I am going to open up a huge can of worms. A few of my friends and I regularly discuss _mandatory_ vaccinations. They think I’m insane. They may be right 😛.
I believe that some of the confusion that may occur is that there are three groups of children I am considering 1)vaccinated 2)unvaccinated and 3)those who have caught and recovered from the actual disease a vaccination is aimed at preventing. It is this third group of children that I am particularly concerned about.
I posted what is below the series of ****s to a very pro_vaccinate Facebook group “I Vaccinate” where I give some background on why I am concerned about the vaccination business in the US, and then ask a question.
I have pasted the very long post and responses below in case the original link here was taken down. I then make some comments after the additional series of ****s
way down below.
********************************
Post to “I Vaccinate”
So I support ! Don’t always agree with; but I support the people that are against _mandatory_ vaccinations. And because of my support, I would like to get a view of the other side. So I came here.
Now I have always been fascinated by biology and I got piled higher and deeper in microbiology, molecular genetics. I have had year-long upper division classes on the immune system and even a lab class in the chemical nature of antibody interactions. I have also had year-long upper division classes in pathogens. Didn’t learn anything from them :-)but I know full well the herd immunity concept. And I was curious whether anyone out there knows these same subjects at a similar level yet still believes that it is not the government’s responsibility to mandate a medical procedure?
I am sure that I will receive a tidal wave of of enlightened responses but I would really appreciate a little knowledge behind those enthusiastic beliefs.
For example: Science knows that vaccines are far far less efficient than our own immune system in preventing disease. This is well known in the immunological community. But at a more basic level it is why you don’t have to have a booster if you actually got say measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, and a host if not most of the others :-) So my qiestion is shouldn’t there be an automatic opt out for a vaccination if you actually got the disease?
Part of the anti-vax communities frustration with mindless bureaucracy is that Public Schools (education for all) are mandating vaccination adherence. Shouldn’t schools accept a doctor’s certificate that you got chicken pox as even better than a vaccine? Blog note. Not in orig. post
This is not a rhetorical question. It is the primary reason for this post that I elaborate on in my comments way down below after the series of ****s. That is really what the statistics and the science tells us.
Have at it with all the _enlightened_ responses
Best
Bob
PuraVidaAquatic.com
From D.R.
You don’t have to have a booster to mmr, hepatitis b and polio either, in most cases.There is no natural immunity to tetanus, and immunity to pertussis is generally not life long.
Most states do allow exemptions on show of immunity to a disease, some if you can show you got the disease. It varies.
Blog note. Not in orig. post
Actually she is wrong. The CDC as of the date of this post specifically recommends boosters for the others and at least one booster shot for MMR and 2 or 3 for Hep B. And yes you really can get natural immunity to tetanus.Response from me
Thank you! I really was not talking about polio.
Which is an interesting disease because if you get it as a child it does not have the huge effect that it does if you catch it after puberty. One of the truly interesting things about unseen consequences is that polio was not a big problem until our improvements to the countries sanitation system bumped the average age of getting polio up to over adolescence. At that point it became a huge problem. What states allow exemptions on show of immunity? How can I find out more information about that?
Blog note. Not in orig. post
Second time I’ve asked for information on an exemption.Thank you for your response! ☺Polio is also interesting in that the initial attempts at a vaccine miscalculated the killing rate on the vaccine and the first vaccination protocols gave lots of people polio. Unforeseen consequences.
Thank you again and best to you.
From I.K.
I am sorry you didn’t learn much from your classes. Immunity to wild type pathogens are more robust because there is more pathogenic material, because actual cells are being infected, and because often secondary cells are also being infected. Unfortunately, this is also what causes the risk from infection. So, that is where vaccines come in. We can cause an immune response without those risks.Response from me
I.K.
Well the first response was very kind. Yours is a little less so. You obviously know more than I do about haptens, adjuvents and the cellular component of your immune system. And you’re certainly less snarky :-)
Response from D.R.
Polio can and did paralyze and kill children. You may have in mind the fact that it was less dangerous in infancy, but as sanitation improved, less infants got it, as your later part suggests.The vaccine solved that.
