We want to believe in the innate goodness of mankind, that it couldn’t be possible that the big companies, which are run by real human beings, really don’t care about that one child out of 166 who will be diagnosed with a broad-spectrum autism disorder after receiving the supposed “safe” shots or another neuro-developmental or autoimmune problem. We believe we’re doing the right thing and we tell ourselves, “Well, my doctor told me it was safe. If I can’t trust my doctor, who can I trust?” I say, trust yourself, find out for yourself, read for yourself and keep asking questions.
I’m not saying there is a big conspiracy on the part of the medical establishment to hurt our kids. I’m don’t believe every doctor in the world is on board with the evil vaccine manufacturers. I believe they practice what they are taught in their medical schools and that perhaps the information that they are offered is not necessarily the whole story. There is another side.
There is data that shows a link between mercury in vaccines and rising occurrence of autism. The very companies who are making these vaccines have done much of the research out there. There is evidence, much of it anecdotal, yes, but evidence nonetheless, from thousands of parents who believe their normal child became autistic after receiving certain vaccinations. What is the harm in investigating parents' claims instead of denying them? It’s really true that while the agencies that determine the safety of vaccines say they have removed mercury as a preservative (in the form of Thimerosal), they are misleading us. Actually it is still present. It's a matter of semantics.
It was removed for preservative use with a few exceptions such as the flu shot. Mercury still remains in the other vaccines (such as DTP, HepB) as residual left over from the manufacturing process. One can say its use as a preservative has been stopped (on a voluntary basis by some companies, but it’s not mandatory) but one cannot say it has been completely removed. Kids are still getting mercury and now get more shots than at any other time. When your child is vaccinated, they receive significant amounts of heavy metals. That’s a fact. Whether you believe those toxins cause damage to your child or not is another question for debate. The fact that they are present in the shots is not.
There is a lot of evidence that points to corruption and greed in the higher echelons of Big Pharma and government and to skewed research methods, data and bias. For me, it’s not a question of who is right or wrong. It’s not a question of blind faith either. It’s not a question of whether I’m doing the right thing.
For me, it’s a question of “what if”. What if the established medical status quo is wrong? What if mercury in vaccinations does cause autism, asthma, ADHD, mercury poisoning? What if by immunizing my child I am doing far more damage to his brain and developing immune system than a possible exposure to and highly likely survival of a childhood illness like measles, mumps or rubella? What if I let them inject my beautiful boy’s little body with 32 doses (yes, that’s right, in the U.S., if a parent follows the recommended vaccine schedule, a child will receive 32 doses of vaccine before they are 2 years old) of dead or attenuated viruses, derived from the pus of sick pigs and embryonic chickens and preserved with 250 times the recommended safe amount of heavy metals, including aluminum, formaldehyde, and mercury and he happens to be one of those kids who has a reaction? What if he happens to be that one out 166 kids who becomes autistic or develops diabetes or asthma or some other autoimmune disorder that increasingly affect our kids?
Maybe they are safe. Maybe I should trust what they tell me and vaccinate my baby. I mean, the powers that be have never been wrong or dishonest about anything ever before, have they? The coal companies never denied black lung. The asbestos corporations and the US government didn’t deny white lung to military shipyard workers. The tobacco industry never hid research--well, we know. Agent Orange, depleted uranium shell exposure, anthrax vaccination, lead in paint and gasoline…Have they? That’s the question.
Comments Add a public comment
-
-
-
-
This is a difficult issue for parents. I'm not one yet, but I am am chemist. First, please site medical journals that site correlation between illness/defects in children with vaccinations. These are the only peer-reviewed, non-privately funded, transparent sources of information the scientific communtiy has avaialble- not anecdotal prenting websites. Second, the heavy metals are what the vaccine is fixed to. They exist in forms which do not react in the human body! Please stop citing inflammatory arguments! Vaccinations have allowed countless millions of children to have healthy lives. Illness in children manifests itself when they are about two years old anyway, and parents need a reason for why, try genetic counseling and you'll probably find the reason. Finally, not vaccinating your child is dangerous to the rest of us as your child will be in school with our children. So again, we live communally, please act accordingly.
-
-
"..and then you can finish me off with the “you’re lowering the herd immunity response, you’re irresponsible and inconsiderate to the rest of society because of your alternative hippie viewpoint”
You called it!
This is a very difficult issue.. and to be honest, I'm on the fence on this one. I'm not a parent yet so I've never really thought about vaccinations... aside from getting them! I'm glad that someone has been brave enough to voice an alternative viewpoint... after all, there are two sides to every story and nothing is pure black & white.
-
-
i agree this is a difficult and controversial issue. i believe everyone has the right to do what they believe is best for their child/ren. we have chosen to immunise our children as we believe this is what is best for them. if you believe that it is best for your child not to be immunised then that should be OK too.
-
-
First of all, references and resources are cited, not "sited". Just FYI.
Second I did not cite any research because if you read carefully I believe I strongly suggest that you, the reader/independent thinker, ask the questions and do the reading. I could post a million pages of research supporting both sides of this argument and you would or wouldn't refer to them and would likely still hold to your point of view. I'm not blogging about this to change your mind or to convince you of anything. I simply feel that people should be made more aware of the very complex and convoluted issues that surround the subject. There is MORE THAN ONE SIDE. That was the point of the blog. Third, I wish I could find some independent, peer-reviewed, non-privately funded, transparent sources of information. That's another point I'm trying to make, they aren't out there. No one is doing this research. WHY? It's as if there is this black hole of study surrounding these basic questions. And if they are doing the research, those scientists are dismissed as too "out there" or "not qualified enough because they don't represent Harvard or Stanford, better yet, the FDA, CDC, powers that be". In other words, they aren't endorsing the party line and as a result their research is shoved into the dark corners of the scientific community. As I said, most (but NOT ALL-there are people out there trying to find answers that aren't tainted by vested interests) of the evidence is anecdotal and while the scientific community may not accept anecdotal evidence as valid confirmation of the truth of a hypothesis, it should still serve as a catalyst for asking the questions and investigating the possibilities. Finally, I am not writing this as a scientist, although I also have a very strong background in both chemistry and biology. I didn't list my degrees or past life experience but I am capable of understanding how the scientific process works and I'm even able to read some big words and make sense of them. I don't get my information for parenting websites, thanks so much for that rousing endorsement of my opinions. I'd say the vast majority of parenting websites would strongly disagree with my point of view. If anyone is being inflammatory, it is you, Duckworth. You obviously did not read my blog carefully enough to distinguish between my trying to raise consciousness on what could possibly be the greatest health scandal of our generation if any claims turn out to be even partially true and my writing a PhD thesis on the mitochondrial damage aggravated by vaccination. I'm not. I'm writing as a concerned parent and citizen, who yes, lives communally and would happily vaccinate my child if I felt that he wasn't being poisoned in the process and that the vaccines actually work. If you're so worried about your non-existent child who will be vaccinated hanging out with my pariah of a non-vaccinated child because he could pass on chicken pox, then why vaccinate? Vaccinations protect, don't they? Where is your communal soapbox when other people's tax dollars are being spent in caring for your non-existent needlessly vaccine-damaged child for the next 40 years when he or she is not able to care for him or herself? Why is there a Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System in place if vaccines don't cause damage? Why has the US government paid out over 2 billion dollars in vaccine damage claims if they are so safe? Why did the US government just last week concede a case that vaccines did cause autism in one child? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/government-concedes-vacci_b... Why am I inflammatory when I'm just asking questions?
-
-
Even more than the autism issue is the lifelong effect of vaccines on the healthy functioning of our immune system. There is growing research which points, startlingly, to permanent changes in immune function for the WORSE. Food allergies, life threatening asthma, autoimmune diseases including cancer are all in epidemic proportions and much more frequent in vaccinated populations. Vaccine adjuvants throw the Th2 immune response into overdrive, and virtually disable the cellular (th1) immune system--the most critical initial defense against pathogens entering the body.
Multiple vaccination effects on atopy. Allergy. 1999 Apr;54(4):398-400.
Rook GAW, Zumla A. Gulf War syndrome: is it due to a systemic shift in cytokine balance towards a Th2 profile? Lancet 1997;349:1831-1833.
Butler D. Admission on Gulf War vaccines spurs debate on medical records. Nature 1997;390:3-4.
