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Megan Redshaw February 9, 2015 656 Comments Affiliate Disclosure

To the Parent of the Immunocompromised Child Who Thinks My Kid is a Threat

shutterstock_95571682
This is a post written in response to “
To the Parent of the Unvaccinated Child Who Exposed My Child to Measles.”  

To the parent of an immunocompromised child who thinks my child is a threat,

I am so sorry that your child has cancer. I cannot imagine how hard that must be for you. I am sure you are trying to do what you think is best for your child, even if that means requesting that I do something that’s not best for mine. There are no hard feelings here but I have to be honest with you…I too, have a number of emotions surging through my body right now.

Towards my children, I am feeling extra protective. Towards my rights, I am like a mean mama bear who got poked during the middle of a nap. Towards the creators of the hysteria that all of a sudden, for the first time in history, deemed one child more important and makes my child a perceived threat to everyone else’s, I am angry. Towards the parent of an immunocompromised child I am sympathetic, yet frustrated by the fact that you do not respect my choices, that you think my unvaccinated child is the only one who threatens yours, and that you would insinuate that my child should be sacrificed on the altar for your child.

By now, we’ve all been indoctrinated by the measles propaganda surrounding Disneyland. We’ve been mistakenly told that the unvaccinated are to blame, that it’s only occurring in unvaccinated individuals, and that measles disappeared 15 years ago and all of a sudden made a comeback.

In order to justify the removal of our parental rights, we’re told that the unvaccinated put infants and the immunocompromised at risk and we’re shown pictures of children suffering from cancer and other illnesses to drive this point home. We are not however, shown pictures of vaccine-injured children who have died, suffer from cancer, or have debilitating conditions caused by vaccines. No, that would be too objective.

For the sake of this letter, I’m not going to correct the inaccurate assumption that the only reason parents don’t vaccinate is because of vaccine ingredients like thimerosal, nor will I address the highly suspect studies funded by pharmaceutical companies (or entities that have incestuous relationships with pharmaceutical companies) that deem their own vaccines safe, and I dare not sway opinion with an emotional story of my son, who was vaccinated with MMR, almost died, and was subjected to a
 240% increased risk of developing autism. No, I won’t show the photo of his sick, emaciated body lying in my arms after I flew across the world to be with him.

So let’s talk about measles for just a minute. It was once widespread in the U.S. I do not argue this fact. I argue that measles had significantly declined prior to the vaccine and has been and will always be a common childhood illness that when contracted at the appropriate age, yields lifetime immunity, protection against more serious diseases (like cancer) as an adult, and allows a mother to pass on the protection needed to keep her baby safe for his/her first year of life or longer.

Measles is “an illness characterized by a generalized rash lasting ≥3 days, a temperature of ≥101°F [≥38.3°C], and cough, coryza, and/or conjunctivitis.” – The CDC

Measles is typically more severe in adults but prior to the vaccine, 90% of people had it by the time they were 15 years-old and the majority of children had it during their early school years. Now, babies and adults are the at-risk populations and lack immunity because vaccines have manipulated it. Yes, every baby and adult (vaccinated or not) can ultimately thank the vaccination program for their measles. Please forward your “thank you” cards to Merck, not me.

Now, it is true, the CDC says that infected people can spread measles four days before a rash appears, but a rash isn’t the first sign of measles. According to the CDC, a person with  measles will first get a fever, which “increases in stepwise fashion, often peaking as high as 103°–105°F. This is followed by the onset of cough, coryza (runny nose), or conjunctivitis.”

So is the problem with the child’s vaccination status or is it the fact that a parent had a child with a fever and/or cough and toted her kid to Disney land anyway? I mean…they did pay for a trip to see Elsa and all. This is assuming that an unvaccinated child is actually responsible for the measles outbreak at Disney and not foreign tourists.

Like all infectious diseases, measles is contagious (though it can only survive on surfaces or in air for 2 hours or less), which is why the recently vaccinated should avoid contact with immunocompromised people for six weeks, why parents should be trained to recognize the first signs of an illness, and why you should never blow your nose on someone else’s shirt or cough in someone else’s face. 

Measles itself is unpleasant but there are rarely complications unless you consider diarrhea and ear infections (both side effects of the vaccine) “complications.” Sure, your child could get pneumonia, brain encephalitis, or die but these side effects are extremely rare in a developed country and are also side-effects of the vaccine. We haven’t had a confirmed death from measles in over 10 years.

And let’s not forget, complications occur mostly in children under the age of 5 and adults over the age of 20, two groups that are now at risk thanks to…you got it…the vaccine.

We’re told brain encephalitis and death from the MMR vaccine are “rare” but the government doesn’t deem it important enough to properly monitor what happens to our children after they’re vaccinated and there are thousands of children who prove otherwise. What we do know is that death is a possible adverse reaction, was reported in pre-licensure studies, and 140 children have died from the MMR vaccine since 2000 per the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System and that is estimated to be only 1-10% of the actual number. In addition to death and brain encephalitis, other adverse reactions to this vaccine include (but are not limited to):

Panniculitis, atypical measles, fever, syncope, headache, dizziness, irritability, vasculitis, pancreatitis, diarrhea, vomiting, parotitis, nausea, diabetes, thrombocytopenia, purpura, regional lymphadenopathy, leukocytosis, anaphylaxis, arthritis, arthralgia, myalgia, encephalitis, encephalopathy, measles inclusion body encephalitis, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, Guillain-Barré Syndrome, acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, seizures, convulsions, polyneuritis, polyneuropathy, ocular palsies, paresthesia, aseptic meningitis, pneumonia, pneumonitis, sore throat, cough, rhinitis, Stevens-Johnson syndrome, erythema multiforme, urticaria, measles-like rash [also known as measles], pruritus, nerve deafness, otitis media, retinitis, optic neuritis (i.e. blindness), papillitis, retrobulbar neuritis, conjunctivitis, epididymitis, orchitis, and death.

Whoa, calm down self.

I assume you love your child as much as I and you are making the best decisions you can for her but please realize you cannot expect my child to live in a bubble. An unvaccinated child who is actually carrying a disease could be a potential risk to your child, this is true but so is…

  • A child who was recently vaccinated with varicella, MMR, rotavirus, and influenza, (all live vaccines that can shed and infect yours),
  • A child who was vaccinated but didn’t develop immunity,
  • A vaccinated child who develops the disease and spreads it to others,
  • An adult recently vaccinated with shingles,
  • Every single adult (save a few exceptions) whose temporary (if any), artificial immunity they got from their childhood vaccines has long worn off,  
  • An individual who, vaccinated or not, has any type of illness whatsoever.

Oh, you didn’t know this? If you’re a doctor, you should. It’s all right, this information is in the package inserts and the peer-reviewed data. Yet, you claim I should vaccinate my children because the MMR vaccine doesn’t work for everyone, your wife didn’t pass on the protective immunity to your baby exposure to wild measles would have given her, and you have an immunocompromised child who is at risk by both vaccinated and unvaccinated alike. 

Sounds like a problem with the vaccine to me and lack of knowledge parents have regarding proper disease management. Maybe we should emphasize more education and less vaccinations.

But let me tell you why I have a problem with the argument that I have to sacrifice the health of my child for yours:

First, the MMR vaccine has not been proven safe or effective so to ask me to vaccinate my child with something that hasn’t even been properly subjected to pre-licensure, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies using an inert placebo, which is the standard for evidenced based medicine is ludicrous. That’s like asking me to put on a Santa suit and jump off the roof of a house or asking me to give my child a chemotherapy drug that was tested against one of its own ingredients to determine safety.

Second, vaccinations place my children into the “at-risk” categories where measles is much more severe. I’m thinking about my babies’ babies here. Some argue that if we were vaccinated we could protect all of the old people and babies from measles. I say, why pour more of what started the fire on it? I’m personally a fan of herd immunity myself. You do know it doesn’t apply to vaccines right?

Third, it’s misleading to say that the MMR vaccine results in immunity to most who receive it without noting that the immunity given (if any) is temporary (i.e. lasting for a limited period of time). It’s like that really good date you never wanted to end or the pains of childbirth. That’s probably why vaccine-induced herd immunity is a major fail.

Fourth, there are many children who are now immunocompromised because of vaccines. Anyone who thinks otherwise is living under a rock.

Fifth, there are other ways to prevent disease that doesn’t put either of our children at risk. Even the World Health Organization recognizes that using vitamin A can reduce measles deaths by 50%. 

Sixth, when our kids are sick and must go to the doctor or be admitted to a hospital, there is a waiting room full of sick people and an infinite number of viruses circulating that could make our children sick. In fact, 1 in 25 people admitted to a hospital will acquire a health-care associated infection. That’s adds up to 721,800 people each year. Although measles didn’t make the list, maybe if we didn’t make it out to be the monster that it isn’t, people wouldn’t feel the need to bring their child in when they have an infectious disease with symptoms that could easily be managed at home.

Seventh, if government and health officials really cared about the immunocompromised, they would advise the parents of recently vaccinated children to avoid public places (including schools, daycares, and Disney) where immunocompromised children could be present. They would also educate parents on recognizing the signs and symptoms of disease, show them how to manage non-emergency symptoms at home, would encourage other methods of disease prevention, and would emphasize quarantine – not for the perfectly healthy, unvaccinated children, but for any sick child.

I’m sorry your vacation came to an end but the unvaccinated parent did not cause your child’s immunocompromised condition and there is no causal connection between an unvaccinated child and your child’s exposure. A causal connection is what’s required, right?

When we take our child to a place like Disneyland, or any other public place for that matter (including a hospital), we assume the risk that we might come into contact with a sick person, someone who hasn’t washed their hands, a kid who has picked their nose, or rides that have not been properly sanitized between each use. It is not fair to require that my child get vaccinated for the benefit of yours or to force my child to live in a bubble so that yours doesn’t have to.

By the way, did you know that studies show that exposing a cancer patient to wild measles could cure them? (See the Lancet – Bluming 1971, Pasquinucci 1971, Zygier 1971, Taqi 1981 and here and here). CNN even covered the story of the Ugandan boy who went into remission after wild measles exposure but the video and article have since been taken down. No surprise there. We’re trying to make a vaccine for that. If I had a child with cancer, you better believe I’d be looking for a kid with measles. But that’s just me.

Although I sympathize with your situation, pray healing for your child, and wish your circumstances on no one, that does not give anyone the grounds to trump my parental rights. My obligation as a parent is to my children, not yours and I will always (always) put them first. Don’t take it personally. I’m just a little tired of my children being used as the scapegoats of emotional arguments and misguided assertions.

You would be too if you were told you should be jailed or sued for exercising your autonomy as a parent and your “anti-vaxxer” children should be subjected to segregation and marked like the jews. I’m scared to repeat history. Aren’t you?

Mama Bear

 

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656 Comments

  1. A.

    October 15, 2019 at 9:48 pm

    Wow, you are willfully ignorant, cruel, and selfish. An all around horrible person.

    reply to this comment
  2. joe

    May 11, 2019 at 10:32 pm

    wasn’t herd immunity a theory some 8 decades ago?
    a still unproven theory?
    that included a starting figure of 68% immunized to make the herd immune?
    and has since slowly climbed to something like 98%?
    is it possible to get herd immunity from a vaccine?
    from vaccines that are admittedly not 100% effective?
    from vaccines that only give 2 to 10 years immunity in those that it is effective for?
    from vaccines that make the vaccinated person shed the live virus for 6 to 10 weeks afterward?
    how is it that the uss fort mchenry has been quarantined for months over a mumps outbreak with 100% vaccination rate of a vaccine purported to be 88% effective?
    were these sailors immune compromised?
    were there no unvaccinated to scapegoat?

    reply to this comment
    • joe

      May 11, 2019 at 10:35 pm

      how many of those sailors who got mumps on the uss fort mchenry now immune to mumps for life?

      reply to this comment
  3. Lindsay G

    November 16, 2018 at 6:49 pm

    Hey Megan, I really love your content. I’d like to say to some of the people claiming you have no empathy to actually read some of your posts before assuming that you’ve had a perfect cake-walk life. After reading your own health conditions and the battles you have with your children no one could say you have had it easy. You are a warrior! Keep it up!

    Oh real quick this link in your post is no longer good, looks like the domain is up for sale-http://www.naturalimmunityfundamentals.com/herdimmunity- too bad because I’d love to have read that article.

    —but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.— Is. 40-31

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Redshaw

      November 16, 2018 at 8:36 pm

      Lindsay,
      You make some very valid points. I may be biased but I tend to agree. 😉
      Thank you for letting me know about the link! I will look to see if there is an archived version and update the link.
      P.S – I love that verse.

      <3 Megan

      reply to this comment
  4. Danielle

    June 15, 2018 at 10:49 pm

    This article completely lacks any empathy and I feel is a very selfish way of thinking. I think what you have said is easy for you to say because you do not know what it’s like nor have you been affected or touched by someone with health issues. I am severely immunodeficient and your way of thinking along with so many others who feel this way do frighten me and rightfully so. Every time winter rolls around and the viruses start spreading, I have to wear a mask, sanitize and wash my hands constantly, and I have to keep distance from everyone even my own child. I can’t even go to my child’s programs at school because I live in a state where it’s ok not to vaccinate your child for personal reasons. It seems like no biggie for you, but for some of us, a simple infection can mean life or death and that’s what happened to me this recent year. I lost an organ and almost my life to a simple virus. And I’ll play the devils advocate here. I used to be an anti-vax feeling person and heavily considered not doing vaccines anymore based on the same groundless evidence that’s been debunked that you base your feelings on…until I saw my own father in a coma, on his death bed within a matter of 3 days of coming down with meningitis because he had never had the vaccine. I won’t tell you what to do, but I’m telling you, when it happens to you or anti-vaccinations touch your life or one of your children’s you will spend so much time wishing you had. I watched another one of my friends 3 year old child who was immune compromised die of a virus as well this year because other parents hadn’t vaccinated and he caught it at day care. Sad to think that the world could go back to the epidemics we used to have because of this way of thinking and that people like you care so little about how it affects others. It’s not hysteria or a conspiracy theory, it’s REAL. It happens in real life! It’s not stuff that’s just made up to scare you, it is very real and very scary when it happens.

    reply to this comment
  5. Corina

    June 7, 2018 at 10:34 pm

    The complete lack of empathy in the article is astonishing. While I or anyone else can’t tell you what to do and not vaccinating your children is 100% your choice, please try to empathize with people who are dealing with major life threatening diseases like cancer, or have been transplanted with an organ. I’m personally waiting for a kidney transplant and immunocompromized. I will be even more immunocompromised after transplant, anything as small as a virus, a fungal infection or a bacterial infection that normal people can fight off can kill me. It really is life or death for some of us and to have to go through all the SHIT I have gin though in the last year and the long and anxious wait for a life saving kidney to potentially lose it because of a disease like the measels or even the flu. As much as I would love to live in a bubble, I can’t so I depend on the rest of the population to be vaccinated and healthy.

    Diseases like measles, whooping cough and even the flu KILL people there is no question about that, specially children, so I sometimes wonder what parents who make the decision to not vaccinate would feel like if they lost a child due to one of these very much preventable diseases. How do you live with that?

    reply to this comment
    • Patrick

      January 15, 2021 at 7:33 am

      Parents have to make choices for what they deem best for their child, so go ahead and immunize YOUR CHILD if you think you should, but do NOT tell other parents what to do with their children….Vaccinations for the most part ( especially MMR ) have also been proven to cause AUTISM in some children ( Dr Judy Mikovits )..

      For all the parents who think the rest of the World should cater to them, I have some sad news for you, we won’t

      reply to this comment
  6. Lauren T.G.

    May 19, 2018 at 8:39 pm

    While I respect your freedom to express your views, there are several ethos in this commentary that I, as an immunodeficient person and disability rights scholar, find troubling. They don’t even have to do with the larger scientific debate per se, but more on your use of empathy. Frankly, you have no idea what it is like to live with chronic immunodeficiency. You have brushed this off in the comments as “as for the immunocomprised, I think the article adresses this.” Yes, the recently vaccinated can spread disease. As do common viruses, etc. etc. But that does not erase the fact that unvaccinated people can spread disease, too. Right now, in the Midwest, a Hepatitis A outbreak is ravaging our communities. Yes, the most vulnerable are homeless communities, incarcerated individuals, and drug users. In a 2018 report issued by the Michigan state government, vaccines are cited as the most effective preventative measure. Rhetoric condemning vaccines while also labeling life-threatening epidemics as merely the problems of “foreign countries” (or “foreign immigrants,” as you write) ignores very real and devastating health crises that occur in the US, exacerbated by inequitable access to clean water, shelter, food, and care conducive to sanitation and health. I think that this is also where socioeconomic differences pose a challenge to your argument: it is easy to declare vaccines as unnecessary when you and your children have the economic ability to have a roof over your heads and access to clean water and food. I’m not saying that you are exceptionally economically privileged– I don’t know that– but based on your ability to steadily run a blog and provide for your children, you are clearly not disadvantaged. Consider for a moment being homeless, uninsured, and/or recovering from addiction. You likely don’t have the privilege to secure with certainty the access to vaccination proven to prevent Hep. A. in the first place, let alone deliberate whether or not to vaccinate. Now, I’d also argue that to ignore the realities of the lack of resources for the homeless and ecomically disadvantaged in the US (as well as so many Americans who don’t have access to insurance) by claiming that such lack is a “foreign” problem while deeming vaccines unnecessary is dangerous to national rhetoric and policy. For example, your colleagues in the anti-vaccination movement have held considerable sway with President Donald Trump, as he questions the efficacy of vaccinations and repeats the myth (which is itself stigmatizing and lacking of nuance) that they are linked to autism. If one of the goals of this movement really is to deem all vaccines unnecessary and dangerous, it implicitly is no longer just about your children. Thinking toward the future, such rhetoric could have the ability to change policies and funding, further making vaccines inaccessible to people who want them, who need them as their best possible preventative measure, and thus again not only do not have the privilege to deliberate, but could die without access despite the studies you cite. Immunodeficient people are among this group.
    This is where I’d like to come back to choice. While I respect your decision to choose what you see as best for your children and hear your reasons, you made the choice to not vaccinate your kids. My fellow “immunosuppressies” and I didn’t choose to have chronic immunodeficiency. To keep a long story short, I was born this way, babe. The child to whom you refer in this article didn’t choose to get cancer. Just like how you didn’t choose the painful, life-threatening complications that happened to your child from a vaccine. I ask you to please call back to those moments– the fear, the grief, the crushing uncertainty, the anger. It is not hyperbole to state that this is how immunodeficient people feel everyday. As you write, a random stranger’s sneeze could send us to the hospital (I am recovering from a trip to the ER as we speak), unsanitary food prep can kill us, as can bacteria in pools, hot tubs, lakes, and our own showers. Even a hug from a healthy, asymptomatic friend unknowingly carrying the flu can risk our lives. I ask you to please imagine living like this, or find a situation in your own life that you can relate to it. In fact, perhaps your feelings of grief and distrust surrounding vaccines can be a place to start. I mean to put this gently, but among all of the factors that put immunodeficient individuals at risk, unvaccinated peoples are indeed among them. The fact that there are so, so many factors doesn’t rule out the fact that contact with unvaccinated peoples is one of them. The number one cause of the spread of Hepatitis A, for example, is person-to-person contact. I think that this is why the mother to whom you refer wrote with so much passion and pain, focusing mostly on the anti-vaccination movement. Basically, we’re coming from an opposite position as you with shared intense feelings of grief, trauma, and pain. We as immunodeficient people have so little control over our health as it is. For example, in my community, I would be at risk for Hepatitis A. right now had I not gotten the vaccine. Sorry, I see no other way around this. Despite the complications that you cite, vaccines are one concrete, proven way to ensure our care. You say that you are being a “Mama Bear”– well, that speaks to our primal need to protect ourselves, as well, as incredibly sensitive bodies braving a world of colds, viruses, bugs, and immunocompetent people who lack understanding– who carry contempt toward us, or dismiss us outright. (For example, while you expressed some empathy for the child who has cancer and their family, you also quickly stated that measles can “cure” cancer, an abrupt rhetorical move lacking empathy for a grieving family and indeed implying the very sort of judgment that you condemn.) It is a primal pain that we feel, perhaps even a sort of jealousy, that we have battled illness all our lives, while because of your circumstances you can choose with relative security to not vaccinate. Surely, you must know how this contempt feels. So I ask you to hear our pain and not just see it as an attack, to reach into your own “Mama Bear” mode and see how we share deep trauma and drives to survive, despite our differing positions. Most of all, I ask you to hear us and to resist pushing anti-vaccination policies and laws that further restrict access to those who want and indeed need them. You have the choice not to vaccinate. Yes, that is certainly a difficult and complex decision. Again, though, many of us frankly do not have the privilege to deliberate. The risk of further policies and cuts restricting access to vaccines make this not just about your children anymore, but about the rights of all of us to acquire the medical care that works for our conditions, beliefs, and choices. “Vaxxers” and “Anti-vaxxers” alike.

    reply to this comment
    • Cat

      September 24, 2019 at 12:53 pm

      That was a brilliantly thought out and well written response and I applaud and admire you.

      reply to this comment
  7. your new fan

    February 23, 2018 at 9:17 pm

    YOU are BRILLIANT!!!

    reply to this comment
  8. TJ

    October 10, 2017 at 11:28 pm

    Firstly, Autism seems to reside in areas of the brain that develop in utero. Newish science, like 2014, google it and check it out.

    The problem isn’t with vaccines, it’s with the way they’re handled by SOME doctors. My mom worked in immunization tracking and found that many doctors were using expired vaccines. Some were storing vaccines in the lunchroom fridge, rather than a medical grade fridge that has backup power and better temp regulation. Many doctors were giving kids the same shot twice, or missing shots, thus the need for better tracking. This is the info you don’t find when doing internet “research”.

    It doesn’t really make sense to say that there is much more sickness now, due to vaccines. As medical knowledge grows, we get better at identifying things that were previously little understood. An increase in diagnoses doesn’t necessarily mean an increase in incidence, and an increase in incidence doesn’t necessarily mean a causal relationship with something else that happened to increase just prior.

    Here in CA, we have had some pretty bad outbreaks, whooping cough, Hep A, measles. It is not true that people don’t die from these diseases. Whooping cough killed 10 infants in 2010, just in CA. What you have to ask yourself, if you choose not to vaccinate, is : are you really okay with being a vector for a disease that causes the death of someone’s baby, death by something that is preventable?

    But for some of these diseases, the ones who die are considered the “lucky ones” (crass, but there it is, and I’m not saying i agree, just that this is how some people see it, who live with the fallout). My doctor came from a third world country and in his village, grew up with people who’d had polio, or whose moms had rubella while pregnant. These are serious diseases. That’s why vaccines were developed for them! They’re not just a fever or just a rash. We in the first world don’t see these diseases, and so many people downplay how bad they are. Talk to the older generations, they remember.

    Finally, you say on your blog you’re a Christian, yet in this article, you say that your child comes before the child of the doctor you’re attempting to refute. I am a Christian too, and i here offer you fraternal correction that that sentiment is profoundly unChristian. We are called to protect, preferentially, the most vulnerable. Christianity is not about protecting one’s own, even to the detriment of others, being a mad mama bear, or anything like that. Think about that attitude as opposed to the God we are called to respond to: He DID sacrifice His only Son for our good. Straight up, no way out, and after we’d screwed up royally. So please examine your theology along with your science. God bless you and keep you, and i hope i didn’t come off as harsh, i sincerely don’t mean to; just giving you things to ponder.

    reply to this comment
    • anna Ferrell

      February 5, 2018 at 9:53 am

      Hmm it sounds like you know how to do your research. i am puzzled as to why you didnt ? You brought up the fact that children die from wooping cough.this is true did you also know that the wooping vaccine has been admitted by the cdc to not really even work ? And if it does it is for such a short short peroid of time also children who recive this vaccine are the ones most likly to be spreading it via shedding .look it up. Not to mention that merca the mmr vaccine maker is being sued right now by scientist in their own company because they lied to the goverment about how well the mmr actually works and have covered up how safe it actually is..You admite that vaccines get misshandled and are not properly dosed so by your own admission are dangerous .however you have failed to mention the very toxic ingreadients that cause damage and harm to children who recive them and even if they dont cause noticable harm or death in a particular child autoimmune disorders are skyrocketing many have been linked to heavy metal poisening .guess what vaccines contain ? Heavy metals not to mention the very dangerous and cancer and autism causing retro viruses. The vaccine industry claims the heavy metals in vaccines are fine because we ingest metals all the time .however they fail to mention that when you are injected with them as oposed to ingesting your body cannot readily clean them out and therefore stores them into variouse parts of your body .not to mention many vaccines contain a cemical that opens the blood brain barrier allowing aluminum and viruses straight into the brain..you claim to be christain however i have serious doubts as i dont know any christain who advocates that a parent should willingly put they’re child in harms way god gave us parent the charge of protecting our children from harm.. but you say we should risk harming our children on the bases of a lie told to you by the vaccine industrie and the cdc .hmm i would call that unchristain

      reply to this comment
      • Stacey

        May 10, 2018 at 2:25 pm

        Hit the nail on the head with that comment

        reply to this comment
    • Stacey

      May 10, 2018 at 2:17 pm

      My son contracted rubella from a vaccinated boy that I babysat at the time. He was a few months older than my son so my son had not been vaccinated with MMR because he wasn’t old enough to receive that vaccine yet. In our experience with my sons illness of Rubella his symptoms consisted of fever, irritability and rash for 3-4 days and we lived in the US at that time (still do) so it was very much just fever, rash and crankiness. Not sure what Rubella is like in your doctors third world country but for my son, here in America it was exactly what you claim it is not.

      reply to this comment
      • AK

        June 9, 2018 at 8:52 am

        Did you not read the part where she said from doctor’s using “expired vaccines”?

        reply to this comment
  9. Jerry

    August 22, 2017 at 4:45 pm

    While I appreciate that you are an educated person, may I ask if you are educated in medicine, infectious disease, microbiology, immunology, or any other SCIENCE that would give you a foot to stand on? Do you have any PEER REVIEWED scientific evidence for your knowledge, or do you prefer blog posts and wikipedia? If you are more knowledgeable than the PHYSICIANS who recommend vaccinations, perhaps you shouldn’t bring your children to the hospital at all. Perhaps you should not be able to administer antibiotics to your children when they have bacterial infections. I mean aren’t they toxic substances developed by the same people who developed vaccinations intended to poison the population? Your children surely would be better off using herbs to cure all of their infections (like in the 1800s). Also, have you ever seen small pox? Hmmm, I wonder why? How many cases of polio, pertussis, measles, tetanus, haemophilus influenzae, meningococcal, and pneumococcal (to name a few) have you seen? Ever watch a child die from any of them? Ever watch them recover with a multitude of lifelong morbidities? You realize the Measles (which you naively believe is not a high morbidity/mortality disease) are not the only threat to children correct? Have you ever traveled abroad and seen how grateful people are to receive vaccinations FOR FREE from the WHO? Surely it is all a huge government ploy to make money… Screw newborns and immunocompromised children right! They deserve to die, live with lifelong morbidities, and be on ventilators and heart/lung bypass machines from vaccine preventable illnesses such as Pertussis, Neisseria Meningitidis, and Streptococcal Pneumoniae, so that your child can be “toxin” free. I mean clearly “big pharma” and insurance companies make more money off of a $2 vaccine than the costs associated with treating these diseases both acutely and chronically, right? Maybe you should get your medical degree, then you will have every right to discuss why not to vaccinate and why your children are more important than the rest of the population

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      August 22, 2017 at 9:02 pm

      Hi Jerry, Thanks for the message. The father of my children is a physician – as are many of my friends. I happen to know that physicians receive VERY LITTLE training on vaccines in medical school. They get 1 lecture consisting of spoon-fed propaganda. I’d be happy to show you the lecture notes. Despite that, highly educated or not (although I certainly am), anyone with the ability to read has the ability to make an informed decision and as a PARENT … we should all be doing that … medical degree or not (i.e. thinking for ourselves and weighing information). As for my sources, feel free to check the hyperlinks in my post. You won’t find Wikipedia quoted at all. You will find the PubMed database and you’ll find that I have an understanding of the politics that shape the underlying corrupt policies surrounding vaccinations … I’m guessing a political science and law degree would give me the authority to have a stance on such things?

      A physician doesn’t have the authority over my body, my child’s, and his/her opinion isn’t an excuse for anyone in the general population not to use their brain. If we never questioned we’d still be giving people lobotomies, blood-letting sick people, and refusing to wash our hands before we cut a person open.

      P.S – I ran an organization in a third-world country. They don’t want vaccines either. (They’d much prefer clean water and food.)

      Bests,
      Megan

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      • Jerry

        August 23, 2017 at 1:59 pm

        Megan,
        Thank you for the reply.
        So your friends who are physicians did not study and learn about microbiology, immunology, and infectious disease? That’s interesting. How did they pass their medical boards? Well they surely have friends then who are actually ID docs, they should discuss with them about cell biology, etc. They are likely to understand this information and help you make an INFORMED DECISION (not from websites) since they went to medical school. Much like I wouldn’t read an article on court cases and not consult a LAWYER before I made any legal decisions. I do not doubt that you have an understanding of the politics of vaccinations, but I do doubt you have a true understanding of illness and immunology. Or understand the economics of vaccinations:
        Analyses of over 4 million infants, showed that routine childhood immunization among members of the 2009 US birth cohort alone will prevent: 42,000 early deaths and 20 million cases of disease, with net savings of $13.5 billion in direct costs and $68.8 billion in total societal costs, respectively. The direct and societal benefit-cost ratios for routine childhood vaccination with these 9 vaccines were 3.0 and 10.1 (Zhou et al., 2014).
        That’s why we have different degrees and experts in legal, business, and medicine. Moral code though will tell me that killing is wrong. Pretty sure most people have a moral code.

        As for your sources, news outlets and studies from the 1930s, 1970s, 1985, and websites do not count towards recent reputable research. This is back in a time they did blood let, so you contradicted your own logic.
        Also Pubmed is a search engine and includes hundreds of journals so although a handy database it cannot speak to the journal itself. In order to say a journal is reputable it would need to be PEER reviewed and recent. (Which you say you understand, but don’t cite a single recent one). Surely someone who graduated from law school should understand the difference.

        Thank you for doing work in a third world country. I did as well, for 10 years – as a DOCTOR. On the healthcare side my experience was very different with vaccinations, but im sure you got better information as a lawyer than a healthcare professional on this topic.

        Yes I agree the health care industry has caused some immunosuppression… its called chemotherapy to kill CANCER, among other diseases.
        One thing you gravely fail to do is analyze the overall picture of vaccine preventable illnesses (as Measles is only a small piece).

        But to be fair, lets only talk about Measles,

        -During 2000-2015, measles vaccination prevented an estimated 20.3 million deaths. Global measles deaths have decreased by 79% from an estimated 651,600 in 2000* to 134,200 in 2015 (WHO, 2017).
        -Measles cases among US residents (635) – 77% unvaccinatated (CDC, 2016). (This must be coincidence.)
        Measles is absolutely unpleasant:
        WHO/CDC, 2017:
        -Approximately 134,200 people died from measles in 2015
        -1 or 2 out of every 1,000 children who get measles – WILL DIE.
        -As many as 1 out of every 20 children with measles gets pneumonia, the most common cause of death from measles in young children.
        -1 out of every 1,000 who get measles will develop encephalitis (swelling of the brain)

        The information you cite is about complications and deaths from vaccination but do you actually look at the incidence of death or serious complication from the diseases themselves.

        One example from that same MMR insert you cite:

        The risk of serious neurological disorders following live measles virus vaccine administration remains less than the risk of encephalitis and encephalopathy following infection with wild-type measles (1 per 1000 reported cases)

        REGARDLESS, making general assumptions and drawing conclusions about vaccinations causing deaths based on spontaneous reports to VAERS – some of which might be anecdotal or second-hand – or case reports in the media, is not a scientifically valid practice.

        You say, Reports are “estimated to be only 1-10% of the actual number” do you have a CITATION?

        So onto your step by step arguments:

        First, the MMR vaccine HAS been proven safe and effective
        Please recheck your sources, the information above, the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics both have a plethora of information on this. Try again.

        Second, your information on herd immunity is from 1932. Try again.

        Third, If you had any idea how the immune system worked you would understand why some people do not develop immunity, and why people need boosters. This is scientific fact and is not disputed by the microbiologist or the healthcare industry.
        Also your citation for this one is a website, not a recent science text book or article. Try again.

        Fourth, Healthwell.org? Reputable site for sure. Try Again

        Fifth, Yes Vitamin A can restore some life-threatening deficiencies much like Vitamin D can prevent Rickets in newborns and penicillin kills Group A Strep. This is based in scientific fact. Also you should read that page from the WHO in its entirety. There is a lot of good information on there.

        Sixth, Measles is a monster. Measles remains one of the leading causes of death among young children globally, despite the availability of a safe and effective vaccine (WHO, CDC).

        Seventh, They do educate on methods of disease prevention. Hence the name Centers for Disease Control and PREVENTION. Lots of good information on that GOVERNMENTALLY FUNDED site, you should check it out.

        Lastly, you don’t think the parents of immuocompromised children know the risks of public places and contracting diseases. This is not the point. If we as a community can prevent some of the more virulent and threatening diseases (not just Measles), don’t we have a MORAL OBLIGATION to? I mean if it was in your child’s best interest to kill another person, would you do it?
        Well… I guess I would consult a Lawyer on that…

        In summary, the only reputable information you found is actually only picking and choosing the information you want to write or stating scientific facts we already know about immunity. And if you really still think it is a better idea to get the disease than to vaccinate for it (see above statistics for information on Measles only), you really should never take your kids in public. Also if a family member of yours has cancer, and requires chemotherapy, thereby wiping out any EXISTING immunity to any disease, you should tell them and all the other people in the facility being treated, your stance on vaccinations…
        Lets leave the medicine to doctors.

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      • Celina Williams

        February 11, 2020 at 3:22 pm

        Vaccine “science” is junk science. A medical degree is not required to see that vaccines do not do what the “experts” claim they do, and in fact have caused much harm, injury, and death. All one need do, is look at the illness and disease rate among children now as compared to before the vaccine schedule exploded (1986) when doctors and the vaccine manufacturers were given immunity (pun intended) from being sued for injuries and deaths caused by their vaccines to see the TRUTH. I don’t care if you’re a doctor, a scientist, a used car salesman, a garbage truck driver, or the queen of England, if you will take the time to look at ALL the evidence, consider the SOURCE of that evidence, and THINK FOR YOURSELF, it will become shockingly clear that vaccines are one of the biggest hoaxes ever perpetrated on mankind. Those who can’t or refuse to see the truth, are either so deeply indoctrinated by the lies and deception the “system” has programmed us with since birth that they simply can’t accept this as truth, or they benefit in some capacity from the lies.

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    • Ralph Fucetola JD

      August 23, 2017 at 9:30 am

      Oh Jerry, once again the Religion of Science is asserted to make “Anti-Vaxxers” just shut up. Your superstitious belief in the validity of crony corporate science is either an endearing foible or conscious disinformation.

      Here is a piece I wrote on the fallacies of Peer Reviewed Science: http://www.opensourcetruth.com/what-peer-reviewed-science-2/

      Or, to put it another way, we don’t need to be a phlebotomist to know that injecting toxins is not good science.

      When you’ve thought about what is happening to now two generations of children exhibiting chronic diseases not seen in children in the “advanced countries” before, such as certain cancers or other disabilities, you might conclude that it is indeed a religious necessity for parents to refuse all vaccinations if they are to be God-fearing parents!

      That is why we are demanding a Five Year Childhood Vaccine Moratorium, to save 250,000 American children from vaccine-injuries, and 15,000 babies from SIDS.

      That is the moral imperative of the current horrific results of the unholy partnership between Big Govt and Big Pharma.

      http://tinyurl.com/vaccinemoratorium

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    • anna Ferrell

      February 5, 2018 at 10:05 am

      Did you know that the pysicians who recomend the shots are not very knowledgeable about vaccines ?? They just say what they are told to say by vaccine makers and the cdc both are motivated by money. Not science .your assumtion that all physicians recomend vaccines as being safe and effective is incorrect .who do you think is writting all of the studies and articles and blogs against vaccines? Its scientist and docters who decided to look into it themselves and not just blindly do what they where told .your assumption that you must be a scientist or a docter in order to make a educated decision on vaccines is just plain stupid .if you have a brain and can read you are then capable of using and understanding the research put forth by scientists and docters therby able to come to a educated conclusion ..its not rocket sceince here

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  10. Adrian

    May 30, 2017 at 7:02 pm

    My son is 6, and is vaccinated. My brother has two children, one is 3-1/2, and the other is 1-1/2. Neither are vaccinated. We live about 70 miles apart. Every time we go to visit and spend time with them, my son returns home ill.
    At first, he is fine. Within 24 hours of the visit, usually the following day, he gets diarrhea and vomits a couple of times. At first, he would miss a couple of days of school because of it. Now, he improves within a day. For example, we just visited on 5/27 for the day; returned home in the evening. On 5/28, he started off his day with diarrhea; before breakfast. He ate breakfast, and vomited within two hours afterward. He just had that look on his face and mentioned that his stomach didn’t feel right.
    He had diarrhea and vomited once more after. By 7:00 PM, he was already showing sighs of improvement.The following day, 5/29, he was fine. Stools were normal. I gave him pedialyte, and watched what I fed him. No more vomiting or diarrhea occurred, he wasn’t complaining of not feeling right.
    Earlier this year, his pediatrician told us to give him Culturelle before and after the visits, as we had gone up for Christmas, and he was sick just like I described above. She even ordered a stool sample and ran additional tests on his digestive system. That was earlier, this year. All was normal.
    Since Christmas we’ve gone over to visit my mom/family twice, and gave him the Culturelle twice; it didn’t work. Or maybe it helps to a certain degree. He’s not ill as long as he used to be. Maybe it curves the duration. I’m just guessing.
    But it is a pattern, and I’ve given this more chances than I should’ve. Not once, twice, three… at least seven times… I might’ve even missed a couple.
    I can’t keep putting my son through this, but these are his cousins, and the only times we get to see each other. My wife and I argue every time that my mom wants us to come up to visit. It’s more than a coincidence that this happens.
    I really need some insight. I read the article and am doing my best to keep my son from avoiding his family. But that is the only solution that I have right now. He is due for another Dr. visit, but I need help with other sources of info, as well. Her first suggestion wasn’t effective as I need it to be.
    He is in school; (the classroom size is 28 students) stays at day care with 5 other children on the daily. He never gets ill like he does when he plays with his cousins for the few hours that he does, every other month; each time…
    His body definitely reacts to being around them, and his doctor is aware. I want to get to a point where he can play with his cousins without the same results; I just don’t know if that’s possible for the immediate future.

    reply to this comment
    • April

      June 25, 2017 at 2:25 pm

      You may want to look into environmental hazards at the cousins’ home such as mold.

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    • Tiffany

      June 25, 2017 at 2:40 pm

      It could be environmental.. does your kiddo drink tap water there or anything?

      I’d start him on a probiotic and vitamin c to help boost his immune system when you travel.

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    • Joan Malueg

      July 3, 2017 at 7:43 pm

      I understand your frustration, but the unvaccinated children are not the reason for your son’s problems. Instead, how about checking the area around his cousin’s home for possible poisonous plants or water stagnation, or even the food he eats while he’s there (or the water he drinks) or the insects he comes in contact with. The reaction (diarrhea, throwing up) is getting shorter because he’s getting older, but I would concentrate on possible allergic reactions to the grass, or even local crops grown in that area.

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    • Traci

      July 21, 2017 at 8:08 am

      Perhaps your child’s immune system is compromised by vaccines? I would look into changing diet and detoxing.

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    • anna Ferrell

      February 5, 2018 at 10:11 am

      I dont understand what this has to do with being vaccinated or not .my child also has stomach problems any time we travel or eat foods we usually dont .she gets diareha or constipation that quickly resolves itself if your docter did a stool sample and found no bacteria or virus to be causeing the illness then i dont see how you could possibley think it is something he is getting from his cousins and to get it every time sounds ljke it is something he is sensitive too eating or drinking while there

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  11. Bethany Carlisto

    May 17, 2017 at 9:56 pm

    Thanks Megan! My first child was diagnosed with type one diabetes when she was 1. The doctors are saying vaccines had no doing in this but they are also saying that a virus probably triggered it in her. One virus that hey know triggers type one is measles which my daughter never had but it seems strange that she got type one a few months after the vaccine. I am also no doctor but the information they are giving me contradicts itself. My second child is unvaccinated as I fear the same thing may happen however I’m finding out that life will be difficult for him too as he can not attend some schools or activities because he is “unvaccinated “. All you can do is your best and research as much as possible!! Thanks for your letter.

    Bethany

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  12. Michael

    May 10, 2017 at 8:18 pm

    My only child is one month removed from a bone marrow transplant, his best hope for survival against Acute Myeloid Leukemia. He has virtually no immune system.

    First, there is one thing you need to understand. If you have a child, vaccinated or not, that child is a threat to anyone who is immuno-compromised by virtue of him/her being a child alone. Children get sick. A lot. Strep throat can kill an immuno-compromised child if their immune system is compromised enough (yes there are different levels of ‘compromised’). Make sure your antagonist is calling out your vaccine choices specifically before you jump to that conclusion.

