Watch video of mercury damaging brain cells

Mercury destroys brain cells.
Many vaccines did contain mercury; some still do.
Therefore, many vaccines destroyed brain cells, and some still do.

A=B
B=C
Therefore, A=C

It's quite simple, really. Click here, or copy and paste this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85tgwh3HpsM

Again, mercury is NOT out of all vaccines yet. Review the table here. ... And ask yourself what in the world is going on at FDA and CDC. I know I am.

The Elias Tembenis Walk for Autism

2 men walking
3000 miles across
15 states to benefit the
1 in 150 children with autism
in the memory of
1 very special little boy

A worthy cause! Click http://www.nationalautismassociation.org/eliaswalk/ to be informed and learn how you can donate. The walk begins in May.

Thanks, Ginger via Erica for the link to this heroic feat in support of autistic children and their families.

Amish Autism

This is my life: I get on my computer to check for one email or look at my online banking statement, and I get sucked into another vaccine story. Before I know it, half an hour has passed. Or, I'm feeding my son lunch and while he sits in his chair munching Cheerios, I stare off into space thinking of the next person to call, the next thing to write about, or what question I should next leave on the CDC's voicemail and never hear back from them on.

But anyway, here's the story that sucked me in today. Thanks, Dan Olmsted, of Age of Autism.

"So where are we, friends? We're badly in need of the whole truth and nothing but – the kind you get from a powerful, expensive, independent, transparent, urgent study of vaccinated-versus-never-vaccinated American children." -- D. Olmsted

Think when you read, or "Mother, should I trust the government?"

Unless you sit around listening to Pink Floyd albums all day, you might not be in the habit of picking apart patronizing government statements like the one the CDC issued after Journalist David Kirby zinged them for not answering vaccine safety questions in March. But if you want to see how it's done, click here to read Ginger Taylor's response to the CDC statement. (And no, I don't mean to infer that Ginger listens to Pink Floyd :) )

Ginger's son has autism, and not only has it forever changed their lives, but it flung her headlong into the "rabbit hole" of fighting for truth in the vaccine-autism-other-injuries debate. If you don't yet read her blog, you should!

By the way, Mr. Kirby wrote a book, Evidence of Harm, all about mercury in vaccines, to which the CDC said they would reply about 3 years ago. They have yet to do so.

Hepatitis B --- No Child of Mine...

... is EVER getting a Hepatitis B vaccine again. Ever! My firstborn got it, and I pray he will not succumb to any of the proven complications. [EDIT: This vaccine is given at the hospital after birth, at one month and at six months.]

I just finished watching the segment on Hep B in Dr. Sherri Tenpenny's DVD, Vaccines: The Risks, Benefits and Choices, and I need no more convincing. If you want a good starting point for researching vaccines, get this DVD. You will not regret hearing what she has to say.
Dr. Tenpenny is an osteopath and put over 6,000 hours of research (yes, she counted!) into collecting vaccine information from medical journals. As she said, this information is "hidden in plain sight." .... All right, my commercial is over. (Do you think people would hate me if I gave them this as a baby shower gift? :) ha ha) Here is what I learned. Keep in mind her data comes from medical journals and the CDC.

Is my child at risk for Hepatitis B?
Considering that the virus is transferred by blood and is endemic in populations of IV drug users, prostitutes, homosexual men, and homeless persons, I kinda doubt it. If he should end up in one of these lifestyles one day, I'll talk to him about making some better choices.

How dangerous is it?

• 50% of exposed people develop no symptoms and have lifetime immunity. Sweet.
• 30% develop flu-like symptoms, recover, and have lifetime immunity. Not bad!
• 20% actually develop symptoms bad enough to trek to the doctor, where they are diagnosed with the virus. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, jaundice and increased liver enzymes.
• Of those 20%, 95% recover completely, but 5% become chronic carriers.

The CDC touts this as one of the first "anti-cancer" vaccines because they say it protects from the possibility of getting carcinoma and/or liver disease from Hep B. BUT ... that cancer/liver disease shows up anywhere from 10-30 years after the virus, and only in 25% of the 5% of that 20% above (that's a really small #!). And since those folks who got it are probably going on with their same unhealthy lifestyles, you gotta wonder if perhaps their behaviors were further weakening their immune systems and setting them up for disaster.