Kemp T, Pearce N, Fitzharris Pet al. Is infant immunization a risk factor for childhood asthma or allergy? Epidemiology 1997;8:678-680.
Del Prete G. The concept of type-1 and type-2 helper T cells and their cytokines in humans. Int Rev Immunol 1998;16:427-455.
Mark A; Bjorksten B; Granstrom M. Immunoglobulin E responses to diphtheria and tetanus toxoids after booster with aluminium-adsorbed and fluid DT-vaccines. Vaccine 1995 May;13(7):669-73
Gupta RK. Aluminum compounds as vaccine adjuvants. Adv Drug Deliv Rev 1998 Jul 6;32(3):155-172
Vassilev TL. Aluminium phosphate but not calcium phosphate stimulates the specific IgE response in guinea pigs to tetanus toxoid. Allergy 1978 Jun;33(3):155-9 6.
Rook GA, Stanford JL. Give us this day our daily germs. Immunol Today 1998 Mar;19(3):113-6
Taylor-Robinson AW. Multiple vaccination effects on atopy. Allergy 1999 Apr;54(4):398-400
Hurwitz EL, Morgenstern H. Effects of diphtheria- tetanus-pertussis or tetanus vaccination on allergies and allergy-related respiratory symptoms among children and adolescents in the United States. J Manipulative Physiol Ther 2000 Feb;23(2):81-90
Romagnani S. T-cell subsets (Th1 versus Th2). Annals of Allergy, Asthma, & Immunology 2000;85:9-21
ARCHIVES OF PEDIATRICS & ADOLESCENT MEDICINE October 2000, Vol 154, No 10,
Universal Childhood Vaccinations: A Faustian Bargain? Eric L. Hurwitz, DC, PhD http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/issues/v154n10/ffull/plt1000-4.html
-
-
not to mention that vaccines, by way of introducing foreign proteins and other viruses into the human population can affect future generations (see: The Virus and the Vaccine: Contaminated Vaccine, Deadly Cancers, and Government Neglect by Debbie Bookchin and Jim Schumacher on amazon)
I think vaccinating a young person (quite possibly against their will!) is actually ABUSE and unthinkably IR-responsible parenting. In 100 years we will look back on this time with sadness and awe at how huge a mistake we are making trusting big pHARMa....Merck corporation--the same company which made Vioxx, got it approved by covering up all sorts of safety data, causing some 27,000 heart attacks and cardiac deaths in the process-- turns around and develops Gardasil, and gets rubber-stamped fast track approval from the U.S. FDA. Get wise folks. Vaccines are BIG business, and many billions of dollars of profits all depend on the public's continued ignorance and/or blind trust in "officials".
-
-
I'm also on the fence with this. The big corporations have taken over and are in charge - 32 shots before age 2!!! Some childhood diseases are worse than others of course. I wouldn't like a child to end up blind or suffer the effects of polio...I had my kids done almost 40 years ago because it was the done thing. As Kristen suggests, do the research as much as you can and stay informed.
-
-
I think that you are being an irresponsible mother for denying your child the benefit of many years of medical research and time tested benefits of vaccinations. Before Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine, in 1955, how many people were crippled or killed by what is now a preventable disease? Polio is still a big problem in under developed countries (mainly in Africa and parts of S.E. Asia) due to lack of a mandatory vaccination program, yet a vaccine that costs less than $1 can prevent a childhood illness that can have profound physical and mental affects on millions of people.
This is but one example of a vaccine that has changed our lives. You live in China, where a large portion of the population carries the hepatitis A and B virus. Hep A and B vaccines can prevent your child from developing long term liver problems, the least of which is chronic fatigue and the worst being cancer of the liver. Is it not better to have an ounce of prevention to protect one from a lifetime of agony?
Look at the current situation in Hong Kong where the influenza virus has reared its ugly head to sicken a host of little kids and kill three. I am sure the majority of these children did not get a flu vaccine that may have prevented this outbreak from happening. The flu kills more people a year in the United States than HIV/Aids.
You fly in the face of BILLIONS of vaccinations that have gone right to point out the risks of a few hundred thousand that have gone wrong. Nothing is 100% certain. Of course you have the prerogative as your sons mother to not have him vaccinated, but I think you will feel deep regret if your son develops a disease that could have been preventable. Think of the misery he will suffer while suffering from a high fever or scratching his rash from chicken pox or develop the mumps after puberty when he may become sterile from the disease. What about your suffering as you care for your little one when he is not feeling well?
I am also a father of a 2 1/2 year old boy. I have made sure my son is fully vaccinated, including getting shots that are more specific to living in the less hygienic environment of China. I would hate to have my son develop a disease because one of his classmates or friends was not vaccinated. I love him too much to put him through that. It hurt me to see him cry when he got his shots, but I know it was for his own good as well as for the good of his friends and family.
-
-
jhuang, you have much learning to do. First, read EVERYTHING I'm going to post in a moment. Then, get The Virus and The Vaccine and READ IT. Essentially, I used to feel the way you did. I just did not know any better, but now I do. Admit you have not learned much about this, and delve into all the resources before making up your mind.
-
-
jhuang, you have much learning to do. First, read EVERYTHING I'm going to post in a moment. Then, get The Virus and The Vaccine and READ IT. Essentially, I used to feel the way you did. I just did not know any better, but now I do. Admit you have not learned much about this, and delve into all the resources before making up your mind.
-
-
Journal Home Page : http://www.karger.com/journals/iaa/iaa_jh.htm "Evidence has been accumulated to suggest that allergen-reactive Th2 cells play a triggering role in the activation and/or recruitment of IgE antibody-producing B cells, mast cells and eosinophils, the cellular triad involved in allergic inflammation."
The citation is in PubMed but there was no abstract available. I [the author of this email to me] got the original from the med library and typed it out.
Here is the link for the citation in PubMed:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list _uids=10371102&dopt=Abstract
Allergy April 1999 Volume 54, pp. 398-399
MULTIPLE VACCINATION EFFECTS ON ATOPY
A.W. Taylor-Robinson, School of Biology, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
Asthma, tuberculosis, cancer, myalgic encephalomyelitis, and Gulf War syndrome have all been linked recently to a shift in the immune profile favouring a T helper 2 (Th2) cell bias (1). In the UK, this situation has been associated with the multiple vaccinations given to troops before Gulf combat (2). This has led to the suggestion to manipulate the immune response in order to encourage the development of Th1 cells and thereby to counter the effects of these conditions, but this has led to concern that this will not be achieved without some form of immunologic penalty (1).
My concern, however, is the price we may be already paying for the immune deviation toward a Th2 profile.
The soldiers in question were immunized against anthrax, cholera, plague, tetanus, typhoid, and pertussis (whooping cough), all of which require potent Th2-inducing vaccines. This large antigen loading further favours a systemic shift toward a Th2 predominance and associated cytokine profile (1) and has raised questions regarding the safety of the procedure. A UK government report confirms that troops received a pertussis vaccine as an adjuvant for the anthrax vaccine, so that the latter was effective from 7 weeks instead of 32 weeks. The use of pertussis vaccine in this way was highly experimental, relying on the preliminary findings of Ministry of Defence-sponsored research, and was performed despite a warning by the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control, a UK regulatory control body (2).
This highlights a possible serious drawback of combined pertussis vaccine use and is of considerable concern since pertussis vaccination is known to be an etiologic factor in the development of childhood asthma (3). The incidence of asthma is on the increase and so is the use of multiple vaccination procedures. When pertussis is combined with diphtheria and tetanus (the DTP vaccination given in the UK to 8-week-old babies along with Hib and, in some cases, tuberculosis), the same immune deviation develops, a bias towards Th2 responsiveness. The pertussis vaccine may not be the culprit in the case of asthma, but may be a marker for the effects of multiple vaccination, as it is not usually given in isolation.
Apprehension about this apparent shift in immune cell populations is clear. In a Th2-dominant system, interleukins (IL) 4, 5, and 13 are upregulated, along with excessive synthesis of IgE via clonal expansion and secretion of IL-4 (4). Combine this with the resultant enhanced eosinophil activity, and all the ingredients are present for atopic conditions such as asthma, eczema, hay fever, and food intolerances to develop. By contrast, a bias toward Th1-regulated cytokine synthesis would inhibit type 1 hypersensitivity reactions via IFN gamma, which counterregulates IL-4 and thereby decreases IgE production. The balance between IFN gamma and IL-4 determines the level of IgE synthesis. This interrelationship is key since these cytokines are secreted by Th1 and Th2 cells, respectively, supporting the concept that immune balance is crucial if atopy is to be avoided (4).
