Guest Author - Lisa Binion
Diphtheria
Diphtheria, a highly contagious bacterial disease, used to be one of the most feared childhood diseases. It is spread by the coughing or sneezing of infected persons and by touching items they have handled. Sore throat, headache, nausea, coughing and a fever of around 104 degrees are symptoms of this disease. Swelling in the throat and larynx that makes swallowing and breathing difficult are caused by dirty-white patches that can be seen on the tonsils and in the throat.
In 1980, only five cases were reported in the United States. Is the low number of cases due to the DPT vaccine? Well, before the vaccine was even available the number of cases of diphtheria were already diminishing.
Today the chances of your child contracting diphtheria are very unlikely, about as likely as your child being run over in the street by an elephant. Yet most children are still immunized heavily against it before entering school.
There was an outbreak of diphtheria in Chicago, Illinois in 1969. There were sixteen victims - 4 had been fully immunized against this disease and 5 others had received one or more doses of the vaccine. In another outbreak in which 3 people died, one of them had been fully immunized, as had 14 of the 23 carriers.
Whooping Cough
The first symptoms of whooping cough, an extremely contagious sickness, are easily confused with those of the common cold. They are a runny nose with sneezing, listlessness, loss of appetite and teary eyes which are sometimes accompanied by a mild fever. Later on the sickness will lead to a severe cough during the night, which may also occur during the day time hours. This illness is called whooping cough because each coughing bout ends with a whopping intake of breath. Sometimes vomiting also occurs.
This is a very serious illness and can be life-threatening, especially in infants. There is no specific treatment, but bed rest is definitely a good thing.
The vaccine was introduced in 1936 when the number of deaths from whooping cough had already began to diminish. It has been one of the most controversial of vaccinations. There are serious doubts as to how effective it is because many cases of whooping cough occur in those who have been vaccinated.
It is thought that perhaps the decline in cases of whooping cough are due to better living conditions, not the vaccine. Since the decline in death from cases of whooping cough had declined by 80% before the vaccine was made available, that makes perfect sense.
Tetanus
Tetanus, also called lockjaw, is a very rare disease. How rare is this disease? For a three-year period during the 1980s, only six cases were reported. None of these ended in fatalities.
The whole reasoning behind vaccinations is that if you contract a disease, your body will build up an immunity to that disease and you won’t run the risk of catching it again. Tetanus is caused by a bacteria, not a virus. The body does not build up an immunity to bacteria. Still, cases of tetanus don’t pop up very often. You have a much better chance of being struck by lightning than contracting this illness.
How will you know if you have tetanus? Your jaw and neck will be stiff, it will be hard to swallow and you will be irritable. Later on, you may have spasms in your neck, back and abdominal muscles. You will recover, though.
The Vaccination
All three of the above diseases are vaccinated against in one shot, the DPT or DTaP. Both are dangerous. I believe the hazards of subjecting yourself or your child to this vaccination are far more dangerous than any, if there are any, benefits the vaccine might have. At the end of this article, I give the web address for a site that encourages parents to think twice before subjecting their child to this vaccine or any others. It contains a wealth of information on vaccines and reports of adverse reactions that have occurred. It is well worth checking out.
What are the side effects of the vaccine? The most common side effects are fever, fretfulness and vomiting. This vaccine is also thought to be the cause of several neurological disorders (hyperactivity, learning disorders, autism), seizures, and anaphylactic reactions.
The adverse side effects should be no surprise when you look at what is put into the vaccine - formaldehyde, aluminum hydroxide, aluminum phosphate, thimerosal (mercury), and polysorbate 80. There is no safe amount of formaldehyde or mercury that can injected into the human body. So what are we doing injecting it into our children over and over again? From July 1990 to November 1993, there were over 12,000 adverse reports associated with the DPT vaccine. More than 400 of these ended in death.
It’s a shame when there is a larger risk of adverse effects from a vaccination willingly received than there is from the disease itself. Please educate yourself about each and every vaccine before you allow your child to be subject to any of them.
The following website is extremely informative about all of the vaccines.
http://www.thinktwice.com/
