To Vax or Not to Vax?

Is not the question – unless you qualify for a religious exemption.The safety, necessity and effectiveness of each and every vaccine in each and every case, is the just one question.

The false correlation between vaccination and autism was unfortunate, because there does not seem to be any direct relationship. It was unfortunate because it wasn’t provably true and started a kind of hysteria, and unfortunate because it has become an obstacle to looking at vaccines and the vaccination process and the vaccine makers with a forward looking eye.

Here are just some of the questions I have never seen answered in the popular media that ran the so-called autism link without getting a second source from someone of high repute. The primary source, a now-disgraced Dr., was sensationalized. Except that the backfire now covers the entire subject beyond whether to vax or not. The whole subject is off limits, or one is thought to be an anti-vaxxer for asking.

My Questions:

You do not need a kid with autism to look at the current vaccination situation askance. Hep B in the heel of every newborn? That disgusts me. If that one is so obvious, what about other vaccines that aren’t so obvious?

What is new and improved in old vaccine formulas? How effective is pertussis, really?

How much vaccination is too much vaccination?

How does the immune system work, anyway and what else stimulates it besides vaccination or getting the disease? Oh yeah – and breast milk.

Do they still use allergens like egg yolks to produce the vaccine?

Do they still use mercury or another poison to preserve? Why are all vaccines preserved, can’t some, at least, be made fresh or without preservatives?

Who is available to answer questions like these?

Who are the companies making vaccines?

How much R&D do they do, or have access to?

Should companies that make vaccines be for-profit companies? Should they get subsidies as big oil and big farming do, to make sure they stay on the cutting edge of mass diseases without trying to over-vaccinate for profit?

When was the last worldwide study of vaccines and their individual effectiveness? If this has been done, why is it not presented to the public as news? If it is not being done, that should be news too.

These are question I will research online because I like to answer my own questions, but they are also food for thought for people taking the plunge into such things without a clue about what is really going on. And I mean a lot more people than Christian Scientists and me do not know what is going on.

The Food Revolution

Even though you may have no respect for the kind of Christian Scientist I was when I joined, then left the church, maybe being a halfassed Christian Scientist makes a good way to transition away from being a proper and good Christian Scientist as no doubt, many of you once were.

Generic Medicines.

It is my hope that if anybody to whom it is relevant reads this, they will not innocently embrace American Medicine as it is practiced today. Especially beware of medicines that aren’t generic yet. That patent period, when they sell to the public at the highest prices is when the real human testing is done. Therefore, what I do is avoid patent medicines (funny term, huh?). No only are they outrageously expensive, they are not fully tested on human beings when they hit the market. That is why so many medicines are recalled. So my rule of thumb is take generic medicines only.

Instead, let food be your medicine. That is a rule of thumb too. I take medicines for atrial fibrillation, to slow the heart rate down, and a blood thinner for both the a-fib and mechanical heart valve I received in 2006. (The reason: An attack of scarlet fever in 1947 that left me with a very slight heart murmur that didn’t get bad enough to fix until 2006). I am very happy to be able to stay in balance with these meds, though it did take a few years to get the formula just right. I research every med I take and pay close attention to what it does for me before I fully accept it. But, in general, chronic conditions like obesity that goes diabetic are especially amenable to the correct diet for that condition.

Did you ever think that eating food could be science-based? After all, you really don’t need science to eat right, which would be fresh and frozen foods: veggies, protein, and fat. Avoid products with added sugar. That’s it.

You don’t need to know more to eat right, but when you look at how our fresh food is produced, there are a lot of things, amiss. The switch in the 1940’s to using chemical fertilizers and pesticides. They seemed so scientific, everyone was in favor of it, but it has also become a matter of money and jobs to the manufacturers, since then. Artificial agriculture was considered essential, it was subsidized heavily and still is. However, it has knocked almost every family farm out of business in the last 70 years. The chemical companies that make fertilizers and pesticides for big farms have a lot of political clout, which they happen to be focusing on Vermont which is passing a GMO labeling law as I write. They want a rider that makes the chemical companies free from liability.  ??? !!!

