INTRODUCTION
Routine vaccinations are given to many
children. Physicians refer to them as the "baby shots." There are also
special vaccinations for people in high-risk settingssuch as travelers
about to enplane to a hazardous country.
How should we relate to vaccinations for
ourselves and our children? Here is some data which may provide help.
Because there are many questions about
vaccinations, and because there is a strong movement on foot to require
every child in the land to receive a complete series of them,this brief
overview of the vaccination problem has been prepared.
However, the decision whether or not to
vaccinate is a personal one. The author is a researcher and not a health
practitioner. This is a decision you must make personally. It is hoped that
this data will provide you with the basis for additional study on your own.
Only in that way can you make an intelligent decision.
Vaccines primarily consist of dead or
weakened ("attenuated") germs of the same type of disease, which are
injected into the body in the hope that it will stimulate the organism to
produce protein antibodies to protect it against disease.
There is growing pressure from special
interest groups to require nationwide vaccination of children. in view of
that fact, there is an urgent need to examine the information available on
this matter.
"There is a growing suspicion that
immunization against relatively harmless childhood diseases may be
responsible for the dramatic increase in autoimmune diseases since mass
inoculations were introduced. These are fearful diseases such as cancer,
leukemia, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Lou Gehrigs disease,
luuserythematosus, and the Guillain-Barre syndrome.
"An autoimmune disease can be explained
simply as one in which the bodys defense mechanisms cannot distinguish
between foreign invaders and ordinary body tissues, with the consequence
that the body begins to destroy itself. Have we traded mumps and measles for
cancer and leukemia?" Robert Mendelsohn, How to Raise a Healthy Child, p.
211.
Let us begin with the "mandatory" vaccinations. These are
the ones which, In most states, your child is required to take in order to
be admitted to public school.
Chapter 1

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