Tag: religion

10 Reasons to Not Vaccinate Your Kids

The Pontifical Academy for Life reaffirmed the
The Pontifical Academy for Life reaffirmed the “lawfulness” of using vaccines to protect children and those around them.

Parents often have their reasons for why their kids aren’t vaccinated.

But whether they have a medical exemption, personal belief exemption, or a religious exemption to getting vaccines, they often have the same reasons for not believing in vaccines.

What are some of them?

They might be scared of toxins.

They might think that vaccines don’t work.

They might think that vaccines aren’t necessary anymore and that they can just hide in the herd.

They are just trying to fit in at a Waldorf school…

10 Reasons to Not Vaccinate Your Kids

In addition to simply being scared about things they have heard on the Internet, some of the reasons that parents don’t vaccinate their kids include that:

  1. they are vegan – many vegans vaccinate their kids
  2. they are Catholic – most Catholics vaccinate their kids – Pope Francis even led an oral polio vaccination drive recently
  3. their child is on antibiotics – having a mild illness is not usually a good reason to skip or delay getting vaccines
  4. their child had an allergic reaction to a vaccine – a severe, anaphylactic reaction to one vaccine or vaccine ingredient wouldn’t mean that your child couldn’t or shouldn’t get all or most of the others
  5. they are Jewish – most Jews vaccinate their kids
  6. a doctor wrote them a medical exemption – there are actually very few true contraindications to getting vaccinated and a permanent exemption to all vaccines would be extremely rare, which casts doubt on the ever growing rate of medical exemptions in many areas
  7. they are Muslim – most Muslims vaccinate their kids and most Islamic countries have very good immunization rates.
  8. someone at home is immunocompromised – since we stopped giving the oral polio vaccine, shedding from vaccines is not a big concern and contacts of those who are immunocompromised are usually encouraged to get vaccinated
  9. they are Buddhist – most Buddhists vaccinate their kids – the Dalai Lama even led an oral polio vaccination drive recently and Buddhist countries have very good immunization rates.
  10. someone in their family had a vaccine reaction – a family history of a vaccine reaction is not a good reason to skip or delay getting vaccinated, as it has not been shown to increase your own child’s risk of a reaction. And yes, this has even been shown for siblings of autistic children, which makes sense, since vaccines don’t cause autism.

What about other religions?

Whether you are Hindu, non-Catholic Christians, Amish, or Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc., remember that all major religions believe in vaccines. Of course, the Amish are a little more selective of when and which vaccines they will get, but as we saw in the Ohio measles outbreak, they do get vaccinated.

On the other hand, Christian Scientists don’t vaccinate, along with some small Christian churches that believe in faith healing and avoid modern medical care.

Still, most people understand why it is important to vaccinate their kids.

What to Know About These Reasons to Not Vaccinate Your Kids

What do you think about these reasons to not vaccinate your kids? Since they aren’t really absolute reasons to not get vaccinated, are you ready to get your kids vaccinated now?

More About Reasons to Not Vaccinate Your Kids

50 Ways to Get Educated About Vaccines

A Board of Health quarantine poster warning that the premises are contaminated by smallpox.
Have you ever seen a quarantine sign for smallpox on someone’s home? That’s because Vaccines Work!

Have questions about vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases?

Think you have done enough research already?

If that research has you asking for package inserts and requesting low aluminum vaccines, then you might need to rethink how you have been doing your research.

Get Educated About Vaccines

Vaccines are safe, effective, and necessary.

They aren’t full of toxins.

They have been tested together.

Pediatricians do know a lot about vaccines. What they may not know is how to counter every anti-vaccine argument that you might have heard of, read about, or with which one of your family members is scaring you.

“Pediatricians who routinely recommend limiting the numbers of vaccines administered at a single visit such that vaccines are administered late are providing care that deviates from the standard evidence-based schedule recommended by these bodies.”

American Academy of Pediatrics

You can rest assured that these arguments have all been debunked, often many years ago, but they keep coming up, over and over again. In fact, today’s anti-vaccine movement uses many of the same themes as folks used when the first vaccines were introduced over one hundred years ago.

