Testimonial submitted by R.R. of Washington State
Our Unvaccinated Child
Our strategy: First, Do No Harm. While Hippocrates did not really place Do No Harm first in his oath, it is recognized as the most appropriate strategy when there is no indication of disease. The modern translation of the Hippocratic Oath does say: “I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect.”
First off, we would like to express our sympathies to those who have had vaccine injury or death. We can’t imagine the flood of emotions and frustration families and individuals go through when they enter a doctor’s office in the name of preventative health and leave in worse condition.
We are stout believers in natural healthcare. Dad, now 53, is from a holistic, multi-generational chiropractic family. Regrettably, he had some vaccines at age 4; still, he contracted measles and varicella after this. The only question for him was how natural his child would be raised. Mom, also 53, had all childhood vaccines, but also had measles and varicella. She learned about the amazing powers of health care alternatives when she successfully ended 17 years of migraine headaches with acupuncture and NAET allergy treatment (look it up!). This also started the practice of eating organic when shopping at Whole Foods was no small effort on a teacher’s salary. Luckily, this lesson opened mom’s eyes to healthy skepticism of Western medicine prior to planning a family, or dad’s job of convincing might have been much harder.
Dad introduced the idea of minimizing trips to the MD by sharing the book How to Raise a Healthy Child…In Spite of Your Doctor. This book by Dr. Mendelsohn helped guide mom’s diet during pregnancy, the early days for our daughter, and, as new parents, proved to calm our fears during routine sickness.
As older parents, we elected to give birth in a regular hospital. Mom had a potential low platelet condition that prevented her from taking an epidural, and in retrospect, this was a blessing. A 100% chemical free birth for mom and baby, who came out after only 3.5 hours since the first contractions. Regular chiropractic care we feel was greatly responsible for this easy childbirth, as originally claimed by our holistic doctor.
At the hospital, we were wary of the standard processes, beginning with the erythromycin eyedrops on day one in case mom had an STD. Why would we do that? In addition, we opted to delay the California heel-prick process until the two-week checkup. This allowed us to avoid the vitamin K shot, which was to be given to ensure clotting of blood during the heal prick – in case she had a clotting disorder. We asked ourselves – is our wonderful miracle, in the literal ‘infant’ stages of developing her immune system, ready for all these artificial insults? Hell no! Instead, we said No Thank You, which caused “quite the stir” with the staff as our family physician told us the next morning.
During our night in the hospital, we did not let the newborn out of our room. They offered the incubator ‘so we could sleep’, but we said no thank you (we meant: no way).
Escaping the clutches of the medical establishment unscathed, mom proceeded to eat well and nurse for nine months. Throughout this period, she would be with mom as the nursed baby three days a week, in a densely packed office of other employees at the business she owned. After nursing, we had a part-time nanny to take care of her in home from age one to four. We were also confident enough to take her in public situations; she was a great, quiet, well-behaved dinner companion. And she went on many trips: Mexican Cruise (Intl, 8 Months), Colorado (yearly), Caribbean Cruise (Intl. 2 yrs), Germany/Switzerland (5 yrs), and all of this frequent travel in germ-infested planes continues.
Well-baby visits? We went to the primary care physician/pediatrician at two months to hear that the baby was good, was near 50%ile, and where we had our first vaccination discussion with an MD. We wanted to delay and he was OK with that. We asked if he had kids and what he did about vaccines: they used a delayed schedule and would only take a few shots that addressed the more common diseases like measles and pertussis. What? An MD who didn’t follow the CDC schedule? Must have been an anti-vaxxer.
Daughter’s Health/Sickness Events:
• 2 Months, Mom: breast infection; nursed throughout.
• Annual cold w dry cough
• 0-3 yrs. Baby eczema; in desperation, we obtained Elidel steroidal cream, which received a ‘black box’ warning for cancer risk on the second day we had it. So, we stuck with fish oil and probiotic to help control it with a gastro-intestinal approach.
• 2.5 yrs: Fever; vomit (only time)
• 4 yrs: suspected mild case of pertussis; just lots of dry coughing; dissipated quickly with 3-4 visits to acupuncturist applying massage and cupping
• 4.5 yrs: H1N1 suspected in both mom and child. Lots of high fever and lethargy during flu season; likely contracted in pre-school setting.
• 6 yrs:
o Flu, missed 3 days of school in fall
o Flu / ear ache / ear infection, missed 5 days of school; took Amox-Clav but probably didn’t take course. Stubborn, so from ENT, tried Ofloxacin (ear drops) and Amoxicillin anti-biotic for first time.
o Quickly went back on cod liver oil, low sugar, probiotic, organic diet
Sure, there were occasional doubts we were doing the right thing. A family member would sometimes challenge our choice. The media and Public Health (at the seeming direction of the CDC) would announce Armageddon-like diseases (West Nile 2002, SARS 2004, H1N1 bird flu (2005), Swine Flu, Ebola and Zika, and now measles?). But we knew something in the US Vaccine Program smelled funny, so we kept digging into the other facts of the matter – the more we knew, the more we were NO! The case against vaccines passes our conspiracy theory test, which is: throw out 50% of the information and do vaccines still seem unsafe? Yes! We are 100% convinced we’re doing the right thing for our daughter.
But what about community immunity? Given modern sanitation, first-world food availability and the fact that all our direct ancestors for thousands of years survived infectious diseases, we say bring on the natural diseases. In their own course. The establishment should study how better to survive wild infectious diseases (e.g., vitamin A for measles), given all the latest scientific tools (e.g, epigenetics). We are contributing to community immunity, but only with a natural immune system that is smarter than the best vaccines.