Is the vaccine risky?
YES! According to a study in the Journal of Autoimmunity, "There is no doubt that the new recombinant hepatitis B virus vaccine has the ability to trigger autoimmunity." (Dec. 1996) Dr. Tenpenny has many adult patients on long-term, chronic disability from Hep B vaccine, and this autoimmunity finding is littered throughout the medical journals. There was even a case of a 35-day-old baby getting Kawasaki disease (a blood vessel disorder) one day after his 2nd dose of Hep B!

Could this be the reason Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis is affecting one in four children under 16?! Type I diabetes is also an autoimmune disorder Dr. Tenpenny mentioned. (She explains molecular mimicry and how antibodies from vaccines can turn on our tissues.)

The CDC says that any "presumed risks" of Hep B vaccine should be weighed against the "expected risk of acute and chronic liver disease." Yet they are inoculating our infants as part of a U.S. strategy to "eliminate" Hep B transmission, with no proof that it is safe for infants (the manufacturer only tested on 5- and 10-year olds and testified before Congress to this fact). AND the CDC says the same size dose should be given to preemies, full-term infants, older children and adults. We don't even do this with Tylenol!

Dr. Tenpenny said that she would devote her life to getting this vaccine off the pediatric schedule if she could. (I wonder how much money that would take, to defeat the power of the billions of dollars of Big Pharma?)

I hope this information is helpful to some of my fellow concerned parents out there. Let them come after this mother bear the next time I'm birthing a baby ... I'll show 'em what it's like.

:) (gratuitous George Costanza quote)

Thanks, Shannon, for letting your buds borrow the DVD. And thanks, Michelle, for letting me borrow it from you!

Links to Package Inserts, Mercury Content

My new acquaintance, Alicia, has found these helpful tables on the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Web site:

Thimerasol (Mercury) Content in Vaccines

Vaccine Package Inserts

I have also placed these links in my sidebar, so you can come back any time and find them easily.

Alicia has an interesting post about mercury on her blog - click here to read it.

Just How Much Money?

Here's a nice little synop of how much money we're actually talking about in the business of vaccines: http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/30/news/companies/vaccine/index.htm

"'I expect [the vaccine industry] to more than double' by 2010, said Butler, noting he expects Merck and Wyeth will sell some $10 billion worth of vaccines a year by 2010..."

"Gardasil, on the market for nearly a year, is the potential blockbuster that helped the New Jersey-based Merck pull out of its Vioxx withdrawal blues. Since the Food and Drug Administration approved Gardasil last June, Merck's stock has surged 57 percent, outperforming S&P gains of 21 percent."

"Gardasil sales totaled $365 million in the first quarter of 2007, helping Merck reach nearly $1 billion in total vaccine sales for the quarter ... Analyst projections have ranged up to $4 billion in annual sales for Gardasil, assuming the government mandates widespread vaccinations for girls."

"Merck showed that you can make quite a bit of money with vaccines, and I think that got a lot of people's attention," said Funtleyder.

... Now keep in mind that those very pharmaceutical companies are one of the most powerful (top 2?) lobbying groups on Capitol Hill, and you may see where part of the vaccine safety problem lies. They do their own vaccine research, present it to the FDA, lobby lawmakers, traipse through doctor's offices and hospitals, advertise to children on TV, publish ads in magazines.... the list goes on.

I'm just saying. Think about it. Are vaccine manufacturers just nice old philanthropists generously coming up with new ways to do good to our children out of the kindness of their hearts? Or are they in business? Did you ask for new vaccines? Or did they just give them to you?

Calling the CDC

The other day I placed a call to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) by using the number given on their Web site (800-311-3435). I wanted to talk to somebody about the fact that Prevnar and other vaccines have never been tested for carcinogenic effects, mutagenic effects or fertility impairment (as the manufacturer's insert states).

I was hoping they could tell me why this is acceptable to the CDC, that the vaccines they recommend we administer to our children are not tested for such things. I am genuinely curious and am not trying to be incendiary. Though, it does seem to me that these things ought to be tested...maybe I'm missing something, but I want to know this before it's shot into my child.

