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Get Your Child Vaccinated or Go To Jail — by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at BlogHer)
More problems associated with vaccines, this time the controversy is with the Chicken Pox vaccine. I haven’t been silent about my distrust with the pharmaceutical industry, and most recently with the collaboration between this industry and our government…specifically the rush to make the HPV vaccine mandatory for 9 to 12 year old girls. As much as I have a problem with *some* vaccines, I have a much larger problem with our government forcing parents to vaccinate for viruses such as Chicken Pox and HPV.
I am not someone who is against childhood vaccinations, as a nurse I fully understand the necessity for vaccinating children against polio, measles, mumps, and rubella. However, vaccinating against these diseases was begun for the sole purpose of saving the lives of children, that can not be said for most of the newer vaccines (Flu, HPV, Chicken Pox, Hepatitis, etc). The sole purpose for pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccines today, is for one purpose and one purpose only…money (and a lot of it). I wont be able to go into each one in detail for this post (maybe in a future one), but here are a few statistics to just give you an idea of what I am talking about.
But now, let me talk specifically about the Chicken Pox vaccine and this latest controversy.
In Maryland parents are being threatened with fines and jail if they do not comply with vaccinating their children for chicken pox. Does anyone NOT see how insane that sounds? What the bleepidy-bleep is going on????
Speaking as one of the lucky ones, who lived through “The Great Chicken Pock Pandemic” of the 1970’s…oh wait, there was no pandemic and everyone I knew got the chicken pox and a couple days off from school, and actually lived to tell the tale. For those of us old enough to remember having the chicken pox…The memories are horrifying…the pustules, the itch, the dreaded calamine lotion. If you haven’t been through it yourself, you can not begin to imagine what we suffered with for those never ending couple of days. [My attempt as sarcasm...I know, don't quit my day job.]
Seriously now. When my children were born (and at that time the vaccine was not yet mandatory), the pediatrician told me about it, and I decided that if my children weren’t exposed to the virus before they would be attending school, then I would consider it. [CHOICE...it's a beautiful thing, but becoming more and more rare in our society.] My reservations had nothing to do with a possible adverse reaction to the vaccine…It was the fact that, getting chicken pox as a child is not serious, and getting the virus actually gives a life-long immunity (the vaccine does not). I also wondered why anyone would consider this vaccine, when there was already an anti-viral medication available, that reduced the severity of the symptoms and cut the duration of the illness?
My children both were exposed to the chicken pox before they were even in nursery school, it was no big deal, and now they are protected for life. The same can not be said for children vaccinated for chicken pox.
Most of my friends back then, thought I was crazy for not just getting the vaccine for my kids. But, even though at the time there was no (available) evidence that suggested the vaccine would not be life-long…I knew that they could not be sure until the first generation of children got older (they were the guinea pigs – just like todays generation will be the guinea pigs for the HPV vaccine). I also knew how dangerous it would be if these immunized children got older and developed this virus as adults, not to mention the girls who would be women someday and possibly lose a pregnancy because they didn’t have a life-long immunity to the chicken pox.
The United States is the only country in the world that requires the chicken pox (varicella) vaccine. Other countries have assessed it and determined that chicken pox is too mild of a disease and the chicken pox shot to ineffective to justify the huge expenditure needed to mandate a shot. As with the hepatitis-b, several years after the shot became mandated the vaccine industry revealed that it too diminishes in effectiveness over time and boosters are now mandate in many states. The failure to contract wild chicken pox as a child makes a person far more susceptible to the disease shingles as an adult. Shingles is generally considered a far more serious disease than chicken pox. It is acknowledged by the vaccine industry that the widespread use of the chicken pox vaccine will lead to an epidemic of shingles. Merck, the developer of the chicken pox vaccine now has a vaccine for shingles as well. — READ FULL ARTICLE
I feel I made the right choice for my children back then. And it is very sad to me that parents today aren’t able to decide for themselves what is best for their own children. This was a vaccine designed to make money for the pharmaceutical industry, not to save lives…Even the Federal Immunization Advisory Committee admits the benefits to this vaccine are not to save lives, but to save money by reducing the amount of time parents had to take off from work…Honestly, that’s not a joke.
The American people have become pauns and guinea pigs to both our governments and corporate America (which basically are one in the same at this point).
So that’s my take. Here are what other bloggers are saying on this issue…
This is from Barbara Loe Fisher and expert in the field of vaccinations…
- There are many new vaccines being developed that will be added to the childhood schedule and what has happened in Maryland brings up the question that many parents are asking: How many more vaccines are children going to be forced to get to be able to get a public education?
- Although Maryland and other states may allow medical and religious exemptions, they are very difficult for parents to obtain. Doctors cannot easily write medical exemptions that are not second- guessed by public health officials, who require strict adherence to narrow contraindications blessed by the CDC. Often parents, who attempt to file religious exemptions, are thrown into rooms and grilled about the sincerity of the religious beliefs.
- Parents are wondering why every vaccine that industry produces is always automatically recommended for universal use by the CDC and then mandate.
- It is time for the people to take back the power – through their elected representatives – to decide which vaccines their children should have to take to go to school. In the past few decades, legislatures have given up their power to vote on which new vaccines will be mandated and have handed that power over to public health officials who have never met a vaccine they did not want to mandate
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Well, it’s a first. I actually agree with Michelle Malkin. She has a post today titled “Vaccine Bullies in the Public Schools“, I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Parents are being treated like child abusers by the Maryland public education system, but who’s exploiting whom? If you’re wondering why the schools didn’t simply threaten to kick the kids out of school–as opposed to jailing and fining their parents–the answer is all in the money. The schools are funded based on average-daily-attendance. Every body in a classroom is cash in their pockets.
From Country Dawn…
Parents in Maryland were threatened with jail time on Saturday if they didn’t vaccinate their children. On the spot. That’s right, nurses with needles were lined up and waiting… and so were police officers.
Oh, and get this. I love this. Many of these kids waited in line on Saturday to get a chicken pox booster so their parents wouldn’t go to jail. Chicken pox–a vaccine that has such dubious effectiveness and value that the Federal Immunization Advisory Committee could only rationalize making it mandatory in the first place by arguing that it would prevent parents from losing about a week’s worth of time from work.
In other words, it was an economic argument, not a medical one. Now, the police state of Maryland is threatening to throw parents in jail for ten days because their children haven’t received a vaccine mandated solely on the grounds that it would keep parents from missing work in the first place…
This is from Yankee Cowgirl…
I heard an interview with Mr. Ivey yesterday where he was asked if he was going after parents that had exemptions. He said he was glad they had exemptions and he was sure they weren’t going after those students.
I don’t believe him. Out of the 1300 students they are going after, I’m expected to believe that none of those have exemptions? Come on!
And in a interesting twist…
See why the pro-life movement and Catholics are against the chicken pox vaccine.
Well that’s all I have. How do you feel about this issue? Do you feel the government has a right to force parents to vaccinate their children for non-life threatening diseases/viruses? Does it seem to you that the government is *in bed* with the pharmaceutical companies on this one? Is it time for parents to take a stand on this issue? What would you do if you were one of the parents facing jail time in Maryland?
