The vaccine dilema

To vaccinate or not to vaccinate...that is the question.

Or so it seems. It's an ongoing debate in my head for Keller. I mean I was vaccinated and I seem to be doing fine, but then again, I have asthma, chronic sinus issues and obviously some issues with my immune system. But then on the other had, I was vaccinated with the schedule from 1984.

Here is what I mean by that. In 1984, children received ELEVEN shots of vaccines from birth until age 16. These vaccines covered Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis, (DTP now DTaP), Oral attenuated Poliovirus (OPV now IPV), MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) and then the Td (adult tetanus).

http://www.generationrescue.org/pdf/cdc1983.pdf

Now, children receive anywhere between THIRTY and FIFTY shots for a NORMAL CHILD! You have GOT to be kidding me. Were we doing THAT bad back in 1984? Seriously...think about it some and give the skeptics some credit. We can't honestly believe that tripling the number of times you stick an infant, child, adolescent with a needle containing...what? did YOU read the label? I really don't even know if our doctors read the labels considering the way they learn about the vaccine is thru the drug rep who sells it to their clinic....will improve our children's health?

http://www.aap.org/sections/infectdis/IZSchedule_Childhood.pdf

I'm not saying there is a conspiracy, I really do think that most people in the medical field are working for our benefit and considering the limited education many of them received (limited not meaning stupid, limited as in, "western medicine is better than God, better than anything else ever" limited), they just don't know any better. Medicine does not make you healthy. Medicine allows you to live a normal life and work towards getting healthy while being sick. It also prevents you from getting more sick in some cases, allowing your body to heal and get better.

But back to vaccines. I realize that we needed them 100 years, even 50 years ago. But where was our public health 50 years ago? And better yet, where was our emergency care 50 years ago? The accessibility alone of basics such as antifungals, antibacterials, bandages, cortisone creams and other topicals is how many times better than 50 years ago? So how, in a society that has an obviously more advance medical system than we did in 1980, need THREE TIMES as many shots to create the same amount of immunity to diseases?

Another area I don't understand, is WHY CAN'T MY CHILD JUST GET THE DARNED CHICKEN POX?!!! What is wrong with the chicken pox??? Vaccinating your kids against chicken pox only INCREASES YOUR own risk of getting shingles! So why the dickens would we do this?
The only real answer I can come up with is money. The drug reps want money and how do they make money? By getting consumers (us) to use their products...well they created a new product to stop chicken pox, well lucky for them it creates ANOTHER problem (shingles) that they then get to make ANOTHER product for and make more money. Really this isn't that difficult to see.

Now earlier I wrote that I think the medical community really is looking out for us and trying to keep us healthy, the drug companies are a different story. They are just like news stations, t.v. shows, movies, restaurants, car dealerships, Wal-Mart, Target, any other store. THEY SELL THINGS TO MAKE MONEY. The more they sell; the more they make. Therefore, the more drugs they can sell and get us to ingest; the more money they make. We all know how attacked McDonald's has been recently, also thinking back a decade, the cigarette companies. Now why are drug companies any better? How have they really helped us? By creating an epidemic of sick people? By giving us a "slide" on being responsible for our own health and allowing people to be lazy, gain 100lbs, never eat a vegetable in their life and STILL have low blood pressure? Ugh..

So someone explain this situation to me? Why again am I entrusting my son to people whose aim is to make money? Because ultimately that is what it comes down to. Our species has survived disease (somehow...because apparently modern medicine is the only way we can survive beyond today) for thousands of years. I'll take my odds in listening to our ancestors and doing it their way...

But in the present, how do you judge whether its worth it to vaccinate? Please comment..

P.S. here is a statistic on Autism...
Since the 80's: In the late 1980's, 4 to 5 in every 10,000 children were thought to be afflicted...Now, for 2009, according to the CDC an average of 1 in 110 have a diagnosis on the autism scale. Now our genetics haven't changed that much in 2000 years, why would they change in 30? And a whole nations eating habits couldn't have changed that much either....but something almost every child received did...the number of vaccinations...think about it...just a little...

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/01/health/01AUTI.html
http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html