The woman I reached obviously worked in some sort of call center and was not going to be able to answer detailed questions that required more than a script to reply. She repeated part of my question back to me to verify what I was asking, but didn't really get the whole thing. I repeated the question (Why is it OK with the CDC that certain vaccines are not tested for carcinogenic effects or fertility impairment?) and was put on hold.

She tried no less than three times to refer me to the vaccine manufacturer, but I told her I really wanted the CDC to tell me why. I asked if there was someone else I could talk to, but, according to her, it was not OK to give me any names of any CDC employees nor to give me a different phone number. Apparently, I had reached a general information line (CDC-INFO), and unless I had someone's specific name, I would continue to reach this line whenever I called. How convenient for the CDC.

After I persisted, she put me on hold again and came back to read me a paragraph about the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). This was mostly useless, but one thing that stood out to me was that she actually stated that vaccine manufacturers/CDC can't know everything about a vaccine's safety until it goes to market. Great. So we really are one big science experiment! (I'm only kidding.... partly. Let's remember the long history of medical mistakes such as treating acne with X-rays and pregnant women with thalidomide. So please forgive me if I'm skeptical.)

At the end of the call I had no answer to my question, but did get a phone number for the manufacturer of Prevnar (Wyeth -- 800-572-8221) and a phone number for VAERS (800-822-7967). And a very strange sensation that I had just been subdued by the giant wall of government bureaucracy.

After a little more digging, I found a REAL phone number for the Immunization Safety Office within CDC (404-639-8256). I left a voicemail two days ago and am not sure if I will ever hear back. I'll let you know.

I also called the National Vaccine Information Center this morning to ask them some questions about pending legislation by Rep. Dave Weldon (R-Florida) and what we as simple parents can do to tell our government officials we want safer government policies. I am awaiting a call back, but will post that info when I get it.

What I Read Today

Vaccine Myths
http://www.nvic.org/myths.htm

SIDS deaths in Idaho (Sept/Oct 2007) leads parents to blame vaccines
http://www.vaclib.org/news/shelly.htm

This is not the first time I have read about a connection between SIDS and vaccines... This is one of the many reasons I keep researching...

Click here for Google search of "SIDS, vaccines"

Blogger: Facing Autism in New Brunswick
"Why the (Vaccine) Debate Rages"
http://autisminnb.blogspot.com/2007/06/autism-why-vaccine-debate-rages.html

3:00 a.m. Conviction

Yesterday, I posted about my phone calls to the CDC to try to ask questions about vaccine safety. I have removed the post until I can think about my words a little further... I woke up at 3:30 this morning thinking about it...

I have had the conviction lately that I am doing a poor job encouraging my friends to trust in the Lord above all else as we search out answers on vaccinations. In fact, I have not mentioned the Lord at all! Please forgive me.

Ultimately, Scripture teaches us, even "the king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord," (Prov. 21:1), and whether that king (or government official) does good or evil, the Lord's purpose will stand. "The Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble," says Proverbs 16:4. When we are distressed by government policies or decisions (ex: failure to fully inform us of risks), ultimately, as Christians, we can place our hope in the Lord and His promises. He has made us and crafted all our days, and His thoughts toward us are precious! (see Psalm 139)

We need God's wisdom
James 1: 5 says, "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him." God promises to help His people by giving us wisdom. When we pray, we can rest in this promise and have faith that God will do it.

For me, as I know is the case for many of my friends, the information on vaccine safety, once you start digging, is overwhelming and frightening. I have a general plan of how to go about weighing the risks, but it takes a lot of work to find the information I feel I need. In the end, I just will have to trust that God led my husband and me to the right places, and we will have to make a decision for our son.

We need humility and the fear of the Lord
One thing that stood out to me last week was Proverbs 15:33: "The fear of the Lord is instruction in wisdom, and humility comes before honor." In my interactions with others regarding this topic, I truly want to honor God by recognizing my shortcomings and the fact that I do not have all the answers. I humbly reserve the right to make decisions for my child, and need to humbly respect others' rights to do the same for theirs.

In addition, I will need to remain open to new information that may affect my son's health.

