No one can doubt that vaccines work as disease preventatives. Testimonies to that end range from veterinary services to pediatric physicians. Today we live in a crowded and well-traveled world, and the chances of acquiring serious disease for humans and animals has increased exponentially.
What’s in a vaccine?
Vaccines contain a dead or weakened form of the disease-germ in question. These germs, called antigens, are grown in labs and combined with stabilizers and other substances to create an optimum immune reaction in a vaccinated individual. Memory cells in the person’s immune system record this response forever. If the germ exposure ever shows up again it will be wiped out.
The problem is that no one can determine just how vigorous an individual’s immune response will be. All vaccines are pretty much compounded alike. All human bodies are not alike, in spite of their similarities. Some vaccines are troublesome to some children.
Dangerous Vaccines
Whole-Cell Pertussis Vaccine
The pertussis vaccine, routinely given to infants to protect them against the known dangers of whooping cough, can be dangerous. A press release issued by Peoples Union for Democratic Rights stated that, in October 2013, eight infants died and many others had become seriously ill after receiving a pertussis vaccine.
Since children receive three shots apiece, exposure to possible harm is high. Some children cried for hours. Shock-like reactions have occurred, resulting in total collapse of the child. Premature babies stopped breathing momentarily. The DTP (pertussis) vaccine can increase seizures related to fever fivefold within the first 24 hours after vaccination. Encephalitis has been possibly linked to pertussis vaccines. Lasting brain damage was observed in 105 children per million vaccinated, according to the Institute of Medicine’s findings.
Gardasil
Parents of girls have been warned that cervical cancer is the result of the human papilloma virus, or HPV. This is a very common sexually transmitted disease within the adult population. It is estimated that possibly 90 percent of adults will contract it within their lifetimes, but the immune system eventually prevails against it.
In some women, the virus remains in the cervix, eventually causing dysplasia and cervical cancer. An HPV vaccination will prevent infection with this virus if administered to young girls.
Some young women had bad reactions to the vaccination. Sixteen deaths after Gardasil was administered were recorded within an 18-month period from 2009 to 2010. There were 784 reports of ‘serious’ adverse reactions to the vaccine, including 213 listed as disabilities, according to Judicial Watch. For instance, Naomi Snell, of Melbourne Australia, is suffering autoimmune and neurological distress after a Gardasil vaccination. Soon after the vaccination, she had seizures and could not walk.
Chicken Pox Vaccine
Although chicken pox seems a fairly benign case of fever and itching, the disease leaves lasting consequences. One of these is the herpes virus, now lurking in the body and ready to spring to life with complications like painful shingles or Epstein-Barr. Chicken pox is also highly contagious through coughing or sneezing, and a minority of people present with life-threatening complications of this disease. This is why chicken pox vaccines are routinely performed. Mild rashes are usually side effects of this vaccine, and possible fever. More serious events include breathing problems, seizures and high fever.
Vaccines for children will always be controversial, because no one can foresee all reactions to the deliberate injection of an antigen into a human being. Vaccines are one of the most effective agents against disease since the time they were developed. Education about dangerous vaccines, their benefits and side-effects, is the most effective way to examine the need for certain child vaccinations.
Learn more about dangerous vaccines.
