I think the reason that the debate on vaccines is so heated on this is because it's an intensely personal parenting decision that is also intensely political. My take on all this is philosophical. The dominant metaphor and paradigm for larger Western society is warfare. The medical industrial complex is steeped in that framework, treating disease and bacteria as enemy combatants, and valuing profit over evidence-based protocols. So that's the context in which the billion dollar vaccination industry was developed.
When we look at the mortality rate associated with any given disease, let's say polio, we'll see that the mortality rate was dropping with the advent of industrialization and better sanitation--prior to the introduction of a polio vaccine. The early polio vaccines were "live" and many people who were vaccinated contracted polio from the vaccine itself before they recalled it. Most pro-vaccine lit only looks at the period immediately after vaccines were introduced as "proof" that they work. Without that larger historical context, yes, it's easy to attribute the salvation of the human race to vaccines.
Even with the recent pertussis outbreak, if you look at the population dying, it's typically very poor children, and in Cali, undocumented Latino immigrant children, who are more likely to have poor nutrition and poor health. Yet rather than address the underlying factors of poverty and anti-immigrant health policies, the DPH is telling the general population to vaccinate.
Let's look at Gardasil as another example--this vaccine for females which supposedly prevents genital warts, an STD, which can lead to cervical cancer. This was fasttracked onto the market and is the controversial subject of mandatory vaccination laws. It's been around a few years now and the deaths or sterilization or other vaccine injury of young girls is only beginning to make the FDA take a second look. What is manifestly clear to me, is that vaccines are a massive human guinea pig experiment funded and fueled by the pharmaceutical industry.
Anyways, I recommend Aviva Jill Romm's Vaccinations book over Dr. Sears. She is a midwife, herbalist and now MD. She actually explains the fine print of what are the benefits, risks & adverse reactions to vaccinations (i.e. what your doctor is supposed to tell you) AND how the disease manifests and it's risks so that one can make a truly informed decision. It's the only book I found to discuss the disease itself.
Final tangent (sorry there's no returns in here): It's only very recently that it's become profitable to understand the immune system and commodify non-invasive healing modalities (i.e. indigenous or traditional healing systems). Hence the sudden commercialization of probiotics as the "friendly" bacteria after decades of vilifying bacteria and creating the self-perpetuated problem of "super-bacteria" which are immune to antibiotics. From a holistic standpoint, the human body exists because of bacteria; we live in symbiosis with bacteria and it's not until our body is out of balance that the bacteria become harmful. In that context, we need to re-evaluate the supremacy of Western medicine and its paradigm over all other traditional modalities.
And as parents, we have to weigh and balance all those personal, political, social, financial factors and make the best decisions for our families. (As a side note, in true service of humanity, India patented their traditional system of healing under Creative Commons license to prevent the continued theft of "intellectual property/patent" by pharmeceutical corporations.)
When we look at the mortality rate associated with any given disease, let's say polio, we'll see that the mortality rate was dropping with the advent of industrialization and better sanitation--prior to the introduction of a polio vaccine. The early polio vaccines were "live" and many people who were vaccinated contracted polio from the vaccine itself before they recalled it. Most pro-vaccine lit only looks at the period immediately after vaccines were introduced as "proof" that they work. Without that larger historical context, yes, it's easy to attribute the salvation of the human race to vaccines.
Even with the recent pertussis outbreak, if you look at the population dying, it's typically very poor children, and in Cali, undocumented Latino immigrant children, who are more likely to have poor nutrition and poor health. Yet rather than address the underlying factors of poverty and anti-immigrant health policies, the DPH is telling the general population to vaccinate.
Let's look at Gardasil as another example--this vaccine for females which supposedly prevents genital warts, an STD, which can lead to cervical cancer. This was fasttracked onto the market and is the controversial subject of mandatory vaccination laws. It's been around a few years now and the deaths or sterilization or other vaccine injury of young girls is only beginning to make the FDA take a second look. What is manifestly clear to me, is that vaccines are a massive human guinea pig experiment funded and fueled by the pharmaceutical industry.
Anyways, I recommend Aviva Jill Romm's Vaccinations book over Dr. Sears. She is a midwife, herbalist and now MD. She actually explains the fine print of what are the benefits, risks & adverse reactions to vaccinations (i.e. what your doctor is supposed to tell you) AND how the disease manifests and it's risks so that one can make a truly informed decision. It's the only book I found to discuss the disease itself.
Final tangent (sorry there's no returns in here): It's only very recently that it's become profitable to understand the immune system and commodify non-invasive healing modalities (i.e. indigenous or traditional healing systems). Hence the sudden commercialization of probiotics as the "friendly" bacteria after decades of vilifying bacteria and creating the self-perpetuated problem of "super-bacteria" which are immune to antibiotics. From a holistic standpoint, the human body exists because of bacteria; we live in symbiosis with bacteria and it's not until our body is out of balance that the bacteria become harmful. In that context, we need to re-evaluate the supremacy of Western medicine and its paradigm over all other traditional modalities.
And as parents, we have to weigh and balance all those personal, political, social, financial factors and make the best decisions for our families. (As a side note, in true service of humanity, India patented their traditional system of healing under Creative Commons license to prevent the continued theft of "intellectual property/patent" by pharmeceutical corporations.)
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