In light of the worldwide fear created by the emergence of the swine flu, the efficacy, safety, and benefit of vaccines to counter such disease, or any other disease,for that matter, are again subject of much debate.
Closer to home, the safety of vaccines has been hot topic in our household ever since we had Isabelle and Ilysse. Prior to my so-called "enlightenment", Isabelle had the complete set of vaccinations, from DTP to MMR to Chickenpox to Hepatitis B, to all its booster shots. Even though Andrew was strongly against it, I even had Isabelle vaccinated against the flu at age 3. I totally regret what I did since shortly after her flu shot, her allergies to everything around her started to appear. We partly attribute Isabelle's allergies and eczema to these vaccinations and our theory has been supported by growing research and data on the detrimental effects of vaccination (particularly, the chemicals, like mercury, that go with the vaccines) on children. A very informative site on the ill effects of vaccination can be found at Generation Rescue (www.generationrescue.org) which was put up by Jenny McCarthy whose son was diagnosed with autism shortly after he was vaccinated.
With Ilysse, I knew better. I was more confident in not having Ilysse vaccinated because I breastfed her for 3 1/2 years. She had vaccinations only for DTP and she does not have allergies and rarely gets sick.
Thankfully, Andrew never got tired of reminding me of the dangers of vaccination at such an early age. He would even assuage my fears of not having our children vaccinated by correctly pointing out that our generation never had those vaccinations, but here we are, still alive and kicking. We got our share of measles, chickenpox, mumps, even hepatitis A, but, as far as we were concerned, they were simply childhood irritants.
To vaccinate or not to vaccinate obviously remains to be every parent's decision but I encourage parents to research and continue reading up on the latest on these vaccines. Do not make it routinary simply because everybody else is doing it. If you really want to have your children vaccinated, delay it until they are bigger and stronger to take on not only the germ that will be introduced in their system but also the multitude of toxic chemicals that come with the vaccine.