Multiple vaccinations shift this delicate balance, favouring the development of atopy and, perhaps, autoimmunity through vaccine-induced polyclonal activation leading to autoantibody production. An increase in the incidence of childhood atopic diseases may be expected as a result of concurrent vaccination strategies that induce a Th2-biased immune response. What should be discussed is whether the prize of a reduction of common infectious diseases through a policy of mass vaccination from birth is worth the price of a higher prevalence of atopy.
References
Rook GAW, Zumla A. Gulf War syndrome: is it due to a systemic shift in cytokine balance towards a Th2 profile? Lancet 1997;349:1831-1833.
Butler D. Admission on Gulf War vaccines spurs debate on medical records. Nature 1997;390:3-4.
Kemp T, Pearce N, Fitzharris Pet al. Is infant immunization a risk factor for childhood asthma or allergy? Epidemiology 1997;8:678-680.
Del Prete G. The concept of type-1 and type-2 helper T cells and their cytokines in humans. Int Rev Immunol 1998;16:427-455.
3. Mark A; Bjorksten B; Granstrom M. Immunoglobulin E responses to diphtheria and tetanus toxoids after booster with aluminium-adsorbed and fluid DT-vaccines. Vaccine 1995 May;13(7):669-734. Gupta RK. Aluminum compounds as vaccineadjuvants. Adv Drug Deliv Rev 1998 Jul 6;32(3):155-172
5. Vassilev TL. Aluminium phosphate but not calciumphosphate stimulates the specific IgE response in guinea pigs to tetanus toxoid. Allergy 1978 Jun;33(3):155-9 6. Rook GA, Stanford JL. Give us this day our daily germs. Immunol Today 1998 Mar;19(3):113-6
7. Taylor-Robinson AW. Multiple vaccination effectson atopy. Allergy 1999 Apr;54(4):398-400
8. Hurwitz EL, Morgenstern H. Effects ofdiphtheria-tetanus-pertussis or tetanus vaccination on allergies and allergy-related respiratory symptoms among children and adolescents in the United States. J Manipulative Physiol Ther 2000 Feb;23(2):81-90
9. Romagnani S. T-cell subsets (Th1 versus Th2).Annals of Allergy, Asthma, & Immunology 2000;85:9-21
ARCHIVES OF PEDIATRICS & ADOLESCENT MEDICINE October 2000, Vol 154, No 10, >Universal Childhood Vaccinations: A Faustian Bargain? Eric L. Hurwitz, DC, PhD http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/issues/v154n10/ffull/plt1000-4.html -
-
Most doctors do not know the immunological damage vaccines can and do perpetrate (see http://www.amazon.com/Vaccination-100-Years-Orthodox-Research/dp/064615124X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205487363&sr=8-1 Viera Scheibner Ph.D's book
Vaccination: 100 Years of Orthodox Research Shows that Vaccines Represent a Medical Assault On the Immune System
(title shortened by Amazon)
why do doctors so vehemently support vaccination, overall? (for their patients, at least...doctors are notorious for not vaxing their own babies)
Because they are neither virologists nor immunologists. Because the training in medical school conspicuously omits vital information. Amounting to...well, at best, perpetrating a belief system. The Pharmacological industry has long, long tentacles, into the FDA, the EPA, AMA of course and all the standard institutions. It is a totally morally bankrupt industry.
They pushed through Gardasil the HPV vaccine quickly with little testing (there have been a higher than expected number of vax reactions and death...) because why? Because Vioxx was having lawsuits and the company needed money....fast. the quickest and best way to get it? Legislation and MANDATORY Hpv vaxes. Look up Texas Governor Perry and Gardasil, and HPV. A whole organization was formed because of it all: called PROVE.
http://vaccineinfo.net/ -
-
by the way, the immune function problem, I think, in time will be related in the literature to much or most of the autism we see today.
Autistic individuals are known to have immune system irregularities, and gut disturbances (the gut flora is intimately involved in our immune responses, as seen by Gluten intolerant and casien intolerant individuals, as well as people with systemic yeast overgrowth which disrupts the bacterial balance of the gut). Most autistic folks are Celiac's disease and/or have food allergies, and there is overlap in the Celiac's and IgA deficiency diagnoses, too.
-
-
I see that you have included some references to studies on the effects of vaccines given to soldiers heading off to the Gulf. I do agree with you that a lot of those vaccines were not properly tested or at least hurried through the approval process for use in the Gulf. But, what you fail to see is that in any approval process, there are clinical trials that need to be performed. I cannot see a larger clinical trial population than that for the common childhood vaccinations.
I do not believe that we will be giving our children anthrax, cholera, plague and typhoid vaccines in the near future. Of course combination vaccines can produce side effects (as stated in all vaccination leaflets provided by the manufacturer), but once again, we are talking about minute amounts compared with the over all numbers of shots given.
Once again, billions of vaccinations have been given to children with little or no problems. What more proof can you want. Furthermore, we see a lot of new disorders cropping up every year but a lot of it is due to environmental and other man-made factors (pollution = asthma, pesticides = digestive disorders and immunological disorders, etc, etc.). How do you do a control study when we are being bombarded by all these external influences everyday?
I guess it is up to you what you do to your child, but I'm sticking with the odds that I will have a healthy and happy child with the vaccinations.
As a person working in the health care business, I have seen and heard a lot of controversy over all sorts of medicines over the years. You have to weigh for yourself the costs and benefits. Everything we put into our bodies will have some sort of adverse reaction and it will only get worse in my opinion.
-
-
Jhuang, please, please, please READ my comments before you pass judgment on my decisions as a mother. I hardly think calling me irresponsible and then saying that just because you work in the "health care business" (with the operative word here being BUSINESS) that you have the all-knowing proof that these bloody shots aren't hurting our kids. The point of the whole piece is that we DON'T KNOW. I am no more irresponsible for choosing not to vaccinate than you are for choosing to at this point in our human journey. Please pay closer attention to my arguments and in particular my QUESTIONS, before you start pointing fingers at me
-
-
*This is a fascinating article I just received from BOCA- I have excerpted a bit of it. To read the whole thing, follow the link
Dr. Palevsky, who is co- founder and president of the Holistic Pediatric Association and past president of the American Holistic Medical Association, questions whether aluminum in vaccines is affecting the health of our children and contributing to the burden of chronic disease and disability.
In his referenced article, Dr. Palevsky explains the importance of maintaining a healthy immune system capable of initiating and resolving inflammation in response to challenges from viruses and bacteria, as well as reviews what is known and not known about the effects of the heavy metal, aluminum, on immune and brain function. He asks "Does aluminum play a role in impairing the overall synergistic, balanced activity of TH1, TH2 and TH3, which is a requirement for a healthy immune system response to the natural environment?"
Dr. Palevsky received his medical degree from the NYU School of Medicine in 1987. He completed a residency at Mount Sinai Hospital in NYC and a fellowship at Bellevue Hospital before joining Our Lady of Mercy Medical Center in the Bronx. He served as Chief of the Pediatric Acute Care Unit at Lenox Hill Hospital for four years and later was in private practice as a holistic integrative pediatrician for the Center for Health & Healing, an integrative and complementary care medical facility affiliated with Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. He provides wellness care for families at the Northport Wellness Center in Long Island and in New York City and participates in community health education programs in New York and nationally.
The Doctor's Corner, sponsored by the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), was created for enlightened pediatricians to publish referenced articles and stimulate dialogue about how and why vaccines cause reactions, injuries and death; why some individuals may be at higher risk than others for suffering a vaccine reaction; and ways in which vaccine risks may be reduced. The discussion on NVIC's The Doctor's Corner will also examine the relationship between infectious disease and vaccination and how early childhood experiences with both can influence immune and brain function.
The National Vaccine Information Center has long supported the forging of a new and more enlightened partnership between pediatricians and parents when it comes to making vaccination decisions for children. Parents in the 21st Century are becoming educated about vaccination and they want something more from pediatricians than inflexible administration of one-size- fits-all vaccine policies that fail to respect bio-diversity or the informed consent ethic. Parents are looking for intelligent, open-minded, compassionate and courageous pediatricians offering an alternative to calls by physicians inside and outside of government issue for forced use of multiple vaccines by all children.
