I never expected to start along the road of a vaccine advocate, just to be a mom. Honestly, when I had my daughter 11 years ago I just vaccinated because that is what the Doctors told us to do. It wasn't until I was pregnant with my son last year that I learned there was a anti vaccine movement out there, claiming that vaccines did more harm than good. That made pay attention! I went on a few of their support sites, on Facebook and began reading, following the links that they posted to support their claims all the way to the end, reading the actual scientific studies and articles. If there was no science behind their claim, I discounted it. Researching the articles often taught me that the actual science that was out there supported vaccination and the anti vaccination theories have been dis-proven again and again. They claim the same things over and over, but when you try to argue, you are automatically assumed to be working for "big Pharma", or Merek. They don't listen when you argue that anything in inappropriate quantities is toxic, or deadly. Inject air into your veins and you'll die, drinking to much water at once can kill you as well.
Then I noticed that a lot of the anti vaccine self proclaimed "experts" were conspiracy theorists. They essentially claim that disease isn't so bad. Most of it can be cured with homeopathic treatments. Just last night I was
SHOCKED to see someone suggest on a Facebook page that polio is curable with homeopathy and vitamin C injections. So don't vaccinate against that. Another tread was saying, if your child gets measles, let the fever burn. Treat with oregano oil, and don't worry about that. And yet another mother was saying that her child got rota-virus, was in the hospital, but she is still glad that she didn't have the child vaccinated because now he is immune. One google search taught me that you can get rota-virus more than once, and you can even catch a mild case of it if you are vaccinated, and I'm sorry, but when my daughter was in the hospital as an infant with RSV, I'd have done anything to spare her that! This page will delete any comment that doesn't support their views! So the 17 year old mother who posted the question walks away thinking that disease isn't so bad.
Many of the most active anti-vaxers spout off about government conspiracy. And that every government in the world is in on this, and the scientists and that any of us who are against them, must be from "big pharma". Yet, they are often the ones with no profile pictures, and obviously fake names. (Or parents with a wicked sense of humor.) Wild and crazy accusations, such as "they are injecting us with transmitters so that they can track us all by satellite." (Umm... what??)
There is one page in particular on Facebook that will delete any comment that doesn't support their anti-vaccination views. No discussion, if you don't support us, then we will delete your comment. I don't understand that thinking at all! There are people on that page believing them because everyone else does!! Yet they preface every post with :
"All information is provided
on an as-is basis. "REMOVED THE PAGE NAME" does not
take any responsibility for comments published by its readers. Readers
publish comments at their own risk.
Verified Official by facebook©
This
page or the owners/founders of it are not liable or responsible in any
way for your actions or inactions. Use your head and your own
discretion.
Please check with your medical professional ( MD,
ND, Midwife, Chiropractor, DC, etc..) before taking medical advice from
someone on this page. this page holds NO responsibility for illness,
allergy, etc if you take a supplement/etc because someone on the
"internet " told you to.
Be wise..don't immunize, but also don't take something or give your kid something because you read it on the computer :)"
And yet, they are the worst at deleting any comment that doesn't agree with their views. They advise people on how to lie on exemption forms, and how to get around the rules. One mother was putting her un-vaccinated child into a state funded day care and wanted to know how to get around the state required rule of sending out letters to the other parents informing them that there were un-vaccinated children in their class. Thank god for that law, because I would want to know!
One tactic I personally love is when they start with the wild
assumptions about you, calling you uneducated, or attacking your diet,
are saying you must love to take medication. They don't like hearing that my degree isn't in Google, and that I delivered two children, one 9lb 8oz, the next 9lb 12oz, with no pain medication. I don't run them to the Dr for antibiotics, and I know what CSA's are, support farm to table, and use ingredients when I cook. That when my daughter was diagnosed with ADHD, I researched and chose not
to medicate and instead chose diet and therapy to treat her. They really get mad when I respond to their "Well, she wouldn't have ADHD if you didn't vaccinate." with "Then explain to me why she was re tested 4 years later, and 5 months after her 4 booster shots for middle school and found to no longer have ADHD. Diet and therapy worked."
Many articles that I have read are suggesting that the un-vaccinated are actually putting the rest of us at risk by allowing the diseases to mutate enough so that the vaccines are not working. I have read shocking statistics that were summarized by Parenting Magazine: 1 child dies of a vaccine preventable illness every 20 seconds. 1 in 600 un-vaccinated children will be hospitalized with a vaccine preventable illness. There are vaccine reactions, but they are much less common and range from mild, say a fever, to a more severe reaction, are 1 in 100,000.
Then my mother asked about Helen Keller. Would she have chosen vaccination with that risk, or what happened to her.
So Thank You anti vaccination crowd. You have pushed me to do serious research. I am now a vaccine advocate. I will ask every parent, before allowing a playdate, "is your child current on their vaccinations?" because that is MY right. It is MY right to protect my children to the best of my ability. I'm not sorry if I hurt your feelings, and you can tell me over and over "if your child is vaccinated, you have nothing to worry about." I know that is BS because you and your friends have forced me to do enough research to where I also know that vaccines are not perfect. You can still catch something that you have been vaccinated for, you'll just generally get a less severe case. And to be quite frank, I dread having to tell my kids that one of their friends has died because their parents went along with a fad, therefore I won't encourage, and will discourage that friendship, no matter how nice a person you are on the surface.
And my education continues. A group I am in on Facebook also includes one of the Authors of
"Your Babies Best Shot: Why Vaccines are Safe and Save Lives" . A book I will be ordering and reading cover to cover.
And before you tell me that Facebook isn't a viable source of research, remember I am following actual links- to actual articles written and published by medical experts, scientists etc, and I have a safe forum to go to now that will help me understand the few things that are way over my head, and help me to put the context of the article into a whole report, without pulling out one or two lines that support my bias view.
(Like the woman who told me that you can't catch HIV from donor milk - and posted an article from Fox news that said that- with a link that I followed to an actual report that quite clearly stated that you COULD catch HIV that way unless you were on antivirals. But that is an entirely other argument!)
** Commenting is turned off for now. This blog is public, and children of friends read it. I won't publish hate speech and foul language. To be honest, I have had enough of that on my Facebook page and messages!**
*Update 9/5, I was banned from the Proud Parents of UnVaccinated Children. page on Facebook. ROFL- I told them that I wouldn't risk the lives of my children on a FAD and they banned me from commenting anymore. I find it both HILARIOUS and SAD that the admins of that page will ban someone for speaking their mind, but yet let people spread outright lies and garbage about vaccinations. They removed the entire post that got me worked up- it was a picture of pen caps. It said that there were more deaths from choking on pen caps than from whooping cough. What an outright lie.