Response from me
I don’t believe that vaccinations were in place before the huge neuro-muscular problems (resulting in the classic iron lung machines) occured.
It seems reasonable to me that as sanitation improved and we thus bumped the average age of infection up that we started seeing those effects but it’s a belief because it’s what I was taught in grad school and I really don’t have any specific data for it and wasn’t there myself but it was also taught that the initial vaccines were generated by not understanding that killing is a log function and when they extrapolated to 0 (which is non-existent on a log scale) they miscalculated the amount of killing but I wasn’t there for that either :-)
Best
Response from D.R.
I think you mean the Cutter Incident – a serious blunder, I agree, which led to improvements in testing and monitoring vaccines, and never happened again. It’s part of how we got to our current state of very safe vaccines.
Response from me
D.R
Well I’m glad that you believe that it has never happened again. And I am seriously not being snarky ! I wish I still had the comfort of being sure that mistakes aren’t made but I can’t be so sure myself. Also I am less confident because I am excluded from the complete data set that the vaccine companies generate. Proprietary information :-) But I certainly do hope that someone will chip in with some specific information or website about opting out of a vaccination if you have actually had the disease.
Blog note. Not in orig. post
Third time I’ve asked for specific information on exemptions _if you have had the disease_ I am not really interested in a religious or moral or other exemption.
I am interested in a fact based scientifically based exemption if you have had the disease the vaccine would be targeting.
Best
Response from D.R.
Dr. Paul Offit has a book on the Cutter Incident that goes through it. Your description is pretty right, but the regulations were still improved after.
Response from me
D.R. yep that’s it. 1955 didn’t know the name of it. Thank you and the best to you.
Response from D.H.
https://m.facebook.com/CBICinc/Perhaps you would find the discussion your looking for here.Certification Board of Infection Control…
Response from me
D.H.
Thank you! I am looking into it.Blog note. Not in orig. post
Actually this site was not about vaccination options and had no information that I could find on the original question. At best it was not deliberate misdirection
From M.W.
You can opt out of any vaccination by showing immunity through a titer. The immune response by our bodies is also greater because more of the pathogen is coming into our body (and causing symptoms at that). Vaccinations are a much safer alternative since we can build immunity without experiencing all those nasty symptoms of the illnesses and diseases they protect us against.
Blog note. Not in orig. post
No specific link for a form. No specific details or a specific state. Not helpfull, just fuzzy hand waving.Response from me
M.W.
Wow you have to drag the kid through the procedure of drawing blood — and then who pays for all the lab work? This assay workup itself is far from perfect. What if it’s wrong.What? We have decided that there is a certain gauge and number of needle jabs a kid has to go through before they’re one of the club? Another medical procedure mandated by the state when a simple piece of paper from a doctor saying that you have had the disease would suffice?? I’m beginning to understand why the anti-vacc people really dis-like this mandate.
And this is the second time I’ve been given the silly response that there is more pathogen in one’s body as the reason why we elicit a better natural immune response. I was going to ignore the obvious irony of the response the first time but I think I will go ahead and respond now. So what you’re saying is that the vaccines could simply have more material in them to generate a far far more effective vaccine. And that the fact that the vaccine companies don’t provide such an easy fix is literally criminal. And the two silly thumbs up — you should feel proud.
There is far, far more to regulating our immune responses then just the amount of material present. It’s interesting but our digestive system plays a huge role.
Blog note. Not in orig. post
http://www.puravidaaquatic.com/wordpress/allergy-and-the-gastrointestinal-system/And for those of you who believe that accidents and outright fraud simply never happen in a big business, unfortunately I know very few big companies who would _never_ lie, cheat, or steal in order to make more profit. Cigarette companies and more lately VW come to mind. So everyone of you who fully believes that the vaccine companies are perfect and that “accidents” can _never_ happen, I truly and honestly hope you never have reason to find that that belief is wrong. And I hope that you never have reason to believe that your own child was badly hurt by a vaccine.
Sorry for the long rant but I have worried for a long time that the anti-vax people don’t really know much about what they are fighting about/for and I wanted to hear the other side.
