Excerpt from The Vaccine Guide: Making an Informed Choice

Randall Neustaedter OMD, LAc

 

 Philosophy and Medical Care

 

     Modern (allopathic) medicine is based upon several underlying

assumptions. The first is the concept of reduction. The body can be reduced

to its parts, the organs, the tissues, and the "systems." This allows for

the manipulation of one part, for example the immune system, without any

regard for the effect this will have on the integrity of the person as a

whole. The second assumption is that diseases are bad and need to be

combated. This leads to the concepts of chemical warfare conducted against

the kingdom of diseases. If some innocent civilians lose their lives as a

result of the weapons employed, then that is the unfortunate cost of war.

This has certainly been the stated position of leaders in the vaccine

campaign. The third assumption is that diseases should be prevented by

chemicals. This takes the form of lifelong medication with drugs, for

example flouridation of water systems to supposedly prevent tooth decay,

estrogen replacement in all postmenopausal women to prevent bone loss, and

periodic vaccine administration beginning in infancy to prevent infectious

diseases.

 

     It is important for parents to examine their beliefs about these

assumptions because the administration of vaccines implies tacit approval of

the allopathic medical philosophy. Parents do have a choice about the

medical treatment of their children. The United States constitution is based

upon the principle of freedom of choice. The widespread belief that

vaccination of an entire population is necessary, however, has threatened

the basic rights of parents and their ability to legally make an informed

decision.

 

     The history of mandatory vaccinations reads like the story of martial

law in an occupied country. The freedom to choose is suspended in an all out

effort to eradicate an enemy. This is the mentality of war. The problem with

warfare lies in its basically destructive principles. The casualties are

usually heavy. In the vaccine war, the casualties have been devastatingly

damaged children with resultant lifelong retardation, seizure disorders,

autism, and fatalities directly caused by the vaccines. The crime, and the

shame, of the vaccine industry and the medical establishment has been the

routine and blatant denial of these casualties in public testimony and in

daily practice. In their view the good fight has been staged and these

supposed casualties represent merely the deluded suspicions of parents with

a sick child who are all too eager to point at vaccines as the cause of

their problems. The Vaccine Injury Act was instituted not because the

vaccine industry admitted its culpability in these tragedies, but simply

because the drug companies refused to continue production of these

substances that resulted in multimillion dollar lawsuits. The government

chose to subsidize vaccine production by paying awards out of tax dollars

and limiting the amount to an administrative budget. Litigation against drug

companies was eliminated and parents were left seeking recompense from a

government bureaucracy. This guaranteed protection of the drug companies

assured continuing profits. Vaccine production was reestablished. Parents'

claims were deflected, continued to be denied, and no recourse was left to

the victims. The war could then continue unabated. The drug companies'

production of vaccine and the government's requirements for their

administration has been a very successful partnership. When a consumer

evaluates medical pronouncements about drug prescriptions for the entire

world's population , one should never lose sight of the fact that drug

companies reap the tremendous profits. The same companies that make and sell

these drugs fund their research. In fact, research and marketing go hand in

hand. The next simple step is for the drug companies to assist in

legislative efforts to make drug prescribing mandatory for all citizens. The

need for profits shapes the law.

 

     The war on disease represents the driving force behind vaccine use. The

basic assumptions of our culture fuel the policies adopted for our citizens

in the areas of medicine and defense. Waging war provides a simple black and

white perspective. Identify an enemy and declare war. In medicine the

concept of disease provides us with the unwitting, elusive, and destructive

enemy. The lowly virus and bacteria become the identified targets, the

carriers, the weapons, and the tangible troops of the invading army. The

analogy is striking. It has become so integrated into our personal belief

systems that it seems ludicrous to question it. Who would call disease an

ally?

 

     Yet the analogy upon which all of allopathic medicine is based falls

apart. The body is not a battleground. Hostile enemy forces are not

threatening our way of life and biochemical war is not the only solution to

illness. There is another philosophy of medicine which has been ignored in

the assumptions of the allopathic world view. In our population and in our

lifetime a shift in consciousness has already occurred. This awareness

encompasses the notion that the body itself has an innate intelligence and

healing ability. In this view the body needs to be nurtured, not attacked

with chemicals. The body does have a fundamental order and integrity. This

ordered and harmonious function benefits from life promoting activities and

suffers under the stressful influence of hostile interventions. A philosophy

of healing that respects the natural order inherent within the body and the

body's innate healing abilities may provide us with an approach to

prevention that avoids chemical warfare. When the organism is seen as a

whole, when we view nutritional factors, lifestyle, the body's natural

integrity, and their overall effect on healing, then we can view vaccines

from a different perspective.