50 Ways To Get Educated About Vaccines

So before deciding to skip or delay any of your child’s vaccines, do some real research about vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases and:

  1. Understand the Pseudoscience Behind the Anti-Vaccine Movement
  2. Review the contraindications to vaccines and even more common, the things commonly misperceived as contraindications
  3. Examine the evidence for the safety of vaccines
  4. Get answers to the 9 Questions For The Pro-Vaxers
  5. Know that Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism
  6. Read about these Five Things I’ve Learned About Vaccines Through 21 Years of Parenting
  7. Learn the Tactics and Tropes of the Anti-vaccine Movement
  8. Know that kids do not get too many vaccines too soon and that vaccines don’t overwhelm your child’s immune system
  9. Understand these Vaccine Safety Basics
  10. Don’t listen to these anti-vaccine celebrities
  11. Get the details of Andrew Wakefield’s fraud
  12. Study why those Graphs That Show Vaccines Don’t Work are just propaganda
  13. Know that you can’t hide your kids in the herd to avoid disease
  14. Read why “Spacing Out” Vaccines Doesn’t Make Them Safer
  15. Wonder why parents misuse religious exemptions to excuse kids from vaccines
  16. See the evidence that Flu Shots Work for Kids Under Two
  17. Review these questions and answers on immunization and vaccine safety
  18. Learn Why My Child With Autism Is Fully Vaccinated
  19. Know that You Can Be the Pro-Life Parent of a Fully Vaccinated Child
  20. See how Having a baby doesn’t change the facts on vaccines
  21. Question Vaccine Injury Stories: the Sacred Cows of the Internet
  22. Read An Open Letter to Expecting Parents and Parents Yet-To-Be about Vaccinating
  23. Know that there is No Clear Evidence that Vaccines Cause Autism
  24. Learn from those who have Left the Anti-Vaccine Movement
  25. Understand why you’re wrong if you think the flu vax gives you the flu
  26. Avoid Cashing In On Fear: The Danger of Dr. Sears
  27. Realize that Almost All Religions Support Immunizations
  28. Learn which vaccines are the most important to get
  29. See that Unvaccinated Children Can Have Autism Too
  30. View Personal Stories of Families Affected by Vaccine-Preventable Diseases
  31. Know who is at risk if you don’t vaccinate your kids
  32. Read about the most common Misconceptions about Vaccines
  33. Review the Benefits vs. Risks of getting vaccinated
  34. Learn about the Ingredients in Vaccines
  35. Realize that vaccines are carefully monitored for safety, even after they have been approved, and it isn’t just by folks reporting side effects to VAERS
  36. Know that those 124 Research Papers Supporting the Vaccine/Autism Link Really Don’t
  37. Understand what Vaccine Package Inserts really do and don’t tell you
  38. See why the CDC Whistleblower really has no whistle to blow
  39. Know that the Vaccine Court did not say that vaccines cause autism
  40. What to consider if Deciding whether to alter the immunization schedule
  41. Learn why Shedding from Vaccines isn’t a danger to your kids
  42. Review even more Misconceptions about Immunizations
  43. Understand The Science Behind Vaccine Research and Testing
  44. Know that your Unvaccinated Child isn’t going to be Healthier than Vaccinated Kids
  45. Realize just how important the HPV vaccine really is
  46. Learn How to Respond to Inaccurate Posts about Vaccines on Social Media
  47. Know that vaccines are studied in pregnant women
  48. See the real dangers in following Jenny McCarthy’s advice
  49. Know that VAERS reports are often misused and understand that parents can report suspected adverse events to VAERS themselves
  50. Fill out a screening questionnaire for contraindications to vaccines

Still have questions? Read one or more of these Vaccine Books

And talk to your doctor about your concerns about vaccines.

Get Educated. Get Vaccinated.

More Ways To Get Educated About Vaccines

These websites and blogs will also help you get educated about vaccines and research any addition questions you might have:

Obstetric Tetanus Is Still a Thing in the United States

Yes, even though we have had a tetanus vaccine for over 80 years, obstetric tetanus is still a thing in the United States.

Obstetric Tetanus in Kentucky

According to a report from the CDC, in July 2016, an unvaccinated Amish woman in Kentucky developed “facial numbness and neck pain, which progressed over 24 hours to stiff neck and jaw and difficulty swallowing and breathing” about nine days after “she delivered a child at home, assisted by an unlicensed community childbirth assistant.”

She  was hospitalized for a month, during which time she had seizures and was on a mechanical ventilator to help her breath for a “prolonged” amount of time.

Fortunately, her baby didn’t also develop tetanus, even though the family refused a recommended dose of tetanus immunoglobulin that could prevent neonatal tetanus from developing.

Surprisingly, after this incident, only 12% of community members agreed to be vaccinated with a tetanus vaccine. One pregnant woman even refused to get vaccinated. This is even less than the response to the Ohio measles outbreak in 2014, when up to 28% of unvaccinated Amish members got vaccinated with an MMR vaccine.

