> Children and Parenting > Health and Environmental Concerns > vaccinations

Heartfelt advice from Michael Belkin, a bereaved father whose five-week-old baby daughter died following a hepatitis B vaccination and who initiated Congressional hearings to investigate this vaccine, is as follows: "The whole medical profession is deluded about vaccination. It’s their magic bullet. They are fundamentally flawed and cannot be trusted. Instead of blind faith and obedience to untrustworthy pediatricians, investigate for yourself the scientific risk of vaccine-induced encephalopathy and subsequent death or permanent brain damage before allowing the medical profession to use your children as guinea pigs in their obsessive-compulsive war on germs. Protect your children!"

For some parents, the comfort zone is being in the medical fold and believing that vaccines are harmless and will protect their children from disease. For others who embrace a holistic lifestyle, health is a creative process and we’re in charge!

The first step is to take responsibility for our own and our children’s health through lifestyle choices. Nutritious food, clean water and air and breastfeeding for infants are the most essential aspects of developing a strong, healthy immune system.

Embracing a holistic, health-creating paradigm is a crucial step for parents. From this perspective, the idea of injecting multiple viruses, bacteria, particles of foreign DNA, animal proteins and toxic preservatives into their children’s pure bodies is abhorrent.

The medical party line currently says this is a crock--vaccines don’t in any way threaten immune system function. Most parents find that bringing their research to the doctor usually meets with derision, coercion and fear tactics--and the underlying threat that all those diseases will come raging back if you don’t vaccinate your child. Sometimes there are even threats to call the child welfare authorities (many doctors consider not vaccinating as a form of child abuse).

Just Say No!

In terms of presenting solid arguments to justify and defend their decision to opt out of vaccine schedules, parents are advised to be well armed with information from many sources: the many books that have been written, parent information groups (like the Vaccine Risk Awareness Network [VRAN]), newsletters, audio visual materials, groups on the Internet and articles from peer reviewed, mainstream medical journals. An informed decision is made for your own sake and for the sake of your children–not for the sake of trying to convince the doctors of their decision to reject vaccines for their child.

I advise parents to find a doctor who is respectful of their choice and knows not to argue about it. Doctors need to back off, respect patient autonomy and parents’ right to make informed decisions on behalf of their children. If parents really want to engage in some deep discussion with their doctors, they should ask the doctor to provide them with the published studies in peer-reviewed scientific journals to demonstrate the long-term health outcome of vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. These studies have never been done. The science to prove the long-term safety of vaccines does not exist.

What does exist in the absence of the so-called scientific "gold standard" is the growing realization that children’s health is hanging in jeopardy. And the science is emerging in cell biology, immunology and neurology that vaccines impact negatively and destructively on the overall health of this generation of children.

Stop The Vaccine Machine

Mothers whose immune systems have already been altered by vaccines give birth to children who are highly susceptible to severe immunological/ neurological injury. Dr Edward Yazbak's recent studies describe the high incidence of autism in children whose mothers received live virus vaccines prior to conception and during pregnancy. Currently, estimates of autism rates being reported in the United States and Britain run as high as one in every 165 to one in every 300 children. That's cause for alarm all by itself!

The pro-vaccine forces are nevertheless intensifying their efforts. Their goal is to force vaccines on every child on the planet by declaring them "basic human rights." This means if you choose not to vaccinate, you will be seen as depriving your child of an essential right to life–as essential as food and water. The issue at hand is that we retain the right to make an informed choice about all matters of health, medical procedures and drugs, including vaccines.

Edda West is the coordinator of the Vaccine Risk Awareness Network.

Source: alive #215, September 2000