We need to trust God for our children
The topic of man's free will and God's sovereignty has filled entire books, so I can't do it justice here. But I see that I need to make the best decision I can as a parent while also trusting that God is in control of my son's life. For me, I have many doubts that certain vaccines are safe or necessary for my child. Instead of just trusting God as the needle goes in, I feel the burden to look into it more. This may not be the case for everyone. To me, it relates a little to walking down a dark alley at night. I trust God with my life, but there are certain risks I do not take.

I also need to believe that God is good and that His will is perfect, even if harm would befall my child. Jesus said, "I have said these things to you that you may have peace. In the world, you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world." (John 16:33) I am encouraged to know that God is not surprised by the troubles we have, but instead tells us to expect them and "take heart" in knowing that He is the ultimate Overcomer. One day, we will see his victory over all sin and injustice.

Psalm 1 speaks of the man whose "delight is in the law of the Lord," and how that man is "like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither." Lately I have felt a little that my leaves have been withering, and that I need to take some time to soak next to that stream once again. I need to devote a little more time to life outside this issue, and the posts may drop off for a while.

My next resource for personal research will be the Vaccine Safety Manual by Neil Miller. As I have read one of his other books, I believe that this new one (published this year) will be a complete coverage of all current vaccines, their risks, and full information about the diseases. He has included about 1000 studies from medical journals and other sources and I expect that everything will be footnoted. Since I love to highlight on paper, I think this will be more helpful to me than dancing all over the Internet looking at different sources (though I'll keep doing that, too).

If you are looking for more spiritual guidance and refreshment, I would refer you to my friends' & pastors' blog, The Blazing Center. It is one of my favorite daily reads and is always concise yet thought-provoking.

May God give you peace as you trust Him for your children.

On Capitol Hill

Barbara Loe Fisher, vaccine safety advocate since the early 1980s, has a re-cap of an important meeting that took place on Capitol Hill on Friday, April 11th, on her blog, Vaccine Awakening. I am glad to know that lawmakers are opening their doors once more to hear from parents of injured children, as well as other Americans concerned about the "crisis of trust" in the vaccination schedule. Like, Barbara, though, I hope it "was not just an old day dressed up in new clothes."

I hope to make some calls to Capitol Hill this week to find out a little more about how we, as concerned parents, can lobby our elected officials (remember, they work for us!) to take this very seriously.

Some thought-provoking quotes:

"SafeMinds board member Jim Moody, JD, commented that a lack of credible scientific studies demonstrating vaccine safety makes the application of one-size-fits-all vaccine policies on the entire child population an uncontrolled 'scientific experiment.'"

"Attorney Patty Healy, who was a former biotech scientist and is NVIC's Director of Counseling, told the Committee that when she became a new Mom eight years ago, she looked at the science for vaccine proof of safety and found it so lacking in substance that she made the difficult decision not to vaccinate her daughter."

"Young parents today, who trusted doctors to give them good advice about how to keep their children well, do not understand why their children are never well when they have been given twice as many vaccines as children in previous generations received. They want a full-scale, transparent scientific investigation into all potential environmental causes of autism and other chronic immune and brain disorders conducted by extra-mural researchers who are not connected to vaccine makers and policymakers with a bias toward existing policy."

Read the whole post here.

Measles

This blog can not possibly serve to dish out all the information that exists about measles, or any other disease for that matter. But here are a few sources I have found helpful regarding the first "M" of MMR:

• National Vaccine Information Center MMR page
• Think Twice MMR page
• Book: Vaccine Safety Manual by Neil Z. Miller (I am reading the previous book, Vaccines, Autism and Childhood Disorders, but I imagine this one is much more extensive)
• DVD: Vaccines: The Risks, The Benefits, The Choices by Dr. Sherri Tenpenny
• Congressional Testimonies from doctors and parents

You can read the MedLine information on measles here.