There are a lot of people fighting this right now, so Vermont may become a model for a nationwide label GMO products. GMO might sound fine right now, just as families used DDT inside homes in the 40’s to get rid of flies. Now we know better. GMO’s are not science-based, they are mostly modified to enable the plant to withstand huge doses of herbicides and pesticides. They are the completely narcissistic result of  forcing their formulas on the industry, instead of inventing new things that benefit people. They have corrupted themselves into some kind of incestuous pornography of chemical brews that damage people, and they can not afford to care about that and still make gargantuan profits.

So, on to the Food Revolution.

http://summit2016.foodrevolution.org/resources/?utm_campaign=frs16lrs&utm_medium=email&utm_source=email-automated&utm_content=1778&utm_term=existing-email-list

All during the rise of chemical farming, there has been a coterie of people collectively labeled as “health food nuts”. But inside that pejorative term are many serious scientists and MD doctors, who have decried the rise of chemical farming since the beginning. They are interested in nutrition, science-based nutrition and for one thing, fat is good for you. Low fat/high carb diets have been the establishment blab since Pritikin came out with it, what 40-50 years ago? But now we know that dietary cholesterol has nothing to due with cholesterol levels in the blood and animal fat is good for you, its trans fats that are bad. That is what science supports.

Medicine should be science based; so should growing foods. We know that mass overcrowded chickens and caged pigs fed antibiotics daily so they can survive under those conditions, are awful, but that is what you have to do  to make a profit. And their manure has become a health hazard itself. It has no use.The ultimate answer is probably local family farms everywhere there is good farm land. Then they fertilize with their own manure. DUH.

Why is this taking a huge multi-decade clash with the corporate structure to fix? Why are people like Dr Joseph Mercola and Dr Oz, vilified? Not to mention the scads of people with nutrition degrees and other PhDs. Here’s one who expects you to understand her science-based vocabulary. FoundMyFitness.com. One and all these people advocate for organic foods grown without chemicals. The organic movement is growing. I can get organic food at the Safeway and the Kroger’s and the Walmart (Were I to shop there at all) It is also among this group of people that you will find the actual science of many of the vaccine formulas and the lack of science based research in their manufacture.

I think my path with this blog is to present the third way. Not Christian Science, but not an all out cave in to corporate patent medicine and drugs, either. Food as medicine is the third way. And that way also leads to the requirement of corporate and planetary discipline.

 

 

 

 

My kids’ Health 2

Childhood Disease and Vaccinations

I nursed each of my kids until they were about two. I knew they had immunity to whatever I had immunity to, but illness never crossed my mind in those years. I have practically no childhood illnesses to discuss. The kids were healthy. When they appeared to be drooping, they were allowed to ask for a day off from school. When they complained about a sore throat, they gargled salt water and stayed home.

Sometimes they felt low feverish and so were put to bed, fed soup and encouraged to sleep. I never even thought about vaccinations. When they began school, my hubby got an exemption because he was CS. I will say that all the kids at their school were healthy. No one ever got a major childhood illness like chicken pox or measles at their school. Now I think that my kids were safe with herd immunity.

But there came a day when the son broke a bone when he was in middle school. The hospital asked if he was vaccinated and we said no. So they vaccinated all three and had us come back until they were done. My older daughter was 14, the son 11, the youngest, 2. The reason my hubby agreed was that I said it would protect the kids from other people’s fear.

Eat right.

My hubby works in the arts and we never had a steady 9-5 job with health insurance. However, about the same time I found out hubby was CS in our early dating life, I became interested in nutrition and a good diet.

The big thing at the time was that sugar was bad because it was a highly refined white substance, so I quit sugar. My dad was diabetic so I was raised without it anyway. I am sure this step was the single best step I ever could have taken for my health and my families’ health. We had no sugar in the house for decades. The kids had homemade birthday cakes made with honey. they ate sugar elsewhere, as I did as a child, but dessert was not on the menu. Fruit was.