    Secondly, even if they do perceive your child to be a threat specifically because of their un-vaccinated status, that is their right as a parent, and you should be ashamed for questioning it, let alone publicly blog-shaming it, because your feelings were hurt. I certainly respect your decision not to vaccinate, and while I don’t agree with it personally, I would never ask you to vaccinate your child if you didn’t want to.

    It’s life and death for these kids. Politics – and feelings – go right out the window if they must.

    reply to this comment
    • Joan Malueg

      July 3, 2017 at 8:00 pm

      If you have a child that’s subject to illness because his or her health is compromised, you do not have the right to use that to tell others what to do. Your child is your responsibility … nobody else’s …, and you are the one who has to protect him or her from catching something from his/her environment. Just because you have been dealt a blow doesn’t mean everybody else has to kowtow to your wishes, other than being compassionate and understanding.

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  13. amber

    April 25, 2017 at 7:30 pm

    If you went to law school then you should really know the preference to use and cite peer reviewed journals vs. finding a website like hearthiswell.org for your references. The article you cited from the American Journal of Epidemiology was entitled “MONTHLY ESTIMATES OF THE CHILD POPULATION “SUSCEPTIBLE’ TO MEASLES, 1900–1931, BALTIMORE, MD*” published in 1933 — nearly 100 years ago.

    In another article, from the Journal of Infectious Diseases, I note that you pulled out the line regarding “Complication rates are higher in those 20 years old,” but took liberties in leaving out ” Complication rates are increased by immune deficiency disorders, malnutrition, vitamin A deficiency, intense exposures to measles, AND LACK OF A PREVIOUS MEASLES VACCINATION” (https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/189/Supplement_1/S4/823958/The-Clinical-Significance-of-Measles-A-Review)

    When my pediatrician, who DID graduate from medical school feels very strongly about vaccinations, and that yes, my immunocompromised child is at higher risk of infection (infections that, if he catches, he is more likely to experience more of those severe symptoms than an unvaccinated child with a healthy immune sytem) due to many more people now choosing not to vaccinate, I value his input more than 100 year old journal articles and blogs on the internet.

    You cannot imply that you are citing scientific studies yet only pulling out the bits and pieces of those studies you want to include. Yes, I do realize the “other side” does this too– but… this makes you no different than that other side you are so against.

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    • David

      May 7, 2017 at 12:39 am

      Did your pediatrician also mention they get a huge financial kickback for each full set of vaccines they give (USA)?

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      • Alan Roberts

        June 23, 2017 at 1:09 pm

        From whom? Insurance providers give an incentive based on a number of metrics including vaccination. I believe this happens in parts of Canada too.

        However since insurance companies make the most money from people who are well this really isn’t a conflict of interest as much as a validation of vaccine safety and effectiveness.

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  14. Karen

    March 31, 2017 at 2:47 pm

    I don’t think the majority of indignant pro-vax responders have even bothered to read the entire article. They have probably read the title and responded only to that. It’s very frustrating living in a predominantly pro-vax society. But I do greatly appreciate this article as a reference if/when I need one. Lots of well thought-out arguments for not vaccinating. Hopefully it has and will open at least a few eyes. Thanks for writing it. 😊

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  15. Beth

    March 25, 2017 at 2:06 am

    Wow! I really can’t believe the ignorance and selfishness of so many parents, especially the one writing this article. What if your child was the one with cancer? How would you feel? It saddens me that some parents would be so negligent as to fall for the hype (cult mentality) of articles like this one and anti vaccination groups. Please do the real research, and be sure to check the author. A stay at home Mom does not qualify as a medical expert and posting articles like this are extremely reckless and irresponsible.

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    • Megan Heimer

      March 27, 2017 at 6:42 pm

      Beth, I would in no way expect somebody else to put their child at risk to “protect” mine. Secondly, I’ve studied negligence – not vaccinating does not meet that standard. Third, if you’d like to do your research, hyperlinks are in coral font. Finally, I am not a medical expert, but I find it highly insulting (as I’m sure any reader would) that you think a stay at home mom is incapable of using her brain.

      I went to law school so I can assure you I know how to read and research quite well, as I’m sure other parents do.
      P.S – The medical “experts” you’re referring to have almost ZERO training in vaccines. But even if they did, that doesn’t absolve a parent’s responsibility to do their own research.

      Bests,
      Megan

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    • Dorry

      June 28, 2017 at 1:25 pm

      Wow, you are so ignorant. If only have you read MMR vaccine leaflet you would know measles vaccine sheds. And you have the gut to call somebody selfish because they don’t want to put their child at rsik for the sake of others. It is so sad that there are so many morons who think that the only people who can read and analyse facts are doctors.

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  16. Lil

    March 23, 2017 at 6:29 am

    I think you hit the nail on the head!. Heard immunity from vaccine is a philosophical joke. I read the first 2 comments and laught …paranoia??? ha…by the things you said you are seem to be paranoid.

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  17. shosty

    January 15, 2017 at 9:06 am

    You probably didn’t hear about the 2011 case of the unvaccinated child who spread measles to other children.

    You would rather risk spreading disease to others because of your own unfounded paranoia. The CDC, AAP and WHO do not find a correlation between vaccines and autism… but you obviously know better because you’re a “mom”. Fantastic.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      January 18, 2017 at 2:46 am

      Shosty,

      Vaccinated children spread disease every single day. I’m not concerned about the one unvaccinated child and you shouldn’t be either if your child is vaccinated. As for the immunocompromised … I think this article addressed it quite well.

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      • WHiggins

        December 11, 2017 at 3:02 pm

        If the human body – one infected – is a host for producing viruses, then how can you possibly say the child who was vaccinated and will succumb to producing millions of copies of the virus to sneeze into the air, is just as much a threat as the non-vaccinated child, who WILL succumb to the virus, and become a walking virus factory even if they don’t show outward symptoms.

        There is no grey here, you are in the wrong and have succumbed to new-age philosophy that flies in the face of almost a century of accumulative research. But worse, you are propagating this nonsense because you want to believe made a wise choice and that it is correct – even though it is clearly wrong.

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    • Amanda

      April 15, 2017 at 11:26 am

      The CDC AAP and WHO of course would not find any correlation between autism and vaccines, they profit from disease! Get a clue, vaccines have been a huge money maker for those who push for their use!

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  18. Peeved

    January 14, 2017 at 6:33 pm

    You are so dead-set on your kids not having autism that you would rather them contract diseases that have either been eradicated completely or are very rare…BECAUSE OF VACCINES. But, I am sure you will never actually realize that vaccines DO. NOT. CAUSE. AUTISM.

    Yout righteous indignation is disturbing, sickening, and dangerous. You use and take advantage of the health of others smart enough to get vaccinated and rely on herd immunity to keep YOUR kids safe.

    What if the rest of world stopped getting vaccinated, just like you? And, aaall that cozy herd immunity that you not only take for granted, but RELY on to keep you and your kids safe, swiftly went bye-bye? Where would your indignation be then? What if measles became a rampant, painful, and dangerous disease all of again like it was before vaccines, nearly resistant to treatment? Would you be so haughty about your non-vaxing life then? And, are you SO sure measles are just such a fun and warm and cozy lil illness that you’re willing to put your money AND your children’s health where your mouth is and subject them to it? If so, buck up! And, get to contractin’ those silly ol’ walk-in-the-park diseases! Just keep your kids away from ours.

    Being vaccinated does not 100% protect you from vaccines. So, again, going back to herd immunity, while you live out your life with the ignorant view of “why should your vaccinated kid care about my non-vaccinated kid?!? Your kid is safe from disease, riiiiight?”, let me help you realize that even vaccinated kids CAN STILL GET THE DISEASES THEY ARE VACCINATED AGAINST. While vaccines are WILDLY helpful and necessary, they are not 120% foolproof. Yes – vaccinated kids can still get the very diseases they are vaccinated against, So, again, keep your kids away from ours.

    While you rabidly take advantage of the rest of the population’s herd immunity and reap the benefits of everyone ELSE getting vaccinated, it is ironic you overlook the consequences of if everyone suddenly stopped getting vaccinated. What the hell would you rely on to keep your kids safe from PREVENTABLE diseases, then?

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    • Cali

      April 3, 2017 at 5:27 am

      Preach. It’s no wonder the author didn’t comment. They have no good argument

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    • watkino

      April 25, 2017 at 7:50 pm

      Peeved – thanks for putting into words what most readers are thinking. For not being vaccinated, anti-vaxxers have developed a miraculous resistance to the truth!

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    • eileen

      May 22, 2017 at 12:49 pm

      I think you need to learn what herd immunity is, first of all, and then maybe actually read the article. All of you who have attacked the author here have each suggested in one way or another that she should be more concerned about the other children than she should be about her own…what don’t you people understand about the hypocrisy of asking a mother to love your children more than her own and insisting that SHE is the one who is being selfish? Imagine you are speaking to a mother who lost her child to a vaccine…trust me, she is reading your self centered indignation and hoping you don’t also suffer the guilt of being a lemming who got her child killed in the process of keeping up with the Joneses.

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    • Lily

      March 19, 2018 at 3:40 pm

      Dear Peeved,
      No, we are not taking advantage of your “heard immunity”. I understand that not everyone has such an opportunity, but I live in America. I’m very blessed to have clean running water, sanitation and a waste management system, fresh air and a healthcare system that supports the sick in cases of emergency. If you live in a place that has such things, you can take advantage of that too! You don’t have to inject toxins into your children and poison them! I’ve also taught my children the importance of hand washing and taking preventative measures to make sure that others don’t get sick if they are sick with something and to staying away from your children when they’re shedding like crazy from their poisonous vaccines. It’s not selfish, it’s common sense.
      How does injecting toxic poisons into a child or adult make them healthy? It doesn’t! That’s not what health is. Vaccines cause long term damage in everyone! From gut issues to brain issues and a ton of auto immune diseases. I am vaccine injured. My injury was not immediate but it’s a major health problem for me now that I’m older and my body has accumulated the many toxins that it can’t get rid of. I was born in a third world country and moved to America as a little girl. I was force-vaccinated to get into America. I vaccinated my two oldest children which I now deeply regret – I didn’t know better. Knowing what I know now, I would do anything to take those vaccinations back from my children. You yourself mention in your post that vaccination does not 100% protect or provide immunity to your children. Then why poison them?! It makes them sick and slaves to the medical system for life. Most of these PREVENTABLE diseases that you’re so afraid of are NOT DEADLY in a first world country. They can be treated and a person can recover from them without any poisons being injected into them and as a bonus, they will have lifetime immunity and not a false sense of immunity from a toxic vaccine that may or may not work. Please don’t be terrified of them and don’t spread false terror onto other people. Terror and fear is what the vaccine manufacturers use to market their deadly products. Most of the horror stories talked about on the new are advertisements for drug companies. They don’t report about the thousands and thousands of other diseases that people get sick with. Only the ones that have vaccines so that they can create fear and push their very profitable propaganda. Keeping children free of toxic vaccines is – free. I have found a better way to keep my children healthy, I hope that many, many other parents do too!

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  19. Scott

    January 13, 2017 at 10:10 am

    Question: Are you immunized?

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  20. Melissa

    December 7, 2016 at 6:46 pm

    AMAZING!! Everything I would want to say and point out but just can’t find all the right words to do it! Love everything about your website, I literally just found it today online when I was researching more on vaccines and how bad they are (in my opinion). I have a daycare so everyone here except my own kids are vaccinated, and sadly I have never seen more frequently sick kids in my whole life! Thank you for making this as a reference for me now!

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      December 9, 2016 at 2:16 am

      So welcome Melissa! I’m glad you liked it. 😉 <3

      reply to this comment
    • Linda

      April 9, 2017 at 11:57 pm

      This is so good to hear. Thanks for sharing

      reply to this comment
  21. Randy

    November 17, 2016 at 4:50 pm

    i really enjoyed your article. i am a future dad and an apprentice homeopath, so I know full well about the immuno-suppressive nature of vaccination. This issue is probably the biggest debate my wife and I are having. thanks for putting all kinds of good info in one place

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      November 18, 2016 at 3:07 am

      You’re welcome, Randy. Thanks for reading!

      reply to this comment
  22. Linda

    October 24, 2016 at 3:16 am

    What if we all decided not to vaccinate our children? These diseases would return and mutate to the point where they would be even worse and more difficult to treat. You are lucky to live in a country where you can make a choice like this, and you – and more importantly – your children may not contract the diseases in their lifetimes for which they ought to have been vaccinated against. But we are living longer and longer, and guess what, with globalization, your kids will likely be affected by one or more of these diseases. If you can live with that risk for the next 80+ years, then by all means. Think of all the kids in the 2nd and 3rd world countries that are literally dying to receive these vaccines. A guy I went to highschool with contracted Hep C about 25 years after we all got our vaccinations because his parents didn’t want him vaccinated. The guy was a semi-pro athlete….not any more. Think about it.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      October 24, 2016 at 3:07 pm

      Linda,
      With all due respect, your comment is not supported by the history of these diseases, prevalence and mortality statistics, current research, or my experience working in a third world country. They are not “dying” to receive vaccines. They do not want them. They want clean water to drink (coupled with hygiene training this reduces disease prevalence by 85%) and food to eat. We may be living longer but we have never been sicker with 1 in 2 people having a chronic disease.

      P.S – The Hep C vaccine only gives temporary immunity. Vaccine or not, he wouldn’t have had protection 25 years later. Oh, I also adopted two children from a third-world country and I flew across the world when my son almost died from an MMR vaccine he should never have had. I paid his medical care for three years because he was constantly sick. Since he has been home, he hasn’t been sick a single time. I’ve seen first hand what a clean living environment and proper nutrition can do. 😉

      I do think this is a choice all parents have to make for themselves, and I respect your opinion even if I disagree with it.

      Bests,
      Megan

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    • Pissed parent

      October 31, 2016 at 6:09 am

      Vaccines are an investment for the medical corporation just a way for the medical industry to insure future revenue! The human body has the ability to heal itself. I remember when an apple a day keeps the doctor away! My 3 year old was recently vaccinated and now he has the chicken pox! I am pissed at the way we are being forced to participate in there eugenic agenda!

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  23. SapphireMind

    June 29, 2016 at 6:22 am

    I understand no parent wants to put their child at risk. And yes, boosters are needed for vaccines.

    I was once like you, I was scared to potentially sacrifice my child for the herd. Then I started paying attention more to zeros. Unfortunately human brains are not designed to be great at judging odds and relative risks. That’s why so many people play the lotto 😉

    If I say someone has a 1 in 10 chance of something, that’s super easy to conceptualize, but we start getting into 1 in 10,000 (disease) or 1 in 1,000,000 (vaccine)….the brain just sees “super rare!” 🙂 Which is totally true. So, it’s super rare to get one of these diseases and have a severe complication these days. It’s even more super rare to have a problem from the vaccine (and yes, some kids will have a reaction, we know this) And there’s no way to guarantee that if your child is the one who has a complication from the vaccine, that they wouldn’t be the one that would have the complication from the disease if they got it. (arguably, you could theorize that if it is something with the virus in the vaccine causing the reaction, they are more likely to be that kid who has the severe complications)

    You exponentially decrease your odds of having a bad reaction/outcome/problem by having the vaccine, even though there is a small risk associated with the vaccine itself. There are risks with every medication and non-medication. The science is there. Vaccines do work and they do save lives.

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    • CAmom75

      September 2, 2016 at 1:46 pm

      Have you not read ANY of the links in this article???

      I used to be all paranoid about the diseases that my doctors warned me about. But then I started doing my own research, and trying to figure out those big scary numbers. I forget the actual data, because its been 6 years since I researched it. But something like 5 in 600,000 babies will have a problem with bleeding after both, yet 5 out of 400,000 babies will have a reaction to the vit k shot. 1 hundredth of 1% of babies are at risk for catching hep b, yet one tenth of 1% will have a reaction to the vaccine.

      So I winder why the CDC would “force” moms to have their babies vaccinated against a disease that they’re already tested for during pregnancy. Assuming they got prenatal care of course. I wonder why that is?

      I also know two women who had babies die after receiving the flu shot. But being that its so “rare”, I must be quite the anomoly. Though I think its worth noting that neither case was able to to file a VAERS report, which makes all of the VDC’s data skewed.

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      • K-Dog

        October 21, 2016 at 10:15 pm

        Perhaps the reason that Hep B is so rare is because of the vaccines. Sure, maybe that sounds like an opinion or anecdotal evidence but so is your example of the two flu shot “victims.”

        That’s like saying that both of my grandparents lived until 108 and they smoked two packs a day. Just to be clear, that’s an example of anecdotal evidence. It is something that isn’t true for the general population.

        I am very sorry for those two cases that you cite but I can’t examine your evidence because you didn’t offer any. Just to be clear, babies aren’t supposed to get flu shots until they are six months old. Did you see the coroners report that stated complications resulting from the flu shot?

        Can you point me to the newspaper article that was written about this incident?

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      • Truesayer

        November 2, 2016 at 10:36 pm

        You are aware that babies don’t stay babies but Hep B immunity lasts beyond infancy?

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        • Megan Heimer

          November 3, 2016 at 3:06 am

          Actually it lasts up to seven years…at best. How many 7-year-olds or tiny toddlers do you know, who are using needles or having sex?

          reply to this comment
  24. Wombat

    June 27, 2016 at 3:50 pm

    You can keep your rights without being free from the consequence of judgement and common sense ‘right time right place’ restrictions.
    Your rights and choices are not backed up by literal decades of scientific study and public policy effectiveness.

    You are, whether tangentially or not, contributing to the infection of said immunocompromised children (though given your rejection of Immunology’s conclusions in other situations I’m slightly surprised you ‘believe’ – because beliefs are different than knowledge, keep that one thing straight – there ARE immunocompromised children…).

    The article about ‘foreign tourist’ you attempt to prejudicial charged fear-monger clearly indicates that such a spread would require /spreading it to others/, Who are those others? The non-vaccinateable for accepted scientific reasons, the very small number of vaccinated who may have laxer immunity, and the very large number of the unvaccinated who have not already been exposed. Nothing will stop all infection. Lots of things will allow it to propagate much more easily, including you and your family.

    P.s. I bet your parents got you vaccinated. Much easier to spout this when you have no skin in the game.

    reply to this comment
    • Wombat

      June 27, 2016 at 3:51 pm

      And I look forward to remaining in moderation purgatory.

      reply to this comment
    • sara Berman

      June 29, 2016 at 2:55 pm

      Love that! “You can keep your rights without being free from the consequence of judgement!”- well said!

      reply to this comment
    • CAmom75

      September 2, 2016 at 2:00 pm

      The question we should be asking ourselves, is WHY do have so many immune compromised children. We have vaccines, yet we’re NOT healthy. So, no measles, mumps, or rubella. Yet, so many children suffer from:
      Asthma
      Allergies
      Eczema
      Chronic ear infections
      ADD
      ADHD
      Autism 1 in 50 (!?!?!?!)
      Not to mention cancer and leukemia.

      Trust me, if I knew that my one year old would be sick as a dog for 5 days following the MMR vaccine, I would have rather risked measles.

      reply to this comment
    • AwakeMom

      September 3, 2016 at 12:21 am

      Wombat-
      You tell her that you’re sure that her parents got her vaccinated when she was young… Have you recently looked at the difference between the 1980 vaccination schedule and the 2016 schedule?! It’s not the same world. I feel like after reading your response to her article that you didn’t read with the intention of understanding but waiting your turn to speak. You choose to vaccinate your kids and knowingly (Or unknowingly, possibly) make them little carriers of the illness through shedding, and then you turn around and blame the unvaccinated, who can not spread an illness that they don’t have, but your recently vaccinated ones can. How does that make sense?

      reply to this comment
  25. Floyd

    June 5, 2016 at 3:26 am

    I’m not sure I completely understand the problem here? If my child is vaccinated and you child is not vaccinated what do I have to worry about? If your child has measles, why should I worry, mines been vaccinated. Unless, your telling me that my child could still catch measles even though he is vaccinated, then why the hell did I get him vaccinated. If you are going to force someone to put a drug into their body it better 100% work and do what you say or else it should be the parents choice.

    On another note if your child ha a weekend immune system or is to young to be vaccinated why the hell are you taking them to Disneyland. You have no one to blame but your own stupidity. And, if you vaccinated them they can’t catch anything anyways. Right???

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    • Melissa

      December 7, 2016 at 7:03 pm

      LOVE THIS!!!

      reply to this comment
  26. Matt

    June 3, 2016 at 2:55 am

    The best article I’ve read in a long time. I just had a daughter 2 weeks ago. My fiancé and I have been arguing non stop about vaccines. She wants to vaccinate and I have a lot of reservation. Do you have any links/articles/studies etc I can show her? It would be greatly appreciated!!! 🙂

    reply to this comment
    • Ralph Fucetola JD

      June 5, 2016 at 2:47 am

      One of the strongest points that can be made is that “pro vax” statistics lie. We’ve compiled some examples here: http://drrimatruthreports.com/pro-vaxx-statistics-lie/

      reply to this comment
    • Truesayer

      November 2, 2016 at 11:13 pm

      How about the statistic that small pox which was a scourge on this planet for 3,000 years has been eradicated. I still have the scar on my arm to prove it when the world wide eradication campaign was underway. Thank God my parents didn’t believe it was OK for other people’s kids to take the risk but not their own precious DNA. There is a possibility we could eliminate the most common types of HPV and most cervical cancer in one or two generations with vaccinations. Before vaccinations, the mumps was a known cause of deafness.
      Rubella, a very mild illness in most people used to cause devastating birth defects in pregnant women in this country (look up the statistics on the last big outbreak before vaccination was common). Now this only tends to happen in women who have been out of the country when they became pregnant or early in their pregnancies and were in a population of largely unvaccinated people.
      How about the statistic that meningococcal meningitis though uncommmon, causes 1-2,000 cases a year and has a 10-15 % death rate with 20 % of the survivors having neurological damage. This is the vaccine usually required to enter college. Since vaccinations began in the 70’s, and initally it was an imperfect vaccine and was not widely administered (still isn’t as much as other vaccines) the US rate if infection has plummeted

      reply to this comment
      • Megan Heimer

        November 3, 2016 at 3:03 am

        The mass quarantine program eradicated small pox. It’s pretty well-known, there’s vast historical documentation of this in both the U.S and UK, and you’ll find it in the PubMed database. Just thought I’d point that out. 😉 (I’ll hold back on telling you what caused the last known case of small pox … but I bet you can guess.)

        Not sure where you’re getting your meningitis stats.

        Keep on… 🙂
        Megan

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  27. Michelle

    April 23, 2016 at 10:18 pm

    I just felt the need to comment and say that I am (or was) the parent of an immunocompromised child. She is now off chemotherapy (hooray!). BUT – I am also a non vaccinating parent! I always feel like I should let people know that there ARE parents out there of immunocompromised kids who DON’T vaccinate. I was nonvax prior to childhood cancer and will remain nonvax after. In fact, she had pertussis during her treatment and did fine with it 🙂 (she got it from ME, an UTD on her Tdap adult, btw).

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  28. Sophia

    February 1, 2016 at 8:21 am

    Oh how I wish you were in my neighborhood and would talk to legislators with me! Your argument style is impeccable, researched, and confident. It would be awesome to see you at the Sacramento capitol. I don’t think you are in CA, but you would be gem here. We are not giving up.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 11, 2016 at 2:59 am

      Thanks for the kind words and for advocating for yourself and others! I would love to do all of those things, but my blog posts will have to do for now. Hopefully they inspire others to get out and advocate though. 😉

      reply to this comment
  29. Stephen Juarez

    January 6, 2016 at 8:15 am

    The author of the article you’ve responded to seemed like he/she insulted someone for choosing to not have a facebook account.

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  30. rebecca g.

    October 14, 2015 at 5:55 pm

    Heres my 2 cents. No one is saying that parents do not have a choice. But in life, choices have consaquences. If i go out and spent all my rent money on a prada purse, I have to accept that i wont have a place to live. Is it fair? Depends on who you ask, my husband might not feel that is fair, but my landlord woud. That being said. You have every right to refuse to vaccinate your child. The goverment can not tell you what to do. It is your childs body.
    BUT, if you make that choice, you have to deal with the consaquences. One of them being, that an unvaccinated (for NON medical reasons) should not be allowed in school. But, gasp you say, your child has a right to a education, just like anyone elses child. And yes, yes they do. they have every right. But as with life, there are rules. One rule being that you must vaccinate your child to go to school. If you CHOOSE not to, then you CHOOSE to deal with the consaquenses. Not everything in life is a right, nor is everything given for free. As adults we deal with the consaquenses of outr choices every day. suck it up.
    Now that we are on the topic of rights. What about the right of a immunodiffenect child? They did NOT choose to have HIV, cancer, autoimmune disorders or like my daughter, born with a immunodefiency. They do not have the choice. And I bet every one of these parents with a sick child would love to have a choice. A choice of not having to send them to school worrying if the child sitting next to yours is carryying something that can kill your child.
    So yes, I give you the freedom to choose not to vaccinate your children. i give you the freedom to gamble their lives on the herd immunity protecting them. But as an adult, I expect you to man up and accept the consaquences for your actions.

    reply to this comment
    • Ralph Fucetola JD

      October 16, 2015 at 6:58 pm

      The Religious Rights Restoration Act of 1993 (a federal law) and numerous other laws require reasonable accommodation for peoples religious beliefs.

      The Courts have never held that a State may exclude vaccinated children from public school EXCEPT during an actual epidemic for a disease for which there is a safe vaccination [courts have also regularly held that vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe.”]

      Most if not all states make receiving a free public education a legal right.

      It is an illegal “unconstitutional condition” to condition the receipt of a public benefit on the surrender of a protected right. Numerous cases have so held.

      In 2013 the Supreme Court held [Missouri v McNeely] that your right to Informed Consent is presumed waived if you are silent, but if you assert the right,

      Even “…diminished expectation of privacy does not diminish their privacy interest in preventing a government agent from piercing their skin. And though a blood test conducted in a medical setting by trained personnel is less intrusive than other bodily invasions, this Court has never retreated from its recognition that any compelled intrusion into the human body implicates significant, constitutionally protected privacy interests…” (page 15; emphasis added).

      So, how do we balance this conflicting legal points?

      Simple enough, those States that mandate “unavoidably unsafe” vaccines in order to receive a public benefit must accommodate religious and philosophical conscientious objections by paying for private schooling (in a vaccine/toxin free private academy) or homeschooling.

      Let the unvaccinated be like the Amish. Free to practice their beliefs.

      Any attempt to violate international humanitarian law must be rejected.

      http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=31058&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

      The international convention on Informed Consent: “Article 6 – Consent – 1. Any preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information. The consent should, where appropriate, be express and may be withdrawn by the person concerned at any time and for any reason without disadvantage or prejudice…”

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    • elle salazar

      November 6, 2015 at 7:36 am

      I beg to differ, we live now in a more progressive society. Women couldn’t vote about a hundred years ago and look at what we have now. The legalization of being who you really are as a human being isn’t defined by sex or religion anymore, you may love and agree on the things you stand for unless it’s murder, theft or rape. In the whole vast majority of the countries in this planet there is peace compared to about 60-50 years ago. This wasn’t done by conforming but by pushing the boundaries of a simple idea, preference, and belief.

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    • Anne

      February 13, 2016 at 2:22 pm

      And your child who is immunocompromised could catch a cold and die. Your child is the one who should not be going to school not a perfectly healthy child with no illness.

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      • HelenD

        July 3, 2016 at 3:10 pm

        So children with primary immune deficiencies, who are born with these disorders, should be made to stay at home reducing their quality of life? Wow, that’s one of the most cold and insensitive remarks I’ve ever read. In other words, we should go back to treating these kids like it was portrayed in the movie “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble” and forget all the advances in treatment so that PID children could have a more normal life. That’s ridiculous and you are woefully uneducated about the life of children born with PID disorders and what life is like for their families. What we faced when the doctors told us that my son would not reach full adulthood and to let him have as normal life as possible for as long as possible is a nightmare I wouldn’t wish on anyone. The heart wrenching first years as he fought life-threatening illnesses like Pneumocystis pneumonia, the sadness we felt when we had to tell him “no” to the playground, “no” to having a pet, “no” to playing in the dirt with his trucks, “no” to the neighbor kid’s birthday party. And the agonizing fear we faced as we realized this sad and lonely child needed school, needed friendships, needed a better quality of life than keeping him at home 24/7. May I suggest that you educate yourself at the Immune Deficiency Foundation website and then head on over to the nearest university like UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital and ask to speak with the families. I can only surmise that your callous remark was the result of lack of knowledge and that you are not as evil as you sound.

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    • sara Berman

      June 29, 2016 at 2:56 pm

      well said!

      reply to this comment
    • AwakeMom

      September 3, 2016 at 12:23 am

      You understand that a child can’t catch an illness from another child WHO DOESN’T HAVE THE ILLNESS?! The recently vaccinated can (AND DO) shed the virus, but the unvaccinated can’t pass something they don’t have!

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  31. Rayan Alam

    August 5, 2015 at 7:37 pm

    Here are some things that we both can agree on.
    Washing hands can prevent disease

    Wearing a functioning Level A Hazmat Suit and functioning Gas Mask at all times gives you 100% protection against 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of all diseases :P. Just trying to calm everyone down a bit.

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  32. Sarah

    June 18, 2015 at 3:12 pm

    If your child had a life-threatening reaction to a vaccine, then shouldn’t you have a medical exemption from having to receive any more vaccinations? If that’s the case, doesn’t that put you in the same camp as the parent of a child who can’t be vaccinated because he has cancer? If so, I’m really not sure what you’re grizzling about. The fact that your child had a rare, life threatening reaction from a vaccine shouldn’t preclude parents of other children from vaccinating their kids. Your child relies on herd immunity just as much as that cancer patient does. You should be championing vaccines, not encouraging others to refuse them, too. Life threatening reactions to vaccines are a lot less common than cancer is–millions of kids get vaccinated every year and the very large majority of them don’t have any reactions at all. We need herd immunity, specifically to protect kids like yours who have a valid medical reason to avoid vaccinations.

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  33. B

    May 26, 2015 at 9:56 am

    Um, does anybody realize that Patient Zero has not been identified for the Disneyland scenario and it could be a recently vaxed person or any carrier animal? This is sorta important for the argument…pertinent data point – the keystone data point. The news outlets made some conjecture but there is no data. CDC has not found patient zero.

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  34. Greg Baird

    April 22, 2015 at 4:07 am

    Hello Megan,

    I think it is a good thing for people to be skeptical. I find that it can be very difficult to discern truth from even objective sources of information. I don’t believe your commentary can be described as scientific or based on reliable objective facts. A lot of your argument is based on incorrect assumptions and information whose source is less than objective.

    To be frank, I don’t understand why you would need to exaggerate, make false statements, or rely so heavily on emotion driven statements, for something that, in your research, is so obvious. Why not just stick to irrefutable facts? Or if the facts are not irrefutable, why assert a position that requires an acceptance of something that is not accepted as a fact?

    I was going attempt to work my way through your post but there is just too many points you make that rely on the reader to suspend reliance to reality. I would, however, be interested in your thoughts on a couple of crucial elements.

    In my own research “to find the truth”, which I will say changes a little bit each time I read something else on the subject, I have often been struck by how the opposing forces in the vaccine debate line up; what is the fundamental problem or challenge that creates the opposition. I mean, It seems to me that the anti-vax / pro choice / etc are parents who want to protect their children. The health system wants to protect people from getting sick. Surely that would put both groups on the same team?

    Of course, the problem from the anti-vax camp is the belief that the vaccines will do harm exceeding benefit of the vaccine and don’t accept the evidence on the instances of side affects from the “system” that makes and promotes them. It’s all very hazy in that mind set because there is very little incontrovertible evidence that one can call upon to make a clear case against vaccines. Correct me if I am wrong, but the basis of rationale requires thinking that on the balance of probability, given all the unknown. unreliable, tainted, sources of information, that there is enough doubt about the veracity of vaccination that it is “reasonable” to suspend acceptance given the consequences are to be endured by one’s child?

    If one has doubt the honesty or care factor in the system, and thus about vaccine side effect rates then one should really make allowances for a rate greater than the “system” says there is and from that balance the risk of not vacinating. Well there’s another unknown and do we trust the “system” to provide truthful information there? Of course we will have to minimise the advertised risk.

    Of course the ultimate justification for not vaccinating is that vaccines just don’t do, and have never done, what we are supposed to believe they have done. This is really key I think to whether you can rationally argue against vaccines. If you can intellectually find evidence to support a position that dismisses the history of vaccine efficacy then there is no need to argue about minor things like side effects and ingredients in vaccines.

    People like Dr Suzanne Humphries, with medical and scientific training, make very compelling arguments against vaccination. She, like many, have obviously needed to find a way to debunk the history of vaccines and use very persuasive reasoning to prove the death rates of vaccine treated illnesses were already declining BEFORE vaccines. You mention that you argue that Measles was already in decline inferring that vaccination was not part of the decline. If you are going to infer that then you really need to be prepared to back it up. Just like Dr Humphries though, your position is inferred and not backed up with honesty.

    For example, how do account for the fact that in 1964-65 12.5 million americans contracted German Measles but in 2012 there were 9 reported cases? You can’t argue sanitation and nutrition improvements changed so markedly in the USA from 1965-2012.

    That’s just one example. To be intellectually honest you need to be able to prove vaccines don’t prevent infections. The WHO estimates that measles is the 8th highest cause of death on the planet.

    First question is – how do you prove that vaccines don’t work?

    If you can’t you then have the burden of proving the side effects occur at a greater rate, and cause greater harm than the prevention of millions of infections. Please provide that?

    The rest of the value of the article relies on the position that vaccines don’t work – that really has to be your starting point.

    regards
    Greg

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    • Russell

      May 3, 2015 at 2:01 am

      So what you are saying is that the greater good is more important than the individual. Adolph would be so proud of you! There is no doubt that vaccines can potentially cause great harm. Dr. William Thompson of the CDC was one of the co-autors of the 2004 study that found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. When his conscience finally got the better of him he went public and admitted they had hidden data that absolutely confirmed the link between MMR vaccines and autism. So that eliminates the argument that there is no evidence. The parent has the absolute right to decide what is best for their child. Period. And comparing this to a child having a ruptured appendix? That’s just embarrassingly stupid. You sound like a talking points puppet which leads me to believe you don’t research these things. Or if you do you aren’t going all the way down the rabbit hole. When my daughter was just over a year old she went into convulsions and I thought she died right in my arms on the way to the hospital. I was devastated. It was discovered that she had a severe ear infection that caused a fever spike which led to the convulsions. They said she was a “convulsive baby” and a fever above 103 could trigger it, and that the convulsions could cause permanent brain damage or even death. So we had tubes put in her ear drums to help protect against infections, but what we found from our family doctor floored me. He said it was probably the DPT shot that caused the infection to begin with and we would have to wait to begin the vaccinations again and without one of the components (the one for whooping cough). That was the end of the vaccinations. We put a halt to that crap. And when the school bitched about it I threw the doctors report in their faces. But I’ll tell you something, even if I didn’t have that report there is not a chance in hell I was going to let anyone inject her with any bullshit vaccine. And if they had tried they would have been practicing medicine with broken fingers for a very long time. She’s a happy healthy adult now, and all without any vaccines (except of course the one that almost killed her). I keep hearing the argument that anti-vaxxers are just speaking from emotion. You’re damned straight. It’s because we care and we will protect our children from those that would cause them harm by any means necessary. Besides, if you think vaccines are good you are free to let them inject your family with them. It’s your choice. You see, that’s the difference between us: we don’t want to impose our will on you and your family, but you seem to want to decide what’s best for ours. But you can’t because we won’t allow it. And that, my friend, is carved in stone!

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      • Greg Baird

        May 4, 2015 at 2:55 am

        Hello Russell,

        It sounds like you feel very strongly that no one has the right to interfere with your right to protect your child. That is totally understandable. It is an innate parental desire to protect ones child.

        My point is that if the science is correct then it is irrational to choose to potentially harm your child by not protecting them and by definition quite rational for other parents to want to protect their children from irrational decisions of other parents.

        If your choices to not vaccinate didn’t have any potential adverse consequences to me or mine then I couldn’t care less whether you chose to vaccinate or not.

        The problem comes when your choices potentially have consequences for others.

        Unfortunately you prove my point for me by using anecdotes, personal attacks, and not sticking to scientific evidence as the basis for claiming your stance is rational.

        The William Thompson / Autism scandal has long been debunked and is a demonstration of selective evidence to suit a particular argument. But please feel free to come down any one of dozens of rabbit holes you ignore and argue against the studies, scientifically proven tested, reviewed, that have shown no link between autism and vaccines.

        Nasty side effects from things in the environment and that we consume all the time. Just because my step sister was rushed to hospital with an allergic reaction after gorging herself on a jar of chocolate and nut spread, doesn’t mean that it’s rational to refuse to eat anything from a jar! OR from that company, or chocolate and nut spreads. You can’t infer a scientific basis for a claim that vaccines are on the whole, bad, from a personal experience of a reaction. A reaction that could have had many factors that helped cause it and could not be absolutely blamed on a vaccination.

        If the evidence shows that vaccines prevent more harm than not vaccinating then you need to refute the evidence not just claim a morally superior position based on selective quoting of debunked anti-vax propaganda.

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        • Ralph Fucetola JD

          May 5, 2015 at 1:46 am

          The science is settled. Once you discount, as any reasonable person must, the crony-corporatist tainted studies that the CDC relies upon to approve vaccines (with only weeks of (sic) “safety testing”), the only remaining science is included in hundreds of peer-reviewed studies that prove what US courts have long determined, vaccines are “unavoidably dangerous.”*

          That cannot be disputed.

          Vaccines are an uninsurable risk.

          That cannot be disputed.

          Vaccines will cause foreseeable harm to an unknown number of recipients, especially infants and children.

          That is not disputed.

          The question is, are you a moral person who is charged with protecting your children from foreseeable harms, or will you “offer your children to the fires of Moloch?”

          * See, for example, the presentation made earlier this year at the All India Medical Education Conference: http://tinyurl.com/DrRimaIndiaPaper

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      • ljb

        March 3, 2016 at 2:35 pm

        http://www.snopes.com/medical/disease/cdcwhistleblower.asp
        I’m so tired of people picking and choosing what they want to hear. You want to state material to back up your erroneous claim so you pick a few words out and hope others seeing reports that validate what they want to hear, don’t question the source just repeat the false content. You do this with everything the bible, politics, conspiracy theories, oh and yes vaccinations. YOUR DATA IS NOT TRUE IT IS PICKED OVER BY PEOPLE THAT DON’T CARE WHAT THE TRUTH IS ENOUGH TO FIND THE FACTS BEFORE THEY STIR THE POT. I added the link to the actual source of Dr.Thompsons concern. It was a racial concern with the statistical group not at all what antivaxers are promoting. Yes you don’t vaccinate your children and they infect an immunocompromised child then you are liable, you should be prosecuted it is no different than pulling the trigger on a gun and saying but I didn’t know it could kill.

        reply to this comment
        • Megan Heimer

          March 3, 2016 at 10:35 pm

          Okay, I don’t have time to jump into this conversation but we shouldn’t be using Snopes as any sort of credible resource. And to be fair, are we going to hold vaccinated adults liable (as their vaccine immunity is long gone) or the parent of a vaccinated child liable if their child viral sheds and infects this same immunocompromised individual?

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        • Ralph Fucetola JD

          March 4, 2016 at 2:21 am

          I beg to differ… Natural Solutions Foundation, as one example of an NGO involved in the vaccine mandate issue, was quite clear that Dr. Thompson’s information was about black boys being targeted. That’s why Dr. Rima interviewed Louis Farakhand’s son Tony Muhammed about the issue last July here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=995Bag3UsSw — But, as Dr. Rima points out, white boys who got the specific shot were also more likely to develop autism than children who were vaccine-free.

          Vaccination is an uninsurable risk that has been held by courts to be “unavoidably unsafe.” It is simply intellectually dishonest, at this late date, for anyone to argue otherwise.

          Where there is unavoidable risk there must be Informed Consent. Vaccine mandates violate international humanitarian law and those who pursue such govt action are aiding and abetting a crime against humanity.

          The death toll continues to rise; you and each and every proponent of vaccination has undeniable blood on your hands.

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        • Kerri

          March 7, 2016 at 3:04 am

          Well written!!! And, parents with an immunocompromised child MUST re-read point number seven, along with all those who choose to vaccinate their children. The following is a true story of an event that happened to my family and 3 other families:
          I took my three children to a birthday party. My first two children were vaccinated, the third we chose not to (as with our subsequent children). There were three other families at the party who did not vaccinate their children. The hostess of the party came into the room and plopped her one year old down. We all had children of the same ages, so our little ones were all playing with the baby toys while the older kids were playing a birthday party game. The hostess asked us if we would be willing to watch her baby while she continued on with the game. No problem we said. Then we all looked at the baby as she sneezed. I honestly have never in my 20 years of parenting seen a child with such a snotty nose!!! We were all a bit alarmed. No one wants to leave with the latest cold. But then the hostess says to us, “Oh, don’t worry, she’s not sick, this always happens after she gets her shots.” Ha! No worries? Well, three weeks later all of the other non vaccinated kids and my third child came down with measles. It was not biggie. We were not at all mad at the mom in any way. We took full responsibility for our sick kids, by keeping them home.
          My point is this….my children, and I have 8 (6 of them never have been vaccinated INCLUDING one who was for years immunocompromised ), have never before, nor since had ANY vaccine preventable disease EXCEPT for this one incidence where it was passed on by a VACCINATED child. You are all seriously barking up the wrong tree! If you are truly concerned for your children, you need to pressure doctors to educate the parents of vaccinated children that their kids are at risk of passing on diseases from the vaccines that are live. These children need to be quarantined for a particular time (depending on what disease they were just vaccinated for.) I am highly, HIGHLY doubting that the thousands upon thousands of children that are vaccinated each year are going to be kept at home, out of daycare, out of school. But, seriously if you are all very concerned that people be responsible, then that is what NEEDS to be done. And seeing as how a couple of doctors (one being a PICU doctor at one of our hospitals) I’ve talked to have actually said that the chicken pox vaccine if for one of convenience, so that parents won’t have to take time off of work to tend to their sick child, then I am assuming we will NOT see the public at large, keeping their recently vaccinated children at home. You are MUCH more at risk of your child contracting any said vaccine preventable disease by the recently vaccinated than from an unvaccinated child.