The CDC handout from the doctor's office (PDF downloadable from http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side-effects.htm#mmr) reveals the following risks with the vaccine:

Moderate Problems
• Seizure (jerking or staring) caused by fever (about
1 out of 3,000 doses)
• Temporary pain and stiffness in the joints, mostly
in teenage or adult women (up to 1 out of 4)
• Temporary low platelet count, which can cause a
bleeding disorder (about 1 out of 30,000 doses)

Severe Problems (Very Rare)
• Serious allergic reaction (less than 1 out of a million
doses)
• Several other severe problems have been known to
occur after a child gets MMR vaccine. But this
happens so rarely, experts cannot be sure whether
they are caused by the vaccine or not. These include:
- Deafness
- Long-term seizures, coma, or lowered
consciousness
- Permanent brain damage

(Kinda sounds like autism to me....) Here, the CDC's own literature says that they do not know if permanent brain damage, coma, seizures, or lowered consciousness are actually caused by the vaccine. My question is, if I can't rely on them to be sure, why should I rely on the statement that reactions are rare? (Not to mention, shouldn't they be sure??? Have they become that lackadaisical about public health?) The FDA and CDC know that the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is flawed. Doctors are not required to report. And anyone whose child has had a reaction to a vaccine knows that it takes a lot of arm-twisting and hospital tests before a doctor will even consider that it was the vaccine.

Here is a quote from the meeting minutes taken from the Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines Conference Call in March of last year (2007). I got this right off the HHS Web site:

"VAERS also has its weaknesses. VAERS is often missing data or has inaccurate data. There is underreporting to VAERS. Accuracy rates are not known. VAERS is better at detecting events that occur in close time proximity with vaccination, than events with long latency periods. There is a lack of an accurate denominator or number of people that are vaccinated. There is also a lack of a control group. All of these weaknesses result in the near inability to assess causality."
-- Dr. Ann McMahon, Food and Drug Administration (italics mine)

(Aside: It was estimated in a Journal of the American Medical Association study that reporting of adverse events may be as low as 1% to 10%. There were 128,035 adverse events reported in a less-than-five-year time span (around the middle of 1999-beginning of 2004). So does that mean that there were possibly 1.28 million to 12.8 million adverse events in those 5 years?)

The manufacturer of the MMR vaccine warns that it "has not been evaluated for carcinogenic or mutagenic potential." (Source: Physician's Desk Reference, 55th edition, as quoted by Neil Miller) ... Not been tested for the possibility to cause cancer?

"Severe afflictions affecting nearly every body system -- blood, lymphatic, digestive, cardiovascular, immune, nervous, respiratory and sensory -- have been linked to this 'preventative' inoculation." -- Neil Miller, Vaccines, Autism and Childhood Disorders

Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, a pediatrician for almost 30 years, wrote in his 1984 book How To Raise a Healthy Child...In Spite of Your Doctor that the measles vaccine side effects included "even a relationship with Hodgkin's disease and cancer." He describes the reluctance of some doctors to even vaccinate their own children during a Los Angeles measles epidemic: "Unlike their patients, who weren't told, they realized that 'slow viruses' found in all live vaccines, and particularly in the measles vaccine, can hide in human tissue for years. They may emerge later in the form of encephalitis, multiple sclerosis, and as potential seeds for the development and growth of cancer."

Dr. Mendelsohn also noted that "in a 1978 survey of 30 states, more than half of the children who contracted measles had been adequately vaccinated." The World Health Organization has said that the chances of catching measles are about 15 times greater for those who are vaccinated than those who are not. Similar data on the inefficacy of measles vaccines is recorded by Neil Miller, whose sources are the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and several editions of the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Here's why I do not think this particular disease is worth the risk of the associated vaccine for my child. (Again, this is just me; this is not medical advice.)

In 1920, 1.6% of measles cases ended in death.
In 1955, it was only 3 in 10 million.
Vaccination began in 1963.
(Source: MMWR 4/2/1999 - thank you, Dr. Tenpenny)
So the disease was already on its way out before vaccination began.

Much of what I have read indicates that measles is a pretty innocuous disease that rarely leaves behind any complications in healthy, well-nourished children. Treatment consists of bed rest, drinking fluids, and administering calamine or other lotions to relieve itching. Vitamin A has also been shown to be an important part of helping the body to fight the disease. Doctors will bring up the risk of measles encephalitis (brain infection), but I question the likelihood of this occurring in a healthy child. This is just one parent, assessing the risk for my child. (Well, and my husband makes two parents, deciding together!)