Neonatal Tetanus

An 8-day old baby with neonatal tetanus born to an unvaccinated mother.
An 8-day old baby with neonatal tetanus born to an unvaccinated mother. (CC BY 3.0)

In addition to obstetric tetanus, getting tetanus during or right after a pregnancy, neonatal tetanus is a big concern for unvaccinated mothers. Just like if their mothers don’t get a flu or pertussis containing vaccine, without a tetanus vaccine, newborn babies don’t get any passive immunity and protection against tetanus.

In 2015, 34,019 newborns died from neonatal tetanus worldwide. Amazingly, that is down from 787,000 newborns in 1988 “through immunization of children, mothers, other women of reproductive age (WRA) and promotion of more hygienic deliveries and cord care practices.”

It is not all about hygiene though. Tetanus spores are everywhere. For example, in the Kentucky case, the CDC found no evidence of “birth trauma, unsterile conditions, or other complications.”

In Montana, the baby of an unvaccinated mother developed tetanus that was linked to a non-sterile clay that was given to them by a midwife for home umbilical cord care.

Fortunately, these kinds of cases are rare. There have probably been less than 40 cases of neonatal tetanus since the early 1970s, and only two since 1989, but they should still be a reminder of what could happen if we stop getting vaccinated.

Risky Umbilical Cord Practices

Adding to the risk of getting tetanus, the same moms who aren’t getting vaccinated and protected may be following unsafe umbilical cord care practices.

“…tetanus in neonates can result from umbilical cord colonization, particularly in countries with limited resources. This infection results from contamination of the umbilical separation site by Clostridium tetani acquired from a nonsterile device used to separate the umbilical cord during the peripartum period or from application of unhygienic substances to the cord stump.”

AAP – Umbilical Cord Care in the Newborn Infant – 2016

In countries that are still combating neonatal tetanus, we hear of mothers in rural areas  putting herbs, herbal pastes, chalk, powders, clay, oils, and even butter on their baby’s umbilical cord.

These natural substances are certainly not safer than more standard care, as they can be contaminated with something else that is natural – tetanus spores.

What natural things, and risky, things can you see recommended for umbilical cord care in developed countries? How about honey, goldenseal powder, Frankincense and myrrh oil, and Aztec Healing Clay?

You don’t feed honey to infants because of the risk of botulism spores, but you are supposed to put it directly on their umbilical stump?

Some midwifes even recommend ground rosemary or other dried herbs that you are actually supposed to sprinkle directly on your baby’s umbilical stump. The use of dried herbs is especially problematic. It is well known that these products are not sterile.

“Spore forming bacteria (B. cereus, C. perfringens) that are capable of causing foodborne disease when ingested in large numbers are frequently found in spices and herbs, but usually at low levels.”

Food Microbiology. Volume 26, Issue 1, February 2009, Pages 39–43

If dried herbs are also contaminated with tetanus spores (C. tetani), and you place them on an umbilical cord stump of a child whose mother wasn’t vaccinated against tetanus, then you unnecessarily increase the risk for neonatal tetanus.

Not that you would ever hear about this risk from anyone who pushes these practices or tells these moms to avoid getting vaccinated. What happened to informed consent?

And what happens as Andrew Wakefield‘s kids continue to grow up, move beyond getting measles, and begin to have kids? If they still aren’t vaccinated, they and their babies will be at risk for diseases that we thought we had gotten well controlled, like obstetric tetanus, neonatal tetanus, and congenital rubella syndrome.

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Faith Tabernacle Congregation church

The Faith Tabernacle Congregation church and their church run school were part of a large measles outbreak in Philadelphia, in which the church saw 486 cases of measles and 6 deaths among their members.

And this wasn’t in the 1940s or 50s, before we had a measles vaccine.

This happened in 1991.

There were other measles cases and deaths in the city and nationwide that year. In fact, between 1989 to 1991, there were 55,622 cases and 123 deaths in the United States, a big increase that was blamed on falling immunization rates.

What was different about the Faith Tabernacle Congregation church outbreak was that all of the children were unvaccinated and, as a faith-healing church, they refused medical care even once they got measles.

Health officials eventually had to get a court order to force the parents in the congregation to vaccinate their children.

Ultimately, only nine children from church got vaccinated though.

For More Information On The Faith Tabernacle Congregation:

Aborted Fetal Tissue

Vaccines do not contain aborted fetal tissue.

Some vaccines are made with fetal embryo fibroblast cells from cell lines that are derived (they can replicate infinitely) from two electively terminated pregnancies in the 1960s. That certainly does not mean that any vaccines contain aborted fetal tissue or fetal parts though.

The original cells aren’t even involved in making these vaccines. The cells used today have been copied, over and over again. And even then, they are removed before the final vaccine is produced.

For more information: