Is Vaccination Safe?

Introduction

Children’s immunization is a hot topic. Like most hot topics, it has fervent advocates and equally fervent opponents. In our present environment, the advocates hold all the economic and political power, and so the majority of people only hear one side of the argument.

When I was first exposed to the idea that immunization was harmful, fifteen years ago, I could not accept it. I had been brought up with the belief that vaccines save lives and guard us from unimagineable dangers. If vaccines were abandoned, what would protect us from harm?

As I treated children, both vaccinated and unvaccinated, in the ensuing years, I could not help but notice a difference. The unvaccinated kids were more vital, responded more quickly to holistic treatment, and seemed more cheerful. As I began to research the topic of immunization, moreover, I could understand why this difference might exist. Vaccination works by suppressing the immune system. It is the beginning of a vicious cycle that leads to more suppression by antibiotics and ultimately to complete dependency on the modern medical system.

Toxins In Vaccines

There has been a lot of publicity about mercury in vaccines recently, and a possible link between vaccination and autism:

The parents of 12-year old Michelle Cedillo asked a federal court yesterday to find that their child’s autism was caused by common childhood vaccines, a precedent-setting case that could pave the way for thousands of autistic children to receive compensation from a government fund set up to help people injured by the shots.
-The Associated Press, June 12, 2007

There is no doubt that autism is a 20th century phenomenon. Only a handful of cases existed in the U.S. before 1943. Of the first 100 cases, most were children of medical professionals or parents who eagerly embraced new medical practices before they became widespread.

As universal vaccination programs were introduced in the 1940s, the incidence of autism increased among every socio-economic class. The same chronological link between immunization and autism emerged in other countries as well. In Japan, for example, the first case occurred in 1945—just months after the United States Occupation instituted compulsory pertussis immunization for Japanese children.

According to the Autism Society of America, over a million Americans now have some form of autism. In the period 1989 to 1999, California saw a 273% increase in the number of children with autism entering the developmental services program—1,685 cases in 1998 alone. But no one has offered a plausible explanation.

Amy Lansky, author of a book about the recovery of her son from autism, describes the effect of a TB shot on her son after he was already much improved:

Unfortunately, this injection led to a marked aggravation and deterioration in Max’s state. For the next week, he became increasingly sensitive, crying for no reason. The teachers at his camp and at school remarked about the change in him. He had become more withdrawn and fearful. He was not his usual self. This reaction made us wonder if, indeed, vaccination was the root cause of Max’s problems in the first place. Years later, I discovered another hint of this. After going through his medical records, I realized that at age 18 months, Max had been given a dose of the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine only one week after recovering from roseola—an ailment related to measles. Perhaps he had been in a compromised state. Indeed, the MMR vaccine has been highly implicated in triggering autism.
-Impossible Cure, by Amy Lansky (R.L. Ranch Press, 2004), p.63

Suspicion has fallen on a preservative used in vaccines called Thimerosal, which is about 50% mercury. Mercury is a known neurotoxin. The FDA says that pregnant women and young children should not eat fish with high levels of mercury, because it “may harm an unborn baby or young child's developing nervous system” (Consumer Advisory, March, 2004).

Yet the amount of mercury in six ounces of canned tuna fish is only 0.1 microgram. A single shot of vaccine contains 12 to 60 micrograms. The FDA has established an acceptable daily intake for mercury of 0.4 micrograms per kilogram of body weight per day (the EPA’s recommendation is much lower—0.1 micrograms). So if a baby weighs ten pounds (4.5 kg), it can “safely” eat 1.8 micrograms, according the less stringent guideline.

But clearly mercury injected into the blood stream is more dangerous than mercury in the digestive tract, where only a small percentage would be absorbed by the intestines into the blood. The FDA has never established how much mercury can safely be injected into a small child.

Nevertheless, the mercury in vaccines may not be the problem, or at least not the whole problem. In some scientific studies, there is no apparent link between autism and mercury in vaccines.

But there are other toxins in vaccines besides mercury: aluminum, formaldehyde, bacterial toxins, animal blood, and more. Even if mercury is not to blame for vaccine injury, there are plenty of other candidates. It may be that the basic concept of introducing bacteria and other foreign proteins directly into child’s bloodstream, bypassing all the natural defences that we have against such invasions, is fundamentally flawed.
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This article is an excerpt from Dr. Finne's paper, "Is Vaccination Safe?" which has more information about vaccination and vaccination alternatives. The article can be downloaded from his official website. Google "Diderik Finne" for the link.