Sigh
********************************
End of 48h
A day or so later I received another couple of posts neither of which addressed the original question of: is there a specific way for a anti-vax parent with a kid who has had some of the diseases to opt out of some of the vaccination protocols?
And then I Vaccinate stripped all the above from the site and blocked me 😮 Wow the first time blocked ever. My personal opinion is that there was some useful information there but maybe I did react poorly to what I perceived as snarky, shallow responses.
It has dawned on me though that the “I Vaccinate” site which strongly promotes getting vaccinations as doing ones civic duty to help your neighbors does not seem to be in the least bit interested in helping any “neighbor” who doesn’t agree with them. Does it seem that way to you?
Well that’s not entirely true. The person D.R. seems to be better informed than most and certainly was willing to supply information. Information that she wanted to supply to support her beliefs. But in two days no one ever supplied any specifc useful information regarding the actual question that would help the anti-vaxers.
Now a lot of people might say why should the I Vaccinate people help the anti-vaxers? You mean other than a desire for community and neighbors 😏, a primary motivation that the I Vaccinate’ers group claim is that the anti-vax people are making it unsafe for the I Vaccinate’ers kids. A few I Vacc’ers claim to actually worry about the anti-vax people’s kids’ safety –if that is not just an excuse… — good for them, to be a little bit less selfish in this world is a great thing!
But this is where the irony comes in, because there is no question scientifically that natural immunity is stronger, many immunologists would say far better than the immunity generated by a vaccine. And so you would think that any _intellegent_ I Vacc’ers would be jumping up and down happy — overjoyed to have a child who has been _documented_ to actually have had the disease come to their schools/community.
The kids with full-blown natural immunity do a far, far better job of protecting themselves _and those around them_ then the half-baked vaccinated kids. And I used half-baked only with respect to their immune system.
Wait. _What?_
Yes, The vaccinated kids are quite a bit safer _because_ of the anti-vax kids’ robust immunity. And that is something the anti-vax crowd should feel proud of and not try to minimize. But! keeping up with the chicken pox, mumps, measles, etc. parties should be a primary emphasis and goal for the anti-vax community. Immunity to these diseases is important! I fully support the people that want to believe that immunity should be natural but it is not something they should be sloppy about. We should all be trying to benefit the children in the world. It is not a child’s fault that _they_ picked the wrong parents!
One might also wonder why the I Vacc’ers, a group so enamored with community and neighbors does not do all they can to _help_ another child avoid complicated, scary and somewhat painful additional medical procedures. Even a simple blood draw _can_ have side effect and sometimes serious ones, and is certainly scary for the child. And yet the I Vacc’ers as a group do not seem to have this view. I may be wrong, but it does not seem to me that they support the idea of simply having a doctors written statement that the kid has had the disease. How about you?
There may also be much more information -about opting out if you have had the disease itself- that is out there which I am unaware of that someone on I Vaccinate _is_ aware of. But I did not block me from their site 😏. Tribalism! Having swallowed hook line and sinker a bill of goods without much true knowledge and understanding; their reaction _seems to me_ to be “I don’t wanna help _their_ kids!”
Tribalism. Pretty ironic. Especially as the anti-vax kids who have caught chicken pox, or measles, or mumps from parties (not exactly my idea of a party 😯 ) as pointed out above, generate a huge benefit _to_ the vaccinated kids.
Tribalism! This is something permaculture needs to fight tooth and claw because this kind of behavior is not about living with the world.
All you permaculturists out there, how about instead of feeling morally superior to another person with a different opinion then yours, try to _gently_ supply some useful, _helpful_ information. And when I say gently; trying to bash someone else over the head with your opinion is not _gently_ supplying useful information.
Supply links to solid forms or application pages not foolish simplistic opinion pages like this one ☺. And if we do that, maybe we can start short-circuiting the stranglehold on news that the big companies have. Learn some facts. Turn off the TV, the political opinion/analysts, and Facebook sites that only agree with your already cemented opinions and take a night school class in ….biology, microbiology, or immunology. Learn some facts about your own bodies. They are yours for awhile.
Best to you all
Bob