The two pediatricians who have written articles for NVIC's "The Doctor's Corner" - Edward Yazbak, M.D. and Lawrence Palevsky, M.D. - demonstrate that there are enlightened pediatricians who respect and understand parental concerns about vaccines and the risks associated with inflexible vaccine policies. We thank them both for their courage and commitment to preventing vaccine injuries and deaths through public education. The Doctor's Corner National Vaccine Information Center http://www.nvic.org/doctors_corner/doctors_corner.htm Aluminum and Vaccine Ingredients: What Do We Know? What Don’t We Know? by Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD, FAAP
(and I QUOTE-Hanksmama)
"You cannot do research on questions that enough people don’t believe are worth asking, or are afraid of what the answers might show if the proper studies were done.
It is unfortunate that we continue to drag out this dialogue by singling out each individual vaccine ingredient as a detriment to the health of our children. First thimerosal needed to be removed, despite contentions from the medical community that there were any real medical reasons to do so, and now aluminum. According to Environmental Defense30, all the vaccine ingredients are poisonous, carcinogenic or potentially harmful to the skin, gastrointestinal, pulmonary, immune and neurological systems in our bodies. What about formaldehyde? Are we going to wait until another brave physician or scientist writes about the damaging effects of injected vaccine-containing formaldehyde on our children’s brains before we are called to demand that formaldehyde be removed? Or about the problems associated with having Polysorbate-80 in the vaccines? Polysorbate-80 is used in pharmacology to assist in the delivery of certain drugs or chemotherapeutic agents across the blood-brain-barrier. What viral, bacterial, yeast, heavy metal or other vaccine containing ingredient need to pass into the brains of our children? Do they belong in the brain? Is that part of the needed immune response to protect our children from disease? Do vaccine materials pass across the blood-brain barrier with the help of Polysorbate-80? If so, are there complications from being in the brains of our children? Is this another connection to help us get an understanding of why 1 in 150[31] children have autism, or 1 in 6 children has developmental/learning disabilities? If we’re going to do justice to the topic of vaccine ingredients, we need to look at the potential harm of all the vaccine ingredients at once, and examine their individual effects on our children’s immune and nervous systems. Then, we can examine the interactive effects of the vaccine ingredients on human tissue, and evaluate the potential for harm, as Dr. Haley has already successfully done. How many more children need to be potentially harmed before we invoke the precautionary principle and the Hippocratic Oath – First, Do No Harm? If there’s no adequate science, and we have positive evidence of toxicity from aluminum, injected alone or in conjunction with other ingredients, and we have a potential model to understand why certain chronic conditions may be developing in a susceptible population of children, then injecting aluminum containing vaccines into anyone should stop right now until we have the proper scientific proof we need to say otherwise. We need the same scientific proof of safety for all vaccine ingredients and their interactions, and we need parents, scientists and practitioners to stand up and demand nothing less before we make matters worse." Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD, FAAP Pediatrician
-
-
Has Ms. Billings ever had measles? Because I have. I've also had major abdominal surgery. Guess which one required a week-long hospital stay, a blood transfusion, an emergency plasma transfusion, and nearly killed me. (Here's a hint: it wasn't the abdominal surgery.)
Does Ms. Billings know that measles can kill you rapidly? What starts off as innocently as any other flu turns deadly in as little as two days. Does she know that in later stages of measles your mouth is filled with bleeding sores? Does she know that you can't even keep liquids down? There is a reason that people get vaccinated for these diseases, and it isn't because they don't want the inconvenience of something relatively trivial like chicken pox -- it's because this disease can kill you.
Or perhaps she thinks her children will never be exposed to people with measles if she stays around Westerners? Guess again. I grew up in Chicago; I probably caught it on a flight home from L.A. for a school trip. Neither of these cities is small, backwater area.
Also, treatment for this potentially deadly illness is often delayed because doctors no longer recognize it...because it is so rare, now that most (sensible) people in developed nations are vaccinated against it. I was extremely lucky that one of the older doctors in our family practice recognized some of my symptoms and told my parents to rush me to a hospital, or I probably would have died. As it was, I spent a week in isolation in a hospital, complete with an emergency plasma transfusion followed a day later by an emergency blood transfusion. After my week in the hospital I spent another two weeks at home, recovering. It was nearly a month before I was out of bed for long periods, and two months before I was well enough to even attempt sports again. Keep in mind that I was a healthy, strong high school student before I caught the measles.
So if Ms. Billings isn't willing to listen to the chemist who wrote in, or the the health and safety organizations of most nations in the Western world (not just America), then perhaps she will listen to someone who nearly died from measles
Oh, and the major abdominal surgery? I was on my feet again and out of the hospital within three days. Piece of cake.
-
-
Oh, you mean YOUR mmr shot as a kid didn't protect you? Why am I not surprised.
While I am sorry you had measles I have some quotes and information about the typical course of measles.
Sir MacFarlane Burnet was one of the great and really knowledgeable virologists/bacteriologists of the time when measles was supposedly a major killer. He wrote:
"Most parents and doctors feel that if a healthy young school child is exposed to measles, there is nothing to be gained by trying to prevent infection. Provided a doctor is on hand to watch for and deal with any complications like middle-ear infection, the disease presents no danger to a healthy child"
An infectious disease doctor wrote this in 1989: "Measles used to be a common cause of severe illness although the outlook was always good."
It appears your case was an atypically bad one. Here is the normal course from the CDC for adult Measles.
Symptoms of measles include high fever, rash, runny nose, watery eyes and coughing.
The average time between exposure to the measles virus and the development of symptoms is usually from 10 to 14 days.
Now, why was yours so severe? Several Vitamin A studies have shown the following, and here I quote from one particular study: "Even sub-clinical vitamin A deficiency is associated with more severe disease..." (p.491) The impact of Vitamin A supplementation on death and severity in measles is striking. High-dose Vitamin A supplementation has reduced severity and deaths even among children with no clinical signs of vitamin A deficiency." (page 493)
So maybe we should be giving all the kids good healthy diets, and Vitamin A supplementation instead of shots.
Especially since time and time again, the presence of antibodies (whether from vaccine or from having already had the disease) does not get even close to guaranteeing immunity.
Furthermore, even with 90+ % of worldwide vaccine "compliance" these diseases have not been eradicated.
I say it's time for something new. Looking at the data. Learning about the normal course of disease, and paying attention to the myriad natural, herbal, dietary, homeopathic remedies. Being honest about vaccine's virtual irrelevance to disease "protection", and in fact that they cause way more illness than they prevent.
-
-
Oh, and from one of my books, this.
"A child only dies of measles if he or she:
*had a serious underlying condition before catching measles, or
*suffers from severe calorie/protein deficiency, or
*is accidentally or deliberately chilled while having measles, or
- is given drugs to suppress the fever.
me again. Modern Medicine kills countless people by sabotaging the body's defenses though chilling (cold rooms cold baths, ice cream and jelly/jello) and giving drugs which suppress fever.
Three to one they were giving paracetamol/Tylenol all those days you were in hospital. It's not your fault you were so sick, this is what they learn in their so called Medical School while at the same time they are taught to label those who want to supplement with Vitamin A the quacks.
You'd been a lot better off at home under blankets being cared for by a loved one, drinking and eating healthful food instead of tablets. It never would've gotten this bad.
By the way, not to pry, but are you asthmatic? I have read a theory about the steroidal medications used to control not asthma but leukemia...anyway the steroids are interfering with the normal immune response resulting in very little rash but a high degree of mortality and severity of measles and I wonder if the same mechanism would not play out in asthmatics as well.
-
-
"Researchers Dr. Garth Nicolson and his wife Nancy have found a tiny bacterial microbe (a "mycoplasma") in the blood of nearly half the ill vets with GWI [this is Gulf War Illness aka Gulf War Syndrome~Liora]. Amazingly, this infectious agent has a piece of HIV (the AIDS virus) attached to it. This microbe could never have occurred naturally. On the contrary, the composition of the microbe suggests a man-made and genetically-engineered biological warfare agent. " Of course this means necessarily that this microbe was part of the vaccine series given to the Gulf war soldiers.