I became an expert on why refined sugar is bad, but will not repeat that entire rant today. I read books about the history of sugar. The history is the reason for slavery, so sugar is way-bad karma, too. Then, once I heard an interview with Eric Clapton shortly after he cleaned up. The interviewer asked what his earliest drug of choice was and he said, “Sugar”. I had been saying that sugar was a drug, not a food, for years, but always got blank stares. Few people I knew were of a mind to give up sugar. But, sugar is not a food. It has no food value except high glycemic calories. It is a highly refined white substance that has killed more people than any other drug in history. If you look at it as a drug, you will understand what I am saying.

This stance, which has been a my hard stance since 1966, has led me away from all refined and processed foods. No white flour for me! No boxed foods. Fresh meat, fresh veggies and fresh fruit was our diet and still is. I never paid attention to the low fat craze and I am glad it is over, because fat is good.  Full fat yogurt. Butter. Heavy cream. cottage cheese. All cheeses. Not too much meat, but veggies and fruits- all you want!

My hubby and kids continue in excellent health to this day at ages 74, 47, 44, and 35. I have never given 100% credit to Christian Science for this good health. I think the good diet did most of it.

Plus exercise.

I put my kids in dance, karate and gymnastics and worked them hard several times a week. Punishments for squabbling etc. was always to run around the house X times or do X number of sit-ups or push-ups. I was determined that my kids’ bad behavior was redirected into physical activity. I plumb wore them out almost every day. My oldest at about age 9, one day asked me to count how many sit ups she could do. I did and she quit around 350. She did them for fun.

My kids always slept like logs.

Eat right, exercise and sleep. That is what keeps you healthy. If Christian Science contributes a positive outlook in addition to the above, that’s fine.

 

My Kids’ Health While Growing Up 1

One. The Births.
I was a spontaneously practicing Christian Scientist during the years of my childrens’ births. My hubby was a 4th gen CS, and I followed his practices, plus I read S&H cover to cover. I had them all at home with the company of some unafraid women (and my husband), one of whom was the designated midwife.

For my first child, I certainly was not afraid. I knew at least a million years of ancestors gave birth successfully so there was no reason I shouldn’t also. I read about the La Maze method in a book and realized it was based on breathing through the contractions. Wow. That is something I knew a bit about. I was a Graham trained dancer. Meaning Martha Graham, through the legacy of my teacher and mentor, Ethel Butler. Graham technique is based on contract, release, breathe out, breathe in. I had practiced it for about 6-7 years at that point. I knew how to contract about any muscle group in my body and release it, though of course the curved back contraction that takes place in the gut and lower back, is the one Graham technique emphasizes. I had what has become popularly known fairly recently as a “strong core”. Childbirth? Easy. I felt thoroughly prepared.

I was able to practice the breathing through the earliest contractions and by the time the intensity started, I was totally in the rhythm of excluding the rest of my body from the contraction and release action going on the gut. I think I may have hyperventilated once or twice, but each passed in a wave of extra oxygen.

When the intensity started, my husband began to read the Chapter on Creation. I actually listened to it and got really high on the ideas of a spiritual basis to the universe. It was not an LSD flashback, but LSD had prepared me to yield to the intensity and go with the flow, etc. I also realized it was a super-cosmic occasion, and really psychedelic, because I had had them previously on LSD trips. LSD had taught me there were cosmic events and we were all interconnected to them. I thought I knew what Mary Baker Eddy was talking about with a spiritual basis for creation.

My first, a daughter was born in seven and a half hours. Everything WAS perfect. We let the cord drain before it was cut. There were jokes about me eating the placenta. Ha.Ha.

The birth of my son was a little more complicated because he was breech from the earliest days. I actually went to a medical practice that did home births when I realized that, but they told me the baby was breech and therefore a cesarean was called for. I told them I was sorry they did not want to participate in the birth and left. (This visit later became the proof I was pregnant when I applied for a birth certificate, so it did have its value.)