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      • SapphireMind

        June 29, 2016 at 6:04 am

        I’m going to make a longer post later, but I am not sure whether what your doctor told you went through a filter in your mind and you heard something different or your doctor just told you incorrect/outdated information.

        What you have described is a febrile seizure. They are generally regarded as harmless. Terrifying for parents, absolutely. But they do not typically cause any sort of long-term harm to the child nor do they increase their likelihood of developing epilepsy later in life.

        http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/febrile_seizures/detail_febrile_seizures.htm

        reply to this comment
  35. Brian West

    April 12, 2015 at 4:17 pm

    It is not about taking a choice away from you. It is keeping you from harming your child, and other children because of your flawed “beliefs”. We don’t let parents of kids with burst appendixes pray to heal their children, and we shouldn’t let your ignorance about a lifesaving discovery kill other children. If you don’t want to vaccinate, you don’t get to take your kids in public, period.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      April 13, 2015 at 3:55 am

      Brian, I’m sure your philosophy would go over really well with your parents, their parents, and their parent’s parents, all of whom either didn’t vaccinate or vaccinated on a far lesser scale. In fact, you were vaccinated on a far lesser scale, so I certainly hope you don’t exercise this type of bigotry towards your parents. Just because we do not share beliefs does not mean my beliefs are flawed or are founded upon anything other than science. I think we should exercise respect and tolerance towards one another. I will not vaccinate my children and I will continue to take them in public. You’re welcome to shelter your vaccinated children at home if you’re concerned.
      With respect,
      Megan

      reply to this comment
      • Sara Berman

        April 13, 2015 at 5:37 am

        actually, your beliefs ARE founded on something other than science.

        reply to this comment
        • Megan Heimer

          April 17, 2015 at 12:46 am

          And the problem with having beliefs supported by multiple foundations?

          reply to this comment
    • Bob Roger

      April 13, 2015 at 4:54 pm

      Brian, I wouldn’t be as diplomatic as Megan in her reply, but I’ll restrain myself in not putting myself at your level of intelligence, if you want to educate yourself from a very popular film, (not to long) and it’s free to view, https://boughtmovie.net/free-viewing/thank-you.php?AFFID=195137&[email protected] I could actually keep your reading and viewing scientific information on the health CRISES involving the dangers on vaccines for the next month 24 hrs a day … here is an article = http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/11/15/vaccine-safety-greater-good.aspx?e_cid=20141115Z1_DNL_art_1&utm_source=dnl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=art1&utm_campaign=20141115Z1&et_cid=DM60121&et_rid=729940213 – and you should do yourself a favor and get educated by Dr. Mercola by subscribing to his newsletters, his site is the biggest health site in the world .. actually if your don’t view this information, then your a pharmaceutical employee or a republican ..

      reply to this comment
    • Pat McGroin

      April 14, 2015 at 1:53 am

      Brian, I choose not to feed or shelter my children at all. Their natural instinct to find food and shelter is good enough, since it was good enough for our ancestors. It’s survival of the fittest. Plain and simple.

      VERY respectfully,

      Pat

      reply to this comment
    • Keriane

      April 18, 2015 at 5:00 am

      I am an immuno – suppressed adult transplant patient and request that you keep your newly vaccinated children at home for 6 weeks so as not to infect me and others like me. And I would appreciate you getting blood tested every year to insure said children and yourself are still immunised as science is unable to predicte exactly when current vaccines shed and wear off. I am not collateral damage in your pursuit of a false sence of security.

      Sent from Keriane’s iPad

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      • Amanda

        October 23, 2016 at 3:57 pm

        This is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever read. You are sorry someone’s child has cancer and calling that child a threat to yours? If your child is vaccinated a child who is immune compromised is no threat to them. My son is immunosupressed and I wish that all parents of healthy children would get their children vaccinated, just like I had mine vaccinated before he became ill. Unfortunately, now his immunity to chicken pox is gone, and cannot get the vaccine again until he is off immunosuppressants, if he ever is. Who is at danger? My child. The child who has a serious risk of death if he contracts the virus because of his suppressed immune system. I choose to keep my son at home instead of public schools, where the risk of contracting a serious disease, and suffering serious consequences is higher for him than any other child. How dare you bring sick children into this post! Parent should get their kids vaccinated if there is no medical reason why they shouldn’t to protect all children, especially the immune compromised, who are no danger to your vaccinated child. However, people newly vaccinated are also a danger to my child, so like the woman before me stated, you should probably stay home after getting your vaccine as to not make my child sick with the diseases you are so worried about your healthy child contracting.

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  36. Jade

    March 10, 2015 at 7:08 pm

    Just wondering what anyone’s take is on SSPE. I haven’t heard much mention of it, probably because it has never been a huge issue in the US because we have a vaccine that prevents this. If you don’t know what it is I highly recommend finding some scholarly articles on it, or find a local journalist who wrote something that you agree with which a lot of you seem to do…So, as many people who want to argue that no deaths have occurred in the US from the measles, I bet in a few years we will start seeing SSPE rear its ugly head and the only real sign of the onset of this disease is the mood changes. Try telling me an adolescent that doesn’t have a few moody episodes here and there. But if you don’t catch those mood swings right from the start and get SSPE diagnosed early then it has a 99.9% mortality rate. With the rise in measles outbreaks it is only a matter of time before we will be seeing more about this, as it is a problem seen in underdeveloped countries who don’t have access to the MMR vaccine.

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  37. Roger Watson

    March 10, 2015 at 6:17 am

    200 Evidence-Based Reasons NOT To Vaccinate – FREE Research PDF Download!
    http://www.greenmedinfo.com

    The evidence against vaccine safety and effectiveness is massive. Here is a 300+ page research download of National Library of Medicine abstracts showing there are over 200 adverse effects of the vaccines in the CDC schedule, including death.

    reply to this comment
  38. shaz t

    February 25, 2015 at 8:57 pm

    more people, all ages, die from prescription drugs. time was mothers ran their children around to visit the kids who had the childrens’ illnesses. as for no. five: sadly, a U.N. agency has torn asunder the ‘holistic’ and ‘vitamin’ industries. now big pharma will make the things we bought most, and they will be virtually ineffectual, or worse. so vitamins and natural hormones and other of life’s saving graces are no longer available to us. our choices have been taken away.
    any medical treatment being forced upon a person is wrong unless there is a life or death situation – and even then there are circumstantial/legal choices. forced medicine and vaccines can be (and no doubt are) used in nefarious ways.
    no i do not wear tin foil on any part of my body. and raised three children. and have five grandchildren, so far. and hope life will survive mankind, for my grandkids and so on.
    thanks for the opp to comment.

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  39. Steve

    February 24, 2015 at 5:38 pm

    To all the parents interested in Forcing Vaccination on others and the parents that think mass Vaccination for MMR is a good thing… I think you should read this with an open mind because you are being led down the wrong path.

    Conclusion. Children of mothers vaccinated against measles and, possibly, rubella have lower concentrations of maternal antibodies and lose protection by maternal antibodies at an earlier age than children of mothers in communities that oppose vaccination. This increases the risk of disease transmission in highly vaccinated populations.

    The above conclusion is not from some rag paper or hack author…

    From the Journal of Infectious Diseases;
    Volume 208, Issue 1, Pages 10-16

    Waning of Maternal Antibodies Against Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and Varicella in Communities With Contrasting Vaccination Coverage

    Abstract

    Background. The combined measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine has been successfully administered for >20 years. Because of this, protection by maternal antibodies in infants born to vaccinated mothers might be negatively affected.

    Methods. A large cross-sectional serologic survey was conducted in the Netherlands during 2006–2007. We compared the kinetics of antibody concentrations in children and women of childbearing age in the highly vaccinated general population with those in orthodox Protestant communities that were exposed to outbreaks.

    Results. The estimated duration of protection by maternal antibodies among infants in the general population, most of whom were born to vaccinated mothers, was short: 3.3 months for measles, 2.7 months for mumps, 3.9 months for rubella, and 3.4 months for varicella. The duration of protection against measles was 2 months longer for infants born in the orthodox communities, most of whom had unvaccinated mothers. For rubella, mothers in the orthodox communities had higher concentrations of antibodies as compared to the general population.

    Conclusion. Children of mothers vaccinated against measles and, possibly, rubella have lower concentrations of maternal antibodies and lose protection by maternal antibodies at an earlier age than children of mothers in communities that oppose vaccination. This increases the risk of disease transmission in highly vaccinated populations.

    reply to this comment
  40. Adi

    February 23, 2015 at 9:52 pm

    Megan, I have really enjoyed reading all of your posts on vaccines. I particularly liked this one. You make so many good points. For a long time, I have had mixed feelings about vaccines, but I’m questioning them more and more, the more I research them.

    I have a 3 boys. My eldest, who is 6 years old, is fully vaccinated and appears to be healthy. My middle son is 4 years old and is also up to date on vaccines, but now is due for his boosters to enter kindergarten. He has developmental delays and appears to have an autistic spectrum disorder, in my opinion (even though a prior evaluation diagnosed him just as “developmentally delayed”). We have seen some improvement in him through diet/supplements and I don’t want to lose the progress we have made. I don’t think I want to further vaccinate him and I’m thinking about getting a vaccine waiver. My youngest son is 15 months old. He is partially vaccinated. I have delayed many vaccines with him. I haven’t taken him to the pediatrician since his 9 month visit. He has been healthy and I don’t intend to give him the Varicella or MMR vaccines, so I’d rather not get harassed by the Pediatrician. I don’t share these thoughts with too many people, because most are not supportive.

    I appreciate all the well-researched information that you provide. It makes me feel like I am not alone.

    reply to this comment
    • signalfire

      March 1, 2015 at 9:47 pm

      Well child visits are a scam to get you used to having the kids shot up with godknowswhat. The doc offices (and the doc and the rest of the staff) are also a hotbed of germs and viruses. Does the staff change their clothes between room? No… Is there a UV light in the waiting room and are you ushered into a separate room away from that sneezy runny nose kid immediately? No.

      It’s a scam, it’s all a scam and if your kid gets vaccinated and you call the doc at 3 am with a shrieking feverish child in the background, s/he won’t even remember that your kid got a vaccine – they typically farm that out to a staffer because they ‘don’t want the kid scared of them’. You shouldn’t go to the doc for anything but ‘sick child visits’ and advice, and the best thing would be for THEM to come to YOU. Remember the good old days, when docs made housecalls?

      reply to this comment
    • Cindy

      March 7, 2015 at 6:25 am

      You took the words out of my mouth!! We have 8yo twins on the spectrum, a 6yo with adhd/extreme behaviors and a 16mo girl partially vaccinated. we are staring the MMR in the face and i do NOT want the combo shot…lots to pray over here! Thank you for all the info!

      reply to this comment
  41. Susan

    February 22, 2015 at 1:34 pm

    Yesterday I was watching “how to marry a millionaire” and Betty Grable found out she had measles and became alarmed. The other character in the scene said, “oh calm down! its just the measles. Go sit in a dark room for a week and you’ll be fine. LOL! Its funny to see measles referenced in old movies and TV shows becuase everyone is so calm about it.

    reply to this comment
  42. Jem Kat

    February 22, 2015 at 4:06 am

    Thank you so much for this! I made an entire 15 minute video for YouTube just last night, basically just reading the insert for the MMR vaccine. I have been called hick, retard, and told that someone wishes me and my children would just get polio and die already so THEIR children would be safe from my evil unvaxxed kids. Nevermind the fact that my children have only ever had the COMMON COLD, which they presumably got from a vaccinated child.
    The government does NOT have the right to dictate our health, and especially not our childrens health. I am not a Marxist, I don’t care if the government believes they are but they cannot infringe on OUR BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS.
    If they are able to pass this, they will be able to pass anything and ALL OF OUR children will become nothing more than test subjects and guinea pigs.
    No thank you US, if you manage to pass this, we will be going to Canada.
    Sincerely,
    One PISSED off Mommy.

    reply to this comment
  43. Kristan

    February 22, 2015 at 12:07 am

    I do not agree with you. Except understanding defending what you believe best for your own child. But then you started curing cancers with measles and you sound psychotic. Open church and start infecting cancer patients with measles and see how well they do. When you and yours get sick remember those that will come to your aid no matter what has come out of your mouth before.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 22, 2015 at 7:47 pm

      Kristan, Thanks for the comment. You can refer to the 7 citations I listed for more on measles and cancer – although, I’d personally prefer to treat cancer with things that are proven to heal the body and have no risks, I recognize that these mild, common, childhood illnesses could serve a purpose and as science suggests, could ward off more severe diseases. I’m glad we agree that defending what one believes is best for their child is important. Regards.

      reply to this comment
      • Jaime

        February 22, 2015 at 11:30 pm

        Beautiful reply Megan…

        reply to this comment
    • Heather

      February 24, 2015 at 12:58 am

      Actually, a woman in MN was cured by high doses of the measles virus.

      http://www.medicaldaily.com/measles-virus-cures-cancer-woman-multiple-myeloma-stacy-erholtz-now-fundraising-more-302850

      reply to this comment
  44. Doug Bell

    February 20, 2015 at 1:56 am

    #3

    The claim that the efficacy and safety of the MMR vaccine has not been proven is completely wrong. It just is.

    There have been numerous studies involving millions of children. You make a very strained attempt at disqualifying all of the studies that have been performed by requiring them to be “pre-licensure, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies using an inert placebo”. While a study meeting those requirements would have been ideal, that doesn’t disqualify all of the many studies that have been performed—especially given that a “pre-licensure” study for MMR has no longer been possible for 50+ years. While the gold standard of evidence-based medicine would have been great, the actual disease was causing widespread damage, so the vaccine was moved into production before tests meeting those standards were performed. It was deemed unethical to perform placebo-based studies after the vaccine was available. There was no “Big Pharma” conspiracy or special treatment going on.

    To claim that the safety and efficacy have not been proven is to deny the results of scores of studies.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 21, 2015 at 4:20 pm

      How many pre-licensure studies were done using an inert placebo? This is the standard of evidenced-based medicine. How many post-licensure studies have been conducted using an inert placebo that were not funded by Merck? I know how vaccines are conveniently fast-tracked. Measles was never considered the deadly monster we have made it out to be – not by the scientific community, not by the American people, and not even by the media. Until now.

      reply to this comment
      • Joseph

        February 21, 2015 at 8:39 pm

        There are vaccines that have been developed for numerous pathogens beyond what is currently available. The only reason they aren’t being distributed is money. No company will develop a vaccine that won’t make them money. But more importantly, they won’t develop a vaccine for a pathogen that isn’t dangerous, because no one will bother being immunized. Scientists and doctors would not stand idly by while big pharma benefits from the ignorance of the general public, and those companies are fully aware of that. Unfortunately, the main factor in determining whether a vaccine will be brought to market is the economic benefit of immunization. Once again, a privilege that the upper class is taking for granted. If only society had followed in the footsteps of Jonas Salk.

        http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/2/22/
        http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/116/1/e1.short
        http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/189/Supplement_1/S131.short
        http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X02006230
        http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/187/Supplement_1/S8.short

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      • Doug Bell

        February 25, 2015 at 1:48 am

        I answered your question in my post. It was determined to be unethical to conduct testing using a placebo. This is far from unprecedented–it’s actually reasonably common. When giving a placebo is extremely likely to leave a patient without effective treatment when an effective treatment is know, it is unethical to do so.

        If a medication or treatment provides significant advantage relative to disadvantages. For example a new cancer drug in early trials has a 50% remission rate against a previously untreatable cancer with a 50% mortality rate, and relatively mild side effects compared to dying, then performing a double-blind placebo-based trial would be considered unethical.

        reply to this comment
      • Doug Bell

        February 25, 2015 at 2:20 am

        Your contention that measles wasn’t the “deadly monster” it’s been made out to be is an interesting claim. In the 1950s, measles was causing around 500 deaths per year in the US. The US population was around half of what it is today, so that would be the equivalent of around 1,000 deaths per year. Most of the deaths were children. 1,000 deaths to children between the ages of 1 and 14 would make measles the most deadly childhood disease in the United States today.

        However, you want to claim that deaths from vaccines–which taking the most exaggerated claims of vaccine deaths would be in the tens of deaths per year, and is much more likely to be in low single digits per year–is the “deadly monster”?

        Hardly.

        reply to this comment
    • Bob Roger

      February 23, 2015 at 9:49 pm

      Doug Bell “The claim that the efficacy and safety of the MMR vaccine has not been proven is completely wrong. It just is.” ARTICLE I CAN produce and prove myself!!!! “””Even more disturbing is that the FDA approves of drugs anyway! In spite of knowing the company faked their data and the drug could kill people from liver damage, FDA gave their official stamp of approval. Corporate interests are the only explanation for why these regulators would choose to look the other way and knowingly put you and your family’s life at risk”””. – – – comments about cancer… ” Cancer has been cured with a proven record since 1928 .. I have been showing people (not as a business) even how to get rid of a cold – Flu within hrs.. for the last 30yrs…people jam up hospitals with cold & flu systems – I even volunteered to prove to a hospital what I could do to resolve the situation – as usual deaf ears to plain stupidity – the US is the only country that makes vaccines obligatory by law .. also the US health care cost are more then all of the western countries combined, (you should thank the republicans for that) – I myself with medical training thank goodness, could elevate pain (any) within minutes and nothing would enter the body – also recently scientist have proven that emotional problems are 89% of health problems..which I have been stating for the last 40yrs., I do color & graphology testing, to conclude this to long entry the web address I submitted is an ad showing just a touch of health alternatives that health care systems ignore, even the WHO (world health organization) have stated for 20yrs++ that acupuncture give 60% better results than drug (also without side effects again North American Health “IGNORES” I wonder WHY???

      reply to this comment
      • Vb

        February 23, 2015 at 10:13 pm

        interesting. I, for one, would like to know more about your information on getting rid of flu/cold virus’. I have one of those sneaky little things coming on me right now. Taking airborne and using a blend of essential oils. What else you got?

        reply to this comment
        • Bob Roger

          March 1, 2015 at 6:53 am

          Hi VB – in the last 40 yrs or so I think I got the flu twice, I realized a long time ago that a person immune system was the key to prevent most of health problems, along with resolving emotional problems, “as they say an once of prevention is worth a lb of cure” (now I could write a book) lots of people are even suggesting that I do, but for your question, on flu, I’m a French Canadian so excuse my English – here in Montreal their is a company that have been producing a different vitamin C it contains an immune system booster, now the problem with is that people don’t really know the procedure, actually when a cold starts you should take at least 1 capsule per hour! not just one or 2 during the day! the only thing that vitamin C will give you are gasses, (remember don’t take any type – investigate and make sure it’s not synthetic.. along with this is take (optional since the proper C will resolve within the day!) is hydrogen peroxide 3% – put 3 or 4 drops into each ear for a few minutes and rinse (it will tingle) … in my region I do a little more like color and graphology to help resolve emotional disturbance since it has been scientifically proven that 89% of health issues, I also do QT + QE – these issues have to do with energy healing, ..along with a acupuncture technique that has nothing to do with needles nor electronic units.. (also in my past 30yrs++ I use to manufacture a natural iodine that cured farm animals health of course veterinarians fought to stop me since it removed their antibiotics for cows @ $129.00 a crack and the farmers cow had to be quarantined for 3 months, my system with iodine costs the farmer .10 cents plus the cow was back in production the next day! it was also good for flu’s as well – the same type of ignorance is within the health system – as I said I could write a book) take care VD

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      • Doug Bell

        February 25, 2015 at 1:57 am

        I have no doubt you “could elevate [sic] pain (any) within minutes and nothing would enter the body”. 😉

        Chiropractors are covered by most insurance policies; acupuncture is covered by some. That’s because evidence-based studies have indicated that they provide relief for some people. Where is your evidence-based research for your claims?

        reply to this comment
  45. Doug Bell

    February 20, 2015 at 1:45 am

    #2

    The claim of 140 deaths from MMR vaccinations since 2000 is wildly exaggerated. The majority of adverse effects reported cannot be linked to the administration of the vaccine, so reporting raw numbers from VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System) is disingenuous at best. However, VAERS lists a total of only 38 reports between Jan. 2000 and Dec. 2014 of death, neonatal death, death of companion or death of relative related to any form of measles vaccine (MMR, MMRV, MM, MER, & MEA), so the claim of 140 deaths is unsubstantiated by the source you reference. The majority of the deaths associated with MMR vaccinations are the result of transmission to immunocompromised individuals.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 22, 2015 at 5:27 am

      I’m not sure how you can say that the “140 deaths due to MMR vaccine” figure is widely exaggerated when you, by your own admission, state that VAERS is “disingenuous at best.” Is there another system out there that the government has established that actually monitors vaccine adverse events properly that I don’t know about? You can not on the one hand, say that it’s disingenuous and then use the same database to substantiate your viewpoint.

      There have been 140 deaths reported on VAERS since 2000 and since VAERS only contains 1-10% of actual adverse events, this figure is more than likely underestimated.

      The fact that the government has no proper system to monitor adverse reactions and the fact that vaccines are given in such a way as to make it almost impossible to prove a causal connection between a vaccine and any adverse reaction should be of concern to everyone. (I didn’t address your last statement because it is ambiguous.)

      Respectfully, Megan

      reply to this comment
      • Doug Bell

        February 25, 2015 at 1:40 am

        You have misstated what I said. I said that using **raw numbers** from VAERS was disingenuous at best because following investigation, the majority of the events reported on VAERS are determined to have been coincidental, not causal. Then I go on to say the the **raw number** from VAERS is only 38, not 140.

        I give the criteria I used to perform the search that return 38. Perhaps you can share the criteria you used to return 140.

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      • Doug Bell

        March 13, 2015 at 1:46 am

        A couple weeks ago I asked you for the search criteria you used on VAERS that returned 140 MMR deaths. I gave you the criteria I used, and that only returned 38. I would appreciate you either providing the criteria or correcting the figure used in your article.

        reply to this comment
  46. Doug Bell

    February 20, 2015 at 1:13 am

    I left a long comment refuting many of your claims that never got posted, so I’ll try them one at a time and see which dissenting opinions you’re willing to discuss.

    #1

    The claim that “vaccine-induced herd immunity is a fail” is based on an article that draws its conclusion from the analysis of several studies. The article is not peer reviewed and is not published. Several of the papers it cites are based on studies that indicate that vaccinations will not be able to eradicate measles. That’s a far cry from saying herd immunity is a fail. Measles is one of the two most infectious diseases we know of. Therefore, even highly effective vaccines leave enough reservoirs for the virus to hide in the wild. That means while we can reduce measles down to only a fraction of a percent of the population, it is unlikely that we will ever be able to eradicate it.

    However, going from 90+% of the population down to a fraction of a percent is a win in my book. Why do you claim vaccine-induced herd immunity is a fail?

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 21, 2015 at 4:17 pm

      Doug, Have you read the original paper on herd immunity (linked in this post)? This is “the paper” upon vaccine-induced herd immunity is founded upon. Herd immunity only applies to those diseases, derived naturally, that confer lifetime immunity. A vaccine provides artificial immunity (if any) for a temporary amount of time. It’s pretty common sense but the original paper might clear up the confusion.

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      • Joseph

        February 21, 2015 at 8:58 pm

        http://www.naturalimmunityfundamentals.com/herdimmunity…. Is that seriously one of your citations? Might as well go pull someone’s blog from the huffington post. Please take a look at the response I had for Lillie. That isn’t how immunology works. And that is not the definition of herd immunity. If someone has acquired an adaptive response (as a result of vaccination) then they are immune to that pathogen PERIOD. That cannot be argued against. If I took antibodies from an individual who has recently received an immunization, they will neutralize the infection of a virus in vitro (I can infect a cell culture in combination with that person’s serum, and the virus will not be able to infect the cells). So, if the majority of the population receives a vaccine, then herd immunity will be acquired. It’s true that a vaccine won’t be effective in every single individual (herd immunity, it will work for most of the population). This could be due to the actual formulation and preparation of the vaccine. How it was stored and how it was administered could also dampen its efficacy. But HLA haplotype restriction also plays a significant role in determining how an individual responds to a vaccine platform. Nature is without a doubt the most respected scientific journal in the world… Can’t say the same for any of your references, they’re pretty much all garbage.
        http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v10/n11/full/nri2868.html
        http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v6/n4/full/nri1805.html
        http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v11/n12/full/nri3084.html
        http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v3/n8/full/nri1149.html
        http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v9/n12/full/nri2669.html

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        • Megan Heimer

          February 22, 2015 at 5:51 am

          Joseph,

          Thanks for your comment. Have you looked at the citations (or lack thereof) in every single pro-vax post, article, and opinion piece circulating? I hope you are holding them to the same standards. I cited many credible sources including the original paper on herd immunity (upon which vaccine-induced herd immunity was misappropriated from) and this wonderful article by Dr. Tetyana who also has a PhD in immunology. Now I don’t have a PhD in immunology like you but it only takes common sense to understand that herd immunity only applies to those illnesses derived naturally that confer lifetime immunity. A vaccine does not give lifetime immunity. It gives artificial and temporary (if any) immunity at best shifting the age of exposure to our most vulnerable populations (which we’re seeing now). By your reasoning, China, with a 99% infant/child MMR vaccine uptake as per WHO and UNICEF wouldn’t have had 50,000 confirmed measles cases in 2014, with Italy and Germany following suit. (I’m assuming you have access to the world bank data.)

          Now, I would love to pay for access to all of your impressive citations but I fear it would be a waste of time and money. I would end up pointing out the shortcomings of these studies (and refuting them with others) and you would then refute me by degrading my education, ability to read, and ability to think critically, as you have done with your fellow peer.

          P.S – This statement “If someone has acquired an adaptive response (as a result of vaccination) then they are immune to that pathogen PERIOD.” is not correct.

          Respectfully, Megan

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          • Doug Bell

            February 25, 2015 at 1:30 am

            Megan, “herd immunity” describes the state of the “herd”. It’s not some permanent condition, and has nothing to do with how long the herd offers immunity to its susceptible members. You are simply incorrect in your interpretation of the meaning of herd immunity.

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          • Kalli

            March 10, 2015 at 11:41 pm

            Megan,
            I also have to disagree with your interpretation of herd immunity. There’s a reason why we receive boosters, because as you stated the vaccines may not be permanent. For some of us, myself included, “lifetime” vaccinations don’t always last a lifetime which is why we are screened with titers. This is especially important if you work in the medical field, which I do. The continuation of vaccine schedules and boosters helps to further perpetuate herd immunity and helps protect those with weaker immune systems from being exposed to the disease in the first place. I’m currently in medical school and have been taught by some of the best immunologists in the United States who have performed numerous experiments relating directly to herd immunity. Please, before too many this blog post and get more confused, try to provide some updated, evidence based research-1930 is a little outdated. Also, I read on your “about me” section that your husband is a physician, what type of physician is he?

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            • Megan Heimer

              March 11, 2015 at 7:02 pm

              Kalli, I would advise reading that paper from the 1930s you were quick to discount. It is the original paper on herd immunity, of which your views (and the views of the immunologists who are giving you your brief exposure to the subject of vaccines) are improperly derived from. I recommend discounting a source based on content (versus year published). Although I would never downplay your achievements, I remember the air of superiority many students had while enduring the medical school marathon. I hope it doesn’t keep you from performing proper analysis, or at the very least, respecting your future patients who have informed themselves (no matter where they fall on the spectrum).

              Respectfully, Megan

            • karen

              March 24, 2015 at 1:14 am

              Kalli,
              I am also a member of the medical community who has had to get the MMR FOUR times since 1996 due to changing of employment and being tested for titres. I am one of the people who apparently does not hold onto measles immunity. That being said, unless you are reapplying for a new hospital or school system, one is never retested for their MMR or Varicella titres. Most people lose immunity and have no idea. Once you leave medical school you will get screened for your residency. If you elect a fellowship, then you will get screened again. When you go out into clinical practice, you will be asked to get a booster or be screened again. That is it, no more titres after that. So then when you and your family decide to travel outside the country in ten years and come back and perhaps stop at Disneyland on the way home for a few days. It may be you and your family who are spreading the disease. You just cannot blame the people who choose not to vaccinate. You may be “unvaccinated” yourselves at that point.
              Thank you,
              Karen

    • Nyki

      April 19, 2015 at 5:10 pm

      I am noticing a disturbing trend. People “research” their medical choices, and they claim to have found “proof” backing up their ideas and decisions.
      The problem lies in the lack of true peer- reviewed evidence- based research. There is a reason that healthcare providers do not use google for their research. Standards of Care of developed with great care, and they are modified as new research emerges. I saw a post directing me to an article written in 1930… (Are you kidding me???) I would much rather use current research that is available. Thank you for your intelligent response to this dangerous and irresponsible post.

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      • Megan Heimer

        April 19, 2015 at 9:13 pm

        Nyki, that article from 1930 is THE paper upon which herd immunity is founded upon. As someone with a professional degree who is also married to a physician, I urge you to scrutinize data based on it’s content and not the date of publish. Oh, and for the record, I know not a single physician who hangs out at the library.
        Respectfully,
        Megan

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  47. Dr. Musich

    February 19, 2015 at 5:46 pm

    I’d Like to add to this by saying that the Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, the ‘gold standard’ of health, states clearly that the CURE for measles is high doses of vitamin A. 300,000 IUs a day for 3 days and it’s gone. This is whats done in the 3rd world breakouts.
    I’d also like to point out that Vitamin A is the master vitamin of the immune system and if you are deficient in it, which most of us are, you are clinically immunocompromised. Take Airborne. i recommend it to all my patients. Use it as your multivitamin and take it with meals.

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    • Colleen

      February 20, 2015 at 4:05 pm

      Thousands of children and adults in third world countries die of the measles every year. There is no Cure just treatmtnts. Doctors and organizations need all the vitamin A they can get in third world countries to help the people who have no access to vitamin A rich foods. They’re a lot of serious health problems for these people, blindness is a big one. Millions of children and adults die every year from preventable diseases.

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      • Megan Heimer

        February 21, 2015 at 4:03 am

        Globally speaking, yes…but we live in the United States. We should not be mandating vaccinations based on numbers in Africa any more than they should be implementing our obesity initiatives.

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  48. Rylee

    February 19, 2015 at 5:35 pm

    As a follow up to your response to my previous post it actually is the same premise. An immunocompromised child is guaranteed to suffer severe consequences if they are to become ill due to a virus that your children may carry due to the fact that they’re not vaccinated. Unvaccinated individuals may carry harmful diseases that can kill someone just as a child bringing peanuts may kill a child with allergies. Just because one is a visible object does not mean the premise is any different.
    The argument is not that unvaccinated children are the only way that immunocompromised individuals can get sick, the argument is that this is the main issue. Given the fact that you’ve chosen to cite articles from the 70s and 80s and the fact that many of your arguments have been proven to be incorrect, I find it difficult to understand why others would deem these compelling enough to go against medical professionals, individuals who have taken the Hippocratic oath to keep us safe. You are certainly right that you have the right to not vaccinate your kids but in my opinion, if you make this decision then your children should be homeschooled or placed in a school with others who have made the same decision. You don’t deserve the benefit of herd immunity if you choose to not protect others who do not have the choice to vaccinate. Then see how fast disease spreads in those communities and get back to me about the vaccination issue. If you are to expect others to protect other kids who have peanut allergies then I think it’s fair to protect those who cannot get vaccinated.

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    • Megan Heimer

      February 19, 2015 at 7:04 pm

      Rylee, an immunocompromised person will not suffer any consequences from an unvaccinated child who does not have a disease, he/she is not guaranteed to get it even if an unvaccinated child does, and the affects (if an immunocompromised person should actually contract a disease) of that are largely speculation on your part.

      Of course, we’re pretending unvaccinated children (who actually have* the illness) are the only people who put the immunocompromised at risk here…which (if you’ve read my post), is not true. You cannot compare subjecting my child to a medical procedure that carries a risk of death, to depriving your child of a peanut butter sandwich between the hours of 8 and 3. We’ll have to agree to disagree if you think otherwise.

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      • Joseph

        February 20, 2015 at 8:07 pm

        An immunocompromised individual has lost the ability to mount an immune response, likely due to decreased lymphocyte counts (as is seen in acute forms of leukemia and HIV). His assumption that an immunocompromised individual contracting an infectious disease would result in life threatening complications, is completely valid. People don’t die from HIV, they die from secondary infections because they’re T cell counts are too low, or no longer exist, to form an adaptive response to combat the infection (still with me?). The same could be said for children suffering from leukemia, the most common form of childhood cancer. Any unvaccinated individual sheds virus, and everyone they come into contact with has the potential to spread that virus. Your child could be asymptomatic and still be shedding virus for days. During that stage, anyone he comes into contact with could carry that virus back to someone who is immunocompromised. Keeping the immunocompromised segregated is not an option, immunizing your children is.
        Utilizing viruses for cancer therapy has been researched for decades. Sorry, measles isn’t a forerunner in that race. And, IRONICALLY, these cancer treatments using viruses are essentially vaccines! There’s really no difference between those treatments and vaccines, so you better boycott them as well.

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        • Megan Heimer

          February 21, 2015 at 3:56 am

          Any recently vaccinated child can shed a virus and infect an immunocompromised patient. That’s why both St. Jude’s Hospital and John Hopkins (as well as the rest) recommend that cancer patients avoid the recently vaccinated (linked in this post). Is this also going to be enforced in the classroom? Are parents keeping their children home for six weeks post-vaccine? There are MILLIONS of pathogens for which we have no vaccine for and for which the immunocompromised could come into contact with. There are also millions of adults walking around with no immunity to these childhood illnesses (despite being vaccinated) and are potential carriers that could infect the immunocompromised. Even if we were all vaccinated, there is still a percentage of the population who would receive no immunity and could infect an immunocompromised patient. How do you plan to prevent this from happening? How do we know when artificial immunity wears off? Although I think everyone should have the right to go about as they please, I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that one person is more important than another. Although I feel for the immunocompromised, there are better ways of preventing disease that puts no child at risk and I would prefer not to subject my child to a medical procedure that carries a risk of serious adverse reaction, including death.

          Where do you think the idea of using the measles vaccine to treat cancer came from? It came from the realization that exposure to these childhood illnesses could play a role in the prevention and treatment of more serious diseases. I liked seven citations in this post. Of course, we can’t patent wild measles and we’d hate to lose money from the MMR, so we’ll make a cancer vaccine that we can patent. Do you know how much the standard cancer treatment costs these days? There’s big money in a cancer vaccine and no money in exposure to a mild, common, childhood disease.

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          • Joseph

            February 21, 2015 at 8:25 pm

            You can do what ever you want, it is your choice to put your child and others in danger. That being said, I’m going to refute everything that you just posted (this is being backed with my MSc in virology and PhD in immunology, what’s your background in studying infectious diseases and the immune response again? I haven’t been informed as to what they cover in law school). Even if an individual were to contract an infection from someone who was recently immunized, the virus that they would be infected with is attenuated (IT’S NOT DANGEROUS). That’s why they can immunize with a live virus, because specific genes of the virus that confer increased pathogenicity have been deleted from its genome. You’re wrong.
            Also, you think the idea for cancer treatment with viruses came from some random experiment that somehow cured cancer with the measles virus (cancers aren’t all the same and every individual’s cancer is unique based on their genotype). But, the point is viruses have been used for an extremely long time to deliver specific genes to be expressed in cells. The real benefit of using a vector delivered vaccine (that’s using a virus to deliver a gene for expression in cells) is that you can target cancer cells specifically (which is much better than using chemo and radiation which target cells non-specifically). There’s also quite a few different strategies to utilize viruses for vaccines and cancer therapy, it would take years to review them all. You can’t just give someone who has cancer measles and hope for the best, that’s just ignorant and dangerous. And, the measles virus is far from being the number one choice for a viral platform. Most of the research for vectors are being done in DNA viruses for too many reasons to bother explaining to you, you can read about it if you’re curious. Here’s a few articles from the most respected scientific journal in the world (good luck).
            http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v3/n8/full/nri1150.html
            http://www.nature.com/nrmicro/journal/v8/n1/full/nrmicro2240.html
            http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v5/n4/full/nri1592.html (dendritic cells will likely work better than using a viral vector. Before you read that article, you should read through these…
            http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v5/n8/full/nri1670.html
            http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v12/n11/full/nri3298.html
            http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v14/n7/full/nri3689.html
            http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v6/n6/full/nri1845.html
            http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v14/n6/full/nri3683.html
            Lastly, just curious as to why a lot of my posts haven’t made it onto the page. It seems that the people with scientific backgrounds have run into the same issue. And weren’t you complaining that big pharma is just money hungry and these vaccines offer no benefit to anyone except making them profits… Who do you think has the money to run any clinical trial? A vector delivered cancer vaccine is far from entering the market, but when it does, Big Pharma will charge out the ass for it. It won’t be some vaccine that everyone can get. It will be for the upper class. Don’t you find it slightly immoral that only the wealthy will be immune to cancers, and you’re supporting that. Then again, you neglecting to immunize your children is based on the fact that when they do become ill, you’ll be able to have top of the line health care (who cares about the people who need our help the most, right?).

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            • Megan Heimer

              February 22, 2015 at 6:09 am

              Hi Joseph,
              You will have to forgive me for that fact that it took me a few hours to post your comments. I was engaged in other activities. You’ll also have to excuse me if I don’t take time away from my family to respond to your comment (in detail) – of which pertained to very little of what was said in my blog post and consisted mostly of insulting me as a person. I understand that you feel it takes a degree in immunology AND a belief in your viewpoint to understand this issue. I absolutely disagree but nothing I say will convince you otherwise.

              Dr. Tetyana Obukhanych is an immunologist and she states in her book (better than I possibly could) how the field of immunology has missed the mark. I always feel that in order to make an objective, educated opinion, one needs to expose themselves to information on both sides of the issue, so I hope you’ll read it.

              I won’t be responding further but I will approve your comments if they are respectful and conform to my comment policy.

              Regards, Megan

        • sara

          February 21, 2015 at 5:43 am

          Joseph, you are awesome!

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    • Lilie

      February 20, 2015 at 3:50 am

      You are making assumptions that are not fact. First of all, vaccinations doesn’t make you immune. Immunity can only be conferred by natural means and NOT vaccination. Vaccination, at best and supposedly, only teaches the body’s second response system to fight the disease if you ever come in contact with it. It thus weakens the first response so that you are more likely to get the disease, and then fight it off. But all this time the vaccinated, now that are more prone to actually get the disease, are also more likely to spread the disease until their secondary immune response kicks in and fights it. On top of all of this, the live virus vaccines shed. So not only can they more easily catch the diseases and be asymptomatic carriers spreading the disease, they show no symptoms so no quarantine happens, and then they are shedding the very vaccines for up to 2 months post vaccination. I don’t see the vaccine-free causing this much mayhem in the world.

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      • Demitra M. N.

        February 20, 2015 at 4:43 pm

        Lilie, very well said! ..I agree.

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      • Joseph

        February 20, 2015 at 8:29 pm

        So that isn’t how immunology works at all in any way what so ever. There’s two branches of immunity, the innate and adaptive immune systems. Innate immunity could be considered any sort of barrier, epithelial cells (that’s your skin) and mucous membranes being the primary barrier. The secondary barrier would be innate immune cells, those which are incapable of forming a memory response (leukocytes primarily). Theses cells are incapable of distinguishing one pathogen from another. They are armed with pattern recognition receptors (PRRs, such as TLRs, NLRs, RigI, and MDA5) that are able to recognize specific attributes found on bacteria and viruses that are not seen in eukaryotic cells (those are found on animals), they are referred to as pathogen associated molecular patterns or PAMPs (such as methylated DNA, lipopolysacharide, peptidoglycan, single stranded RNA, DNA in the cytoplasm, double stranded RNA, etc). Upon recognizing one of these PAMPs, the innate immune cells release cytokines to essentially warn the body that there is a danger present. These cytokines are important in not only providing an innate defense, but more so in recruiting adaptive immune cells (B and T lymphocytes) to the site of infection.
        When you give a vaccine, an innate response is launched. The innate cells present antigen to naive T lymphocytes in the draining lymph node. The T cells proliferate in response to a pattern specific to that virus, parasite, or bacterium (which has been included in the vaccine). And B cells join the fight to produce antibodies (this typically takes a week or 2). The vaccine is then essentially eliminated from the body as the immune system disposes of it. But, memory T cells and memory B cells are formed during this response. They stick around the body for years, potentially lifelong (really dependent on an individual’s genetic make up… There’s 3 billion base pairs in the human genome, and everyone’s is different so it’s going to take a while to figure that part out). So, when the immunized individual comes into contact with said virus naturally, the memory cells respond almost immediately. This eliminates that 1-2 week window that could allow the virus to spread rapidly (which is the whole point of a vaccine). Some viruses are very efficient at spreading rapidly (Ebola), not only that, a lot of the dangerous viruses have evolved to evade any sort of inhibitory cytokine response. They hide from your immune system and kill you (1918 Spanish Influenza).
        So, how is this any different from a natural infection? It isn’t. When you get a cold, the doctor says go home and sleep it off. The cold is restricted to the upper respiratory tract and doesn’t pose any sort of immediate threat. Usually after 2 weeks you’re back to normal. Interesting right? That’s your immune system responding in the exact same manner that it did to the vaccine. Scratch your arm right now with your finger nail, you’ll see inflammation of that particular area. That is your innate immune system sending out a warning that their could be a breach in the skin, and adaptive immune cells are already being recruited to that site of inflammation.
        These are the very basics of immunology that I’ve taught to my 10 year old nephew (it gets a lot more intense than this). So, you can take your chances of contracting that virus and pray that it’s contained long enough for your adaptive immune system to respond (which immunocompromised individuals are incapable of doing) or you can go get vaccinated and you’ll never know that you were infected in the first place. And you’ll be looking out for the guy who isn’t as lucky as you genetically. Your choice, seems like a simple one to me.