-
-
"FDA virologist Peter Reeve........ acknowledged that the FDA suspended its own independent tests of vaccine purity 15 years ago, leaving it entirely up to the manufacturers to ensure the vaccine is contaminant free."--'The Virus and the Vaccine' article: Atlantic Monthly
-
-
"Since the 1920s, virtually all continuing medical and public health education is funded by pharmaceutical companies. In fact, today, the FDA can't even tell health scientists the truth about vaccine contaminants and their likely effects. The agency is bound and gagged by proprietary laws and non-disclosure agreements forced upon them by the pharmaceutical industry. Let us not forget that the pharmaceutical industry, as a special interest group, is the number one contributor to politicians on Capital Hill."--Leonard Horowitz, MD
-
-
"In an effort to quell concerns about the safety of vaccines, scientists are finally taking another look at the "non-infectious" particles of bird-cancer viruses (avian leukosis virus) in the mumps/measles/rubella vaccines routinely given to kids. Could this be the reason the FDA held a meeting in September, 1999, to reconsider using human tumor cell lines (like HeLa) rather than monkey kidneys and chicken embryos which are no longer guaranteed 100% safe? ... The big question everyone seems to avoid is: Can vaccines cause cancer? There is certainly evidence connecting contaminated vaccines to AIDS. And HIV is a cancer-causing virus. Robert Gallo, the co-discoverer of HIV in 1984, has clearly stated AIDS is an epidemic of cancer. Animal and avian viruses can contaminate vaccines and have all been studied as cancer-causing agents. And cancer and vaccine research would be much more difficult without the use of cell lines (to grow the "target" viral/bacterial pathogens on ~liora) , some of which are derived from cancer."--Dr Cantwell
-
-
ok just call me the thread killer....or is anyone up for a fight???
MWU-HAHAHAHAHAHAHA (p.s. that's my lame version of an evil laugh....)
-
-
aaronduckworth you are dead wrong about metals not being in "forms which do not react in the human body"
Aluminum hydroxide for one http://www.mothering.com/articles/growing_child/vaccines/aluminum-new-thimerosal.html
Robert Sears, MD, son of William Sears, MD has a new article and book about aluminum neurotoxicity (hint: kills neurons, you know, the stuff brains are made of?).Ethylmercury (the form in thimerosol but not the more widely studied form Methylmercury) : "Other observations clearly point out that various biochemical processes are inhibited at exceptionally low nanomolar levels of Thimerosal, including the killing of neurons in culture, the inhibition of the enzyme that makes methyl-B12, the inhibition of phagocytosis (the first step in the innate and acquired immune system), the inhibition of nerve growth factor function at levels not cytotoxic, and the negative effect on brain dendritic cells. It is also now quite clear from primate studies that Thimerosal, or more correctly, the ethylmercury from Thimerosal delivers mercury to the brain, and causes brain inorganic mercury levels higher than equal levels of methylmercury." Dr. Boyd E. Haley
Metals are NOT "what the vaccine is fixed to". Aluminum hydroxide is an adjuvant (look it up). Mercury in the form of ethyl mercury aka. thimerosol (aka thiomersol) is a preservative.
Maybe you should go back to "chemistry" school and learn how to site studees.
-
-
a humorous short video clip for all you folks from the Royal Canadian Air Farce.
also is here on Youtube, I like this version better because you can enlarge the screen if you like.
-
-
$75,000 Offered For any U.S. licensed MD to Publicly Drink Vaccine Additives
Jock Doubleday, director of the California non-profit corporation Natural Woman, Natural Man, Inc., has offered $75,000 to the first medical doctor or pharmaceutical company CEO who publicly drinks a mixture of standard vaccine additives.
The additives would be the same as those contained in the vaccines recommended for a 6-year-old according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines, and the dose would be body-weight calibrated. It would include, but not be limited to:
* Thimerosal (a mercury derivative) * Ethylene glycol (antifreeze) * Phenol (a disinfectant dye) * Aluminum * Benzethonium chloride (a disinfectant) * Formaldehyde (a preservative and disinfectant)On August 1, 2007, if no one has taken the challenge, the offer will be increased to $90,000 and will increase at a rate of $5,000 per month until someone accepts.
Dr. Mercola Dr. Mercola's Comments:
Not surprisingly, this offer has been on the table since 2001, but no one has been willing to take that toxic chemical cocktail -- except for the children who innocently go in for their routine vaccinations. With the average amount of loans for medical students now well in excess of $100,000 you might have thought some doctor would have tried to cash in on this so they could accelerate the payment of their student loans.
In addition to the vaccine additives listed above, others can include ammonium sulfate, amphotericin B, pig blood, rabbit brain, monkey kidney, betapropiolactone, tri(n)butylphosphate, and a laundry list of other chemicals. The mercury-based preservative thimerosal, in particular, is dangerous. Mercury is a poison and potent neurotoxin. Injecting it into a child, whose nervous system is rapidly developing, can have terrible consequences.
From the evidence I have reviewed and my own clinical experience it is clear that mercury is one of the reasons autism skyrocketed in the last 10 years. Autism has started to decrease now that some the vaccines have eliminated mercury, but be wary; many vaccines still do contain thimerosal, no matter what you may have heard.
And even those vaccines without thimerosal still contain an incredible number of dangerous chemicals. When the mercury is removed, it is typically replaced with another toxic additive that is frequently just as health-harming. The aluminum hydroxide used in many vaccines has been linked to symptoms associated with Parkinson's, ALS, and Alzheimer's. Phenols, methanol, isopropyl, and 2-pheoxyethanol are other ingredients which are corrosive or toxic.
-
-
You could be right that my response was atypically bad. However, unless you expose a child to measles, you can't guarantee that they will actually contract it during childhood. I was nearly an adult.
I was very healthy, and my mother is a health nut (probably like you, by the sound of it) and so all I ate growing up was organic, vitamin-laden food. I used to yearn for cookies and snack foods, but my lunch were always packed with whole-wheat sandwiches and fruit. Our family made its own butter and its own bread. You can't really sell me on the 'non-healthy lifestyle' angle; that's nonsense. I was, in fact, at home, being cared for by my health-nut, stay-at home mom, and not being given paracetamol or any other drugs. And, like I said -- I almost died.
She decided not to get a booster shot for me in high school. You can see how well that worked out.
The doctors didn't know what was wrong the first time she took me in, and she took me to the doctor again only when I started vomiting water and passing out whenever I tried to walk to the toilet. If we didn't live in a major city within close-range to hospitals and emergency rooms, I'd probably be dead.
You can keep telling yourself that vaccines are irrelevant. I am assuming, of course, that you are vegan and that you grow all of your own food using water you know for a fact not to be contaminated with any pollutants (and you know this because you test it yourself with chemical strips) and that you live in an alpine resort of some sort where there is no pollution of any kind and you eschew electrical equipment of any kind because of the potential damage caused by radiation. In addition, you certainly do not use deodorants or lotions (Think of all of the harmful chemicals that could be leeched into the body through your skin!). And of course you never drive a car or permit your children to go near one, due to the exhaust fumes, and you do not use plastics of any kind because you know about their potential estrogen-mimicking effects which could possibly upset your child's metabolism and disturb the hormonal balance in young male children.
Or could it be that the number of autism cases hasn't risen; it's the diagnosis that's risen. Just as, in the past, any number of other conditions have also been misdiagnosed. (Yesterday's bad student is today's dyslexic, and so on.)
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11014498
-
-
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11014498
Here is a correction to that last story link.
Oh, and no -- I'm not asthmatic.
-
-
For some reason this comment sheet doesn't seem to want to add the story link (at least, not on my web page), so I'll do it in parts:
http://www.economist.com /science /displaystory.cfm?story_id=11014498
This excerpt might be of particular interest:
"That this is fashion rather than reality is suggested by the fact that the explanation proffered in Britain has been that such vaccines provoke an immune response that damages the nervous system, whereas Americans have blamed residual mercury in the same vaccines."
-
-
this is in response to your quote above.
Read it well.
The World Health Organization (WHO) in 1999 classified veterinary vaccine adjuvants as Class III/IV carcinogens with Class IV being the highest risk," IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans: Volume 74, World Health Organization, International Agency for Research on Cancer, Feb. 23-Mar. 2, 1999, p. 24, 305, 310.)