Anyway, My third gen CS Mother-in Law had given me a book called “Midwifery”, published in England where home births were still acceptable, during my first pregnancy, but I hardly looked at it then. I looked up breech births in it when I got home and saw how the English midwives did it. Later, I found a Police Emergency Booklet that told a policeman how to deliver a breech birth. The advice was get on the knees with support under the upper body and deliver from that position. It was an explanation without fear with specific instructions. Perfect. This is what we did.

The birth was kind of spectacular. He broke my bag of water and came through foot first. (Later called his first karate kick) My “midwife” (same as for the daughter) helped the other leg out and the baby slid out up to his forehead with a bit of help with the arms. My sister said at that point. “Oh. Just. Push”. So I did, and later discovered he was a ten pound baby and if he had presented the full diameter of his head, I probably would have torn. As it was he slipped out like the reverse of putting a shirt on a baby and I stretched less than for my first birth. Of course no pain, I knew how to breathe. That labor took four and a half hours and was in time for the super bowl game at hubby’s request.

My third pregnancy, I was actually a member of the church. I had a practitioner on the job, who basically thought I should go to a hospital, and I actually hired a midwife. Everything went well and when I went into labor, the practitioner and the midwife were called. The baby was born in 2.5 hours, also weighing in at 10 pounds. A girl. There was one point where I wanted to get into some position and the midwife said no. Well, my sister and friends argued with her and I got my way. I was mildly disappointed in the midwife. She didn’t do anything my friends and family hadn’t done in the other births, except boss me around. I realized her only function had been to block other peoples’ fear of my audacity to trust my athletic body and perfect health to perform exactly as nature intended. I had gotten SO MUCH fear and negative feedback about the first two births, if people found out how I had my first two, I did it within expectations the third time, but it wasn’t as much fun.

I also must say that when I joined the mother church, all the cosmic left and the mundane began. I always thought I was a better example of Christian Science before I joined the Mother Church and found out how Christian Scientists act out their beliefs. The culture of the church caused me to contract and sink down into mundane expressions of spirituality. I lost interest in CS and reading the lesson with its repetitive quotes, and quit attending the branch church. After a while I quit it. They really did not care. But the Mother Church did. I had to get quite firm in multiple letters to quit that one.
Next time. The story of how we got our kids vaccinated. and their health throughout childhood.

“Don’t be a Candy-Ass and Shit Flows Downhill”

At the end of a summer visit from Nana, my 3 year old twin grand-niece and nephew were asked by their parents what they learned from their Nana that summer. The boy said, “Don’t be a candy-ass” and the girl said, “Shit flows downhill”.

The parents were moderately shocked and asked how they learned that. The grandson said, “When my ball landed at the bottom of the water, I was afraid to go get it and Nana said, “Don’t be a candy-ass”, so I went and got it.” The grand daughter said, “when you were disagreeing, I interrupted and asked something, then you both got mad at me and I didn’t do ANYTHING”. Nana told me, “Shit flows downhill”.

The parents thought it was so funny, they have told the story ever since. I just had to put it here.

I am not an Anti-Vaxxer, BUT beware anyway.

This is another of my series of posts regarding vaccination. I am not an anti-vaxxer, but I do think the entire vaccination process, the ingredients of the vaccine, length of effectiveness of each type of vaccine, and who REALLY should get one when, should be totally transparent and any influence by corporate drug makers on the system, should also be transparent, which it is not at present.

First off, let me say that I got my children all their vaccinations, even though I was a member of The Mother Church at the time. My reasoning was that measles may not be real, but vaccinations protect others from fear of the disease.

Second, as a former Christian Scientist and present wife of a member of the Mother Church, I have found medicine to be full of pitfalls for the inexperienced. Right now, at this point in time, medicine is characterized by greed, a lack of basic scientific studies, especially about nutrition, and unsupported points of view. Doctors are 99% influenced by fads, like the low fat fad diet that pushed more carbohydrates in the diet and less fat, that is just now being debunked. And I mean thoroughly debunked.  And doctors preach whatever the AMA official line is, whether it is science-based or not. The AMA without admitting wrongdoing is now admitting the low fat diet is not the universally best diet,  and that saturated fat is not bad for people, after all. Eggs are now OK to eat again after decades of banishment for the cholesterol content, which is now known to be irrelevant to cholesterol blood levels.