Entire books and Web sites are dedicated to the CDC/FDA/HHS/AAP/AMA-denied link between autism and the MMR. But it didn't take me much reading to be haunted forever by those three little letters. Once you start reading testimonies from parents just like you, who love their kids like you love your kids, you just can't look back. I will never look at public health policy in this country the same way.

I leave you with an excerpt from one of the Congressional Government Reform Committee meetings, that took place on April 6, 2000. The words of Rep. Dan Burton (R-Indiana):

"Liz Burt was one of the hundreds of parents who contacted us. Her five-year-old son, Matthew, has been classified autistic. He was developing normally. At age 15 months, following his MMR vaccine, he began to regress. Since the time of his vaccination, he’s had chronic diarrhea. This is very prevalent in autistic children. He also didn’t sleep on a regular basis for over three years. Liz took her son to numerous gastroenterologists in prominent medical facilities in the United States. with no resolution. Finally, this past November, Liz took her son to London, to the Royal Free Hospital. A team of medical experts there examined Matthew. They felt that he had a bowel obstruction. To the family, this seemed impossible since he had constant diarrhea. An x-ray indicated that Matthew had a fecal mass in his colon the size of a small cantaloupe. After the obstruction was cleared with laxatives, Matthew underwent an endoscopy and colonoscopy. The lesions in Matthew’s bowel tested positive for the measles virus."

You do the math.

[EDITED 5/2/2008 TO ADD: OK, now I see who Liz "Burt" was - her name is actually spelled "Birt," and she was a champion for autistic families. I found a bunch of information on her after her tragic death in 2005 on Adventures in Autism.]

A New Film on Autism

Thanks to Age of Autism for this information.

Thank you, David Kirby, for being just plain awesome. I love that when the CDC finally issued a statement on vaccine safety after Hannah Poling's case hit the news, they felt it necessary to try to discredit you throughout the whole thing. Do you think you hit a nerve? :)
[EDIT: If you decide to read the CDC's mantra in that statement above, be sure to read this breakdown by Ginger Taylor, M.S., who runs the Adventures in Autism blog. She nails it.]

AUTISM YESTERDAY
Available on Amazon ($20)

"At a time when Big Medicine, Big Government and Big Media are trying hard to make the vaccine-autism debate go away, along comes a quiet little film like “Autism Yesterday” to throw a wrench in the establishment’s best laid plans to stifle the pesky vaccine chatter once and for all." -- David Kirby

"None of These Parents Should Have to Be Here"

At the suggestion of one of my commentors, I am adding Age of Autism in my link box. I have visited the site only a few times, but really appreciate their knowledge & expertise. Through these autism blogs are whole underground networks of "collateral damage for the vaccine program," as Wendy Fournier put it (Wendy is President of the National Autism Association). Those brave and hurting parents who are standing up to the "machine" of public health policy and demanding that American children not be harmed anymore. I grieve for parents like them, that their doctors weren't more up front about the real risks of vaccination. But I also see much hope for them in the support they have in one another and the progress being made to treat autism.

"Jenny asked parents to take the microphone and talk about their children. We heard the same heartbreaking story over and over again. Our baby was perfect, he met all of his developmental milestones and after receiving multiple vaccines, we lost him.

"I stood in the back of the room with tears streaming down my face, shaking uncontrollably with profound sadness for these parents as I saw the pain on their faces and heard their voices crack with emotion."

"...as I looked around that room, all I could think was that there were so many people there - this should have been over long ago, and none of these parents should have to be here."

-- From Meltdown in Cherry Hill (where Jenny McCarthy spoke to a crowd of families with vaccine-inured children) on the Age of Autism blog

This Week

I've spent a lot of time so far linking to groups and people who are on the "I question the safety of vaccines" side. As a parent, I also have many questions about the diseases themselves, and if it's even safe for me to consider not vaccinating. I'm not crazy, and I don't want my child to get sick with something that could kill or permanently harm him, if there's a vaccine that can safely protect him from it (key word: safely). I mean, that would be nuts. I hope to get more into that topic in coming posts.

