We’re not one to say “I told you so” (oh, who are we kidding) but reports are in from the CDC that the number of measles cases in the U.S. has risen to its highest level in more than a decade, with nearly half of the reported cases involving children whose parents chose not to have them vaccinated for the disease.
Granted, the number of cases is low, 131 total, but that’s only from January through July of 2008—and that increase is significant, considering that 2007 saw a grand total of 42 cases. Thus far, none of the newly infected have died, though 15 were hospitalized. To make matters worse, the AP reports, at least 17 children contracted whooping cough (which can be fatal to children) at a private school in the San Francisco Bay area, and 13 of them weren’t vaccinated against the disease.
Vaccination rates in 2006 were still at 92 percent, but this year’s uptick indicates that the Herculean (albeit totally misguided) efforts of the celebrity set and their anti-vax followers may be working, and children are getting sick as a result. According to the CDC report, in 63 of the new measles cases—almost all of them minors—the child or their parents had refused to be vaccinated for “philosophical or religious reasons.”
Luckily, reason and logic won’t go down without a fight: the Academy of Pediatrics has made educating parents about the safety and necessity of vaccines a top priority this year, and doctors are taking action, distributing detailed pamphlets and documents explaining why physicians don’t believe the shots cause autism. Still, with the glut of misinformation and sketchy “evidence” flying around, doctors may have a long, preventable-disease-addled road ahead of them.
August 23rd, 2008 at 10:31 pm
The “totally misquided” efforts you speak of are to educate parents about the fact that they have a choice, in every state, to vaccinate or not to vaccinate their children. Informed consent is essential in every medical procedure, especially if it carries risk of DEATH. Vaccination has risks, and no magazine or medical professional is going to convince me that the benefits outweigh them, because the medical community under reports adverse reactions to vaccines. Doctors have a hard time believing that a shot they give a child to keep him healthy could HARM him, so when kids become ill the day after they get a shot, it’s said to be a coincidence, or genetic, or the parent’s fault. If vaccines are so safe and effective, why aren’t the manufacturers or doctors liable if your child becomes injured by a shot?
All parents who refuse shots for their children aren’t only concerned about the thimerisol, but the fact that 1 in 150 kids nationally have autism, 1 in 6 kids has a “special need” and asthma and allergies are on the rise - and so are the vaccine mandates. How many is too many? New shots are in development for diabetes, MS, depression, obesity, HIV, addiction, arthritis, alzheimers, and more. How many of these will we be told our infants NEED before they can go to school or daycare?
Follow the money and be responsible for your own health. Do your own research and don’t rely on mainstream media with pharma advertisers to tell you what you need to do or who is right and who is wrong.
Join the fight for vaccination choice in NJ. http://njvaccinationchoice.org
August 23rd, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Since ‘86, close to $2 billion has been compensated to families and individuals for vaccine damage/death. If your child dies after an adverse reaction to a vaccine, you get a lump sum of $250,000. Thanks to Bill Frist, formerly of the Senate, his appx. $600,000 in pharma campaign $$ guaranteed that he would slip a clause into the Homeland Security Act during the 9-11 debacle, which indemnified drug cos. from any lawsuits from drug and vaccine reactions. In 2007, $91 million was paid out to vaccine plaintiffs, despite this clause. This is just the tip of the iceberg in that many vaccine reactions, which are estimated at over one million per year, and that’s conservative, are not reported by doctors unwilling to jeopardize their reputations or practices as filing an adverse event w/VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) puts them at risk for higher malpractice premiums among other concerns (see above). Inoculating one’s self or child w/a toxic serum of formaldehyde, aluminum, thimerosol (49.6% ethyl mercury) - yes, it’s still in there and cannot be filtered out entirely due to the protein antigens binding to the mercury), ethylene glycol (anti-freeze), phenols, carbolic acid, neomycin, streptomycin, squalene, dead animal pus, foreign viruses, etc., is hazardous and not without risk. 48 doses of 14 vaccines by age 6 is excessive and harmful. Witness the rise in autism (1 in 84 boys), 1 in 150 nationwide, 1 in 9 children asthmatic, diabetic, ADHD, etc. The correlative rise in these disorders is caused predominately by these neurotoxins and carcinogens which are accumulative and destructive. The vaccine dose for an 8# baby is no different than for a 200# man. Go figure…
August 24th, 2008 at 8:09 am
How come the FDA does not require double blind placebo controlled studies of all vaccines like other pharmaceuticals? Instead the children are the test bed. After seeing how many got ill from these shots the governement passed the 1986 law to protect them from law suits.
We stop toys from China with lead (which we should) but we have no problem injecting highly toxic substances directly into a child’s vein. And then when there is a reaction the pediatrician’s back the pharmaceutical companies and say it was something else and the parent is looked at for the cause.
Many other countries have parental choice but the USA (state by state) is mandating more.
The vaccine industry is a multi-billion dollar one. When I see our food going down nutritionally, children starting to get type 2 diabetes, many getting diseases earlier in life, the immune system beaten down and then the pharmaceutical industry stepping in with their magic vaccines and pills with the government (including the FDA & CDC) giving them the red carpet treatment, state representatives just going along instead of challenging them and physicians turning their heads to alternatives, I wonder about the dotted lines.
Until this governement removes the lobbyists from the steps of DC We The People don’t have much of a chance. It’s broken and time to be fixed.
August 24th, 2008 at 8:37 am
Maybe the rise is due to unvaccinated children…maybe not. But instead of just blaming the parents that choose to not vaccinate, why not listen to their concerns about the vaccinces and make them safer.
This issue seems to have two sides and nothing in between.
