Only two weeks ago i posted about why i didn’t vaccinate my son, and i 100% stand by this as a personal choice. However, the recent outbreak of measles reported in the media is driving widespread concern, including for my parents. So once again conversations have arisen in my family about the fact my husband and i decided against vaccinating. This is causing me repeated grief over this subject, and honestly, i’m sick and tired of talking about it, and defending a decision that only my husband and i are responsible for. I certainly didn’t think that this would be an issue that i’d be posting about again, yet alone this soon.
Anti-vaxxers get a lot of stick, but its not without strong rationale we choose not to vaccinate. There’s a lot of pressure of public responsibility to vaccinate, and i often see comments on forums such as (and i paraphrase) “Anti-Vaxxers are not only endangering their own children’s lives but the lives of those who can’t be vaccinated”, and “It’s everyone’s responsibility to get vaccinated to avoid an epidemic”.
Honestly, are these the comments we are making in a world of information at our finger tips?? My question is, where the hell is the governments, the doctors, and pharmaceutical companies public responsibility to fully inform individuals, and parents of the true risks of vaccination? Or is there none, because it would kill their profit margins? Afterall, vaccinations are patented, meaning big profits, and our GPs are paid commission for each vaccination they give. Could this be clouding their judgement? Statement-of-financial-entitlements-amendments-directions-2019. See a breakdown of payments per scheduled vaccination here.
I don’t judge or blame individuals for catching up on their jabs, or parents for following herd vaccination. Its scary to move away from, or question something that has always been deemed as the norm, most people don’t even think twice about it. Its just like drinking cows milk, it’s normal, right? Well no, not really, because that’s intended for calves to help them grow into big strong cows, just like a mothers breast milk is intended for infants growth and development. But heavy marketing campaigns tell us otherwise, and so our minds are conditioned to this.
For me, looking at real facts is important but finding relevant and factual information can be difficult, as there are plenty of websites and blogs out there that show bias information, even the NHS.
If you look at the vaccine schedule, and then click to find out more about a specific vaccine, lets use MMR as an example, most typically the “common” side-effects shown are swelling, redness, and fever; incidentally these are the only ones most doctors tell us about. However, if you dig a little deeper, you can find the side-effects that could be fatal or life limiting, (rare side-effects occur 1 in 1000 doses) such as; narrowing or blockage of the blood vessels, and seizures (fits). There are two vaccines available for MMR, find out more about the side-effects of each here pil.6307 / pil.1159.
During a period of research (as mentioned in “Why i didn’t vaccinate my son“, I came across a site called what do they know, which allows individuals to connect to the government and public sector for freedom of information request. I have been able to dig out some facts from the pool of available information; See below:
- From 2007 – 2017 MMR Vaccine Drug Analysis shows 18 fatalities related to the vaccination and 1,692 reported reactions
- In total there have been 8 fatalities from actual measles in the same time period (measles death report) . One of which has been marked as “….not known to be measles” and one other labelled as provisional data
- Human papillomavirus Drug Analysis shows 9 fatalities between May 2006 and April 2019, and 3,396 serious reactions
- Between 2012- 2017 the Td/IPV vaccine caused 2 deaths and 897 reported reactions. TD IPV Vaccine Drug Analysis Print
- From April 2008 to April 2018 there were 792 claims for Vaccine Damage payment in the UK, which only 12 were awarded, an award rate of only 1.5%. (more recent stat requests are pending on whatdotheyknow.com).
You can find more reports at the department of health site and what do they know.
In addition to the above sources of information, the below extracts are stats from The National Vaccine Information centre (NVIC), which is a US independent clearinghouse for information on diseases and vaccine science. This outlines that there were 459 deaths related to the measles vaccine in 2018. There were also thousands hospitalised or disabled as a result of the vaccination (this is in the US alone).
In my view these are pretty scary stats.
To help the public become fully aware of the rate of complications from vaccination, there should be an annual publicised report excluding medical jargon, and easily accessible via our GPs. In addition it should be a part of doctors duty of care to outline the number of annual adverse reactions to vaccinations, including fatalities before injecting our children.
I find it crazy that people are more concerned about the next stupid thing the Kardashian’s have said or done, or whatever sexist comment Donald Trump tweeted, than they are about things that can actually impact their life and importantly health.
You may not agree with anti-vaccination, and that’s fine if you understand the risks on both sides of the coin. Just remember ignorance may be bliss, but knowledge is power, and any decision you make about vaccinations should be a fully informed one.
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A MUM LIFE 