having been in a medical drug study for the past 6 years now, i can tell you that the amount of work that goes into testing these drugs before they are allowed into the public is tremendous. the suggestions that these vaccines are somehow dangerous is not only ridiculous, i think that it is fear-mongering.

it is certainly your choice as a parent, however, to use vaccinations. people who choose not to vaccinate always strike me as having done a ton of homework on the subject, and are doing what they feel is best. my beef is with the people who are running around telling parents that vaccinating their children is 'abuse', and that they are somehow poisoning their children because of some obscure study done in some faraway country that somehow shows that vaccinations cause everything from mental retardation to a slow and painful death.

There are certainly some cases of children reacting to vaccinations and that causes the scare. Of course, the greater risk of getting a disease and all those problems is very real.

The children who aren't vaccinated get their safety from teh fact that most are vaccinated. That more or less stops the spread of disease. The risk will be when a larger percentage are not vaccinated. Then disease will spread quickly and the ones at real risk are those with compromised systems; the ill, the elderly, the infirm

The majority of children respond favorably immunologically to purified attenuated virus based vaccines. Unfortunately, children have been damaged neurologically from vaccines. Having worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 28 years, I can assure you that side effects occur that are unexpected and unfortunate. If I were raising children today, I would not have them vaccinated under any condition, including being kicked out of school. The existing medical establishment has turned a blind eye to vaccine based complications, with the proviso...The few must suffer for the greater good. We should do better in cleaning up our vaccines and manage side effect and complications more effectively.

As a mother of an Autistic child you can imagine what we have gone through with all the groups that are accusing the vacinations for causing "autism". I have research, read, talked, searched and still would get my son vacinated if I had to do it over again. He was autistic at birth for reasons that we will never know, but God does, He is 13 now and I would not change a thing about him, he would not be Mitch if he was different in any way. I pray daily that he will have a good, productive life and find happiness and fufilment that we are all searching for. I would only change the poeple around us who do not understand children with "invisible disabilities". I hope God has a reason and a purpose for bringing Mitch to us as special as he is.

Our generation have lost perspective- few have seen what polio, diptheria or rubella can do to a child. The very fact that this topic is up for discussion proves that these infectious diseases are a scourge that is long forgotten. Maybe there needs to be a Cafe site showing how the lives of those kids who survive is affected.
The only way for an unvaccinated child to be 99% sure that they will never catch these diseases is if all other humans on the planet vaccinate their children. Please consider the Risk Management portion of your childs health- Does the risk of the Known disease exceed the risk of the Unknown?
Read both sides of the arguement before you draw your conclusion.Talk to someone who has worked in an underveloped country and has treated the survivors.

It seems to me that many of us have lost a real sense of perspective.
Vaccinations, innoculations are not absolute protection........... nor are trhey absolutely safe.
Just look at polio - as a youngster in the '45 to'55 era I can recall the terror of 'getting polio', some of my age group died before reaching adulthood, others recovered - some almost completerl.
By mid-high school the Salk vaccine was available to us........... parents did not have any doubts about the value of inocculation against polio
Keep your perspective in tune. If the innoculant is a proven product then chances are tiny there will be any adverse reaction.

my son has aspergers syndrome, so i too have had 'hmmm' moments when i hear the anti-immunizationists claim that he got it from my choice to immunize him as a child.

having discussed it with many health care professionals, however, i see that they have little to no proof of this claim. it is pure scare-mongering on their part, and it makes me angry to see them making all the parents who chose to immunize feel like horrible people because they made that choice.

having worked as a nurse, i too have seen the devastation caused by polio, and the very real threat of long term disability that comes from severe cases of measles, mumps, rubella, and diptheria. these diseases are virtually unknown in our society today because of these vaccines.

i would compare it to what we see with cancer today. if you could get your child vaccinated against cancer, would you?? THAT was what it was like with all those diseases before we had the vaccination.

and anyone who would DARE come up to me and say that vaccinating my child against cancer would be treated with the disdain that they deserved.

I think it depends partly on what diseases a person is being vaccinated for. I have questions about things like the chicken pox vaccine, because I'm hearing that it doesn't last long enough and people are ending up getting chicken pox as adults. I've also heard that the whooping cough vaccine has limited effectiveness, and that vaccinated mothers are not necessarily able to provide the same protection to their child via breastfeeding that mothers who have had whooping cough can. I've heard that many of the people who have had measles or mumps in the recent outbreaks were vaccinated already, but the vaccines aren't effective enough, and that it might be safer for younger children to get the real diseases rather than getting them when they are young adults. I don't know. I've heard that many of the deadly diseases were on the decline prior to the introduction of vaccines, simply because of better nutrition, hygenine, and natural human evolution. So I wonder. I wonder big picture, what it will be like long term.

Chicken pox is one of those diseases we take lightly. Everyone is fairly ok when their kids get it and you hear about people have chicken pox parties so the whole grade gets it over a month or so.

The reality is that chicken pox can have profound effects up to and including death. The major serious complication is Encephalitis.