This week, I really need to take time at home to research the pros and cons for the diseases and respective vaccines for my son's upcoming doctor's appointment.

Entire books have been written on this subject, so I don't expect my blog to cover it all completely.

And let me say again, just to be clear, that this blog is just one person's quest for information. I am not here to give medical advice; I am not qualified to do so. I am not claiming to be an expert. I'm just, let's say, opening the lid on a large Pandora's Box of questions and chronicling what little I can. Hopefully it will be helpful not just to me, but to others who have the same questions.

Jenny McCarthy - Autism Parent and Spokesperson

I didn't get to see Jenny on Larry King Live, but there's this sweet site called "YouTube" ... I still haven't watched this, but would like to sometime. Here are the links. You can also just read the transcript, which is a lot faster.

"Thousands and thousands of us are screaming the same thing. And this is going to go down in history as the time when mothers fought the giants to save their babies." -- Jenny McCarthy

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Check out some of the Pro's

And not as in, the opposite of "con's" ... but as in some of the people who have been researching and fighting for vaccine safety for years, many of them, parents of autistic children who regressed after vaccination. I have linked to some organizations in the box to the right, and describe some below. Check them out when you get a chance.

1) Barbara Loe Fisher and the National Vaccine Information Center. Ms. Fisher "founded this non-profit, educational organization in 1982 with parents of vaccine injured children. Developed strategy for and has led a national, grassroots movement and public information campaign to institute vaccine safety reforms and informed consent protections in the public health system." (more) She also runs the blog Vaccine Awakening. (Did you see that it says 1982? This has been going on a looooonnng time... I was 4 then. She's definitely a Pro in my book.)

2) Generation Rescue - this one that Jenny McCarthy is affiliated with (along with TACA). (Perhaps you've seen Jenny on Oprah or Larry King Live recently.) There is lots of information here regarding treatment and evidence, and I think this organization is the sleeping giant the CDC has awoken. They have a powerful public awareness campaign (check out the newspaper ads on their homepage) and are helping sponsor a large rally in Washington, D.C. on June 4th. They also have a list of suggestions for things to ask and do when vaccinating.

3) TACA - Talk About Curing Autism. Also a very professional Web site, and provides a support network for parents of autistic kids. They have a long list (300-some pages) of autism studies and related medical conditions. (To see this, scroll down until you get to "Vaccines" in the far-left column, mouse over it, and click the top link that appears.)

I didn't know until last month that autistic kids often have bowel problems, sleep problems, and gluten/casein allergies. It is quite obvious that autism has with it some very distinct biological markers, and it just makes me wonder - are they all symptoms of the same biological disturbance that caused neurological problems? And do children with "classic" (non-vaccine-injury) autism also have these problems? ... Well, questions for another day...

By the way, autism is not the only vaccine side-effect I hope to explore on this blog...

The Gentleman from Indiana

Since today is my son's birthday, I don't have much time to post, but I wanted to put up a link to some very compelling Congressional Committee Meeting testimonies. Rep. Dan Burton (R-Indiana) has been a champion for parents and their injured kids on Capitol Hill. I know they are long, but even just looking at the April 6, 2000, testimony would be a good start.

I found these through a book my chiropractor lent me. (Most who've blazed this trail before me know that chiropractors often --or always? -- do NOT vaccinate... I just found that out, but I am curious to know what they are learning that the medical schools are not teaching M.D.s ...) The testimonies, given to the U.S. Committee on Government Reform, are unfortunately not available on the Library of Congress Web site (THOMAS), because they do not archive committtee meetings. I spent a few minutes looking for them on the Government Printing Office site and the Reform Committee site but couldn't spend any more time. Thank goodness for vaccine safety groups and moms with autistic kids who are fighting tooth and nail to keep this information from being buried forever in some drawer in Washington.

Dear Prudence

If there are anecdotal stories of people living in a building that's about to be demolished, prudence (in the form of plain old-fashioned care for fellow human beings) demands that we investigate thoroughly before detonating the explosives. To ignore reports from those folks close to the building, who claim they've seen homeless families going in and out of it, would be callous, dangerous, and just plain wrong. Hopefully the project foreman would order an extensive walkthrough of the property on the day of scheduled demolition.

