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Last week, my first blog on this very sensitive topic called "8 Reasons I Haven't Vaccinated my Daughter" went viral on MindBodyGreen, being shared almost 50,000 times in the first week. There has been such an outpouring of support from all over the world that has been very humbling. Given the imminent direction vaccination policy in going, it seems like a good time to speak up.
The original article I wrote had 15 reasons, but after editing it was turned into eight. Here are eight more that didn't make the cut, that I thought GreenMedInfo readers might like.
1. I can't trust vaccine studies to be true.
We all love studies, right? Let's start off with one that I believe may be the most important study of all. This gem caught my attention because it examined the "undue industry influence that distorts healthcare research, strategy, expenditure and practice." The conclusion reads, "to serve its interests, the industry masterfully influences evidence-base production, evidence synthesis, understanding of harms issues, cost-effectiveness evaluations, clinical practice guidelines and healthcare professional education and also exerts direct influences on professional decisions and health consumers."
The key word there is masterfully, because it wouldn't be masterful if everyone knew it was going on. The fact that marketing is spun to be made to look like pure science is the true "mastery".
Any one of these factors in isolation might be enough to make anyone doubt whose interests are being served by pro-vaccine research, but all together and working synergistically? Given the scope of this conclusion, it seems unlikely that a doctor or hospital will provide the most objective opinion, given their exposure to the 'direct influences' from pharmaceutical companies that have paid over $11bn in fines in the last three years for criminal wrongdoing.
2. I believe the benefits of vaccines have been exaggerated.
I already hear you saying, "But James, how can you say that about vaccines? We all know that vaccines have saved millions of lives." Well, when you talk about saving lives, you are talking about reducing mortality. And when we look at the mortality presumably impacted by vaccines, we see a different picture than we have been told is true. There is no doubt that sanitation, nutrition and socioeconomic factors played a much greater role in reducing mortality from communicable diseases than vaccines.
Graph Courtesy of HealthSentinel.com
Prime example: measles. Mortality reduced 99.5% before the vaccine was introduced in 1963. Notice also, scarlet fever follows the same pattern of decline without the use of a vaccine ever. Even polio deaths were reduced 47% in the USA and 55% in the UK before the first vaccine was introduced, and were falling. How far could we have gone without vaccines? We will never know.
Since my article has come out, Dr. Suzanne Humpries has written a very well thought out piece on this exact topic, you can find it here. I challenge anyone to read that and still be 100% pro-vaccine.