With a crazy medical system like the current one, it is best to eat right,  especially low sugar, and  avoid processed foods with a lot of non-food ingredients in the label. (You think they ever tested the safety of any of those ingredients? Think again, not unless they were sued for injuries due to the ingredient.) Proper exercise is essential to good health and proper sleep. Save the medical system for infections, and body mechanics, like broken bones or brain surgery, etc. Seriously. Our current medical system is corrupt, greed-based and dangerous.

Suddenly, I have a good reason to examine the safety of current, approved, medical recommendations such as vaccines.

My youngest is pregnant. She is a very healthy person and intends to use the midwifery branch of a local hospital.

It was this blog and the people accessed from it that brought up the vaccination topic and I believe I have commented on this topic before. Since then, I have pursued the literature available online both from the standard medical point of view – and alternative points of view.

One of the things I learned is that it is now standard practice in hospitals to give newborns a hepatitis b vaccine in the heel. I mean within minutes of birth. This happens whether the mother had the hep-b vaccine or not. I was stunned at this. Why is it necessary? I can’t see any reason why, except that it made it onto the vaccination schedule, and the pros who  give vaccines are not about to question ANY vaccine added to the load.

My daughter said she will have her baby at home, if the midwives insist on the vaccine. I don’t blame her. #1, she had the vaccine herself and has acquired immunity. #2 she is going to nurse the baby and thus anything she has immunity for is transferred to the baby during the nursing stage. When nursing is tapering off is when to start a nursing child on vaccines. Now why have I never seen that online? It is as though nursing mothers do not exist.

 Another vaccination thought: Pertussis.

What is going on with the pertussis vaccine? That’s whooping cough. (Why the ad with the grandma who secretly harbors live pertussis germs?) The number of cases of pertussis has been rising annually for a number of years after an extreme initial from when it was first introduced. It is far more common than measles. I could not copy the government-generated chart connected to the following link, but it details the numbers of pertussis occurrences by state in 2013-2014. And the number of deaths, 13, most of them in babies under 3 months and adults over 55.  The babies were, no doubt, bottle fed and thus had no ongoing immunity. Pertussis doesn’t happen in nursing babies, even if the mom’s vaccination is not recent.

http://www.cdc.gov/pertussis/downloads/pertuss-surv-report-2014.pdf

Well, it also appears that pertussis immunity only lasts a few years. That is one vaccine that is reapplied throughout the child’s vaccination career, but stops when one becomes an adult. I wonder if an an adult gets pertussis once, if it confers immunity? Obviously adults can get it and not die or even have a risk of dying unless they are immune-compromised and over 55. It seems that from age 4 until 55, there is no risk of death from this disease.

Pertussis is part of the famous DPT vaccination, and in spite of all my comments, I do not object to the vaccine, I am just noting that vaccination conferred immunity -for pertussis- does not last and adults do not get regular booster shots, so the level of the germ in the adult population is way higher than for measles. I guess the only way to cut the current rate of incidence any further would require all adults get re-vaccinated every 2-3 years for the sake of the bottle-fed babies 1-3 months old. I have no opinion on this, I am just noting the general facts about this vaccine.

 This is the CDC recommendation, but I disagree. There is no science-based research on this topic.Also, the effects of stimulating a pregnant woman’s immune system have not been studied enough, but it does not appear to be a good thing, though I will not discuss that at this time.

The following is from my favorite online health nut, actually a science-based medical doctor, who teaches that proper food, exercise and sleep will keep you healthy and also restore health where one of those three elements was lacking. And, notably, this is the only way to improve any chronic disease. Diet. Exercise. Sleep.  The basis of all good health and always recommended by every medical group who recommends to the public. This is always one excellent researcher of the dangers of iatrogenic disease. The following  quote pertains to the pertussis vaccine only.

Glaring Lack of Safety Testing

You have to look no further than information in the vaccine manufacturer product inserts and posted online by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to quickly answer that question.