 

     All actions have the ability to influence the inherent order of the

organism. The body seeks to maintain a healthy balance or homeostasis. Some

actions will promote order and others will tend to disorder the internal

balance that the body has created. For example, when a child makes a

transition from one environment to another, like going to a new preschool,

this has the potential to create disorder. The transition may be interpreted

by the child as threatening and the resulting internal disorder might

manifest as a tantrum. The parent can then take actions which reassure the

child and reestablish balance and homeostasis. Other actions may have a more

disordering effect. To continue the analogy in the emotional realm, the

death of a pet or a family member will provoke a deeper injury and greater

imbalance. These emotional reactions, the fear and grief, may cause

symptoms. When managed appropriately, with respect for the child's feelings

and emotional maturity, these stresses can result in a stronger, more

resilient personality. Similarly, different physical stresses on the system

will cause varying degrees of imbalance and disorder. When we view the body

as an organism in balance, then everything that occurs is potentially

ordering or disordering. An apparent stress can result in order. A continued

stress can upset the balance and a toxic stress can cause damage that throws

the body into a tailspin. Drugs have the potential to cause a significant

degree of imbalance because of their inherent toxicity. Vaccines can provoke

toxic reactions as well, and they are also capable of causing these same

types of imbalances. They can be just as devastating as other severe shocks

to the system. The degree of the imbalance and disorder will depend upon the

toxic potential of the vaccine and the susceptibility of the organism. By

contrast, when an infectious disease causes stress on the body, the result

can be a stronger immune system. Antibodies are produced against that

specific disease organism and the body learns how to manage other viruses

and bacteria as well. Illness can thus be seen as a strengthening process.

The immunization decision involves weighing these considerations and viewing

them in the context of an underlying philosophy of health and disease.

 

     Looking at the body as a whole, as an integrated organism, encompasses

a philosophy in contrast to the allopathic reduction of the body to a set of

parts. Modern technological medicine views only short-term reactions and

localized effects of its interventions. There is little attention to

long-term effects because there is no model for viewing or evaluating these.

The double blind study looks at limited effects on distinct physiological

systems in the body. Vaccines stimulate specific antibody responses in the

immune system. That is the desired effect and the ultimate goal is

prevention of a specific disease in the tested population. These tests run

for a few years at the most. The issue of long-term detrimental effects of

vaccines never arises in these study designs because that concept defies the

nature of those tests. Politically, it would not be useful to look for these

effects because the studies are conducted by vaccine manufacturers who have

a vested interest in the product. They have no interest in revealing vaccine

toxicity. This intentionally myopic view encourages the limited perspective

of allopathic medicine. Parents and consumers of medical services in general

are questioning this limited view. They increasingly seek the perspectives

of other medical systems that do view the body as a whole. The systems of

Oriental medicine, homeopathy, and naturopathy all share the belief that

interventions have global, long-term effects in the body. Their goal is to

bring the body into a higher state of order and balance. Their interventions

create harmony. Within these systems diet, drug use, herbs, medicines,

exercise, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and relationships all play a role in

the overall health of each person. The physical body and the mind are linked

in the sense that an imbalance in one realm will affect all others. Physical

illness can cause emotional stress and emotional turmoil can cause physical

reactions. When the natural energetic balance and harmony of body systems is

upset, then the resulting disorder may manifest in symptoms and destructive

physiological processes. A persistent unremitting stress may cause chronic

problems. For example, repressed anger can result in physical changes within

the body causing high blood pressure or a depressed immune system and

consequent cancer growth. Vaccine critics have postulated that the constant

stress caused by manipulating and altering the immune system with vaccines

could also result in these types of imbalances and disease processes.

Healing systems that address these imbalances intend to have the opposite

effect, to create harmony and reestablish balance in the body. The goal is a

healthy life and prevention of illness. The crisis oriented approach of

allopathic medicine and its attention to isolated, disjointed reactions

exists in sharp distinction to the curative and preventive healing

approaches of these other medical systems.