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  49. Tulani

    February 19, 2015 at 10:46 am

    Thank you for writing this article 🙂 x

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  50. Jenn

    February 19, 2015 at 5:20 am

    Thank you so much for writing this well-thought-out, well-written response. That woman’s article made me sick to my stomach. You are a brave woman; your purpose is clear. Keep fighting the good fight, there are many who stand with you. God Bless!

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  51. dhinds

    February 19, 2015 at 1:41 am

    Since risks are present on both sides – whether vaccinating vs not vaccinating is correct is not the issue. The issue here is a legal issue, a matter of choice – and valid reasons can be found on both sides. Therefore, those that chose not to vaccinate their children or themselves should NOT be stigmatized or subjected to either ridicule or contempt.

    They are within their rights and can not validly be coerced into taking a path that carries risks of it’s own. Furthermore, vaccinations are simply a means of inducing immunity, which can also be derived naturally. Unvaccinated persons do NOT necessarily represent a threat to either a vaccinated or an unvaccinated person, since many additional factors are involved. In other words, the ability of a persons immune system to fend off disease does not depend on whether he or she was vaccinated or not but rather, on many other factors.

    So this is a call for understanding and tolerance.

    Megan has done an excellent job of presenting her position and is deserving of respect.

    She is also a lawyer.

    That said, I am not going to drink bone broth (as she suggests in another article), now or ever, (Nor do I drink soda pop). I am going to squeeze a pineapple and a few sweet limes, instead. (I’d add the juice from a pomegranate, if I had one).

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  52. mike

    February 18, 2015 at 10:39 pm

    The links you posted to studies you claim demonstrate convincingly to you that exposure to wild measles cures cancer – so much so that you would expose your own child to measles is they had cancer – don’t actually show the studies themselves. They show titles of the studies, nothing more. They don’t give us any context – what were the nature of these studies? Sample sizes? Controls? What sort of methodologies did they use? What were the long term follow ups? What is the biological mechanism by which they propose that measles caused spontaneous remission?

    For every good study out there in the world, there are a hundred crappy ones that can be easily debunked. You claim you respect medicine that is evidence based and holds up under scrutiny, yet you advocate treatment for a terminal disease based on nothing more than glancing at the titles of four decades old studies, without knowing literally the least bit about any of those studies? How can you justify claiming these studies demonstrate anything when you don’t have anything more than the titles of said studies? How can you claim to be giving evidence based advice without actually looking at the supposed evidence to judge its value? And how could you offer advice to a parent that would kill their child if you were wrong, without even bothering to do the least bit of actual research to see if your advice is actually base on hard evidence?

    “Research” does not mean typing a subject line into pub med, and then thinking if your search returns any results, that means you are correct. Research means actually examining studies in detail in order to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, and then investigating what follow up studies were done that helped to prove and disprove them. Even with extremely well performed studies using good methodology, early studies (which typically have limited sample sizes, or are in vitro or animal studies rather than using live human subjects) very often have results that look promising, only to be disproven when more extensive research is then embarked upon.

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    • Leanna

      February 19, 2015 at 10:01 pm

      Amen, Mike. Well said. We can all claim research qualifications by simply typing in search terms.

      reply to this comment
    • LILIE

      February 20, 2015 at 3:44 am

      You know you can click the links and read the whole report in PUBMED if you’d like. She’s is not going to post it all here for you when its already posted at the link. smh

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    • Colleen

      February 20, 2015 at 4:34 pm

      Thank you ! I worked in public health for over ten years, this drives me crazy. Have any of you lived in a third world country? Well millions of children die every year from preventable diseases. One in four children under the age of five die every year. Do you know why we don’t have that kind of death toll? Because 90+% of the children in this country are immunized. I think a lot of people think the risk is low because all of the other children are protecting your child to some degree. Also I think the mentalty for the parents of non immunized children is if they Do get sick that modern medicine will make them well.think about it. Other people die in the USA because a non immunized kid got them sick. And modern medicine can’t save them all.

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      • Megan Heimer

        February 21, 2015 at 4:01 am

        We don’t have that kind of death toll because we don’t have the living conditions of a third world country. We have clean water to drink, food, toilets, clean living conditions with wide open spaces, the ability to quarantine when we are sick, and access to medical care when intervention is needed for acute conditions. We can reject vaccinations (bad science) and utilize the areas of modern medicine that are sound. As for your last sentence, it is unsubstantiated.

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  53. Jake

    February 18, 2015 at 9:59 pm

    I’d like to point out that a few of the Author’s references (news stories in particular) feature medical professionals that state that vaccination is the best way to help prevent outbreaks.

    Your own references argue with your completely contrived, and misrepresented facts. Logic and reason also argue with your “facts”.

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  54. Lisa

    February 18, 2015 at 9:47 pm

    The sad part is no one really listens to the reality of this situation and “choice” that they are making.This doesn’t sway my opinion on doing EVERYTHING in my power to prevent these diseases from
    Harming my children.. You as a parent have to make the choice that you feel that you can live with.. As far as Autism you are born with that gene nothing in the vaccine has been proved to be associated with autism.. I’m assuming this article is saying respect choices of the parents but I know if I had a baby or child with any autoimmune disease I would keep them far away from unvaccinated children.. Just like you don’t take a newborn out in public for the first month or a puppy around other dogs.. This is the choice that you as a parent have to live with and if your child gets polio or other very deadly diseases that is what THEY have to live with..SHAME ON YOU AS A FAMILY MEMBER THAT HAS LOST PEOPLE IN THE HOLOCAUST COMPARE THIS WITH YOUR “CHOICE”

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 19, 2015 at 3:47 am

      Hi Lisa, I am sorry you feel that way. The truth can be convicting. I drew a correlation between bracelets and quarantine camps with jewish stars and ghettos. I could give other examples but none of them would cast these actions in a more positive light. Discrimination is never justified. I think we should take a lesson from history – for the sake of your relatives and mine.

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    • the Truth is stranger than fiction...

      February 19, 2015 at 6:32 pm

      Wow….

      The hate/fear that is connected to this whole issue is beyond my comprehension sometimes…

      It floors me that people will continuously berate vaccine-questioners for their “unscientific” choices, and then turn around and say things such as “autism is caused by the autism gene”. Such a statement takes ignorance and adds to a whopping scoop of illogic.

      “Genes” do not produce manifestations of exponential increases of anything. Such a proposition ignores the obvious fact that if something like autism really was genetic, then we would’ve been seeing these same kinds of numbers way back into history, not this sudden, massive spike. It’s not an “improvement in our methods of diagnosis” either. The percentages of children being born with “spectrum disorders” that any parent could “diagnose” as not normal are increasing at an insane rate. It’s not “genetics”. It is without question connected to unnatural substances which our children are increasingly being exposed to. This should be obvious to anyone willing to look at the situation with a modicum of intellectual honesty.

      The pharmaceutical companies and vaccine manufacturers are for-profit entities. Period. I find it quite ironic that this whole recent “epidemic” began in Disneyland, because that is essentially where you have to permanently park your critical thinking in order to continue naively believing that it is impossible that they could actually be lying to the public about something this important. You have to come back from Never-Never-Land, and get real about the persuasive power that profit has on any industry, including “healthcare”.

      And since we’re playing the “my family has…” game, I’ll end by adding that my grandfather contracted polio as a young man, lived as a quadriplegic for many years, several spent in “iron lungs”, before eventually dying. I know all too well the arguments “for” vaccines. But let’s face it, the measles ain’t polio, and if you have an immune-compromised child, then this is indeed an unfortunate situation, but it is the for-profit-vaccine-industry which has ultimately fostered this narrative which says that it is everyone else’s moral and civic duty to inject their own children with their products, in order to allegedly free the world from disease and thus save these immunocompromised kids. It’s simply a lie, told for the sake of profit…

      reply to this comment
      • Adi

        February 23, 2015 at 9:05 pm

        the Truth is Stranger than fiction, thank you for your comment. It boils my blood when people say autism is genetic! I was going to reply to this individual, but then I saw your comment and felt better.

        reply to this comment
    • Lilie

      February 20, 2015 at 3:56 am

      Did you say there is a gene for autism? Do you even know what autism is? Its a psychological term in which can NOT be tested for, but only issued based on observational tests. Encephalitis causes or is the underlying cause of Autism, which is listed on the many vaccine inserts. NOW, so maybe you can actually understand why CDC and Co claims that vaccines don’t cause autism is because vaccines are tested against other vaccines and test subjects may also be getting recommended vaccines so they can’t conclusively determine which vaccine would cause it. They can not say conclusively that it doesn’t. Only that they have no “causal” connection, for the very obvious reason. NOW, they can do a test to put that to rest but they haven’t, and won’t, for obvious reasons. If they were so sure it doesn’t, then the test would have been done. But no long term studies exist. VAERS is on of the few sources and of course the lawsuits that were awarded for “autism”.

      reply to this comment
    • Mick

      February 26, 2015 at 7:13 pm

      There is no “autism” gene. What they are defining as regressive autism is a combination of genetics (MTHRFR Mutation or others) and toxic-overload (vaccines and other environmental toxins). You obviously don’t know anything about Polio. 90% of the time Polio is asymptomatic (no symptoms).6-7% of the time there will be symptoms but nothing serious and 1-3% of the time there will be serious symptoms like paralysis, but even then 99% of those with paralysis it is only temporary and BTW there hasn’t been a wild case of Polio in the US for a few decades, but there have been cases caused from the vaccine. “DOH”

      reply to this comment
  55. Gregory Beamer

    February 18, 2015 at 7:23 pm

    The non-vaccinated have been used as “boogie men” in this incident. While I am not sure where I stand on vaccination, I am certainly not for labeling people as unreasoning cretins for making a decision. Some on “both sides” have used reason for their decision and some have joined one bandwagon or another.

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  56. Parker

    February 18, 2015 at 6:54 pm

    I am sorry… I understand fear and respect why people are skeptical. Our kids are our heart… But..

    This article is just completely fictionally inaccurate, filled with logical fallacies. The most dangerous part is your “whistleblower” that has been shown to have been used by antivax proponents but only parts of it…
    These conspiracy theorists are sad and lack a misunderstanding of science in general. Put some stats and links and people read this without actually looking into its claims. It is at best misleading and worst, lies. You should be ashamed, no matter your good intentions.

    People reading this and aknowledge that this woman is “not a doctor”, ask a few ACTUAL doctors instead. Get a few opinions like you would about any other medical decision.

    reply to this comment
  57. Lory

    February 18, 2015 at 6:07 pm

    I can’t help but notice how completely respectful you are with your opinion and how completely disrespectful your opponents are. I came here to inform myself on the other side, but, I must admit, based on the outright verbal attacks on your wide, I’m feeling swayed to yours. You have done an excellent job on your research. Very impressed. Very unimpressed with theirs. Appreciate it!

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 19, 2015 at 3:28 am

      Thanks Lory. I try to keep it respectful. Thanks for reading. 🙂

      reply to this comment
  58. angela

    February 18, 2015 at 3:49 pm

    I was watching the Drs show about a month ago and there was a lady on there that had been given a death sentence for her cancer because it was rapidly spreading and inoperable. There was a new research being done and she volunteered for it. They injected her with a mutated form of measles (they could only do this because she had never received the vaccine). She has now been pronounced free of cancer. Look up the show and open you eyes… if they cured cancer do you have any idea how much money the hospitals would lose… do you have any idea how profitable cancer is? You hear of a “cure” one day and then ironically you never hear from them or the idea ever again…. strange, or is it? Its easier to fool someone than it is to convince someone they have been fooled. I feel so sorry for all those who truly have been brain washed by our government and pharmaceutical companies. If measles is the cure from some cancers…. I wonder why they are pushing the vaccine so much. Interesting to say the least.

    reply to this comment
    • Mindblind

      February 19, 2015 at 1:38 am

      This thing is shady. It references an article that may or may not say what the author claims but its from 1900-1931 and costs 40 bucks to read. It references another article that specifies this is educational and not medical advice. Then it says “Measles itself is unpleasant but there are rarely complications unless you consider diarrhea and ear infections” but then to add authenticity links a WHO article that you are supposed to see but not click because it immediately says: “Key facts

      Measles is one of the leading causes of death among young children even though a safe and cost-effective vaccine is available.
      In 2013, there were 145 700 measles deaths globally – about 400 deaths every day or 16 deaths every hour.
      Measles vaccination resulted in a 75% drop in measles deaths between 2000 and 2013 worldwide.
      In 2013, about 84% of the world’s children received one dose of measles vaccine by their first birthday through routine health services – up from 73% in 2000.
      During 2000-2013, measles vaccination prevented an estimated 15.6 million deaths making measles vaccine one of the best buys in public health. How is measles the leading cause of death when this article clearly states:”We haven’t had a confirmed death from measles in over 10 years.” Side effect of measles:Encephalitis – 0.1% reported. 1 in every 1000
      Seizures – 0.6-0.7% reported 6-7 every 1000
      Death – 0.2% reported 2 out of every 1000 people who got measles died.
      Side effect of vaccine: Thrombocytopenia – <1/30,000 doses
      Parotitis – rare
      Deafness – rare
      Encephalopathy – <1/1,000,000 doses

      All this information is from this article or from the links provided in the article itself. This is clearly lies. If the pharmaceutical companies wanted to make money, instead of providing a $20 shot they could just let everyone get infected and have 6 in every 1000 be treated from the "nondangerous" side effects of the measles, including brain damage. Let 1 in every 500 children die. This author twisted facts where they didn't straight up lie. Vaccines work and there is no logical reason to not get them.

      reply to this comment
      • Megan Heimer

        February 19, 2015 at 3:24 am

        Mindblind – The paper you are referencing is THE PAPER on which the concept of herd immunity is founded upon (and the paper from which vaccine-induced immunity was improperly derived from). It’s not freely available to the public because most articles they wouldn’t want you to read aren’t. You can pay the money to view the article or you can find an immunologist who has a copy (like I did). Sometimes you have to invest a little money in your education. 😉

        As for your measles vaccine stats – where did you derive these? Not VAERS I hope as I have been told (by people of your like-mind) that it’s a very unreliable reporting system (and only represents 1-10% of actual adverse events). So, I would personally love to see your source.

        Pharmaceutical companies make a large sum of money off of vaccine-injured children. Vaccine induced brain damage will cost over 3 million dollars over the course of one’s life. Do you know how much it cost me to treat my daughter’s chicken pox naturally? $3.00 (for a bag of epsom salts and a few drops of essential oils).

        Respectfully,
        Megan

        reply to this comment
  59. angela

    February 18, 2015 at 3:32 pm

    My child was destroyed by MMR, within a day we were in the hospital with seizures fever, a limp lifeless child and of coarse “it was not vaccine related”… He lost all sounds, all words and he is now 4 we just started the process for a “talker” . My son will never talk again. We watched him melt into a blob just within a day of shot. If I could go back…
    Thank you for your article and your in site, if only people would stop looking at us like we are the enemy and focus on the enemy that is like a wolf in sheeps clothes brainwashing the millions.
    I love your article!
    Angela

    reply to this comment
    • Michael Shur

      February 18, 2015 at 9:21 pm

      Same story here. My daughter started having seizures within a week or two of the MMR vaccine. Within a month, she was in status epilepticus – a constant state of seizure. A brilliant little 3 year-old girl all of a sudden couldn’t even sit up, talk, look you in the eye, or do anything. She’s 16 now and can barely speak.

      I’m sorry to hear you’re facing this, I know it’s totally heartbreaking,

      reply to this comment
  60. MM

    February 18, 2015 at 3:05 pm

    Start with that fact that she blames big pharma for everything and is horrified by what’s in the package insert. Clearly she never read the PI for the first pat commonly used prescription drug -bayer aspirin. That drig has more side effects in its PI than anyone would ever believe. Yet now it’s a safe, OTC that led to many other great drugs coming to market. So I assume this lady never gives her kid a drug, antibiotic etc. She states her kid was hospitalized for his vaccine reaction. Bet she never used a drug then! So ok to trust big pharma for your meds but not vaccines. Nonsense.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 18, 2015 at 4:58 pm

      I have never given my children antibiotics or medications, nor have I ever used aspirin (which is certainly not deemed “safe”). So, if you are insinuating some sort of hypocrisy, you certainly won’t find it in this area of my life.

      I don’t think is has to be “all or nothing” when it comes to modern medicine. I think everyone has the right to object to forms of modern medicine that are scientifically unsound while utilizing those that are sound – especially in acute / emergency situations (e.g. car accidents, burns, life-saving surgeries) where “modern medicine” seems to work best.

      Respectfully,
      Megan

      reply to this comment
  61. Jon Jones

    February 18, 2015 at 1:42 pm

    Is there someone that can help me understand why?

    The ‘Big Pharma’ companies are headed by people who are on record of being vaccinated, so if they’re trying to get people to take a deadly and debilitating vaccination, they are fully committed to the cause.

    But that’s not what I mean when I say why……Why would they use something that they think causes harm and not a placebo? Why would they want to kill people?

    If the argument is that vaccines are not effective, then why are homeopaths trying so hard to justify nosode usage with various forms of homeopathic vaccinations? If the argument is that it’s just ‘Big Pharma’ trying to profit, why do homeopaths charge so much for their products as well?

    As a sidebar, the closing argument was grossly offended. You’re comparing someone questioning your choices as a parent for not vaccinating your child to the holocaust? That’s disgusting and I hope you see why that would be offensive.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 18, 2015 at 5:23 pm

      Jon,
      The truth can be convicting. The only people who don’t see the correlations between bracelets and separate communities (or quarantine camps) and jewish stars and the ghettos are the ones who advocate this discrimination. I could give other examples but none of them would cast these actions in a more positive light. Discrimination is never justified.

      As for homeopathics, I’m not really involved in that debate but I don’t think the issue is that big pharma makes money…it’s that they do so through deceptive and fraudulent practices that put the health (and lives) of our children at risk.

      reply to this comment
      • Jon Jones

        February 18, 2015 at 7:18 pm

        You’ve completely missed why the Jewish comment is ignorant. By the rationale of the defense you use, I can make claims that my morning routine is like the holocaust because it involves a shower, but that’s incredibly ignorant to do because I’m comparing something pretty mundane to the genocide of a race of people! Being of Jewish decent, let me tell you that I find this to be incredibly insulting and demeaning. The holocaust was a tragic event and I lost family as a result of it, using it to create hyperbole for an anti-vaccination rant is deplorable.

        But I digress, there are so many facets of the anti-vaccination movement that it’s so hard to keep track of what’s considered right or not.

        It seems that as soon as one argument is torn down, it is quickly dismissed and then replaced with another absurdity. So the issue here is that you believe vaccinations cause diseases and disorders (Autism?) but there is no motive for the industry to use placebos? Why wouldn’t they just use the homeopathic memory water? At least then there wouldn’t be health issues, right?

        I guess the better question would be “What causes the issues you believe vaccinations cause?” Is it the thermosil? Is it a specific vaccination? I know the argument is that there’s an issue with the blood/brain barrier in children, but when I asked if that would mean they would consider vaccination once it’s been established, the conversation ended.

        reply to this comment
        • Megan Heimer

          February 19, 2015 at 12:51 am

          Jon, Have you ever thought that maybe parents have multiple reasons for not vaccinating? I certainly do. Maybe it appears that there’s only one issue in play because that’s how the media portrays it. I assure you though, that is not the case.

          reply to this comment
        • Lilie

          February 20, 2015 at 4:13 am

          Wow! So than this loss of rights for what to inject in our and our children’s bodies must really be close to your heart since one of the main objectives during the holocaust was performing medical procedures by force. You should be crying out loud and calling all the representatives to make sure NO law ever passes that would force anyone to be injected or be part of any medical procedure against their will. Further, you should also feel the same about watching ANY group of people being quarantined. You do know that the Jews were looked upon like a cancer to society, buying up all the businesses and keeping it in the family thus creating an economy that was not beneficial to any non jew right? And the people thought it was like a gene that was carried. You also know that some of the largest corporations funded the war, the machines, and the doctors, right? I’m not sure how much studying you actually did on the subject, but from reading your comment, you are hateful and disrespectful to the jewish faith. If I was jewish, you would be a shame to my faith and I would NOT consider you jewish. You are on the wrong side of the fence, my friend. You should be the biggest activist for freedom. And especially anti-quarantine, and anti-forced medication.

          reply to this comment
  62. Chelsea

    February 18, 2015 at 7:28 am

    Anyone that truly wants to make a well educated decision about vaccines should first know all of the facts! Please watch this documentary & make an informed smart decision based on what doctors, scientists, biochemists & etc….have said about vaccines. If after watching this you can make an argument based on all the information & education you have received then my hat is off to you! Also if you like this documentary please try to share it with anyone & everyone so they maybe well educated & can learn the truth about vaccines! http://youtu.be/lJGyN3gCsBg

    reply to this comment
    • Jen

      February 18, 2015 at 9:01 pm

      Before I go watch this video, I want to know who made it and who paid for the making of it? That is the biggest problem with this entire debate. There are no truly unbiased opinions in the info being tossed around. The vaccine companies pay for the majority of the testing. When a company who stands to make millions off of a treatment is allowed to pay for the safety testing, we have a huge conflict of interest. Anyone who cannot see that is in complete denial. And it is no secret that the FDA is in the pockets of most of the drug companies, since many of the FDA’s top people go on to take high paying salaries at said drug companies after working for the FDA. This is also a huge conflict of interest.

      I honestly waffle on the subject of vaccines. I would like to think they do what they are supposed to do, but to be perfectly honest, I just do not trust the system that produces them. They are pushed like drugs on the street and when there is injury, most of the time it is not even reported because the system does not want to admit to any flaws. And Drs seem to be no help in correcting the problem. I am personally just totally frustrated with the entire subject.

      reply to this comment
  63. mhank

    February 18, 2015 at 6:20 am

    I am curious about your source regarding the increased risk of autism. I am a teaching student and your source would be great to have for a paper. Autism has been so controversial. It is a genetic anomaly though, so can you help me out. I couldn’t find the source in the text. P.s. don’t care if you vaccinate or not as long as you are aware of the precautions you need to take. The problem is that a lot of parents are not so well informed.

    reply to this comment
  64. Suzann Tillman

    February 18, 2015 at 5:31 am

    Funny, you are not highly educated as many of your statements are not evidence based. Evidence based medicine is the only way to practice. You need to do legitimate research then give your opinion. Starting with the fact that vaccines do not “shed” when they are not live vaccines. Please take the time needed to really understand a topic before you write on it. No one mistakes your for a physician, there was no need to clarify.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 18, 2015 at 5:29 pm

      Suzann, Thanks for the comment. I think you need to re-read my post. I said “live vaccines shed,” listed which vaccines were live, and then cited. Secondly, evidenced based medicine requires double-blind, (inert) placebo-controlled studies to determine safety and efficacy. Please read the vaccine package inserts where you will see that pre-licensure studies use adjuvants contained in the vaccine being tested or other vaccines as “controls.” You can read my other posts on vaccines at the “vaccines” tab above. All are well-referenced. Just because I have an opinion that is different from yours, does not mean that I have not done legitimate research.

      Respectfully, Megan

      reply to this comment
  65. Rylee

    February 18, 2015 at 4:09 am

    So let me ask, if your child has a severe allergy to peanuts would you expect others to not bring peanuts to school? You know, it’s not everyone else’s responsibility to make their children live in a bubble because YOUR child’s immune system can’t handle peanuts or any other allergen for that matter.

    I find your article extremely misinformed and selfish. You certainly have the right to make any decision you want based on your googled facts but other children should not suffer because of it. If you don’t want your kids vaccinated then home school them.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 18, 2015 at 4:35 am

      Denying a child the opportunity to eat peanuts from 8am to 3pm is not comparable to subjecting a child that does not belong to you to a medical procedure with documented adverse reactions. Peanut allergic kids are guaranteed to go into shock if they are exposed to peanut. Vaccinated children are not guaranteed to catch a disease from an unvaccinated child, especially a child who does not even carry the disease. If you intend to submit a comment in the future do so respectfully.

      reply to this comment
      • Emily

        February 18, 2015 at 12:55 pm

        Have you, personally, been given at least one round of the MMR?
        Did you know there are 4 rounds of the MMR, three of which are given before the age of 18 and the 4th is recommended to be given by the age of 28? Did you know that YOU are a vehicle to give your child the Measles, which can cause death, because you never received all four rounds of the vaccine? What are the statistics of getting the measles and dying, versus giving your child the vaccine and dying?
        Would you please publish your sources of the documented adverse reactions?
        Thank you!

        reply to this comment
        • Jgonza

          February 27, 2015 at 12:45 am

          Um no, there are two recommended does of mmr… One at 15-18 months old and the other by six years.. And pre 1989- there was only one recommended does… Please figure out what you are saying so people can take you seriously…

          reply to this comment
    • Robin

      February 18, 2015 at 5:01 am

      A straw man is a common reference argument and is an informal fallacy based on the representation of an opponent’s argument. To be successful, a straw man argument requires that the audience be ignorant or uninformed of the original argument.

      The so-called typical “attacking a straw man” argument creates the illusion of having completely refuted or defeated an opponent’s proposition by covertly replacing it with a different proposition (i.e., “stand up a straw man”) and then to refute or defeat that false argument (“knock down a straw man”) instead of the original proposition.

      reply to this comment
    • lilie

      February 20, 2015 at 4:22 am

      Actually, you can probably blame vaccines for peanut allergies too. Peanut allergies spiked after vaccination programs were implemented. Vaccine manufacturers do not have to list all their ingredients. But we have found out that some the ingredients used are the allergens that are common today, including peanut oil, egg proteins, and gluten. Also, there are actually some excellent studies that believe the vaccine actually attacks the gut and causes long-term inflammation. I don’t care to be an expert so you can research for yourself and find these studies. I’m sorry but I am not going to gamble with all the personal experience I have with vaccines, and all the issues that seem to be arising from vaccines. Now don’t get me wrong, I think a person with an excellent and strong immune system due to generational great nutritional habits, and lifestyles may seem unfazed by the whole plethora of vaccines, but I believe even these people are damaged but don’t have that unvaccinated twin or sibling to compare themselves to in order to determine what damage, however minimal, may have been done. Or it can manifest in adulthood.

      reply to this comment
  66. Peggy Casey

    February 18, 2015 at 3:12 am

    Outstanding. Thank you.

    reply to this comment
  67. cj

    February 18, 2015 at 2:39 am

    Please continue to educate yourself perhaps trust in the CDC and National Institute of Health, these are our best and brightest in all the world.If you don`t trust these people you must be a kook.

    reply to this comment
  68. Data Queen

    February 18, 2015 at 2:23 am

    I would like to see your evidence and sources for the statements you make in this article. According to the CDC, measles causes 146,000 deaths annually. I find it interesting that you talk about your son having a 204% greater risk of developing autism. Where did that number come from? I have yet to see conclusive evidence from a reputable source that vaccines increase the risk for autism. However, if I were to go with that argument for a second, I would refer back to my CDC statistic that states 146,00 people die from complications due to measles every year. 0 people, to my knowledge, die from complications due to autism. It almost sounds like the argument is you would rather have a child die, than raise a child with autism. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

    P.S. I’m super eager to read and consult your sources.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 18, 2015 at 3:59 am

      Citations are in the post.

      reply to this comment
      • Chris

        February 18, 2015 at 2:55 pm

        I have to question one of your citations. Not the voracity of just your use of it. You hyperlinked the CDC’s description of measles when you were talking about the signs and symptoms. However, upon clicking the link, The very first line of the description of measles states “Measles is a highly contagious, acute viral illness that can lead to serious complications and death.” Just saying that sounds pretty important, especially since it’s the very first thing they say about it. Not really something I’d want to just naturally expose my children to if I could find a better way.

        reply to this comment
        • Megan Heimer

          February 18, 2015 at 5:11 pm

          Chris, Thanks for the comment. That statement is based off of the global presentation of measles in third world countries. That’s why it’s important to read the MMWR data and the clinical definition, which is how measles presents in the clinic setting in the United States. To validate what I’m saying, check out the MMWR data to see how many people have actually died from measles in this country or suffered serious complications in the past 10 years.

          Measles is an acute viral illness and it is contagious, but it is misleading to use global statistics from third world countries (or even our own statistics from the 18-1900s) to say that it is a “deadly disease.” About 1 person dies every 10 years from measles based off of MMWR data. 2,000 people die each year falling down their stairs (that’s 20,000 people in the same time frame that 1 person dies of measles in this country). Perspective.

          reply to this comment
          • dude

            February 18, 2015 at 9:30 pm

            There are so few people that have died from measles in the last 10 years because the infection rates are very low thanks to vaccination. The chance of adverse events in the people who contract the disease remains the same. It merely reduces the number of adverse events that we will see in the population. It’s ironic that you would argue measles isn’t a big problem as a reason for not getting vaccinated, when the vaccine itself is the reason for the low incidence of the disease in the first place…

            reply to this comment
  69. KC

    February 18, 2015 at 12:36 am

    Thank you for this. It’s a relief to find other voices that sound like ours.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 18, 2015 at 5:38 pm

      Thanks KC! 🙂

      reply to this comment
  70. ananda

    February 18, 2015 at 12:06 am

    240% increase in risk for developing autism? There is no cause for Autism, that theory has been debunked.

    reply to this comment
    • Steve

      February 23, 2015 at 4:58 pm

      ananda, If the theory was debunked… Why is it listed as a possible side affect on the insert that comes with the MMR vial? Why did GSK have 5 cases of Autism in a clinical trial for one of their vaccines (yes, I know it was not an MMR vaccine… the point is you can’t conclusively say it is not a possibility).

      “Based on expert medical testimony, the court concluded that the child more likely than not suffered autism and brain damage because of the neurotoxic mercury, aluminum and his particular susceptibility from a genetic mutation. The Court also noted that Infanrix Hexa contained thimerosal, now banned in Italy because of its neurotoxicity, “in concentrations greatly exceeding the maximum recommended levels for infants weighing only a few kilograms.”

      Presiding Judge Nicola Di Leo considered another piece of damning evidence: a 1271-page confidential GlaxoSmithKline report. This industry document provided ample evidence of adverse events from the vaccine, including five known cases of autism resulting from the vaccine’s administration during its clinical trials.” (I would insert the table on page 626, but I do not know how to add a picture here)

      Every Drug that has been recalled by the FDA, was once approved as safe by the FDA. You want to have blind faith in that system where they tell you its safe until enough people get sick, then they say well I guess we were wrong, be my guest… I don’t.

      You are entitled to your own opinions… but not your own facts.

      reply to this comment
      • Sia

        September 13, 2015 at 1:07 am

        Good question! Simple answer: It’s not!

        It’s listed as an adverse event! A.k.a. It correlates with the vaccine.

        Do you realize how …. well, zealous…clinical trials are about looking at things like that?

        During one particular clinical trial, someone went to a pub, got drunk and decided to dance on the table. They fell off. Any reasonable person can tell you that it’s far more likely they were drunk but it was investigated anyway to check the vaccine didn’t cause it and had to be listed on ‘adverse events’

        Suppose I were to set up a clinical trial testing the claim that ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’. Suppose one of my participants was to break an arm because they decided to climb a tree and fell out.

        It’s not enough for me to go ‘Welp, that clearly wasn’t the apple’ Nope, I would have to investigate that the apple didn’t cause ‘acquired osteogeneis’, and all manner of things. And were I to develop a drug based off of this apple, I would have to list ‘broken arm’ as an adverse event.

        reply to this comment
        • Ralph Fucetola JD

          September 13, 2015 at 8:00 pm

          The glib comment “It’s not.” to the reasonable assumption that the listing of an adverse event on the drug package insert means there is an adverser reaction shows a failure of critical thinking.

          American courts have been consistent in their characterization of vaccines as “unavoidably unsafe.” The American insurance industry has not wavered from the conclusion that vaccines are an uninsurable risk.

          Humane science, seeing the correlation between increased vaccination and increased chronic disease, such as autism, diabetes, childhood cancers, obesity and other gastrointestinal issues, would seek the causation behind the epidemic of such harms. Crony corporatist pseudo-science instead says “It’s not.” and we are supposed to accept that bizarre superstition as “settled science.”

          What inhumane carelessness… or greed for personal gain… or unwillingness to repent and recognize that no one can be made healthier by ever increasing injections of toxins… what horrid stupidity!

          Those who would force vaccinations upon any of us are simply making the wrong moral choice.

          reply to this comment
  71. Virstyne

    February 17, 2015 at 11:43 pm

    Wonderful Article!! Thank You so much. Great job!!!

    reply to this comment
  72. Jessica Hugh

    February 17, 2015 at 10:26 pm

    I LOVE THIS! Thank you!

    I share the same beliefs as you do.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 18, 2015 at 5:38 pm

      Thanks Jessica. I am so glad you liked it. 🙂

      reply to this comment
  73. jilld

    February 17, 2015 at 8:48 pm

    I believe in debating and challenging my own and other’s views. That being said, it can and should be done respectfully if we want to really have an open dialogue and make any progress. Name calling and disrespecting never made me want to listen to someone. I have been vaccinated probably more than most as I have been in the military and to Africa, with no negative side effects. I have had my son fully vaccinated even though my brother is severely autistic and began showing signs around when he received his MMR vaccine. That being said, I don’t hate anyone who chooses not to vaccinate, I want to understand their reasons for doing so. Science and medicine are constantly evolving, if we didn’t have people questioning the status quo would we still be using bloodletting, leeches or any other number of outdated treatments?

    I would also like to point out that I wish we as a society/country would be getting this fired up in other aspects of healthcare too…like outrage at insurers for raising premiums each and every year, less time with doctors during appointments, unnecessary medicines/treatments and the fact that we as a country still lag far behind many other developed countries in vital statistics (i.e. infant mortality and life expectancy) but pay more.

    reply to this comment
    • A

      March 5, 2015 at 9:09 pm

      Could everyone please read the above comment? Like this person says, a little respect and perspective are important when communicating with one another.

      reply to this comment
  74. Bauni Nilson

    February 17, 2015 at 7:38 pm

    Wow! This is phenomenal- I appreciate your knowledge and brave steadfastness in standing up for your rights and mine! Thank you so much!!

    reply to this comment
  75. Jen

    February 17, 2015 at 7:14 pm

    A very polarizing topic these days. It is good to have supporting facts. To blithely say that measles rarely has serious complications is not correct. According to the World Health Organization, over 145,000 people died worldwide in 2013 alone, with millions of deaths prevented because of the vaccine. It is a topic very worthy of open discussion that needs to be studied further.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 17, 2015 at 8:15 pm

      Those are GLOBAL statistics Jen – from third world countries where even the simplest illness can be deadly. Measles is not a deadly disease in this country. I talk about this here: https://www.livingwhole.org/this-mama-isnt-scared-of-the-shmeasle-measles/

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      • J

        February 17, 2015 at 11:11 pm

        By saying it’s not deadly in this country, you’re assuming it doesn’t cause death in developed countries. But it does.

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  76. Carrie McCann

    February 17, 2015 at 6:43 pm

    Weighing off my rights to vaccinate versus the possibility of infecting a child who has cancer is not even a question.

    I’d find SOME other solution that didn’t endanger another’s fragile child.
    It could be as simple as simple as having MY KID wear a simple surgical mask when she must be near the compromised child.

    OTOH, wouldn’t it be fair for the compromised kid to also wear such a mask?

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  77. Sharon

    February 17, 2015 at 6:04 pm

    I am a mother of a childhood cancer survivor(immunocompromised child) I also have another child who has a lower immune system. I do not vaccinate my children and I could never ask any one else to vaccinate simply because I have 2 children with lowered immune systems, in fact I would prefer others did not immunize their children and expose all my children and myself to the shedding of these. To those who choose to vaccinate, I am grateful we all have the choice we feel is right for our own families.

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  78. Rebecca

    February 17, 2015 at 5:59 pm

    there is so much I could say. I won’t. You’ve heard it. I will leave one comment regarding one of the last things you said, ” If I had a child with cancer, you better believe I’d be looking for a kid with measles”. I feel that you severely misunderstand why kids with cancer are in need of protection. They can’t receive the vaccine for the same reason they should NEVER be exposed to illnesses such as measles. The chemotherapy given to them to save their lives has wiped out essentially all of their immune system. they can’t build antibodies to measles the way a normal person can because they don’t have a system to make antibodies anymore. Even if we did manage to keep the measles from killing them since they can’t fight it themselves, they would have zero immunity to it going into the future. Without an immune system, you can’t build “natural immunity”. So while it’s true your kid may not be at risk of death from measles, not immunizing does hurt other people. But hey, why not sacrifice a few cancer kids so your kid doesn’t get autism? Oh wait, vaccines don’t actually cause autism.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 17, 2015 at 8:34 pm

      Rebecca, are you aware that chemotherapy has a 2.6% success rate? Have you looked at the package insert? Do you know how many people die from chemotherapy every year? It is astronomical. If I had a child who was dying and there was credible data that showed exposing them to wild measles may very well be the cure (or at very least – remission), I would consider it…for the same reason people with cancer undertook the mutated measles cancer vaccine. (That of course, I would not do.)

      I didn’t opt out of vaccinating because of autism. I opted out because vaccines are not safe or effective and there are better ways of preventing disease that puts no child at risk. I’d advise not making assumptions based on misconceptions and I think we should be respectful to both cancer patients and vaccine injured children alike (many of whom ironically have autism).

      reply to this comment
      • Mara Henderson

        February 17, 2015 at 10:08 pm

        I am a 22 year old who had acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) that would have absolutely been fatal within a few months. I was already on my way to death from the rapid proliferation of leukemia cells. Chemotherapy saved my life. Chemo was awful, but I would be dead without it. Before chemotherapy and radiation treatment, nearly 100% of children with ALL would die within six months. Today, the 10 year survival rate for a child is 90%. Do some research with verified data before you go spouting such total nonsense. It is at the least offensive and at the worst deadly spreading such misinformation.

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        • Megan Heimer

          February 17, 2015 at 10:22 pm

          Mara, That quote is from the PubMed database. (I didn’t make it up because I have something against chemotherapy.)

          “The overall contribution of curative and adjuvant cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adults was estimated to be 2.3% in Australia and 2.1% in the USA.”

