Very few things in the world are clearly black or clearly white. Vaccines are one of those things, and with the media and politicians pushing vaccines today I feel it pertinent to point out some dialogue we should be having... yet we are not.
Which vaccines people are discussing in their attempt to force vaccines? Is this only MMR/Polio? What about HPV? Influenza? These discussions are absent in the "all or nothing" reports in media and all or nothing political opinions on both sides of the debate.
As a bit of background, I am a US Army veteran who has had more than my fair share of vaccines. I had no moral objection to my own vaccines, I understood the risks on both sides and accepted those risks. Some of the vaccines I took required a waiver to be signed, because there were very known risks to those vaccines which included potentially death. These were not what most of us think of with MMR and Polio, but more rare diseases.
At the time I made those decisions I was a single person without children. I signed up to serve my country, and I did exactly that. I was a young healthy adult and if something went wrong the impact would not have impacted dependents. I had medical professionals provide information on the vaccines and provide counseling to be sure I knew what the risks were.
There are a few important items to key in on here.
1. My decision only impacted me.
2. Back then we openly admitted that vaccines had risks.
3. Doctors regularly discussed those risks with patients.
The amount of research required then was not as intensive as is required today, which I'll show in a moment. This was about 30 years ago...
Fast forward to today, and the world is not the same place. The vaccine schedule recommended by the CDC today drastically different. Compare the 1983 vaccine schedule here to the 2014 schedule. I was going to attempt to summarize in a nice clean table, but the differences are not as simple as that. Today, as you should see for yourself, there are lots of fuzzy schedules. For example many vaccines are scheduled from six to nine months, or six months to eighteen months, etc... So in the most simple terms here is what we had, and have.
1983 - 6 vaccination shots from 2 months to 6 years old, and 4 doses of OPV (Oral Polio Vaccine). As a teenager, you would receive DT (diphtheria/tetanus)
2014 - 31 shots starting from birth to 6 years and 4 doses of OPV. In addition to DT, you have to add in annual flu shots and HPV if you follow the recommendation.
This is a drastically different landscape. By 18 months children are receiving 312% more vaccines today, by age 6 years 450% more vaccines, and if we total up all of the vaccines from birth to 18 years old it's 862.5% increase in vaccinations. This site has an interesting file to view here.
I don't advocate jumping to correlation equals causation so hold that thought. I will state that all parents want healthy children, so when planning or prospective parents see that autism rates have risen in the same time frame by over 1,000%, it should be expected that they ask questions. Given the similarly high numbers, people are going to begin to correlate. Increased ability to detect autism does not explain the massive rise sufficiently.
Perhaps there is some room for valid concerns.
The links I provided contain a lot of data, and you should absolutely read everything you can. I'll continue this in part 2.
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