According to the 2003 American Animal Hospital Association's Canine Vaccine Guidelines http://www.leerburg.com/specialreport.htm_ (http://www.leerburg.com/special_report.htm) (Page 16),
"...killed vaccines are much more likely to cause hypersensitivity reactions (e.g., immune-mediated disease)."
Could this be due to the combination of mercury (thimersol) and aluminum additives in the same vaccine?
Mercury (Thimersol) is commonly found as a preservative in killed, adjuvanted veterinary vaccines. The combination of the mercury (thimersol) and adjuvant components (aluminum hydroxide, aluminum phosphate) in the same vaccine are of considerable concern because of the reactive properties of aluminum, especially when in contact with mercury (thimsersol).
-
-
sorry, but you're going to have to do a lot more reading. If you want to be intellectually honest, and dispute this, I will listen. If you want to live in your predetermined bubble then by all means, close your eyes to the facts. (By the way, measles has a VERY specific clinical presentation, known to medicine for 100years plus...so I am left wondering. It sounds like what you had might not be measles if they were not sure!)
We have learned about the mechanism of immune system and brain function damage from the Hannah Polig case (you know, the U.S. court conceded that her autism was caused by the vaccines ?!)
-
-
http://www.newswithviews.com/Richards/byron54.htm >Please see above site for all the live links. ~Liora >By Byron J. Richards, CCN >April 10, 2008 >NewsWithViews.com
It is a colossal failure on the part of our government to not warn parents of the actual risks associated with vaccines. The blind insistence that vaccines are safe and effective is not supported by science, at least for a significant number of our children. There are now 25,000 children per year developing autism (1 in 150), a problem that has expanded in direct proportion to the increase in vaccinations. How do you know if your child is at risk?
The government’s primary goal appears to be to prevent parents, en masse, from refusing to vaccinate their children. To prevent such a “run on the public health bank” all caution is being recklessly thrown to the wind. American children are now the most vaccinated people in the world. What are we actually doing? The vaccination problem needs to be objectively solved so that public health is maintained, yet needless vaccine injury is avoided.
It should not be of any great comfort to parents that scientists hardly understand how the immune system works. The simplistic idea that vaccines offer protection against disease has an element of truth and a significant element of risk. This article explores the risk in greater depth. I will first explain what is known about the nature of the risk and follow with some natural options that can really help out.
Vaccine Adjuvants – A Double-Edged Sword
Giving a fully active virus as a vaccine would obviously cause the disease. On the other hand, a weakened or deadened form of the virus may not produce much of an immune response thereby making the vaccine worthless. This problem has been “solved” by combining the weakened disease with an immune activator called an adjuvant.
An adjuvant does not contain the disease; rather it is intended to initiate the first step in fighting an infection – the inflammatory response. This is like giving a general wake up call to the immune system. This can be done with an irritant or a more specific toxin the immune system is likely to recognize based on eons of exposure.
In the irritant category the most common adjuvants used in vaccines your child will get are salts of aluminum (aluminum phosphate and aluminum hydroxide). The safety of aluminum salts has been called into question following the poor health of many Gulf War Veterans who received multiple aluminum adjuvant vaccinations. Many scientists consider that their poor health was caused by the adjuvants in the vaccines they were given. In 2003 French researchers identified aluminum hydroxide vaccine adjuvants as the cause of a new disease consisting of pain and chronic fatigue; noting similarities to problems in Gulf War soldiers.
In a recent study mice were given aluminum hydroxide at doses comparable to Gulf War soldiers. Extensive testing was done of their cognitive ability as well as analysis of the nervous system upon sacrifice. The results showed that aluminum hydroxide caused nerve-related motor defects. Analysis of brain tissue showed 255% increase in inflammatory markers along with 35% loss of motor neurons.
It has been over a year since this study was published. Why isn’t the CDC doing the same experiment with the adjuvant load from their recommended vaccine schedule? Any substance that is adversely neurotoxic in an adult is likely to be more neurotoxic in the evolving nervous system of a baby. Not following up on this is gross negligence on the part of the CDC.
Another common adjuvant is bacterial endotoxin (the outer membrane of the cell wall of Gram-negative bacteria), also known as lipopolysaccharide or LPS. Since we have been battling bacteria since the beginning of our evolution, our immune systems recognize LPS as an invasion – setting off a powerful inflammatory immune system reaction. The toxicity of any bacterial infection relates to LPS.
Scientists at the National Institutes of Health freely acknowledge that the proinflammatory effects of adjuvants in vaccines “underlie many of the observed toxic effects.” What the new science shows very clearly is that all the inflammation that is generated by adjuvants is actually not necessary for activating the immune response.
This means that our government is sticking by a vaccine program that relies on firing a toxic shotgun at the immune system even though they know a laser-guided approach would have much less risk of vaccine injury from direct toxicity. The problem for our government is that they don’t currently have the ability to make safer vaccines; thus they blindly defend the safety of a very crude approach and refuse to conduct tests that would easily show the current vaccine program is not safe. It is quite clear that an inflamed nervous system is an undeniable feature in autism.
What Does NF-kappaB Have to Do With It?
Nuclear Factor kappa-B is the “brain” residing within every cell of your body, including cells of your nervous system. It is a gene transcription factor, meaning that it tells your cells how to behave depending on what is happening. When everything is running smoothly, NF-kappaB has its feet up on the lawn chair in a relaxed mode of operation. Under stress NF-kappaB initiates survival strategies. NF-kappaB is the main regulator of all inflammatory and immune responses, and is intimately involved with the healthy function of your nervous system. NF-kappaB is an active intelligence within your cells. The last thing you would ever want to do is mess up NF-kappaB. Adjuvants, due to their intentionally inflammatory mode of operation, activate NF-kappaB. This is done to ramp up the immune system so it can “see” the weakened virus in the vaccine. The million dollar question is: “How much NF-kappaB activation can a child take before their NF-kappaB system overheats and sets a fire in their brain called autism?” When NF-kappaB overheats it generates large amounts of inflammatory immune system messengers (like TNFa and IL6) and massive numbers of free radicals that damage nerve cells.
If a child is already acutely inflamed then the NF-kappaB pump has already been primed and the risk for vaccine injury is greater. Acute inflammation is caused by illness, injury, surgery, poor diet, and stress at home. This problem is magnified if the child had a history of inflammation while in the womb, was born prematurely, or had health struggles during the first few years of life. Even a previous round of vaccines can prime the inflammatory NF-kappaB pump. Environmental toxicity is another factor that cannot be ignored, as is the health of the mother prior to and during pregnancy. A mother’s obesity and eating habits have a significant effect on the nerve health of her child.
The main point to understand is that if the NF-kappaB system is already on the edge of overheating due to other factors, then the intentional pushing of this system with vaccines poses a serious risk to the child. Multiple vaccines given at one time, with multiple pro-inflammatory adjuvants, obviously increase the risk. Any person objectively reviewing the science on this issue could reach no other conclusion. The issue of NF-kappaB is so important that the next generation of vaccines will utilize it in an attempt to make less toxic vaccines (the laser-guided approach rather than the shotgun). While NF-kappaB-targeted vaccines will be less blatantly toxic, making them free of adverse side effects is another story altogether. Manipulating NF-kappaB is playing with the essence of the life force of a cell. At any given time there are numerous ons and offs relating to how NF-kappaB is naturally working to maintain health. The new vaccines will turn on the inflammatory aspect of NF-kappaB – which could easily upset the applecart in some other needed aspect of health.
No matter how good research scientists are at developing new vaccines, there will always be a percentage of at-risk-already-inflamed children who are likely to respond in a poor manner. Vaccine safety is not just about better vaccines; it’s also about protecting those who are most likely to poorly react to them. It is not possible to have a good public health policy for disease prevention that fails to take this fact into account.
Nutrients that Can Help
Mother Nature has provided an array of NF-kappaB modulating compounds. Unlike drugs, nutrients are far more compatible with genes as we evolved using nutrition to assist survival. When we provide our cells needed nutrients, NF-kappaB seems to know what to do with them. It is very clear that NF-kappaB uses nutrition to help cool itself off – like a tall glass of ice water on a hot day.