          “It is clear that cytotoxic chemotherapy only makes a minor contribution to cancer survival. To justify the continued funding and availability of drugs used in cytotoxic chemotherapy, a rigorous evaluation of the cost-effectiveness and impact on quality of life is urgently required.”

          http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/156308492.6%

          I am not saying one should not have chemotherapy. I’m saying that if I had a child who was dying and exposure to wild measles could cure her, I would look into it. I am very glad you are well and wish you nothing but health and happiness.
          Megan

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          • Lisa

            February 18, 2015 at 1:42 am

            Megan, that source that you provided is nothing more than a literature review. It is not a validated, peer reviewed study. What a terribly dangerous supposition to post and to use it to suggest that chemotherapy doesn’t work. That literature review does not say why many didn’t need chemotherapy. It could have been that they instead used radiation, surgery, or oral medication that was sufficient based on the type of cancer and the time of diagnosis. Please, if you are going to hold yourself out as a well informed parent then inform yourself in a more responsible way.

            reply to this comment
            • Megan Heimer

              February 18, 2015 at 4:14 am

              Lisa, I am not here to attack you or anyone else with cancer. Although I would never undertake chemotherapy and I clearly have a different definition of “effectiveness” and view on what causes cancer, I respect an individual’s right to choose what treatment is best for them. You say that chemotherapy “works,” yet there is no cure for cancer, so I’m not sure what comprises your definition of effectiveness. There is much credible literature that calls current cancer treatments (and the cancer industry itself) into question. I would leave you with a list of citations but I suspect they will not live up to your standards (nor do I wish to flood the comments on a post regarding vaccines with a debate about chemotherapy).
              I hope you can understand. With respect,
              Megan

          • John

            February 19, 2015 at 1:46 am

            There are more than 200 types of cancer and each requires a specific treatment based off many different factors. That this one person got treated and it healed him doesn’t mean its a 100% success rate, maybe the reason it’s not used instead of chemo is it has a 1 in a million chance of healing someones cancer. Doctors use what works. People who have cancer and go off to Africa to get ‘wild’, is there a tame version, measles die.

            reply to this comment
            • Megan Heimer

              February 19, 2015 at 3:14 am

              Hi John. Thanks for the comment. I guess you and I have different definitions of the word “works.” To my knowledge there is no pharmaceutical cure for cancer. I also have a different view of cancer entirely and I do not believe doctors are allowed to use “what works.” They’re actually very restricted on what they can use. To my knowledge, cancer treatments are pretty standard (radiation, chemotherapy, hormone therapy [for some female related cancers], and surgery). I linked seven sources regarding wild measles and various cancers in my post. Please read them. I also linked to the treatments for these cancers below. You’ll have to excuse me if I opt for an alternate approach and if I side with the scientists who believe mild childhood illnesses prime the immune system and could bestow some benefit. I would love to talk further but cancer goes beyond the scope of this post. Regards, Megan

              CDC – How is breast cancer treated? http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/breast/basic_info/treatment.htm
              CDC – How is prostate cancer treated? http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/prostate/basic_info/treatment.htm
              CDC – How is lung cancer treated? http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/lung/basic_info/diagnosis_treatment.htm
              CDC – How is ovarian cancer treated? http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/ovarian/basic_info/treatment.htm
              Cancer.gov – How is colon cancer treated? http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/treatment/colon/Patient/page4
              Cancer.gov – How is brain cancer treated? http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/treatment/adultbrain/Patient/page3

      • Sara

        February 18, 2015 at 5:29 am

        While I know this all started with the great vaccine debate, somehow it has morphed into alternative cancer treatments and I have to say that it is extremely irresponsible of you to recommend that someone suffering from cancer should run out and get measles to cure it. While there are many ongoing studies into the use of viruses to fight cancer, there is no data to back up your claim. Many “wild” viruses do in fact attack cancer, and in some cases shrink tumors, but the cancer returns when the virus runs it’s course. Maybe that is why the story is no longer posted and not some conspiracy. Herpes is a virus known to attack certain types of cancer, would you recommend someone run out and get that? Perhaps someday viruses will be used to cure cancer, but if that happens it will be through the use of many viruses administered by an oncologist, not by having a cancer patient share a room with someone with measles. So you go find measles if you want, but if I had cancer, I would find a respected oncologist.

        reply to this comment
        • Megan Heimer

          February 18, 2015 at 5:32 pm

          The story is no longer posted because they are creating a measles cancer vaccine. Please re-read my post. Please re-read my comments. Please read the citations. Please look up the definition of satire. I did not tell any cancer patient what they should do, nor did I give medical advice.
          With respect,
          Megan

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          • Roxy

            March 1, 2015 at 10:07 pm

            Have you heard of antibody therapy that is now used to treat cancer? It’s still in the research phase and the doctors are struggling to obtain funds to speed things along. The medical community is actively seeking less dangerous/toxic/invasive treatments for cancer so I have no idea how you can say that chemo, radiation, surgery and hormone therapy is all doctors are “allowed” to use. Have you considered that it is people like you who go around swearing big pharma is out to kill us all that’s causing these trials to remain underfunded by encouraging people to distrust doctors and not support these studies? You said it yourself, you’re not a doctor.Have some humility and accept that your medical education from Google cannot be compared to the medical education that an actual doctor receives during 7-10 years of medical school/residency plus all the knowledge they accumulate once they begin practising(did you know doctors never stop learning unlike people who choose different career paths?) . I understand that you’re doing what you feel is best for your child, I myself believe in the standard vaccines that have prooven effective over the years not the new ones like the HPV one(I have my doubts and I would not give it to my daughter). I wish your children the best of course but here’s a question:
            Should your child get polio/measles/mumps/cancer, are you willing to sign a legal paper stating that you give up rights to treatment since you stated measles is no big deal and chemo does not help with cancer? I mean, a paper that says no matter how sick your child gets you will not have a change of heart and treat him with the medicine you now condemn. Because you see, I’ve seen parents like you, they swear their child will never receive this and that, convince a bunch of impressionable people to follow them and the minute the kid gets sick and is in clear danger immediately come and demand treatment, all that was said before, forgotten. So, would you?

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    • fudbud

      February 17, 2015 at 9:46 pm

      Rebecca, spot on. Great points and great arguments.I don’t get involved in these conversations usually as there is so much emotion on both sides that I keep my opinions and my mutiplely vaccinated children to myself.
      My kids are adopted from a foreign country. They received vaccines in infancy in a Chinese orphanage. Then they were required to have another full set prior to leaving China[or being allowed to enter the US]. Then upon entering the US there were more required vaccines over time for immigration. My kids are healthy in spite of or because of three sets of vaccines each protecting their health.
      I fully support a families right to not vaccinate their kids. i also fully believe they should have to forfeit their children’s free and appropriate public school education when they do.

      reply to this comment
      • Diana

        February 18, 2015 at 4:38 pm

        fudbud, what right do you or anyone else for that matter have deciding that an unvaccinated child should have to forfeit “free” public school. Vaccinated children have every right to attend public school. And by the way, public school isn’t free. I’m pretty sure my tax dollars go to funding it!!

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  79. RhondaJ.

    February 17, 2015 at 3:41 pm

    Thank you. Thank you. Thank you! You’ve said as well or better than I have, and I’m a nurse. I did vaccinate my kids when they were children, BECAUSE I thought it was the right and best thing to do. When my last child was a teen, we did the Guardisil, then there were DEATH from it, and I got rather “awakened!” I began to do my Own research. I realized that my autoimmune diseases HAD to have come from all the vaccines I’ve had: Entire childhood shots (AFTER having HAD the diseases in the 60’s & 70’s) FOR TIMES, twice in the Army – plus overseas series of shots, forced flu shots, and who knows what else they gave me! Then, as a nurse – many, many forced shots! I now have lupus, SJOGREN’S Disease, liver tumors, and disabled at 49. An MD in Jerusalem has studied this, and come with ASIA, AUTOIMMUNE SYDROME INTRODUCED by (vaccine) ADJUVANTS, which he suspects ‘May’ BE Gulf War Syndrome! So, I am horrified at the thought of gov forced vaccines, as well as the usurpation of Parental Authority – as much as I hate our socialist twisted, untrustworthy gov now! (Need Proof? Research for yourselves: AGENDA 21, CODEX ALIMENTUS, CLOWARD-PIVENS STRATEGY – just to get you started!) Anyway – thank you for your input!

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  80. Pauline

    February 17, 2015 at 3:33 pm

    I have read both sides of this debate and would like to have the right to choose for myself and my family to vaccinate or not. I also received the MMR vaccine as a baby and almost died from the seizures that it caused.

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  81. Lisa

    February 17, 2015 at 2:39 pm

    yesterday it came out that the little boy with leukemia who was on the news asking for his classmates to get vaccinated has a tie to GSK. His grandfather is a paid consultant for GlaxoSmithKline. A new low for pharmaceutical companies.

    I like to give full disclosure, something you will never see from vaccine supporters. I almost died from a flu shot I received in 2005. I spent 24 days in the hospital paralyzed from the neck down. The list goes on and on of the health problems I have had from the shot. My doctors say any further shots would kill me.

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  82. Veblen

    February 17, 2015 at 7:44 am

    You know, as someone who respects the choice not to vaccinate and generally agrees with your arguments, I must say, I don’t like that you brought in the measles-cures-cancer argument when you wrote an entire piece against it last year: https://www.livingwhole.org/measles-vaccine-as-a-cancer-treatment-absolutely-not/

    As an FYI – that measles-cancer thing wasn’t taken off of CNN:

    http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/15/health/measles-cancer-remission/

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 17, 2015 at 4:28 pm

      Veblen – I wrote a piece against the MEASLES VACCINE for cancer…not WILD MEASLES. The post you linked was to the measles vaccine. The piece that I was referring to was CNN’s post on the Uganda boy who was exposed to WILD measles and went into remission. Please read my post. 🙂

      reply to this comment
  83. Carissa

    February 17, 2015 at 6:17 am

    http://www.medalerts.org/vaersdb/findfield.php
    In case you want to see the stats of deaths and severe reactions related to vaccines. This is where you find it.

    reply to this comment
  84. Sandy Manning

    February 17, 2015 at 6:11 am

    Great job! I had both types of measles when I was a child. I was real sick but I survived! Most people did! My kids are 19-29 and if I could do it over, I wouldn’t vaccinate. I remember when my now 19 y.o. was given the Hep B vaccine just after birth. I didn’t even know until after. I was furious! It is well established that that is one of the stupidest vaccines ever given to children. Makes no sense. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t give any to my kids. And, I was told (we were all told) that the vaccines for all of these things gave lifetime immunity which is just plain wrong. I don’t know if they really believed it did, or just told us so we would do it. Anyway, you did a great job writing this article!

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  85. DAwn

    February 17, 2015 at 5:32 am

    You missed one point. Our government is allowing sick illegal alien children into our country and placing them in our children’s schools, doctor’s offices, local walmarts and Disneyland. Almost every case of measles tested has been determined to be a foreign caught variant which is why vaccinated children are getting it. Our vaccinations are not for the measles coming from over our borders. Our government is bringing in sick children and heaping the blame on American children. I don’t see these parents up in arms about the disease invading our country from illegal aliens.

    reply to this comment
    • Kathy Bassett

      February 17, 2015 at 6:42 pm

      Don’t blame illegal alien kids…the ones who come over the border are vaccinated…measles are a rash with fever, not the end of the world.

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  86. Sharing LOGIC

    February 17, 2015 at 5:14 am

    “You would be too if you were told you should be jailed or sued for exercising your autonomy as a parent and your “anti-vaxxer” children should be subjected to segregation and marked like the jews. I’m scared to repeat history. Aren’t you?”

    A better relation would have been to bring up the history of the shunned and threatened HIV/AIDS victims…that is the history we should fear repeating!

    Thank you for sharing the much needed LOGICAL thoughts and citations!

    reply to this comment
  87. Jill

    February 17, 2015 at 5:01 am

    Thank you from one mama bear to another! Here is another reference for your comment on shedding.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11858860

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  88. Sara Berman

    February 17, 2015 at 3:59 am

    None of your comments have any scientific validity. Parents who do not vaccinate their children are selfish. We as part of a community don’t have a “right” to do whatever we want. Just because you think it is the “best choice” for your child does not make it a “right” choice. Your post is cruel (to the parents of theimmuno- suppressed child) and dangerous(who those believe what you write)

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 17, 2015 at 4:36 pm

      I’m so sorry you feel that way Sara. There are many who have commented on this forum who have immunocompromised children and have been supportive of this post. Though I point out the opposing viewpoint, I do so respectfully. As for the “scientific validity,” I’ll refer you to the citations.

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    • Patricia

      February 17, 2015 at 5:55 pm

      Sara, you are obviously ignorant of the facts in this matter. Do some objective research. Stay away from studies that are funded by Big Pharma and what the FDA says; they are funded by Big Pharma and DO NOT

      reply to this comment
      • Peter

        February 17, 2015 at 11:47 pm

        This is like arguing with a Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist or a 9/11 truther. Any actual evidence against the established point can be handwaved away with the “Big Pharma” tag.

        reply to this comment
  89. susan lucas

    February 16, 2015 at 8:40 pm

    I too am not a fan of vaccinations..not just the MMR but DPT as well. I find it risky at best to vaccinate newborn babies for hep b and hep c. When I was a kid I had measles,chicken pox,mumps and rubella. My immunity to these diseases will last a lifetime, plus I passed the immunities to all 4 children. I suspect that one or more of these vaccines are a direct cause of autism. I’d never heard of autism when I was a child. We now have gone from autism being a rarety to 1 in 77 children have autism. Big pharma is not telling the truth and the stabilizers in flu shots is very suspect, especially pregnant women getting flu shots.

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  90. Carol

    February 16, 2015 at 8:03 pm

    Recently I received a call from another mother to shyly question me as to if my children had been vaccinated. Her concern was for her infant who was too young to be vaccinated – you know, the ‘at risk” group. She, and her family, infant included, were vacationing at DISNEYWORLD ! She was worried that upon her return her child might come into contact with an unvaccinated child. Really? This uneducated person was properly terrified by the media and yet remained ignorant of the danger she herself had put her child in. But hey, she was on vacation.

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  91. RileyN

    February 16, 2015 at 2:45 pm

    Love this; 100% spot on

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  92. James

    February 16, 2015 at 9:08 am

    Good article and mostly sound arguments. If you are open to it, I’d suggest you be open to being wrong about herd immunity and its effect on a population. I respect your intelligence and assume like most well reasoned and critical thinking researchers that your existing positions about anything can be challenged. Consider this a challenge. A very intelligent bio chemist (former drug maker), Shane Ellison views herd immunity differently than you. See this recent post. http://thepeopleschemist.com/chemist-says-media-left-horrifying-facts-measles-shot/.

    Here is a key piece of Shane’s article: This failure of herd immunity was also stressed by the medical journal, Clinical Infectious Diseases. Warning against using the vaccine for protection, they wrote, “Other problems arise because herd immunity is not the same as biologic (immunologic) immunity; individuals protected only by indirect herd effects remain fully susceptible to infection, should they ever be exposed.”

    Translation, “Herd immunity can’t protect you. Only your immune system can.”

    I would also encourage you to research the so-called 1918 flu epidemic and read accounts of some nurses in America hospitals who worked daily with flu victims while they themselves stayed completely healthy in spite of the daily bombardment of the victims’ disease. Here is a good starting point. http://www.whale.to/vaccine/sf1.html

    So, immune system health is paramount.

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  93. Fae

    February 16, 2015 at 1:48 am

    Thank you. I have watched the recent coverage and denigration of “anti-vaxxers” (terrible label) with fascination. So much emotion and promotion of fear portrayed to sway opinions.

    Good health to you and yours now and always, Megan.

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  94. Martine Perreault

    February 16, 2015 at 12:05 am

    In 1999 I almost died from a vaccine. I spent 1 week in intensive care with a ventilator and a total of 3 weeks in the hospital. My doctor told me not to have any more vaccines and I wouldn’t want another vaccine even if they told me I could. It cost me a fortune because I couldn’t take care of my kids for months and spent the next 2 years in and out of the hospital until the vaccine was completely gone from my system. In 1992 one of my daughters had a very bad reaction to the MMR vaccine. Her pediatrician decided not to give her any more of the MMR vaccine. In 1996 my 4 children developped bad cases of Whooping cough even though they had all received the vaccine. My youngest daughter, who was 2 years old at the time spent one week in the hospital because one of her lungs collapsed and her oxygen levels were too low and the other 3 were very sick with the disease for several months. Because of my personal experiences, I do not believe that vaccines are for everyone. That is my personal opinion based on my personal experience.

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  95. Joanna Mclean

    February 15, 2015 at 5:21 pm

    Many thanks for posting this, there is so much hype over a few cases of measles yet nobody is even batting an eyelid at these statistics… 1 in 2 of us will develop cancer and 1 in 5 will be autistic. Keep your eyes peeled… a vaccine for autism must be in the making!

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  96. mike

    February 15, 2015 at 3:47 pm

    I would vaccinate my child but i do not expect everyone to do the same. Who is everyone out there to trample on parental rights. Its my decision to vaccinate my child. Its everyone elses to not. It wouldnt stop my child to play with theres. I wish everyone would get there heads out of their backside and realize this. But not everyone does and it brings up stuff like this article which wouldnt be an issue if people would mind their own bussiness.

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  97. Andy

    February 15, 2015 at 2:54 am

    Megan,

    I have been following this website for some months, gently providing a counter argument to many of what I know to be inaccurate statements that have been made. I appreciate you sharing your mind with me, and the dialogue that I have had with many of your commenters.

    However, I will not be writing here any further. You as moderator of this site have allowed people to promote their products to concerned parents with sick kids. One person, and their associate have been promoting a product to inquiring parents that is only registered as a pesticide, as an “immune booster”. It has not been shown to be an “immune booster”, in fact, animal trials indicate the opposite.

    To me, this is unequivocally morally wrong. Frightened parents will look anywhere they can for answers, and unscrupulous persons will capitalize on their dismay. You have given them a platform to do so.

    For reference, the persons in question are Dr. Rima Liabow, and her associate Ralph Fucetola. They have been promoting their nanosilver product to a parent with an immunocompromised child. This is what I wrote below in response to their sales pitch:

    Dear Concerned Parent:

    Please do not buy products over the internet from people claiming to have miracle cures. The FDA has warned this person about promoting this product: http://www.lohud.com/story/news/health/2014/10/10/rima-laibow-ebola-treatment-fda/17047307/

    Currently, the only registered use for this product that they are selling is as a pesticide:

    http://www.epa.gov/oppfead1/cb/csb_page/updates/2013/nanosilver.html

    This person tried to sell this product to East Africans during their vulnerable time of the last Ebola outbreak:

    http://www.riskscience.umich.edu/nano-silver-used-treat-ebola-victims-nigeria/

    Although this person may attempt to convince you that “there are 1000s of peer reviewed papers demonstrating that nanosilver is an immune booster”, this is not so. There are many papers demonstrating it’s use as a germicide, but regarding the immunological effects, a cursory review of the literature reveals this:

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24885556 For those who don’t click links, the title is “Immunotoxicity of silver nanoparticles in an intravenous 28 day repeated dose toxicity study in rats”.

    This person is using misinformation to try to sell you a pesticide to give to your child.

    Megan, earlier in response to my letter on this very topic (the predatory nature of persons who financially exploit anti-vaccine misinformation), your response was that you felt that “people deserve to be compensated for their time”.

    No Megan, they do not. Not if their time is spent selling pesticides to frightened parents, with the intention to use it to treat ill children.

    This crosses a line for me. I don’t mind people trying new and untested therapies on themselves, (or, heaven forbid, actually performing trials) but selling them to desperate parents disturbs me profoundly. It may indeed be found that nanosilver can produce a beneficial immune response, but offering it as a panacea is dangerous and irresponsible. Honestly, I want nothing to do with it.

    Over and out.

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    • A

      March 5, 2015 at 9:25 pm

      Please don’t quit posting, Andy! Even though I am unsure about vaccines, I always appreciate what you have to say. Do you write in other places?

      reply to this comment
    • Ralph Fucetola JD

      May 5, 2015 at 1:52 am

      I did not notice this comment from February until just now. It is dishonest and misleading.

      Nano silver serves different roles for different uses. It is a dietary supplement when used to supplement the diet and provide powerful immune system support. Just Google Nano Silver!

      As a surface cleanser it has been approved by EPA UNDER THE SAME REGULATIONS AS PESTICIDES because that’s how the regulatory system is structured, not as your poster would have us believe because it is a “dangerous substance.” That is bizarre and truly misinformation.

      It has also been approved by FDA as a wound dressing.

      Maybe your poster fears Nano Silver because its natural benefits would do so much to stem the coming of the resistant pathogens…

      http://drrimatruthreports.com/us-govt-nano-silver-study-declassified-2009/

      reply to this comment
  98. Jaime

    February 15, 2015 at 2:52 am

    Brilliant post! Thank you for taking the brave stand on behalf of all of us ‘truth seeking’ parents. We know what we know & we can not unknow it.

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  99. Carl

    February 15, 2015 at 1:53 am

    I encourage everyone reading this article to click the citation link in the Fifth point of this article, the link to the WHO. Just read the first one or two bullets on that site. I don’t believe the author has read any of the citations to which she links as proof of her arguments. The true is out there, even in the websites she references.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 15, 2015 at 2:43 am

      Are you referring to the global statistics? I’m assuming you want to use these global statistics from third world countries to justify getting an MMR in the U.S? I addressed this in the post linked at the bottom of this article.

      reply to this comment
      • Carl

        February 15, 2015 at 4:22 am

        I am just encouraging people to read the citations. I was surprised to see WHO cited and went to read the citation. I came to the conclusion that the WHO website was very in favor of global vaccination, meaning vaccinating everywhere around the globe. I did not take the WHO website to be specific for third world countries, a term that is not used anywhere on that page.

        I think that everyone should get as much information as possible on this topic and not take a single person’s opinion as absolute truth.

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    • Kate

      February 15, 2015 at 4:45 am

      I did read that link, and if you scroll down to the section on treatment you will see the information about vitamin A, I have cut and pasted it for you:
      Treatment

      No specific antiviral treatment exists for measles virus.

      Severe complications from measles can be avoided through supportive care that ensures good nutrition, adequate fluid intake and treatment of dehydration with WHO-recommended oral rehydration solution. This solution replaces fluids and other essential elements that are lost through diarrhoea or vomiting. Antibiotics should be prescribed to treat eye and ear infections, and pneumonia.

      All children in developing countries diagnosed with measles should receive two doses of vitamin A supplements, given 24 hours apart. This treatment restores low vitamin A levels during measles that occur even in well-nourished children and can help prevent eye damage and blindness. Vitamin A supplements have been shown to reduce the number of deaths from measles by 50%.

      reply to this comment
    • Danchi

      February 15, 2015 at 2:30 pm

      The WHO is a criminal organization and if it wasn’t for the powerful members who are members of the eugenics movement, they would fall under the RICO status. People who use critical thinking and common sense do no rely on The WHO, CDC, HHS, IOM, NIH, FDA or the pharmaceutical company. FYI: Megan is very well researched. More than you are apparently because you rely on the WHO for information.

      reply to this comment
      • VB

        February 16, 2015 at 9:18 pm

        https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6WQtRI7A064

        reply to this comment
      • Sara

        February 17, 2015 at 6:36 am

        Meagan was the one who “quoted”. WHO in the first place (actually misquoted, but that’s besides the point)

        reply to this comment
        • Megan Heimer

          February 17, 2015 at 4:25 pm

          No. I did not misquote.

          reply to this comment
          • sara

            February 17, 2015 at 4:37 pm

            That’s right, you didn’t “misquote”– but you did take it out of context. WHO recommends that you vaccinate your child so quoting them to prove your point makes no sense.

            reply to this comment
            • Megan Heimer

              February 17, 2015 at 8:36 pm

              WHO would recommend vaccinating even if everyone being vaccinated died. That aside, this wasn’t about where the WHO stands on vaccinating. It was where they stand on vitamin A. I like to keep it relevant and to the scope.

  100. Julie

    February 14, 2015 at 9:02 pm

    Thank you Thank you Thank you…for speaking out for us “anti vaxxers”…like another commenter, I too feel like I have to be silent about my vaccine choices. I would love to see studies comparing unvaccinated childrens medical records with those of vaccinated children. Studies not funded by big pharma, of course.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 15, 2015 at 12:36 am

      Thanks for the comment Julie! I would love to see a retrospective study too.

      reply to this comment
  101. Rita Palma

    February 14, 2015 at 7:06 pm

    There are many posts here that praise choice- however, that choice is under fire in virtually every state in the US. California, Maryland and Vermont just introduced bills to take away all exemptions to vaccines except medical. Other states, including NY, have bills on the edge of being introduced. The precedent this sets is chilling and sets the stage for further erosion of parent’s rights. As a NY-based grass-roots lobbyist for vax choice, I know passing these bills into law will be a reality unless parents push back. Please, folks, get out to your lawmakers in your state and tell them, for all the good reasons posted here, that choice trumps all. If we don’t speak up ( I know it’s tough!) we will lose the right to say if, when and how many. Please like my kids, my choice on FB

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  102. Courtney

    February 14, 2015 at 6:24 pm

    The influenza vaccine is only live/LAIV/activated in the form of the nasal spray. The shots, which I get my kids (2, 4 & 6) are not. All readily available information if you are looking at legitimate sources & not trying to spin doctor arguments. Not so different then what you are accusing others of.

    reply to this comment
    • Danchi

      February 15, 2015 at 2:34 pm

      If you look at the fact that ALL LIVE VIRUS VACCINES SHED.

      All readily available information if you are looking at legitimate sources:
      Funny you didn’t mention what you consider a reliable source. I have one for you:

      The Emerging Risks of Live Virus & Virus Vectored Vaccines: http://www.nvic (dot) org/vaccine-strain-virus-shedding-and-transmission.aspx.

      This ebook is heavily cited with references from the CDC, vaccine industry and other “RELIABLE” sources.

      reply to this comment
  103. Bill

    February 14, 2015 at 5:30 pm

    Wonderful radio conversation between a mother of an immunocompromised child and a mother who choices not to vaccinate her children. Take a listen it will make you think –
    http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2015/02/09/vaccinations-pro-and-anti-vaxxer-parents-make-their-cases/

    reply to this comment
    • Danchi

      February 14, 2015 at 11:00 pm

      There have always been people who are immune-compromised people-including children since the dawn of time. I have sympathy for any person with a chronic illness or a child who is chronically ill but I draw the line at being forced into a invasive medical procedure. Families with immuno-compromised family members are not entitled to any more than the rest of the citizens of the US. It is the parents job to protect the child-not the rest of the country. It’s called parenting. My sons are lactose intolerant but I didn’t go to the food industry and demand that all milk protects be removed from the food chain. I am extremely sensitive to MSG and I have ended up in emergency multiple times with blinding migraine headaches so severe that every one of my sense is over stimulated. Vomiting with every sound, smell, movement-and it goes on for hours. Yet, I’ve not petitioned every restaurant, bakery, fast food joint, beverage company to change their menus or labels to bold print that this food item has so many grams of MSG in it. I take responsibility for getting that information myself. Restaurant-do you have a ingredients list for your food items, I read all label of products I purchase, bakery-I ask who’s cooking do you use MSG or Accent(MSG). I email companies and ask specifically if certain products of theirs that I may purchase have MSG. MY responsibility-NOT the Communities or the population. You know what I find very interesting? The parents of Autistic children and other Vaccine Injured children are not all over the internet comment boards insisting on mandatory vaccination. These children are now immuno-compromised. Isn’t that something.

      You know what the really sad sad sorry thing is about all the “SAD SACK” Mothers with immuno-compromised children stories that have popped up on this site? I have read the same stories on at least a dozen other website comment boards in the last 10 days. With the exception of the audio linked in this post and it could be a ruse because it has been done before over the years, the stories are not real. Because it’s the same scenario:
      Mom start off comment by being uncertain, not sure, divided, confused if she, should she, will she vaccinate her children. She has vaccinated before and everything is fine but now she’s confused (the hook) . In the middle of the comment it goes something like this:
      People don’t want to vaccination, just in case, but it seems they are not also considering it the other way around that by not vaccinating they are equally dicing with both disability and death. Their child is more likely to be damaged or killed by the disease they did not prevent than to be injured by the vaccine. (devils advocate)
      Next comes the venom and rage and your selfishness has caused the death of a baby:
      it is selfish and reckless considering that unvaccinated people, such as young babies or those with suppressed or no immune systems should be exposed and THEIR health and life risked. Ask that dead-from-measles baby’s parents what they think of your unvaccinated child killing their baby?
      Parts of this comment are from a woman named Madge. Probably a fake. This, in the world of truth suppression and misinformation uses several tactics :

      *Become incredulous and indignant. Avoid discussing key issues and instead focus on side issues which can be used show the topic as being critical of some otherwise sacrosanct group or theme. This is also known as the ‘How dare you!’ gambit.
      *Emotionalize, Antagonize, and Goad Opponents. If you can’t do anything else, chide and taunt your opponents and draw them into emotional responses which will tend to make them look foolish and overly motivated, and generally render their material somewhat less coherent. Not only will you avoid discussing the issues in the first instance, but even if their emotional response addresses the issue, you can further avoid the issues by then focusing on how ‘sensitive they are to criticism.’

      Invoking the death of a child is manipulative and creates fear into those who are still trying to wade their way through all the propaganda. Nothing is more terrifying to a parent than the death of their child and the pharmaceutical companies will work that angle until the wheels fall off their wagon.

      New information. I read a report out of California that the Disney workers were instructed to get vaccinated for measles in December 2014. This comes from a California resident. This is research is in progress. It has not been confirmed but it is sure interesting because this is a False Falg event just like Ebola, All The Flu outbreaks, The Whooping Cough outbreaks in 2010-12, The Mumps outbreaks of late 2013-14. London had a measles outbreak in December 1959 and in three weeks there were 41,000 cases of measles. Doctors reporting to the BMJ didn’t break a sweat reporting it is a mild disease. “https://childhealthsafety.wordpress (dot) com/2013/04/15/british-medical-journal-tells-us-measles-is-not-the-scary-disease-the-press-want-you-to-think-it-is/

      “Mumps and other once-perilous childhood diseases “have been brought under control and there is cause to rejoice in the fact … that epidemics are becoming scarce,” Dr. E. H. Lossing, the chief of epidemiology at the federal government’s Department of Health and Welfare, wrote in 1955”

      What’s changed about this situation—MONEY.

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      • Katherine

        February 16, 2015 at 10:42 pm

        Absolutely! These parents shouldn’t think they are anymore entitled than the rest of us! As I said before, genes do matter, which is something these parents of immuno-compromised kids do not understand. These, of course, are the same ones who think every child should have a trophy and believe their acting out in public should be tolerated. Newsflash: if you cannot possibly deal with the fact that your child may not comb gray hair or see wrinkles, don’t breed! Death is part of life.

        These are also paid pharmaceutical employees trolling the comments. One is Dorit Reiss.

        reply to this comment
  104. Zac

    February 14, 2015 at 11:24 am

    That was a great read 🙂 But I’m confused about one thing.
    You said “If I had a child with cancer, you better believe I’d be looking for a kid with measles” but one of the links you posted, leading me to another of your posts on this site has you completely disagreeing with what you just said here. Yet other links you posted to different sites, are all for it.
    So which is it? Do you believe wild measels can cure cancer, or not?

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 14, 2015 at 4:47 pm

      Hi Zac. My post (that I linked to) is on a measles vaccine for cancer (containing engineered mutated measles) derived from the notion that wild measles can put cancer into remission. I linked to the wild measles studies and to my post addressing the issues with the measles cancer vaccine.

      reply to this comment
      • Zac

        February 20, 2015 at 11:43 pm

        Yes but you seem to act favourably towards it here but unfavourably on the other page. So I’m asking how you really feel about it.

        reply to this comment
    • Danchi

      February 15, 2015 at 3:11 pm

      Do you believe wild measels can cure cancer, or not?

      Engineered measles virus used in anti-cancer therapy. from WHALE. Resources at website

      Carmona Mota (1973) described a remission of infantile Hodgkin’s disease after natural measles. They wrote, “A 23-months-old Caucasian male was seen for the first time in April 1970 with a large mass in the neck due to hypertrophy of the left cervical lymph nodes. Before radiotherapy could be started the child developed measles. Much to our surprise the large cervical mass vanished without further therapy.”

      Many others started researching and writing about the oncolytic (cancer-destroying) effect of measles virus.

      Msaouel et al. (2009) conducted clinical testing of engineered oncolytic measles virus strains in the treatment of cancer. Even though the virus they used was a vaccine-type virus, the research was done in vitro with a virus directly injected into the tumour. They wrote, “It is of note that a number of viral strains, including certain derivatives of the attenuated live measles virus Edmonston (MV-Edm) vaccine strain, demonstrate a propensity to preferentially infect, propagate in, and destroy cancerous tissue.

      The reason for using modified viruses was given as “concerns regarding the potential of wild-type-viruses to cause serious side effects, technical limitations in manufacturing viral lots of high purity for clinical use, as well as the overwhelming excitement and fervent support for the, at the time, newly emerging chemotherapy approaches that slowed down research on alternative strategies”.

      One can reasonably speculate that there were also political reasons for using a vaccine measles virus (an engineered measles virus), and not the wild measles virus, because the next question to answer would be why not simply let children have the natural measles and thus achieve the long-term non-specific immunity to a number of cancers.

      Having measles not only results in life-long specific immunity to measles, but also in life-long non-specific immunity to degenerative diseases of bone and cartilage, sebaceous skin diseases, immunoreactive diseases and certain tumours as demonstrated by Ronne (1985).

      Having mumps protects against ovarian cancer (West 1969).

      *So the pharmaceutical industry has known for decades that contracting measles naturally has health benefits later in life. However Cancer is a huge money maker for the pharmaceutical industry, especially those producing incredibly expensive chemo drugs that don’t work. If cancer was cured think of all the other industries that are attached to big pharma that will take a huge financial hit.

      Dr. Bernice Eddy in 1954 discovered that the formaldehyde in the Polio Vaccine not only didn’t deactivate the Polio Virus the Polio Virus, when injected into monkey’s caused huge tumors to develop-cancer. She told her bosses who told her to keep quiet. Being greatly disturbed by this, in 1960 she reported this to a the American Cancer Membership at a meeting in NY. She predicted because SV-40, the virus in the vaccine, if it was not removed (it couldn’t be) there would be an explosion of soft tissue cancers within the next 30 years. Her prophecy came true as childhood cancers begin to rise, breast cancers in women exploded in the late 70’s, there has been and continue to be a 100% rise in leukemia in children , brain, lung, colon, stomach and other soft tissue cancers. 63% of these cancers removed in surgery have the DNA of SV-40 in them. Eddy, after she revealed this information was demoted, lost her lab and basically was Wakefielded. No one would touch her in the scientific community. The cancer industry KNEW cancer cases were going to rise. Was there a plan to allow cancer to run rampant by stopping one of natures mechanism for preventing it? Good possibility. Everything that has happened over the last 35-40 years has been planned. None of this has happened by chance.

      -Merck vaccine scientist Dr. Maurice Hilleman admitted presence of SV40, AIDS and cancer viruses in vaccines: http://tv.naturalnews (dot) com/v.asp?v=13EAAF22CDA367BB3C2F94D2CD90EF7B
      -transcript-http://www.naturalnews (dot) com/033584_dr_maurice_hilleman_sv40.html

      What happened to Eddy? Dr. Eddy was swooped up by the pentagon and worked with Dr. Maurice Hilleman on what else, germ warfare.

      From Hilleman video: Hilleman joking with Albert Sabin about SV-40.

      Dr Maurice Hilleman: …no that’s right, but yellow fever vaccine had leukemia virus in it and you know this was in the days of very crude science. So anyway I went down and talked to him and said well, why are you concerned about it? Well I said “I’ll tell you what, I have a feeling in my bones that this virus is different, I don’t know why to tell you this but I …(unintelligible) …I just think this virus will have some long term effects.” And he said what? And I said “cancer”. (laughter) I said Albert, you probably think I’m nuts, but I just have that feeling. Well in the mean time we had taken this virus and put it into monkeys and into hamsters. So we had this meeting and that was sort of the topic of the day and the jokes that were going around was that “gee, we would win the Olympics because the Russians would all be loaded down with tumors.” (laughter) This was where the vaccine was being tested, this was where… so, uhh, and it really destroyed the meeting and it was sort of the topic. Well anyway…

      “Within a few years of the polio vaccine we started seeing some strange phenomena like the year before the first 300,000 doses were given in the United States childhood leukaemia had never struck in children under the age of two. One year after the first onslaught they had the first cases of children under the age of two that died of leukaemia…….. Dr Herbert Radnor observed that in a small area of this little town, in an area where no cases of leukaemia had been expected or at the most one in 4 years according to previous statistics, they suddenly had a rash like an epidemic within a few blocks”—Dr Snead

      reply to this comment
  105. Natasha

    February 14, 2015 at 8:37 am

    Maybe it needs to happen as Michael states

    “and private businesses such as Disneyland could enforce a mandatory vaccination policy”

    Then people like Michael will see that things like measles will still be present in places like Disneyland and realise finally that non vaccinated children aren’t the ones to blame!
    Bit hard when all non vaccinated people won’t be allowed in.

    reply to this comment
  106. Steve

    February 14, 2015 at 7:43 am

    I have been vaccinated, my children have been vaccinated. I have done a great deal of research, and if I had it to do all over again, I would not vaccinate my kids. I am sure many people having a different viewpoint than (or even attacking) the vaccine resistant crowd have never thought about this;

    Every drug that has ever been recalled by the FDA, was once approved as safe by the FDA.

    I can completely understand the resistant parents lack of trust in a system that should be protecting their children.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 14, 2015 at 4:49 pm

      Thanks for sharing Steve.

      reply to this comment
    • Lori

      February 18, 2015 at 7:34 pm

      Just remember that if someone dies and they can prove it was due to your negligence, you are responsible and can do time or pay for someone else’s medical treatment

      reply to this comment
      • Megan Heimer

        February 19, 2015 at 12:50 am

        Does that apply to those recently vaccinated with live vaccines who then shed and infect someone else…or an adult with no artificial immunity? The double standard is unfortunate considering parents of vaccine-injured children can’t sue doctors or pharmaceutical companies (or people who would force vaccines upon them) for their injuries.

        reply to this comment
  107. Shelle

    February 14, 2015 at 7:24 am

    Thankyou for putting into words, the thoughts that have been keeping me awake since the whole fear driven farce about measles reignited the vaccine debate. Ive been so so angry at the prospect of losing yet more of my parental rights, and potentially being forced to vaccinate my HEALTHY children. My vaccine injured eldest child will forever carry the evidence (recurrent otitis media resulting in deafness in one ear and constant buzzing in the other), that I made uninformed choices on his behalf, and I will always carry the guilt that I didn’t choose more carefully for him. I will not take kindly to anyone else trying to force my hand into the same position with my subsequent children.

    Its hard to remain standing when so many are currently carrying their misplaced provax zeal and I have become silent for my own protection.

    reply to this comment
  108. Dave

    February 14, 2015 at 6:12 am

    Over 100,000 children died worldwide from measles in 2013. Perhaps the writer can spend a few weeks with her unimmunised kids in a subsaharan refugee camp, then we can reasses and see whether she still thinks vaccines are a waste of time. Maybe have a chat with some of the mothers there and see what they think about her ‘right’ not to have western medicine. Vacinnes are a victim of their own success – no one fears the diseases they prevent

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 14, 2015 at 4:58 pm

      Dave, every disease is potentially more deadly in a third world country. We cannot make policy in this country based on the living conditions and circumstances of third world countries. I linked to a post at the end of this article where I talk about that in more detail.

      reply to this comment
    • Danchi

      February 15, 2015 at 3:29 pm

      Over 100,000 children died worldwide from measles in 2013.

      Are we going to re-do this misleading argument again?
      What would really help you trolls is if you would start your comments out by being honest. When you start the sentence with UN-truths, people pretty much look at whatever else you have to say as-untrue and bias.

      Those are statics from the WHO. Those numbers are from third world countries which by the way, are inaccurate. Those cases of measles the WHO loves to throw out are not lab confirmed. Lab confirmation is the only way to diagnosis measles accurately because there are many other rashes that mimick measles. Go onto a dermatology site and look at pictures that look like measles but aren’t.

      There have been 9 deaths in the US from measles since the year 2000. Source: CDC’s National Viral Statics Reports.

      There are NO studies and NO data that confirms that the reduction of measles deaths can be attributed to a vaccine. Measles deaths had abated 98% before the first measles vaccine was developed in 1963.

      “Vacinnes are a victim of their own success – no one fears the diseases they prevent”

      Please provide an INDEPENDENT STUDY THAT CONFIRMS THE SAFETY AND EFFECTIVENESS OF AN CHILDHOOD VACCINE. That study must be the scientific Gold Standard which is:
      A double blind Independent placebo based controlled study. In the case of vaccine the study would be comparing the health of an Unvaccinated child to he health of a Vaccinated child.

      1 child in 6 has become chronically ill since the increase in vaccine:

      U.S. CHILD CHRONIC DISEASE INCREASES

      1976: 1 child in 30 was learning disabled
      →2013: 1 child in 6 is learning disabled.

      1980: 1 child in 27 had asthma
      →2013: 1 child in 9 has asthma.

      1990’s: 1 child in 555 developed autism
      →2013: 1 child in 50 develops autism.

      2001: 1 child in 500 had diabetes
      →2013: 1 child in 400 has diabetes.

      THREE TIMES AS MANY VACCINATIONS FOR CHILDREN
      1953: CDC recommended 16 doses of 4 vaccines (smallpox, DPT) between two months and age six.
      1983: CDC recommended 23 doses of 7 vaccines (DPT, MMR, polio) between two months and age six.
      2013: CDC recommended 49 doses of 14 vaccines between day of birth and age six and 69 doses of 16 vaccines between day of birth and age 1.

      Over 50% of children have a chronic condition and 1 in 6 have a neurodevelomental disorder (aka vaccine caused brain injury). Autism and autoimmune disorders are skyrocketing. Injecting aluminum, mercury, aborted fetal tissue, formaldehyde, MSG, diseased monkey kidney, etc. does not bring health.
      Trends in the Prevalence of Developmental Disabilities in US Children, 1997–2008

      100 Compiled Studies on Vaccine Dangers
      activistpost (dot) com/2011/09/100-compiled-studies-on-vaccine-dangers.html

      reply to this comment
  109. Madeline

    February 14, 2015 at 4:58 am

    Thanks, Megan. Brilliant as always!

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 14, 2015 at 4:58 pm

      Thanks Madeline. 🙂

      reply to this comment
  110. Bob

    February 14, 2015 at 4:56 am

    I had my shots. No consequences and doing my part to keep preventable diseases away.

