I’d like to add another thought to the vaccine discussion on my last post. It’s prompted by two things: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s push for vaccinations in Third World countries and the sudden recollection of seemingly innocuous events, like the illness that hit one of Steve Bemis’ sons, in association with vaccination.
When you think about the problems of disease confronting Third World countries, vaccination makes a lot of sense. The problems of preventable disease are so huge that mass innoculation almost certainly will make things better than they were, even allowing for some bad reactions to the vaccines.
Well, those Third World countries are the U.S. 100 years ago. And vaccines did help eradicate disease in the U.S. Part of the problem may be that the effect was so dramatic that we fell in love with the seemingly magical power of vaccines. The article Dave Milano links to by Joseph Mercola captures this idea:
“Epidemiologic studies…have shown that as families improve their living conditions, hygiene, nutrition, literacy and education, the risk of life-threatening acute infectious, inflammatory diseases very much decreases. Families with poor living conditions, hygiene, nutrition and literacy would generally be most likely to benefit from vaccinations. Families with good living conditions, hygiene, nutrition and education probably would benefit from vaccinations very little or not at all. Individuals with a tendency to allergic or autoimmune diseases are LIKELY to BE HARMED BY VACCINATIONS.”
Our world has changed big time since many of the most important vaccines were developed, yet our bureaucratized and autocratic health care system can’t accept that our children’s vaccination needs likely have changed in the interim.
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I’ve been thinking some more about an exchange Anna, Steve Bemis, and I had a couple days ago about our cholesterol levels. (Yes, Steve, my test was a fasting test.)
Each of our recaps ended with something to the effect that cholesterol testing may well be meaningless in any event. Now we’re being told that homocysteine and C-reactive protein levels are possibly more important markers. Another reminder of how little we know about key areas of health assessment, though that doesn’t seem to impede the pharmaceutical companies, which continue promoting statins to reduce cholesterol levels as a multibillion dollar enterprise.
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Speaking of how little we know, or want to know, here are is a quote from a front-page Financial Times article today about how the number of American children being treated for type II diabetes more than doubled between 2001 and 2005: “The substantial increases uncovered by the analysis bolster the pharmaceutical industry’s push for new pills to treat type II diabetes…and the potentially vast market that is opening up because of childhood obesity.”
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And possibly a glimmer of reality from an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association about the decline in American health care: “ The US health care system is considered a dysfunctional mess… Today, the list of drugs and technologies for which new might not be better (and may be even worse) has expanded rapidly: postmenopausal hormone therapy, bare-metal stents, megadose antioxidants, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors for adolescents, Swan-Ganz catheters, gabapentin for bipolar disorder, erythropoietin for anemia, and the list goes on.”
It may be said that exposure to certain viruses confers some protection against allergic diseases such as atopic dermatitis, etc., but one must first survive exposure to the disease. Many will not survive exposure at all without at least some serious morbidity.
Clostridia are bacteria that occur everywhere in soil. Sail-makers in early America took advantage of this fact to immerse flax in wet soil to process it into sail cloth. Unfortunately, these organisms also cause serious diseases such as tetanus, botulism, gas-gangrene, and pseudomembranous colitis. Since tetanus is easy to come by, but difficult to cure, most of us get vaccinated every 10 years or so. Vaccinating during an outbreak of disease won’t work well because immunity takes time to develop.
I had a very sobering experience with this concept just this spring. I had purchased four bred does and brought them home last November. Normally I vaccinate against tetanus about 1 month before a doe gives birth, but these does kidded earlier than expected in January. I did vaccinate their kids at two weeks of age as I normally do, but didn’t think to vaccinate the adults. They were doing well and seemed fine. Then, in a 1-month period starting in late February, one after the other died of tetanus. I immediately vaccinated the three remaining ones after the first died, but to no avail. It was a heartbreaking experience. None of my other goats, which are regularly vaccinated, became ill.
Nothing comes without a down side. It’s a matter of mitigating risk. Communicable diseases such as tetanus, polio, diphtheria and typhoid come with a pretty hefty amount of risk.
I am sorry to hear about your goats. They are one of my favorite animals, and I appreciate your heartache.
How do you know they died of tetanus? Tetanus is not communicable, so they would all have to have gotten cut and come in contact with the organisms that live in the soil that can lead to symptoms of tetanus. It seems pretty unlikely that they all had the same exposure at the same time. Did they all have deep cuts or punctures?
As you probably know, tetanus is contracted by getting a very deep wound, the proverbial rusty nail, and contracting the C. tetani bacteria, which is omnipresent in the soil. Interestingly, many people who do not have symptoms of tetanus have the bacteria floating around their bodies (which is actually true of just about any disease-causing organism), whether that is from routine vaccination or not I do not know. It’s infinitely more interesting to me why some people don’t get sick than anything else, but that’s another matter…
Just as a side note, what’s interesting about the rusty nail association is it has nothing to do with the rust. Rusty nails just tend to be outside, which is where the bacteria are.
<<Unvaccinated individuals do not have a high probability of contracting communicable diseases in first-world countries, because the majority of the population is vaccinated.>>
I would be interested to see a study — and not an epidemiological one — that demonstrates this is true. I have yet to find controlled research to confirm this. We actually have no long-term research, none that I know of anyway, that shows that vaccinated populations live longer and/or healthier lives than unvaccinated populations.
And in a third country or first, I would take sanitation over a vaccine any day. There are countless children in India who have been vaccinated against polio a half dozen to a dozen times, and they are still contracting the disease. Why is this?
<<When a large segment of the population remains unvaccinated, however, epidemics occur.>>
Actually, epidemics of disease occur due to many factors and sometimes are not affected by vaccine rates in the way we think. Take the recent mumps outbreak in Iowa last year. Almost without exception, those who got sick were vaccinated, most "fully" so.
Disease in general is cyclic, as it serves a very important role in populations. Whether we find that a palitable fact or not does not change it. It shows up where there is stress, of any nature. The healthiest will always have the lowest incident rate, and show the fewest symptoms.
What we have done as a species, not only to ourselves but to all other species with whom we share this small and precious planet, is successively weaken each generation by more and more insults: endocrine disruptors everywhere, dirty air, dirty water, habitat degradation.
Disease is a balancing force, and always shows up where there is susceptibilty and mistunement. That is true whether we vaccinate or not, and it may very well be that the vaccines themselves are just another layer of insult.
http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/Articles/Vaccine_Genocide.html