A diet rich in fresh fruits and vegetables is the foundation for NF-kappaB anti-inflammatory nutrition. When a mother eats this way during pregnancy and while nursing she is passing tremendous benefit to her child. It is now clear that such good health habits are passed along, a type of fetal programming of the taste system, wherein the child is now more likely to eat healthfully and consequently have better function of NF-kappaB.
On top of a good diet there are certain “super nutrients” that significantly help NF-kappaB behave in a healthy manner. These help NF-kappaB not get overheated or too bent out of shape. The following list of nutrients is by no means complete; I’ve selected them because I’ve used them for years and I know they work. There is plenty of science to support their common sense use, for young and old.
Such extra nutrient support can be used as needed to: 1) Calm down nerves from existing life stress or a pattern of wear and tear, 2) Calm down nerves following an inflammatory event, such as vaccinations, 3) Stabilize nerves that are struggling, 4) Generally improve cognitive function and nerve development.
The five nutrients I’ve selected for discussion are the tocotrienol form of vitamin E, the herb silymarin, grape seed extract, lipoic acid, and acetyl-l-carnitine. This is a treasure trove of NF-kappaB modulating nerve and energy support nutrients.
Tocotrienols are a special form of vitamin E with unique antioxidant properties that are in many ways superior to plain vitamin E. For example, a recent study showed that tocotrienols offered superior protection to the nervous system from methylmercury – a potent nerve toxin. It is very clear that tocotrienols work by modulating NF-kappaB, are a superior brain protecting nutrient, and are also helpful for inflammation in the circulatory system by reducing NF-kappaB.
Silymarin or Milk Thistle is an herb that is commonly used to protect the liver as well as to help the liver clear toxins. Silymarin also works by modulating NF-kappaB to turn down inflammation. One study showed it was able to stop the LPS induced toxicity in brain cells. Another study showed it stop the autoimmune-driven damage to nerves (demyelination) while reducing inflammation.
Grape seed extracts contain proanthocyanidins that have also been shown to directly turn off LPS toxicity by turning down NF-kappaB. Taking the extract before damage to the nerves, as from alcohol consumption, helps prevent brain damage. Taking the extract after damage to nerves is already in progress helps stop the damage. Grape seed extracts are another top choice for nerve protection. R-Alpha Lipoic Acid and Acetyl-L-Carnitine work synergistically to restore mitochondrial energy production in nerve cells. It is now believed that one factor involved with vaccine injury is poor mitochondrial function. Lipoic Acid is another nutrient now proven to lower NF-kappaB and reduce the inflammation associated with LPS toxicity. Acetyl-l-Carnitine has been extensively studied for its role in memory and cognitive function. It also exerts powerful nerve protection by a variety of different mechanisms.
As you can see, there is plenty of science to support the use of nutrition to help out the brain – and this is just a sample of some of the better options. These nutrients are typically quite easy to mix into juice, apple sauce, or yogurt. The tocotrienol oil can be squeezed from the softgel capsule directly into the mouth. Powders can be mixed in water and administered with a dropper during nursing. Moms can take any of these nutrients which will transfer in her milk. Nutrition excels at the safe and natural regulation of inflammation, including nerve inflammation, primarily by helping NF-kappaB work normally. © 2008 Truth in Wellness, LLC - All Rights Reserv
Byron J. Richards, Founder/Director of Wellness Resources, is a Board-Certified Clinical Nutritionist and nationally-renowned health expert, radio personality, and educator. He is the author of Mastering Leptin, The Leptin Diet, and Fight for Your Health: Exposing the FDA's Betrayal of America. Richards encourages individuals to take charge of their health, stand up for their health rights, and not blindly succumb to propaganda from the vested-interests who profit from keeping Americans sick. As founder of Wellness Resources, Inc. of Minneapolis, MN, an independently-owned fine-quality dietary supplement company since 1985, he has personally developed 75 unique nutraceutical-grade nutritional formulas. www.wellnessresources.com
-
-
http://www.nvic.org/doctors_corner/lawrence_palevsky_aluminum_and_vaccine_ingredients.htm
live links to some of the references are available at the above site.
The Doctor's Corner National Vaccine Information Center
Aluminum and Vaccine Ingredients: What Do We Know? What Don’t We Know?
by Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD, FAAP
Thimerosal, which contains the organic compound ethyl mercury, is a known neurotoxin and used to be a major ingredient in childhood vaccines. There are over 15,000 articles in the medical literature describing the adverse health effects on the human body with exposure to varying amounts and forms of mercury.In 1999 the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) urged government agencies to work rapidly toward reducing children's exposure to mercury from all sources. Because any potential risk was of concern, the AAP and the USPHS (United States Public Health Service) agreed that the use of thimerosal-containing vaccines should be reduced or eliminated.[1] The AAP recommended that it would be a good idea to remove thimerosal from vaccines, even though according to them, there was no evidence linking childhood health issues to thimerosal exposure from vaccines. In 2008, children are still being injected with thimerosal-containing vaccines, and old stocks of thimerosal-containing vaccines manufactured by 1999 continued to be administered to children up to 2003.
However, a growing number of physicians, scientists and parents maintain that thimerosal has played, and continues to play a large role in contributing to the emergence of multiple chronic illnesses in children and adults, including the neurological spectrum disorders. Aluminum, which is present in the environment and in many childhood vaccines, may be affecting the health of our children in ways that we have yet to understand.
Aluminum is a heavy metal with known neurotoxic effects on human and animal nervous systems. It can be found in the following childhood vaccines – DTaP, Pediarix (DTaP-Hepatitis B-Polio combination), Pentacel (DTaP-HIB-Polio combination), Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenzae B (HIB), Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), and Pneumococcal vaccines.[2] In 1996, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a position paper on Aluminum Toxicity in Infants and Children which stated in the first paragraph, “Aluminum is now being implicated as interfering with a variety of cellular and metabolic processes in the nervous system and in other tissues.[3] A review of the medical literature on aluminum reveals a surprising lack of scientific evidence that injected aluminum is safe. There is limited understanding of what happens to children when aluminum is injected into their bodies, including whether or not it accumulates in tissues and organs or is properly eliminated from the body. It is also unknown if genetic factors affect long term adverse health outcomes for those injected with aluminum containing vaccines. One in 6 children under the age of 18 in this country has developmental/learning disabilities, although the numbers may be higher since this 1994 report was published.[4] Ten percent of all children have asthma.[5] Growing numbers of children are living with different types of allergies. That means they have impairment, or even irreversible damage to their nervous and immune systems. Isn’t it possible that injected aluminum plays a role in affecting the health of our children’s nervous and immune systems, as the science we do have seems to suggest? What is even more concerning is the lack of accepted scientific data explaining whether injected aluminum interacts with other vaccine ingredients to cause harm to our children. Boyd Haley, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Kentucky completed lab experiments showing the damaging effects on nerve cells when he exposed them to aluminum, especially in the presence of other vaccine ingredients like mercury, formaldehyde, and the antibiotic neomycin.[6] [7] His data, however, have been ignored by the scientific, medical and governmental institutions making vaccine policies.[8] The scientific community needs to be doing these experiments in the lab before shooting kids with these ingredients and declaring unequivocal vaccine safety for all children. Aluminum is added to vaccines as an adjuvant so vaccines will produce a stronger antibody response and be more protective. It is this role as an adjuvant that may reveal to us the most significant relationship between aluminum in vaccines and the damage it imparts on the long term health of our children’s nervous and immune systems. A Little Science Review Children are born with a cellular mediated immune system (TH1 cells – T-helper 1), a humoral immune system (TH2 cells – T-helper 2), and a regulator immune system (TH3 cells – T-helper 3) as major pieces of their overall immune systems. These three arms are immature when babies are born, and begin to mature as children are exposed to their environments through their nervous systems, skin, airways and intestines. Antibiotics, poor nutrition, stress, exposure to heavy metals and other environmental toxins, and the use of vaccines, may interfere with the proper maturing process of these three arms of children’s immune systems. In theory, if the TH system is allowed to mature, and is not interfered with, children will develop a mature, balanced TH1, TH2 and TH3 immune system by age three. TH1 and TH2 develop to protect children from the outside world, producing inflammation and anti-inflammation responses to foreign particles from the natural environment. TH3 immune cells develop to keep the TH1/TH2 arms of the immune system in check so the body only produces the amount of inflammation and anti-inflammation that is needed to protect itself from exposures in the natural environment. When TH2 cells are activated properly, either directly via the natural environment, or through a direct signal from the TH1 system, the B cell arm of the immune system is then stimulated, leading to the production of the desired protective antibodies.