So it is with anecdotal stories of parents who are claiming their children have been harmed by vaccines. If the CDC and American Academy of Pediatrics were prudent, they would thoroughly investigate the claims of these families before administering any more vaccines. This is what I would do, if I held the key to safeguarding America's children. Why are we, as a nation, even risking it one more day??

When I watched the video clip on WJLA of Hannah Poling's case, the images of happy, alert, healthy children descending into isolated, tormented shells of their former selves struck me like a punch in the gut. There is no way I would even want to subject my child to that risk. Isn't having measles a better option? Or the flu, or even mumps? ... I wasn't so sure about polio and life in a iron lung, but I was determined to find out. (By the way, polio, I have found, does not actually equal "iron lung." Only 0.04% of polio exposures lead to this fearful yet overexaggerated fate. That's straight from the Merck Manual - a doctor's reference book. Click here.)

As with many decisions, there is a logical path to weighing the costs and benefits. My questions at the outset, were:

1) Is autism truly a cost of childhood vaccination? (I found very quickly, YES. Though you won't hear that straight from most doctors, the AAP, or the government.) See http://generationrescue.org/studies.html, http://www.nvic.org/Diseases/Autism.htm, and/or http://thinktwice.com/autism.htm just to whet your palate.

2) What is the gravity of the risks of not vaccinating versus the risks of vaccinating? (I am still digging through the data, but so far am pretty sure neither measles nor mumps nor rubella are even worth vaccinating against, considering the 20 year history of parents' reports of MMR causing great harm to their children. More on those diseases, and others, later...)

3) Will my child be allowed to go to school if he is not vaccinated? Does the law tell me I must vaccinate? (First, yes, he can, at least in PA. All it takes is a signature. And second, no, it is not the law. I'm not sure yet where the command comes from, but for now, it isn't in the law. Let's hope our elected leaders preserve our right to make our own medical decisions.)

And so, I am on this path. Trying to collect enough information as a lay person to protect my child's health because the government does not appear to be doing so -- at least, not to the extent that I would like. Stay tuned.

Where to Start?

I am creating this blog a couple of days before my son's first birthday and about a week and a half before he is due for his 12-month check-up (and next round of vaccinations). I am in the midst of a personal research project to determine if the vaccines my son is to receive are riskier than the worth of the benefits they are supposed to give.

My project started in the middle of last month, when my husband told me about an acquaintance whose autistic daughter had been developing normally until age 2 1/2. The day after her vaccines were administered, apparently, she changed completely. I had heard rumors of vaccines being linked to autism, having worked in a therapy office that treated autistic kids before our son was born. I had even asked the nurse at our pediatrician's office about the rumored vaccine-autism connection, but she replied that no evidence was out there to really legitimize it. (On that day, I nervously sat through the shots going into my screaming baby, but when he seemed OK afterwards, I sort of forgot about the whole issue.)

Ever since my husband came home with that news, I have been researching almost every day. What I have found has forever changed the way I think about vaccinations. As of today, I plan on halting all vaccines until I feel comfortable with them again (if ever). Now, let me just say that even as I type that, I never thought I would be in that boat! In college, I majored in Environmental Health Science; my studies included Immunology, Microbiology, Epidemiology, Toxicology and many more human health / public health policy courses. "CDC" is a name I admired and trusted and I even hoped, in my budding career plans, to work for them one day.

After college, I worked for a public policy organization in Washington, D.C., and got a little smarter about politics and the supposed neutrality of government bodies. ... The CDC has a major problem on its hands right now, and I am not the only one who has lost trust in them.

My current research project began the week after Hannah Poling's case hit the headlines. I watched this video (Source: WJLA - ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C., March 6, 2008) and my concern level reached new peaks.

I next asked a friend for information, knowing that she had researched vaccines a lot and chose not to vaccinate her children. (I never really knew why, but respected her decision and figured she had good reasons.) She gave me some links to the National Vaccine Information Center and a set of DVDs she recommended. She also asked a challenging rhetorical question:

"If shots are so great, why is there a federal injury compensation program in place?!"

Good question indeed.
Many questions remain. Many more posts to come. The baby has awoken.