Vaccination Decisions for Parents from NVIC, National Vaccine Information Center:

"Vaccination is a medical procedure which carries a risk of injury or death. As a parent, it is your responsibility to become educated about the benefits and risks of vaccines...."

1. Your doctor is required by law to provide you with vaccine benefit/risk information materials before your child is vaccinated.

Local vaccine education resources that favor fewer or no vaccines are listed following the NVIC list. And after that, Dr. Christianne Northrop talks about Pertussiss

Consumer groups, including the National Vaccine Information Center, worked with government health agencies to develop parent information booklets on each mandated vaccine. Ask your doctor for the booklet and take time to read it before your child is vaccinated. You may also ask your doctor to show you the information insert provided by the drug company which manufactured the vaccine(s) your child is scheduled to receive.

2. Your doctor is required by law to keep a permanent record of all vaccinations given, including the vaccine manufacturer's name and lot number. Ask for a copy of the doctor's record on vaccinations given to your child to keep for your records.

3. Your doctor is required by law to report all adverse events, including injuries and deaths which occur within 30 days after vaccination to federal health authorities. If your doctor refuses to report a reaction following vaccination, you have the right to report to the government yourself.

4. If your child is left permanently brain damaged or dies as a result of a vaccine reaction, you may be entitled to benefits under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986.

DO:

Become educated about childhood diseases and vaccines. You have the ultimate responsibility for your child's health and well-being and you, not your doctor or state or federal health officials, will live with, and be responsible for the consequences of your decision.

Ask your doctor to give your child a physical exam to make sure your child is healthy before you permit vaccination. A sick child can be at increased risk for having a vaccine reaction.

Write down your child's personal and family medical history listing major illnesses and diseases or medical conditions, especially previous reactions to vaccinations, and have it included in your child's permanent medical records. Before permitting vaccination of your child, ask your doctor if any of these conditions will put your child at risk for having a vaccine reaction. A child who has had a previous severe reaction to a vaccination can be especially at risk for even more severe reactions if more vaccine is given. If you are not satisfied with the answers you are given, get a second opinion.

Monitor your child closely after vaccination. Call your doctor if you suspect a reaction. If your doctor is not concerned and you are, take your child to an emergency room.

Obtain a copy of your state mandatory vaccination laws. Become educated about state vaccine requirements, your rights and legal exemptions to vaccination. Click here to review your state law.

Don't be intimidated by medical personnel and forced into a vaccination decision before you are comfortable with your decision.

Want more information?

Christina Able, RN, has studied the issue in depth for about 30 years. She has a monthly meeting at her house in New Hope, MN.

She sends out a regular newsletter on up-to-date articles and study findings that reflect a non-vaccine bias.

Dr. Brian Boyd, DC., offers regular classes for parents on vaccine information. Here is what he says about his classes:

Many parents who are expecting a little one or now have a newborn have questions in regards to vaccinations for their child.  Are all these shots necessary?  Are they safe?  These concerned parents go to the internet and find an abundance of information on vaccines, some pro-vaccination, some anti-vaccination, but a lot of it charged with emotion intending to pursuade them to one side of the fence or the other.

My name is Dr. Brian Boyd and I have been teaching a class on vaccinations for the past five years called How Vaccinations Affect Your Child's Immune System.  My reason for offering the class to parents is to give them information to help them make an informed decision on vaccinations for their children.  One of the things I do not do is tell parents whether or not to vaccinate their child. 

Since the topic of vaccinations is such an emotionally charged issue, I make every effort to remove emotion from the class so we can take a common sense approach and look at the information logically.  Unfortunately most parents make this vital decision for their child based on fear, and the information or person that scares them the most ends up making the decision for them.

In Part 1 of the class, we look at how the immune system works, and the difference between how it normally reacts to viruses and bacteria, and how it reacts to vaccines.  We also discuss how parents can help boost their child's immune system naturally, and the importance of building a network of people and health providers around them that help support their philosophy of health.

In Part 2, we go through each vaccine in the childhood schedule and the diseases they are designed to protect against.  Much of the information used in this class comes directly from the product inserts from the vaccine manufacturers.  One of the main focuses as we look at each vaccine is what is meant when health officials say that vaccines are safe and effective.  How do they determine that a vaccine is safe?  How do they determine a vaccine is effective?

I encourage parents to ask questions such as these and to continue to learn more on this issue.  This class is not only a great opportunity to learn information from a scientific, health-oriented perspective, but it also gives them the chance to a have an open discussion on the topic. 

I have been studying the topic of vaccinations for the past 15 years, and began offering this class when I began to learn how vaccines were affecting the development of the immune systems of children on a cellular level.  In addition, my wife and I were expecting our first child, and I was facing this issue not only as a health care provider, but also as a parent.

We now have two beautiful girls Grace (5) and Hannah (4), and are expecting our third child any day now.  I am grateful for what I have learned in helping us make our decision in regards to vaccines, and I offer this class to share this information so that other parents can make their own informed decision.