    Thanks mom and dad!

    reply to this comment
  111. Tracie

    February 14, 2015 at 1:23 am

    As one mama bear to another, all I can say is THANK YOU.

    reply to this comment
  112. VB

    February 13, 2015 at 8:30 pm

    I came across this video today. It speaks to the misinformation and hysteria we are seeing today over this issue.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-bYAQ-ZZtEU

    reply to this comment
  113. Amber

    February 13, 2015 at 5:34 pm

    Megan,

    I’m so glad I came across your blog. You have said EXACTLY what I think but have been unable to put into words. We are not the bad guys and I am SICK AND TIRED of the hate and shame that people are directing towards us for our choices for OUR children! Thank you so much for standing up to “them” not only for you and your child, but for those of us who have the same beliefs as you but aren’t good with words. 🙂

    Amber

    reply to this comment
  114. AH

    February 13, 2015 at 3:57 pm

    Great article. Please sign and share! https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/prohibit-any-laws-mandating-force-and-requirement-vaccinations-any-kind/HW1B3YKz

    reply to this comment
  115. Lorene Eppolite

    February 13, 2015 at 3:47 pm

    Though I probably should have read the other comments first 🙂

    reply to this comment
  116. Lorene Eppolite

    February 13, 2015 at 3:46 pm

    Very eloquent article and I agree on every point… except one. There have been 4 reported measles deaths in the last 10 years (2008-2009 I believe), I know I was able to find this info when I looked for it, though it was not the quickest info to find.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 13, 2015 at 7:44 pm

      You are right, but it was information gathered from death certificates and weren’t confirmed measles cases by the CDC. You probably saw my comment on this in the thread somewhere judging by your other comment. 😉

      reply to this comment
    • Danchi

      February 13, 2015 at 10:51 pm

      According to the CDC’s National Vitals Statics Report, where all deaths have to be confirmed by labs or other means, There have been 9 deaths from measles since the year 2000. The NVSR:

      The National Vital Statistics System is the oldest and most successful example of inter-governmental data sharing in Public Health and the shared relationships, standards, and procedures form the mechanism by which NCHS collects and disseminates the Nation’s official vital statistics. These data are provided through contracts between NCHS and vital registration systems operated in the various jurisdictions legally responsible for the registration of vital events – births, deaths, marriages, divorces, and fetal deaths.

      It is the only government database that hasn’t been manipulated to date. Everyone born in the US is documented here and everyone that dies in the US is documented here by date, age, race, location, cause of death, etc. I have the reports dating back to 1940. A coupe of things that give people incorrect information is the publication of the weekly surveillance bulletins and the CDC telebriefings. Because the NVSR is updated one to two years after the facts, because it takes that long to collect and confirm all the data (such as lab confirmations for deaths), people rely on the bulletins which eventually prove not to be accurate.

      reply to this comment
  117. Amanda

    February 13, 2015 at 6:23 am

    Whoa. So much hate on both sides. This is getting ridiculous.
    Yes, I vaccinate my children. I whole-heartedly believe in the effectiveness of vaccines.
    Do I fear your unvaccinated child will get my vaccinated child sick? No. I don’t. I’ve taken steps to protect my children.
    Does that mean my children won’t get sick? No, my children get sick. I keep them home when they run fevers. That’s my responsibility as a parent.
    I have one child in public school, while my oldest I have to homeschool, due to various other reasons. Do I blame his vaccinations for the serious health issues and social issues that we are dealing with? No. Absolutely not. I will not be like the masses and try to place blame on something that isn’t even remotely linked to his conditions that so many others would love to place blame on.
    As for myself, I have to get the flu shot every year because my husband has diabetes. I haven’t gotten the flu from the shot. Ever. I’ve been fully vaccinated except for chicken pox, which I was blessed with twice in the same month when I was younger. Now I’m at risk for shingles later on. Will I get vaccinated for that? You better believe it.
    I could go on and on. The fact is, our bodies are different. They react differently due to our genetic makeup. Different medicines will work differently for each individual. That’s just the way it is. I don’t agree with your article. I’m not going to change your mind and you won’t change mine. Just my belief.
    The problem is that we have lost our compassion for one another. No one has respect for anyone anymore. Just because you believe one way doesn’t mean you can force it on me, the same way I can’t force my beliefs on you.
    I do believe that parents of children that have immune deficiencies have a right to know if a child and/or children in their class has not had their vaccinations, due to whatever reasons, because of health concerns of their child so that whatever precautions need to be taken, can and will be taken. Is this so hard to ask from either viewpoint? To have a little common decency, respect, and common sense? I’ve seen that, yes, it really is a lost cause.

    reply to this comment
    • Danchi

      February 13, 2015 at 11:23 pm

      I do believe that parents of children that have immune deficiencies have a right to know if a child and/or children in their class has not had their vaccinations, due to whatever reasons, because of health concerns of their child so that whatever precautions need to be taken, can and will be taken.

      No, they really don’t. People’s medical histories are private. It is your responsibility to inform the school or any other place that your child has issues and compensate. It’s called PARENTING. Why should 20-30 children & the school system change their world to accommodate you child? If it’s a public school those are the tax dollars of the American people, not just the dollars of the vaccinated. If it’s a private school parents have paid a lot of money and they have equal rights. Being unvaccinated is not a crime and any behavior that adds to the paranoia would just further imply that there is something wrong.

      The fact is, your vaccinated children are the ones that are contagious. That is a fact. Your child is injected with live viruses that never leave their bodies because they don’t enter in a way for the immune system to deal with them.

      In 1995, Golding and Scott, published the need for strategies to make vaccines that would generate the “required” Th cell to the corresponding microorganism. Since that time, attempts to produce vaccines that would generate a “natural”- type response have failed. So, we are left with vaccines that generate “protective” responses as a second choice. How does this work? In vaccine-induced Th2 responses, called humoral responses, the body produces large quantities of specific antibodies that block the virus from entering cells. This response is why a vaccinated child doesn’t get a full blown infection and why the child won’t spread as many viruses into the environment. However, antibodies cannot get into cells to eliminate viruses once the viruses are in the cells or cannot kill infected cells themselves. Therefore, the body has no choice other than to internalize the virus and be chronically infected when the body is forced into a Th2 antibody response. The body is essentially constipated with viruses that it cannot expel!

      Unvaccinated children who are exposed to measles will generate the immune response that is required to make permanent immunity as well as kick out the virus from the body. The normal, healthy body’s response to viruses is to externalize them. To suppress this natural response can be as hazardous to our health as suppressing waste elimination from the bowel or toxin release from the skin. Natural Th1 responses generate cell-mediated responses that serve to both neutralize viruses by producing antibodies and most importantly stimulate the immune cells necessary to kill any cells infected with viruses. The body works to externalize and eliminate viruses when the Th1 response is generated. So we understand now that when a Th2 response is induced, “it drives the infection deeper into the interior and causes us to harbor it chronically.” It is commonly held that the presence of antibody to viruses is a sign of a chronic on-going infection not a sign of immunity. Our bodies generally need to have Th1 cells to defend against viral, Gram-negative bacterial, and fungal infections, and tuberculosis, as well as to protect against cancer. Th2 response is necessary to protect against Gram-positive bacterial, parasitic infections, as well as to neutralize toxins from microorganisms and the environment. A balance of Th1/Th2 cells in the body is defined as immunostasis (or immune balance) and is required for optimum health and wellness. Vaccines promote a failure in immunostasis by making the Th2-type cells dominant. Golding S., Scott DE., Vaccine Strategy: Targeting Helper T Cell Responses. Ann. NY Acad. Sci. 754:126-137, May 31, 1995

      So the body is holding onto the viruses in the vaccine and when the child’s immune system is weakened from lack of proper nutrition or illness, those LIVE viruses can become virulent and the child may develop an illness “out of the blue” without being exposed to it from an outside source. Does the CDC know this? Of course they. They count on it.

      So in the scenario you proposed, in alignment with the current mindset put out by the MSM, if people who want vaccine choice, people who want more informed consent, people who want to chose when their child receives vaccines and people who do not want their child vaccinated-should be the ones concerned-if they thought like the rabid pro-vaccine mafia of the CDC/big pharma. However, they are a more intelligent, pragmatic, non-hysterical, people who use critical thinking and common sense in this False Flag Measles outbreak. How do you know the CDC is lying? Their mouths are moving.

      reply to this comment
      • vj

        February 15, 2015 at 4:42 pm

        I would liKe to make the decision to not vaccinate my dog against rabies then send her into your classrooms full of unvaccinated children. This of course is ridiculous….I absolutely agree with the poster regarding compassion…we are all more concerned with our “rights” being violated no matter what the cost to others. Most of our population was vaccinated without negative impact…get over it and allow the same for our future generations. This whole fight is about as ridiculous as refusing medical treatment for religious reasons…God gave us a brain and some humans choose to use it. As a side note, I didn’t have “rights” until I was 18, parents need to start raising there children instead of passing the buck. No wonder other country’s children excel…they have discipline and order. Better hope your breast feeding until they are 15 passed along your immunities..

        reply to this comment
        • Megan Heimer

          February 16, 2015 at 12:56 am

          They also have lower vaccination rates and healthier children.

          reply to this comment
    • Jgonza

      February 27, 2015 at 1:07 am

      Wait so why do you think just because a kid is immune compromised my kids hippa rights should be violated… God help us…

      reply to this comment
  118. Karen from Canada

    February 13, 2015 at 2:42 am

    And yet again … my comment will not show up. When I try to repost it says I’ve already posted. Very fishy!

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 13, 2015 at 2:57 am

      Karen, I am not sitting at my computer 24/7 moderating comments. I am taking care of my children. However, I just read your comment and you need to alter it to conform with my comment policy. The other one was approved.

      https://www.livingwhole.org/comment-policy/

      reply to this comment
      • Karen Trying Yet Again!

        February 13, 2015 at 8:21 am

        And you certainly seem to have plenty of time to moderate comments that serve your purpose or where you can instantly craft a response. You refuse to post mine, because it exposes your behaviour and inaccuracies. You hide behind your comment policy so that nobody will know what I’m calling you on.

        reply to this comment
        • Megan Heimer

          February 13, 2015 at 7:55 pm

          I have not posted your comment because it does not conform to the comment policy – a policy that sets the standards for discussion on this forum. If you would like to start a fund I would be happy to hire a full-time moderator but they will still not post comments that violate the comment policy. Thank you.

          reply to this comment
      • Rima E. Laibow, MD

        February 13, 2015 at 9:42 am

        I have been trying to post the comment below in response to Shona, whose 32 year old son is immunocompromised.
        I tried to post it and it did not show up. Then I tried to post it again and was told that it had already been posted.
        Here is the comment:
        I am sorry for the difficulties you and your son are experiencing. The best way to immune competence lies in nutritional support of the immune system, whatever the cause of the immune dysfunction. Vaccines, perhaps?
        Your son should begin taking Nano Silver 10 PPM (NOT colloidal silver, please) twice per day (1 capfull in a bit of water or plain). This near-miraculous immune support nutrient will make it possible for him to move about without fear of infectious diseases.
        Since it has been shown effective in this role by more than 1000 peer reviewed studies and is totally non toxic, even as fragile as he is, he will be able to use this immune support safely.
        I am writing not as a physician, which I am, but as a helpful person since your son and I have no doctor patient relationship.
        If you contact me off line I will tell you how you can get the necessary immune support nutrient product for your son.
        You can simply reply to this post if you are interested and it will reach my email box or send me a private message on Twitter.
        Yours in health and freedom,
        Dr. Rima
        Rima E. Laibow, MD
        Medical Director
        Natural Solutions Foundation
        http://www.DrRimaTruthReports.com
        @DrRimaLaibow

        Thanks for your help
        Dr. Rima

        reply to this comment
        • Joanne

          February 14, 2015 at 10:23 am

          I would live to hear more about the nano silver for my 11 year old immunocompromised child. She has AIH with overlapping PSC. My email address is [email protected]

          Thank you

          reply to this comment
        • Andy

          February 15, 2015 at 2:04 am

          Dear Concerned Parent:

          Please do not buy products over the internet from people claiming to have miracle cures. The FDA has warned this person about promoting this product: http://www.lohud.com/story/news/health/2014/10/10/rima-laibow-ebola-treatment-fda/17047307/

          Currently, the only registered use for this product that they are selling is as a pesticide:

          http://www.epa.gov/oppfead1/cb/csb_page/updates/2013/nanosilver.html

          This person tried to sell this product to East Africans during their vulnerable time of the last Ebola outbreak:

          http://www.riskscience.umich.edu/nano-silver-used-treat-ebola-victims-nigeria/

          Although this person may attempt to convince you that “there are 1000s of peer reviewed papers demonstrating that nanosilver is an immune booster”, this is not so. There are many papers demonstrating it’s use as a germicide, but regarding the immunological effects, a cursory review of the literature reveals this:

          http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24885556 For those who don’t click links, the title is “Immunotoxicity of silver nanoparticles in an intravenous 28 day repeated dose toxicity study in rats”.

          This person is using misinformation to try to sell you a pesticide to give to your child.

          reply to this comment
          • Megan Heimer

            February 15, 2015 at 2:36 am

            The FDA warns everyone about everything that isn’t a pharmaceutical medication. Sorry Andy, I just had to. 😉

            reply to this comment
      • Rima E. Laibow, MD

        February 13, 2015 at 10:04 am

        I just tried to post this in reply to Danchi
        According to US law, EVERY vaccine must be found to be both safe and effective before it can be deployed in the US.
        Number of vaccines found to be safe using accepted scientific methodology: Zero
        Number of vaccines found to be effective using accepted scientific methodology: Zero.
        The reality is that a frequently-documented set of vaccine risks and adverse events (including autism, immuno compromise, disease generation, encepahology, auto immune disorders, cancer [thanks, in part to the known, and admitted “stealth viruses” like SV-40, a known leukemia virus, that the CDC was forced to admit that they KNEW contaminated at least 98,000,000 American’s polio vaccines but did not force manufacturers to remove in order not to place a financial burden on manufacturers], sudden infant death, so-called Shaken Baby Syndrome and many others) seems not to penetrate the near-religious belief system of pro vaccine people.
        The reality is that vaccination is an uninsurable risk (the only other uninsurable risk being the nuclear industry) and that manufacturers have no, zero, zilch legal or financial responsibility for whatever damage they do with their products.
        Regulators are, in effect, pharma employees who rotate into government, make highly self-dealing conflicted decisions and then rotate back to very highly paid jobs in the pharma industry for their services to their bosses.
        Service to the public is absent.
        Please see this paper that I presented a few days ago to the First All India Congress on Medical Education: http://drrimatruthreports.com/wp-content/uploads/Final-All-India-Medical-Congress-Paper.020415.pdf. The powerpoint is here: http://drrimatruthreports.com/wp-content/uploads/Regulation-and-Results20520151a.pdf
        The actual presentation is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_LlhUPqWFQ&feature=youtu.be. The sound gets better after about a minute.
        The facts are irrefutable: vaccines do not protect anyone at all and they do vast damage BUT if someone wants to vaccinate themselves or their children, I believe they should have the right to make that mistake. But to compel anyone else to do so, or impose sanctions like isolation because of their irrational beliefs is unconscionable.
        Yours in health and freedom,
        Dr. Rima
        Rima E. Laibow, MD
        Medical Director
        Natural Solutions Foundation
        http://www.DrRimaTruthReports.com
        @DrRimaLaibow

        but it did not show up.
        Please help
        Dr. Rima

        reply to this comment
  119. daniel

    February 13, 2015 at 2:01 am

    you lost me at a 240% increased risk of developing autism, that number is from a flawed study run by someone with an opposing vaccine patent. skewed science has no place in any article if you want ppl to take it seriously

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 13, 2015 at 5:29 am

      What flawed study are you referring to?

      reply to this comment
    • Lisa

      February 13, 2015 at 6:47 pm

      Daniel – so a study is flawed if it is “run by someone with an opposing vaccine patent. skewed science has no place in any article if you want ppl to take it seriously.” So, basically you said that if a study is run by someone who benefits financially from the results of the study it is a flawed study. Every study that has been run that shows vaccines are safe was run by people who have a vested interest in the outcomes. So any study that has been run by, funded by, or reviewed by anyone with a vested interest in the vaccine industry that shows that vaccines are safe are – in your opinion – not to be taken seriously.

      reply to this comment
  120. Shona

    February 13, 2015 at 12:51 am

    I guess I am one of the parents this person is referring to as I have a son who is immune compromised. Although he is 32 now, it has only gotten worse for him. He has been immune compromised since the removal of his spleen and part of his pancreas, his tonsils and several lymph nodes by the time he was 14. At the age of 28 he got SOOO sick (we don’t know exactly what from, just a simple virus they said) his kidneys shut completely down. In ICU for 21 says. That was 3yrs ago, at the age of 32 he has moved back home with us (his parents and younger siblings) because he can’t support himself (he either gets fired or is forced to quit jobs because he spends so much time sick or in the hospital) He rarely even leaves the house for fear of getting sick. And (at least in our state) kids can go to public school if their parent signs a simple waiver so we have to worry about him ‘catching’ something from his sibling that goes to public school It’s so ridiculous and self centered to not vaccinate. No “article” is going to convince me any different. If you do not vaccinate, you are selfish and uneducated and pick and choose what you want to believe. My son could DIE, your child may run a fever. Get a grip

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 13, 2015 at 2:44 am

      Shona, I am so so very sorry to hear about your son. I can’t imagine how tough that is for you (and him). However, we cannot downplay the very serious adverse events (including death) that have occurred at the hands of vaccines and we cannot ignore the fact that there are other ways of preventing disease that puts neither of our children at risk. Many children have become immunocompromised because of vaccines and many more will if vaccines are mandated. There are an infinite number of pathogens that we do not vaccinate against that your son could come into contact with in the environment, including a virus from a recently vaccinated child. I promise to do what I can to keep my child healthy (and contain them when they are not) but I will not put my child (or yours) at risk by vaccinating. With love, Megan

      reply to this comment
      • SD

        February 13, 2015 at 4:17 am

        You are not sorry. If you were, you would read actual research and vaccinate because it is safe. I checked your cited sources and they are rife with inaccuracies.
        I wrote these comments in response to a friend who posted from your blog.

        -The author states that measles exposure provides protection against some cancer–” yields lifetime immunity, protection against more serious diseases (like cancer) as an adult, “. However, the article actually says:
        The presence of measles specific antibodies is usually taken as evidence of typical measles in the past; in the present study it was regarded as evidence of infection with measles virus, but not necessarily of the common disease accompanied by a typical rash. The association between a negative history of measles in childhood and certain diseases later in life was investigated by a historical prospective method, based on school health records combined with self-reporting in adulthood, and tests for specific IgG measles antibody. There was evidence of association between a negative history of measles, exposure in early life (possibly injection of immune serum globulin after exposure), and development of immunoreactive diseases, sebaceous skin diseases, degenerative diseases of bone and cartilage, and certain tumours. It is suggested that the presence of measles virus specific antibodies at the time of acute infection interferes with development of specific cytolytic reactions, and enables intracellular measles virus to survive the acute infection. If this hypothesis is verified, use of immune serum globulin after measles exposure has to be of immune serum globulin after measles exposure has to be reconsidered.” Not only is is a bit weird in terms of language, but actually seems to be saying that immunoglobulin injection interferes with measles immunity from natural infection–but not necessarily that measles prevents cancer

        Secondly, the author speaks about virus shedding==”A child who was recently vaccinated with varicella, MMR, rotavirus, and influenza, (all live vaccines that can shed and infect yours),” and cities an article here (http://globenewswire.com/…/Studies-Show-that-Vaccinated… ). Within that article, it is stated :
        “Scientific evidence demonstrates that individuals vaccinated with live virus vaccines such as MMR (measles, mumps and rubella), rotavirus, chicken pox, shingles and influenza can shed the virus for many weeks or months afterwards and infect the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike -” .

        There are 10 citations to support this statement included. One is actually in favor of vaccines when read {although it is the NY times and not scholarly, but it is their citation} http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/health/03coug.html?_r=1&amp;.
        It states:
        “Dr. Margaret K. Hostetter, who leads the department of pediatrics at Yale, was impressed with the study’s methodology and said it reinforced the case for early vaccination.
        “Sometimes we think waiting a month or two beyond the appropriate time for the immunization isn’t a big deal,” she said. “This study shows that those very early months are extremely important for a baby’s protection.” Dr. Hostetter was not involved in the study, which appears in the April issue of The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal”

        Another one is about viral shedding. Unfortunately for the point of the author, it is about natural influenza infection and not vaccine related shedding. It points out that those vaccinated and unvaccinated that contracted the flu had similar shedding rates from the virus, but not from the vaccine itself
        “(The viral shedding and the symptom profile of vaccinated cases) were comparable to those of non-vaccinated ILI cases” http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article…).
        So while this may show that the vaccine was less effective in some (which we already know) it does not show that the viral shedding from a vaccine did anything.

        reply to this comment
        • Joanne

          February 14, 2015 at 10:30 am

          I too am one of those parents referred to in this article. My 11yo daughter is immunocompromised – she has two chronic liver diseases.

          My daughter is in regular contact with many unvaccinated children and her consultant tells me to worry more about a recently vaccinated child!

          As mentioned in the article – THIS worries me far more than an unvaccinated child:

          *A child who was recently vaccinated with varicella, MMR, rotavirus, and influenza, (all live vaccines that can shed and infect yours),
          *A child who was vaccinated but didn’t develop immunity,
          *A vaccinated child who develops the disease and spreads it to others,
          *An adult recently vaccinated with shingles,
          *Every single adult (save a few exceptions) whose temporary (if any), artificial immunity they got from their childhood vaccines has long worn off,
          *An individual who, vaccinated or not, has any type of illness whatsoever.

          reply to this comment
        • Lisa

          February 14, 2015 at 4:43 pm

          SD – I believe she was sorry that the child – your child? – was immune compromised. I doubt that anyone reading about someone with immunity issues would not care about the person. Would not feel sympathy – and in the cases of many parents who have children with health issues due to vaccine injury, they can actually empathize with another parent who has a child with health issues. However, she is not sorry for taking the position that she views as best for her child – which is what every parent should do. That is their job.

          For those who advocate for forced vaccination, or even just coerced vaccinations, are you sorry for those who have been injured by vaccinations – enough to change your position on forced vaccinations? Are you sorry enough for those – who even the government has acknowledged via the national vaccine injury compensation program -have been injured by vaccines? We always hear the heart wrenching stories about the poor immune compromised and young babies too little to be vaccinated and old people with health issues as heart touching stories that are supposed to open our eyes to our own selfishness and suddenly see the need to vaccinate. However, there are just as many heart wrenching stories of people who have been harmed by vaccines. Billions of dollars have been awarded for those able to work their way through the government system and prove beyond doubt that their child was injured. An Italian court as recently as September found vaccine to be the cause of a boy’s injuries there. Are, or should, those pushing for vaccinations be sorry for those children? Should they feel any level of responsibility for the injury done to those children – especially if, or when, they are successful in making vaccinations required by law – all to protect their immune compromised child from exposure? Will there be remorse for the children sacrificed for the (perceived) health benefit to their child?

          My job as a parent is to do the best I can to protect my child’s health, without running over your right to protect your child’s health.

          reply to this comment
    • Danchi

      February 13, 2015 at 3:18 am

      My son could DIE, your child may run a fever. Get a grip.

      I’m sorry for your son but, there have Always been immune-compromised children/people -for decades and parents didn’t expect the world to turn itself inside out for them. Parents dealt with it in a mature way. The parent, realizing that certain situations and things could be injurious to the child took every precaution to insure the child was protect. It was not expected that the community would make extraordinary measures to protect one child.

      I don’t understand the mentality of people who want the world to accommodate them for physical or mental challenges. I can see wheelchair ramps and rails, handicap parking, wider aisles in store to accommodate the disabled. You do what you can and the public will do their part. However I draw the line at people expecting others to submit to an invasive dangerous medical procedure for them. Period!

      Two things you may want to consider:
      1. On the vaccine vial insert it states that an immune-suppressed person can take the MMR with no problems.
      2. You want others to get vaccinated for your son? Have you heard of viral vaccine shedding? This is not a new phenomenon in regards to live virus vaccines. People shot up with live viruses are contagious. They can shed the virus in the vaccine for up to 28 days.
      The Emerging Risks of Live Virus & Virus Vectored Vaccines: http://www.nvic.org/vaccine-strain-virus-shedding-and-transmission.aspx

      reply to this comment
      • Rima E. Laibow, MD

        February 13, 2015 at 10:02 am

        According to US law, EVERY vaccine must be found to be both safe and effective before it can be deployed in the US.
        Number of vaccines found to be safe using accepted scientific methodology: Zero
        Number of vaccines found to be effective using accepted scientific methodology: Zero.
        The reality is that a frequently-documented set of vaccine risks and adverse events (including autism, immuno compromise, disease generation, encepahology, auto immune disorders, cancer [thanks, in part to the known, and admitted “stealth viruses” like SV-40, a known leukemia virus, that the CDC was forced to admit that they KNEW contaminated at least 98,000,000 American’s polio vaccines but did not force manufacturers to remove in order not to place a financial burden on manufacturers], sudden infant death, so-called Shaken Baby Syndrome and many others) seems not to penetrate the near-religious belief system of pro vaccine people.
        The reality is that vaccination is an uninsurable risk (the only other uninsurable risk being the nuclear industry) and that manufacturers have no, zero, zilch legal or financial responsibility for whatever damage they do with their products.
        Regulators are, in effect, pharma employees who rotate into government, make highly self-dealing conflicted decisions and then rotate back to very highly paid jobs in the pharma industry for their services to their bosses.
        Service to the public is absent.
        Please see this paper that I presented a few days ago to the First All India Congress on Medical Education: http://drrimatruthreports.com/wp-content/uploads/Final-All-India-Medical-Congress-Paper.020415.pdf. The powerpoint is here: http://drrimatruthreports.com/wp-content/uploads/Regulation-and-Results20520151a.pdf
        The actual presentation is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_LlhUPqWFQ&feature=youtu.be. The sound gets better after about a minute.
        The facts are irrefutable: vaccines do not protect anyone at all and they do vast damage BUT if someone wants to vaccinate themselves or their children, I believe they should have the right to make that mistake. But to compel anyone else to do so, or impose sanctions like isolation because of their irrational beliefs is unconscionable.
        Yours in health and freedom,
        Dr. Rima
        Rima E. Laibow, MD
        Medical Director
        Natural Solutions Foundation
        http://www.DrRimaTruthReports.com
        @DrRimaLaibow

        reply to this comment
    • chemfreemom

      February 13, 2015 at 7:06 am

      Shona, Actually, those who don’t vaccinate are not uneducated. If you look it up on the CDC’s website, you’ll find that those who choose not to vaccinate are upper-middle class and college educated. People who don’t vaccinate are making a decision that goes against most doctors and scientists today. We don’t do that lightly. These people have spent many more hours than most studying this subject. There are also many doctors, epidemiologists, immunologists, scientists, and other experts who question the vaccine as policy or who are outright against it. You’ll never see them on the mainstream news, but if you put a little effort into researching this issue, they’re not that hard to find. The media tries to marginalize this issue by painting the picture of a group of uneducated moms going against science. The truth is that just like throughout history, as a precursor to a shift in scientific thought on medicine or some other issue, a few scientists, doctors, etc. start to question the status quo. They are laughed at and attacked for a period of time, but eventually progress will prevail. Scientists who are wary of vaccines may be extremely outnumbered at this point, so much so that they are afraid of being too public with their opinion for fear of having their reputation ruined, but little by little, more will be brave enough to speak out, and whistleblowers like Dr. Thompson from the CDC will continue to speak out about how the CDC hides study data to protect the reputation of vaccines, etc. In the meantime, I don’t appreciate someone trying to tell me to inject a substance into my child that has well-known and well-documented side effects. There is a risk on both sides, I feel the risk is larger with vaccines, you feel the risk is larger with the disease–as loving parents, we should be able to make the choice as to which risk we want to take. And, incidentally, before you cry “herd immunity,” it doesn’t exist and never did exist from vaccines. It says that 92 to 95% of the population has to be vaccinated to work. The majority of people in their 50’s and 60’s at least, have not been vaccinated since childhood. Now they say we need boosters because the vaccines only last a year or two. So, anyone over 50 is not “protected,” and neither are all the people who cannot medically be vaccinated. So, there is nowhere NEAR 90% of the population with vaccine-induced immunity. So…no herd immunity.

      reply to this comment
    • Rima E. Laibow, MD

      February 13, 2015 at 9:22 am

      I am sorry for the difficulties you and your son are experiencing. The best way to immune competence lies in nutritional support of the immune system, whatever the cause of the immune dysfunction. Vaccines, perhaps?
      Your son should begin taking Nano Silver 10 PPM (NOT colloidal silver, please) twice per day (1 capfull in a bit of water or plain). This near-miraculous immune support nutrient will make it possible for him to move about without fear of infectious diseases.
      Since it has been shown effective in this role by more than 1000 peer reviewed studies and is totally non toxic, even as fragile as he is, he will be able to use this immune support safely.
      I am writing not as a physician, which I am, but as a helpful person since your son and I have no doctor patient relationship.
      If you contact me off line I will tell you how you can get the necessary immune support nutrient product for your son.
      You can simply reply to this post if you are interested and it will reach my email box or send me a private message on Twitter.
      Yours in health and freedom,
      Dr. Rima
      Rima E. Laibow, MD
      Medical Director
      Natural Solutions Foundation
      http://www.DrRimaTruthReports.com
      @DrRimaLaibow

      reply to this comment
  121. Laura

    February 12, 2015 at 11:47 pm

    This article definitely brings up a lot of issues along with different opinions however, I do not think because you choose to not vaccinate your child that you judge parents who get their children vaccinated

    I work in the medical field and anyone who works in the medical field MUST be vaccinated along with flu shots and also to think that your not putting your child at risk is naive for when you do happen to bring your child to the doctor you are putting them at risk…

    Do I agree with everything the government does but if vaccines were as bad as your making them put to be doctors wouldn’t suggest them personally from my own knowledge kids who are not vaccinated cannot attend public schools ….as you need to have current up to date immunizations before you can register them

    I get u want to do what’s best for your child fine but can u really sit there and say YOUR opinion is best for for your child , your basically raising your child to not trust anybody not doctors nothing which I think is terrible is there affects to vaccines yes absolutely but I strongly believe there is high risks if you do not vaccinate as well we are all welcome to our own opinions but again instead of being selfish and thinking of OUR selves maybe we should think about what our children would want now and in the future ur forcing your children to have your opinion

    Not vaccinating your children is restricting them from a number of things that could effect their future such as an education , or for example if they grow up wanting to be in the medical field they can’t do so because they were never vaccinated

    There is no sense in the argument there is studies for both sides so remember that!!!!

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 13, 2015 at 2:49 am

      Laura, You can be in the medical field and not be vaccinated. You do however, have to fill out an exemption and wear a flu mask. My children are young, but if they want to get vaccinated when they are older that is their choice. I’m raising them to question, to fight for what they believe in, to value their rights, and to research research research so that they can make an informed decision – no matter the outcome.

      To attend public school without vaccines a parent needs to fill out a vaccine exemption form.

      reply to this comment
      • andrea studt

        February 13, 2015 at 2:17 pm

        Another thought….when they become adults and want to do the things you mention….they can get the vaccines at that time. There is no reason you must get vaccinated only as a child. I get frustrated reading these kinds of things.
        Andrea

        reply to this comment
    • chemfreemom

      February 13, 2015 at 7:31 am

      To blindly trust something as important as the health of your child to ANYONE completely is irresponsible parenting. I’m not saying you shouldn’t take your child to a doctor and get their opinion, but the final decision must be yours. Doctors are not infallible, and frankly, when it comes to vaccines, they are the last people to trust. They are taught to vaccinate as many children as possible in school. They do not receive training on the other side of the issue. I only trust open-minded doctors who put just as much effort into researching the other side of the vaccine issue, and I’ve been lucky enough to find such a doctor. She didn’t start vaccinating her son until he was in 5th grade, one per year, and ONLY so he could get into public high school. She works for the university family practice here. I met another doctor when I moved here, at the urgent care place, who when I told him my son had no vaccinations, he told me he agrees with me. But, I would never make this decision solely on what a doctor told me. I did the research myself, hours and hours and hours of it. Reading scientific studies, and peer-reviewed articles that would have bored the heck out of me if I wasn’t so passionate about getting the whole story on vaccines before making my decision. I’d venture to guess that most doctors spent nowhere near that much time studying the other side of the story. And, to suggest that anyone should blindly trust their children’s health to doctors, or even science, when doctors and science throughout history have made some very questionable choices in medical treatments (like lobotomies, for example). I read all about the history of some of these barbaric treatments. These were widely accepted by the entire medical field and scientists alike for many years. I’m sure they made a lot of the same arguments doctors and scientists make today about what wonderful procedures they were, and how many people they saved. That’s what they believed. It doesn’t make them bad, any more than believing in vaccination makes doctors and scientists bad today. They’re just wrong, and someday, they’ll look back at this era and say “they injected WHAT into babies?” And, don’t even get me started on suggesting blind trust in a government organization like the CDC. Aside from all the medical experiments the government has paid for that were done on people without their knowledge or consent in the early 1900’s, some even later, there have been several whistleblowers from vaccine companies and the CDC just in the last few years, who have said there IS a problem with vaccines and they’re hiding it from us. That’s not a conspiracy theory, and I’d like to think they’re doing it because they genuinely feel that vaccinating everyone they possibly can, will make us all healthier. They’re just wrong. We have more vaccines than almost any other country, and we only rank #30 as far as good health goes, even among lesser developed nations. We also have one of the highest infant mortality rates, according the World Health Organization. More vaccines will not make us healthier, and anyone who thinks otherwise, has not given this subject the research it deserves.

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    • Lauren

      February 13, 2015 at 4:23 pm

      Laura,

      A Doctor recommended Gardasil to me, and I took all 3 doses and look at what a crazy situation that all turned out to be.

      Just because a Doctor tells you to do something doesn’t mean it’s 100% accurate or 100% legitimate. People make mistakes, doctors are people.

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    • Lisa

      February 13, 2015 at 7:01 pm

      I actually think it is smart to raise children to not trust someone else’s opinion without doing their own research. Why do we have such skeptical opinions of, for instance, a used car sales man – whose product might break down, but in the vast majority of instances won’t potentially kill us. Yet, we think doctors should be trusted – no matter what – when their “product” could kill us or have life long consequences.

      I am not anti-doctor, I have worked in the medical industry for over a decade, I think medicine has brought us many beneficial things. However, to indoctrinate people to never question is the wrong answer. We should ALWAYS be encouraging and teaching our children to question, to do their own research, to make the best choice for themselves and their families. Trust isn’t earned with a degree or a title.

      Questioning doesn’t imply unwillingness to trust either. All it really says is that I know you are a person too with all the same fallacies that every other person has – you have the same ability to make mistakes, to be misinformed, to have different values than I do, and may other things – so if I want to make a fully informed choice, a choice that is in the best interests of myself and my family, I had better do my own research, hear the opinions of many experts, read the literature – both for and against – and come to my own decision. That is what “pro-choicers” when it comes to vaccines do – they teach their children to do their own research because people are just people, whether they are a doctor or a used car salesman.

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  122. Rachel

    February 12, 2015 at 11:22 pm

    WOW WOW WOW!!!!!!! Mindblown! Outstanding article!!!!!!!!!!… I cannot begin to express my gratitude for you sharing this. Nailed it!!!!!

    reply to this comment
    • Francine

      February 13, 2015 at 3:46 am

      Took the words right out of my mouth!!!

      reply to this comment
  123. Heather

    February 12, 2015 at 10:39 pm

    I don’t know if this has been discussed in the comments or not, I honestly don’t have time at the moment to read through all of them. But you mentioned the boy who contracted wild measles and it sent his cancer into temporary remission. I read about that a while back and did a bit of research. I do think that there is something there that warrants further study. This isn’t the first time a virus has been shown to effectively attack cancer. The herpes virus is particularly effective against brain cancer. However, I think purposefully exposing a cancer patient to a wild strain of any virus is terribly irresponsible. We simply don’t know enough about viruses or cancer. What causes cancer? We have lots of theories, but we don’t know for certain. Are viruses the elusive off switch for cancer or in some cases, such as cervical cancer, the cause? We don’t know, we’re just scratching the surface. And what about the little boy in Africa? We know his cancer came back 18 months later? Was it milder than before and easily controlled with other methods or did it come back worse? What happened to him in the long run? Unless I missed something, we don’t know. But, imagine having a child with cancer, who then contracts measles, and the virus does nothing to help.

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    • Megan Heimer

      February 13, 2015 at 2:52 am

      Heather, it is cited satire. But considering chemotherapy has a 2.6% rate, if my child were dying I would do whatever I could to save them. I think wild measles and cancer should be studied further but our government won’t sink money into something that pharma can’t profit from. You can’t patent a naturally occurring substance, which is why they’re funding the measles cancer vaccine instead.

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  124. Glenno

    February 12, 2015 at 10:07 pm

    Respectfully, and without any emotional judgment: this piece unfortunately relies upon a number of easily verifiable factual errors and unwarranted claims. Perhaps the most obvious is this one: “140 children have died from the MMR vaccine since 2000 per the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System” (VAERS).

    Since you link directly to the VAERS website, surely you know your claim is unfounded, and you can understand why it casts your entire letter as unreliable.

    As you know, VAERS does *not* provide evidence of causal links between vaccines and adverse effects. It’s merely a resource that passively accepts any and all voluntary reports of symptoms or illnesses claimed to have occurred some time after vaccination. This includes purely coincidental events and even erroneous reports.

    This is very clearly explained on the VAERS website – which even insists that you verify you’ve read and understood its explanation and disclaimer before you can search its database (see link below).

    So one actually has to be willfully ignorant in order to reference VAERS without understanding it does not tell us that children died of the MMR vaccine. Surely we agree it’s irresponsible to misrepresent facts when making claims about health decisions that affect others.

    https://vaers.hhs.gov/data/index

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    • Megan Heimer

      February 13, 2015 at 5:44 am

      Glenno, I link to VAERS because I talked about it in my post. I agree that it has it’s limitations. What’s irresponsible is the fact that THIS is the only system our government has set in place to monitor adverse reactions and that those who support vaccines use VAERS to make claims that adverse events are RARE* when it suits them.

      I can see why the govt. wouldn’t want to implement a proper reporting system though, more adverse events would be reported, they would be causally connected to the vaccine, and more parents would question. I can also see why they would want the court records sealed for children who receive compensation for their vaccine injuries. I think I will send them a memo and I’ll use your reasoning to support my argument that VAERS needs to go and something proper needs to be put in place. It’s the least they can do.

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      • Glenno

        February 18, 2015 at 1:20 am

        Megan, thank you very much for your reply, but you didn’t actually address my point, which was that you made a claim of fact that is not indeed factual. Namely, that “140 children have died from the MMR vaccine since 2000.” There is no compelling evidence that they died from the MMR vaccine.

        The point here is not about VAERS’ limitations, as it does exactly what it’s meant to do. The point is specifically about your deceptive claim, which your readers may believe. Why would you want to give people false impressions and spread misinformation — especially when that’s just what you’re accusing others of doing? It suggests you’re not interested in being a reliable, trustworthy source of information yourself. Assuming (as I do) that’s not the impression you wish to give at all, simply revise your original piece to be clear and accurate. Say, “140 deaths have been reported to VAERS as having followed the MMR vaccine since 2000, though a causal link has not been demonstrated or established.” If that doesn’t make your point effectively, and you need to resort to deception, it’s time to consider the point probably isn’t supported., and just rethink it.

        I’m sorry that my earlier reasoning won’t be of any use to you in your memo, since my reasoning is of course already right there on the VAERS website itself. They’re familiar with it. What it sounds like you want is not another reporting system, since anyone and everyone can already add reports to VAERS now. What I gather you want is just more and broader objective studies, trials and systematic reviews. Which is of course always good. I doubt we’ll find what you believe we’ll find, based on all we know thus far. But the more scientific investigation, always the better.

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  125. J.

    February 12, 2015 at 9:43 pm

    I am so happy, thankful, really, you write on these topics. Keep it up!

    J.

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  126. Mike

    February 12, 2015 at 9:39 pm

    I have a hard time coming to terms with my two instincts. First, that people shouldn’t be forcefully vaccinated. But second, that vaccines should be mandatory. I won’t debate the research with you because there would be no point in it for either of us. But I will say that I think kids (or adults) who aren’t vaccinated should be labelled somehow. It would be relatively easy to create a separate but equal school system where parents who choose not to have vaccinations could send their kids, and private businesses such as Disneyland could enforce a mandatory vaccination policy (exceptions granted according to the ADA of course), but just out and about mingling in society poses challenges. If I don’t want my kids exposed to unvaccinated kids, how am I supposed to protect them in the world? At a sporting event? At the park? Labelling unvaccinated kids would immediately let me know whom I should keep my kids from befriending, or even casually standing near. This isn’t an ideal solution for anyone, I admit, but it is a compromise I think everyone can live with. Please consider joining my Facebook group Antivaxxers: Label Your Children. I have free labels you can download and use. Thank you.
    Michael

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    • Danchi

      February 13, 2015 at 3:34 am

      But I will say that I think kids (or adults) who aren’t vaccinated should be labelled somehow.
      Antivaxxers: Label Your Children. I have free labels you can download and use. Thank you.

      You should wear a label, a large button and a bumper sticker that designates you as:
      Pro child killer,full of live virus—Contagious (in neon red)
      I won’t give you a link to download the label, button and bumper sticker but you have your own software:)

      reply to this comment
      • Anon

        February 15, 2015 at 7:04 am

        LOL! A child that is unvaccinated is full of virus?!!! Haha! You made my day. You realize what a vaccine is full of, besides chemicals, is a virus? Your body will not produce antibodies without coming into contact with the antigen. And usually the higher the antibody count, the higher the viral load. Your body doesn’t produce antibodies for fun, but they are used to clear your body of an infection. So by your logic, an unvaccinated child, who may or may not have come into contact with the virus, is dirty and contagious? What kind of logic is that? It’s like thinking that the more pus in a wound is the sign of a cleared infection. Antibodies, which are what the vaccine theory is based on, does not equal an immunity. You can still catch the disease and have antibodies to it.

