I am one of you. I hear, and feel, all the anxiety expressed in this forum about protocols not fully tested, past medical and scientific errors, environmental hazards, and the overwhelming responsibility of trying to stay ahead of the game and never take anything having to do with our children's welfare for granted. I too troll the internet, suspect conspiracies, read "alternative" takes on accepted norms.
That said: avoiding vaccination for our children is SO the wrong battle. If you want to talk about scary, actual science, focus on things like electromagnetic fields (EMF) and other forms of non-ionizing radiation that have troublesome, long-range connections to childhood cancers and other disorders. Do you know where the high-tension power lines nearest your residence or your child's school are? (It's easy to get an idea with Google Maps--look for the long narrow lines shorn of trees that extend for miles.) What about non-ionizing radiation from television and radio transmitters, which have a less convincing body of evidence about them than EMF, but still way more than supports the idea of harm from vaccines?
I've seen several outraged cites to possible formaldehyde in vaccines in these posts: well, has your house been constructed with standard plywood? (the answer is yes if it's less than 35 years old) Do you own any furniture made from MDF or particle board, like those lovely high-end train tables or shelves with toy-baskets? Then you have formaldehyde outgassing in your house all the time.
Have you ever read about what's required by law to be in our mattresses due to anti-inflammability requirements, and have you sought out organic alternatives for your children? Do you use lotions or creams on your children that contain parabens? If no to the former or yes to the latter, you're exposing your children every day, for many hours of the day, to substances that have been banned by the European Union for overwhelming scientific proof of hazard to health. (But they still vaccinate in the EU.)
Do you eat organic where it matters most, in the kid-pleasing foods (apples and potatoes at the top of the list) that retain the most toxic pesticides, no matter how well you wash them? These pesticides are retained in the body and build up over time into the sort of "body burden" that some of you are hypothesizing could be created by vaccines--though there is no evidence to support this with vaccines, but there is plenty for pesticides, cosmetic and other environmental toxins. (Check out the website of the Environmental Working Group.)
Do you ever use chemical sunscreens? Do you ever allow a child to talk on a cell phone held to his or her head?
People, what I'm trying to say is that it is a scary world, we love our children, and we want to protect them. We don't trust either the government or big corporations to do it for us or to tell us how to do it. But I firmly believe, from 9-plus years of following these issues assiduously with my own beloved children in mind, that vaccines are the LEAST of our worries. And indeed, that vaccines are wonderful. I am absolutely floored to hear people bragging on this website that they have neglected to vaccinate their children against serious or fatal illness. I will be at our county health department this weekend waiting in line to get an H1N1 (killed virus) vaccine for my 3-year-old and 8-year-old. It will even have thimerosol in it, because that is all that is currently available in my area. But you know what? Last week a child in primary grade in our rural school system died of this flu that disproportionately affects young children, and we know personally of children who have been hospitalized in quite serious condition over the past weeks. Multiple local children have not been killed or injured by vaccination in the past month. And we are not even talking about polio or tetanus or diphtheria here.
Read some nineteenth-century women's novels. Children died of these diseases all the time, and terribly, so such scenes are aptly portrayed. Talk to your parents and grandparents. Learn about other hazards to our children. Consider shifting your focus to demanding that high-tension power lines in residential areas be buried underground, which costs the power company money but removes the known health risks. Consider demanding that the FDA recognize the same studies that the European Union uses to regulate parabens and chemical sunscreens. Consider finding out if your school is broadcasting RF frequencies throughout its grounds all day so that it can brag it has a "wireless" computing environment. There is a lot of energy and a lot of goodwill on this board, but it is horribly and sadly and dangerously and discouragingly misdirected.
