Life on the Road

I just read a disturbing post from Amber on her Homeschool Diva blog.  Apparently there’s a new drug out there that’s being foisted on girls as a vaccine against cervical cancer, which has not been adequately tested (and the results of the tests that were done are alarming!).

I’ll copy the main text of the article, then continue below with my thoughts…

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[Amber] received this updated research article from [her] fab doc Dr. Erika Schwartz.

“The public interest group Judicial Watch has just reported 371 serious adverse events in patients who received Merck’s cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil, including three deaths.

You may remember I exposed this HPV vaccine earlier this year as “an act of aggression against our daughters who are becoming victims of pharmaceutical greed.”

In February I wrote: “The HPV vaccine has only been tested for five years on possibly as low as 100,000 ten year old girls in Africa. No one knows what will happen to those girls or our girls in the five, 10 or 20 years after the vaccine has been administered.The only science here is the real live testing about to be done on our daughters, who are technically, like the African ten year olds, the guinea pigs. Remember Lyme vaccine? What happened to that cure-all? It killed a few people and was quickly taken off the market.”

Merck invested hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying and marketing the drug and almost persuaded Texas and some other states to mandate its use on sixth-grade schoolgirls. Only a revolt by parents and community groups put a stop to this insanity.

As of May 11, 1,637 side effects were reported to the FDA through the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), the group said. Judicial Watch received the information through a Freedom of Information Act request. Approximately 77 percent of the adverse reactions were typical, including pain at the injection site, itching, fever, nausea and dizziness, the group noted.

However, one female patient died of a blood clot three hours after receiving the vaccine, the group said. A 19-year-old patient died of heart failure partially caused by large blood clots two weeks after getting the vaccine. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, both patients were taking birth control pills, which can cause clotting. In addition, a 12-year-old patient died of heart complications six days after receiving Gardasil, according to the VAERS reports.

Eighteen of the 42 women who received Gardasil while pregnant experienced adverse side effects, ranging from spontaneous abortion to fetal abnormalities. Clinical trials used in the FDA’s review of Gardasil last year showed five cases of birth defects among women who received the vaccine within 30 days of conception. Gardasil is not recommended for pregnant women, according to the product’s label.

Merck recently submitted a supplemental biologic license application to the FDA to market Gardasil to prevent vaginal and vulvar cancers.”

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Lyme vaccine?  What about Thalidamide??

I know vaccines are a hot topic in parenting circles, anyway, and we each have to make the choices we think are best for even the “regular” childhood immunizations…

Do you really want to know? 

I had Nick vaccinated on the normal schedule, withthe inactive Pertussus component of the vaccine, since the standard one was shown to be the worst of the offenders at that time.  Although we had no horrible effects, I was troubled looking back at his baby book that we accept a kid being sick and miserable for a day or more with a disease we intentionally gave them!

I do think that some vaccinating is necessary for “the greater good.”  As more and more parents are choosing not to immunize their children, the country slides further from the safety of the “herd immunity” we had created, and even now outbreaks of these diseases are beginning to show up.  My latest research led us to choose a slightly different course for Jewel.  We do intend to immunize her, but we did not start at birth.  A child’s immune system develops largely over the first two years of life, so waiting until after that point gives them a chance to protect themselves from the vaccines’ onslaught and better avoid complications.  Time will tell…

Neither child had or will have the chicken pox vaccine, which I am still convinced is just plain silly.  Heck, it’s harder on kids than the childhood disease we all had!  Nick had chicken pox before it came out, so it was never an issue.  It may be with Jewel when she’s old enough to want to go to summer camp, but we’ll cross that bridge.

I let them drink out of the garden hose, too…