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Anti-Vaccination Hysteria Causing Outbreaks

Contributed by: Ralph Dosser on 7/1/2008

When people stop vaccinating their children, disease breaks out. It's that simple.

The biggest recent case has been Nigeria, where In 2003, Islamic religious leaders called on their followers to boycott UN-provided polio vaccines, claiming they were contaminated. UN and Nigerian government officials performed additional testing and retesting of the vaccines and found nothing, but fear proved stronger than science, and four state governments halted their immunization programs for years. The result was an outbreak of polio, which effects mainly children. In 3 to 4% of cases, the disease destroys nerve cells that move muscles, resulting in paralysis and suffocation. Nigerian infection rates increased 30-fold, and polio spread to 10 other countries, many of which had previously been polio-free. This disaster halted a global program to eradicate polio, just when its goal was almost in reach. The anti-vaccination sentiment remains strong in northern Nigeria, largely due to religious objections, and one state has yet to resume vaccination.

The US is not immune to the outbreaks of once-rare childhood diseases. There are currently four ongoing outbreaks of measles, all centered in communities with high numbers of unvaccinated children. In all cases the outbreak was traced to people returning from Switzerland, where 15% of children are unvaccinated, and 1,297 cases have been reported this year.

These US oubreaks point to a future in which formerly rare childhood diseases could become commonplace again. Why? because anti-immunization sentiment is growing from several sources, ranging from religious strictures to distrust of the government, big pharma and the medical establishment.

In Colorado, up to 7% of children are "exempt" from being vaccinated under the state's notoriously lax exemption program. This threatens the entire population's protection under the principle of 'herd immunity,' under which the odds of encountering a disease drop with the level of immunity of the general population. As more of the population drops its defenses, the riper it is for infection. Children who cannot be innoculated because of autoimmune diseases or other medical problems are defenseless.

Our immunization program has been a victim of its own success - people have lost their fear of many diseases because they simply don't see them anymore. There were as many as 3 million cases of measles in 1958, leading to hundreds of deaths. In 1952 and 1953, the U.S. had polio outbreaks of 58,000 and 35,000 cases, respectively, up from a typical number of 20,000 cases a year. After measles and polio vaccination programs were introduced in the 1960s, the number of cases of both diseases dropped to essentially zero. Until now.

It's a matter of proportional response. Parents have never seen a neighbor or family member's child sick with any of the diseases that vaccinations protect against, but they do read scare stories about supposedly harmful ingredients or side effects in vaccines. A single case in which a child has a bad reaction to a vaccine looms like a monster, blotting out the view of the millions of children who have been kept safe by them. Celebrities (such as former Playboy centerfold Jennie McCarthy) keep themselves in the public eye by pumping up hysteria about vaccines and autism. Hucksters undermine modern medicine in order to sell books promoting quack cures. Meanwhile, careful scientific studies showing that vaccines are safe and effective go ignored.

President Franklin Roosevelt - himself a victim of childhood polio - once told Americans "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." These days, panic is king. And next to him, astride a pale horse, rides pestilence - coming soon to a child near you.



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Showing 1-10 of 18 comments
Submitted By: Samantha Mirabal
posted on 8/20/2008 @ 1:32:31 PM
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Why don't you give Dr. Arvay a call. Since you hyave studied so much into immunizations maybe you can come to the class with Mary Tocco and give your input. I'm sure it is comparable to her 27 years of study! Right?!
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Submitted By: Joseph Arvay
posted on 7/31/2008 @ 12:40:05 PM
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Mr. Dosser I would love to openly discuss this in a public forum on our different views of health care. I think the public would like to hear the truth. Would you be open to that?
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Submitted By: Doug Wray
posted on 7/7/2008 @ 9:34:35 PM
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I'd take these folks more seriously if they could (ever) spell. I can overlook bad grammar... but the stream of basic spelling errors hurts my eyes. MOMMIE!!!
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Submitted By: Ralph Dosser
posted on 7/7/2008 @ 8:59:34 PM
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There's a scientific principle called "the law of mass action." In layman's terms, it means "there more there is, the more it does." Other ways of saying it are "if you have a bad headache, take more aspirin" or "I drank more, so I got drunker." More does more, than less does less. If there is less of something, it has a smaller effect. Trace amounts of the mercury, formaldehyde and aluminum compounds have no measurable effect - they're a drop in the ocean. Then there's antifreeze. The main ingredients of antifreeze are ethylene glycol and diethylene glycol.There's no ethylene glycol or diethylene glycol in vaccines. It's a lie, plain and simple.
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Submitted By: Samantha Mirabal
posted on 7/7/2008 @ 9:24:02 AM
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So, lets inject Mercury, Formaldehyde, Aluminim, and Antifreeze into our kids and cause them other diseases!! Not to mention the aborted fetal cells! This is a worse medical falicy then blood letting!!
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Submitted By: Doug Wray
posted on 7/6/2008 @ 10:53:43 AM
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Kaye, there will always be atavistic luddites desperately trying to turn back the clock to 'a simpler time'. Trouble is, in those 'simpler times' the diagnoses were simple too: "You're going to die". Vaccines have saved untold numbers and that's documented fact.
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Submitted By: Kaye Fissinger
posted on 7/5/2008 @ 6:37:38 PM
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Ralph, your post is extremely well-researched and well written. It's a shame it attracted an individual living in a fantasy world. This person knows nothing of history. If he did, he wouldn't be spouting such nonsense. My parents and their siblings were born in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Their families lost children to diseases for which there are now vaccinations. So, too, did the families of some of their children. The fear of polio was palpable in the 40s and 50s and almost every extended family had a member who was afflicted.
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Submitted By: Ralph Dosser
posted on 7/4/2008 @ 10:38:13 PM
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BTW Mr. Ackley, vaccine administration is intramuscular or oral - not "injected directly into the bloodstream." And some antibiotics ARE administered intravenously. Boy, there's a couple of major whoppers. Do you ever get anything right on this subject?
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Submitted By: Doug Wray
posted on 7/4/2008 @ 9:50:10 AM
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(singing softly in high childlike voice) "...ring around the roo-sie... pocketful of posies... ash-es, ash-es, we all fall >DOWN!<" Let's keep in mind it took the 'organically living' English months to figure out their water supply was tainted - and a big fraction of the city had died by then. Science saved them (statistics in this case) and that's a fact. 'Toughing it out' isn't a strategy, it's a death sentence.
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Submitted By: Ralph Dosser
posted on 7/4/2008 @ 8:53:34 AM
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I don't think you're going to "educate" anyone, sir. "Science" doesn't mean "charlatans who agree with Sean Ackley." Real science can be found at the websites of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention here: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/6mishome.htm - those who oppose vaccines are peddling paranoia and babble.
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Showing 1-10 of 18 comments
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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Ralph Dosser

Longmont , CO

Ralph Dosser has posted 31 stories and 145 comments since joining on 5/16/2007. Ralph Dosser 's average story rating is 2.47.
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