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  • From: "Linda Shewan" <linda_shewan@yahoo.com.au>
  • To: "'permaculture'" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Ignore the anti-vaccination mindset
  • Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2015 04:09:24 +1100

Apologies to the list - this is my final response.

Hi Toby,

I wrote my initial email way too quickly... you are correct re some factual
errors. I also want to re-iterate that I am not anti-vax. I agree with the
theory of vaccination, I simply don't believe the ingredients in the current
vaccines mean they are safe to inject into the human body. Again, I can
point to neurologists and doctors questioning the same things, they are very
easy to find if you want to look at alternative information. That's all I do,
try and find credible information from as many sources as possible to make an
informed decision. Admittedly sometimes it is hard to know what is credible.

I have answered your statements below with my intentions perhaps not
elucidated well originally, hopefully I will do better this time:

----------
As a former immunologist (who is agnostic on the vaccine debate, but a
supporter of good data collection), I would point out some errors here.
Vaccines are not “chemicals.” The active ingredient is disabled cells from
the disease organism; that part of them is made from life itself, so the
active component is as natural as any living thing.

> reference to injecting the plant was meant as an analogy not a scientific
> statement. Apologies.

> Some vaccines are still live - like the measles vaccine which 'sheds' and
> there have been cases of people getting measles from the vaccine itself.
> Polio was live until quite recently and again, people got polio from the
> vaccine.

> Another very active ingredient, though not 'alive', is aluminium which has
> increased in use over the years as an adjuvant - that is to kick start the
> immune system into reacting - creating a 'hyper-reaction' to get the
> response required. There are neurologists very concerned about the overuse
> of aluminium in this way.
> http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/attacking-ourselves-top-doctors-reveal-vaccines-turn-our-immune-system-against-us.
> I have not researched the science of this article yet but would be
> interested in your analysis of it.

Second, plants do not have immune systems. But animals do. Injecting an
animal with an antigen absolutely, provably can render that animal immune to
a disease. Vaccination is a biological control, and the same processs occurs
constantly in nature when an animal gets a disease and then becomes more
immune to it. I had measles. I am immune to it now.

> as I said, I agree with the theory of vaccination, simply not the way it is
> practiced today, I also believe we massively overload a babies immune
> system with the number of vaccines given. I agree that catching the wild
> disease gives lifetime immunity, a vaccination does not. The measles
> vaccine actually lasts better than any other I believe but still not at the
> level of natural acquired immunity.

The “deaths from vaccines” data come from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting
System (VAERS) and does not measure confirmed vaccine-related deaths, but
simply reports a death that occurred at some time after the person received a
vaccine. So the number of VAERS deaths will be higher than the number of
confirmed deaths caused by a vaccine. For example, there are roughly 100
VAERS deaths from measles vaccines reported per year, but most of those fall
apart on follow-up (look at the VAERS website).

> Factual error apologies - death and injury of 2699 not all deaths...
> the data came from the US Health Department’s National Vaccine Injury
> Compensation Program, which has just released its figures for 2010. The
> Program received submissions from 13,797 families who believed that a
> vaccine injured or killed their child; although most of the cases are still
> under review, 2,699 parents have so far been compensated and a link to a
> vaccine has been established. The most dangerous of the vaccines is the DTP
> (diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis), which was the subject of 3,979 claims,
> including 696 deaths. (I have not independently verified this information).

Measles deaths in the US from 1900 to 1950 averaged between 350-750 per year
(plus all the brain damage from the disease). After the vaccine, deaths
dropped to 2 per year. Even if the 100/yr vaccine deaths is accurate—and we
know it is much lower—that’s better than 350-750.

>it's not better for the child that died or was permanently injured from the
>vaccine but would have been ok with the disease. And many more children are
>injured for life as well. My friends child got MS from a vaccine. Not
>reported I believe but her doctor knew and advised her against vaccinating
>any further children she had...

Of course vaccines have side effects in a percentage of those using them. So
does eating any food (enjoy your wheat and dairy!) or taking any medicine,
herbal or otherwise.

> I'm not convinced with the increase of standard of living, nutrition etc
> that the side effects are not worse than the disease. Certainly if we raise
> our children on real food in a healthy environment. It's a toss up and it
> probably depends on which child it hits which side of the fence you sit on
> I think. As with my friend above. Or the mother in my 'mothers group' whose
> child started fitting the night he received his first vaccinations. She was
> distraught, looking death in the eye almost every day while doctors told
> her she should continue with the schedule. Or the mother that I met at the
> park whose child screamed non-stop for 3 days solid with back arching pain
> after a vaccine (one of the triples, can't remember). Just some real life
> examples.

I am not arguing for vaccines here. I am arguing for looking at all the data,
especially at data that refutes your hypothesis (which is one of the true
joys of science: having a colleague come up with a zinger that utterly
demolishes your idea, so you come back with a much stronger hypothesis).

> I actually enjoy being challenged, respectfully. I love acquiring knowledge
> and am happy to change my opinion if new information convinces me.

The problem with self-educating is that we tend to gather only information
that supports our position, and ignore (or nowadays, fail to search for) info
that refutes it. Data that refute a position are far more important than data
that support it. This is particularly a problem in highly educated people who
have not been taught how to think critically, and there are many of them.
They are great at data collection and confirmation bias, and terrible at data
analysis. Of course it’s the educated who don’t vaccinate: they read all the
scary stuff.

> just one example. These people are a community of scientists
> http://vaccinefactcheck.org/2015/03/25/los-alamos-scientists-shun-vaccinations/
> .

> it's not true that self-educated people only look to what supports their
> position. I had no position when I first started studying it before my
> children were born. I had concerns but certainly no fixed idea. I read all
> the govt literature. I read the vaccine inserts from the drug companies, I
> read books and I talked and talked to people on the street both before
> making a decision and after. That was fascinating though anecdotal of
> course.

The main problem with not getting vaccinated, regardless of how you feel
about the safety of vaccination, is that those who do not get vaccinated
become the sole carriers of diseases that would otherwise become extinct or
extremely rare, like measles in the US (the deaths are all in the
unvaccinated). Vaccine avoiders put others at risk, and make other people
sick. So avoiding vaccines is a social problem, and not so much a health
issue.

> if unvaccinated were the sole carriers of disease the outbreaks in fully
> vaccinated populations would not occur as they have multiple times over the
> past years in different areas of America. I hear what you are saying but
> the herd immunity arguments just don't stack up to me. We have a much
> higher rate of vaccination now than in the 70's in Australia and yet more
> cases of whooping cough for example. It doesn't make sense with the herd
> immunity argument. The other thing is that no vaccine is 100% effective.
> There are always people that receive the vaccine that still get the disease
> and spread it... sometimes a large percentage are vaccinated against the
> disease they catch.
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/herd-immunity-myth-or-reality by Tetyana
Obukhanych Ph.D. in Immunology

> http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/lawrence-solomon/merck-whistleblowers_b_5881914.html
> - We trust the drug companies to do their own trials. We just don't have
> honest information. How many times do these companies have to be caught out
> before people start questioning their data. We should always be
> questioning..

I agree that it would be great to have a magic pill to protect us against
disease, I just don't believe vaccination in its current form is that pill. I
only want the right to make my own choices for myself and my family. That's
all.


Linda


Toby
http://patternliteracy.com


>

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