  I schedule the classes approximately every other month, and if you would like to receive an update email of when classes are scheduled, simply reply to this email.  You can also go to our website at www.y-chiropractic.com and click on classes & events to view the calendar of when classes are scheduled.

And now, from Dr. Northrop's website:

In June 2010, there was an outbreak of pertussis (whooping cough) in California that reporters were calling the worst epidemic in 50 years. Although we’ve been vaccinating for pertussis for more than a half-century, California health officials’ answer was more vaccinations. They even went so far as to blame the outbreak on the increasing number of parents choosing not to vaccinate their children. This led to fear, fear, and more fear, as well as more confusion. Because you are more likely to wrestle with whether to vaccinate your children (or yourself) when a new school year starts, I’d like to share some information that you may not know about pertussis and give you some insights about the HPV (human papilloma virus) and meningitis vaccine...

Most people don’t know that the pertussis vaccine doesn’t provide lifetime immunity! Unlike chicken pox, having the disease once doesn’t protect you from having it a second time. This is why I don’t believe there was an epidemic at all. According to my colleague Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, who I consider to be the foremost medical expert in vaccine safety, “Outbreaks of pertussis are cyclical and tend to peak every two to five years, regardless of the vaccination rate….” Further, “Your child can be fully vaccinated and still contract pertussis.”²

This negates accusations of California health officials who assert that when parents don’t vaccinate their children, they can create a rampant resurgence of diseases, like polio or pertussis. These conditions are thought to be under control because of mandatory vaccinations. Our society buys into something that Dr. Tenpenny calls herd immunity: If we vaccinate as many people as we can, especially the healthy ones, it will protect those who are young, elderly, and immuno-compromised. Unfortunately, this isn’t true. Just because you are healthy and vaccinated against pertussis, you can still carry the disease without knowing it and become sick or infect others.

Babies under six months of age are at risk the most for contracting pertussis and dying from it. Babies have very narrow bronchial passages, which block air flow to the lungs. Sadly, this causes death in some. Six died in California this year as of July 21, 2010. The CDC believes that these same children are at risk because they aren’t fully vaccinated before six months (if you follow the recommended vaccination schedule).

There’s much you can do to support your infant’s health, the most important of which is to breastfeed her. It’s well documented that breast milk contains antibodies against all kinds of germs a newborn is likely to encounter, organisms to which her mother is already resistant.

[more from Dr. Northrop...]

One of the reasons I’m against giving the HPV vaccine is, in over 90% of women, the immune system “clears” the virus (renders the virus inactive) after two years or so (often less), particularly in young women. These women are asymptomatic from then on. While there’s been so much press about HPV, the truth is that most people don’t even know they have it—and for most women it’s not likely to ever progress past a few abnormal pap smears! This is why the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists has just issued new guidelines saying that pap smears under the age of 21 do more harm than good. Many women under 21 have changes in their cervical cells from HPV that simply heal on their own without medical intervention.

The rationale to get the HPV vaccine after you’ve already been diagnosed with it is this: There are over 100 different strains of HPV; the vaccine allegedly protects you against four of these. Therefore, getting the vaccine may protect you against a strain that you haven’t already come in contact with.

Once you “catch” HPV, that strain stays in the body permanently, like a cold sore virus does. Although it’s with you for life, that doesn’t mean HPV always causes problems. Most of the time it simply remains dormant. When HPV is associated with abnormal cells, it means that something is “off” with the immune system. ...

The meningitis vaccine is one of the safer vaccines, because it’s acellular. That means there is no live virus in the vaccine. It’s also not preserved with mercury or other toxic material that are still in many vaccines. When my youngest daughter went to college, I threw in the towel and had her vaccinated. (I’m referring to the one given to college-age children, not infants.) It just wasn’t worth the fight with her school’s administration at the time. But I was ambivalent, and would have opted out if it had been easier to do.

The symptoms for meningitis, a bacterial infection, are very similar to the flu. Two things for to watch for are a rash and a stiff neck, which are not present with most flu viruses. The worry that most parents have with meningitis is that its onset is very rapid, and because it’s difficult to diagnose, children can go from healthy to severely ill (and even die) in a very short amount of time. If your child is away from home for the first time and she isn’t normally good at taking care of herself when she gets sick, you may want to consider getting her the vaccine. It’s not worth the angst....

Most public health authorities contend that the overall benefit of vaccines for the “herd” is worth the price that some individuals pay. When it comes to my own children, I don’t agree. When it comes to your choices in medical care, it’ imperative that you have the courage to step away from the herd for a moment, do your research, and then decide what is right for you and your children.

Note: It is very difficult to find a balanced view of vaccines because their effectiveness and safety are sacrosanct in our culture. My colleague Dr. Sherri Tenpenny has done the best job of anyone I know in illuminating the other side of the coin, which we almost never hear about in mainstream medicine. To learn more, I recommend reading Dr. Tenpenny’s book Saying No to Vaccines and watching her Youtube presentations.

Read the whole article.