Vaccinations--Pros and Cons
Safe and Effective and should they be government mandated?
The number of available vaccines are increasing and so are the questions of parents and concerned individuals who want to be enlightened about the pros and cons.
On another forum, KFC noted that some parents in Belgium are being jailed for refusing to have their children vaccinated against polio. According to a Lifesite news report, 2 sets of parents have been sentenced to five months in prison as well as a hefty fine for their crime. It’s a crime because the polio vaccine is legally mandated in Belgium and France. The article didn’t reveal why the parents have refused to vaccinate their children. However, vaccination has long been a subject of health and ethical concern, especially since the discovery that numerous vaccines, including several versions of the polio vaccine, are made using tissue from aborted fetuses. It’s unclear whether or not Belgium's polio vaccine has been tainted with fetal tissue.
While no vaccine is 100% safe, medical experts and health officials have long insisted the risk of diseases far outweigh the risks associated with vaccines. And that’s where the rub lies. It’s a small percentage, but what if it happens to you? Various anti-vaccination groups argue that long-term health concerns for children who have received vaccinations have not been adequately addressed, with some claiming that vaccination shots can lead to medical problems such as cancer, autism and even SIDS, "sudden infant death syndrome".
In 1986, due to pressure from parents who children had suffered devastating problems after being vaccinated, the government created the National Vaccine Compensation Program and since then has paid out more than 1.2 billion dollars in settlements to compensate families or individuals in which vaccines killed, caused brain-damage or otherwise seriously hurt children.
Right now, we have pretty much employed a "one size fits all" vaccination policy and as specified on the Universal Childhood Immunization Schedule our children as early as only a few days old are required to get certain vaccines. Besides that, there is a concern about the practice of giving a child as many as 6 separate shots or one super shot containing as many as 9 vaccines (some containing mercury) in one visit. It seems that 75% of the settlements cited above concerned the DPT vaccine given to babies at about 2 months old. Turns out they are linking many multiple learning disabilities as a result of a negative reaction to DPT.
In an effort to make this world a better place, and with a billion dollar budget, the drug industry and the medical community are racing forward developing all kinds of vaccines. Case in point is the new HPV vaccine which is supposed to protect against certain strains of human papillomavirus (STD) which lead to cervical cancer. Problem is only a fraction of that budget goes to fund independent studies of side effects and that finally has come to the attention to some in Congress.
Who decides what drugs are forced on children? One parent group based in Ohio supports allowing parents to opt their children out of vaccines and as a result, a dozen or so states have granted a limited medical exemption, a religious exemption, and a philosophical (conscientiously held belief) exemption. Unfortunately, great pressure is put on parents who choose to exempt their children. That happened to me in the case of the small pox vaccine a couple of years ago. The school insisted....and threatened to oust my child...the pressure was on.....and, as for me, I was aware of the medical, religious and philosophical exemptions.