[9] [10] It’s important for the reader to know that the hallmark of a healthy, mature immune system in children is demonstrated by an equal and balanced TH1, TH2 and TH3 immune response to the natural environment. TH1, TH2 & TH3 do not work independently, and require a very important synergistic relationship to function properly in our bodies. As soon as one or more of these three arms begins to over or under work in relation to the other, chronic illness begins to express itself. More on Aluminum Aluminum is placed in the vaccines to selectively target the up-regulation of the humoral arm (TH2 cells) of children’s immune systems, to drive the production of antibodies. The medical community leads us to believe that this production of antibodies is what imparts for children a protective nature against vaccine-preventable illnesses. Yet, this outcome may come at a cost. There are multiple articles in the medical literature demonstrating how chronic illnesses like allergies,[11] [12] asthma, [13] [14] [15] eczema,[16] lupus, [17] inflammatory bowel disease, [18] ADD/ADHD[19] and autism[20] all exhibit a skewed production and over-activity of the TH2 arm of the immune system. Similarly, chronic illnesses like juvenile diabetes mellitus[21] [22] and rheumatoid arthritis,[23] multiple sclerosis,[24] uveits,[25] inflammatory bowel disease,[26] and autism[27] [28] all exhibit skewed production and over-activity of the TH1 arm of the immune system. While aluminum in the vaccines is specifically targeting the over-activation of TH2 to encourage the body to produce antibodies, any direct or indirect effect of aluminum on the health or maturation of the TH1 or TH3 system is unknown. Yet, in many of these TH2 dominant chronic illnesses, TH1 and TH3 have also been shown to exhibit an impaired immune response to the environment.[29] Any direct or indirect effect on the health or maturation of the TH1, TH2 and TH3 arms of children’s immune systems from any of the injected vaccine ingredients, either due to their individual action, or due to their combined interaction, is unknown as well. The important synergistic, balanced activity of TH1, TH2 and TH3, in response to the environment is dysfunctional and impaired in all chronic illnesses. Children are not necessarily born with this dysfunction or impairment, although they may inherit the susceptibility from their parents. How then, do children develop the expression of these TH1, TH2, TH3 impairments, into what we describe as chronic illness? What is clear is aluminum pushes the TH2 immune system to over perform, and multiple chronic illnesses in children show immune systems where the TH2 immune response over performs, while TH1 and TH3 responses are also impaired. Is there a connection? By having this type of effect on the TH2 system, is aluminum in any way contributing to the development of these chronic illnesses in children; especially in those children from families with a genetic history of the above mentioned chronic illnesses? Does aluminum also affect the TH1 immune response, unbeknownst to scientists, clinicians and parents? Does aluminum play a role in impairing the overall synergistic, balanced activity of TH1, TH2 and TH3, which is a requirement for a healthy immune system response to the natural environment? There is no scientific evidence to clarify our understanding one way or the other, but the evidence may be right in front of us to conclude otherwise. Aluminum forces the undeveloped and immature immune system of infants and children to produce greater amounts of humoral immune cells (TH2) and antibodies, before their immune systems have a chance to adapt to the world in which they’ve barely had a chance to live in. Under these circumstances, the activity of aluminum appears to play a vital role in disrupting the maturation of the immune system in infants and children through its effects on TH2 and therefore, on TH1 and TH3. What effect this has on their overall health in the short or long term is unknown, but this model appears to help us understand how we may be contributing to the development of chronic illness in infants and children with the use of aluminum in vaccines. We also have little understanding of what might happen to the overall health of their immune systems if parents wait until later in life to expose them to vaccines containing aluminum, or if they’re exposed in smaller doses one at a time. How much of a role does injected aluminum play, either acting alone, or in conjunction with other vaccine ingredients and environmental toxins, in the selection and subsequent development of chronic illnesses, in a susceptible population of children, through the disruption of TH1, TH2, TH3? There is no science to answer this question because no one has investigated this issue. We have no scientific studies in infants, children or adults to help us understand the nature of the progression of TH1, TH2 and TH3 immune responses to any of the injected materials in vaccines. You cannot do research on questions that enough people don’t believe is worth asking, or are afraid of what the answers might show if the proper studies were done. It is unfortunate that we continue to drag out this dialogue by singling out each individual vaccine ingredient as a detriment to the health of our children. First thimerosal needed to be removed, despite contentions from the medical community that there were any real medical reasons to do so, and now aluminum. According to Environmental Defense[30] (formerly known as the Environmental Defense fund), all the vaccine ingredients are poisonous, carcinogenic or potentially harmful to the skin, gastrointestinal, pulmonary, immune and neurological systems in our bodies. What about formaldehyde? Are we going to wait until another brave physician or scientist writes about the damaging effects of injected vaccine-containing formaldehyde on our children’s brains before we are called to demand that formaldehyde be removed? Or about the problems associated with having Polysorbate-80 in the vaccines? Polysorbate-80 is used in pharmacology to assist in the delivery of certain drugs or chemotherapeutic agents across the blood-brain-barrier. What viral, bacterial, yeast, heavy metal or other vaccine containing ingredient need to pass into the brains of our children? Do they belong in the brain? Is that part of the needed immune response to protect our children from disease? Do vaccine materials pass across the blood-brain barrier with the help of Polysorbate-80? If so, are there complications from being in the brains of our children? Is this another connection to help us get an understanding of why 1 in 150[31] children have autism, or 1 in 6 children has developmental/learning disabilities? If we’re going to do justice to the topic of vaccine ingredients, we need to look at the potential harm of all the vaccine ingredients at once, and examine their individual effects on our children’s immune and nervous systems. Then, we can examine the interactive effects of the vaccine ingredients on human tissue, and evaluate the potential for harm, as Dr. Haley has already successfully done. How many more children need to be potentially harmed before we invoke the precautionary principle and the Hippocratic Oath – First, Do No Harm? If there’s no adequate science, and we have positive evidence of toxicity from aluminum, injected alone or in conjunction with other ingredients, and we have a potential model to understand why certain chronic conditions may be developing in a susceptible population of children, then injecting aluminum containing vaccines into anyone should stop right now until we have the proper scientific proof we need to say otherwise. We need the same scientific proof of safety for all vaccine ingredients and their interactions, and we need parents, scientists and practitioners to stand up and demand nothing less before we make matters worse. Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD, FAAP Pediatrician _______________________________________________________________________ 1 PEDIATRICS Vol. 104 No. 3, September 1999, pp. 570-574 [Return] 2 MOTHERING No. 146, January-February 2008, pp. 46-53 [Return] 3 PEDIATRICS Vol. 97, 1996, pp. 413-416 [Return] 4 PEDIATRICS, Vol. 93 No. 3, 1994, pp 399-403 [Return] 5 AMA, Vol. 297, No. 24, June 27, 2007,pp. 2755-2759 [Return] 6 General Vaccine Issues: Mercury, Thimerosal and Neurodevelopmental Outcomes: Affidavit of Boyd E. Haley, PhD, Professor and Chair, University of Kentucky [Return] 7 http://www.whale.to/m/haley.html [Return] 8 http://www.safeminds.org/pressroom/press_releases/2005-07-01-Haley-IOM-Response.pdf [Return] 9 IMMUNOLOGY RESEARCH, Vol. 20, 1999, pp.147-161 [Return] 10 ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE REVIEW, Vol. 8, No. 3, August 2003, pp. 223-246 [Return] 11 CLINICAL OPINION IN CLINICAL ALLERGY and IMMUNOLOGY, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2003, pp.199-203 [Return] 12 JOURNAL of ALLERGY and CLINICAL IMMUNOLOGY, Vol. 113, No. 3, 2004, pp. 395-400 [Return] 13 JOURNAL of ALLERGY and CLINICAL IMMUNOLOGY, Vol. 111, 2003, pp. 450-463 [Return] 14 ANNUAL REVIEW OF MEDICINE, Vol. 53, 2002, pp. 477-498 [Return] 15 RESPIRATORY RESEARCH, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2001, pp. 80-84 [Return] 16 CLINICAL and EXPERIMENTAL ALLERGY, Vol. 32, No. 5, 2002, pp. 796-
Beware big brother and his big bucks!