No one wants their child to die from the measles - actually, you never stated how many of the 131 children were severely injured or died - however no parent wants to be responsible for damaging their child with a possible deadly vaccine.
Instead of saying…ha ha told you so….how about helping us mandate what is safe for our kids.
August 24th, 2008 at 9:13 am
The article stated nearly half, I’d like to know what the other half was made up of.
My mom and I were talking the other day about my views and she said back in the day everyone got chicken pox and measles. There were only a few vaccinations and hardly any of the complications of today. Maybe we should be the ones saying….ha ha told you so….
August 24th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I recall hearing when the WHO said that over 95% of recipients receiving the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) shots contracted measles anyway. So basically the shots are useless at keeping an innocuous virus at bay. Boosters w/their accumulative toxins aka poisons are required and the measles virus, which ideally should be discharged through the skin, the body’s largest organ, is suppressed and takes up residence in the gut, causing all manner of intestinal disorders.
As a child of the 50’s-60’s, we all had measles, mumps, and chickenpox, which are necessary immune stimulants and as stated above, need to be discharged through the skin for full immunity. In utero, the baby absorbs nutrients and by products from the mother, the latter which needs to come to the surface of the skin in order to be discharged and eliminated fully. When this process is bypassed, as w/vaccines, the immune system is compromised and not allowed to be fully activated.
In actuality, the majority of mumps, measles and whooping cough (pertussis) cases are highest among the vaccinated. The immune system is doing its best to discharge these poisons so these reported cases should not be misconstrued as a cause for alarm or panic, which is often the case w/our state ‘health’ depts. which are in bed w/the pharma cabal of lobbyists and reps. My sister-in-law is a former pharma rep now pharmacist and has regaled me w/stories of how she would basically tell doctors which drugs and vaccines to use, no questions asked. She said they hire the brightest and most attractive to charm and cajole doctors into using their products. She was well aware of how manipulative the system is, but realized she was excellent at what she did (graduated magna cum laude from school) and could pull off a good salary with which to raise her 3 children. She said it’s just a matter of time before the system collapses as people wake up to realize the corruption and sleaze within the industry, not to mention the harm drugs and vaccines confer. She said to check out the advisory boards for Merck, Phizer, Eli Lilly, Sanofis-Pastuer (sp?), and others. Former pharma reps and lobbyists work both sides as well as former and current employees of gov’t watchdog agencies such as the FDA, CDC, American Academy of Pediatricians, NIH, etc. Collusion anyone? Conflict of interest?
August 24th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Big deal. My grandmother had measles, my mom had measles, I wish I had the opportunity to have had measles as a child, when it is best tolerated, so I would have lifelong immunity now and protection against allergies that the disease confers. (See Immunology Today peer reviewed journal article entitled “Give Us This Day Our Daily Germs”). What killed so many when measles was rampant was supressing fever, God forbid a child have a fever, and in many cases, inadequate nutrition and vitamin A deficiency. Get out the Tylenol and screw up their liver rather than let fever do its job!!! I had mumps, chickenpox, pertussis, and I’m glad for it. My UNVACCINATED son has also had chickenpox and pertussis and he’s still here, actually, neither disease was a big deal because he actually has a functioning immune system unlike his vaccinated peers. His fully vaccinated sister didn’t contract any of the childhood diseases during her short five and a half months of life but she did suffer from allergies, eczema, hyptonic hyporesponsive episodes (seizures)before she died.
I’ll take measles any day over the chronic illness, autoimmune disorders, autism spectrum disorders and sometimes death that overvaccination is causing today.
August 25th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
[…] health, according to the authors, is the recommended schedule of child immunizations. Since, as we’ve discussed before, neglecting (or refusing) to innoculate against preventable diseases is only going to increase […]
August 25th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
To begin an article with “we told you so” in a publication that prides itself on new and scientific discovery on an issue that has no definitive answer, is not only poor journalism, but extremely insulting to the people who read your magazine for unbiased information. There is too much pressure from the health care providers to mandate our choices regarding our children and our bodies. Gardisil is the newest effort by the drug czars to create profitabilty. There are many in this country that feel we are being forced to vacinate our children for profit at the detriment of our children’s health. Continue to be an information source, not a messenger of the corporations.
August 26th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
It surprises me that parents are being scrutinized for questioning the safety of vaccines. If medical and health professionals would like more parents to vaccinate their children, they need to answer the following questions with the support of sound safety data: what are the safety risks associated with the ingredients found in vaccines? What are the safety risks associated with administering multiple vaccines, sometimes multiple combo-vaccines, to infants and children on the current recommended schedules?
As a parent I am floored that no answers to these questions exists. Instead, I am to throw caution to the wind and hope that my child doesn’t come down with some of the adverse reactions that are related to the individual vaccines (e.g., mild-fever, redness and swelling at site, moderate-seizures, non-stop crying, high fever, severe-serious allergic reaction, long-term seizures, brain damage), let alone the unknown outcomes that may be associated with some of the ingredients found in vaccines and the administration of multiple vaccines.
As our children’s sole advocates, my husband and I pay very close attention to everything that our children eat, drink, or use as toys. Why would we treat vaccinations any differently?
September 24th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
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October 8th, 2008 at 6:19 am
You said in your opening statement…
“With nearly half of the reported cases involving children whose parents chose not to have them vaccinated”
You did not provide the numbers but in my math… nearly half means that the “unvaccinated children” were less than 50% … so at best according to your own statement 49% unvaccinated children got it where as 51% who were vaccinated got it meaning unvaccinated children were more successful at preventing the disease. … so what exactly are you “TELLING US SO?”