 

     The subject of immune system deficiencies has occupied a great deal of

attention in the health care industry, especially the health foods arena.

Many products now exist which purport to strengthen the immune system

including herbs, mushrooms, algae, meditation and movement techniques. This

interest stems from the widespread rise in immune system disorders and new

diseases that never existed prior to the modern chemical era of industrial

pollution and drugs (AIDS, cancer, lupus, chronic fatigue syndrome,

hypothyroidism, and a whole array of autoimmune disorders). Opportunistic

viruses may also play a role in the declining health of the population, but

concern over the fundamental underlying immune system failure lies at the

core of the efforts to develop immune enhancement. The possible role of

vaccines in causing these immune system deficiencies has been the subject of

much speculation and controversy. Many health care providers and consumer

advocates have pointed to vaccines as a cause of immune failure. The

coincident emergence of these diseases and the mass immunization of

populations has led to suspicions that an entire generation has suffered

immune system crippling from the vaccines which should be protecting us from

illness. Eloquent indictments about the toxic effects of vaccines on immune

system function have recently been written and parents would do well to

consider the information they contain (Scheibner, 1993; Murphy, 1993;

Miller, 1992). Other body systems may also be impacted by the vaccines. The

nervous system seems to be particularly sensitive to the toxic properties of

vaccines. Subtle nervous system damage caused by vaccines has been

identified as a possible source of the recently identified epidemic problems

of attention disorders, criminal behavior in children and the emergence of

autism as a new disease since the advent of mass immunization (Coulter,

1990). More immediate and dramatic nervous system reactions can occur soon

after vaccine administration, often after the third or fourth dose. These

include convulsions sometimes resulting in lifelong epilepsy, persistent

high pitched screaming, bizarre grimacing, and sudden unexplainable death

(SIDS). Of course, these types of reactions are continuously denied by the

vaccine industry (Stratton et al., 1994).

 

     Another significant shift in consciousness that affects the way parents

make health care decisions involves the evolving view of the doctor. Some

parents have discovered that the exalted position of the medical doctor who

dictates all treatment decisions may involve misplaced trust. Doctors are

trained by drug companies, both in medical schools and later in their

offices and clinics. Medical textbooks teach drug prescribing, clinical

training involves learning the proper way to prescribe drugs, and seminars

for doctors in practice teach the latest advances in drug development. All

of this information is derived from research conducted by the pharmaceutical

industry whose only goal is to sell drugs. Increasingly, drug companies own

the health care delivery institutions themselves. In this way they can

supervise and design the delivery of their products. This phenomenon has not

escaped the consumer's awareness. If an individual citizen in the role of

patient wants something other than drugs, then he or she must turn to

sources outside the medical establishment simply because the world of

physicians represents the position of the drug manufacturing industry. Many

parents have realized that accepting the opinion of their physician about

vaccines is similar to believing the car salesman's pitch. Both have a

product to push. Vaccines represent consumer goods and parents should

research this product even more carefully than other purchases. Their

children's lives could be at stake. The doctor-as-god philosophy is

gradually declining. Consumers want information. The scandals and tragedies

associated with drug company products have created a more wary public.

Thalidomide, the IUD, silicone breast implants, unnecessary mutilations in

the form of mastectomies and hysterectomies have resulted in widespread

mistrust. People have discovered that drug companies may not have our best

interests at heart. Doctors do what they are told. The consumer who does not

beware is the unwitting participant and potential victim.

 

ALL INFORMATION, DATA, AND MATERIAL CONTAINED, PRESENTED, OR PROVIDED HERE IS FOR GENERAL INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY AND IS NOT TO BE CONSTRUED AS REFLECTING THE KNOWLEDGE OR OPINIONS OF THE PUBLISHER, AND IS NOT TO BE CONSTRUED OR INTENDED AS PROVIDING MEDICAL OR LEGAL ADVICE.  THE DECISION WHETHER OR NOT TO VACCINATE IS AN IMPORTANT AND COMPLEX ISSUE AND SHOULD BE MADE BY YOU, AND YOU ALONE, IN CONSULTATION WITH YOUR HEALTH CARE PROVIDER.