> Health and Disease > Colds, Infections, and Viruses

Vaccine should be a four-letter word. It sure is to me. Recent articles in your magazine on the hepatitis B vaccine and its link to diabetes is something that plagues me every day.

My two perfectly healthy children were vaccinated with the hep B vaccine at ages three and six respectively. A year-and-a-half later my daughter, then aged five, developed diabetes (Type I–insulin dependent). I was devastated and totally shocked. There is no history of diabetes in our families. I accepted it as a fluke until eight months later when my son developed Type I diabetes also.

I was crushed. With two diabetic children on my hands I wasn’t willing to accept it as a fluke anymore. I put both sides of the family on a search and we still couldn’t find any relative with diabetes as far back as three generations. There had to be a reason that both of my children came down with this horrible disease. Although I have no medical proof, I am certain that there is a definite link between the hep B vaccine and diabetes. Not only that, other vaccines such as measles, mumps rubella, meningitis and whooping cough have also been related to an increase in Type I diabetes.

The ironic thing about these vaccines is that my children have contracted the actual diseases they were vaccinated against! Red measles, German measles and whooping cough. So my question is, why do we allow ourselves to be forced or talked into taking these vaccines when they are not helping? They are seriously harming the most precious people in our lives.

Having two children with diabetes is costly, both monetarily and emotionally. Even though most of our medical costs are covered by drug plans, the special foods and herbal supplements we now use to try to enhance the insulin is very costly.

Our children cannot go on simple class trips without one of us present, which means someone must miss work. Sleep-overs until this last year were not allowed (as they get older, my children are becoming more independent with their management of the disease). Flus and other viruses send us scrambling to try and keep enough food down or adding extra insulin to the body in an attempt to control the high sugar levels that come with illness. I have had many sleepless nights due to around-the-clock sugar monitoring. We have spent many nights in the hospital because of uncontrollable sugar levels or accidental insulin overdoses.

I am so angry there aren’t enough words to describe it. Needless to say we no longer believe in or accept any vaccines–not even the flu shot which is strongly suggested for diabetics–and to think this could have all quite possibly been prevented.

Parents beware.

Lisa Bisgaard is an alive reader living in Fife Lake, SK.

Source: alive #220, February 2001