        Also, by the assumption that the unvaccinated are full of viruses is like believing that the unvaccinated are ‘IMMUNE’ to the disease themselves. They have no signs, symptoms and did not die from virus they are supposedly carrying. Isn’t that the objective of the vaccine to convey such an immunity? So forget the virus itself, a human is only a threat if they haven’t produced antibodies as a sign of a recent infection. With the fear and hysteria, soon babies and immunocomprimised could be treated as a threat to society too, regardless of the reason they are unable to be vaccinated. I mean, for the greater good, includes sacrificing and discriminating against ANYONE that poses or is perceived to pose a threat to the ‘greater good’. Media propaganda comes to Zero Tolerance: No antibodies, no ‘immunity’, no rights.

        Remember the holocaust, Spanish Inquisition and many witch hunts were started through fear, ignorance and the ‘greater good’ belief that an individual has no rights over the group. Vaccines are artificial means to modify our bodies and we should have a right to say no without discrimination. Without this right, the transhumanism movement (with the exponentially growing technology in bioengineering, genetics, nanotechnology, etc) could lead unaltered humans becoming second class or worse.

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    • chemfreemom

      February 13, 2015 at 7:43 am

      Then, Michael, how about your kids have to wear a label when they’ve received a vaccine in the last few weeks so I make sure my son doesn’t get a disease from your son shedding. And, more than half the population would have to wear labels since people used to only get vaccines as kids and now they know they wear off in a few years. Your vaccinated child is actually in the minority if you consider the WHOLE population, and not just kids. And since he’s in the minority, it would be better if he wore the sign….Besides, if he’s gotten all of his vaccinations, he should be safe, right?

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    • Lily

      February 13, 2015 at 7:47 am

      Michael,

      Should we also make labels for kids who have recently been injected with live virus vaccines that can shed? Shall we also make labels for every adult who hasn’t had boosters of their childhood vaccines? Should we label tourists from other countries once they step off the plane? That’s a lot of freakin’ labels.

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    • christina

      February 13, 2015 at 4:22 pm

      to simply answer your question….then don’t have your children go to places where “the public” would be. the only power you have is to *remove yourself* from the situation. you can’t make anyone do anything, but you have control over your actions. vaccines are prompted towards parents via fear. “what if” was all over your comment. take away what if and implement, how can *i* control the situation. you don’t want to see an animal slaughtered, walk away. you don’t want to see someone who is exposed, walk away. you have the power. …..you are letting the vaccine company take away your power via fear. ppl don’t pursue their dreams over fear. fear and death are big scares for many individuals!! it can make you do a lot!

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    • RG

      February 13, 2015 at 5:51 pm

      I was vaccinated as a child, but now as an adult at age 48, I am clueless as to my current levels of immunity. Labeling me as vaccinated is not helpful if vaccines’ effectiveness wears off. I have not had measles, but I may be susceptible. So labeling me as vaccinated would be useless. Vaccinated people can still manifest the disease. Vaccines are no guarantee that one won’t contract the disease for which one was vaccinated. In fact, I believe they contribute to chronic disease.

      However, those who have developed true immunity by actually having had and recovered from measles are the safest. It is highly unlikely if not impossible to contract measles from them. Perhaps these people should be labeled as “safe.” Those who are vaccinated are not.

      Because widespread vaccination have contributed to chronic disease and immune problems, now as a population we are weakened and have more risk from acute diseases like measles. It is a vicious cycle. But piling on more vaccines will just make us all sicker.

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    • Lisa

      February 13, 2015 at 8:33 pm

      I appreciate that you stated you don’t think people should be forcefully vaccinated. However, the labeling idea is ridiculous. Vaccinated children shed vaccine for up to approximately a month every time they get vaccinated. So we have known carriers, shedding vaccine on a very regular basis, yet you think the unvaccinated are the ones who should be labelled and wear some version of the “star of David” armband? All that really is, is an attempt to socially stigmatize those who disagree with your position on vaccination, and coerce them into submission.

      This argument is really about freedom. There is no liberty if you can be forced or coerced into submitting to unwanted medical treatment – whether it’s effective or not. There is no liberty if people can be forced to wear labels for exercising their rights. The argument for loss of liberty is always “for the good of the children.” The fear mongering that is the entire foundation for forcing, or coercing, people to be vaccinated is entirely unjustified.

      The idea that one person is responsible for assuring that their choices don’t negatively affect anyone else is ridiculous also. There will always be someone who is allergic, or sensitive, to something the majority are not. Should those who eat peanuts or peanut butter – or any kind of nut – also be forced to wear visible labels so those with peanut allergies are “safer.” Or should we, maybe, teach our children with allergies how to protect themselves, watch out for their own needs, and how to react if they are exposed? Which would truly make them safer? Should those who have pets be forced to wear some label so those with animal allergies can know who to stay away from? My son is deathly allergic, and we carry epi-pens at all times, should we force everyone else to accommodate his issues, or teach him to watch out for himself and to know what to do in the event of exposure? Should we force people to wear face masks – all people – to reduce potential exposure? Vaccinated or not? After all, it might make people safer. – and, on a side note, the Asian fashion market has made them very fashionable. Why don’t we just quarantine most people to stop cross-contamination? With internet and technology that is available now, children could stay home and do school on line. That way they wouldn’t be exposed to potential viruses or bacterias – especially from those who have been vaccinated and are known – known, not potentially, but KNOWN – to be shedding viruses.

      People who have been vaccinated aren’t unable to carry the virus on their person, they just are (supposedly) not susceptible to developing symptoms. People immune – even people who have acquired natural life long immunity – can still carry the virus on their person. Even if vaccines work as manufacturers say, the virus doesn’t die on contact with vaccinated person, it doesn’t work that way, so they can still carry the virus from one person to another, from a contaminated surface to another person, can carry shed virus on their person, etc. Besides, it always comes back to the fact that if the vaccine really works, and your child is vaccinated, you should have no fear of those who aren’t.

      Immune compromised people need to be careful, but not vaccinated people. Immune compromised need to be just as careful of those shedding virus from vaccination, of those who might have the common cold, of pretty much everything. The rest of the population can’t be isolated, quarantined, or medically violated because some people have a compromised immune system. My heart goes out to people with compromised immune systems – I have had more than a few family members and friends with compromised immune systems. It’s not easy for them, or the rest of the family, but they don’t expect – and shouldn’t – everyone else to stay home, or to receive medical treatment they don’t need, just so they can go to the mall or restaurant without potentially being exposed. They modify their own life to accommodate their own circumstances and needs. The rest of us do our best to avoid contact when we are sick. We ask about recent blood work to know if their levels are ok right now before hugging. We’ve learned to “air hug” and blow kisses from a distance to deal with what’s going on. Even the youngest grandchild knows to only air hug or blow kisses unless they’ve been given permission to do otherwise – and they know why.

      It is about freedom, but is also a matter of personal responsibility. Being responsible for your own person, for your own medical needs, etc. Granted, we should be calling for people to be considerate of other people’s needs, to be aware of needs and accommodate where possible, but we should never give up freedoms, or the right, to make our own medical choices. . . . . Especially when we know that one of the things that medicine is really good at, is figuring out that they were wrong . . . . eventually anyway.

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    • Tia Leschke

      February 14, 2015 at 1:21 am

      Gee, maybe we could make them all wear yellow stars. Sigh.
      Are your children vaccinated, Michael? If they are, what are you concerned about? That is, if the vaccines actually work.

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    • Jeanmarie

      February 15, 2015 at 2:44 am

      Michael, it’s almost as though you didn’t read the post at all and merely came on this site to comment. Read it again, slowly, and maybe the concepts will sink in. People with sick children (fevers, sniffles, coughs, etc etc) should NOT be taking them to Disneyland, to school or anywhere else. They should be at home drinking bone broth and sipping fermented cod liver oil, for example. Two, vaccinated people can shed virus if they’ve been vaccinated with live vaccines. Should we bar them, too? Segregate them from the rest of the crowd?
      Third, if one has an immuno-compromised child, perhaps they’re the ones that should stay away from the unwashed masses? That seems an obvious solution.
      Fourth, if people were catching measles during childhood like they used to (like I did), and getting lifelong immunity and then passing that on to their babies, which would protect them until school age when they’d catch a mild case of measles that would protect them for life, etc etc., none of this would be an issue.
      Fifth, Malnourished children, like so many sugarholic, good fat-deprived American children are, are going to be more susceptible to *everything* that comes along. If I were a parent, I’d prioritize good nutrition for my children above *anything* else.

      Thanks to the author for this post!

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      • Megan Heimer

        February 15, 2015 at 2:44 am

        Standing ovation Jeanmarie. Thanks for the comment. 🙂

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  127. Karen

    February 12, 2015 at 7:29 pm

    I find it strange that my comment isn’t still pending and is not being published.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 12, 2015 at 8:25 pm

      I have no other comments pending under your name. Feel free to re-submit.

      reply to this comment
  128. Jen

    February 12, 2015 at 7:12 pm

    Thanks again for a wonderful article! Wow -measles to cure cancer….that is truly amazing!

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  129. April

    February 12, 2015 at 5:43 pm

    Personally, I feel like this author is cherry picking her data to support her biased opinion and not thinking critically to write her response. Acting purely on emotional opinion rather then being objective to see both sides of the story.

    Just because you find an article that implies that there is a correlation between increased rates of autism, or deaths due to vaccines etc does not mean that the vaccines were an actual cause. Unless we place every child or adult in a sterile bubble while we vaccinate them to avoid other environmental factors or ensuring there are no other underlying physiological or psychological conditions before vaccinating we can never fully say that this vaccines cause anything.

    Just some critiques on your seven points and how invalid they are:

    1. Although the ideas you presented I totally agree with as I think all medications or vaccines should go through battery of tests and studies. But to get a pass from an ethics board would be hard to obtain especially for placebo based studies.

    2. The study you posted in support was published in 1933, not anywhere near enough to be considered relevant or accurate.

    3. The article in question is biased and not a credible source as it comes from the doctors OWN webpage.

    4. This is a podcast/blog website that is filled purely of biased and subjective opinions.

    5. You clearly didn’t thoroughly read what the WHO had to say in regards to measles. Here is a direct quote from the TREATMENT SECTION “All children in developing countries diagnosed with measles should receive two doses of vitamin A supplements, given 24 hours apart. This treatment restores low vitamin A levels during measles that occur even in well-nourished children and can help prevent eye damage and blindness. Vitamin A supplements have been shown to reduce the number of deaths from measles by 50%”. This means that all the children had the measles not were at risk for it or even the severity of it. The WHO under the PREVENTION section highly recommends routinely vaccinating your children to gain immunity from measles.

    6. Measles is a monster and it has one of the highest rates of transmission out of all the preventable diseases and even some of the non preventable communicable diseases. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1408696

    7. This is why parents NEED TO ASK QUESTIONS AND NOT JUST ASSUME THINGS.

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    • Megan Heimer

      February 12, 2015 at 6:25 pm

      April,

      I have nothing to gain by holding this viewpoint. I do not make money. I do not have sponsors. I have no ads on this page. There is no emotional story written in this post. There is my opinion supported by credible citation. I think it’s important that we have an alternate viewpoint, which is why I’ve provided it.

      1. What’s unethical is to subject a child to a vaccine that has not first been proven safe or effective. There are many other type of studies that could be done and all would be a step up.
      2. This is THE PAPER on HERD IMMUNITY upon which vaccine-induced immunity is founded upon. It’s kind of important. You should read it.
      3. What? How about READING the paper before you simply discount it. Would the mainstream media promoting it make it more credible? It’s posted on other websites – does linking to one of them make if more credible?
      4. What?
      5. I didn’t say the WHO didn’t recommend vaccinations. Even if every child dropped dead after an injection the WHO (and the CDC) would still recommend vaccinations. I said Vitamin A reduces measles deaths by 50%.
      6. No it isn’t unless you look at statistics from a third-world country where every disease is potentially a “monster.” We’re told to ask our grandparents about polio. I think we should ask them about measles too.
      7. I agree. Parents should ask questions.

      I think you should actually read the studies and citations instead of making every excuse in the world not to.

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      • April

        February 12, 2015 at 9:05 pm

        I did read them (aside from the 1933 on which would not open for me).

        No ethics board that I know would subject any child to an actual virus or any other drug that can kill them, regardless if it is the measles or not. There are many worse implications that could be attained from other drugs because they were never tested properly (ie Thalidomide or Cytotek in pregnant women) so why focus on just vaccinations. Unfortunately measles is human specific so I believe they couldn’t use animal trials before hand.

        I could careless if the mainstream media posted them but any student in post-secondary education who has taken a Communications course knows how to pick out a biased paper when they see it. The article in question is from your third point. It is on the Dr. Tetyana Obukhanych own website which I assume she created, it is not from a credible journal in the field and only focuses on how herd immunity and vaccines essentially have a negative correlation, it shows none of the other side of the argument for that matter.

        Did you even read the article I posted?

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        • Danchi

          February 13, 2015 at 4:55 am

          You don’t consider Dr. Tetyana Obukhanych creditable because she has a website?

          Obukhanych is a Cornell, Harvard, and Stanford vetted immunologist. You think a website invalidates her?

          -Harvard Medical School’s Dr. Marcia Angell is the author of The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It. But more to the point, she’s also the former Editor-in-Chief at the New England Journal of Medicine, arguably one of the most respected medical journals on earth. But after reading her article in the New York Review of Books called Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption, one wonders if any medical journal on earth is worth anybody’s respect anymore.

          “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.”

          This is better:
          Ben Goldacre states in his book “Bad Pharma”
          How Drug companies Misled Doctors and harm Patients:

          He writes in the introduction that the book aims to defend the following paragraph:
          Medicine is Broken. Drugs are tested by the people who manufacture them, in poorly designed trials, on hopelessly small numbers of weird, unrepresentative patients, and analyzed using techniques which are flawed by design, in such a way that they exaggerate the benefits of treatments. Unsurprisingly, these trials tend to produce results that favour the manufacturer. When trials throw up results that companies don’t like, they are perfectly entitled to hide them from doctors and patients, so we only ever see a distorted picture of any drug’s true effects. Regulators see most of the trial data, but only from early on in a drug’s life, and even then they don’t give this data to doctors or patients, or even to other parts of government. This distorted evidence is then communicated and applied in a distorted fashion. In their forty years of practice after leaving medical school, doctors hear about what works through ad hoc oral traditions, from sales reps, colleagues or journals. But those colleagues can be in the pay of drug companies – often undisclosed – and the journals are too. And so are the patient groups. And finally, academic papers, which everyone thinks of as objective, are often covertly planned and written by people who work directly for the companies, without disclosure. Sometimes whole academic journals are even owned outright by one drug company. Aside from all this, for several of the most important and enduring problems in medicine, we have no idea what the best treatment is, because it’s not in anyone’s financial interest to conduct any trials at all. These are ongoing problems, and although people have claimed to fix many of them, for the most part they have failed; so all these problems persist, but worse than ever, because now people can pretend that everything is fine after all.

          This is from a pharmaceutical industry insider and shrill.

          Most pharmaceutical companies own their own Journals. Why risk a editor rejecting your study because it’s poorly done when you can buy your won journals and put whatever you want in it.

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          • chemfreemom

            February 13, 2015 at 8:01 am

            It’s not surprising. I just read that almost a quarter of a million people per year die in a hospital, inpatient and outpatient, due to errors with drugs. And, I read another great paper based on the work of Thomas Merton, about how scientific revolutions occur over time, and in it he made a great argument for why science is not really all that objective. A relatively small group of scientists make decisions on what will be taught in Universities, who will get money for research, what topics will be researched and what will be printed in medical and scientific journals. If you’re a scientist who happens to come from a different school of thought than that small group who makes all these decisions, your viewpoint will never even be looked at. It must be very comforting for these people who believe whole-heartedly in what the government and doctors and scientists say. You don’t really have to think for yourself then or worry about researching. I guess that’s what they mean by ignorance is bliss….

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    • shona

      February 13, 2015 at 12:48 am

      Thanks April.

      reply to this comment
    • Danchi

      February 13, 2015 at 2:45 am

      Measles is not a MONSTER and didn’t become a MONSTER until the pharmaceutical company found out how much money there is to make.

      In 1967 (several years after the introduction of the first measles vaccine), D.J Spencer co-authored a paper that stated the following:

      “For centuries the measles virus has maintained a remarkably stable ecological relationship with man. The clinical disease is a characteristic syndrome of notable constancy and only moderate severity. Complications are infrequent, and, with adequate medical care, fatality is rare. Susceptibility to the disease after the waning of maternal immunity is universal; immunity following recovery is solid and lifelong in duration.”

      Why is that particularly noteworthy?

      Dr David J Spencer was the longest serving director of CDC, a highly qualified and respected professional. So much so the CDC now have a museum dedicated to him.

      Let’s put things into perspective:
      Here are extracts of how measles was described in 1959 in the British Medical Journal showing a very, very different picture compared to the ones we are being given at the moment. The BMJ articles are unfortunately not on open access so you can get access if you have a subscription which allows BMJ online access or you can visit and ask at your local hospital’s library :

      Measles Epidemic: ANNOTATIONS
      Measles epidemic [page 354] Br Med J 1959;1:351.2 (Published 07 February 1959)

      In the first three weeks of this year about 41,000 cases of measles were recorded in England and Wales. This is well above the corresponding figures of the last two years – namely, about 9,000 in 1958 and 28,000 in 1957 – though it is below the highest levels reached in the last nine years. To give some idea of the main features of the disease as it appears today and of how it is best treated, we invited some general practitioners to write short reports on the cases they have seen in their practices recently.

      These appear at p.380 (extracts from this page follow this article). It is interesting to note, first, that the distribution of the disease is rather patchy at present. It has not yet reached the areas where two of these doctors practise (in South Scotland and Cornwall), and other areas are known to be free of the disease so far. On the other hand, in Kent it is reported to have arrived in time to put the children to bed over Christmas. These writers agree that measles is nowadays normally a mild infection, and they rarely have occasion to give prophylactic gamma globulin. As to the treatment of the disease and its complications, the emphasis naturally varies from one practice to another. Amount of bed-rest, when to administer a sulphonamide or antibiotic, the use of analgesics and linctuses – all these may still be debatable problems in the treatment of what is said to be the commonest disease in the world. But there is probably much in the opinion which one of the writers expresses: “It is the frequent visiting by the interested clinician and not the therapy which produces the good results.”
      _*_*_*_*_*_*
      VITAL STATISTICS
      MEASLES REPORTS FROM GENERAL PRACTITIONERS Br Med J 1959;1:380 (Published 07 February 1959)
      EXTRACTS [pages 380-381]

      We are much indebted to the general practitioners whose names appear below for the following notes on the present outbreak of measles.
      Dr G. I. WATSON (Peaslake, Surrey) writes:

      Measles was introduced just before Christmas by a child from Petworth …….

      Treatment of Attack. – No drugs are given for either the fever or the cough; if pressed, I dispense mist. salin. B.N.F. as a placebo. Glutethimide 125 mg. may be given in the afternoon if the child is restless when the rash develops; 250 mg. in single or divided doses at bedtime ensures a good night’s sleep in spite of coughing. I encourage a warm humid atmosphere in the room by various methods: some electric fires and most electric toasters allow an open pan of water to rest on top; an electric kettle blows off too much steam to be kept on for more than short periods. Parents, conscious of the need to darken the room and to forbid reading, may carry this to an unnecessary extreme, starting even before the rash appears. To save a mother some demands, the wireless is a boon to children in darkened rooms. They are allowed up when the rash fades from the abdomen-usually the fourth or fifth day-and may go outside on the next fine day. Apart from fruit to eat, solid food is avoided on the day the rash is appearing; fruit drinks or soups are all they appear to want.

      Complications. – So far few complications have arisen. Four cases of otitis media occurred in the first 25 children, but only one had pain. No case of pneumonia has occurred, but one child had grossly abnormal signs in the chest for a few days after the fever subsided, uninfluenced by oral penicillin. One girl had a tear-duct infection and another an undue blepharitis. Of three adult males with the disease, two have been more severely affected than any of the children.

      Dr. R. E. HOPE SIMPSON (Cirencester, Glos) writes:
      We make no attempt to prevent the spread of measles, and would only use gamma globulin to mitigate the severity of the disease in the case of the exposure of a susceptible adult or child who is already severely debilitated. Bed rest, for seven davs for moderate and severe cases and of five to six days in mild cases, seems to cut down the incidence of such complications as secondary bacterial otitis media and bronchopneumonia. We have not been impressed by the prophylactic or therapeutic use of antibiotics and sulphonamides in the first week of the disease. As soon as the patient is out of bed we allow him out of doors almost regardless of the weather. Otitis Media and Bronchopneumonia.-These conditions often appear so early, sometimes even before the rash, that in such cases one can only conclude that the responsible agent is the virus itself. Despite their initial alarming severity, they tend to resolve spontaneously, and treatment apart from first principles seems useless. When, on the other hand, otitis media or bronchopneumonia comes on after the subsidence of the initial symptoms of measles, it is probably due to a secondary bacterial invader, and we find antibiotics or sulphonamides useful…..

      MILD AILMENT
      Dr. JOHN FRY (Beckenham, Kent) writes:
      The expected biennial epidemic of measles appeared in this region in early December, 1958, just in time to put many youngsters to bed over Christmas. To date there have been close on 150 cases in the practice, and the numbers are now steadily decreasing. Like previous epidemics, the primary cases have been chiefly in the 5- and 6-year-olds, with secondary cases in their younger siblings. No special features have been noted in this relatively mild epidemic. It has been mild because complications have occurred in only four children. One little girl aged 2 suffered from a lobular pneumonia, and three others developed acute otitis media following their measles. In the majority of children the whole episode has been well and truly over in a week, from the prodromal phase to the disappearance of the rash, and many mothers have remarked ”how much good the attack has done their children,” as they seem so much better after the measles.

      A family doctor’s approach to the management of measles is essentially a personal and individual matter, based on the personal experiences of the doctor and the individual character and background of the child and the family. In this practice measles is considered as a relatively mild and inevitable childhood ailment that is best encountered any time from 3 to 7 years of age. Over the past 10 years there have been few serious complications at any age, and all children have made complete recoveries. As a result of this reasoning no special attempts have been made at prevention even in young infants in whom the disease has not been found to be especially serious.

      You did read the number of cases——41,000 cases in THREE (3) WEEKS.
      Do the doctors reporting sound sound like they are concerned? Are they freaking out? Do they mention the populace running around in fear porn madness saying mandatory vaccines, don’t let kids go to school if they aren’t vaccinated, are the doctors threatening anyone? NO! None of this nonsense is going on because one doctor titled his report-MILD AILMENT. Because it is. In a immunocompromised person it could be problematic but otherwise inconvenient but not deadly.

      More perspective:
      There have been 9 deaths from Measles in the US since the year 2000-CDC National Vital Statics Reports. In that time frame there have been over 108 deaths from the MMR -The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) http://www.medalerts.org/vaersdb/index.php. Autism rate is 1 in 28.
      95% of all children in the US have had all the required MMR’s and booster (CDC Telebriefing Sept. 2013) US children rank 2nd in vaccination rate in the world. California outbreak of 2014-63% of the people who developed measles are ADULTS and all have not been lab confirmed.Conflicting reports state the viral strain detected is a vaccine strain. Which means-people who have recently been vaccinated are contagious and are shedding the virus through coughing, spit, sweat, sneezing, poop & urine. This can go on for 28 days. Viral vaccine shedding peaks around day 4-5 but measles virus has been detected in urine the day after vaccination.

      I will give you a logical reason for the current freakout other than the obvious.

      WHO vaccine-preventable diseases: monitoring system. 2014 global summary. Incidence time series for United States of America (the) (USA) Last updated 05-Dec-2014 ( Data received as of 1-Dec-2014)
      Next overall update June 2015: http://apps.who.int/immunization_monitoring/globalsummary/incidences?c=USA. chart won’t post so I’ll just give the numbers.

      2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2000 1990 1980
      Measles 187 55 222 63 71 85 27’786 13’506
      Pertussis 28’532 47’693 18’610 27’410 0 7’867 4’570 1’730

      Given that there have been 9 measles death since the year 2000 and in comparison to the GENUINE measles outbreak in England in 1959 of of 41,000, this pants on fire fake juiced up fear mongering measles campaign led by the government owned MSM seems–RIDICULOUS!!! Why not pertussis????
      Could it be that MERCK doesn’t make a Dtap or Pertussis Vaccine? But they do hold a monopoly on the MMR-especially the mumps. Might it be that a judge has not dismissed the lawsuit against Merck for faking the efficiency study on the Mumps portion of the MMR?
      Judge: Lawsuit Against Merck’s MMR Vaccine Fraud to Continue:
      http://healthimpactnews.com/2014/judge-lawsuit-against-mercks-mmr-vaccine-fraud-to-continue/
      Class Says Merck Lied About Mumps Vaccine: http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/06/27/47851.htm
      -Antitrust, FCA Claims On Merck Mumps Vaccine To Advance: http://www.law360.com/classaction/articles/574389
      -Memorandum issued by Judge explaining his ruling. http://www.rescuepost.com/files/59-opinion.pdf. Document 59 Filed 09/04/14.

      Notice the date? It would take about 3 months to put together a False Flag campaign to terrorize and manipulate the public into increasing Merck’s financial bottom line. Merck knows they cannot keep the lid on this indefinitely though they have done a good job since the suit was filed and the repercussions is the public will be more aggressive in questioning the efficiency and validity of the vaccine program. However this is just my opinion.

      In a healthy person Measles is not a monster. Than again, because 1 child in 6 is chronically ill since the massive vaccination program began in the US-that might be cause for concern although the MMR vial package insert says not to give to children that are ill. Nah, doctors don’t even read the package inserts so, that’s where the danger for children comes in.

      reply to this comment
    • Danchi

      February 13, 2015 at 4:14 am

      Just because you find an article that implies that there is a correlation between increased rates of autism, or deaths due to vaccines etc does not mean that the vaccines were an actual cause.

      -Julie Gerberding Admits on CNN that Vaccines can Trigger Autism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh-nkD5LSIg
      Transcripts of meeting can be found: Scientific Review of Vaccine Safety Datalink Information June 7-8, 2000 Simpsonwood Retreat Center Norcross, Georgia. http://www.thinktwice.com/simpwood.pdf
      22 Medical Studies That Show Vaccines Can Cause Autism: activistpost.com/2013/09/22-medical-studies-that-show-vaccines.html
      List of peer reviewed vaccine research https://therefurbishedrogue.wordpress.com/2013/05/03/my-list-of-peer-reviewed-vaccine-research/
      Frank Engley, PhD Interview A Pioneer in the research of Thimerosal Efficacy and Toxicity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR1sY5jd8jI
      Kern, J.K.; Haley, B.E.; Geier, D.A.; Sykes, L.K.; King, P.G.; Geier, M.R. Thimerosal Exposure and the Role of Sulfation Chemistry and Thiol Availability in Autism. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2013, 10, 3771-3800.
      B-Lymphocytes from a Population of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Their Unaffected Siblings Exhibit Hypersensitivity to Thimerosal: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3697751/

      “But to get a pass from an ethics board would be hard to obtain especially for placebo based studies.”

      That is a get out of jail free pass for the pharmaceutical industry. They are by law required to do “Gold Standard” studies on all test although they don’t. The Gold Stand of a scientific experiment is “A double blind placebo based controlled study”. There re NONE OF ANY CHILDHOOD VACCINE.

      “The study you posted in support was published in 1933, not anywhere near enough to be considered relevant or accurate.”

      You have got to be joking. THIS STUDY IS THE FOUNDATION Of MASS VACCINATION. You didn’t even take the time to do a pubmed search. Nothing, nad-zip research. This is the observation by A.W. Hedrich, that the medical profession has based it faith on for decades-HERD IMMUNITY. LOL. This is a myth. Doesn’t exist at all because it is not a immunologic idea, but rather an epidemiologic construct, which theoretically predicts successful disease control when a certain pre-calculated percentage of people in the population are immune from disease. Caveat: It is based on NATURAL DERIVED IMMUNITY-Vaccines were not part of the observation.

      “3.The article in question is biased and not a credible source as it comes from the doctors OWN webpage. 4. This is a podcast/blog website that is filled purely of biased and subjective opinions.”

      Both complaints are vague and non-descriptive. Not meant to elicit any cogent response rather stated to confuse others and distract from the article that’s posed. On future posting please be specific.

      “You clearly didn’t thoroughly read what the WHO had to say in regards to measles.”

      Intelligent well informed people do not listen to the WHO. The WHO, CDC, FDA, have employees who have engaged in false flag events that have results in them benefiting financially as a result of their fear mongering. Prime example is the Swine Flu of 2009.

      “A recent report revealed that five of the fifteen members on the panel had received some type of financial support from pharmaceutical companies either during or prior to the pandemic.

      The panel was composed of members from almost every continent, and many were scientists and researchers. An entire list of panel members can be viewed here: http://www.who.int/ihr/emerg_comm_members_2009/en/

      Some experts expressed concern that panel member connections to the drug industry played a role in helping them to secure large orders for vaccines around the world, especially since these members had received funding from drug companies specifically for pandemic flu research.

      Nancy Cox, a panel member from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, admitted to receiving financial support from the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) for flu vaccine research, for instance. And Professor Arnold Monto, another panel member, revealed that he consults with major drug companies like GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Roche, Baxter and Sanofi Pasteur.

      VRM: World Health Organization & Vaccine Manufacturers Implicated In Massive H1N1 Financial Scam Involving Kickbacks & Cover-ups: http://vaccineresistancemovement.org/?p=4610

      “This is why parents NEED TO ASK QUESTIONS AND NOT JUST ASSUME THINGS.”

      It is those very questions that people are asking but with comments like yours which seems to be designed to confuse, it doesn’t seem like you want the questions answered.

      reply to this comment
      • Rachel

        February 17, 2015 at 9:51 pm

        Danchi, I have read through almost all of your replies and comments on this post and I’m surprised that no one has said this before me, but your very well spoken and researched opinion is admirable. You state facts and list references, and you seem to be very knowledgeable on this subject. It is amazing to me how vaccine pushers can be so condescending and demoralizing and their tactics are no different than that of a childish bully. I agree with this article wholeheartedly and I am so glad more and more people are opening their eyes to the proof of immunization dangers. As a mother of 4 completely healthy unvacccinated children, who has to defend her choice to every tom, dick, and moron who tries to tell me what I need to do with my children, it’s helpful to find so much factual information in one place. So thank you

        reply to this comment
        • Megan Heimer

          February 17, 2015 at 10:28 pm

          I love Danchi.

          reply to this comment
  130. Travis

    February 12, 2015 at 5:12 pm

    Look, the sources you listed appear unreliable, don’t contain published data (as in data points), and appear to make unverifiable claims.

    Barring side effects (<1%), the vaccine is safe. It's in the same range or lower than common drugs such as aspirin and penicillin (let alone that other antibiotics tend to have higher incidence of side effects, but are necessary and useful).

    Even if you do not trust the studies available, there are literally hundreds of millions of existing data points currently available, given that the vaccine was widely available in 1971 (and given that each generation has received it).

    Thus, if it was dangerous, we'd have lots and lots of data to support it, and the government would not be able to hide such information due to its prevalence.

    Given this, I struggle to understand the perspective of vaccines being dangerous. If you rely on conspiracy theory, you should at least understand why others are not as persuaded, as it appears that the argument hinges greatly on the principle of "lack of evidence is all the evidence I need."

    Likewise, for those that are unvaccinated due to age or condition, they are the MOST in danger (infants younger than 1, or the immuno-suppressed and -comprised), thus ANY additional infection poses greater-than-normal risks compared to the general population, both in terms of incidence of infection, but more importantly, increased risks of complication, morbidity, and death.

    If this were a new vaccine, I could understand the hesitance, but given the MMR's long history, I, and many like me (particularly the scientific community) fail to understand the reluctance to vaccinate.

    reply to this comment
    • Ralph Fucetol JD

      February 12, 2015 at 8:15 pm

      Are you so naive that you believe the “government” — which means specific individuals receiving paychecks from the govt — wouldn’t lie to you?

      Oh please… and when those individuals have conflicts of interest, such as alleged “bio-ethicist” Dr. Offitt, who has made millions on vaccines he voted for as a member of a CDC committee? Do you still believe them?

      http://drrimatruthreports.com/dr-rima-replies-shame-on-you-childrens-hospital/

      Your government lies and millions die, from war, from famine, from crony fake “medicine!”

      YOUR beliefs in the safety and efficacy of politics is your own business, except when you sanction the use of your govt’s force to make us endanger our children based on your crony “science.”

      Then, you become just another thug.

      reply to this comment
      • Travis

        February 12, 2015 at 8:59 pm

        I am not believing the “government” – I’m believing science, scientists, and data.

        As I said, the data exists in the real world – you can empirically go and touch it. It’s very likely you, me, your siblings, almost my entire generation, etc.

        To jump to the conclusion that *I* am going to stick you with a needle is weird and exaggerative. I pointed out that the data exists outside of ‘the government.’ I’m not coming to take you away.

        You keep pointing to some super conspiracy, and you cite to articles/references with no data points. No repeatable, verifiable trials. No peer-reviewed data (peers being scientists). Not all scientists make a lot of money or work for pharmaceutical companies (statistically, most DON’T).

        I don’t know how you expect everyone to swallow the “lack of evidence is the proof” argument. I’ll certainly agree that pharmaceutical companies lie (they actually have an incentive to lie), but to disregard all modern advancements in medicine because of that is equally insane.

        Once medicine is out there, being used, it can be INDEPENDENTLY verified. As with the case of the MMR, the data set is enormous.

        I bet for everyone 1 person you claim a side-effect of a vaccine, I can produce thousands (likely tens of thousands or more) who had no ill effects. That’s the point.

        I’m not making an argument for ALL medicine in ALL cases – I’m arguing that there is not actually any data points indicating a problem with MMR. There just isn’t. This isn’t new – it’s decades old, with hundreds of millions of recipients.

        reply to this comment
        • Karen

          February 12, 2015 at 10:07 pm

          THANK YOU! Well-said. It’s like banging your head on a brick wall. Nobody, no science, no proof can compare with the bizarre and inexplicable draw that Jenny McCarthy has for these laughable theories. Her opinion clearly trumps all scientific evidence. It’s just weird. Really, worryingly WEIRD?!

          reply to this comment
          • chemfreemom

            February 13, 2015 at 8:28 am

            Karen, I love when people laugh off those of us who question vaccine safety and efficacy by mentioning Jenny McCarthy. You see, usually I spend way more time than I can afford to spend looking up links to the many scientific studies and peer-reviewed articles in journals to back up what I’m saying. I always approach the issue from the perspective that the person questioning those of us who are critical thinkers, really just aren’t aware of the facts, but have a genuine interest in learning more. But, at this stage of the game, when someone still has done so little home work that they attribute the whole movement to Jenny McCarthy, I know I’d be wasting my time to post links to studies. Why would you even comment on this topic when you know so little about the body of evidence out there, that you fall back on the popular myth that Jenny
            McCarthy is behind it all. The CDC’s website will tell you that those who are not vaccinating are college-educated. I know a lot of these people, and I never, ever hear Jenny McCarthy’s name from any of them. It’s not that I have anything against Jenny, I don’t know her. But, I only hear that name from people whose whole understanding of this issue comes from soundbites on TV. Instead of wasting time making judgements, it would really behoove you to read some of the study links that have been provided.

            reply to this comment
  131. Don

    February 12, 2015 at 7:19 am

    This post is an example of a complete misunderstanding of how the the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) works. It’s a passive system, any one can report anything they want as an adverse reaction to a vaccine, even if it happened to someone else, and even if they’re not sure if they’ve taken the vaccine in question. No one verifies if any of these reports are true. Therefore, not only does it not establish causality, it doesn’t even establish correlation. Dr. James Laidler reported that the influenza virus turned him into the incredible hulk, just to make a point. By law, all these reported events are required to be printed in the “adverse reactions” section every vaccine info sheet. The adverse reactions section does mention that these are reported “without regard to causality”, but they need to make it clearer that this is just stuff that random people have reported and think *might* be caused by the vaccine. It’s not “proof” of anything. It’s actually the main thing anti-vaxers latch on to now to “prove” vaccines are dangerous. Disgustingly large numbers of personal injury lawyers are now feeding the system with reports, hoping to make money by proving vaccines cause autism – even though we now have some very large and expensive studies from many different countries that prove that it is not the case.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 12, 2015 at 4:04 pm

      Don,
      Exactly, which why I think it is unacceptable that out government expects us to subject our children to 49 vaccines before the age of six without having a (mandatory) proper resorting system in place. Though if they did, we’d see more adverse reactions and have more parents questioning vaccines. With VAERS, it’s easy to write-off the adverse reactions and impossible to causally connect them with vaccines. Yet, we’ll use these numbers to support our argument that one is more likely to experience an adverse reaction or die from a childhood disease than a vaccine. It’s a “win” for everyone but the children.

      I disagree however, that parents are just going online claiming their child had an adverse reaction. It is VERY hard to receive compensation for a vaccine injury.

      reply to this comment
    • Ralph Fucetol JD

      February 12, 2015 at 4:23 pm

      Except, of course, we now have administrative agencies and court decisions that clearly link vaccines, esp. the MNR, with adverse reactions that can and have led to autism. Perhaps the crony media and the crony agencies and the crony universities and the crony, self-interested “scientists” want to pretend otherwise, but the truth will out!

      http://healthimpactnews.com/2015/u-s-media-blackout-italian-courts-rule-vaccines-cause-autism/

      Those who continue to support the use of government force to sacrifice children for the “public good” are monsters.

      reply to this comment
      • Mike

        February 12, 2015 at 9:17 pm

        Exactly right. Except totally wrong.
        http://www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillingham/2013/08/09/court-rulings-dont-confirm-autism-vaccine-link/

        This stuff has been discredited so many times by so many researches. Ugh. And btw, the italian courts also convicted scientists for not predicting an earthquake. You should seriously question yourself if you are trusting an italian court in regards to science.

        reply to this comment
        • Steve

          February 13, 2015 at 5:01 am

          Mike,

          I agree with you in general about the Italian Courts, but did you read this part of the article?

          “Presiding Judge Nicola Di Leo considered another piece of damning evidence: a 1271-page confidential GlaxoSmithKline report. This industry document provided ample evidence of adverse events from the vaccine, including five known cases of autism resulting from the vaccine’s administration during its clinical trials (see table at page 626, excerpt below).”

          That was not the Judge writing her opinion… that was in the Manufactures “Confidential” report with information on the clinical trials.

          Also noteworthy, “As in many other developed countries, government, not industry, compensates families in the event of vaccine injury.” That means they easily could have ruled against the child & the parents and the Italian Government wouldn’t have to pay a dime.

          reply to this comment
    • Danchi

      February 13, 2015 at 4:19 am

      This post is an example of a complete misunderstanding of how the the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) works. It’s a passive system, any one can report anything they want as an adverse reaction to a vaccine, even if it happened to someone else, and even if they’re not sure if they’ve taken the vaccine in question.

      It isn’t a misunderstanding, it’s the only system in place. There would be no question about VAERS if the FDA had appropriated the necessary funds and personnel to do what it was suppose to do. However when you assign 1 or 2 personnel to monitor it-the system is what it is and until someone at the FDA makes an issue out of what’s being recorded-it’s a valid resource for information.

      reply to this comment
  132. Maureen

    February 12, 2015 at 6:54 am

    Megan, thank you so much for all that you are providing here. It’s so much more than solid information.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 12, 2015 at 6:35 pm

      Thanks Maureen! I’m glad you liked it. 🙂

      reply to this comment
  133. Danchi

    February 12, 2015 at 4:56 am

    I have compassion for any family with a sick child. It is the worst feeling in the world. I’ve seen it up close and the sense of helplessness is overwhelming. What I have contemplated over the years is it is human nature to want to blame someone or thing. Anything to lift that weight & guilt just a little and if their is a space you can project that energy-people will do it but it’s wrong. Especially if the family has no facts. In order for them to determine where the child got infected a PCR test would have to be done. If the child had chemo or radiation I doubt if the test would be conclusive as those treatments damage cells. Here are a couple of facts the CDC & their government PR dept. know as the MSM are not sharing with the populace:
    – There are 149 measles cases spread across the US. A whopping 63 percent are in adults.

    -American Children Highly Vaccinated
    In August and September, the CDC published annual reports that once again confirmed American children are among the most highly vaccinated in the world. In 2012, 95% of children entering kindergarten had gotten two MMR shots and so had more than 90% of high school students. About 1.8% of kindergarten children had a medical or personal belief exemption to vaccination on file with schools.

    Bottom line: 95% of the approximately 75 million children under age 18 have gotten two doses of MMR vaccine and there is also a high measles vaccination rate among young adults in their 20’s and mid-30’s because, since 1981, 95% of all children entering kindergarten have received at least one dose of MMR vaccine and three or more doses of diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis and polio containing vaccines. Source: CDC telebriefing on measles in 2013.