FACT:Drug companies did not test the safety and effectiveness of giving influenza or Tdap vaccine to pregnant women before the vaccines were licensed in the U.S.^{12, 13} and there is almost no data on inflammatory or other biological responses to these vaccines that could affect pregnancy and birth outcomes.¹⁴

FACT:The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lists influenza and Tdap vaccines as either Pregnancy Category B or C biologicals,¹⁵ which means that adequate testing has not been done in humans to demonstrate safety for pregnant women and it is not known whether the vaccines can cause fetal harm or affect reproduction capacity. The manufacturers of influenza and Tdap vaccines state that human toxicity and fertility studies are inadequate and warn that the influenza and Tdap vaccines should “be given to a pregnant woman only if clearly needed.”^{16, 17, 18}

FACT:There are ingredients in influenza and pertussis containing Tdap vaccines that have not been fully evaluated for potential genotoxic¹⁹ or other adverse effects on the human fetus developing in the womb that may negatively affect health after birth, including aluminum adjuvants, mercury containing (Thimerosal) preservatives and many more bioactive and potentially toxic ingredients.^{20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29}

FACT:There are serious problems with outdated testing procedures for determining the potency and toxicity of pertussis vaccines and some scientists are calling for limits to be established for specific toxin content of pertussis-containing vaccines.³⁰

FACT:There are no published biological mechanism studies that assess pre-vaccination health status and measure changes in brain and immune function and chromosomal integrity after vaccination of pregnant women or their babies developing in the womb.³¹

FACT:Since licensure of influenza and Tdap vaccines in the U.S., there have been no well designed prospective case controlled studies comparing the health outcomes of large groups of women who get influenza and pertussis containing Tdap vaccines during pregnancy either separately or simultaneously compared to those who do not get the vaccines, and no similar health outcome comparisons of their newborns at birth or in the first year of life have been conducted.

Safety and effectiveness evaluations that have been conducted are either small,³² retrospective,^{33, 34} compare vaccinated women to vaccinated women³⁵ or have been performed by drug company or government health officials using unpublished data.³⁶

FACT:The FDA has licensed Tdap vaccines to be given once as a single dose pertussis booster shot to individuals over 10 or 11 years old. The CDC’s recommendation that doctors give every pregnant woman a Tdap vaccination during every pregnancy – regardless of whether a woman has already received one dose of Tdap – is an off-label use of the vaccine.³⁷

FACT:Injuries and deaths from pertussis-containing vaccines are the most compensated claims in the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) and influenza vaccine injuries and deaths are the second most compensated claim.³⁸

FACT:A 2013 published study evaluating reports of acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM) following vaccination in the U. S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) and in a European vaccine reaction reporting system found that seasonal influenza vaccine was the most frequently suspected cause of brain inflammation after 18 years old, representing 32 percent of the total cases reported, and pertussis containing DTaP was among the vaccines most frequently associated with brain inflammation in children between birth and age five.³⁹

FACT:When a pregnant woman is harmed by an influenza or Tdap vaccine, drug companies selling the vaccines in the U.S., doctors and other vaccine providers are shielded from vaccine injury lawsuits⁴⁰ but it is unclear whether vaccine injuries sustained by an unborn child in the womb will qualify for federal vaccine injury compensation.⁴¹

Honestly, if the medical establishment was honest, it would have done all the needed studies and answered all the problems illustrated by the list of facts. Why isn’t an honest job being done? Could it be that the profit motive skims off the money better suited to doing these safety studies, before a distribution to the shareholders and the self-administration of bonuses by the ones who collect the money?

Our medical system right now is dominated by giant drug companies who are routinely found to have lied, cheated, and fooled many a customer. They push their newest drugs mercilessly, and every measure shows their bottom line is profit, not the consumer’s best interests.

The vaccine companies with the support of the CDC, are on a roll and will tar anyone who questions their procedures, administration schedule, or ingredients with an anti-vaxxer label.

But it seems to me that there are good reasons to question every aspect of the vaccine market, from the manufacturing process, to the determination of what vaccines are needed when, and whether they all tested by double-blind studies or whatever is the best measure for the vaccine being tested.