    Kids are vaccinated so those of you who are indulging in fear porn or trolling, stop bellyaching. Unless you are up to date on your adult vaccination schedule-you have no right to tell/ask or expect anyone one else to submit to an invasive medical procedure: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/downloads/adult/adult-schedule.pdf. CDC has been complaining the last few years for have not offered themselves up. Well, your opportunity has arrived.

    The problem is not the unvaccinated, the problem is the VACCINATED. So says Dr. Gregory Poland.

    The measles vaccine has failed, he explained two years ago in a prescient paper, “The re-emergence of measles in developed countries.” In that paper, he warned that due to factors that most haven’t noticed, measles has come back to be a serious public health threat. Poland sees the need for a major rethink, after concluding that the current measles vaccine is unlikely to ever live up to the job expected of it: “outbreaks are occurring even in highly developed countries where vaccine access, public health infrastructure, and health literacy are not significant issues. This is unexpected and a worrisome harbinger — measles outbreaks are occurring where they are least expected,” he wrote in his 2012 paper, listing the “surprising numbers of cases occurring in persons who previously received one or even two documented doses of measles-containing vaccine.” During the 1989-1991 U.S. outbreaks, 20% to 40% of those affected had received one to two doses. In a 2011 outbreak in Canada, “over 50% of the 98 individuals had received two doses of measles vaccine.”
    Paper: The Re-Emergence of Measles in Developed Countries: Time to Develop the Next-Generation Measles Vaccines? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih (dot) gov/pmc/articles/PMC3905323/

    -Arch Intern Med. 1994 Aug 22;154(16):1815-20.
    Failure to reach the goal of measles elimination. Apparent paradox of measles infections in immunized persons. Poland GA1, Jacobson RM.
    Conclusion:
    The apparent paradox is that as measles immunization rates rise to high levels in a population, measles becomes a disease of immunized persons. Because of the failure rate of the vaccine and the unique transmissibility of the measles virus, the currently available measles vaccine, used in a single-dose strategy, is unlikely to completely eliminate measles. The long-term success of a two-dose strategy to eliminate measles remains to be determined. http://archinte.jamanetwork (dot) com/article.aspx?articleid=619215
    Dr. Gregory Poland is Professor of Medicine and founder and leader of Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group. Poland is one of the world’s most admired, most advanced thinkers in the field of vaccinology.

    Here are examples of Measles outbreaks in highly vaccinated populations:

    Study titled, “Outbreak of Measles Among Persons With Prior Evidence of Immunity, New York City, 2011,” http://cid.oxfordjournals (dot) org/content/58/9/1205.long
    the groundbreaking study acknowledged that, “Measles may occur in vaccinated individuals, but secondary transmission from such individuals has not been documented.
    Sciencemag (dot) org article from April 2014 titled “Measles Outbreak Traced to Fully Vaccinated Patient for First Time.”
    Specifics:
    In order to find out if measles vaccine compliant individuals are capable of being infected and transmitting the infection to others, they evaluated suspected cases and contacts exposed during a 2011 measles outbreak in NYC. They focused on one patient who had received two doses of measles-containing vaccine and found that,

    “Of 88 contacts, four secondary cases were confirmed that had either two doses of measles-containing vaccine or a past positive measles IgG antibody. All cases had laboratory confirmation of measles infection, clinical symptoms consistent with measles, and high avidity IgG antibody characteristic of a secondary immune response.”
    Their remarkable conclusion:

    “This is the first report of measles transmission from a twice vaccinated individual. The clinical presentation and laboratory data of the index were typical of measles in a naïve individual. Secondary cases had robust anamnestic antibody responses. No tertiary cases occurred despite numerous contacts. This outbreak underscores the need for thorough epidemiologic and laboratory investigation of suspected measles cases regardless of vaccination status.”

    Did you follow that? A twice-vaccinated individual, from a NYC measles outbreak, was found to have transmitted measles to four of her contacts, two of which themselves had received two doses of MMR vaccine and had prior presumably protective measles IgG antibody results.
    This phenomenon — the MMR vaccine compliant infecting other MMR vaccine compliant cases – has been ignored by health agencies and the media.

    -PLoS study: “Difficulties in eliminating measles and controlling rubella and mumps: a cross-sectional study of a first measles and rubella vaccination and a second measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination. China has one of the most vaccination compliant populations in the world. In fact, measles vaccine is mandatory. So why have they had over 700 measles outbreaks from 2009 and 2012 alone? “The reported coverage of the measles-rubella (MR) or measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine is greater than 99.0% in Zhejiang province. However, the incidence of measles, mumps, and rubella remains high.” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih (dot) gov/pmc/articles/PMC3930734/

    -Vaccine. 2002 Feb 22;20(11-12):1541-3. Detection of measles vaccine in the throat of a vaccinated child. Morfin F1, Beguin A, Lina B, Thouvenot D. Author information 1Laboratory of Virology, Hospices Civils de Lyon, Domaine Rockefeller, 8 avenue Rockefeller, 69373 Lyon Cedex 08, France.

    -BROTHER-TO-SISTER TRANSMISSION OF MEASLES AFTER MEASLES, MUMPS, AND RUBELLA IMMUNISATION http://www.thelancet (dot) com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2889%2991274-9/abstract

    -Major Measles Epidemic in Quebec Despite 99% Vaccination Coverage
    Vaccine Failure
    A measles outbreak in a population with 99.0% vaccination coverage. The authors state, “Incomplete vaccination coverage is not a valid explanation for the Quebec City measles outbreak.”
    Boulianne N, De Serres G, Duval B, Joly JR, Meyer F, Déry P, Alary M, Le Hénaff D, Thériault N. Département de santé communautaire, Centre Hospitalier de l’Université Laval. [Major measles epidemic in the region of Quebec despite a 99% vaccine coverage] [Article in French]. Can J Public health. 1991 May-Jun;82(3):189-90

    -Measles Outbreak in 99.7% Vaccinated Population
    Robert T. Chen (1), Gary M. Goldbaum (2), Steven G. F. Wassilak (1), Lauri E. Markowitz (1) And Walter A. Orenstein (1). An Explosive Point-Source measles outbreak In A Highly Vaccinated Population Modes Of Transmission And Risk Factors For Disease. Am J Epidemiol 1989;129:173-82.
    (1) Division of immunization, Center for Prevention Services, Centers for disease Control Atlanta, GA. (2) Division of health Education, Center for health Promotion and Education, Centers for disease Control Atlanta, GA

    -The largest measles epidemic in North America in the last decade, occurred in 2011 in Quebec, Canada, where rates of 1- and 2-dose vaccine coverage among children 3 years of age were 95%-97% and 90%, respectively, with 3%-5% unvaccinated.”
    “Among adolescents, 22% had received 2 vaccine doses. Outbreak investigation showed this proportion to have been an underestimate; active case finding identified 130% more cases among 2-dose recipients.”
    Largest measles epidemic in North America in a decade–Quebec, Canada, 2011: contribution of susceptibility, serendipity, and superspreading events.
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23264672

    Let’s not for get, the efficiency of the Mumps portion of the MMR is said to be fraudulent. Why is the Mainstream Media Ignoring Measles Vaccine Fraud Cases? http://healthimpactnews (dot)com/2015/why-is-the-mainstream-media-ignoring-measles-vaccine-fraud-cases/

    “the unsealing of a whistleblower suit against Merck, filed back in 2010 by two former employees accusing the drugmaker of overstating the effectiveness of its mumps, measles, and rubella vaccine.”

    The scientists claim Merck defrauded the U.S. government by causing it to purchase an estimated four million doses of mislabeled and misbranded MMR vaccine per year for at least a decade, and helped ignite two recent mumps outbreaks that the allegedly ineffective vaccine was intended to prevent in the first place.

    “As the single largest purchaser of childhood vaccines (accounting for more than 50 percent of all vaccine purchasers), the United States is by far the largest financial victim of Merck’s fraud. But the ultimate victims here are the millions of children who every year are being injected with a mumps vaccine that is not providing them with an adequate level of protection against mumps. And while this is a disease the CDC targeted to eradicate by now, the failure in Merck’s vaccine has allowed this disease to linger with significant outbreaks continuing to occur,” the suit alleges.

    Merck is the only manufacturer licensed by the FDA to sell the mumps vaccine in United States, and if it could not show that the vaccine was 95 percent effective, it risked losing its lucrative monopoly, according to the complaint.

    That’s why Merck found it critically important to keep claiming such a high efficacy rate, the complaint states.

    And, Chatom claims, that’s why Merck went to great lengths, including “manipulating its test procedures and falsifying the test results,” to prop up the bogus figure, though it knew that the attenuated virus from which it created the vaccine had been altered over the years during the manufacturing process, and that the quality of the vaccine had degraded as a result.

    Chatom says Merck initially called its testing program Protocol 007.
    Under Protocol 007, Merck did not test the vaccine’s ability to protect children against a “wild-type” mumps virus, which is “the type of real-life virus against which vaccines are generally tested,” the complaint states.
    Instead, Chatom says, Merck tested children’s blood using its own attenuated strain of the virus.
    “This was the same mumps strain with which the children were vaccinated,” the complaint states.

    Merck also added animal antibodies to blood samples to achieve more favorable test results, though it knew that the human immune system would never produce such antibodies, and that the antibodies created a laboratory testing scenario that “did not in any way correspond to, correlate with, or represent real life … virus neutralization in vaccinated people,” according to the complaint.

    Go to link and read the entire page. Also go to these links to see the actual court document and the judges decisions for the case to move forward as Merck has tried to stop it for 5 years.

    -http://healthimpactnews (dot) com/2014/judge-lawsuit-against-mercks-mmr-vaccine-fraud-to-continue/
    -Judges Memorandum: http://www.rescuepost (dot) com/files/59-opinion.pdf
    -Antitrust, FCA Claims On Merck Mumps Vaccine To Advance: http://www.law360 (dot) com/classaction/articles/574389
    -False Claims Act document: http://www.naturalnews (dot) com/gallery/documents/Merck-False-Claims-Act.pdf

    So ask yourself this: if one part of the whole is proven to be completely ineffective-does it affect the efficiency of the remainder? If you read the MMR vaccine vial insert it states the virus shed for up to 28 days. So who’s doing who?

    reply to this comment
    • Adriane

      February 12, 2015 at 8:16 am

      Thanks Danchi for taking the time to post all those studies. It’s appreciated!

      reply to this comment
  134. jackson

    February 12, 2015 at 12:11 am

    Megan. Though I disagree with your views, I respect your well-thought out response. However, you lose a lot of credibility with off-hand remarks like “marked like the jews.” Putting an inane remark from a show like The View on the same level as an entire people who have suffered thousands of years of violent persecution makes you sound overly dramatic and, frankly, less-educated than you make yourself out to be.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 12, 2015 at 5:02 am

      Jackson – I’m assuming you’ve studied the holocaust (and its beginnings) so I’m sure you know the course of events. I’m referring to the Star of David they were required to wear to distinguish themselves. Intended or not it was a badge of shame and preceded further discrimination and other horrific events. I’m not comparing what’s happening to us todays to what happened to the Jews in concentration camps but the belief that we should wear bracelets to distinguish ourselves and that we should be segregated is a very dangerous path to travel and I think we should revere history.

      reply to this comment
      • Angela

        February 12, 2015 at 5:53 am

        This is a very thoughtful response to all the hype about not vaccinated children spreading the measles.
        I would add that in all this controversy about diseases and whether or not the government should dictate a law that everyone be vaccinated, WHY is there NO mention, nor blame from the CDC on corporations such as Monsanto and Dow chemical companies that are dousing our produce with neurotoxins that are weakening our immune systems? Why is the CDC not fighting for GMO labeling? Why are vaccines pushed more into mainstream media rather than promoting strengthening the immune system by eating right and avoiding processed foods? Why is the blame not put on modified wheat that’s wreaking havoc on our digestive systems, causing inflammation that is at the root of all disease? These are the questions that should be coming up before the house and congress instead of should we take away parental rights to protect their children and further burdening society by putting them in a system that creates more problems than it solves. There are already enough children in foster care with behavioral problems that grow up to be menacing to society. Taxpayers are burdened not only by caring for these homeless children, but also by those that grow up without guidance and become imprisoned as adults. This is how a statement such as, “I think an unfit parent who doesn’t vaccinate their children should have them taken away from them” comes full circle. We’re so quick to force our ideologies (that were spoon fed to us by Big-Pharma via the media) on others trying to do right by their families that we don’t consider 1. the actual source of the problem (as a society, we have sterilized and taxed our immune systems so that they can’t fight for us anymore) and 2. the consequences of wanting government to force a one-size-fits-all approach to living out our lives (resulting in being penalized for not following the rules, further burdening society and let’s not forget removing our civil rights to live). Once you open Pandora’s box and allow the government to dictate what we are required to inject into our bodies, there is no turning back. Be careful what you wish for, because you may one day get it.

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      • Liz

        February 12, 2015 at 2:05 pm

        Well, except, of course, that freedom of religion is a human right, and that a person being Jewish does not harm anyone else in any way. On the other hand, you seem to think that you have a right to avoid social censure for taking an action known to place other people at risk of harm, where there is no scientifically justifiable reason to avoid it.

        reply to this comment
        • Megan Heimer

          February 12, 2015 at 6:35 pm

          And the freedom to determine what is put into our body or our child’s isn’t a basic human right? I’m assuming you’re pro-life then.
          Discrimination is not justifiable in any context. Let’s not pretend that it is.

          reply to this comment
  135. Thomas Campbell

    February 12, 2015 at 12:07 am

    My parents told me of the times, prior to the polio vaccine being developed, that they would spend sleepless nights worrying about my brother, who would be getting over a cold, would wake up with a paralyzed limb or worse due to polio. He was one for the first children vaccinated in the US. He never developed polio and my parents were (and still are) grateful to Dr. Salk and Dr. Sabin. How many people died of smallpox worldwide before DA Henderson and the WHO started the vaccination campaign that has eradicated that disease?

    Looking at this, how can anyone dispute the efficacy of vaccines?

    It’s interesting, many of the homeopathic and/or natural ‘remedies’ that are offered up as alternatives to vaccination can be attributed to medicine from the far east. However, for thousands of years, when a smallpox outbreak it….they didn’t increase their uptake of pepper or grind up some Echinacea…..they vaccinated themselves. And they clearly recognized the potential danger of these vaccines, but also realized that the potential harmful effects of vaccination paled when compared to the misery encountered if they DID NOT vaccinate. Now you gotta ask yourself, how could a civilization of people who thought the sun was some sort of big dragon walking across the sky have more common sense and recognize the value of vaccines….and modern people don’t.

    reply to this comment
    • Danchi

      February 13, 2015 at 12:31 am

      Looking at this, how can anyone dispute the efficacy of vaccines?

      Polio vaccine caused polio. Even Jonas Salk stated that.
      “In 1977, Dr Jonas Salk who developed the first polio vaccine, testified along with other scientists, that mass inoculation against polio was the cause of most polio cases throughout the USA since 1961. (Science 4/4/77 “Abstracts” –Control of influenza and poliomyelitis with killed virus vaccines)
      sciencemag.com and a very small embedded article in the Washington Post on September 24, 1976

      The United States Center for Disease Control (CDC) admitted that the vaccine has become the dominant cause of polio in the US today, with 87% of cases between 1973 and 1983 caused by the vaccine. More recently, 1980-1989, every case of polio in the US was caused by the vaccine. Doctors and scientists on the staff of the National Institute of Health during the 1950’s were well aware that the Salk vaccine was ineffective and deadly. Some frankly stated that it was “worthless as a preventative and dangerous to take”. The Salk “inactivated” or “killed-virus” was actually regulated to permit 5,000 live viruses per million doses.

      Polio is still here. Never left. This is what happened;
      In 1958, the CDC formally adopted the “Best available paralytic poliomyelitis case count” or BAPPCC:
      “Cases must be clinically and epidemiologically compatible with poliomyelitis, must have resulted in paralysis, and must have a residual neurological deficit 60 days after onset of initial symptoms. .. the BAPPCC does not include cases of nonparalytic poliomyelitis, of those in which paralysis is more transient. The original purpose of developing these criteria was to omit cases possibly due to enteroviruses other than polioviruses.” People who showed polio like symptoms that previously would have been diagnosed as Polio were now being diagnosed as: Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP), Transverse Myelitis, Viral or Aseptic Meningitis, Guillaine Barre Syndrome (GBS), Chinese Paralytic Syndrome, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Epidemic Cholera, Cholera Morbus, Spinal Meningitis, Spinal Apolexy, Inhibitory Palsy, Intermittent Fever, Famine Fever, Worm Fever, Bilious Remittent Fever, Ergotis, ME, Post-Polio Syndrome aka GBS. Coxsackie virus and echo viruses can cause paralytic syndromes that are clinically indistinguishable from paralytic poliomyelitis. The definition changes were so radical, that many doctors publicly stated in medical journals, that it effectively eliminated 90% of what had previous been accepted as paralytic polio.

      Polio is more than paralysis or being encased in an iron lung. The question is always asked what happened to the iron lungs? Doesn’t that prove Polio has been eradicated/cured. No, it doesn’t. The iron lungs were replaced by oxygen tents and than respirators. So if one contracts one of the above illness and has breathing difficulties-you’ll likely to be put on a respirator or the little oxygen nose plugs. Today, If you object to taking the polio vaccine and you get polio–it is usually called “polio.” If you have been vaccinated and you get “polio”, it is called meningitis or one of the other names.

      Why was the criteria changed to 60 days? Because almost all Polio cases resolved themselves within 60 days.

      In about 95 percent of polio cases, infection from the polio virus causes no symptoms or
      serious effects. In about 5 percent of cases, the polio virus manifests in a mild form (abortive polio) with flu-like symptoms, in a non-paralytic form (aseptic meningitis) or in a severe form called paralytic polio. People who have minor or non-paralytic forms recover completely. …”Journal of Experimental Medicine, 1958, 108:605 – 616,

      95% of polio cases occur without symptoms and the rest have only a mild fever except for that tiny
      fraction of 1% where the virus penetrates the blood-brain barrier and causes paralysis. Provocation poliomyelitis: Wyatt 1981, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 55:543-
      557.

      This discusses the many scientists from 1914-1950 who observed the phenomenon that injections can cause outbreaks of polio. Most of these papers observed that paralysis correlated to the limb that was injected and then spread from there. Strebel et al 1995, The New England Journal of Medicine, 332(8):500-506. Reviews more current literature and adds some of its own observations. They point out that intramuscular injection within 30 days of immunization with oral polio vaccine increases the risk of vaccine-induced paralysis. At least 86% of paralysis cases were caused by injection and the higher number of injections correlated to higher frequency of paralysis cases.

      Contemporary outbreaks of Polio caused by the vaccine:
      A recent report published in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics (IJME) explains that, clinically, NPAFP is indistinguishable from polio paralysis. But according to the Office of Medical & Scientific Justice (OMSJ), NPAFP is twice as deadly as polio paralysis, and yet was not even an issue in India prior to the rollout of the massive polio vaccine campaigns.

      In 2011, for instance, the year in which India was declared to be polio-free, there were 47,500 known cases of NPAFP, which is a shockingly high figure under the circumstances. And based on data collected from India’s National Polio Surveillance Project, cases of NPAFP across India rose dramatically in direct proportion to the number of polio vaccines administered, which suggests that the vaccines were responsible for spurring the rapid spread of this deadly condition.
      (this was in 2011, the number of cases of NPAFP has now reached 66,000)Flip side of India’s polio success story: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120116/jsp/frontpage/story_15011108.jsp
      – Country needs to pencil strategy to fight infection triggered by vaccine itself, say experts

      -In neighboring Pakistan during 2011, 136 children came down with polio. Yet 107 of them had been vaccinated multiple times with oral polio vaccines (OPVs). That’s over 78% of those supposedly “immunized” against polio getting that same disease.
      Vaccine-nation: ‘Globally-supported company is funding fatal polio shots’: http://tribune.com.pk/story/293191/vaccine-nation-globally-supported-company-is-funding-fatal-polio-shots/
      ————————————————————————————————————————————————
      “It is pathetic and ludicrous to say we ever vanquished smallpox with vaccines, when only 10% of the population was ever vaccinated.” Glen Dettman A.M.M., BA, Ph.D., F.A.P.M.

      “far east. However, for thousands of years, when a smallpox outbreak it….they didn’t increase their uptake of pepper or grind up some Echinacea…..they vaccinated themselves.”

      “uptake of pepper or grind up some Echinacea” They would have been better off if they had!

      First of all, you need to be specific when you are talking about certain cultures . The Far East is huge so you are deliberately being vague. As far as smallpox is concerned it also was a failed vaccine. Every country that took if suffered immeasurable suffering and death. The Far East, had the smallpox vaccine pushed upon them no doubt by the West saying it would prevent disease but it had the opposite effect.

      Smallpox vaccination was the first vaccine that invoked the first compulsory laws, provoked the first anti-vaccination leagues, and promulgated the first “eradication” claim. Smallpox Vaccination was Ineffective.

      Compulsory Vaccination:
      – In 1854, the year England’s compulsory law went into effect, there were dramatic outbreaks throughout the country.
      – London’s epidemic of 1857-1859 had 14,000 deaths
      -From 1871-1873 all of Europe was wept with the worst epidemic in
      recorded history, as England and other countries boasted near universal coverage. England and Wales incurred more than 45,000 deaths alone.
      – The Philippines’ epidemic of 1917-1919 brought 70,000 deaths
      (in a population of 11 million) after the US staged a compulsory vaccination campaign there.
      -India’s epidemic of 1953 revealed that 80% of the diseased had at least one small pox vaccination and 50% had two or three. (Kempe, 1960)

      REALITY CHECK
      Many of Jenner’s own contemporaries were shocked at how easily the scientific community was taken in by this poser.

      Perusing the work of Walter Hadwen MD, celebrated English surgeon, author, and medical scholar of 100 years ago, we find a version of the Jenner story that is not so set in bronze as most of what we read today. Hadwen points out a few cracks in Jenner’s pedestal:

      – Jenner was no physician. He never passed a medical exam in his life, completed any course of medical study, or received a diploma from any medical school.

      – Jenner bought his medical degree for £15 from St Andrew’s College in Scotland, which he never attended (Hume, p 174, also Hadwen. )

      –Jenner “tested” his theory on two patient, and then immediately claimed that he had “immunized” the patient against smallpox for life. Jenner also claimed that the vaccine would work universally. That’s it. No controlled clinical trials, no years of research, nothing! Two patient. With no proof whatsoever, and a sample size of one, Jenner tricked the entire medical profession, then and now, into pretending that cowpox was smallpox in cows – a total scientific inaccuracy. And then he sold the idea that his vaccine was the cure. The two patients his ten month old son, Edward, Jr, and one of his neighbor’s servants, by inoculating them with cowpox. (thought it was the same as smallpox).

      Jenner lanced the baby’s arms and then infecting the scratch “with matter from a pustule of the baby’s nurse, who had caught the cowpox infection.” Eight days later baby Edward took sick and developed sores, but he did eventually recover.

      Then, two years later, Jenner again challenged his son again, this time, with unhappy results. This time there was a reaction, and a severe one. But he quickly recovered, and a year later Jenner inoculated him with once again.

      Unfortunately, however, in the years following these experiments, young Edward “became a sickly child and exhibited signs of mild mental retardation,” likely due to neurological damage.
      Jenner also inoculated a young boy named James Phipps. both Phipps and Jenner’s son died at ages 20 and 21 respectively from tuberculosis, which has been linked to the smallpox vaccine. TB is a manifestation of the Smallpox shot.

      Accurate historical records reveal that the incidence of TB increased at an alarming rate during the smallpox epidemics of the 19th century when smallpox vaccine mandates were enforced. In William Osler’s book, Principles and Practices of Medicine (p.330, 8th ed., 1918), he wrote that “with the greatest care certain risks are present… A quiescent malady may be lighted into activity by vaccination. This has happened with congenital syphilis, also with tuberculosis.”

      A doctor at the Mayo Clinic, Dr. E.C. Rosenow, recorded in the Mayo Collected Papers, Vol. II, p. 92, that he found “the vaccine serums injected into guinea pigs tended to localize in the lungs.” Even the Surgeon-General of the U.S. Army innocently recorded in a 1918-1919 report that “for all officers and enlisted men, Americans and native troops in all countries where United States troops were serving, tuberculosis of the lungs was the leading cause for discharge; and among American troops at home and abroad there were 31,106 hospital admissions for pulmonary tuberculosis, with 1,114 deaths, in the period of this country’s participation in the World War.”

      1853, Parliament began passing compulsory vaccine laws despite the lack of research and testing. Then as now, the media was controlled by the vaccine manufacturers and the government, who stood to make huge money from the sale of these spurious vaccines. This is how mass immunizations got started. Once the money machine started rolling, doctors who questioned the research were ignored. Despite the lack of scientific validation and hundreds of thousands of documented vaccine deaths, compulsory smallpox vaccination lasted for 120 years! The US was the last holdout, finally giving it up in 1971.

      So Prussia passed a mandatory vaccination law in 1834 for smallpox along with Britain. Even to the point of forced vaccination. The results: in Prussia 35 years after this vaccination law, a smallpox epidemic which killed “124,978 of her vaccinated and re-vaccinated citizens after thirty-five years of compulsory vaccination! England?

      1857-9 — 14,244 deaths
      1863-5 — 20,059 deaths
      1868 ——– 44,840 deaths

      Alfred Russell Wallace offers abundant proof how vaccine statistics were manipulated in England during the 1800s – the who and the why of it. After a thorough presentation charting actual deaths throughout the UK and the Continent from smallpox and from the vaccine, Wallace concludes that smallpox vaccine “.… has actually increased susceptibility to the disease. … the conclusion is in every case the same: that vaccination is a gigantic delusion; that it has never saved a single life; but that it has been the cause of so much disease, so many deaths,such a vast amount of utterly needless and altogether undeserved suffering, that it will be classed by the coming generation among the greatest errors of an ignorant and prejudiced age, and its penal enforcement the foulest blot on the generally beneficent course of legislation during our century.”
      – Alfred R. Wallace, Chapter VI 1898 Wallace, A, VACCINATION A DELUSION – Its Penal Enforcement a Crime
      FYI:
      -US began vaccinating for smallpox 1902, England stopped by 1907, Holland 1928 & Australia 1925. Why? The smallpox vaccine not only didn’t work, but was dangerous and often fatal. The US stopped
      vaccinating in 1971, the last holdout in the world. From 1950 to 1970, zero cases of wild smallpox were reported in the U.S. After several years there are now a few cases of smallpox, but they only occurred among the ranks of the vaccinated! (Scheibner). Smallpox vaccination in the U.S. persisted another 30 years after the disease was at an incidence of practically zero. Again, the only source of death from smallpox in the U.S. for 30 years was from the vaccine itself. (Mendelsohn, p 232, World Book, 1994). Today smallpox occurs nowhere in nature. The only time smallpox occurs-it’s from the vaccine. Which is why it was stopped.

      -In 1918, the US Army forced the vaccination of 3,285,376 natives in the Philippines when no epidemic was brewing, only the sporadic cases of the usual mild nature. Of the vaccinated persons, 47,369 came down with small-pox, and of these 16,477 died. In 1919 the experiment was doubled. 7,670,252 natives were vaccinated. Of these 65,180 victims came down with small-pox, and 44,408 died. In the first experiment, one-third died, and in the second, two-thirds of the infected ones died. —– from Dr. William Koch’s book, The Survival Factor in Neoplastic and Viral Diseases.

      -“One of the medical profession’s greatest boasts is that it eradicated smallpox through the use of the smallpox vaccine. I myself believed this claim for many years. But it simply isn’t true. One of the worst smallpox epidemics of all time took place in England between 1870 and 1872 – nearly two decades after compulsory vaccination was introduced. After this evidence that smallpox vaccination didn’t work the people of Leicester in the English midlands refused to have the vaccine any more. When the next smallpox epidemic struck in the early 1890s the people of Leicester relied upon good sanitation and a system of quarantine. There was only one death from smallpox in Leicester during that epidemic. In contrast the citizens of other towns (who had been vaccinated) died in vast numbers. ……Doctors and drug companies may not like it but the truth is that surveillance, quarantine and better living conditions got rid of smallpox – not the smallpox vaccine……It is worth pointing out that Edward Jenner, widely feted as the inventor of the smallpox vaccine, tried out the first smallpox vaccination on his own 10 month old son. His son remained mentally retarded until his death at the age of 21. Jenner refused to have his second child vaccinated. “—- Dr Vernon Coleman MB http://www.vernoncoleman.com/vaccines.htm

      “During 10 outbreaks of smallpox between 1947 and 1974 nearly 100 people became ill with smallpox—even though they had been vaccinated.”Dr Buchwald (The Decline of Tuberculosis despite “Protective” Vaccination by Dr. Gerhard Buchwald M.D. p. 134

      The Bush administration tried to fear monger the country into wanting and accepting the resurrection of the Smallpox Vaccine despite it’s devastating history. Our government had already spent over $3 billion on the same vaccine. It hadn’t changed a molecule. Obviously they were certain they could get the CDC on board but for once they did not follow suit. Vaccine industry didn’t care one way or another-they made 3 billion. There were obstacles that the CDC could not cover up it the vaccine was resurrected. The vaccine could not be given to:
      – HIV people
      – anyone on immunosuppressive drugs
      -anyone with eczema (go to the new mom websties and put in the search eczema and see how many babies have developed eczema after being vaccinated. Eczema is a manifestation of vaccines.)

      -Safety of Smallpox Vaccine among Military Recipients Questioned_JAMA Mon, 3 Nov 2003

      The CDC quoted a study in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, describing vaccine reactions like blindness, scarring, and death. How many Americans would be excluded?

      “Given the number of people who suffer from eczema, up to one half of the US population may be ineligible for routine smallpox vaccination.”

      -AIDS patients and those on immunosuppressive drugs add another significant proportion to the group of those who shouldn’t be vaccinated. Let’s see – how many drugs are immuno-suppressive? Like, all of them?

      -Most Americans over 31 years of age had already been vaccinated for smallpox, since the vaccine was only halted in 1971 in the US. So if the vaccine really worked, then obviously these people will not need a new shot,right?

      -The final nail in the coffin for the post 9/11 smallpox vaccine program was the discovery in Mar 2003 that the vaccine should not be given to heart patients. Question: How many people died from heart attacks after they were vaccinated over the last two hundred years?

      -The same individual who invented the program finally pulled it:
      “Under the new guidelines, people who have been diagnosed with serious heart disease such as coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, heart attack and angina are being told not to get the vaccine. The change was ordered by Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson.”

      -CDC director Jeffrey Koplan has admitted that universal smallpox vaccination could unleash a significant number of side-effects. He said that because many parts of our population do not have a “robust immune system,” a fair number of people could have serious reactions.
      ~Koplan speaking on the PBS special “Bioterror Propaganda” aired by WETA, November 14, 2001

      -All this wasn’t discovered until after the $3 billion was spent.

      *Smallpox shot infects soldier’s toddler son Boy critically ill; mom also stricken By Jeremy Manier Tribune staff reporter Published March 17, 2007. Also is on Reuters news service.
      *July 16, 2009 – Stricken Marine spurs lawmaker’s amendment – Marine Corps Times
      *[2009 July] Vaccine leaves nurse disabled. Nurse fights hospital over smallpox shot” & Vaccine leaves nurse disabled. Nurse fights hospital over smallpox shot The Cincinnati Enquirer • July 12, 2009
      Do a google search on the above 3 articles.

      -Smallpox was declared eradicated, yet still infects humans today. By Viera Scheibner, PhD

      Dr. John Marcinak of the University of Chicago, together with CDC experts, confirmed that American Military Personnel are CONTAGIOUS after being Vaccinated

      reply to this comment
  136. Katie

    February 11, 2015 at 10:59 pm

    Here’s what happens when you’re more committed to your cause than to being a compassionate human being. If you had read the entire letter to which you have written a reply, you would learn that this family did not go to Disneyland or Disney World.

    “I’m sorry your vacation came to an end but the unvaccinated parent did not cause your child’s immunocompromised condition and there is no causal connection between an unvaccinated child and your child’s exposure. A causal connection is what’s required, right?

    When we take our child to a place like Disney World, or any other public place for that matter, we assume the risk that we might come into contact with a sick person, someone who hasn’t washed their hands, a kid who has picked their nose, or rides that have not been properly sanitized between each use. It is not fair to require that my child get vaccinated for the benefit of yours or to force my child to live in a bubble so that yours doesn’t have to.”

    They went to a medical clinic. With their child who has cancer. Not on a vacation, not on a fun trip, to a freaking doctor because they had to. And you not only didn’t read their whole story before crafting a response that ignores, well, science, but you also as good as accused them of causing their child’s cancer, which, I cannot even with that.

    Measles is a big deal. Measles causes encephalitis, it can cause hearing and vision loss. If you think the rate of complications from vaccines is higher than the risk of complications from vaccines, then I can only imagine that you must either delusional or illiterate. Or bad at math. Total up the number of children in this country who receive vaccines and divide the number of reported vaccine reactions (real ones, not fevers, as those are signs that the immune system is working) by the total number vaccinated. And then compare that to the CDC and WHO figures on complications from these vaccine preventable diseases. The rate of complications from vaccines is so small that you have to use scientific notation to avoid writing multiple zeroes.

    As for your claim that live, DEACTIVATED viruses cause outbreaks, I would love to see one case where this has been proven. You want a study with placebos? I want a study, with human beings, showing that a deactivated virus in a vaccine can get an unvaccinated person sick. Deactivated “live” vaccines don’t cause disease. They cause the immune system to develop antibodies to recognize a particular disease and be able to fight it.

    And just as I know you will not be able to provide that study because it does not exist, you know that there will not be a double blind study on vaccines. We, meaning medical practitioners, don’t withhold treatment from people. We know vaccines work, we know they are safe based on the myriad studies we’ve already done, we sure as hell aren’t going to pretend to protect some kids and then send them out into the world unvaccinated so we can prove, again, for the millionth time, that the risks of vaccines are a thousand times smaller than the reward.

    Last year, my husband, a physician, treated two brothers who were intentionally unvaccinated. They both developed measles encephalitis and will never be the same again. If that’s where the story ended that would be tragic, but I was pregnant at the time and we had a son who had only just received his MMR and did not yet have immunity. We had to undergo testing to make sure we had immunity because that family’s decision not to vaccinate, that foolish, uneducated decision didn’t just risk their children’s lives. Other children at the hospital had to be given immunoglobulin and it risked my toddlers and my unborn child’s lives.

    Your inability to even read a person’s story all the way through, let alone muster up even pretend compassion, is embarrassing. Your grasp on science is sad and I only hope that the people who teach your children are more well versed in peer reviewed research and quality science.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 12, 2015 at 5:17 am

      Katie, I wish I could address your comment in its entirety.

      – This article addresses the immnunocompromised issue (not just the original post). The hospital scenario is referenced in point seven.

      – You said your husband treated two unvaccinated children with measles and they suffered brain encephalitis but according to the CDC’s MMWR data
      “No cases of encephalitis and no deaths have been reported.” – CDC MMWR DATA 2014

      – You blame the unvaccinated for you (or your son) not having protection when the blame rests squarely on the vaccine.

      – If you look at the MMWR data you’ll see that the majority of people who get measles are over the age of 20 – again the blame rests with the vaccine.

      – We don’t need proper studies on vaccines because “we know” they’re safe and effective? Without proper studies how can you determine this?

      – It states directly in the package inserts that these live vaccines can shed and I’m assuming you know how to use PubMed. You are free to look at the citations in my post or look up this info. in the PubMed database. You will find peer-reviewed articles on varicella, rotavirus, mumps, rubella, measles, shingles, and influenza (flu mist).

      – You seem to be solidified in your stance that MMR doesn’t cause any adverse reactions. I’m wondering where you’re getting your numbers. VAERS is deemed unreliable (by people who hold your viewpoint) and is estimated to only contain 1-10% of reported adverse events so is there another system I don’t know about?

      I respect your viewpoint, but I hope that you’ll take the time to actually read my post as I address many of the issues referenced above. What isn’t covered in this one was addressed in the post linked at the bottom of the article.

      Respectfully,
      Megan

      reply to this comment
    • Lily

      February 12, 2015 at 6:41 am

      Katie,

      Since you apparently have a hard time finding this information yourself, I’m helping you out. Here you go:

      Vaccine Injury Table of covered vaccines and associated injuries, from hrsa.gov. Note encephalitis as a comensable vaccine related injury. Encephalitis is listed for multiple vaccines. Damages have been awarded to families for vaccine induced encephalopathies.

      http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/vaccinetable.html

      Multiple studies and case reports of vaccine shedding. If you are incapable of reading the article then you may scroll to the bottom where multiple studies are linked.

      http://www.westonaprice.org/press/studies-show-that-vaccinated-individuals-spread-disease/

      reply to this comment
  137. Katherine

    February 11, 2015 at 8:58 pm

    Thank you, Megan, for voicing what I’ve been thinking all along! If your child is immunocompromised or has a severe allergy, they do not belong out in public! It is not our responsibility to roll out the red carpet for a child you chose to bring into this world. I would be willing to bet that these are the same parents who expect us to tolerate their child acting up in public! Also, schools and other public places do not have go above and beyond if it would require too much of a hardship. Many of these immune disorders are genetic, so if you carry the mutation, do not have children! You will not pass it on. (Robert Graham had a point about only genetically superior people breeding. There is a reason certain people should not breed. You can hate him, but if you wear glasses, you’re supporting him.) Genetics do win most of the time! Don’t expect of the rest of us to take the risk. It’s your responsibility as parent.

    reply to this comment
    • sam

      February 12, 2015 at 4:01 am

      wow. the nazi’s were also of the view that “some people shouldn’t procreate.” perhaps you heard of them? they too believed that only genetically superior people should procreate….aka: the aryans. that is a very limited and dangerous viewpoint you spout here. used to be people had compassion for others. not any more. i fear for the world today.

      reply to this comment
      • Megan Heimer

        February 12, 2015 at 4:52 am

        That’s not what she’s saying.

        reply to this comment
  138. aksinya

    February 11, 2015 at 7:03 pm

    I watched my friend’s baby have seizures after her vaccinations. My family members have died shortly after getting vaccinations due to the complications yet no medical professional ever associated the seizures or the deaths with the vaccinations so no record or report of it was made. If this occurred in just my small world how many other deaths and complications due to the vaccinations go unreported?

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 12, 2015 at 5:28 am

      I’m very sorry. Most deaths and adverse reactions are not reported. If we had a proper system in place and reactions were required to be reported we’d have a lot more acknowledged reactions and a lot more people questioning vaccines.

      reply to this comment
  139. Candace

    February 11, 2015 at 6:35 pm

    Measles causes just sniffles? Really?
    Measles is one of the leading causes of death among young children even though a safe and cost-effective vaccine is available.
    In 2013, there were 145 700 measles deaths globally – about 400 deaths every day or 16 deaths every hour.
    Measles vaccination resulted in a 75% drop in measles deaths between 2000 and 2013 worldwide.
    In 2013, about 84% of the world’s children received one dose of measles vaccine by their first birthday through routine health services – up from 73% in 2000.
    During 2000-2013, measles vaccination prevented an estimated 15.6 million deaths making measles vaccine one of the best buys in public health.

    reply to this comment
    • Megan Heimer

      February 12, 2015 at 5:26 am

      Key word: GLOBALLY.

      https://www.livingwhole.org/this-mama-isnt-scared-of-the-shmeasle-measles/

      reply to this comment
    • Danchi

      February 13, 2015 at 4:36 am

      Measles causes just sniffles? Really?
      “Measles is one of the leading causes of death among young children even though a safe and cost-effective vaccine is available.”
      -Measles is an respiratory illness. If you don’t know that why are you commenting. Oh, I know.

      “In 2013, there were 145 700 measles deaths globally – about 400 deaths every day or 16 deaths every hour.
      -Be honest now. Those deaths occurred in third world countries. There have been 9 measles deaths in the US since the year 2000. There were ZERO (0) deaths from measles in 2013 in the US.

      “Measles vaccination resulted in a 75% drop in measles deaths between 2000 and 2013 worldwide.”
      -Please provide the INDEPENDENT study, data or report that confirms that. You know if that was the case the CDC would have been flaunting it all over the internet.

      “In 2013, about 84% of the world’s children received one dose of measles vaccine by their first birthday through routine health services – up from 73% in 2000.”
      -Actually in 2013 according to the CDC 95% of children under the age of 18 have been fully vaccinated. US children take more vaccines than any country with with the exception of Korea. Korea’s Autism rate is 1 in 38.
      1 in 38 Sout Korean Schoolchildren Have AUTISM Mandated MMR
      – source: YALE MEDICAL SCHOOL.
      Since US children are so overwhelmed with vaccine -95%, why are so many people acting like the bubonic plague has ascended down from on high. Ridiculous. Read this study:
      Arch Intern Med. 1994 Aug 22;154(16):1815-20.
      Failure to reach the goal of measles elimination. Apparent paradox of measles infections in immunized persons.
      Poland GA1, Jacobson RM.
      Conclusion:
      The apparent paradox is that as measles immunization rates rise to high levels in a population, measles becomes a disease of immunized persons. Because of the failure rate of the vaccine and the unique transmissibility of the measles virus, the currently available measles vaccine, used in a single-dose strategy, is unlikely to completely eliminate measles. The long-term success of a two-dose strategy to eliminate measles remains to be determined. http://archinte.jamanetwork (do